"Darwinism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... late religious affairs. In yesterday's "Anglo-American Weekly Times," I read a well-written sermon by the Dean of St. Paul's, London, on the evidence of the wisdom and goodness of God derived from the facts of evolution; not Darwinism, as that phase of the theory of development has latterly become practically of secondary importance. Justice was done, however, in this discourse, to the immense contributions made by Darwin's genius and labors to the facts of natural science, and to the proofs ...
— 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century • Henry Hartshorne
... calmer and more candid mood might have befitted the investigation. At any rate in these later days such a mood has been maintained by inquirers like William James and the Society for Psychical Research. These are straws, but it is hardly a straw that when Darwinism emerged upon the world, winning such speedy and almost universal adherence among scientific men and revolutionising in general the thought of the world as to the method of creation, Agassiz stood almost solitary among authorities rejecting evolution and clinging to the doctrine ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... Darwinism can be used to back up two mad moralities, but it cannot be used to back up a single sane one. The kinship and competition of all living creatures can be used as a reason for being insanely cruel or insanely sentimental; but not for a healthy love of animals. On the evolutionary basis you ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... his own tongue too well, and he had remained a leading lawyer in Equity, when he might have ended a judge, or even a Congressman. Of late years, however, since people whom he could have joined in their agnosticism so heartily, up to a certain point, had begun to make such fools of themselves about Darwinism and the brotherhood of all men in the monkey, he had grown much more tolerant. He still clung to his old-fashioned deistical opinions; but be thought no worse of a man for not holding them; he did not deny that a man might be a Christian, and still be ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... a very simple expression of "Darwinism," and will be enlarged later. The reader should ignore the occasional statement of non-scientific writers that Darwinism is "dead" or superseded. The questions which are actually in dispute relate ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe
... Political Economy," p. 134. See also an article, "Malthusianism, Darwinism, and Pessimism," ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... such a low form of life as here postulated, and there is no force in Paley's pretended objection to the Darwinism of his time. ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... will not allow themselves to be led away by the false issues which are [290] dangled before them. A man really may love his fellow-men; cherish any form of Christianity he pleases; and hold not only that Darwinism is "tottering to its fall," but, if he pleases, the equally sane belief that it never existed; and yet may feel it his duty to oppose, to the best of his capacity, despotic Socialism in all its forms, and, more ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... she describes as the most gentle and docile in the world. We had ample opportunity of making their acquaintance, for during our stay the decks were daily thronged with them. In these men the advocates of Darwinism might well behold the missing link. From head to heel they are covered with thick shaggy unkempt masses of hair; that on their heads and faces hanging down in wild elfish locks. They wear but scant ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... Copernicus to the speculations of Ptolemy. But the planetary orbits turned out to be not quite circular after all, and, grand as was the service Copernicus rendered to science, Kepler and Newton had to come after him. What if the orbit of Darwinism should be a little too circular? What if species should offer residual phaenomena, here and there, not explicable by natural selection? Twenty years hence naturalists may be in a position to say whether this is, or is not, the case; but in either event they will owe ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... prove the rule. The evil effects of military selection and its associated influences have long been recognized in theory by certain students of social evolution. But the ideas derived from the sane application of our knowledge of Darwinism to history are even now just beginning to penetrate the current literature of war and peace. In public affairs most nations have followed the principle of opportunism, "striking while the iron is hot," ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... survey the civilization of our age and its medical science, we see, on the one hand, the crude superstitions of the masses, the subtler superstitions of the educated classes; gross materialism, bewildering Darwinism, pessimism, and degenerate political economy; on the other hand, unmitigated quackery and cupidity, with its weight of oppression on humanity,—everywhere confusion ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... born in Kingston, Canada, 1848, and a prolific writer; an able upholder of the evolution doctrine and an expounder of Darwinism. