At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state as we may hope, than the Caucasian and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.
Such simple instincts as bees making a beehive could be sufficient to overthrow my whole theory.
With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth.
Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy.
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.
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.
The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an improved theory, is it then a science or faith?
To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree
A moral being is one who is capable of reflecting on his past actions and their motives - of approving of some and disapproving of others.
A mathematician is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat which isn't there.
The main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely that man is descended from some lowly-organised form, will, I regret to think, be highly distasteful to many persons. But there can hardly be a doubt that we are descended from barbarians.
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.
Why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms.
The question of whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the Universe has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed.
Even people who aren’t geniuses can outthink the rest of mankind if they develop certain thinking habits.
Much love much trial, but what an utter desert is life without love.
It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.
We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it.
An agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind.
Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.
I never gave up Christianity until I was forty years of age.
Free will is to mind what chance is to matter.
If every one were cast in the same mould, there would be no such thing as beauty.
I am not apt to follow blindly the lead of other men
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