Abstract

“Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work worthy the interposition of a deity. More humble and I think truer to consider him created from animals.” Thus wrote Darwin in his notebooks for 1838, twenty-one years before he was to publish The Origin of Species. He would go on, of course, to support this idea with overwhelming evidence, and it is commonly said that, in doing so, he brought about a profound change in our conception of ourselves. After Darwin, we can no longer think of ourselves as occupying a special place in creation—instead, we must realize that we are products of the same evolutionary forces that shaped the rest of the animal kingdom. We are not a great work. We were created from animals. And this, it is said, has deep philosophical significance.