Alfred Russel Wallace Quotes
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Modification of form is admitted to be a matter of time.
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Mars, therefore, is not only uninhabited by intelligent beings such as Mr. Lowell postulates, but is absolutely uninhabitable.
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Civilisation has ever accompanied emigration and conquest - the conflict of opinion, of religion, or of race.
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I have since wandered among men of many races and many religions.
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There might have been a hundred or a thousand life-bearing planets, had the course of evolution of the universe been a little different, or there might have been none at all. They would probably add, that, as life and man have been produced, that shows that their production was possible; and therefore, if not now then at some other time, if not here then in some other planet of some other sun, we should be sure to have come into existence; or if not precisely the same as we are, then something a little better or a little worse.
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There is a tendency in nature to the continued progression of certain classes of varieties further and further from the original type.
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I spent, as you know, a year and a half in a clergyman's family and heard almost every Tuesday the very best, most earnest and most impressive preacher it has ever been my fortune to meet with, but it produced no effect whatever on my mind.
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But naturalists are now beginning to look beyond this, and to see that there must be some other principle regulating the infinitely varied forms of animal life.
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I then walk off into the swamp along the path of logs and tree-trunks, picking my way cautiously, now glancing right and left on the foliage, and then surveying carefully the surface of the smooth round log I am walking on.
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In one of my latest conversations with Darwin he expressed himself very gloomily on the future of humanity, on the ground that in our modern civilization natural selection had no play, and the fittest did not survive. Those who succeed in the race for wealth are by no means the best or the most intelligent, and it is notorious that our population is more largely renewed in each generation from the lower than from the middle and upper classes.
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I am thankful I can see much to admire in all religions.
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As well might it be said that, because we are ignorant of the laws by which metals are produced and trees developed, we cannot know anything of the origin of steamships and railways.
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Nature seems to have taken every precaution that these, her choicest treasures, may not lose value by being too easily obtained.
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Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing closely allied species.
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There is, I conceive, no contradiction in believing that mind is at once the cause of matter and of the development of individualised human minds through the agency of matter.
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To the mass of mankind religion of some kind is a necessity.
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The foregoing considerations lead us to the very important conclusion, that matter is essentially force, and nothing but force; that matter, as popularly understood, does not exist, and is, in fact, philosophically inconceivable.
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Why do some die and some live? The answer was clearly, that on the whole the best fitted live. From the effects of disease the most healthy escaped; from enemies, the strongest, swiftest, or the most cunning; from famine, the best hunters or those with the best digestion; and so on. Then it suddenly flashed upon me that this self-acting process would necessarily improve the race, because in every generation the inferior would inevitably be killed off and the superior would remain-that is, the fittest would survive.
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To expect the world to receive a new truth, or even an old truth, without challenging it, is to look for one of those miracles which do not occur.
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In my solitude I have pondered much on the incomprehensible subjects of space, eternity, life and death.
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But I think that a little consideration will show you that belief is quite independent of our will, and our common expressions show it.
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In all works on Natural History, we constantly find details of the marvellous adaptation of animals to their food, their habits, and the localities in which they are found.
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What birds can have their bills more peculiarly formed than the ibis, the spoonbill, and the heron?
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If this is not done, future ages will certainly look back upon us as a people so immersed in the pursuit of wealth as to be blind to higher considerations.