Chapter Fourteen
In which Darwin expounds his 鈥渓ong argument鈥� and addresses the 鈥渕ystery of mysteries鈥�: why there are so many different species
A century and a half after The Origin, Darwin can be seen to have been triumphantly right about almost everything. Evolution is now no more 鈥渏ust a theory鈥� than is chemistry and, like all other sciences, it provides a logical way of looking at the world. As he dared only to hope in that great book, light has been cast upon not just the worlds of plants and animals, but on ourselves and our origins.
Darwinism makes sense of what was once no more than a jumble of unconnected facts, and in so doing unifies biology. Modern psychology, ecology and more find their birthplace in the pages of his greatest work. A century-and-a-half on, evolution is as central to our understanding of life as gravity is to the study of the universe. The closing words of The Origin say it all:
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鈥淭here 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.鈥�
Read more: On the Origin of Species, Revisited