George John Romanes

“ And, indeed, even in this our time, which is marked by the first opening dawn of the science of psychology, we have but to look with eyes unprejudiced to see that the philosophy of evolution is here like a rising sun of truth, eclipsing all the lesser lights of previous philosophies, dispelling superstitions like vapors born of darkness, and revealing to our gladdened gaze the wonders of a world till now unseen. ”

“ Either there is a distinction, or else there is not a distinction, between connotation that is receptual, and connotation that is conceptual. If there is no distinction, all argument is at an end: the brute and the man are one in kind. But I allow that there is a distinction, and I acknowledge that the distinction resides where it is alleged to reside by my opponents—namely, in the presence or absence of self-consciousness on the part of a mind which bestows a name. Or, to revert to my own terminology, it is the distinction between denotation and denomination. ”

“ As a rational being who waits to take a wider view of the facts than that which is open to the one line of research pursued by the physiologist, I am forced to conclude that not without a reason does mind exist in the frame of things; and that apart from the activity of mind, whereby motion is related to that which is not motion, this planet could never have held the wonderful being, who in multiplying has replenished the earth and subdued it—holding dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth. ”

“ If so, the image of the red sea-stars bespangling a mile of shining sand, or decorating the darkness of a thousand grottoes, must be joined with the image, no less vivid, of those crystal globes pulsating with life and gleaming with all the colours of the rainbow, which are perhaps the most strange, and certainly in my estimation the most delicately lovely creatures in the world. ”

“ The only danger of speculation consists in its momentum being apt to carry away the mind from the more laborious work of adequate verification; and therefore a true scientific judgment consists in giving a free rein to speculation on the one hand, while holding ready the break of verification with the other. Now, it is just because Darwin did both these things with so admirable a judgment, that he gave the world of natural history so good a lesson as to the most effectual way of driving the chariot of science. ”

“ Only because we are so familiar with the great phenomenon of causality do we take it for granted, and think that we reach an ultimate explanation of anything when we have succeeded in finding the 'cause' thereof: when, in point of fact, we have only succeeded in merging it in the mystery of mysteries. I often wish we could have come into the world, like the young of some other mammals, with all the powers of intellect that we shall ever subsequently attain already developed, but without any individual experience, and so without any of the blunting effects of custom. ”

“ If there is a God, surely our first duty towards him must be to exert to our utmost, in our attempts to find him, the most noble faculty with which he has endowed us—as carefully to investigate the evidence which he has seen fit to furnish of his own existence as we investigate the evidence of inferior things in his dependent creation. To say that there is one rule or method for ascertaining truth in the latter case, which it is not legitimate to apply in the former case, is merely a covert way of saying that the Deity, if he exists, has not supplied us with rational evidence of his existence. ”

“ Nothing in insect movements is more striking than the rapid march of these large and compact bodies. Wherever they pass, all the rest of the animal world is thrown into a state of alarm. They stream along the ground and climb to the summits of all the lower trees, searching every leaf to its apex, and whenever they encounter a mass of decaying vegetable matter, where booty is plentiful, they concentrate, like other Ecitons, all their forces upon it, the dense phalanx of shining and quickly-moving bodies, as it spreads over the surface, looking like a flood of dark red liquid. ”

“ How many of us who live for most of the year in the fog and dust of large towns enjoy with the greater zest our summer's holiday at the seaside? And in the memories of most of us is there not associated with the picture of breaking waves and sea-birds floating indifferently in the blue sky or on the water still more blue, the thoughts of many a ramble among the weedy rocks and living pools, where for the time being we all become naturalists, and where those who least know what they are likely to find 2 in their search are most likely to approach the keen happiness of childhood? ”

“ But we may well hope that before another ten years shall have passed, even these still outstanding questions will have been finally settled; and thus that within the limits of an ordinary lifetime the theory of organic evolution will have been founded and completed in all its parts, to stand for ever in the world of men as at once the greatest achievement in the history of science, and the most splendid monument of the nineteenth century. ”

“ To my mind it is simply inconceivable that any stronger proof of mental evolution could be furnished, than is furnished in this one great fact by the whole warp and woof of the thousand dialects of every pattern which are now spread over the surface of the globe. We cannot speak to each other in any tongue without declaring the pre-conceptual derivation of our speech; we cannot so much as discuss the “origin of human faculty” itself, without announcing, in the very medium of our discussion, what that origin has been. ”

“ To me it has always seemed that the doctrine of the Unknowable, in so far as it differs from the doctrine of the Unknown, is highly unphilosophical. By what right can it be affirmed that Deity, if He exists, may not reveal the fact of His existence to-morrow—and this to the whole human race without the possibility of doubt? Or, if there be a God, who is to say that there certainly cannot be a future life, in which each individual man may have unquestionable proof of Theism? ”

“ We are living in a generation which has witnessed a revolution of thought unparalleled in the history of our race. I do not merely allude to the fact that this is a generation in which all the sciences, without exception, have made a leap of progress such as widely to surpass all previous eras of intellectual activity; but I allude to the fact that in the special science of biology it has been reserved for us to see the first rational enunciation, the first practical demonstration, and the first general acceptance, of the doctrine of evolution. ”

“ On the beneficent design theory, for instance, it is inexplicable that no species should ever be found to present a structure or an instinct having primary reference to the welfare of another species, when, ex hypothesi, such an endless amount of thought has been displayed in the creation of structures and instincts having primary reference to the species which present them. For how magnificent a display of divine beneficence would organic nature have afforded, if all—or even some—species had been so inter-related as to have ministered to each others wants. ”