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

An agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind.

As some of the lowest organisms, in which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiving light, it does not seem impossible that certain sensitive elements in their sarcode should become aggregated and developed into nerves, endowed with this special sensibility.

Natural selection acts solely by accumulating slight successive favorable variations, it can produce no great or sudden modification; it can act only by very short steps.

As natural selection acts by competition, it adapts the inhabitants of each country only in relation to the degree of perfection of their associates; so that we need feel no surprise at the inhabitants of any one country, although on the ordinary view supposed to have been specially created and adapted for that country, being beaten and supplanted by the naturalised productions from another land.

Even people who aren’t geniuses can outthink the rest of mankind if they develop certain thinking habits.

The main conclusion here arrived at ... is that man is descended from some less highly organized form.