CUL-DAR262.23.1    Draft:    [Undated]   [Biographical sketch of Darwin Charles Robert]   Text   Image

some of whom were very musical (but I remember his giving a proof that it was real, not sham although acquired - that he almost every day would go alone to Kings on a weekday for the pleasure of the music. He also often used to have the Choristers to sing in his own rooms. His musical friends used to hold what they called examinations in music of him another man where he always broke down was in recognising God save the Queen when it was played either a little faster or varied in time

F2219    Periodical contribution:     Darwin, C. R. 1884. Original letters of Charles Darwin to an Australian settler. Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser (9 August): 254-5.   Text   PDF

about the management of the war, which seems to have been very badly conducted; but the men and officers have behaved most nobly, and have made the name of Englishmen a prouder thing than ever. Let me hear again from you. To what shall you bring up your boys? I wish to God I knew what to do with mine. — Believe me, with every good wish, your friend, C. DARWIN. Down Bromley, Kent. March 9, '56. Dear Covington,— I was very glad to get a month or six weeks ago your letter of the 4th of September, with

A2    Book:     [Chambers, Robert] 1844. Vestiges of the natural history of creation. London: John Churchill.   Text

mind? Do not the first attributes of matter lie as inscrutable in the bosom of God-of its first author-as those of mind? Has not even matter confessedly received from God the power of experiencing, in consequence of impressions from the earlier modifications of matter, certain consciousnesses called sensations of the same? Is not, therefore, the wonder of matter also receiving the consciousnesses of other matter called ideas of the mind a wonder more flowing out of and in analogy with all former

A2    Book:     [Chambers, Robert] 1844. Vestiges of the natural history of creation. London: John Churchill.   Text

brain. Here, it will be observed, God no more decreed an immoral being, than he decreed an immoral paroxysm of the sentiments. Our perplexity is in considering the ill-disposed being by himself. He is only a part of a series of phenomena, traceable to a principle good in the main, but which admits of evil as an exception. We have seen that it is for wise ends that God leaves our moral faculties to an indefinite range of action; the general good results of this arrangement are obvious; but

A2    Book:     [Chambers, Robert] 1844. Vestiges of the natural history of creation. London: John Churchill.   Text

frequent additions to the previously existing forms, but frequent withdrawals of forms which had apparently become inappropriate-a constant shifting as well as advance-is a fact calculated very forcibly to arrest attention. A candid consideration of all these circumstances can scarcely fail to introduce into our minds a somewhat different idea of organic creation from what has hitherto been generally entertained. That God created animated beings, as well as the terraqueous theatre of their being, is a

A2    Book:     [Chambers, Robert] 1844. Vestiges of the natural history of creation. London: John Churchill.   Text

for such an end. There is no recipient for an instinct by which the pattern might be constructed. It is God alone, therefore, who is the architect; and for this end, consequently, he must dispose of every new polypus required to continue the pattern, in a new and peculiar position, which the animal could not have discovered by itself. Yet more, millions of these blind workers unite thir works to form an island, which is also wrought out according to a constant general pattern, and of a very

A2    Book:     [Chambers, Robert] 1844. Vestiges of the natural history of creation. London: John Churchill.   Text

familiar with the numberless things of earth, and enables us to rise in conception and communion to the councils of God himself! It is matter which forms the medium or instrument-a little mass which, decomposed, is but so much common dust; yet in its living constitution, designed, formed, and sustained by Almighty Wisdom, how admirable its character! how reflective of the unutterable depths of that Power by which it was so formed, and is so sustained! In the mundane economy, mental action takes

A2    Book:     [Chambers, Robert] 1844. Vestiges of the natural history of creation. London: John Churchill.   Text

which he exemplifies in the whole of his wondrous doings. Beyond this, mental science does not carry us in support of religion: the rest depends on evidence of a different kind. But it is surely much that we thus discover in nature a provision for things so important. The existence of faculties having a regard to such things is a good evidence that such things exist. The face of God is reflected in the organization of man, as a little pool reflects the glorious sun. The affective or sentimental

A2    Book:     [Chambers, Robert] 1844. Vestiges of the natural history of creation. London: John Churchill.   Text

evil though it be, is, after all, but the exceptive case, a casual misdirection of properties and powers essentially good. God has given us the tendencies for a benevolent purpose. He has only not laid down any absolute obstruction to [page] 366 PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITIO

