From My Early Youth I

A Fair Result Can Be Obtained Only By Fully Stating And Balancing The Facts And Arguments On Both Sides Of Each Question." Charles Darwin

When I View All Beings Not As Special Creations, But As The Lineal Descendants Of Some Few Beings Which Lived Long Before The First Bed Of The Cambrian System Was Deposited, They Seem To Me To Become Ennobled.

Disbelief Crept Over Me At A Very Slow Rate, But At Last It Was Complete.

Consequently, If My Theory Be True, It Is Indisputable That Before The Lowest Silurian Stratum Was Deposited, Long Periods Elapsed, As Long As, Or Probably Far Longer Than, The Whole Interval From The Silurian Age To The Present Day; And That During These Vast, Yet Quite Unknown, Periods Of Time, The World Swarmed With Living Creatures. To The Question Why We Do Not Find Records Of These Vast Primordial Periods, I Can Give No Satisfactory Answer.

At Last Gleams Of Light Have Come, And I Am Almost Convinced (quite Contrary To Opinion I Started With) That Species Are Not (it Is Like Confessing A Murder) Immutable. Heaven Forfend Me From Lamarck Nonsense Of A 'tendency To Progression', 'adaptations From The Slow Willing Of Animals', &c! But The Conclusions I Am Led To Are Not Widely Different From His; Though The Means Of Change Are Wholly So. I Think I Have Found Out (here's Presumption!) The Simple Way By Which Species Become Exquisitely Adapted To Various Ends.