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... This, at least, scorns to myself a not illogical argument. Mr. Leaf has argued on the other side, that 'Darwinism may have done something for Totemism, by proving the existence of a great monkey kinship. But Totemism can hardly be quoted as evidence for Darwinism.' True, but Darwinism and Totemism are matters of opinion, not facts of personal experience. To a believer ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... iron-clad scheme for the defence of property and the free action of the holders and manipulators of property. Backed by the economic philosophy of Locke, Adam Smith, Bentham and the Manchester School, generally, and the evolutionary theories of the exponents of Darwinism, and abetted by an endless series of statutes, the idea of the exemption of property holders from any responsibility to society for the use of their property, became a fixed part of the mental equipment of modernism. Precisely the same thing happened politically and socially. Rights were ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... hostile to a new word. In philosophy he was a devoted disciple of Kant, and his decided orthodoxy in religious belief affected many of his judgments. He could not appreciate Carlyle; he looked with much distrust on Darwinism and the philosophy of Herbert Spencer and he had very little patience with some of the moral and intellectual extravagances of modern literature. But, according to his own standards and in the wide range of his own subjects, his literary judgment ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... Proteus from his eldest brother, the first world-poet, and transplants it into the Second Part of Faust, where it has its place in the development of the modern man. The Mythus of Evolution the tale of Proteus becomes in Goethe's hands, and hints of Darwinism long ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... description of the method by which organisms evolve, putting all of the emphasis upon the congenital causes of variation, although the reality of other kinds of change is not questioned. But the contrast between Darwinism and the other descriptions of secondary factors can best be made after a somewhat detailed discussion of the former, which has gained the adherence of the majority of the naturalists of to-day. However, we must not pass on without pointing out that however much the explanations ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... universe with tangible answers[1] that especially attracted Romans of Vergil's day to the new philosophy. Their experience was not unlike that of numberless men of the last generation who first escaped from a puerile cosmology by way of popularized versions of Darwinism which the experts ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... highly seasoned with appeals to the prejudices of the audience, upon whose lack of intelligence the speaker relied. Near him sat Huxley, already known as a man of science, and known to look favorably upon Darwinism, but more or less youthful withal, only five-and-thirty, so that the bishop anticipated sport in badgering him. At the close of his speech he suddenly turned upon Huxley and begged to be informed if the learned gentleman was really willing to be ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... to show are unsound. Even in rejecting that phase of sexual selection depending on female choice, I insist on the greater efficacy of natural selection. This is pre-eminently the Darwinian doctrine, and I therefore claim for my book the position of being the advocate of pure Darwinism. ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... is the fourth of Butler's evolution books; it was followed in 1890 by three articles in The Universal Review entitled "The Deadlock in Darwinism" (republished in The Humour of Homer), after which he published ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... comes back to me a bowed and uncouth figure, whom one used to see both in the Cathedral procession on a Sunday, and—rarely— in the University pulpit. One sermon on Darwinism, which was preached, if I remember right, in the early 'seventies, remains with me, as the appearance of some modern Elijah, returning after long silence and exile to protest against an unbelieving world. Sara Coleridge had years ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... seem inexplicable, but which are gradually accounted for as knowledge increases? If, then, this is no objection in scientific pursuits generally, why should it be so here?" This reasoning would be perfectly valid if Darwinism were regarded simply as a scientific investigation. But it is under consideration now on very different rounds. Whatever Mr. Darwin's own views may be, the theory is brought forward by others, not as a mere interesting speculation, but as antagonistic to a record whose authority ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland
... to be what the artist thinks and wants them to be—concrete views which he can apply with utter faith. How many stories of the century past have been marred by the author's too ready application of Darwinism to social life! When we can separate the story from its intellectual background, the inadequacy of the latter matters little; for we can apply metaphysical and political criticism to the theory and enjoy ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... the secret of the profound interest which "Darwinism" has excited in the minds and hearts of more persons than dare to confess their doubts and hopes? It is because it restores "Nature" to its place as a true divine manifestation. It is that it removes the traditional curse ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... book (with the exception of the Frontispiece and the colored plate facing page 332) are copyrighted under the title "Darwinism Illustrated." ...
