_Darwin's own Testimony._
That such is Mr. Darwin's doctrine we prove from his own writings. And
the first proof from that source is found in express declarations. When
an idea pervades a book and constitutes its character, detached passages
constitute a very small part of the evidence of its being inculcated. In
the present case, however, such passages are sufficient to satisfy even
those who have not had occasion to read Mr. Darwin's books. In referring
to the similarity of structure in animals of the same class, he says,
"Nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to explain this similarity
of pattern in members of the same class, by utility or the doctrine of
final causes."[12]
On the last page of his work, he says: "It is interesting to
contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with
birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and
with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these
elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and
dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced
by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being
growth with reproduction; variability from the indirect and direct
action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a ratio of
increase so high as to lead to a struggle for life, and as a consequence
to natural selection, entailing divergence of character and extinction
of less improved forms.
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