Or ever the knightly years were gone
With the old world to the grave,
I was a read more

Or ever the knightly years were gone
With the old world to the grave,
I was a king in Babylon
And you were a Christian slave.

For my own part I am persuaded that everything advances by an
unchangeable law through the eternal constitution and read more

For my own part I am persuaded that everything advances by an
unchangeable law through the eternal constitution and association
of latent causes, which have been long before predestined.
[Lat., Equidem aeterna constitutione crediderim nexuque causarum
atentium et multo ante destinatarum suum quemque ordinem
immutabili lege percurrere.]

Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not read more

Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not on reasoning but on doctrinaire adherence to religious principles

Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And read more

Most species do their own evolving, making it up as they go along, which is the way Nature intended. And this is all very natural and organic and in tune with mysterious cycles of the cosmos, which believes that there’s nothing like millions of years of really frustrating trial and error to give a species moral fiber and, in some cases, backbone.

This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express
in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. read more

This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express
in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called "natural
selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle
for life."

Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm,
Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form:
Mounts from her read more

Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm,
Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form:
Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame,
And soars and shines, another and the same.

The reason why the universe is eternal is that it does not live for itself; it gives life to others read more

The reason why the universe is eternal is that it does not live for itself; it gives life to others as it transforms

Out of the dusk a shadow,
Then a spark;
Out of the cloud a silence,
read more

Out of the dusk a shadow,
Then a spark;
Out of the cloud a silence,
Then a lark;
Out of the heart a rapture,
Then a pain;
Out of the dead, cold ashes,
Life again.

When you were a tadpole, and I was a fish,
In the Palaeozoic time,
And side by read more

When you were a tadpole, and I was a fish,
In the Palaeozoic time,
And side by side in the sluggish tide
We sprawled in the ooze and slime.