On the Origin of Species: the closing paragraphs

In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.

在遥远的未来，我看到有一些重要得多的研究领域敞开着。心理学将建立在一个新的基础上，即每一种心理能力和才能都必然是逐级获得的。人类的起源及其历史，也将由此得到启明。

Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual. When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled. Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity. And of the species now living very few will transmit progeny of any kind to a far distant futurity; for the manner in which all organic beings are grouped, shows that the greater number of species of each genus, and all the species of many genera, have left no descendants, but have become utterly extinct. We can so far take a prophetic glance into futurity as to foretel that it will be the common and widely-spread species, belonging to the larger and dominant groups, which will ultimately prevail and procreate new and dominant species. As all the living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the Silurian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation has never once been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of equally inappreciable length. And as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection.

最杰出的作者们似乎完全满足于这样的观点：每一个物种都是被单独创造出来的。在我看来，世界上过去和现在的居民的产生与灭绝，是由第二性的原因所致，就像决定个体生死的那些原因一样——这与我们所知的造物主加诸物质的法则更为相合。当我不把一切生物看作特别的创造物，而看作远在志留系第一层沉积之前就已生活着的少数几种生物的直系后代时，它们在我看来就变得高贵了。根据过去来判断，我们可以有把握地推断：没有一个现存的物种会把它未经改变的模样传到遥远的未来。而在现存的物种中，能把任何后代传到很遥远的未来的，也只是极少数；因为一切生物的分类方式表明，每一属里的大多数物种，以及许多属里的全部物种，都没有留下后代，而是完全灭绝了。我们可以对未来作这样一番预言式的展望：最终占优势、并繁衍出新的优势物种的，将是那些属于较大的、占优势的类群的常见而分布广泛的物种。既然一切现存的生命形式都是远在志留纪之前就已生活着的那些生物的直系后代，我们就可以确信，通常的世代相传从未中断过一次，也从未有过一场灾变使整个世界荒芜。因此，我们可以有几分信心地展望一个同样长得难以估量的安稳的未来。而且，由于自然选择只是通过并且为了每一个生物的利益而起作用，一切肉体的和精神的禀赋都将趋向于朝完善的方向进步。

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

凝视一处纷繁的河岸，是一件很有意思的事：岸上覆盖着许多种类的植物，鸟儿在灌丛中歌唱，各种昆虫飞来飞去，蠕虫在湿润的泥土里爬行；再想一想，这些构造精巧的生命形式，彼此如此不同，又以如此复杂的方式相互依存，竟都是由在我们周围起作用的法则所产生的。这些法则，就其最广泛的意义而言，就是：伴随着生殖的生长；几乎包含在生殖之中的遗传；由生活的外界条件的间接和直接作用以及由使用和不使用所引起的变异；高得足以导致生存斗争的增殖率，以及由此而来的自然选择，自然选择又引起性状的分歧和改进较少的类型的灭绝。这样，从自然界的战争中，从饥饿和死亡中，我们所能想象的最崇高的事物，即高等动物的产生，便直接随之而来。这种生命观是壮丽的：生命及其若干能力，最初被注入到少数几个类型或一个类型之中；而当这颗行星按照固定的引力法则不停运转的时候，最美丽、最奇妙的无穷无尽的类型，从如此简单的开端演化而来，并且仍在演化之中。