It may not be logical, but to my imagination, it is far more satisfactory to look at the young cuckoo ejecting its foster-brothers, ants making slaves, the larvæ of the Ichneumidæ feeding within the live bodies of their prey, cats playing with mice, otters and cormorants with living fish, not as instincts specially given by the Creator, but as very small parts of one general law leading to the advancement of all organic bodies —Multiply, Vary, let the strongest Live and the weakest Die.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "It may not be logical, but to my imagination, it is far more satisfactory to look at the young cuckoo ejecting its foster-brothers, ants making slaves, the larvæ of the Ichneumidæ feeding within the live bodies of their prey, cats playing with mice, otters and cormorants with living fish, not as instincts specially given by the Creator, but as very small parts of one general law leading to the advancement of all organic bodies —Multiply, Vary, let the strongest Live and the weakest Die." in the context of "Charles Darwin, chapter on Instinct written Origin of the Species but left out, as quoted in George Romanes, Appendix, Mental Evolution in Animals (1883) p. 384." to mean that wisdom is timeless.