1 68 Outlook to Nature 



" Origin of Species " : " It is interesting to 

 contemplate a tangled 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 de- 

 pendent upon 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 and Reproduction ; In- 

 heritance, which is almost implied by reproduc- 

 tion ; Variability from the indirect and direct 

 action of the 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 pro- 

 duction of the higher animals, directly follows. 

 There is grandeur in this view of life, with its 

 several powers, having been originally breathed 



