Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

The generality of mankind never find any difficulty in accounting for the more common and familiar operations of nature—such as the descent of heavy bodies, the growth of plants, the generation of animals, or the nourishment of bodies by food: but suppose that, in all these cases, they perceive the very force or energy of the cause, by which it is connected with its effect, and is for ever infallible in its operation.

Difficulties on the theory of descent with modification.

A line drawn up that tree, never doubling back, from the trunk to the tip of some branch would trace a succession of theories related by descent.

And I know that if I had chosen to deal less sincerely, I might easily have found authority for my suggestions by referring them either to the old times before the Greeks (when natural science was perhaps more flourishing, though it made less noise, not having yet passed into the pipes and trumpets of the Greeks), or even, in part at least, to some of the Greeks themselves; and so gained for them both support and honor, as men of no family devise for themselves by the good help of genealogies the nobility of a descent from some ancient stock.

But at the very moment of time when the thread of water ceases and the descent in drops begins, the water itself recoils upward to avoid discontinuation.

Rules and difficulties in classification, explained on the theory of descent with modification.

Descent always used in classification.

May not those naturalists who, knowing far less of the laws of inheritance than does the breeder, and knowing no more than he does of the intermediate links in the long lines of descent, yet admit that many of our domestic races have descended from the same parents—may they not learn a lesson of caution, when they deride the idea of species in a state of nature being lineal descendants of other species?

The term "variety" is almost equally difficult to define; but here community of descent is almost universally implied, though it can rarely be proved.

The modified offspring from the later and more highly improved branches in the lines of descent, will, it is probable, often take the place of, and so destroy, the earlier and less improved branches: this is represented in the diagram by some of the lower branches not reaching to the upper horizontal lines.