On the Origin of Species: Or, the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature; A Course of Six Lectures to Working Men

Excerpt from On the Origin of Species: Or, the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature; A Course of Six Lectures to Working Men

When it was my duty to consider what subject I would select for the six lectures which I shall now have the pleasure of delivering to you, it occurred to me that I could not do better than endeavour to put before you in a true light, or in what I might perhaps with more modesty call, that which I conceive myself to be the true light, the position of a book which has been more praised and more abused, perhaps, than any book which has appeared for some years; - I mean Mr. Darwin's work on the "Origin of Species." That work, I doubt not, many of you have read; for I know the inquiring spirit which is rife among you. At any rate, all of you will have heard of it, - some by one kind of report and some by another kind of report; the attention of all and the curiosity of all have been probably more or less excited on the subject of that work. All I can do, and all I shall attempt to do, is to put before you that kind of judgment which has been formed by a man, who, of course, is liable to judge erroneously; but at any rate, of one whose business and profession it is to form judgments upon questions of this nature.

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