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The rise of every man he loved to trace,
Up to the very pod O!
And, in baboons, our parent race
Was found by old Monboddo.
Their A, B, C, he made them speak,
And learn their qui, quae, quod, O!
Till Hebrew, Latin, Welsh, and Greek
They knew as well's Monboddo!
Author: Unattributed Author
Source: ballad in "Blackwood's Mag" referring to monkey theory of James Burnett (Lord Monboddo)
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Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and
accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe
loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to
make new things like them.
Author: Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (Marcus Aurelius)
Source: Meditations (ch. IV, 36)
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The stream of tendency in which all things seek to fulfill the
law of their being.
Author: Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (Marcus Aurelius)
Source: Meditations (ch. IV, 36)
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A fire-mist and a planet,
A crystal and a cell,
A jellyfish and a saurian,
And caves where the cavemen dwell;
Then a sense of law and beauty,
And a face turned from the clod--
Some call it Evolution,
And others call it God.
Author: William Herbert Carruth
Source: Each in his Own Tongue
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There was an ape in the days that were earlier,
Centuries passed and his hair became curlier;
Centuries more gave a thumb to his wrist--
Then he was a Man and a Positivist.
Author: Mortimer Collins
Source: The British Birds (st. 5)
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I have called this principle, by which, each slight variation, if
useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.
Author: Charles R. Darwin
Source: The Origin of Species (ch. III)
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The expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer of the Survival
of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally
convenient.
Author: Charles R. Darwin
Source: The Origin of Species (ch. III)
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Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm,
Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form:
Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame,
And soars and shines, another and the same.
Author: Erasmus Darwin
Source: Botanic Garden (pt. I, canto IV, l. 389)
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Said the little Eohippus,
"I am going to be a horse,
And on my middle fingernails
To run my earthly course!
. . . .
I'm going to have a flowing tail!
I'm going to have a mane!
I'm going to stand fourteen hands high
On the Psychozoic plain!"
Author: Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman
Source: Similar cases
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A mighty stream of tendency.
Author: William Hazlitt
Source: Essay--Why Distant Objects Please
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Or ever the knightly years were gone
With the old world to the grave,
I was a king in Babylon
And you were a Christian slave.
Author: William Ernest Henley
Source: Echoes (XXXVII)
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Children, behold the Chimpanzee;
He sits on the ancestral tree
From which we sprang in ages gone.
I'm glad we sprang: had we held on,
We might, for aught that I can say,
Be horrid Chimpanzees to-day.
Author: Oliver Herford
Source: The Chimpanzee
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We seem to exist in a hazardous time,
Driftin' along here through space;
Nobody knows just when we begun,
Or how fur we've gone in the race.
Author: Benjamin Franklin King, Jr.
Source: Evolution
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Pouter, tumbler, and fantail are from the same source;
The racer and hack may be traced to one Horse;
So men were developed from monkeys of course,
Which nobody can deny.
Author: Lord Charles Neaves
Source: The Origin of Species
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I was at Euphorbus at the siege of Troy.
Author: Lord Charles Neaves
Source: The Origin of Species
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For my own part I am persuaded that everything advances by an
unchangeable law through the eternal constitution and association
of latent causes, which have been long before predestined.
[Lat., Equidem aeterna constitutione crediderim nexuque causarum
atentium et multo ante destinatarum suum quemque ordinem
immutabili lege percurrere.]
Author: Quintus Curtius Rufus (Curtis Rufus Quintus)
Source: De Rebus Gestis Alexandri Magni (V, 11, 10)
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When you were a tadpole, and I was a fish,
In the Palaeozoic time,
And side by side in the sluggish tide
We sprawled in the ooze and slime.
Author: Langdon Smith
Source: A Toast to a Lady (Evolution), printed in "The Scrap Book"
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Civilization is a progress from an indefinite, incoherent
homogeneity toward a definite, coherent heterogeneity.
Author: Herbert Spencer
Source: First Principles (ch. XVI, par. 138)
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This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express
in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called "natural
selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle
for life."
Author: Herbert Spencer
Source: Principles of Biology--Indirect Equilibration
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Out of the dusk a shadow,
Then a spark;
Out of the cloud a silence,
Then a lark;
Out of the heart a rapture,
Then a pain;
Out of the dead, cold ashes,
Life again.
Author: John Banister Tabb
Source: Evolution
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The Lord let the house of a brute to the soul of a man,
And the man said, "Am I your debtor?"
And the Lord--"Not yet: but make it as clean as you can,
And then I will let you a better."
Author: Lord Alfred Tennyson
Source: By the Evolutionist
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Is there evil but on earth? Or pain in every people sphere?
Well, be grateful for the sounding watchword "Evolution" here.
Author: Lord Alfred Tennyson
Source: Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (l. 198)
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Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good
And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud.
Author: Lord Alfred Tennyson
Source: Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (l. 200)
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When I was a shepherd on the plains of Assyria.
Author: Lord Alfred Tennyson
Source: Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (l. 200)
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And hear the mighty stream of tendency
Uttering, for elevation of our thought,
A clear sonorous voice, inaudible
To the vast multitude.
Author: William Wordsworth
Source: Excursion (IX, 87)
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