Footnotes to Evolution: A Series of Popular Addresses on the Evolution of Life |
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Common terms and phrases
acquired characters action adult altruism ammonites ammonoids ancestors animals Bactrites become belief birds body Boveri Brachiopoda brain causes centrosome chromatin chromosomes colony competition creatures Crustacea cytoplasm Darwin degeneration degree descendants division egg cell elements embryo ence environment evidence experience fact factors fauna fishes fittest food yolk force forms function genera germ cell germinal Glyphioceras growth hereditary heredity higher homology human impulses increase individual influence inheritance instinct knowledge larvę larval less living means ment mind monism natural selection naturalists nerve nervous never nucleus Origin of Species parent pauperism phenomena philosophy plants Plate possible progress protoconch protoplasm race recognised relations religion Richard Roe Sacculina says sensation sense septa shown species sperm spermatozoa stage structure struggle for existence survival tetrads theory things tion true truth variation vertebrę Weismann whorls woman women words
Popular passages
Page 49 - 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.
Page 18 - Hence, as more individuals are produced than can possibly survive, there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life.
Page 49 - To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual.
Page 268 - ... of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it. To do this effectually it is necessary to be fully possessed of only two beliefs: the first, that the order of nature is ascertainable by our faculties to an extent which is practically unlimited; the second, that our volition counts for something as a condition of the course of events.
Page 268 - We live in a world which is full of misery and ignorance, and the plain duty of each and all of us is to try to make the little corner he can influence somewhat less miserable and somewhat less ignorant than it was before he entered it.
Page 17 - Two canine animals, in a time of dearth, may be truly said to struggle with each other which shall get food and live. But a plant on the edge of a desert is said to struggle for life against the drought, though more properly it should be said to be dependent on the moisture.
Page 88 - It is good to make two blades of grass grow where only one grew before.
Page 268 - ... x's and y's with which he works his problems, for real entities — and with this further disadvantage, as compared with the mathematician, that the blunders of the latter are of no practical consequence, while the errors of systematic materialism may paralyse the energies and destroy the beauty of a life.
Page 206 - That lay in the house that Jack built. This is the cow with the crumpled horn, That tossed the dog, That worried the cat, That killed the rat, That ate the malt, That lay in the house that Jack built.
Page 14 - These facts, as will be seen in the latter chapters of this volume, seemed to throw some light on the origin of species -- that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers.