Hazel (my girlfriend's version)’s Reviews > Voyage of the Beagle: Charles Darwin's Journal of Researches > Status Update

“ To admit that species generally become rare before they become extinct—to feel no surprise at the comparative rarity of one species with another, and yet to call in some extraordinary agent and to marvel greatly when a species ceases to exist, is to admit that sickness is the prelude to death—to feel no surprise at sickness—but when the sick man dies, to wonder, and to believe that he died through violence.

“ Certainly, no fact in the long history of the world is so startling as the wide and repeated exterminations of its inhabitants.”

“ It is impossible to doubt but that the extreme liberalism of these countries must ultimately lead to good results. The very general toleration of foreign religions, the regard paid to the means of education, the freedom of the press, the facilities offered to all foreigners, and to every one professing the humblest pretensions to science, should be recollected with gratitude by those who have visited South America.

“ With this entire want of principle in many of the leading men, with the country full of ill-paid turbulent officers, the people yet hope that a democratic form of government can succeed!”