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.

All that at present can be said with certainty, is that, as with the individual, so with the species, the hour of life has run its course, ans is spent.

Sexual selection acts in a less rigorous manner than natural selection. The latter produces its effects by the life or death at all ages of the more or less successful individuals.

There is grandeur in this view of life... [in which] endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life.

Man, like every other animal, has no doubt advanced to his present high condition through a struggle for existence consequent on his multiplication; and if he is to advance still higher, it is to be feared that he must remain subject to a severe struggle.