ABSTRACT
Charles Darwin thought that, although his father did not believe in phrenology, he was of “so skeptical a disposition and so acute an observer” that he must have recognized that his son’s mind had developed during the voyage. Conceivably, the stage was so set by the time of Darwin’s return and his own role so well rehearsed that nothing his father could do would have prevented him from going on with the play; the most the father could do would have been to postpone its opening. One was a brief paper on the Formation of Mould, read before the Geological Society. With the expansion of that paper forty-four years later into a book which was to be read around the world, Darwin closed his career as an author. The father thereby became a dominating force in moulding Darwin’s character and in determining his attitudes toward both superiors and inferiors.
