Quote:
Originally Posted by neilmarr
Perhaps someone else here could confirm this, Tom, but I believe that after the first edition, Darwin was pressured into adding some strangely out of place words at the start of the book: on the lines that evolution is "guided by the Creator".
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One of the most (in)famous changes is in the very last paragraph. In the first edition it reads:
"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
In later editions, Darwin changed it to this (my emphasis):
"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed
by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."
Either way, it is a beautiful piece of prose.