La terre, dernier élément de Charles Darwin

Abstract

Charles Darwin published The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms, with Observations on their Habits in October 1881, four months before his death. This article aims at understanding the reasons for the unexpectedly immense success the book immediately met with. Darwin was at the height of his fame and the Victorians were attracted to anything that stirred up their nostalgia for land and earth. Yet Darwin’s last opus was also a brilliant plea for the theory of the accumulation of small variations (drawing upon Lyellian uniformitarism) and for a new positioning of Man in the animal kingdom that departed from the old Judaeo-Christian tradition. It could be argued that the worm became Darwin’s efficient advocate who championed his views on evolution and anti-Creationism.