Who are these who seem like clouds?
 [ ... ]

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.