Pioneers of Evolution from Thales to Huxley: With an Intermediate Chapter on the Causes of Arrest of the Movement |
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advance Anaxagoras Anaximander appear applied Aristotle arrest atoms authority barbaric became become belief Bible biologists body brain Buffon causes century changes Charles Darwin Christianity Church civilised creed Darwin death deity discovery divine doctrine dogma earth Empedocles enquiry Epicurus Erasmus Darwin Essays evidence existence explained fact faith geology gods Grant Allen Greek heaven Herbert Spencer human Huxley Huxley's ideas influence intellectual Ionia Ionian Jesus knowledge Lamarck Lectures Leucippus life-forms living Lucretius Malay Archipelago man's matter ment mental mind modern moral natural selection naturalist observation organic Origin of Species pagan Pentateuch phenomena philosophy physical plants and animals primitive principle Professor question races reference religion result Roman Romanes Lecture Rome says scientific Scripture Society soul special creation speculations spirit story structure substance theology theory of Evolution things thought tion universe Wallace Wallace's words writings
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Page 201 - 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 29 - they who through fear of death are all their lifetime subject to bondage.
Page 146 - 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 125 - 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 160 - My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts...
Page 125 - 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 157 - ... 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 246 - 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 115 - 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 180 - It is evident, that all the sciences have a relation, greater or less, to human nature ; and that, however wide any of them may seem to run from it, they still return back by one passage or another.