Biological Hierarchy Quotes

I have been scientifically studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so-called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result profoundly humiliating to me. For it obliges me to renounce my allegiance to the Darwinian theory of the Ascent of Man from the Lower Animals; since it now seems plain to me that that theory ought to be vacated in favor of a new and truer one, this new and truer one to be named the Descent of Man from the Higher Animals.

Nature knows no political boundaries. She puts living creatures on this globe and watches the free play of forces. She then confers the master's right on her favourite child, the strongest in courage and industry ... The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel.

Natural bodies are divided into three kingdomes of nature: viz. the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. Minerals grow, Plants grow and live, Animals grow, live, and have feeling.

There is part of a structure in which every species is related to every other species. And they're built up on species, like a pyramid. The simpler cell organisms, and then the more complicated ones, all the way up to the mammals and birds and so forth. We call it 'developing upward'... The whole thing depends on every part of it. And we're taking out the stones from the pyramid.

Always acknowledge your position in the food chain... They eat because you grow the food.

It's the lie of evolution that all man are just evolved and that they're all equal, and that all creatures are equal.

All advances by degrees in Nature, and nothing by leaps …. Although there may exist in some other world species intermediate between Man and the Apes, Nature has thought it is to remove them from us, in order to establish our superiority beyond question. I speak of intermediate species, and by no means limit myself to those leading to Man.

A beetle may or may not be inferior to a man - the matter awaits demonstration; but if he were inferior by ten thousand fathoms, the fact remains that there is probably a beetle view of things of which a man is entirely ignorant. If he wishes to conceive that point of view, he will scarcely reach it by persistently revelling in the fact that he is not a beetle.

We think we know that chimpanzees are higher animals and earthworms are lower, we think we've always known what that means, and we think evolution makes it even clearer. But it doesn't. It is by no means clear that it means anything at all. Or if it means anything, it means so many different things to be misleading, even pernicious.

The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled.

From the first dawn of life, all organic beings are found to resemble each other in descending degrees, so that they can be classed in groups under groups. This classification is evidently not arbitrary like the grouping of stars in constellations.

So, naturalists observe, a flea; Hath smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum.

We have unmistakable proof that throughout all past time, there has been a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong.

The hierarchy of relations, from the molecular structure of carbon to the equilibrium of the species and ecological whole, will perhaps be the leading idea of the future.

If ancient descent could confer nobility, the lower forms of life would possess it in a greater degree than man.

A fascinating mystery of nature is manifested in the universal fact of hunting: the inexorable hierarchy among living beings. Every animal is in a relationship of superiority or inferiority with regard to every other. Strict equality is exceedingly improbable and anomalous.