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

"...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).

"Rudimentary organs may be compared with the letters in a word, still retained in the spelling, but become useless in the pronunciation, but which serve as a clue for its derivation" (228).

"It is...an astonishing fact that a delicate branching coralline, studded with polypi & attached to a submarine rock, should produce, first by budding & then by transverse division, a host of huge floating jelly-fishes; & that these should produce eggs, from which are hatched swimming animalcules, which attach themselves to rocks & become developed into branching corallines; and so on in an endless cycle" (220).

"All the foregoing rules and aids and difficulties in classification may be explained, if I do not greatly deceive myself, on the view that the Natural System is founded on descent with modification; - that the characters which naturalists consider as showing true affinity between any two or more species, are those which have been inherited from a common parent, all true classification being genealogical..." (210).

"The inhabitants of the Cape Verde Islands are related to those of Africa, like those of the Galapagos to America...it is obvious that the Galapagos Islands would be likely to receive colonists from America, whether by occasional means of transport...and the Cape Verde Islands from Africa; such colonists would be liable to modification - the principle of inheritance still betraying their original birthplace.

"...when the warmth had fully returned, the same species, which had lately lived together on the European and North American lowlands, would again be found in the arctic regions of the Old and New Worlds, and on many isolated mountain summits far distant from each other" (189).

"If the existence of the same species at distant & isolated points of the earth's surface, can...be explained on the view of each species having migrated from a single birthplace; then, considering our ignorance with respect to former climatal & geographical changes and to the various occasional means of transport, the belief that a single birthplace is the law, seems to me incomparably the safest" (184).

"As the accumulation of each formation has often been interrupted, and as long blank intervals have intervened between successive formations, we ought not to expect to find, as I attempted to show in the last chapter, in any one or in any two formations, all the intermediate varieties between the species which appeared at the commencement and close of those periods..." (176).

"The theory of natural selection is grounded on the belief that each new variety and ultimately each new species, is produced and maintained by having some advantage over those with which it comes into competition; and the consequent extinction of the less-favoured forms almost inevitably follows. It is the same with our domestic productions..." (170).

"...I do not pretend that I should ever have suspected how poor was the record in the best preserved geological sections, had not the absence of innumerable transitional links between the species which lived at the commencement and close of each formation, pressed so hardly on my theory" (161-2).

"Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record" (152).

"...from these several considerations we may conclude that fertility does not constitute a fundamental distinction between varieties and species when crossed" (149).

Darwin's definition of "species" is in direct contradiction with modern science's definition. How he can be believed as the expert on "The Origin of Species" is beyond me.

"The fertility of varieties, that is of the forms known or believed to be descended from common parents, when crossed, and likewise the fertility of their mongrel offspring, is, with reference to my theory, of equal importance with the sterility of species; for it seems to make a broad and clear distinction between varieties and species" (136).

"Hence we may conclude that slight modifications of structure or of instinct, correlated with the sterile condition of certain members of the community, have proved advantageous: consequently the fertile males and females have flourished, and transmitted to their fertile offspring a tendency to produce sterile members with the same modification" (133).

"Under changed conditions of life, it is at least possible that slight modifications of instinct might b profitable to a species; and if it can be shown that instincts do vary ever so little, then I can see no difficulty in natural selection preserving and continually accumulating variations of instinct to any extent that was profitable" (119).

"The belief that any given structure, which we think, often erroneously, would have been beneficial to a species, would have been gained under all circumstances through natural selection, is opposed to what we can understand of its manner of actin" (116).

"The development of the mammary glands would have been of no service, and could not have been effected through natural selection, unless the young at the same time were able to partake of the secretion" (111).

"We are ignorant with respect to the conditions which determine the numbers and range of each species; and we cannot even conjecture what changes of structure would be favourable to its increase in some new country" (105).

"In the first place, we are much too ignorant in regard to the whole economy of any one organic being, to say what slight modifications would be of importance or not" (93).

"Why, on the theory of Creation, should there be so much variety and so little real novelty? Why should all the parts and organs of many independent beings, each supposed to have been separately created for its proper place in nature, be so commonly linked together by graduated steps? Why should not Nature take a sudden leap from structure to structure?" (92). And yet, there are huge leaps between organisms.

"Long before the reader has arrived at this part of my work, a crowd of difficulties will have occurred to him. Some of them are so serious that to this day I can hardly reflect on them without being in some degree staggered..." (80).

"He who believes that each equine species was independently created, will, I presume, assert that each species has been created with a tendency to vary...so as often to become striped like the other species of the genus, and that each has been created with a strong tendency, when crossed with species inhabiting distant quarters of the world, to produce hybrids..." (78). No. Different species can't cross breed.

"...natural selection would inevitably tend to preserve those individuals which were born with constitutions best adapted to any country which they inhabited" (69). Which is better adapted to survival, the animal specialized to a particular region, or the animal who can adapt to a multitude of regions?

"Natural selection acts exclusively by the preservation and accumulation of variations, which are beneficial under the organic and inorganic conditions to which each creature is exposed at all periods of life. The ultimate result is that each creature tends to become more and more improved in relation to its conditions. This improvement inevitably leads to the gradual advancement of the organization..." (60).

"...according to my view, varieties are species in the process of formation, or are, as I have called them, incipient species. How, then, does the lesser difference between varieties become augmented into the greater difference between species? That this does habitually happen, we must infer from most of the innumerable species throughout nature presenting well marked difference..." (53).

"It may metaphorically be said hat natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all that are good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life" (42).

"It is good to try in imagination to give to any one species an advantage over another...in no single instance should we know what to do. This ought to convince us of our ignorance on the mutual relations of all organic beings...All that we can do, is to keep steadily in mind that each organic being is striving to increase in a geometrical ratio; that each at some period...has to struggle for life..." (39).