From Professors Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson’s Evolution, published in 1911 by Henry Holt & Co., here are two thoughts for the talibangelists of our devolved day:
Darwin has, in fact, brought us more nearly back to the Noah’s ark of our childhood than we commonly realize; for do not all these stories of thrushes, lizards and what not quaintly recall the origins of human races from the dispersion of Shem, Ham and Japheth?
And…
Most briefly stated, the view of evolution thus reached is that of definite variation: its branchings essentially dichotomous rather than indefinite, with progress essentially through the subordination of individual struggle and development to species-maintaining ends. The ideal of evolution is thus no gladiator’s show, but an Eden; and though competition can never be wholly eliminated — the line of progress is thus no straight line but at most an asymptote — it is much for our pure natural history to see no longer struggle, but love as “creation’s final law.”
I find it a rather curious thing that Darwin is held up by liberals as an ideal, for Darwin is said to have been heavily influenced by, and to have come to his conclusions after reading Adam Smith and later Malthus. In embracing Darwinism, do we not also unwittingly embrace the economic theories of laissez-faire capitalism?
"In October 1838, that is fifteen months after I had begun my systematic enquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus' Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence [a phrase used by Malthus] which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be a new species. Here then I had at last got hold of a theory by which to work."