Charles Kingsley Quotes
Madame Nature allows no dangerous classes, in the modern sense. She has, doubtless for some wise reason, no mercy for the weak. She rewards each organism according to its works; and if anything grows too weak or stupid to take care of itself, she gives it its due deserts by letting it die and disappear.
Kingsley, Charles. Prose Idylls, New and Old. Macmillan and Co., 1873, p. 182.
Laymen look at nature fondly and personify “Mother Nature” as kindly and beneficent. However, scientists have a more dispassionate view of nature and see it as a combination of forces that would kill most life-forms unless there is a combination of behavior and evolution to resist the normal forces of nature. While man has been responsible for the termination of a number of species, well over 99 percent of all the animal species that have ever lived are extinct today and that has been all “natural”. Schrodinger explains that nature is not a positive force, and in reality is the opposite—every species has to overcome nature and what is natural in order to survive.
Charles Kingsley was a broad church priest of the Church of England, a university professor, social reformer, historian, novelist and poet. He is particularly associated with Christian socialism, the working men's college, and forming labour cooperatives, which failed, but encouraged later working reforms. He was a friend and correspondent of Charles Darwin.
