The Friends of Charles Darwin

The community of scholars who pick lint from Darwin's navel has now chanced on an obscure book that hints the great man may owe even more to the past. In 1794, in his 2,000-page An Investigation of the Principles of Knowledge, the geologist James Hutton penned a crucial paragraph: "Those which depart most from the best adapted constitution will be most liable to perish, while those which most approach to the best constitution for the present circumstances will be best adapted to continue, in preserving themselves and multiplying the individuals of their race." That is a clear statement of natural selection, 65 years before The Origin.

Hutton belonged to the Edinburgh scientific community which Darwin joined as a student and which influenced him throughout his life. Perhaps the idea was planted in his mind then, to surface half a century later. Had he realised, Darwin would no doubt have acknowledged the truth.