How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children.

Darwin’s remark contrasts the immediacy of adult concerns with the long horizon that children impose on one’s imagination and priorities. Surrounded by children, the present can feel provisional: daily choices, work, and even anxieties are reframed in terms of what they will mean for the next generation. The line also resonates with Darwin’s broader habit of thinking in extended timescales—development, inheritance, and gradual change—though here it is expressed in domestic, emotional terms rather than scientific argument. Its significance lies in how it captures a common parental experience: children make the future feel more urgent, morally weighty, and “paramount” than the fleeting satisfactions of the moment.