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I Cannot Anyhow Be Contented To View This Wonderful Universe, And Especially The Nature Of Man, And To Conclude That Everything Is The Result Of Brute Force. I Am Inclined To Look At Everything As Resulting From Designed Laws, With The Details, Whether Good Or Bad, Left To The Working Out Of What We Call Chance. Not That This Notion At All Satisfies Me. I Feel Most Deeply That The Whole Subject Is Too Profound For The Human Intellect. A Dog Might As Well Speculate On The Mind Of Newton. Let Each Man Hope And Believe What He Can.

-Charles Darwin

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I Cannot Anyhow Be

Charles Darwin

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I Cannot Anyhow Be Contented To View This Wonderful Universe, And Especially The Nature Of Man, And To Conclude That Everything Is The Result Of Brute Force. I Am Inclined To Look At Everything As Resulting From Designed Laws, With The Details, Whether Good Or Bad, Left To The Working Out Of What We Call Chance. Not That This Notion At All Satisfies Me. I Feel Most Deeply That The Whole Subject Is Too Profound For The Human Intellect. A Dog Might As Well Speculate On The Mind Of Newton. Let Each Man Hope And Believe What He Can.

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Daily It Is Forced Home On The Mind Of The Biologist That Nothing, Not Even The Wind That Blows, Is So Unstable As The Level Of The Crust Of This Earth.

I Have At Least, As I Hope, Done Good Service In Aiding To Overthrow The Dogma Of Separate Creations.

I Cannot Anyhow Be Contented To View This Wonderful Universe, And Especially The Nature Of Man, And To Conclude That Everything Is The Result Of Brute Force. I Am Inclined To Look At Everything As Resulting From Designed Laws, With The Details, Whether Good Or Bad, Left To The Working Out Of What We Call Chance. Not That This Notion At All Satisfies Me. I Feel Most Deeply That The Whole Subject Is Too Profound For The Human Intellect. A Dog Might As Well Speculate On The Mind Of Newton. Let Each Man Hope And Believe What He Can.

That There Is Much Suffering In The World No One Disputes. Which Is More Likely, That Pain And Evil Are The Result Of An All-powerful And Good God, Or The Product Of Uncaring Natural Forces? The Presence Of Much Suffering Agrees Well With The View That All Organic Beings Have Been Developed Through Variation And Natural Selection.

Even The Humblest Mammal's Strong Sexual, Parental, And Social Instincts Give Rise To 'do Unto Others As Yourself' And 'love Thy Neighbor As Thyself'.

I Am Almost Convinced (quite Contrary To Opinion I Started With) That Species Are Not (it Is Like Confessing A Murder) Immutable.

Origin Of Species

It Is Always Advisable To Perceive Clearly Our Ignorance.

A Man Who Has No Assured And Ever Present Belief In The Existence Of A Personal God Or Of A Future Existence With Retribution And Reward, Can Have For His Rule Of Life, As Far As I Can See, Only To Follow Those Impulses And Instincts Which Are The Strongest Or Which Seem To Him The Best Ones

Natural Selection Acts Solely By Accumulating Slight Successive Favorable Variations, It Can Produce No Great Or Sudden Modification; It Can Act Only By Very Short Steps.

I Ought, Or I Ought Not, Constitute The Whole Of Morality.

Another Source Of Conviction In The Existence Of God, Connected With The Reason And Not With The Feelings, Impresses Me As Having Much More Weight. This Follows From The Extreme Difficulty Or Rather Impossibility Of Conceiving This Immense And Wonderful Universe, Including Man With His Capacity Of Looking Far Backwards And Far Into Futurity, As The Result Of Blind Chance Or Necessity. When Thus Reflecting I Feel Compelled To Look To A First Cause Having An Intelligent Mind In Some Degree Analogous To That Of Man; And I Deserve To Be Called A Theist.

And Hail Their Queen, Fair Regent Of The Night.

How Paramount The Future Is To The Present When One Is Surrounded By Children.

We Must, However, Acknowledge, As It Seems To Me, That Man With All His Noble Qualities... Still Bears In His Bodily Frame The Indelible Stamp Of His Lowly Origin.

I Feel Like An Old Warhorse At The Sound Of A Trumpet When I Read About The Capturing Of Rare Beetles.

Endless Forms Most Beautiful And Most Wonderful Have Been, And Are Being Evolved

Theory Of Evolution

Such Simple Instincts As Bees Making A Beehive Could Be Sufficient To Overthrow My Whole Theory.

I Find In The Domestic Duck That The Bones Of The Wing Weigh Less And The Bones Of The Leg More, In Proportion To The Whole Skeleton, Than Do The Same Bones In The Wild Duck; And This Change May Be Safely Attributed To The Domestic Duck Flying Much Less, And Walking More, Than Its Wild Parents.

Man Selects Only For His Own Good: Nature Only For That Of The Being Which She Tends.

Origin Of Species

I Worked On True Baconian Principles, And Without Any Theory Collected Facts.

The Man Who Walks With Henslow.

How So Many Absurd Rules Of Conduct, As Well As So Many Absurd Religious Beliefs, Have Originated, We Do Not Know; Nor How It Is That They Have Become, In All Quarters Of The World, So Deeply Impressed On The Minds Of Men; But It Is Worthy Of Remark That A Belief Constantly Inculcated During The Early Years Of Life, While The Brain Is Impressionable, Appears To Acquire Almost The Nature Of An Instinct; And The Very Essence Of An Instinct Is That It Is Followed Independently Of Reason.

What Can Be More Curious Than That The Hand Of A Man, Formed For Grasping, That Of A Mole For Digging, The Leg Of The Horse, The Paddle Of The Porpoise, And The Wing Of The Bat, Should All Be Constructed On The Same Pattern?

On Your Life, Underestimating The Proclivities Of Finches Is Likely To Lead To Great Internal Hemorrhaging.

We Cannot Fathom The Marvelous Complexity Of An Organic Being; But On The Hypothesis Here Advanced This Complexity Is Much Increased. Each Living Creature Must Be Looked At As A Microcosm--a Little Universe, Formed Of A Host Of Self-propagating Organisms, Inconceivably Minute And As Numerous As The Stars In Heaven.

Multiply, Vary, Let The Strongest Live And The Weakest Die.

Origin Of Species

Natural Selection

A Scientific Man Ought To Have No Wishes, No Affections, - A Mere Heart Of Stone.

The Moral Faculties Are Generally Esteemed, And With Justice, As Of Higher Value Than The Intellectual Powers. But We Should Always Bear In Mind That The Activity Of The Mind In Vividly Recalling Past Impressions Is One Of The Fundamental Though Secondary Bases Of Conscience. This Fact Affords The Strongest Argument For Educating And Stimulating In All Possible Ways The Intellectual Faculties Of Every Human Being.

My Mind Seems To Have Become A Kind Of Machine For Grinding General Laws Out Of Large Collections Of Facts.

Animals, Whom We Have Made Our Slaves, We Do Not Like To Consider Our Equal.

As Some Of The Lowest Organisms, In Which Nerves Cannot Be Detected, Are Capable Of Perceiving Light, It Does Not Seem Impossible That Certain Sensitive Elements In Their Sarcode Should Become Aggregated And Developed Into Nerves, Endowed With This Special Sensibility.

Our Descent, Then, Is The Origin Of Our Evil Passions!! The Devil Under Form Of Baboon Is Our Grandfather.

It Is So Easy To Hide Our Ignorance Under Such Expressions As The Plan Of Creation Or Unity Of Design, Etc., And To Think That We Give An Explanation When We Only Restate A Fact.

The Assumed Instinctive Belief In God Has Been Used By Many Persons As An Argument For His Existence. But This Is A Rash Argument, As We Should Thus Be Compelled To Believe In The Existence Of Many Cruel And Malignant Spirits, Only A Little More Powerful Than Man; For The Belief In Them Is Far More General Than In A Beneficent Deity.

I Agree With Agassiz That Dogs Possess Something Very Like Conscience.

About Weak Points [of The Origin] I Agree. The Eye To This Day Gives Me A Cold Shudder, But When I Think Of The Fine Known Gradations, My Reason Tells Me I Ought To Conquer The Cold Shudder.

Much Love Much Trial, But What An Utter Desert Is Life Without Love.

Till Facts Are Grouped & Called There Can Be No Prediction. The Only Advantage Of Discovering Laws Is To Foretell What Will Happen & To See Bearing Of Scattered Facts.

Man Tends To Increase At A Greater Rate Than His Means Of Subsistence.

Nature Will Tell You A Direct Lie If She Can.

I Am Turned Into A Sort Of Machine For Observing Facts And Grinding Out Conclusions.

History Shows That The Human Mind, Fed By Constant Accessions Of Knowledge, Periodically Grows Too Large For Its Theoretical Coverings, And Bursts Them Asunder To Appear In New Habiliments, As The Feeding And Growing Grub, At Intervals, Casts Its Too Narrow Skin And Assumes Another.

I Have Called This Principle, By Which Each Slight Variation, If Useful, Is Preserved, By The Term Of Natural Selection.

Theory Of Evolution

Many Kinds Of Monkeys Have A Strong Taste For Tea, Coffee And Spirituous Liqueurs.

We Will Now Discuss In A Little More Detail The Struggle For Existence.

But I Own That I Cannot See As Plainly As Others Do, And I Should Wish To Do, Evidence Of Design And Beneficence On All Sides Of Us. There Seems To Me Too Much Misery In The World. I Cannot Persuade Myself That A Beneficent And Omnipotent God Would Have Designedly Created That A Cat Should Play With Mice.

I Have Rarely Read Anything Which Has Interested Me More, Though I Have Not Read As Yet More Than A Quarter Of The Book Proper. From Quotations Which I Had Seen, I Had A High Notion Of Aristotle's Merits, But I Had Not The Most Remote Notion What A Wonderful Man He Was. Linnaeus And Cuvier Have Been My Two Gods, Though In Very Different Ways, But They Were Mere Schoolboys To Old Aristotle.

What Wretched Doings Come From The Ardor Of Fame; The Love Of Truth Alone Would Never Make One Man Attack Another Bitterly.

I Have Called This Principle, By Which Each Slight Variation, If Useful, Is Preserved, By The Term Natural Selection, In Order To Mark Its Relation To Man's Power Of Selection. But The Expression Often Used By Mr. Herbert Spencer Of The Survival Of The Fittest Is More Accurate, And Is Sometimes Equally Convenient.

