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.

To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.

From the first dawn of life, all organic beings are found to resemble each other in descending degrees, so that they can be classed in groups under groups. This classification is evidently not arbitrary like the grouping of stars in constellations.

Mere chance ... alone would never account for so habitual and large an amount of difference as that between varieties of the same species.

It is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life; one might as well think of origin of matter.

Species of the same genus would occasionally exhibit reversions to lost ancestral characters.