ABSTRACT

A mong scientific authors of the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin has perhaps the strongest claim to have revolutionised the way in which we view the world in which we live. His theory of the evolution of species, which undertook to explain the mechanism by which the diversity of terrestrial life developed, was implicitly opposed to the scriptural account of instantaneous creation. It was very widely read and caused great anguish in the Victorian world by its implied conflict between faith and science. Darwin, a retiring and sensitive man whose health was poor, played no personal role in the ensuing controversy, leaving his cause to be fought by the biologist T. H. Huxley.