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Bruce F. Cummings
(7 Sep 1889 - 22 Oct 1919)
English author and diarist whose autobiography, written under the pseudonym W. N. P. Barbellion, The Journal of a Disappointed Man (1919), was published a few months before his early death, at age 30, from multiple sclerosis. In it, he wrote about his love of zoology and his career as a naturalist through excerpts from his diaries. Two more books were published posthumously.
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Science Quotes by Bruce F. Cummings (2 quotes)
How I hate the man who talks about the “brute creation”, with an ugly emphasis on Brute. Only Christians are capable of it. As for me, I am proud of my close kinship with other animals. I take a jealous pride in my Simian ancestry. I like to think that I was once a magnificent hairy fellow living in the trees and that my frame has come down through geological time via sea jelly and worms and Amphioxus, Fish, Dinosaurs, and Apes. Who would exchange these for the pallid couple in the Garden of Eden?
— Bruce F. Cummings
In W.N.P. Barbellion, The Journal of a Disappointed Man (1919), 27-28.
In the enfranchised mind of the scientific naturalist, the usual feelings of repugnance simply do not exist. Curiosity conquers prejudice.
— Bruce F. Cummings
Under pen-name of W. N. P. Barbellion, Journal of a Disappointed Man (1919), 215
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
