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On seeing the marsupials in Australia for the first time and comparing them to placental mammals: “An unbeliever . . . might exclaim 'Surely two distinct Creators must have been at work'”

Charles Darwin

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Charles Darwin
Age: 73 †
Born: 1809
Born: February 12
Died: 1882
Died: April 19
Beekeeper
Botanist
Carcinologist
Entomologist
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Explorer
Geologist
Naturalist
Philosopher
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The Mount
Shrewsbury
Charles Robert Darwin
Charles R. Darwin
Darwin
Time
Creator
Unbelievers
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Seeing
Mammals
Two
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Australia
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Surely
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Unbeliever

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Hence, a traveller should be a botanist, for in all views plants form the chief embellishment.
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If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
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There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties...The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.
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It is scarcely possible to doubt that the love of man has become instinctive in the dog.
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I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before, not even a Sailor in a slow-sailing ship.
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A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be opened, on the causes and laws of variation, on correlation of growth, on the effects of use and disuse, on the direct actions of external conditions, and so forth.
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It occurred to me, in 1837, that something might perhaps be made of this question (the origin of the species) by patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts which could possibly have any bearing on it
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To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree
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The most powerful natural species are those that adapt to environmental change without losing their fundamental identity which gives them their competitive advantage.
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To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree.
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The most important factor in survival is neither intelligence nor strength but adaptability.
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The love of a dog for his master is notorious in the agony of death he has been known to caress his master, and everyone has heard of the dog suffering under vivisection, who licked the hand of the operator this man, unless he had a heart of stone, must have felt remorse to the last hour of his life.
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He who is not content to look, like a savage, at the phenomena of nature as disconnected, cannot any longer believe that man is the work of a separate act of creation ... Man is the co-descendant with other mammals of a common progenitor.
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I am actually weary of telling people that I do not pretend to adduce [direct] evidence of one species changing into another, but I believe that this view is in the main correct, because so many phenomena can thus be grouped end explained.
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Nothing before had ever made me thoroughly realise, though I had read various scientific books, that science consists in grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them.
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Not one great country can be named, from the polar regions in the north to New Zealand in the south, in which the aborigines do not tattoo themselves.
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There is a grandeur in this view of life, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful are being evolved
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It is a fatal fault to reason whilst observing, though so necessary beforehand and so useful afterwards.
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There are several other sources of enjoyment in a long voyage, which are of a more reasonable nature. The map of the world ceases to be a blank it becomes a picture full of the most varied and animated figures.
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A man who has no assured and ever present belief in the existence of a personal God or of a future existence with retribution and reward, can have for his rule of life, as far as I can see, only to follow those impulses and instincts which are the strongest or which seem to him the best ones
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