Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin, FRS FRGS FLS FZSwas an English naturalist and geologist, best known for his contributions to the science of evolution. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and in a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in...
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth12 February 1809
CityShrewsbury, England
One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.
Great is the power of steady misrepresentation
Man selects only for his own good: Nature only for that of the being which she tends.
... not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity.
Mere chance ... alone would never account for so habitual and large an amount of difference as that between varieties of the same species.
A language, like a species, when extinct, never ... reappears.
Why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms.
We behold the face of nature bright with gladness.
Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy.
Animals manifestly enjoy excitement, and suffer from annul and may exhibit curiosity.
I long to set foot where no man has trod before.
History shows that the human mind, fed by constant accessions of knowledge, periodically grows too large for its theoretical coverings, and bursts them asunder to appear in new habiliments, as the feeding and growing grub, at intervals, casts its too narrow skin and assumes another.
The lower animals, on the other hand, must have their bodily structure modified in order to survive under greatly changed conditions. They must be rendered stronger, or acquire more effective teeth or claws, in order to defend themselves from new enemies; or they must be reduced in size so as to escape detection and danger. When they migrate into a colder climate they must become clothed with thicker fur, or have their constitutions altered. If they fail to be thus modified, they will cease to exist.
The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient.