The Times is getting more detestable (but that is too weak word) than ever.

About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorise; and I well remember some one saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!

I have long discovered that geologists never read each other's works, and that the only object in writing a book is a proof of earnestness.

A bad earthquake at once destroys the oldest associations: the world, the very emblem of all that is solid, has moved beneath our feet like a crust over a fluid; one second of time has conveyed to the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would never have created.

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.

We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence.

I cannot persuade myself that a beneficient and omnipotent God would have designedly created...that a cat should play with mice.