All evolution in thought and conduct must at first appear as heresy and misconduct.

All evolution in thought and conduct must at first appear as heresy and misconduct.

Out of the dusk a shadow,
Then a spark;
Out of the cloud a silence,
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Out of the dusk a shadow,
Then a spark;
Out of the cloud a silence,
Then a lark;
Out of the heart a rapture,
Then a pain;
Out of the dead, cold ashes,
Life again.

While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats.

While the rest of the species is descended from apes, redheads are descended from cats.

Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not read more

Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not on reasoning but on doctrinaire adherence to religious principles

Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And read more

Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there’s nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fiber and, in some cases, backbone.

For my own part I am persuaded that everything advances by an
unchangeable law through the eternal constitution and read more

For my own part I am persuaded that everything advances by an
unchangeable law through the eternal constitution and association
of latent causes, which have been long before predestined.
[Lat., Equidem aeterna constitutione crediderim nexuque causarum
atentium et multo ante destinatarum suum quemque ordinem
immutabili lege percurrere.]

The rise of every man he loved to trace,
Up to the very pod O!
And, in read more

The rise of every man he loved to trace,
Up to the very pod O!
And, in baboons, our parent race
Was found by old Monboddo.
Their A, B, C, he made them speak,
And learn their qui, quae, quod, O!
Till Hebrew, Latin, Welsh, and Greek
They knew as well's Monboddo!

This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express
in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. read more

This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express
in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called "natural
selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle
for life."

A fire-mist and a planet,
A crystal and a cell,
A jellyfish and a saurian,
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A fire-mist and a planet,
A crystal and a cell,
A jellyfish and a saurian,
And caves where the cavemen dwell;
Then a sense of law and beauty,
And a face turned from the clod--
Some call it Evolution,
And others call it God.