From The War Of Nature, From Famine

It Is So Easy To Hide Our Ignorance Under Such Expressions As The Plan Of Creation Or Unity Of Design, Etc., And To Think That We Give An Explanation When We Only Restate A Fact.

At Some Future Period, Not Very Distant As Measured By Centuries, The Civilised Races Of Man Will Almost Certainly Exterminate And Replace Throughout The World The Savage Races. At The Same Time The Anthropomorphous Apes, As Professor Schaaffhausen Has Remarked, Will No Doubt Be Exterminated. The Break Will Then Be Rendered Wider, For It Will Intervene Between Man In A More Civilised State As We May Hope, Than The Caucasian And Some Ape As Low As A Baboon, Instead Of As At Present Between The Negro Or Australian And The Gorilla.

Our Descent, Then, Is The Origin Of Our Evil Passions!! The Devil Under Form Of Baboon Is Our Grandfather.

I Can Indeed Hardly See How Anyone Ought To Wish Christianity To Be True For If So The Plain Language Of The Text Seems To Show That The Men Who Do Not Believe, And This Would Include My Father, Brother And Almost All Of My Friends, Will Be Everlastingly Punished. And This Is A Damnable Doctrine.

But I Own That I Cannot See As Plainly As Others Do, And I Should Wish To Do, Evidence Of Design And Beneficence On All Sides Of Us. There Seems To Me Too Much Misery In The World. I Cannot Persuade Myself That A Beneficent And Omnipotent God Would Have Designedly Created That A Cat Should Play With Mice.