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 in so
complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us.
These laws, taken in
the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; inheritance which is
almost implied by
reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the
external
conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so
high as to lead to a Struggle
for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing
Divergence of Character and
the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature,
from famine and
death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving,
namely, the
production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur
in this view of life, with
its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or
into one; and that,
whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of
gravity, from so
simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have
been, and are
being, evolved. "Last modified November 15 2006 08:28 PM