Your Words Have Come True With A Vengeance That I Shd [should] Be Forestalled ... I Never Saw A More Striking Coincidence. If Wallace Had My M.s. Sketch Written Out In 1842 He Could Not Have Made A Better Short Abstract! Even His Terms Now Stand As Heads Of My Chapters.

Now When Naturalists Observe A Close Agreement In Numerous Small Details Of Habits, Tastes And Dispositions Between Two Or More Domestic Races, Or Between Nearly-allied Natural Forms, They Use This Fact As An Argument That All Are Descended From A Common Progenitor Who Was Thus Endowed; And Consequently That All Should Be Classed Under The Same Species. The Same Argument May Be Applied With Much Force To The Races Of Man.

Describing Laughter: The Sound Is Produced By A Deep Inspiration Followed By Short, Interrupted, Spasmodic Contractions Of The Chest, And Especially The Diaphragm... The Mouth Is Open More Or Less Widely, With The Corners Drawn Much Backwards, As Well As A Little Upwards; And The Upper Lip Is Somewhat Raised.

The Normal Food Of Man Is Vegetable.

From The First Dawn Of Life, All Organic Beings Are Found To Resemble Each Other In Descending Degrees, So That They Can Be Classed In Groups Under Groups. This Classification Is Evidently Not Arbitrary Like The Grouping Of Stars In Constellations.

After My Return To England It Appeared To Me That By Following The Example Of Lyell In Geology, And By Collecting All Facts Which Bore In Any Way On The Variation Of Animals And Plants Under Domestication And Nature, Some Light Might Perhaps Be Thrown On The Whole Subject.

There Is No Fundamental Difference Between Humans And The Higher Mammalsin Their Mental Faculties

A Celebrated Author And Divine Has Written To Me That He Has Gradually Learned To See That It Is Just As Noble A Conception Of The Deity To Believe That He Created A Few Original Forms Capable Of Self-development Into Other And Needful Forms, As To Believe That He Required A Fresh Act Of Creation To Supply The Voids Caused By The Action Of His Laws.

Jealousy Was Plainly Exhibited When I Fondled A Large Doll, And When I Weighed His Infant Sister, He Being Then 15? Months Old. Seeing How Strong A Feeling Of Jealousy Is In Dogs, It Would Probably Be Exhibited By Infants At Any Earlier Age Than Just Specified If They Were Tried In A Fitting Manner

But Then With Me The Horrid Doubt Always Arises Whether The Convictions Of Man's Mind, Which Has Been Developed From The Mind Of The Lower Animals, Are Of Any Value Or At All Trustworthy. Would Any One Trust In The Convictions Of A Monkey's Mind, If There Are Any Convictions In Such A Mind?

It Is Absurd To Talk Of One Animal Being Higher Than Another...we Consider Those, Where The Intellectual Faculties Most Developed As The Highest. - A Bee Doubtless Would [use] ... Instincts As A Criteria.

I Long To Set Foot Where No Man Has Trod Before.

Although I Am Fully Convinced Of The Truth Of The Views Given In This Volume Under The Form Of An Abstract, I By No Means Expect To Convince Experienced Naturalists Whose Minds Are Stocked With A Multitude Of Facts All Viewed, During A Long Course Of Years, From A Point Of View Directly Opposite To Mine... I Look With Confidence To The Future, To Young And Rising Naturalists, Who Will Be Able To View Both Sides Of The Question With Impartiality.

The Several Difficulties Here Discussed, Namely Our Not Finding In The Successive Formations Infinitely Numerous Transitional Links Between The Many Species Which Now Exist Or Have Existed; The Sudden Manner In Which Whole Groups Of Species Appear In Our European Formations; The Almost Entire Absence, As At Present Known, Of Fossiliferous Formations Beneath The Silurian Strata, Are All Undoubtedly Of The Gravest Nature.

The Love For All Living Creatures Is The Most Noble Attribute Of Man.

A Man's Friendships Are One Of The Best Measures Of His Worth.

Blushing Is The Most Peculiar And The Most Human Of All Expressions. Monkeys Redden From Passion, But It Would Require An Overwhelming Amount Of Evidence To Make Us Believe That Any Animal Could Blush.

It Seems To Me Absurd To Doubt That A Man May Be An Ardent Theist And An Evolutionist. ... I Have Never Been An Atheist In The Sense Of Denying The Existence Of A God.

So In Regard To Mental Qualities, Their Transmission Is Manifest In Our Dogs, Horses And Other Domestic Animals. Besides Special Tastes And Habits, General Intelligence, Courage, Bad And Good Tempers. Etc., Are Certainly Transmitted.

To Suppose That The Eye Could Have Been Formed By Natural Selection, Seems, I Freely Confess, Absurd In The Highest Possible Degree

Theory Of Evolution

Creation Science

He Who Is Not Content To Look, Like A Savage, At The Phenomena Of Nature As Disconnected, Cannot Any Longer Believe That Man Is The Work Of A Separate Act Of Creation ... Man Is The Co-descendant With Other Mammals Of A Common Progenitor.

[t]he Young And The Old Of Widely Different Races, Both With Man And Animals, Express The Same State Of Mind By The Same Movements.

It Is Really Laughable To See What Different Ideas Are Prominent In Various Naturalists' Minds, When They Speak Of 'species'; In Some, Resemblance Is Everything And Descent Of Little Weight-in Some, Resemblance Seems To Go For Nothing, And Creation The Reigning Idea-in Some, Descent Is The Key,-in Some, Sterility An Unfailing Test, With Others It Is Not Worth A Farthing. It All Comes, I Believe, From Trying To Define The Undefinable.

