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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: and will long remain obscure, I can entertain no doubt, after the most
deliberate study and dispassionate judgment of which I am capable, that the
view which most naturalists entertain, and which I formerly
entertained--namely, that each species has been independently created--is
erroneous. I am fully convinced that species are not immutable; but that
those belonging to what are called the same genera are lineal descendants
of some other and generally extinct species, in the same manner as the
acknowledged varieties of any one species are the descendants of that
species. Furthermore, I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the
main but not exclusive means of modification.
Chapter I
On the Origin of Species |
