Thursday, May 31, 2007

Book Excerpt: The Origin of Species

Thus ends this highly controversial book:


Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created. 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. When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled. Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity. And of the species now living very few will transmit progeny of any kind to a far distant futurity; for the manner in which all organic beings are grouped, shows that the greater number of species of each genus, and all the species of many genera, have left no descendants, but have become utterly extinct. We can so far take a prophetic glance into futurity as to foretell that it will be the common and widely-spread species, belonging to the larger and dominant groups, which will ultimately prevail and procreate new and dominant species. As all the living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the Silurian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of equally inappreciable length. And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection.

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed 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.

- Charles Darwin (The Origin of Species)

6 comments:

Mahi said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
VIDYA said...

:-)
tr isnt anyhtin i want 2 say, but i couldnt go away without commenting aft read this post .

though i dint understand much, from what i did iam touched.

jac said...

I do agree with you that all these succession theory to be pointing towards a finesse, or in your words perfection, with the imminent 'struggle for life’ evident in all living forms... past, present and extinct.

Is that what you would imply, that only the capable few will survive with out extinction?

If affirmative, I think you have a very valid point.

geets, I had to tell you frankly that with out my Encarta latest, I would not have deciphered many of the words.

You deserve a pat for taking a subject so uninteresting to so many, for bringing it to a focal point here.
As a matter of fact, I never read Darwin at all, other than the academy editions.
:)

Geets said...

Vidya: Read it once more and you will understand it fully. Thanks for doing the tag!

Jac: Yeah, you're right. Survival of the fittest. It's not my view but Darwin's. I am comfortable with my belief in Creation rather than in Evolution.

hillgrandmom said...

I haven't read Darwin though I have no doubt about the scientific basis of evolution. But never realised that Darwin would be so poetic!

Geets said...

Absolutely,Suze. He's definitely poetic - the way he's written about the birds singing in the bushes, the bees flitting around....