Jeff Ragan’s Reviews > Darwin > Status Update

"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).