"Modification of form is admitted to be a matter of time"
"There might have been a hundred or a thousand life-bearing planets, had the course of evolution of the universe been a little different, or there might have been none at all. They would probably add, that, as life and man have been produced, that shows that their production was possible; and therefore, if not now then at some other time, if not here then in some other planet of some other sun, we should be sure to have come into existence; or if not precisely the same as we are, then something a little better or a little worse."
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Source: Alfred Russel Wallace, Andrew Berry (2003). “Infinite Tropics: An Alfred Russel Wallace Anthology”, p.225, Verso
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