It is a fatal fault to reason whilst observing, though so necessary beforehand and so useful afterwards.

And hail their queen, fair regent of the night.

I am aware that the assumed instinctive belief in God has been used by many persons as an argument for his existence. The idea of a universal and beneficent Creator does not seem to arise in the mind of man, until he has been elevated by long-continued culture.

In my simplicity, I remember wondering why every gentleman did not become an ornithologist.

I am quite conscious that my speculations run beyond the bounds of true science....It is a mere rag of an hypothesis with as many flaw[s] & holes as sound parts.

I fully subscribe to the judgement of those writers who maintain that of all the differences between man and the lower animal, the moral sense of conscience is by far the most important....It is the most noble of all the attributes of man.

This preservation of favourable variations and the destruction of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest. Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection and would be left a fluctuating element.