Why Does Man Regret, Even Though He May Endeavour To Banish Any Such Regret, That He Has Followed The One Natural Impulse, Rather Than The Other; And Why Does He Further Feel That He Ought To Regret His Conduct? Man In This Respect Differs Profoundly From The Lower Animals.

...for The Shield May Be As Important For Victory, As The Sword Or Spear.

Disbelief Crept Over Me At A Very Slow Rate, But At Last It Was Complete.

But Geology Carries The Day: It Is Like The Pleasure Of Gambling, Speculating, On First Arriving, What The Rocks May Be; I Often Mentally Cry Out 3 To 1 Tertiary Against Primitive; But The Latter Have Hitherto Won All The Bets.

The Survival Or Preservation Of Certain Favoured Words In The Struggle For Existence Is Natural Selection.

Traveling Ought Also To Teach Him Distrust; But At The Same Time He Will Discover, How Many Truly Kind-hearted People There Are, With Whom He Never Before Had, Or Ever Again Will Have Any Further Communication, Who Yet Are Ready To Offer Him The Most Disinterested Assistance.

So Great Is The Economy Of Nature, That Most Flowers Which Are Fertilised By Crepuscular Or Nocturnal Insects Emit Their Odour Chiefly Or Exclusively In The Evening.

Thus We Have Given To Man A Pedigree Of Prodigious Length, But Not, It May Be Said, Of Noble Quality.

Man Is More Courageous, Pugnacious, And Energetic Than Woman, And Has A More Inventive Genius. His Brain Is Absolutely Larger, But Whether Relatively To The Larger Size Of His Body, In Comparison With That Of Woman, Has Not, I Believe Been Fully Ascertained. In Woman The Face Is Rounder; The Jaws And The Base Of The Skull Smaller; The Outlines Of Her Body Rounder, In Parts More Prominent; And Her Pelvis Is Broader Than In Man; But This Latter Character May Perhaps Be Considered Rather As A Primary Than A Secondary Sexual Character. She Comes To Maturity At An Earlier Age Than Man.

Light May Be Shed On Man And His Origins.

The Formation Of Different Languages And Of Distinct Species And The Proofs That Both Have Been Developed Through A Gradual Process, Are Curiously Parallel.

One Day, On Tearing Off Some Old Bark, I Saw Two Rare Beetles, And Seized One In Each Hand. Then I Saw A Third And New Kind, Which I Could Not Bear To Lose, So I Popped The One Which I Held In My Right Hand Into My Mouth. Alas! It Ejected Some Intensely Acrid Fluid, Which Burnt My Tongue So That I Was Forced To Spit The Beetle Out, Which Was Lost, As Was The Third One.

False Facts Are Highly Injurious To The Progress Of Science, For They Often Endure Long; But False Views, If Supported By Some Evidence, Do Little Harm, For Every One Takes A Salutary Pleasure In Proving Their Falseness.

Theory Of Evolution

Man Himself Cannot Express Love And Humility By External Signs, So Plainly As Does A Dog, When With Drooping Ears, Hanging Lips, Flexuous Body, And Wagging Tail, He Meets His Beloved Master.

Man Is Descended From A Hairy, Tailed Quadruped, Probably Arboreal In Its Habits.

Great Is The Power Of Steady Misrepresentation

Misrepresentation

Origin Of Species

It Is Not The Conscience Which Raises A Blush, For A Man May Sincerely Regret Some Slight Fault Committed In Solitude, Or He May Suffer The Deepest Remorse For An Undetected Crime, But He Will Not Blush... It Is Not The Sense Of Guilt, But The Thought That Others Think Or Know Us To Be Guilty Which Crimsons The Face.

Man In His Arrogance Thinks Himself A Great Work, Worthy The Interposition Of A Great Deity. More Humble And I Believe True To Consider Him Created From Animals.

Even When We Are Quite Alone, How Often Do We Think With Pleasure Or Pain Of What Others Think Of Us - Of Their Imagined Approbation Or Disapprobation.

Even People Who Aren’t Geniuses Can Outthink The Rest Of Mankind If They Develop Certain Thinking Habits.

As Man Advances In Civilization, And Small Tribes Are United Into Larger Communities, The Simplest Reason Would Tell Each Individual That He Ought To Extend His Social Instincts And Sympathies To All Members Of The Same Nation, Though Personally Unknown To Him. This Point Being Once Reached, There Is Only An Artificial Barrier To Prevent His Sympathies Extending To The Men Of All Nations And Races.

It Strikes Me That All Our Knowledge About The Structure Of Our Earth Is Very Much Like What An Old Hen Would Know Of The Hundred-acre Field In A Corner Of Which She Is Scratching.

In The Survival Of Favoured Individuals And Races, During The Constantly-recurring Struggle For Existence, We See A Powerful And Ever-acting Form Of Selection.

Any One Whose Disposition Leads Him To Attach More Weight To Unexplained Difficulties Than To The Explanation Of Facts Will Certainly Reject My Theory.

I Shall Always Feel Respect For Every One Who Has Written A Book, Let It Be What It May, For I Had No Idea Of The Trouble Which Trying To Write Common English Could Cost One—and Alas There Yet Remains The Worst Part Of All Correcting The Press.

