Narrating Conversion in an Age of Darwinian Gradualism

Abstract

We have been reading Darwin’s book on the “Origin of Species” just now. . . . [I]t will have a great effect in the scientifi c world, causing a thorough and open discussion of a question about which people have hitherto felt timid. So the world gets on step by step towards brave clearness and honesty! But to me the Development theory and all other explanations of processes by which things come to be, produce a feeble impression compared with the mystery that lies under the processes. — George Eliot, letter to Mme Eugene Bodichyon, December 5, 1859