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"As man can produce and certainly has produced a great result by his
methodical and unconscious means of selection, what may not nature effect?
Man can act only on external and visible characters:
nature ... can act on every internal organ, on every shade of
constitutional difference, on the whole machinery of life.
Man selects only for his own good; Nature only for the being which she tends....
How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of man! how short his time! and consequently how poor will his products be, compared with those accumulated by nature during whole geological periods. Can we wonder, then, that nature's productions should be far 'truer' in character; that they should be infinitely better adapted to the most complex conditions of life, and should plainly bear the stamp of far higher workmanship?" |
| Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species... 1859, p. 83-84 |