1859 THE ' ORIGIN OF SPECIES ' 241 



EXTRACT from " The Reception of the 'Origin of Species'" 

 in Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. ii. pp. 

 187-90 and 195-97. 



I think I must have read the Vestiges before I left 

 England in 1846 ; but, if I did, the book made very 

 little impression upon me, and I was not brought into 

 serious contact with the " Species " question until after 

 1850. At that time, I had long done with the 

 Pentateuchal cosmogony, which had been impressed upon 

 my childish understanding as Divine truth, with all the 

 authority of parents and instructors, and from which it 

 had cost me many a struggle to get free. /But my mind 

 was unbiassed in respect of any doctrine wfiich presented 

 itself, if it professed to be based on purely philosophical 

 and scientific reasoning. It seemed to me then (as it 

 does now) that " creation," in the ordinary sense of the 

 word, is perfectly conceivable. I find no difficulty in 

 conceiving that, at some former period, this universe was 

 not in existence ; and that it made its appearance in six 

 days (or instantaneously, if that is preferred), in conse- 

 quence of the volition of some pre-existing Being. Then, 

 as now, the so-called a priori arguments against Theism, 

 and, given a Deity, against the possibility of creative 

 acts, appeared to me to be devoid of reasonable foundation. 

 I had not then, and I have not now, the smallest a priori 

 objection to raise to the account of the creation of animals 

 and plants given in Paradise Lost, in which Milton so 

 vividly embodies the natural sense of Genesis. Far be 

 it from me to say that it is untrue because it is impossible. 

 I confine myself to what must be regarded as a modest 

 and reasonable request for some particle of evidence that 

 the existing species of animals and plants did originate 

 in that way, as a condition of my belief in a statement 

 which appears to me to be highly improbable. 



And, by way of being perfectly fair, I had exactly 

 the same answer to give to the evolutionists of 1851-58. 



VOL. I R 



