Darwin delayed publishing his major work for twenty-five years. He was dogged with sickness caused by worry about the originality and unorthodoxy of his discoveries. Today we would call his condition a stress-related illness.

Darwin’s degree from Cambridge was in Divinity. He knew that his theories of evolution and natural selection of species would bring charges of blasphemy and godlessness upon him.

Since Darwin’s time the theory of natural selection has been debated, tested, qualified and refined. It has been given new dimensions with discoveries about genetics, molecular biology, and population dynamics.

Today, mankind one minute looks forward to see where we are going and then backwards to spy where we came from. Darwin asserts that somewhere on that journey a shrew-like creature started the mammalian line that led ultimately to chimpanzees – and then to you and me!