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====CLASS, EDUCATION, & EVOLUTION====

The few decades preceding the publication of Charles Darwin’s ''On the Origin of Species'' in 1859 played an important role in setting the stage for how Darwin’s treatise would be received amongst the general public. It is during this time that the working classes, in Britain and most of Western Europe, as well as America, were developing their own sense of identity. A new class unity was slowly forming, founded upon principles of separateness from the upper classes, or as British historian EP Thompson puts it, “the consciousness of an identity of interests as between all these diverse groups of working people and as against the interests of other classes.”<ref> Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class.</ref> Crucial to this new consciousness was the recognition of the power of knowledge and education. A combination of factors, ranging from new types of schooling to the wide readership of “penny” newspapers had created a more literate and political working class. The middle and upper classes feared that the tight grip they had on knowledge and its distribution was being loosened by men who had hitherto been mostly apathetic insofar as education and schooling were concerned.

====EVOLUTIONARY IDEAS BEFORE CHARLES DARWIN====

One of theories that came before Charles Darwin’s was conceived by his own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, and put forth in a work entitled ''Zoonomia'', published in 1794. This work was part medical manual and part poetry – in it, E Darwin deals with everything from psychology to evolutionary theory, all the while narrating his findings in flowing, beautiful prose. He states: “Would it be too bold to imagine…that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one-living filament?”<ref> Darwin, Zoonomia; Or, The Laws of Organic Life, 397.</ref> Erasmus Darwin suggests a theory of evolution founded upon the idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Essentially, this means that traits an organism acquired during its lifetime (i.e., growing a thicker coat of fur to keep warm in a cold climate) would be passed onto its offspring. This idea, although not popular at the time, was hardly a new one. Philosophers such as Hippocrates and Aristotle had put forth similar theories over 2000 years before Erasmus Darwin published his work.

====EVOLUTIONARY IDEAS HIT THE MAINSTREAM====

While Darwin was hard at work on his theory of natural selection, in 1844, a book entitled ''Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation'' was published in London.<ref> For an excellent study of this work, see: Secord, Victorian Sensation.</ref> Giving credit to Darwin’s reluctance to make his own findings known, Vestiges was written by an anonymous author who feared for his own social standing if the “blasphemous” concepts in this book were linked back to him. This work put forth the theory that everything in existence had evolved from some earlier form – this included plants, animals, the solar system, and even mankind. It blended recent theories in astronomy, medical science, geology, and the brand-new science of psychology, and it did so in a way that could be understood by those without a background in science. The work gave credence to Jean Baptiste Lamarck’s previous work on evolutionary theory, but held that Lamarck’s mechanism of evolution (the inheritance of acquired characteristics) was flawed and incorrect. The book was elegantly written – its narrative tied together various scientific theories that had been floating around during the time in an easily readable way.

In his early editions of ''On the Origin of Species'', first published in 1859, Charles Darwin remarked that ''Vestiges'' was vital in preparing the public for his own theory of evolution by natural selection. In the third edition of ''Origin'', Darwin commented that ''Vestiges'' had “done an excellent service in calling this country’s attention to the subject, in removing prejudice, and in thus preparing the ground for the reception of analogous views”.<ref>Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, xvi.</ref> Darwin had actually written down his theory of natural selection in his personal journals the same year that Vestiges was published, 1844, but stalled in publishing his findings, especially after he saw the harsh criticism that ''Vestiges'' received from the learned men of science.

Darwin gathered up the courage to publish ''On the Origin of Species'' primarily because a naturalist named Alfred Russel Wallace sent him a copy of a manuscript that expounded a mechanism of evolution that was oddly similar to Darwin’s own. It seemed that the two men had independently come to a very similar conclusion – that the primary evolutionary mechanism was the “survival of the fittest”, as it would later come to be known. Darwin and Wallace decided to present their work to the Linnean Society (a sort of gentlemen’s club of natural history) together in July of 1858, but their joint lecture drew little attention. Darwin would finally publish ''Origin'' the next year, in 1859. The book was immensely popular – drawing both high praise and brutal censure – but the scientific world would never be the same.