About Thirty Years Ago There Was Much Talk That Geologists Ought Only To Observe And Not Theorise; And I Well Remember Some One Saying That At This Rate A Man Might As Well Go Into A Gravel-pit And Count The Pebbles And Describe The Colours. How Odd It Is That Anyone Should Not See That All Observation Must Be For Or Against Some View If It Is To Be Of Any Service!

We May Confidently Come To The Conclusion, That The Forces Which Slowly And By Little Starts Uplift Continents, And That Those Which At Successive Periods Pour Forth Volcanic Matter From Open Orifices, Are Identical.

If Mozart, Instead Of Playing The Pianoforte At Three Years Old With Wonderfully Little Practice, Had Played A Tune With No Practice At All, He Might Truly Have Been Said To Have Done So Instinctively.

We Are Not Here Concerned With Hopes Or Fears, Only With Truth As Far As Our Reason Permits Us To Discover It.

The More I Study Nature, The More I Become Impressed With Ever-increasing Force With The Conclusion, That The Contrivances And Beautiful Adaptations Slowly Acquired Through Each Part Occasionally Varying In A Slight Degree But In Many Ways, With The Preservation Or Natural Selection Of Those Variations Which Are Beneficial To The Organism Under The Complex And Ever-varying Conditions Of Life, Transcend In An Incomparable Degree The Contrivances And Adaptations Which The Most Fertile Imagination Of Man Could Suggest With Unlimited Time At His Disposal.

I Think It Inevitably Follows, That As New Species In The Course Of Time Are Formed Through Natural Selection, Others Will Become Rarer And Rarer, And Finally Extinct. The Forms Which Stand In Closest Competition With Those Undergoing Modification And Improvement Will Naturally Suffer Most.

On The Ordinary View Of Each Species Having Been Independently Created, We Gain No Scientific Explanation.

The World Will Not Be Inherited By The Strongest, It Will Be Inherited By Those Most Able To Change.

There Is A Grandeur In This View Of Life, From So Simple A Beginning Endless Forms Most Beautiful Are Being Evolved

It's Not The Strongest, But The Most Adaptable That Survive.

It Is Well-known That Those Who Have Charge Of Young Infants, That It Is Difficult To Feel Sure When Certain Movements About Their Mouths Are Really Expressive; That Is When They Really Smile. Hence I Carefully Watched My Own Infants. One Of Them At The Age Of Forty-five Days, And Being In A Happy Frame Of Mind, Smiled... I Observed The Same Thing On The Following Day: But On The Third Day The Child Was Not Quite Well And There Was No Trace Of A Smile, And This Renders It Probable That The Previous Smiles Were Real.

The Age-old And Noble Thought Of 'i Will Lay Down My Life To Save Another,' Is Nothing More Than Cowardice.

The Very Essence Of Instinct Is That It's Followed Independently Of Reason.

It Is A Cursed Evil To Any Man To Become As Absorbed In Any Subject As I Am In Mine.

I Am Aware That The Assumed Instinctive Belief In God Has Been Used By Many Persons As An Argument For His Existence. The Idea Of A Universal And Beneficent Creator Does Not Seem To Arise In The Mind Of Man, Until He Has Been Elevated By Long-continued Culture.

From My Early Youth I Have Had The Strongest Desire To Understand Or Explain Whatever I Observed. ... To Group All Facts Under Some General Laws.

He Who Understands Baboon Would Do More Towards Metaphysics Than Locke.

... Not One Living Species Will Transmit Its Unaltered Likeness To A Distant Futurity.

Origin Of Species

Progress Has Been Much More General Than Retrogression

Everything In Nature Is The Result Of Fixed Laws.

The Noble Science Of Geology Loses Glory From The Extreme Imperfection Of The Record. The Crust Of The Earth With Its Embedded Remains Must Not Be Looked At As A Well-filled Museum, But As A Poor Collection Made At Hazard And At Rare Intervals.

It May Be Conceit, But I Believe The Subject Will Interest The Public, And I Am Sure That The Views Are Original.

For I Am Well Aware That Scarcely A Single Point Is Discussed In This Volume On Which Facts Cannot Be Adduced, Often Apparently Leading To Conclusions Directly Opposite To Those At Which I Have Arrived. A Fair Result Can Be Obtained Only By Fully Stating And Balancing The Facts And Arguments On Both Sides Of Each Question.

It Is Not The Most Intellectual Of The Species That Survives; It Is Not The Strongest That Survives; But The Species That Survives Is The One That Is Able Best To Adapt And Adjust To The Changing Environment In Which It Finds Itself.

Changing Environment

Life Is Nearly Over With Me. I Have Taken No Pains About My Style Of Writing.

Only The Fittest Will Survive.

I Am Sorry To Have To Inform You That I Do Not Believe In The Bible As A Divine Revelation, & Therefore Not In Jesus Christ As The Son Of God.

Nothing Can Be More Hopeless Than To Attempt To Explain This Similarity Of Pattern In Members Of The Same Class, By Utility Or By The Doctrine Of Final Causes.

We Have Happy Days, Remember Good Dinners.

The Young Blush Much More Freely Than The Old But Not During Infancy, Which Is Remarkable, As We Know That Infants At A Very Early Age Redden From Passion.

