George John Romanes

“ Never in the history of man has so terrific a calamity befallen the race as that which all who look may now behold advancing as a deluge, black with destruction, resistless in might, uprooting our most cherished hopes, engulfing our most precious creed, and burying our highest life in mindless desolation. ”

“ 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 theory of natural selection rests on two classes of observable facts: first, that all plants and animals are engaged in a perpetual struggle for existence, there being in every generation of every species a great many more individuals born than can possibly survive ”

“ Darwin's great work has had on every department of science, of literature, and also of art. Thirty-six years have passed away since the publication of the 'Origin of Species,' and we have lived to see that again tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis. Now we see that a man can fully accept the doctrine of evolution, and yet can also believe in a personal God and in the doctrines which logically follow on such a belief. ”

“ John Stuart Mill, for no better reason than that nature sometimes drowns men and burns them, and that childbirth is a painful process, maintained that God could not possibly be infinite. I shall not say what I think of the shallowness and self-conceit displayed by such an argument. What it proves is not the finiteness of God, but the littleness of man. The mind of man never shows itself so small as when it tries to measure the attributes and limit the greatness of its Creator. ”

“ It is a place abounding in every kind of sea-bird, and it is almost impossible to describe the weird, uncanny effect which the long endless twilight of the summer, the silence broken by hootings of owls, by the scream of a sea-gull, produce on one. ”

“ Looking to the outcome, we find that more than one half of the species which have survived the ceaseless struggle are parasitic in their habits, lower and insentient forms of life feasting on higher and sentient forms; we find teeth and talons whetted for slaughter, hooks and suckers moulded for torment—everywhere a reign of terror, hunger, sickness, with oozing blood and quivering limbs, with gasping breath and eyes of innocence that dimly close in deaths of cruel torture! ”

“ Even our smiling landscapes support as the sons of their soil a new generation, to whom the freedom of gladness is a tradition of the past, and on whose brows is stamped, not only the print of honest work, but a new and sadding mark—the brand of sickening care. Or if we look to our universities and schools, to our professional men and men of business, we see this same fierce battle rage—ruined health and shattered hopes, tearful lives and early deaths being everywhere the bitter lot of millions who toil, and strive, and love, and bleed their young hearts' blood in sorrow. ”

“ But, to tell the honest truth, it never once occurred to me that I of all men could be suspected of trying to undermine the theories of Darwin. I was entirely filled with the one idea of presenting what seemed to me 'a supplementary hypothesis,' which, while 'in no way opposed to natural selection,' would 'release the latter from the only difficulties' which to my mind it had ever presented. Therefore I took it for granted that everybody would go with me in recognising natural selection as the 'boss' round which every 'other theory' must revolve, without my having to say so on every page. ”

“ All that has been effected by our recent discovery of a particular case of causality in the selection principle is to throw back the question of design, in all the still outstanding provinces of Nature, to the question—What is the nature of natural causation? Or, again, to quote Mr. Aubrey Moore, 'Darwinism has conferred upon philosophy and religion an inestimable benefit by showing us that we must choose between two alternatives: either God is everywhere present in Nature, or He is nowhere.' This, I apprehend, puts the issue into as small a number of words as it well can be put. ”

“ Most men feel that their University life is one of the most marked phases of their career. Even to those who come up from a public school, with all the prestige and with all the friendships, the sense of fellowship, the hundred and one influences, the customs of a great school 'lying thick' upon them, realise more and more, as time goes on, how great a part Oxford or Cambridge plays in their lives; how it is in their University life they make their intellectual choice, and receive the bias which, for good or for evil, will influence their whole life. ”

“ Amid the swarming bustle of our smoke-smothered towns, surrounded by their zone of poisoned trees, amid the whirling roar of machinery, the scorching blast of furnaces, and in the tallow-lighted blackness of our mines—everywhere, over all the length and breadth of this teeming land, men, and women, and children, in no metaphor, but in cruel truth, are struggling for life. ”

“ No account which science can give, by discovery or conjecture, of the method of creation, can ever weaken the argument which lies from the universality of law, order, and beauty in the universe to the universality of mind. The mind of man looks forth into nature, and finds nowhere unintelligible chance, but everywhere an order, a system, a law, a beauty, which corresponds, as greater to less, to his own rational and spiritual intuitions, methods, and expectations. ”

“ But although I cannot endure to picture your house or your household as the scene of such a death, I can derive some consolation from the thought that he died as few men in the history of the world have died—knowing that he had finished a gigantic work, seeing how that work has transformed the thoughts of mankind, and foreseeing that his name must endure to the end of time among the very greatest of the human race. ”

“ Every endeavour to escape, when once the incautious ant has stepped within the verge of the pit, is vain, for in all its attempts to climb the side the deceptive sand slips from under its feet, and every struggle precipitates it still lower. ”

“ All is not lost, and everything is possible, so long as the mind refuses to doubt the reality of the light that has come, perhaps, as yet only in broken rays. Of such justice and loyalty George Romanes set a very high example. ”

“ No doubt it is always difficult, and usually impossible, logically or unequivocally to prove a negative. If my adversary chose to imagine that nature is presided over by a demon with horns and hoofs, or by a dragon with claws and tail, I should be as unable to disprove this his supposed theory as I am now unable to disprove his actual theory. ”

“ I saw an intelligent sow pig about twelve months old, running in an orchard, going to a young apple tree and shaking it, pricking up her ears at the same time, as if to listen to hear the apples fall. ”

“ If I scold or beat the servants he does not mind so much. When my mother comes back after being out he does not show any great demonstrations of joy. He screams out with pleasure when he hears her voice approaching on the stairs, but does not make much ado when she enters the room. ”

“ Why it should be deemed abstractedly impossible for matter to think if there is no God, and yet abstractedly possible that it should think if there is a God, I confess myself quite unable to determine; but I conceive that it is very important clearly to point out this peculiarity in Locke's views, for he is a favourite authority with theists, and this peculiarity amounts to nothing less than a suicide of his entire argument. ”

“ Romanes pointed out that the theory of natural selection only accounts for such organic changes as are of use to the species—by use signifying life-preserving—that it is, in fact, a theory of the [164] origin and cumulative development of adaptations, whether these be distinctive of species, or of genera, families, classes, &c.
The question then arises, do species differ from species solely in points of a useful character, as they undoubtedly should do if natural selection has been the sole factor in their formation? ”

“ Romanes often spoke, and to whom he dedicated his first book, which was the Burney Prize for 1873. But he also began to study physiology under the direction of Dr. Michael Foster, the present Professor of Physiology at Cambridge, to whom she owes her famous medical school, at that time in its very early beginnings.
Science entirely fascinated him; his first plunge into real scientific work opened to him a new life, gave him the first sense of power and of capacity. Now he read Mr. Darwin's books, and it is impossible to overrate the extraordinary effect they had on the young man's mind. ”

“ He devoted a large part of his last year at the Royal Institution to lecturing on Prof. Weismann's theory, which lectures he worked up into his book, 'An Examination of Weismannism,' published in 1892.
He devised many experiments to test that theory, experiments which have a pathetic interest for those who love him, for they occupied his mind up to the very day of his death.
Of this theory it may safely be said that since the promulgation of Mr. Darwin's great doctrine, no problem has interested the world of science so profoundly. ”

“ There was one such line of advance in the life of George Romanes, of which it may be hard to speak, but wrong, perhaps, to be wholly silent. Few men have shown more finely the simplicity and patience in sustained endeavour which are the conditions of attainment in the quest of truth. It is easy to see how the training and habits of a mind devoted to natural science may render faith more difficult, and cross or check the venture of the soul towards the things eternal and unseen. ”

“ No one can understand the extent of their infatuation until he has seen a confectioner's shop assailed by myriads of hungry bees. I have seen thousands strained out from the syrup in which they had perished; thousands more alighting even upon the boiling sweets, the floor covered and windows darkened with bees, some crawling, others flying, and others still, so completely besmeared as to be able neither to crawl nor fly, not one in ten able to carry home its ill-gotten spoils, and yet the air filled with new hosts of thoughtless comers. ”

“ From the nature of this additional factor at work in the formation of species, Mr. Romanes called his theory 'physiological selection.'
Physiological selection is conceived of as co-operating with natural selection, the former allowing the latter to act by interposing its law of sterility, with the result that the secondary specific characters may be either adaptive or non-adaptive in character. ”

“ Romanes was an omnivorous reader of poetry, and this taste grew by what it fed on. On a holiday he read poetry in preference to anything else, and he was very fond of good anthologies, beginning first and foremost with the 'Golden Treasury.' Shakespeare, Milton, and, above all, Tennyson were the poets he most loved. ”

“ He enjoyed constant pleasant intercourse with men and women differing widely in pursuits, in opinions, in social position; he was full of plans for work, work which led him into many different phases of intellectual life, and he had every year an admixture of country life and country pursuits, and the love for music and for poetry, which increased each year, kept him from growing too absorbed in science, from being at all one-sided. ”

“ Although I have been very much in the world I have not a single enemy, unless it be the ——, who have entirely dropped out of my life.
On the other hand, I do not know anyone who has so many friends, not merely acquaintances, but men and women who are devoted with an ardent affection.... ”

“ If so, as the transmutations of energy from heat to electricity &c. all take place in accordance with law, and as the phenomena of polarity in crystals &c. do the same, it follows that neither these nor any other class of phenomena [87] afford any better evidence of Deity than do any other class of phenomena. Therefore, if all laws follow from the persistence of force, the question of Deity or no Deity would simply become the question as to whether force requires to be created or is self-existent. And if we say it is created, the fact of self-existence still requires to be met in the Creator. ”

“ He thinks with me that if the normal size of a useful organ is maintained in a species, when natural selection is removed, the average size will tend to become progressively reduced by inter-crossing, and this down to whatever extent economy of growth remains operative in placing a premium on variations below the average at any given stage in the history of reduction. ”

“ To a boy of sixteen the mere knowledge of uncertainty in his father's mind may drain all the moral cogency out of the whole conception of religion:—the very suspicion of the uncertainty may unnerve him more than the full realisation of the doubt would change his father's aim and hope in doing his duty. ”

“ The hotel is situated on the top of a hill which slopes for a mile to the sea, and which is thickly clothed with pine and olive woods in all directions. The climate admits of our sitting out of doors without overcoats or shawls till sunset, amid the most wonderful profusion of aromas I have ever met with. ”