Ch. HI.] RELIGION. 57 



" I am sure you will excuse my writing at length, when I 

 tell you that I have long been much out of health, and am now 

 staying away from my home for rest. 



" It is impossible to answer your question briefly ; and I am 

 not sure that I could do so, even if I wrote at sorao length. 

 But I may say that the impossibility of conceiving that this 

 grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose 

 through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the 

 existence of God; but whether this is an argument of real 

 value, I have never been able to decide. I am aware that if , v 

 we admit a FixsLCaiififir-the mind still craves to know whence 

 it came, and how it arose. Nor can I overlook the difficulty 

 from the immense^Ttmount. jof^uffering- through the world. I -'> 

 am, also, induced to defer to a certain extent to the judgment 

 of the many able men who have fully believed in God ; but 

 here again I see how poor an argument this is. The safest 

 conclusion seems to me that the whole subject is beyond the 

 scope of man's intellect ; but man can do his duty." 



Again in 1879 he was applied to by a German student, in a 

 similar manner. The letter was answered by a member of my 

 father's family, who wrote : — 



" Mr. Darwin begs me to say that he receives so many letters, 

 that he cannot answer them all. 



" He considers that the theory of Evolution is quite com- 

 patible with the belief in a God ; but that you must remember 

 that different persons have different definitions of what they 

 mean by God." 



This, however, did not satisfy the German youth, who 

 again wrote to my father, and received from him the following 

 reply:— 



" I am much engaged, an old man, and out of health, and 

 I cannot spare time to answer your questions fully, — nor 

 indeed can they be answered. Science has nothing to do with 

 Christ, except in so far as the habit of scientific research makes 

 a man cautious in admitting evidence. For myself, I do not 

 believe that there ever has been any revelation. As for a 

 future life, every man must judge for himself between con- 

 flicting vague probabilities." 



The passages which here follow are extracts, somewhat 

 abbreviated, from a part of the Autobiography, written in 

 1876, in which my father gives the history of his religious 

 views : — 



* During these two years * I was led to think much about 



• October 1836 to January 1839. 



