Evolution: Darwin: Darwin's Diary

Introduction | 1809-1825 | 1826-1829 | 1831 | 1832 | 1833 | 1835 | 1836
1837 | 1838 | 1842-1854 | 1856 | 1858-1859 | 1881 | 1882

Fall 1858-Fall 1859 (Birth of a Theory)

"In September 1858I set to work to prepare a volume ... on the transmutation of species, but wasoften interrupted by ill-health."

With Wallace'sprompting, Darwin decides he should publish his book quickly. He writes an abridgedversion of the magnum opus he had intended. And all the while, he is plagued byworries about how his radical ideas will be received.

"It cost me thirteenmonths and ten days' hard labour ... It is no doubt the chief work of my life."

On the Origin ofSpecies by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races inthe Struggle for Life, is arguably the most important work in the history ofbiology. At the end of his life, Darwin remembers with some pride, "It was fromthe first highly successful. The first small edition of 1250 copies was sold onthe day of publication, and a second edition of 3000 copies soon afterwards."

It begins

"When on board HMS. Beagle, as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distributionof the organic beings inhabiting South America, and in the geological relations ofthe present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts ... seemed tothrow some light on the origin of species -- that mystery of mysteries ... Afterfive years work I allowed myself to speculate on the subject, and drew up some shortnotes; these I enlarged in 1844 into a sketch of the conclusions ... from that periodto the present day I have steadily pursued the same object. I hope that I may beexcused for entering on these personal details, as I give them to show that I havenot been hasty in coming to a decision."

Darwin saw his500-page book as "one long argument" for the theory of natural selection.

"It may be saidthat natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world,the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, preserving or adding upall that are good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and whereveropportunity offers ... We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, untilthe hand of time has marked the lapse of ages, and then so imperfect is ourview into long-past geological ages, that we see only that the forms of lifeare now different from what they formerly were."

1859 (Darwin's Struggle with Faith) (Birth of a Theory)

Darwin writes in On the Origin of Species

"I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of any one."

Yet he indeed knowsthat they will -- that his theory challenges the religious beliefs of many of hiscolleagues, friends, even his own wife.

Darwin at this time is undecided about his own religious views.When later asked by an American newspaper to write about them, he responds, "I feelin some degree unwilling to express myself publicly on religious subjects, as I donot feel that I have thought deeply enough to justify any publicity."

The Harvard botanist, Asa Gray, an evangelical Christian, is oneof Darwin's dearest colleagues. In a letter to Gray in 1860, Darwin confesses hisreligious doubts, and adds that they may be unresolvable. "I am inclined," he writes,"to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whethergood or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that thisnotion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profoundfor human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton."

It is never Darwin's intent to attack organized religion, or castaspersions on personal faith. After some people take offense, he is at pains in latereditions of On the Origin of Species to stress that evolution can bereconciled with belief in God.

"A celebrated authorand divine has written to me that 'he had gradually learnt to see that it is justas noble a conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few original formscapable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that Herequired a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of Hislaws.'"

Darwin closes Onthe Origin of Species with these words:

"There is grandeurin this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathedinto a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling onaccording to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless formsmost beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."

Here, Darwin borrowsa term from the Book of Genesis, "breathed." In later editions, he adds "by theCreator" to show there was nothing impious in his vision of nature.

-> Go to 1881

Introduction | 1809-1825 | 1826-1829 | 1831 | 1832 | 1833 | 1835 | 1836
1837 | 1838 | 1842-1854 | 1856 | 1858-1859 | 1881 | 1882