Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

The quotation frames moral progress as an evolutionary ascent: as societies develop, they should move from violence and exploitation toward non-harm and universal ethical regard. Its second sentence sharpens the claim into a civilizational critique—so long as humans injure other living beings, we have not truly advanced beyond “savagery.” Read this way, it aligns with traditions of ethical vegetarianism/animal-rights thought and with a broader modern idea that technological or intellectual progress is hollow without moral progress. However, because the attribution to Edison is doubtful, the interpretation is best treated as analysis of the sentiment rather than of Edison’s documented views.