On The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin Chapter 15 Page 60

“as subversive of natural, and inferentially of revealed, religion.” A celebrated author and divine has written to me that “he has gradually learned to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms capable of self- development into other and needful forms, as to believe that He required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of His laws.”

Why, it may be asked, until recently did nearly all the most eminent living naturalists and geologists disbelieve in the mutability of species?

It cannot be asserted that organic beings in a state of nature are subject to no variation; it cannot be proved that the amount of variation in the course of long ages is a limited quantity; no clear