Thomson's views on the recent age of the world have been for some time one of my sorest troubles.

One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.

I have no great quickness of apprehension or wit which is so remarkable in some clever men, for instance Huxley

Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself whether I may have not devoted myself to a fantasy.

Nothing exists for itself alone, but only in relation to other forms of life

Music was known and understood before words were spoken.

Some few, and I am one of them, even wish to God, though at the loss of millions of lives, that the North would proclaim a crusade against slavery. In the long-run, a million horrid deaths would be amply repaid in the cause of humanity. Great God! how I should like to see the greatest curse on earth - slavery - abolished!