Embracing the imagination= vast ensemble of organisms

Book review (1860):

The Origin Of Species: On The Origin Of Species By Means Of Natural Selection Or The Preservation Of Favored Races In The struggle For Life. By Charless Darwin,M.A.,

Some excerpts:

• …..that each species has been independently created
• that "all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was at first breathed!"
• "I have reason to believe that humble-bees are indispensable to the fertilization of the heartsease. Hence I have very little doubt that if the whole genus of humble-bees became extinct or very rare in England, this heartsease and red clover would become very rare, or wholly disappear. The number of humble-bees in any district depends in a great degree on the number of field-mice, which destroy their combs and nests; and Mr. H. NEWMAN, who has long attended to the habits of humble-bees, believes that 'more than two thirds of them are thus destroyed all over England.' Now the number of mice is largely dependent, as everyone knows, on the number of cats; and Mr. NEWMAN says, 'Near villages I have found the nests of humble-bees more numerous than elsewhere, which I attribute to the number of cats that destroy the mice!'"
• Nature is constantly at work doing the same thing.
• "And we do not know how ignorant we are," adds Mr. DARWIN.
• It is the leading idea of modern science that we need not go in search of any other causes than those which are at present in action, for an explanation of the phenomena of Nature.
• The most important contribution to modern thought is undoubtedly the indirect teachings of physical science.
• ………..science needs literature just as much as literature needs science. He is the master of science who makes his facts but initial, leading to heights where new vistas open in flashes of beauty and repose.