As Natural Selection Works Solely By And For The Good Of Each Being, All Corporeal And Mental Endowments Will Tend To Progress Toward Perfection.

Mathematics Seems To Endow One With Something Like A New Sense.

...one Doubts Existence Of Free Will [because] Every Action Determined By Heredity, Constitution, Example Of Others Or Teaching Of Others." "this View Should Teach One Profound Humility, One Deserves No Credit For Anything...nor Ought One To Blame Others.

Man Is Developed From An Ovule, About 125th Of An Inch In Diameter, Which Differs In No Respect From The Ovules Of Other Animals.

It Is A Truly Wonderful Fact - The Wonder Of Which We Are Apt To Overlook From Familiarity - That All Animals And All Plants Throughout All Time And Space Should Be Related To Each Other In Group Subordinate To Group.

With Highly Civilised Nations Continued Progress Depends In A Subordinate Degree On Natural Selection; For Such Nations Do Not Supplant And Exterminate One Another As Do Savage Tribes.

The Times Is Getting More Detestable (but That Is Too Weak Word) Than Ever.

I Have Tried Lately To Read Shakespeare, And Found It So Intolerably Dull That It Nauseated Me.

You Will Be Astonished To Find How The Whole Mental Disposition Of Your Children Changes With Advancing Years. A Young Child And The Same When Nearly Grown, Sometimes Differ Almost As Much As Do A Caterpillar And Butterfly.

The Most Powerful Natural Species Are Those That Adapt To Environmental Change Without Losing Their Fundamental Identity Which Gives Them Their Competitive Advantage.

Animals Manifestly Enjoy Excitement, And Suffer From Annul And May Exhibit Curiosity.

It Is Not The Strongest Of The Species That Survives, Nor The Most Intelligent That Survives. It Is The One That Is The Most Adaptable To Change, That Lives Within The Means Available And Works Co-operatively Against Common Threats.

In My Simplicity, I Remember Wondering Why Every Gentleman Did Not Become An Ornithologist.

It Is Interesting To Contemplate An Entangled Bank Clothed With Many Plants Of Many Kinds With Birds Singing On The Bushes, With Various Insects Flitting About And With Worms Crawling Through The Damp Earth And To Reflect That These Elaborately Constructed Forms So Different From Each Other And Dependent On Each Other And So Complex A Manner Have All Been Produced By Laws Acting Around Us.

I Can Remember The Very Spot In The Road, Whilst In My Carriage, When To My Joy The Solution Occurred To Me.

It May Be Said That Natural Selection Is Daily And Hourly Scrutinizing, Throughout The World, Every Variation, Even The Slightest; Rejecting That Which Is Bad, Preserving And Adding Up All That Is Good; Silently And Insensibly Working, Wherever And Whenever Opportunity Offers, At The Improvement Of Each Organic Being In Relation To Its Organic And Inorganic Conditions Of Life.

I Trust And Believe That The Time Spent In This Voyage ... Will Produce Its Full Worth In Natural History; And It Appears To Me The Doing What Little We Can To Increase The General Stock Of Knowledge Is As Respectable An Object Of Life, As One Can In Any Likelihood Pursue.

An American Monkey, After Getting Drunk On Brandy, Would Never Touch It Again, And Thus Is Much Wiser Than Most Men.

It Is Like Confessing To A Murder.

Positive Atheism

We Have Seen That The Senses And Intuitions, The Various Emotions And Faculties, Such As Love, Memory, Attention And Curiosity, Imitation, Reason, Etc., Of Which Man Boasts, May Be Found In An Incipient, Or Even Sometimes In A Well-developed Condition, In The Lower Animals.

It May Be Doubted That There Are Many Other Animals Which Have Played So Important A Part In The History Of The World As Have These Lowly Organized Creatures.

I Always Feel As If My Books Came Half Out Of Lyell's Brain... & Therefore That When Seeing A Thing Never Seen By Lyell, One Yet Saw It Partially Through His Eyes.

A Language, Like A Species, When Extinct, Never... Reappears.

Although Much Remains Obscure, And Will Long Remain Obscure, ... I Am Convinced That Natural Selection Has Been The Main But Not Exclusive Means Of Modification.

Ignorance More Frequently Begets Confidence Than Does Knowledge: It Is Those Who Know Little, And Not Those Who Know Much, Who So Positively Assert That This Or That Problem Will Never Be Solved By Science.

...i Believe There Exists, & I Feel Within Me, An Instinct For The Truth, Or Knowledge Or Discovery, Of Something Of The Same Nature As The Instinct Of Virtue, & That Our Having Such An Instinct Is Reason Enough For Scientific Researches Without Any Practical Results Ever Ensuing From Them.

Nothing Could Have Been Worse For The Development Of My Mind Than Dr. Butler's School, As It Was Strictly Classical, Nothing Else Being Taught, Except A Little Ancient Geography And History. The School As A Means Of Education To Me Was Simply A Blank. During My Whole Life I Have Been Singularly Incapable Of Mastering Any Language. Especial Attention Was Paid To Versemaking, And This I Could Never Do Well. I Had Many Friends, And Got Together A Good Collection Of Old Verses, Which By Patching Together, Sometimes Aided By Other Boys, I Could Work Into Any Subject.

A Novel According To My Taste, Does Not Come Into The Moderately Good Class Unless It Contains Some Person Whom One Can Thoroughly Love - And If A Pretty Woman, All The Better.

