Each Organic Being Is Striving To Increase

I Am Almost Convinced (quite Contrary To Opinion I Started With) That Species Are Not (it Is Like Confessing A Murder) Immutable.

But Geology Carries The Day: It Is Like The Pleasure Of Gambling, Speculating, On First Arriving, What The Rocks May Be; I Often Mentally Cry Out 3 To 1 Tertiary Against Primitive; But The Latter Have Hitherto Won All The Bets.

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.

Nothing Is Easier Than To Admit In Words The Truth Of The Universal Struggle For Life, Or More Difficult - At Least I Have Found It So - Than Constantly To Bear This Conclusion In Mind...we Behold The Face Of Nature Bright With Gladness...we Do Not See, Or We Forget, That The Birds Which Are Idly Singing Round Us Mostly Live On Insects And Seeds, And Are Thus Constantly Destroying Life.

[t]he Young And The Old Of Widely Different Races, Both With Man And Animals, Express The Same State Of Mind By The Same Movements.