Status Updates From Darwin (Great Books of the ...

"From the ardour of the male throughout the animal kingdom, he is generally willing to accept any female; and it is the female which usually exerts a choice" (429).

"With animals of all kinds, whenever colour has been modified for some special purpose, this has been, as far as we can judge, either for direct or indirect protection, or as an attraction between the sexes" (424).

"The two sexes of another lamellicorn beetle, the Ateuchus cicatricosus, live in pairs, and seem much attached to each other..." (417).

"...insects belonging to this order [Hymenoptera] have the power of recognising each other after long intervals of time, and are deeply attached" (412).

"Every one who has wandered in a tropical forest must have been astonished at the din made by the male Cicadae. The females are mute; as the Grecian poet Xenarchus says 'Happy the cicadas live, since they all have voiceless wives'" (407).

"[Snails]...permanent attachment...into a small...garden...the strong...individual disappeared, & was traced by its track...over a wall into an adjoining well-stocked garden. Mr. Lonsdale concluded that it had deserted its sickly mate; but after an absence of 24 hours it returned, &...communicated the result of its successful exploration, for both then started along the same track & disappeared over the wall" (396).

"In no case...would an inherited tendency to produce both sexes in equal numbers or to produce one sex in excess, be a direct advantage...to certain individuals...for instance, an individual with a tendency to produce more males than females would not succeed better in the battle for life than an individual with an opposite tendency...a tendency of this kind could not be gained through natural selection" (394).

"It seems at first sight a mysterious fact that in different nations, under different conditions and climates, in Naples, Prussia, Westphalia, Holland, France, England and the United States, the excess of male over female births is less when they are illegitimate than when legitimate...we have seen that male infants, from the large size of their heads, suffer more than female infants during parturition... (384)"

"...we may conclude that one, though not the sole cause of characters being exclusively inherited by one sex, is their development at a late age. And secondly, that one, though apparently a less efficient cause of characters being inherited by both sexes, is their development at an early age, whilst the sexes differ but little in constitution" (381).

"...the advantages which favoured males derive from conquering other males in battle or courtship, and thus leaving a numerous progeny, are in the long run greater than those derived from rather more perfect adaptation to their conditions of life" (374-5).

"Since in such cases the males have acquired their present structure, not from being better fitted to survive in the struggle for existence, but from having gained an advantage over other males, and from having transmitted this advantage to their male offspring alone, sexual selection must here have come into action" (356).

"Looking at the matter from the point of view of organisation alone, no one probably would ever have disputed the view of Linnaeus, that man should be placed, merely as a peculiar species, at the head of the mamalia and of those apes" (360).

"It is an interesting circumstance that the chief check to wild animals becoming domesticated, which implies the power of their breeding freely when first captured, and one chief check to wild men, when brought into contact with civilisation, surviving to form a civilised race, is the same, namely, sterility from changed conditions of life" (355).

"...the most weighty of all the arguments against treating the races of man as distinct species, is that they graduate into each other, independently in many cases, as far as we can judge, of their having intercrossed" (346).

"The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form..." (336).

"Even if it be granted that the difference between man and his nearest allies is as great in corporeal structure as some naturalists maintain, and although we must grant that the difference between them is immense in mental power, yet the facts...appear to declare, in the plainest manner, that man is descended from some lower form, notwithstanding that connecting-links have not hitherto been discovered" (331).

"In the breeding of domestic animals, the elimination of those individuals,...which are in any marked manner inferior, is by no means an unimportant element towards success...and with mankind some of the worst dispositions, which occasionally without any assignable cause make their appearance in families, may perhaps be reversions to a savage state fro which we are not removed by very many generations" (325).

"Whatever makes any bad action familiar to the mind, renders its performance by so much the easier. As Marcus Aurelius long ago said, 'Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts'" (318).

"A moral being is one who is capable of comparing his past and future actions or motives, and of approving or disapproving of them" (311).

"...of all the differences between man and the lower animals, the moral sense or conscience is by far the most important...It is the most noble of all the attributes of man, leading him without a moment's hesitation to risk his life for that of a fellow creature; or after due deliberation, impelled simply by the deep feeling of right or duty, to sacrifice it in some great cause" (304).

"The feeling of religious devotion is a highly complex one, consisting of love, complete submission to an exalted and mysterious superior, a strong sense of dependence, fear, reverence, gratitude, hope for the future, and perhaps other elements" (303).

"It is generally admitted that the higher animals possess memory, attention association, &...imagination & reason. If these powers, which differ much in different animals, are capable of improvement, there seems no great improbability in more complex faculties, such as the higher forms of abstraction, & self-consciousness, etc, having been evolved through the development & combination of the simpler ones" (297).

"...modifications in structure or constitution which do not serve to adapt an organism to its habits of life...can not have been thus acquired. We must not, however, be too confident in deciding what modifications are of service to each being; we should remember how little we know about the use of many parts, or what changes in the blood or tissues may serve to fit an organism for a new climate..." (284).

"Man in the rudest state in which he now exists is the most dominant animal that has ever appeared on this earth. He has spread more widely than any other highly organised form; and all others have yielded before him. He manifestly owes this immense superiority to his intellectual faculties, to his social habits, which lead him to aid and defend his fellows, and to his corporeal structure" (278).

"He who rejects with scorn the belief that the shape of his own canines...are due to our early forefathers having been provided with these formidable weapons, will probably reveal, by sneering, the line of his descent. For though he no longer intends...to use these teeth as weapons, he will unconsciously retract his 'snarling muscles'...so as to expose them ready for action, like a dog prepared to fight" (274).

"The homological construction of the whole frame in the members of the same class is intelligible, if we admit their descent from a common progenitor, together with their subsequent adaption to diversified conditions. On any other view, the similarity of pattern between the hand of a man or monkey, the foot of a horse, the flipper of a seal, the wing of a bat...is utterly inexplicable" (265).

"...the natives of...Africa catch the wild baboons by exposing vessels with strong beer, by which they are made drunk...& he gives a laughable account of their behaviour & strange grimaces. On the following morning they were very cross...they held their aching heads with both hands, & wore a most pitiable expression; when beer...was offered them, they turned away with disgust, but relished the juice of lemons" (256).

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator 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" (243).

(The closing lines of Origin of Species)

"With respect to the lapse of time not having been sufficient since our planet was consolidated for the assumed amount of organic change, and this objection, as urged by Sir William Thompson, is probably one of the gravest as yet advanced" (233).