...progressive evolution exists"; yet toward the end of his book On the Origins of Nature he also wrote, "And as natural selection works solely by and for...corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection." The core ideas—Spencer and Darwin without political overtones and progression—emerged...

...morally progressive state that the history of evolution exemplifies and, in the long run, produces, for "as natural selection works solely by and for the...corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection" (Darwin 1859, p. 489). The moral character of nature's actions in regard to her...

...concluded The Origin of Species by saying "we may look with some confidence to a secure future of great length. And as natural selection works solely by and...corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection." However, since the nineteenth century when these confident words were penned, we...

...that, in the concluston at least, he could not refrain from pointing toward the future by writing: "And as natural selection works solely by and for...corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection." Two words are signifscant in this statement: "progress" and "perfection." Indeed,...

...invisible work of natural selection. 'We may look with some confidence to a secure future of great length. And as natural selection works solely by and...corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection.'54 Darwin's view of man seems materialist: 'Why is thought, being a secretion of...

...control and prediction. In addition to being altruistic, natural selection will produce perfection: "And as natural selection works solely by and for...corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection."28 But perfection, here, is only a tendency and at best a fulfillment of a certain...

...catastrophes, such as extinctions, were necessary steps, making room for new and better life forms. As "natural selection works solely by and for the...corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress to- _ wards perfection," Darwin wrote. "Thus from the war of nature, from IJ7 famine and death, the...

...unaltered likeness to a distant futurity," also trumpets an unabashed hopefulness about the future. "Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of great length. . . . [A]ll corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection."...

...morally progressive state that the history of evolution exemplified and, ultimately, produced. For "as natural selection works solely by and for the...corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection."54 The moral character of nature's actions in regard to her own creations is whispered,...

...succession by generation has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of equally inappreciable length. Charles Darwin (489) Since Apollo is often described as an artificer, it is not impossible to think...