A2    Book:     [Chambers, Robert] 1844. Vestiges of the natural history of creation. London: John Churchill.   Text

a means of rising to and communing with God. Obedience is not selfishness, which it would otherwise be-it is worship. The merest barbarians have a glimmering sense of this philosophy, and it continually shines out more and more clearly in the public mind, as a nation advances in intelligence. Nor are individuals alone concerned here. The same rule applies as between one great body or class of men and another, and also between nations. Thus if one set of men keep others in the condition of

A2    Book:     [Chambers, Robert] 1844. Vestiges of the natural history of creation. London: John Churchill.   Text

casualties a matter of indifference to God. For the existence of such a system, the actual constitution of nature is itself an argument. The reasoning may proceed thus: The system of nature assures us that benevolence is a leading principle in the divine mind. But that system is at the same time deficient in a means of making this benevolence of invariable operation. To reconcile this to the recognised character of the Deity, it is necessary to suppose that the present system is but a part of

F272    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1844. Geological observations on the volcanic islands visited during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, together with some brief notices of the geology of Australia and the Cape of Good Hope. Being the second part of the geology of the voyage of the Beagle, under the command of Capt. FitzRoy, R.N. during the years 1832 to 1836. London: Smith Elder and Co.   Text   Image   PDF

., price 10s. 6d. neatly bound in cloth. This is not a work for ordinary readers. The author thinks for himself; and so writes that his readers must think too, or they will not be able to understand him. To the sacred volume, as a revelation from God, he pays uniform and entire deference and the thoughtful and prayerful reader will soon find that he has not the thinkings of a commonplace mind before him. Methodist Magazine. A HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST. In a Course of Lectures. By the Rev. CHARLES

A3    Book:     [Chambers, Robert] 1845. Explanations: A sequel to "Vestiges of the natural history of creation." By the author of that work. London: John Churchill.   Text   Image

; nor are the chief arguments directed to that point. The object is one to which the idea of an organic creation in the manner of natural law is only subordinate and ministrative, as likewise are the nebular hypothesis and the doctrine of a fixed natural order in mind and morals. This purpose is to show that the whole revelation of the works of God presented to our senses and reason is a system based in what we are compelled, for want of a better term, to call LAW; by which, however, is not meant a

A3    Book:     [Chambers, Robert] 1845. Explanations: A sequel to "Vestiges of the natural history of creation." By the author of that work. London: John Churchill.   Text   Image

Whatever part is dubious or obscure, to mankind generally or to themselves in particular, there they rear the torn standard of the arbitrary system of divine rule. Human volitions form such a region to many who know not that Quetelet has reduced these to mathematical formulae, and that one of our own most popular divines has written a Bridgewater Treatise, to show the predominance of natural law over mind, as a proof of the existence and wisdom of God. Some who give up this domain to law, find

A3    Book:     [Chambers, Robert] 1845. Explanations: A sequel to "Vestiges of the natural history of creation." By the author of that work. London: John Churchill.   Text   Image

conception both of Divine power and Divine goodness; and we are constrained to believe, not merely that all material law is subordinate to His will, but that he has also (in the way he allows us to see His works) so exhibited the attributes of His will, as to show himself to the mind of man as a personal and superintending God, concentrating his will on every atom of the universe. The reviewer then censures the language used in my book with respect to the idea of special creative efforts. Does

A3    Book:     [Chambers, Robert] 1845. Explanations: A sequel to "Vestiges of the natural history of creation." By the author of that work. London: John Churchill.   Text   Image

subordinate to will, and the attributes of that will showing us the Deity as a personal and superintending God. Were controversialists entitled thus to assume that the human faculties can pronounce upon one subject in their own way, but are struck powerless on approaching another, tending to an opposite conclusion, there would, of course, be an end of all argument. But even that exercise of the faculties which the reviewer admits of for his own purpose, by no means goes to the conclusion at

A3    Book:     [Chambers, Robert] 1845. Explanations: A sequel to "Vestiges of the natural history of creation." By the author of that work. London: John Churchill.   Text   Image

than to trace the laws by which the world is upheld, and its phenomena perpetually renewed. The presumption naturally rises in the mind, that the same Great Being would adopt the same mode of action in both cases . . . To a mind accustomed, as is every educated mind, to regard the operations of Deity as essentially differing from the limited, sudden, evanescent impulses of a human agent, it is distressing to be compelled to picture to itself, the power of God as put forth in any other manner

