Pioneers of Evolution from Thales to Huxley |
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Page 215 - If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling, it would be a man, a man of restless and versatile intellect, who, not content with an equivocal \ success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions, and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.
Page 25 - they who through fear of death are all their lifetime subject to bondage.
Page 154 - Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses, Or else worth all the rest ; I see thee still, And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, Which was not so before. There's no such thing : It is the bloody business which informs Thus to mine eyes.
Page 132 - I happened to read for amusement ' Malthus on Population,' and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species. Here then I had at last got a theory by which to work...
Page 171 - My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts...
Page 131 - In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic enquiry, I happened to read for amusement 'Malthus on Population,' and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations...
Page 166 - ... by art seems to be done with equal efficacy, though more slowly, by Nature, in the formation of varieties of mankind, fitted for the country which they inhabit. Of the accidental varieties of man, which would occur among the first few and scattered inhabitants of the middle regions of Africa, some one would be better fitted than the others to bear the diseases of the country.
Page 263 - And it cannot be otherwise, for every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the annihilation of the spirit of blind faith ; and the most ardent votary of science holds his firmest convictions, not because the men he most venerates hold them ; not because their verity is testified by portents and wonders ; but because his experience teaches him that whenever he chooses...
Page 119 - appeared in 1844. In the tenth and much improved edition (1853) the anonymous author says (p. 155) : — " The proposition determined on after much consideration is, that the several series of animated beings, from the simplest and oldest up to the highest and most recent...
Page 188 - ... this truth, will see that the course proposed does not imply a degradation of the so-called higher, but an elevation of the so-called lower. Perceiving, as he will, that the Materialist and Spiritualist controversy is a mere war of words, in which the disputants are equally absurd — each thinking he understands that which it is impossible for any man to understand — he will perceive how utterly groundless is the fear referred to.