"... Suppose you knew fully the position and the properties  of every particle of matter ...  in the universe at any particular moment of time:  ... Well, that knowledge would involve the knowledge of the condition of things at the previous moment, and at the moment before that, and so on.  If you knew and perceived the present perfectly, you would perceive therein the whole of the past.  ...  Similarly, if you grasped the whole of the present, ... you would see clearly all the future.  To an omniscent observer ... he would see, as it were, a Rigid Universe filling space and time - a Universe in which things were always the same.  He would see one sole unchanging series of cause and effect...  If ‘past' meant anything, it would mean looking in a certain direction; while ‘future' meant looking the opposite way.  From the absolute point of view the universe is a perfectly rigid unalterable apparatus, entirely predestinate, entirely complete and finished ... time is merely a dimension, quite analogous  to the three dimensions of space."  H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, 1894.

"The business of the animal seems to be, not to live its own life, but but to reproduce its own kind, and the term of life at its disposal is adjusted accurately to the special difficulties of this purpose."  H. G. Wells, "The Duration of Life," Saturday Review, Feb 23, 1895.

"The true forefathers of the reader...  Why were they living ... in inhospitable rivers and spending half their lives half-baked in river mud?  ...  They had failed  in the struggle, they were less active and powerful than their rivals of the sea...  They preferred dirt, discomfort, and survival ... Some conservative descendants of these mud-fish live today in African and Australian rivers...  Others of their children, however, have risen in the world ... Emigrants from the rivers swarmed over the yet uncrowded land. ... From these sprang divergently the birds and mammals, and, finally, the last of the mud-fish family, man...  He it is who goes down to the sea in ships, and , with wide-sweeping nets and hooks cunningly baited, beguiles the children of those who drove his ancestors out of the water.  The whirligig of time brings round its revenges."  H. G. Wells, "Zoological Regression," Gentleman's Magazine, Sep, 1894.

"The life that has schemed and struggled and committed itself, that life that has played and lost, comes at last to the pitiless judgement of time, and is slowly and remorselessly annihilated.  This is the saddest chapter in biological science - the tragedy of (species) extinction.  ...the pterodactyls, the first of vertebrated animals to spread a wing to the wind, and follow the hunted insects to their last refuge of the air.  How triumphantly and gloriously these winged lizards, these original dragons, must have floated through their new empire of the atmosphere!  If their narrow brains could have entertained the thought, they would have congratulated themselves upon having gained a great and inalienable heritage for themselves and their children forever.  And now we cleave a rock and find their bones, and speculate doubtfully what their outer shape may have been."  H. G. Wells, "On Extinction," Chamber's Journal, Sep, 1893.

"Has anything arisen to show ... that where the life and breeding of every individual of a species is about equally secure, a degenerative process must not inevitably supervene?  ...Natural Selection grips us more grimly than it ever did, because the doubts thrown upon the inheritance of acquired characteristics have deprived us of our trust in education as a means of redemption for decadent families.  In our hearts we wish that the case were not so, we all hate Death and his handiwork; but the business of science is not to keep up the courage of men, but to tell the truth."  H. G. Wells, "Bio-Optimism," Nature, Aug 29, 1895.

"...it appears to me impossible to believe that man has undergone anything but an infinitesimal alteration in his intrinsic nature since the age of the unpolished stone.  ...  A decent citizen is always controlling and disciplining the impulses...  ...it is indisputable that civilized man is in some manner different ...  But that difference ... is in no degree inherited.  ... With true articulate speech came the possibilities of more complex co-operations...  Came writing, and therewith a tremendous acceleration in the expansion of that body of knowledge and ideals which is the reality of the civilized state.  ...in civilized man we have (1) an inherited factor, the natural man, who is the product of natural selection, the culminating ape, and a type of animal more obstinately unchangeable than any other living creature; and (2) an acquired factor, the artificial man, the highly plastic creature of tradition, suggestion, and reasoned thought. ...in a rude and undisciplined way indeed, ...humanity is even now consciously steering itself against the currents and winds of the universe in which it finds itself.  In the future, it is at least conceivable, that men with a trained reason and a sounder science, both of matter and psychology, may conduct this operation far more intelligently, unanimously, and effectively, and work towards, and at last attain and preserve, a social organization so cunningly balanced against exterior necessities on the one hand, and the artificial factor in the individual on the other, that the life of every human being ... may be generally happy.   To me, at least, this is no dream, but a possibility to be lost or won by men, as they may have or may not have the greatness of heart to consciously shape their moral conceptions and their lives to such an end."   H. G. Wells, "Human Evolution, An Artificial Process,"  Fortnightly Review, Oct, 1896.