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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, ar...more

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To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light,...more

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A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be opened, on the causes and laws of variation, on correlation of growth, on the effects of use and...more

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It is difficult to believe in the dreadful but quiet war lurking just below the serene facade of nature.

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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 har...more

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The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree.I believe this simile largely speaks the truth. The...more

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When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Cambria...more

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But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal...more

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I fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of H. Spencer's excellent expression of 'the survival of the fittest.' This, however, had not oc...more

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Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert th...more

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To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.

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Origin of man now proved.—Metaphysics must flourish.—He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke.

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...Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers... for quoting the Bible as an...more

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As the great botanist Bichat long ago said, if everyone were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty. If all our women were to ...more

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The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the paren...more