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By Root 1770 0

those venerable claims to origin from God himself, or from gods and goddesses—ancestry from divine beings of vaster beauty, size, and power than ours. But in current and latest times, the theory of human origin that seems to have most made its mark, (curiously reversing the antique,) is that we have come on, originated, developt, from monkeys, baboons—a theory more significant perhaps in its indirections, or what it necessitates, than it is even in itself. (Of the twain, far apart as they seem, and angrily as their conflicting advocates to-day oppose each other, are not both theories to be possibly reconciled, and even blended? Can we, indeed, spare either of them? Better still, out of them is not a third theory, the real one, or suggesting the real one, to arise?)

Of this old theory, evolution, as broach’d anew, trebled, with indeed all-devouring claims, by Darwin, it has so much in it, and is so needed as a counterpoise to yet widely prevailing and unspeakably tenacious, enfeebling superstitions—is fused, by the new man, into such grand, modest, truly scientific accompaniments—that the world of erudition, both moral and physical, cannot but be eventually better’d and broaden’ d in its speculations, from the advent of Darwinism. Nevertheless, the problem of origins, human and other, is not the least whit nearer its solution. In due time the Evolution theory will have to abate its vehemence, cannot be allow’d to dominate every thing else, and will have to take its place as a segment of the circle, the cluster—as but one of many theories, many thoughts, of profoundest value—and re-adjusting and differentiating much, yet leaving the divine secrets just as inexplicable and unreachable as before—may-be more so.

—Notes Left Over (1892)

JOHN TYNDALL

Charles Darwin [is] the Abraham of scientific men—a searcher as obedient to the command of truth as was the patriarch to the command of God.

—Scientific Fragments ( 1871 )

GRANT ALLEN

The end of that great Darwinian revolution the world has not yet seen: in a sense, it will never see it.

—Charles Darwin ( 1885)

Questions

1. Does it bother you to be told that you are related to monkeys and ultimately to all forms of life, including slugs and poison ivy?

2. Consider the last paragraph of The Origin of Species. Does it hold together as well logically as it does rhetorically?

3. If Origin is true, the account of creation in Genesis can’t be literally true (although it could be metaphorically or allegorically true). Does it follow that one has to reject either Darwin or all of the Old Testament?

4. “Natural selection, it should never be forgotten,” says Darwin, “can act solely through and for the advantage of each being.” How then does one explain altruism? Is mother love solely for the advantage of mothers?

5. In chapter VI of Origin there is a section entitled “Organs of Extreme Perfection and Complication” (p. 156), in which Darwin explains how “the theory of modification through natural selection” could account for something so extraordinary as an eagle’s eye. Does his explanation work?

For Further Reading

Other Works by Darwin

Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H. M. S. Beagle, under the Command of Captain FitzRoy, R. N., from 1832 to 1836 (The Voyage of the Beagle), 1839.

The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, 2 vols.,1868.

The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2 vols., 1871.

The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, 1872.

Insectivorous Plants, 1875.

The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom, 1876.

The Various Contrivances by Which Orchids Are Fertilised by Insects, 1877.

Charles Darwin’s ‘The Life of Erasmus Darwin’. 1879. Edited by Desmond King-Hele. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Action of Worms, with Observations on Their Habits, 1881.

The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809-1882. 1958. Edited by Nora Barlow. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993. Originally published