Essays and Criticisms, Volumen2

Portada

Dentro del libro

Páginas seleccionadas

Otras ediciones - Ver todas

Términos y frases comunes

Pasajes populares

Página 54 - The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable — namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man.
Página 4 - IF IT could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.
Página 88 - ... scientific than that of the past ; because it has not only renounced idols of wood and idols of stone, but begins to see the necessity of breaking in pieces the idols built up of books and traditions and fine-spun ecclesiastical cobwebs, and of cherishing the noblest and most human of man's emotions, by worship "for the most part of the silent sort" at the altar of the Unknown and Unknowable.
Página 26 - It is only our natural prejudice, and that arrogance which made our forefathers declare that they were descended from demigods, which leads us to demur to this conclusion.
Página 102 - Dr. Hooker, in his address to the British Association, spoke thus of the author: "Of Mr. Wallace and his many contributions to philosophical biology it is not easy to speak without enthusiasm; for, putting aside their great merits, he, throughout his writings, with a modesty as rare as I believe it to be unconscious, forgets his own unquestioned claim to the honour of having originated independently of Mr. Darwin, the theories which he so ably defends.
Página 146 - Whence it becomes manifest that our experience of force, is that out of which the idea of Matter is built. Matter as opposing our muscular energies, being immediately present to consciousness in terms of force ; and its occupancy of Space being known by an abstract of experiences originally given in terms of force ; it follows that forces, standing in certain correlations, form the whole content of our idea of Matter.
Página 5 - I probably attributed too much to the action of natural selection or the survival of the fittest. I have altered the fifth edition of the Origin so as to confine my remarks to adaptive changes of structure.
Página 63 - Hence every detail of structure in every living creature (making some little allowance for the direct action of physical conditions) may be viewed either as having been of special use to some ancestral form, or as being now of special use to the descendants of this form — either directly, or indirectly, through the complex laws of growth.
Página 45 - Nevertheless the first foundation or origin of the moral sense lies in the social instincts, including sympathy; and these instincts no doubt were primarily gained, as in the case of the lower animals, through natural selection.
Página 8 - Darwin's theory, that the great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, is answered simply by an appeal ' to a belief in the general principle of evolution

Información bibliográfica