— Darwin, and After Darwin (Vol. 1 and 3, of 3) • George John Romanes
... Clifford's Inn, and studied painting, exhibiting regularly in the Academy between 1868 and 1876. But with the publication of Life and Habit (1877) he began to recognize literature as his life work. The book was followed by three others, attacking Darwinism—Evolution Old and New, or the Theories of Buffon, Dr Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck as compared with that of Mr C. Darwin (1879); Unconscious Memory (1880), a comparison between the theory of Dr E. Hering and the Philosophy of the Unconscious of Dr E. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... of the British Association in 1879 I delivered an address on "Degeneration: a Chapter in Darwinism." In the printed version of that address, published in the same year, there are some statements bearing on the matter above discussed which I reproduce here, since I can still make ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... that the life of man was "nasty, short, brutish and mean," and that it might as urgently require a similar sovereign remedy. The repugnance to such a remedy was reinforced by crude analogies between a perverted Darwinism and politics. Darwin's demonstration of evolution by means of the struggle for existence in the natural world was used to support the assumption that a similar struggle among civilized men was natural and therefore inevitable; ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... a passage which is interesting, as being the earliest attempt I know of to bring forward an argument against evolution, which was, even in Paley's day, called "Darwinism," after Dr. Erasmus Darwin its propounder.[18] The argument, I mean, which is drawn from the difficulty of accounting for the incipiency of complex structures. This has been used with greater force by the Rev. J. J. Murphy, Professor Mivart, and others, against that (as ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... Seeds. Chapter V. Plant Migration and Interglacial Periods. Chapter VI. Distribution and Permanence of Species. Chapter VII. What Is Life? Its Various Theories. Chapter VIII. Materialistic Theories of Life Refuted. Chapter IX. Force-Correlation, Differentiation and Other Life Theories. Chapter X. Darwinism Considered from a ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... Century The Dawn of Darwinism The Advent of the Neo-Darwinians Political Inadequacy of the Human Animal Cowardice of the Irreligious Is there any Hope in Education? Homeopathic Education The Diabolical Efficiency of Technical Education ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... Russians! We sit down quietly and wait for something or someone to come along and cure us all at once; heal all our wounds, pull out all our diseases, like a bad tooth. But who or what is to work this magic spell, Darwinism, the land, the Archbishop Perepentiev, a foreign war, we don't know and don't care, but we must have our tooth pulled out for us! It's nothing but mere idleness, sluggishness, want of thinking. Solomin, on ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... and Bothwell. Shakespeare and Bacon. Correct transliteration of Greek; pronunciation of Latin. Sunday opening of museums; of theatres. The English Sunday; Bank Holiday. Darwinism. Is there spontaneous creation? or spontaneous combustion? The germ theory; Pasteur's cures; Mattei's cures; Virchow's cell theory. Unity of Homer; of the Bible. Dickens v. Thackeray. Shall we ever fly? or steer balloons? The credit system; the discount system. ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... cognate lines of evidence which converge with special power in recent times to shed light upon the foundations of Christianity. Among the subjects discussed are Limits of Scientific Thought, Paradoxes of Science, God and Nature, Darwinism and Design, Mediate Miracles, Beyond Reasonable Doubt, The Newly Discovered External Evidences, The Evidence of Textual Criticism, Internal Evidence of the Early Date of the Gospel, and Positive Results of the Cumulative Evidence. These chapters are an elaboration ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... Yet) Emerson's Books (the Shadows of Them) Ventures, on an Old Theme British Literature Darwinism (then Furthermore) "Society" The Tramp and Strike Questions Democracy in the New World Foundation Stages—then Others General Suffrage, Elections, Etc. Who Gets the Plunder? Friendship (the Real Article) Lacks and Wants Yet Rulers Strictly Out of the Masses Monuments—the Past and ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... 'Theories of Darwin,' by Rudolf Schmid. I regard the scientific portion of the book, being about two-thirds of the whole, as the best reasoned and the most philosophic work which we have on organic development, and on Darwinism."—President James McCosh, Princeton College. ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... the Lamarckian theory of organic evolution, so that it has become a rival of Darwinism; the prevalence of these views in the United States, Germany, England, and especially in France, where its author is justly regarded as the real founder of organic evolution, has invested his name ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... only notice of evolution was a book called "Darwinism Dethroned." As for the elaborations of the Darwinian hypothesis by Spencer, Fiske, DeVries, Weismann, Haeckel, Kidd, Bergson, and every subsequent philosophic or biologic writer, all these men might never have written a line so far as Captain ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... command the earnest attention of the scientific and literary world, but it awakened the interest of thoughtful persons everywhere. Later research and criticism have modified the effect of his conclusions and led to new results, but the "Darwinian theory" or "Darwinism" still holds and seems likely long to maintain a central place in the history of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... attended one or two of the lectures by Agassiz before our scientific students, immediately rushed off to this meeting of his brethren, and insisted that the great naturalist was "preaching atheism and Darwinism'' at the university. He seemed about to make a decided impression, when there arose a very dear old friend of mine, the Rev. Dr. Sherman Canfield, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Syracuse, who, fortunately, was a scholar abreast of current questions. Dr. Canfield quietly ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... one of the greatest naturalists of the age, discovered the law of natural selection independently of Darwin, and about the same time. Among his works are "The Malay Archipelago," "Island Life," and "Darwinism." From "Natural Selection," which was published by Macmillan & Co., 1871, the following extracts are taken. The theme has received important development at the hands of Professor E. B. Poulton, in his "The Colours of Animals," ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... our purblind eyes, than that natural causation should be incompetent to produce all the phenomena of nature. The only rational course for those who had no other object than the attainment of truth was to accept "Darwinism" as a working hypothesis and see what could be made of it. Either it would prove its capacity to elucidate the facts of organic life or it would break down under the strain. This was surely the dictate of common sense, and for once common sense ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... on its base, putting the Ouzel at the top angle,—so. Then, the Ouzels pass up into Blackbirds, the Rails to the left into Woodcocks, the Allegrets to the right into Plovers, the Grebes, down left, into Ducks, and the Titanias, down right, into Gulls. And there's a bit of pentagonal Darwinism for you, if you like it, and learn it, which will be really good for something in the end, or the ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... ideas. The rate with which ideas are assimilated by the general public cannot even now be considered excessive, but how much faster it is than it was a few centuries ago may be illustrated by the attitude of the public to Darwinism now, twenty-five years after The Origin of Species, as compared with their attitude to the Copernican system a century after De Revolutionibus. By the way, it is, I know, presumptuous for me to have an opinion, but I cannot hear Darwin compared to or mentioned along with Newton without ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... shall survive!" And here is the central knot of the whole dark tangle. The German coveting greater economic opportunities, knowing himself strong to survive, believes in his divine right to possess. It is conscious Darwinism—the survival of the fittest, materially, which he is applying to the world—Darwinism accelerated by an intelligent will. And the non-Germanic world—the Latin world, for it is a Latin world in varying degrees of saturation outside of Germany—rejects ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... contrasted or compared with the Renaissance. In certain respects, where a common factor can be found, this may profitably be done. But it is important to note how different in kind were the two movements. One might as well compare Darwinism and Socialism in our own time. The one was a new way of looking at things, a fresh {188} intellectual start, without definite program or organization. The other was primarily a thesis: a set of tenets the object of which was concrete action. ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism. By Professor Oscar Schmidt (Strasburg University). With 26 Illustrations. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. Cloth, ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... of those who venture into the unknown realm of science has not entirely come to an end. And while I am writing this Mr. Bryan is addressing a vast multitude on the "Menace of Darwinism," warning his hearers against the errors of the ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... are simply destructive, for, through Darwinism, through experimental psychology, through the physiology of the brain, through biblical exegesis, through the comparative study of savage communities and their moral systems, the new concepts at first shocks the religious idea which ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... masculine American, too, had a friend in William James. There is a feeling abroad now, to which biology and Darwinism lend some colour, that theory is simply an instrument for practice, and intelligence merely a help toward material survival. Bears, it is said, have fur and claws, but poor naked man is condemned to be intelligent, or he will perish. This feeling William James embodied in that ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... exaggerated individualism appealed peculiarly to the best set in London. It was eminently aristocratic and might almost be defended as scientific, for to a certain extent it found corroboration in Darwinism. All progress according to Darwin comes from peculiar individuals; "sports" as men of science call them, or the "heaven-sent" as rhetoricians prefer to style them. The many are only there to produce more "sports" and ultimately to benefit by them. All this is valid enough; but it leaves ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... day of reckoning comes, and the stereotype is shattered, likely as not that which it did wisely take into account is ship-wrecked with it. That is the punishment assessed by Mr. Bernard Shaw against Free Trade, Free Contract, Free Competition, Natural Liberty, Laissez-faire, and Darwinism. A hundred years ago, when he would surely have been one of the tartest advocates of these doctrines, he would not have seen them as he sees them to-day, in the Infidel Half Century, [Footnote: Back to Methuselah. Preface.] to be excuses for "'doing the other fellow down' with impunity, ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... with these belts has been so surprising that we think we have found, at last, the long looked for "missing link," not in "Darwinism," however, but in the belting line. We prophesy a great future for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... the eminent divine who went from city to city, denouncing the "atheistic and pantheistic tendencies" of the proposed education, to the perfervid minister who informed a denominational synod that Agassiz, the last great opponent of Darwin, and a devout theist, was "preaching Darwinism and atheism" in ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... giving names to their joys in the wilderness. One could not better sum up Christianity than by calling a small white insignificant flower "The Star of Bethlehem." But then, again, one could not better sum up the philosophy deduced from Darwinism than in the one verbal picture of "having ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton |
