Here is an intresting passage from Darwin's The Origin of Species:
"Yet unless it be thoroughly engrained in the mind, I am convinced that the whole economy of nature, with every fact of distribution, rarity, abundance, extinction, and variation, will be dimly seen or quite misunderstood. We behold the face of nature bright with gladness, we often see superabundance of food; we do not see, or we forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on insects or seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life; or we forget how largely these songsters, or their eggs, or their nestlings, are destroyed by birds and beasts of prey; we do not always bear in mind, that though food may now be superabundant, it is not so at all seasons of each recurring year." Darwin pg. 61
This reminded me in a strange way of these lines from Eliot's Four Quartets:
"Go, go, go said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality"
T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton
"Yet unless it be thoroughly engrained in the mind, I am convinced that the whole economy of nature, with every fact of distribution, rarity, abundance, extinction, and variation, will be dimly seen or quite misunderstood. We behold the face of nature bright with gladness, we often see superabundance of food; we do not see, or we forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on insects or seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life; or we forget how largely these songsters, or their eggs, or their nestlings, are destroyed by birds and beasts of prey; we do not always bear in mind, that though food may now be superabundant, it is not so at all seasons of each recurring year." Darwin pg. 61
This reminded me in a strange way of these lines from Eliot's Four Quartets:
"Go, go, go said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality"
T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton
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