The Bible of nature

Nature has guarded the health of her creatures by a marvelous system of protective intuitions. The sensitive membrane of the eye resents the intrusion of every foreign substance...

Bodily vigor is the basis of mental and physical health. Strength is power, and the instinctive love of invigorating exercise manifests itself in the young of all but the lowest...

The manifestations of the sexual instinct are guided by the plain and emphatic monitions of a physical conscience, developed partly with the primordial evolution of our organism...

Instinct is hereditary experience. The lessons derived from the repetition of pleasant or painful impressions have been transmitted from an infinite number of generations, till...

The organic faculties of each species of animals are marvelously adapted to its peculiar mode of life, but only in the lower creatures the skilful exercise of those faculties ap...

In the arena of life animal instinct triumphs over the elemental forces of Nature, as human intelligence triumphs over instinct, and the secret of that superiority is knowledge....

If the scale of precedence in the mental development of our fellow-creatures can be determined by any single test, that test is the instinctive love of Independence. Many of the...

The first germs of animal life have been traced to the soil of the tropics, and in the abundance of a perennial summer the instincts of pleasure and pain may long have sufficed...

In the course of evolution from brute to man some of our organs have been highly developed by constant use, while others have been stunted by habitual disuse. In special adaptat...

The Brahmans have a legend that the first children of man ascended Mount Gunganoor, to visit the castle of Indra and inquire into the secret of their origin. Speculations on the...

Moral philosophers have long conjectured the distinction between natural and conventional duties; and only the full recognition of that distinction can reconcile the conflicting...

The enemies of Nature have for ages based the favorite arguments of their creed on the doctrine of Natural Depravity. According to the theories of that tenet the natural instinc...

The wanton disposition of young children, like the mischievousness of our next relatives, the tree climbing half-men of the tropical forests, has often been mistaken for natural...

Philosophers of the utilitarian school have begun to reëstablish the long-forgotten truth that Materialism is the indispensable root of the plant which bears its flowers in spir...

The doctrine of Pythagoras, the philosophic Messiah of Paganism, included the strange tenet of metempsychosis. After death, held the confessors of that dogma, the souls of men a...

It is wonderful how often instinct has anticipated the practical lessons of science. Long before comparative anatomy taught us the characteristics of our digestive organs the te...

The indoor occupations of civilized life imply the necessity of providing artificial substitutes for the opportunities of physical exercise, which men in a state of nature can f...

In the nest-building propensity of the social insects the biologist can recognize the first germ of the instinctive desire for the establishment of a permanent home. Certain bir...

Progress is a general law of Nature, and the comparative study of Evolution proves that the tendency to improvement increases with the advance to higher planes of development. A...

An instinct inherited from the habits of many generations teaches our social fellow-creatures to entrust the welfare of their communities to the protection of an experienced lea...