A3    Book:     [Chambers, Robert] 1845. Explanations: A sequel to "Vestiges of the natural history of creation." By the author of that work. London: John Churchill.   Text   Image

directly from the appointment of the Creator. The Edinburgh reviewer says, they were created by the hand of God and adapted to the conditions of the period. Now, it is, in the first place, not certain that species constantly maintain a fixed character, for we have seen that what were long considered as determinate species have been transmuted into others. Passing, however, from this fact, as it is not generally received among men of science, there remain some great difficulties in connexion

A3    Book:     [Chambers, Robert] 1845. Explanations: A sequel to "Vestiges of the natural history of creation." By the author of that work. London: John Churchill.   Text   Image

expresses to my sense, is only impiety to me, who cannot separate nature from God himself, but it is not necessarily so to him, whose education has given him peculiar, and as I think erroneous conceptions on this subject. The absence, however, of all liberality on these points in my reviewers, is striking, and especially so in those whose geological doctrines have exposed them to similar misconstructions. If the men newly emerged from the odium which was thrown upon Newton's theory of the

A3    Book:     [Chambers, Robert] 1845. Explanations: A sequel to "Vestiges of the natural history of creation." By the author of that work. London: John Churchill.   Text   Image

no recoil against this generation of an animalcule by the wonderful chemistry of God; our objection to this doctrine is, that it is not proved. * As one example of the weakness of the opposition presented by the Edinburgh reviewer on this ground, I may quote a passage in which he has also aimed at convicting me of being enamoured of resemblances, and allowing my senses to be cheated by empty sounds. Every one, says he, has heard of the quickness of thought, and who has not heard of the

CUL-DAR200.3.73    Note:    [Undated]   'Notes on the Darwin family'   Text   Image

To the honoble Comttee for Composions Sitterige att  Gouldsmiths Hall. The humble petition of Willm Darwin Sonn heir of Wm Darwin late of Cletham in the Count of Lincoln Gent decd─ Humbly sheweth that the petrs said father being in Gainsborough when it was taken by the Kings pty went from thence into Nottinghamshire where it pleased God to strike him with the gowt and such sickness that he was not able to return to his habitacon in the County of Lincoln, but writt under his hand to the Comitee

F14    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1845. Journal of researches into the natural history and geology of the countries visited during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle round the world, under the Command of Capt. Fitz Roy, R.N. 2d ed. London: John Murray.   Text   Image   PDF

knowledge in any subject possesses a high interest, which is perhaps increased by its close neighbourhood to the realms of imagination. January 1st, 1835. The new year is ushered in with the ceremonies proper to it in these regions. She lays out no false hopes: a heavy north-western gale, with steady rain, bespeaks the rising year. Thank God, we are not destined here to see the end of it, but hope then to be in the Pacific Ocean, where a blue sky tells one there is a heaven, a something beyond the

F14    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1845. Journal of researches into the natural history and geology of the countries visited during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle round the world, under the Command of Capt. Fitz Roy, R.N. 2d ed. London: John Murray.   Text   Image   PDF

; and accordingly liberated them. Things being in this state, the churches were again broken open, but this time the plate was not recovered. The inhabitants became dreadfully enraged, and declaring that none but heretics would thus eat God Almighty, proceeded to torture some Englishmen, with the intention of afterwards shooting them. At last the authorities interfered, and peace was established. 13th. In the morning I started for the saltpetre-works, a distance of fourteen leagues. Having

F14    Book:     Darwin, C. R. 1845. Journal of researches into the natural history and geology of the countries visited during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle round the world, under the Command of Capt. Fitz Roy, R.N. 2d ed. London: John Murray.   Text   Image   PDF

your little children those objects which nature urges even the slave to call his own being torn from you and sold like beasts to the first bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one's blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty: but it is a consolation to

F3432    Book contribution:     Darwin, C. R. 1890. [Letters to Leonard Horner]. In Katherine Murray Lyell ed. Memoir of Leonard Horner, F.R.S., F.G.S. Consisting of letters to his family and from some of his friends. 2 vols. London: privately printed, vol. 2.   Text   PDF

CHAPTER XIII. 1861. From Charles Darwin. Down, Bromley, Kent, February 14th, 1861. MY DEAR MR. HORNER,—I must just thank you for your note, but I will take advantage of your kind and considerate offer of discussing the points referred to, till we meet. The latter point seems to me very intricate, and I have often thought it over. Man does not cause any variations, he only accumulates any which occur; I do not suppose that God intentionally gave to parent Rock Pigeon a tendency to vary in size