Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good
And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud.

Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good
And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud.

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!

Said the little Eohippus,
"I am going to be a horse,
And on my middle fingernails
read more

Said the little Eohippus,
"I am going to be a horse,
And on my middle fingernails
To run my earthly course!
. . . .
I'm going to have a flowing tail!
I'm going to have a mane!
I'm going to stand fourteen hands high
On the Psychozoic plain!"

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."

There was an ape in the days that were earlier,
Centuries passed and his hair became curlier;
read more

There was an ape in the days that were earlier,
Centuries passed and his hair became curlier;
Centuries more gave a thumb to his wrist--
Then he was a Man and a Positivist.

Civilization is a progress from an indefinite, incoherent
homogeneity toward a definite, coherent heterogeneity.

Civilization is a progress from an indefinite, incoherent
homogeneity toward a definite, coherent heterogeneity.

Children, behold the Chimpanzee;
He sits on the ancestral tree
From which we sprang in ages gone.
read more

Children, behold the Chimpanzee;
He sits on the ancestral tree
From which we sprang in ages gone.
I'm glad we sprang: had we held on,
We might, for aught that I can say,
Be horrid Chimpanzees to-day.

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.

Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm,
Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form:
Mounts from her read more

Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm,
Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form:
Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame,
And soars and shines, another and the same.