...all Nature Is Perverse & Will Not

Man With All His Noble Qualities, With Sympathy Which Feels For The Most Debased, With Benevolence Which Extends Not Only To Other Men But To The Humblest Living Creature, With His God-like Intellect Which Has Penetrated Into The Movements And Constitution Of The Solar System- With All These Exalted Powers- Man Still Bears In His Bodily Frame The Indelible Stamp Of His Lowly Origin.

Owing To This Struggle For Life, Any Variation, However Slight And From Whatever Cause Proceeding, If It Be In Any Degree Profitable To An Individual Of Any Species, In Its Infinitely Complex Relationship To Other Organic Beings And To External Nature, Will Tend To The Preservation Of That Individual, And Will Generally Be Inherited By Its Offspring.

With Savages, The Weak In Body Or Mind Are Soon Eliminated. We Civilized Men, On The Other Hand, Do Our Utmost To Check The Process Of Elimination. We Build Asylums For The Imbecile, The Maimed And The Sick. Thus The Weak Members Of Civilized Societies Propagate Their Kind. No One Who Has Attended To The Breeding Of Domestic Animals Will Doubt That This Must Be Highly Injurious To The Race Of Man. Hardly Anyone Is So Ignorant As To Allow His Worst Animals To Breed.

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.

Nothing Could Have Been Worse For The Development Of My Mind Than Dr. Butler's School, As It Was Strictly Classical, Nothing Else Being Taught, Except A Little Ancient Geography And History. The School As A Means Of Education To Me Was Simply A Blank. During My Whole Life I Have Been Singularly Incapable Of Mastering Any Language. Especial Attention Was Paid To Versemaking, And This I Could Never Do Well. I Had Many Friends, And Got Together A Good Collection Of Old Verses, Which By Patching Together, Sometimes Aided By Other Boys, I Could Work Into Any Subject.