Quotations by Author

Chauncey Wright

Strictly speaking, Natural Selection is not a cause at all, but is the mode of operation of a certain quite limited class of causes.

The questions of philosophy proper are human desires and fears and aspirations - human emotions - taking an intellectual form.

The pains of disconcerted or frustrated habits, and the inherent pleasure there is in following them, are motives which nature has put into our wills without generally caring to inform us why; and she sometimes decrees, indeed, that her reasons shall not be ours.

Natural Selection never made it come to pass, as a habit of nature, that an unsupported stone should move downwards rather than upwards. It applies to no part of inorganic nature, and is very limited even in the phenomena of organic life.