Amidst the vicissitudes of the earth's surface, species cannot be immortal, but must perish, one after another, like the individuals which compose them. There is no possibility of escaping from this conclusion.
Interpretation
Species, like individuals, inevitably face extinction due to the changing conditions of the Earth.
This quote by Charles Lyell emphasizes the transitory nature of life on Earth, highlighting how species are subject to the same fate as individual organisms: mortality. It speaks to the inevitability of extinction and the constant evolution and change of the planet, making it clear that no species can escape this fate, regardless of its adaptability or resilience.
In practice
In a lecture on evolution, one might use this quote to illustrate the concept of natural selection and extinction.
When the aggregate amount of solid matter transported by rivers in a given number of centuries from a large continent, shall be reduced to arithmetical computation, the result will appear most astonishing to those...not in the habit of reflecting how many of the mightiest of operations in nature are effected insensibly, without noise or disorder.
Never was there a dogma more calculated to foster indolence, and to blunt the keen edge of curiosity, than the assumption of the discordance between the former and the existing causes of change.
The question now at issue, whether the living species are connected with the extinct by a common bond of descent, will best be cleared up by devoting ourselves to the study of the actual state of the living world, and to those monuments of the past in which the relics of the animate creation of former ages are best preserved and least mutilated by the hand of time.
God has a prepared path for us to follow. We just have to read the omens he has left for us.
He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.
All of the Antilles, every island, is an effort of memory: every mind, every racial biography culminating in amnesia and fog. Pieces of sunlight through the fog and sudden rainbows, arcs-en-ciel. That is the effort, the labour of the Antillean imagination, rebuilding its gods from bamboo frames, phrase by phrase.
Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache... Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.
There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn.
Debt is a prolific mother of folly and of crime.
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