But we have better evidence on this subject than mere theoretical calculations, namely, the numerous recorded cases of the astonishingly rapid increase of various animals in a state of nature, when circumstances have been favourable to them during two or three following seasons.
In a state of nature almost every plant produces seed, and amongst animals there are very few which do not annually pair.
In looking at Nature, it is most necessary to keep the foregoing considerations always in mind--never to forget that every single organic being around us may be said to be striving to the utmost to increase in numbers; that each lives by a struggle at some period of its life; that heavy destruction inevitably falls either on the young or old, during each generation or at recurrent intervals.
The Origin of Species
And may we not say confidently of man also, that he who is likely to be gentle to his friends and acquaintances, must by nature be a lover of wisdom and knowledge?
Then it will be our duty to select, if we can, natures which are fitted for the task of guarding the city?
But are not these spirited natures apt to be savage with one another, and with everybody else?
Republic
And what can physicians conjecture from feeling the pulse unless they know that according as the blood changes its
nature it can be rarefied by the warmth of the heart, in a higher or lower degree, and more or less quickly than before?
Reason For Discourse
Praise is looked, homage tendered, love flows, from mute nature, from the mountains and the lights of the firmament.
The instinct of the mind, the purpose of nature, betrays itself in the use we make of the signal narrations of history.
Every law which the state enacts indicates a fact in human nature; that is all.
Essays First Series
Nature enhances her beauty, to the eye of loving men, from their belief that the poet is beholding her shows at the same time.
I know not how it is that we need an interpreter, but the great majority of men seem to be minors, who have not yet come into possession of their own, or mutes, who cannot report the conversation they have had with nature. There is no man who does not anticipate a supersensual utility in the sun and stars, earth and water.
For nature is as truly beautiful as it is good, or as it is reasonable, and must as much appear as it must be done, or be known.
Essays Second Series
He had the benefit of all the available formal education, partly at home, partly at a 'grammar' school a few miles away, but his genius was formed chiefly by the influence of Nature, and, in a qualified degree, by that of the simple peasant people of the region.
When, soon after his return, England, in horror at the execution of the French king, joined the coalition of European powers against France, Wordsworth experienced a great shock--the first, he tells us, that his moral nature had ever suffered--at seeing his own country arrayed with corrupt despotisms against what seemed to him the cause of humanity.
A History of English Literature