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v-vi The author does not, however, think any apology necessary; as, if the public lose time unprofitably
over his pages, he considers the blame attachable to them, not to him [JLJ - a great idea - blame your readers for any problems
with your work]. A writer does not obtrude as a speaker does, but merely places his thoughts within reach... There
is one advantage in taking a subject of this kind, that few professional (literary) critics can meddle with it, further than
as regards style and language, without exposing their own ignorance.
p.131-132 The dread of change in Catholic countries [JLJ - England being considered a Protestant country]
- the proscription [JLJ - banning] of almost every new work treating of science [JLJ - a library in Perth banned this book,
perhaps due to the controversial subject of evolution] - the complete submission of the mind to the religious authorities,
bearded men "becoming little children" even to the letter - the consequent general abandonment to sensual enjoyment - the
immense number of holidays - and the shoals of meddling priests, are a great bar to improvement - an insurmountable one to
manufacturing pre-eminence. We need not say that all this is subordination to climate. Effect, however, soon turns to cause.
[JLJ - Matthew did not like Catholicism, did he?]
p.364-365 There is a law universal in nature, tending to render every reproductive being the best possible
suited to its condition that its kind, or organized matter, is susceptible of, which appears intended to model the physical
and mental or instinctive powers to their highest perfection and to continue them so. This law sustains the lion in his strength,
the hare in her swiftness, and the fox in his wiles. As nature, in all her modifications of life, has a power of increase
far beyond what is needed to supply the place of what falls by Time's decay, those individuals who possess not the requisite
strength, swiftness, hardihood, or cunning, fall prematurely without reproducing - either a prey to their natural devourers,
or sinking under disease, generally induced by want of nourishment, their place being occupied by the more perfect of their
own kind, who are pressing on the means of subsistence
p.381-382 Throughout this volume, we have felt considerable inconvenience, from the adopted dogmatical classification
of plants, and have all along been floundering between species and variety, which certainly under culture soften into each
other. A particular conformity, each after its own kind, when in a state of nature, termed species, no doubt exists to a considerable
degree. This conformity has existed during the last forty centuries. Geologists discover a like particular conformity - fossil
species - through the deep deposition of each great epoch, but they also discover an almost complete difference to exist between
the species or stamp of life, of one epoch from that of every other. We are therefore led to admit, either of a repeated
miraculous creation; or of a power of change, under a change of circumstances, to belong to living organized matter, or rather
to the congeries of inferior life, which appears to form superior. The derangements and changes in organized existence,
induced by a change of circumstance from the interference of man, affording us proof of the plastic quality of superior life,
and the likelihood that circumstances have been very different in the different epochs, though steady in each, tend strongly
to heighten the probability of the latter theory.
p.382 Is the inference then unphilosophic, that living things which are proved to have
a circumstance-suiting power - a very slight change of circumstance by culture inducing a corresponding change of character
- may have gradually accommodated themselves to the variations of the elements containing them, and, without a new
creation, have presented the diverging changeable phenomena of past and present organized existence.
p.384 There is more beauty and unity of design in this continual balancing of life to circumstance, and
greater conformity to those dispositions of nature which are manifest to us, than in total destruction and new creation .
. . [The] progeny of the same parents, under great differences of circumstance, might, in several generations, even become
distinct species, incapable of co-reproduction.
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