It’s hard to know where to begin this review, so I think I will start with how amazed I am by how complete a theory this was. I don’t know what edition I read, but he had a whole section of ‘problems with the theory’ in which he systematically explained how objections to his theory were either down to ignorance of the theory or due to incomplete knowledge of the time. At one point he speculates that the land masses were connected to each other decades before continental drift was proposed. At another point he speculates that we likely will find better fossils that add to this theory, which happened. That alone would have been amazing, but the fact that this theory is so complete before the theory of genes was developed or DNA. This theory was also proposed well before ‘deep time’ was considered, which of course led even more evidence to the theory of evolution by means of natural selection. Going outside of the text and into history books. Many naturalists at the time, or soon after, accepted the theory of evolution but ‘by means of natural selection’ was not the most popular mechanism. Yet as time went on more and more scientific evidence accumulated that now evolution by means of natural selection is the bed rock of all life science. Darwin’s personality comes out in a few places where he clearly has no time for individuals who have not put thought into their objections to the theory. In several cases he essentially names people and calls them morons, but in a gentlemanly sort of way. He also has no time for people who clung to creationism as a means to refute his theory. Often pointing out that God is capable of many things, and to say he created life forms in the way ‘you’ think just means you think you know how God works, which is egotistical.