from so simple a beginning

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, 

clothed with many plants of many kinds, 

with birds singing on the bushes,

 insects flitting about and worms crawling

 through the damp earth, 

and to reflect that these forms, so different

 yet so dependent on each other in so complex a manner,

 have all been produced by simple laws.There is grandeur in this

 view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed

 by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, 

whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity,

 from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful 

and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.





Charles Darwin

from On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection