From A. E. Parrott
Taunton, Somerset
Stephen Jay Gould is my idol: the author above all others who would accompany
me to my desert island. He is obviously a scientist of unimpeachable integrity,
and would go to the stake rather than fiddle a quotation to fit his own
doctrine.
In his third essay in Dinosaur in a Haystack, he concludes by
quoting Darwin’s final sentence in On the Origin of Species, as
capturing the essence of Gould’s most cherished tenets, and it reads:
“…life, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into
one”.
My edition of Darwin appears to be a “popular impression” of 1920 (I won it
as a school prize in 1933). In this edition the last sentence reads “originally
breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one”.
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I would really like to know how and when the Creator got in. Did Gould leave
him out—perish the thought!—or did some pious prat working for the
publisher of my edition slip it past the proofreader?
