There are many shining qualities in the mind of man, but there is
none so useful as discretion; it is this, indeed, that gives a value
to all the rest, which sets them to work in their proper times and
places, and turns them to the advantage of the person who is possessed
of them. Without it, learning is pedantry, and wit impertinence;
virtue itself looks like weakness; the best parts only qualify a
man to be more sprightly in errors, and active to his own principle.
-- Addison
The agreement of so many kinds of animals in a certain common structure
which seems to be fundamental not only in their skeletons, but also
in the arrangement of the other parts - so that a wonderfully simple
typical form, by the shortening and lengthening of some parts, and
by the suppression and development of others, might be able to produce
an immense variety of species - allows a ray of hope, however faint,
to enter our minds, that here perhaps some result may be obtained,
by the application of the principle of the mechanism of nature (without
which there can be no natural science in general)....