I Look At The Natural Geological Record As A History Of The World Imperfectly Kept And Written In A Changing Dialect; Of This History We Possess The Last Volume Alone, Relating Only To Two Or Three Countries. Of This Volume, Only Here And There A Short Chapter Has Been Preserved; And Of Each Page, Only Here And There A Few Lines.

The Loss Of These Tastes [for Poetry And Music] Is A Loss Of Happiness, And May Possibly Be Injurious To The Intellect, And More Probably To The Moral Character, By Enfeebling The Emotional Part Of Our Nature.

The Theory Which I Would Offer, Is Simply, That As The Land With The Attached Reefs Subsides Very Gradually From The Action Of Subterranean Causes, The Coral-building Polypi Soon Raise Again Their Solid Masses To The Level Of The Water: But Not So With The Land; Each Inch Lost Is Irreclaimably Gone; As The Whole Gradually Sinks, The Water Gains Foot By Foot On The Shore, Till The Last And Highest Peak Is Finally Submerged.

If I Had Not Been So Great An Invalid, I Should Not Have Done So Much As I Have Accomplished.

Not One Great Country Can Be Named, From The Polar Regions In The North To New Zealand In The South, In Which The Aborigines Do Not Tattoo Themselves.

In My Most Extreme Fluctuations I Have Never Been An Atheist In The Sense Of Denying The Existence Of A God ... I Think That Generally (& More And More So As I Grow Older) But Not Always, That An Agnostic Would Be The Most Correct Description Of My State Of Mind.

Not One Change Of Species Into Another Is On Record ... We Cannot Prove That A Single Species Has Been Changed.

I Always Make Special Notes About Evidence That Contridicts Me: Supportive Evidence I Can Remember Without Trying.

It Is No Valid Objection That Science As Yet Throws No Light On The Far Higher Problem Of The Essence Or Origin Of Life. Who Can Explain Gravity? No One Now Objects To Following Out The Results Consequent On This Unknown Element Of Attraction.

Music Was Known And Understood Before Words Were Spoken.

May We Not Suspect That The Vague But Very Real Fears Of Children, Which Are Quite Independent Of Experience, Are The Inherited Effects Of Real Dangers And Abject Superstitions During Ancient Savage Times?

The Number Of Humble-bees In Any District Depends In A Great Degree On The Number Of Field-mice, Which Destroy Their Combs And Nests; And Mr. H. Newman, Who Has Long Attended To The Habits Of Humble-bees, ... Says "near Villages And Small Towns I Have Found The Nests Of Humble-bees More Numerous Than Elsewhere, Which I Attribute To The Number Of Cats That Destroy The Mice." Hence It Is Quite Credible That The Presence Of A Feline Animal In Large Numbers In A District Might Determine, Through The Intervention First Of Mice And Then Of Bees, The Frequency Of Certain Flowers In That District!

When It Was First Said That The Sun Stood Still And World Turned Round, The Common Sense Of Mankind Declared The Doctrine False; But The Old Saying Of Vox Populi, Vox Dei [the Voice Of The People Is The Voice Of God], As Every Philosopher Knows, Cannot Be Trusted In Science.

What A Book A Devil's Chaplain Might Write On The Clumsy, Wasteful, Blundering, Low, And Horribly Cruel Work Of Nature!

Farewell Australia! You ... Are Too Great And Ambitious For Affection, Yet Not Great Enough For Respect. I Leave Your Shores Without Sorrow Or Regret.

A Cell Is A Complex Structure, With Its Investing Membrane, Nucleus, And Nucleolus.

In However Complex A Manner This Feeling May Have Originated, As It Is One Of High Importance To All Those Animals Which Aid And Defend One Another, It Will Have Been Increased Through Natural Selection; For Those Communities, Which Included The Greatest Number Of The Most Sympathetic Members, Would Flourish Best, And Rear The Greatest Number Of Offspring.

Formerly Milton's Paradise Lost Had Been My Chief Favourite, And In My Excursions During The Voyage Of The Beagle, When I Could Take Only A Single Small Volume, I Always Chose Milton.

[alexander Von Humboldt Was The] Greatest Scientific Traveller Who Ever Lived.

To Kill An Error Is As Good A Service As, And Sometimes Even Better Than, The Establishing Of A New Truth Or Fact.

New Relationship

Man With All His Noble Qualities, With Sympathy Which Feels For The Most Debased, With Benevolence Which Extends Not Only To Other Men But To The Humblest Living Creature, With His God-like Intellect Which Has Penetrated Into The Movements And Constitution Of The Solar System- With All These Exalted Powers- Man Still Bears In His Bodily Frame The Indelible Stamp Of His Lowly Origin.

Seeing This Gradation And Diversity Of Structure In One Small, Intimately Related Group Of Birds, One Might Really Fancy That From An Original Paucity Of Birds In This Archipelago, One Species Had Been Taken And Modified For Different Ends.

If I Had My Life To Live Over Again, I Would Have Made A Rule To Read Some Poetry And Listen To Some Music At Least Once Every Week.

I Have Been Speculating Last Night What Makes A Man A Discoverer Of Undiscovered Things. As Far As I Can Conjecture The Art Consists In Habitually Searching For The Causes And Meaning Of Everything Which Occurs.

