Dear Marion,

What is the logical relationship between the "facts"
that Darwin amassed during the 20 years of procrastination
before publishing the Origin of Species and the theory
of natural selection itself?  I rather suspect (but don't know)
that the theory is relatively independent of the facts,
and that instead of providing the theory with a foundation,
the facts collected by Darwin serve rather to decorate it.
I ask myself (and you) to what extent was the theory of
natural selection compelled by empirical evidence, and
to what extent was it a projection onto nature of the insights
and interpretation of process and development by such as
Thomas Malthus.

I perceive in the work of Malthus and Darwin after him,
a decoupling of the individual from his awareness, real or imagined,
of his own identity. The God of St. Augustine like the God of
Martin Luther served as the personal god of each individual believer
and guaranteed that believer's uniqueness.  As I write these sentences,
I hear strains of Bach's Kantate #137.  The third verse has an
enchanting violin obbligato, which I believe Bach parodied from
one of his Schuebler Chorales for organ, "Kommst Du nun Jesu
vom Himmel herunter. BWV 645.  I spent hours trying to learn
to play it both on the violin and on the keyboard, - all in vain,
but both the words and the melody have engraved themselves in my memory,
and from time to time, I think about them and try to understand
what they mean.  The cantata text is as follows:

Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren,
Meine geliebete Seele, das ist mein Begehren.
Kommet zu Hauf,
Psalter und Harfen, wacht auf!
Lasset die Musicam hören.

Lobe den Herren, der deinen Stand sichtbar gesegnet,
Der aus dem Himmel mit Strömen der Liebe geregnet;
Denke dran,
Was der Allmächtige kann,
Der dir mit Liebe begegnet.

Lobe den Herren, der alles so herrlich regieret,
Der dich auf Adelers Fittichen sicher geführet,
Der dich erhält,
Wie es dir selber gefällt.
Hast du nicht dieses verspüret?

Lobe den Herren, der künstlich und fein dich bereitet,
Der dir Gesundheit verliehen, dich freundlich geleitet.
In wieviel Not
Hat nicht der gnädige Gott
Über dir Flügel gebreitet.

Lobe den Herren, was in mir ist, lobe den Namen!
Alles, was Odem hat, lobe mit Abrahams Samen!
Er ist dein Licht,
Seele, vergiss es ja nicht;
Lobende, schließe mit Amen!

Joachim Neander 1680 (Bach, Kantate #137)

The source of this fantasy is Psalm 103:

Die Luthersche Uebersetzung:

1 Lobe den HERRN, meine Seele,
und was in mir ist, seinen heiligen Namen!
2 Lobe den HERRN, meine Seele, und vergiß nicht,
was er dir Gutes getan hat:
3 der dir alle deine Sünden vergibt und heilet alle deine Gebrechen,
4 der dein Leben vom Verderben erlöst,
der dich krönt mit Gnade und Barmherzigkeit,
5 der deinen Mund fröhlich macht,
und du wieder jung wirst wie ein Adler.
6 Der HERR schafft Gerechtigkeit und Gericht allen, die Unrecht leiden.

The King James Version:

1 Bless the LORD, O my soul:
and all that is within me, bless his holy name.
2  Bless the LORD, O my soul,
and forget not all his benefits:
3  who forgiveth all thine iniquities;
who healeth all thy diseases;
4  who redeemeth thy life from destruction;
who crowneth thee with loving-kindness and tender mercies;
5  who satisfieth thy mouth with good things;
so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's.
6  The LORD executeth righteousness
and judgment for all that are oppressed.

I suspect subsequent to Renaissance and Reformation,
the determined rationalization of the world spawned 
a crisis of individual identity, which Leibniz may have anticipated
and may tried to forestall, - rather unsuccessfully I think, -
with his Monadology. The Monad, as I understand it is a protective
capsule for the individual spirit that would otherwise be at the mercy
of Hobbesian - and later Malthusian and Darwinian depersonalization. 
I construe the spiritual history of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries as a struggle (ein Ringen) for individuality and uniqueness,
which had hitherto been guaranteed by the monotheistic God,
but was now threatened by scientific theorizing, by technological
change and by the industrial and political revolutions.
Perhaps what was so upsetting about the Origin of Species was not
the humiliation of having simian ancestors, but the loss of personal
identity attendant on the loss of ones personal deity.
The Industrial Revolution had intellectual and emotional 
(spiritual) as well as technical, scientific and economic
consequences. Without doubt it was "progress" in many ways,
but other problems it translated or transformed, rather
than solving them.

Romantic history thrives on the illusion that the past was
better than the present, that a golden, a classical age has
been lost. I don't believe it. I think that in every historical
period, and ours is no exception, the individual is confronted
with the challenge of discovering, of defining himself.
But I can perceive in contemporary culture no prototype,
no music, no art, no literature to serve as a framework
for such rediscovery. Perhaps we have been launched into
an era of eclecticism, where technology, - the Internet,
electronic books, CD's and such make it possible for each
of us, like a bee in search of honey, to bumble through the world
in search of meaning and identity on an apparently random path.

I hope this makes sense to you. I'm not sure it does to me.

Jochen