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¹⁴ Laplace sought ‘une évolution antérieure des configurations observées, une raison de leur stabilité qui dispense du recours aux causes finales’. Merleau-Ponty, , op. cit. (2), pp. 34–5.Google Scholar

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³³ This was one of my contentions in my op. cit. (7), especially pp. 222–8. I have tried to make the same point in a different way in ‘The natural theology of the geologists: some theological strata’, in Jordanova, L. J. and Porter, R. S. (eds.), Images of the earth, Chalfont St Giles, 1979, pp. 39–64.Google Scholar

³⁴ Conry, Y., L'introduction du darwinisme en France au XIX^e siécle, Paris, 1974, pp. 415–21.Google Scholar ‘La grande ombre de Comte est devenue le tombeau de Darwin …’ (p. 419).

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³⁶ Gray, A., ‘Explanations of the Vestiges’, North American review, 1846, 62, 466Google Scholar; cited by Numbers, p. 33. It is true that Gray later constructed analogies between the nebular hypothesis and Darwinian evolution in order to make the case for saying that the latter no more negated design than the former (pp. 113–16). But the fact that he had to make the case at all suggests not that the nebular hypothesis had prepared the ground for the acceptance of Darwin, but that the American people had to be told that it had. As Numbers himself goes on to say (p. 117), the more conservative Christians continued to see a marked distinction between inorganic and organic development. One wonders if it was only the conservatives who did.

³⁷ Dawson, J. W., Modern ideas of evolution (1890), ed. by Shea, W. R. and Cornell, J. F., New York, 1977, p. 239.Google Scholar

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⁴¹ Moore, J. R., ‘The post-Darwinian controversies: a study of the Protestant struggle to come to terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870–1900’, University of Manchester PhD thesis, 1975.Google Scholar

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⁴⁵ Kingsley, to Maurice, F. D., 1863, in Charles Kingsley: his letters and memories of his life, ed. by his wife, London, 1883, p. 253.Google Scholar

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⁴⁸ Ibid.

⁴⁹ Cited by Manier from Darwin's Metaphysical Notebook M, ibid.

⁵⁰ Ibid., p. 167.