The More We Know Of The Fixed Laws Of Nature The More Incredible Do Miracles Become, - That The Men At That Time Were Ignorant And Credulous To A Degree Almost Incomprehensible By Us, - That The Gospels Cannot Be Proved To Have Been Written Simultaneously With The Events, - That They Differ In Many Important Details, Far Too Important As It Seemed To Me To Be Admitted As The Usual Inaccuracies Of Eye-witnesses; - By Such Reflections As These... I Gradually Came To Disbelieve In Christianity As A Divine Revelation.

I Cannot See ... Evidence Of Design And Beneficence ... There Seems To Me Too Much Misery In The World.

The Earthquake, However, Must Be To Every One A Most Impressive Event: The Earth, Considered From Our Earliest Childhood As The Type Of Solidity, Has Oscillated Like A Thin Crust Beneath Our Feet; And In Seeing The Laboured Works Of Man In A Moment Overthrown, We Feel The Insignificance Of His Boasted Power.

Mere Chance ... Alone Would Never Account For So Habitual And Large An Amount Of Difference As That Between Varieties Of The Same Species.

Origin Of Species

It Is Not The Biggest, The Brightest Or The Best That Will Survive, But Those Who Adapt The Quickest.

I Liked The Thought Of Being A Country Clergyman. Accordingly I Read With Care Pearson On The Creed And A Few Other Books On Divinity; And As I Did Not Then In The Least Doubt The Strict And Literal Truth Of Every Word In The Bible, I Soon Persuaded Myself That Our Creed Must Be Fully Accepted.

Sympathy Beyond The Confines Of Man, That Is, Humanity To The Lower Animals, Seems To Be One Of The Latest Moral Acquisitions.

I Can Indeed Hardly See How Anyone Ought To Wish Christianity To Be True For If So The Plain Language Of The Text Seems To Show That The Men Who Do Not Believe, And This Would Include My Father, Brother And Almost All Of My Friends, Will Be Everlastingly Punished. And This Is A Damnable Doctrine.

I Love Fools' Experiments. I Am Always Making Them.

Theory Of Evolution

Nothing Can Be More Improving To A Young Naturalist, Than A Journey In A Distant Country.

Man Scans With Scrupulous Care The Character And Pedigree Of His Horses, Cattle, And Dogs Before He Matches Them; But When He Comes To His Own Marriage He Rarely, Or Never, Takes Any Such Care.

Who When Examining In The Cabinet Of The Entomologist The Gay And Exotic Butterflies, And Singular Cicadas, Will Associate With These Lifeless Objects, The Ceaseless Harsh Music Of The Latter, And The Lazy Flight Of The Former - The Sure Accompaniments Of The Still, Glowing Noonday Of The Tropics.

The Presence Of A Body Of Well-instructed Men, Who Have Not To Labor For Their Daily Bread, Is Important To A Degree Which Cannot Be Overestimated; As All High Intellectual Work Is Carried On By Them, And On Such Work Material Progress Of All Kinds Mainly Depends, Not To Mention Other And Higher Advantages.

Extinction Has Only Separated Groups: It Has By No Means Made Them; For If Every Form Which Has Ever Lived On This Earth Were Suddenly To Reappear, Though It Would Be Quite Impossible To Give Definitions By Which Each Group Could Be Distinguished From Other Groups, As All Would Blend Together By Steps As Fine As Those Between The Finest Existing Varieties, Nevertheless A Natural Classification, Or At Least A Natural Arrangement, Would Be Possible.

The Love Of A Dog For His Master Is Notorious; In The Agony Of Death He Has Been Known To Caress His Master, And Everyone Has Heard Of The Dog Suffering Under Vivisection, Who Licked The Hand Of The Operator; This Man, Unless He Had A Heart Of Stone, Must Have Felt Remorse To The Last Hour Of His Life.

It Is Impossible To Concieve Of This Immense And Wonderful Universe As The Result Of Blind Chance Or Necessity.

Delight Itself, However, Is A Weak Term To Express The Feelings Of A Naturalist.

I Fully Agree With All That You Say On The Advantages Of Spencer's Excellent Expression Of 'the Survival Of The Fittest.' This, However, Had Not Occurred To Me Till Reading Your Letter. It Is, However, A Great Objection To This Term That It Cannot Be Used As A Substantive Governing A Verb; And That This Is A Real Objection I Infer From H. Spencer Continually Using The Words, Natural Selection.

The Western Nations Of Europe, Who Now So Immeasurably Surpass Their Former Savage Progenitors, And Stand At The Summit Of Civilization, Owe Little Or None Of Their Superiority To Direct Inheritance From The Old Greeks, Though They Owe Much To The Written Works Of That Wonderful People.

But Just In Proportion As This Process Of Extermination Has Acted On An Enormous Scale, So Must The Number Of Intermediate Varieties, Which Have Formerly Existed, Be Truly Enormous. Why Then Is Not Every Geological Formation And Every Stratum Full Of Such Intermediate Links? Geology Assuredly Does Not Reveal Any Such Finely Graduated Organic Chain; And This, Perhaps, Is The Most Obvious And Serious Objection Which Can Be Urged Against The Theory. The Explanation Lies, As I Believe, In The Extreme Imperfection Of The Geological Record.

Theory Of Evolution

You Ask About My Opinion On Vivisection. I Quite Agree That It Is Justifiable For Real Investigations On Physiology; But Not For Mere Damnable And Detestable Curiosity.

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