Darwin’s Presence as Proof in The Origin of Species-3

27 Chapter 2: Authority of a Poet 2.1 Imagined Evidence The evidence that Darwin offers within the Origin is firstly situated in the present—in his observations of pigeons, domesticated plants, and insects. We have seen this empirical, experiential data build an authoritative and scientific foundation in Darwin’s argument: one that provides trustworthiness and familiarity for his readers. And yet, as we see with Darwin’s use of the tree of divergence, there are many ways in with the present is not enough for Darwin to adequately make his argument. Returning again to Beer’s argument of evolutionary history requiring us to look back on a past in which we are largely absent, “an antiquity in which we have no place,” we see the way in which The Origin requires an argument that can adequately address time and change that we are not actually witness to. Darwin’s early illustrations of the diversity he has personally witnessed serve to ease his readers into understanding by allowing them to feel they are able to see the minute details being described. While this rhetorical strategy works to create a rapport and relationship of trust with his readers, the larger scope of the theory he is arguing for—that of natural selection—demands the ability to see processes that empiricism can’t adequately observe. As Darwin himself admits, “I do believe that natural selection will always act very slowly, often only at long intervals of time, and generally on only a very few of the inhabitants of the same region at the same time” (95). Pigeons and gardens—examples that adhere tightly to Darwin and his personal testimony—are only microcosmic examples of the natural diversity and change Darwin is arguing for. The processes at work in natural selection are, in Darwin’s argument, acting on the “whole economy of nature” throughout time and the present. In this way, describing such processes is not simply a matter of scale; it is temporal. It requires Darwin to take his observations from the present, and to 28 infer from them what he can about the past. He must metaphorically extend his sight—and the sight of his readers—in order to truly encompass the vast periods of time he is attempting to describe. As Beer notes: “‘Relative similarities’, ‘graduated differences’—these are the major topics of The Origin, but instead of examining them only spatially in the present moment attainable by the experimental method, Darwin seeks to examine them also through time, through that which is not ‘present to our eye.’…He must give primacy to imagination, to the perception of analogies, and must extend the study of forms fixed in the present moment into a study of their mutability and transience as well as their powers of transformation and of generation.” (98) The idea of extending his empiricism becomes apparent as Darwin makes imaginative leaps that take him far beyond an empirical pose relying on observation and experiential evidence. “In order to make it clear how, as I believe, natural selection acts,” Darwin explains, “I must beg permission to give one or two imaginary illustrations” (Darwin, 85). This assertion works in multiple ways. He retains a humble appeal to his readers (“I must beg permission”) in order to allow for evidence he does not have, but must instead invent. And yet, he expresses that such imaginary illustrations are necessary to describe the process of natural selection—as Darwin believes it to be. Similarly, when Darwin notes “But how, it may be asked, can any analogous principle apply in nature? I believe it can and does apply most efficiently” we are once again reminded of the need for analogies that Darwin trusts—and implores us to trust—to help describe the processes he is attempting to articulate (98). In this way, as such illustrations and analogies replace the domestic examples Darwin firstly relies on, we see his empiricism replaced by evidence that his mind invents, often in the form of analogy and metaphor. While his acknowledgement of the necessity for such imaginative leaps is occasionally addressed directly, we see him extend his proofs subtly and gradually, beginning with what he has actually seen and stretching this evidence to speak for longer periods of time. 29 Moving to his third chapter on Natural Selection, he claims, “Man can act only on external and visible characters,” and further: “We see nothing of these slow changes in progress” (Darwin, 76, 77). “Slow though the process of selection may be,” Darwin continues to argue, “if feeble man can do much by his powers of artificial selection, I can see no limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and infinite complexity of the co-adaptations between all organic beings” (Darwin, 96). Juxtaposed with the powers of “feeble man,” the process of selection appears limitless, and it is Darwin who sees this possibility. Similarly, after pages of empirical evidence about his domestic pigeons that emphasize his reliance on personal testimony as a means for establishing his argument and persuading his readers, Darwin extends in his observations. In a passage that scolds breeders who refuse to believe their stock could have descended from a single species, Darwin explains that such breeders “ignore all general arguments, and refuse to sum up in their minds slight differences accumulated during successive generations…May they not learn a lesson of caution, when they deride the idea of species in a state of nature being lineal descendents of other species?” (Darwin, 34) He suggests links between organic beings that are ignored by breeders—those who should know better, as Darwin intimates. His argument comprehends the connections between “successive generations” and advising others to do the same exhibits the unique perspective that Darwin demonstrates in his text—one that emphasizes vastness and infinitude, rather than the restricted scope that others are subject to. Darwin is able to move past the breeders’ limited scope and their domestic microcosm, to describe broader natural laws and processes at work. While George Levine describes this sense of expansion when he explains, “infinitude gives to natural selection much of its mythic force, and to the Origin’s prose, as it emerges from empirical fact, its persistently hypothetical nature” (Darwin the Writer, 93). He develops this idea further saying: 30 These infinite extensions of life, which moves slowly but is everywhere, through fields of the known and unknown, lead readers by way of incremental experience on the crucial steps toward acceptance of what Darwin offers, in his first four chapters—a simple, rational, and empirical argument. (93) As Levine suggests, Darwin’s early attention to certainty in domestic examples and assurance in his careful study ground his text in a basic argument, derived from pieces of empirical evidence. These empirical details—what can be “known”—give Darwin a foundation that builds toward descriptions of processes he cannot observe—processes which are, in many ways, “unknown.” From his vivid domestic observations and his constant appeal to personal conviction and belief, Darwin persuasively expands his observations beyond what can be empirically known or proven. His ability to describe “infinite extensions of life” becomes possible by his own extensions of observation—from empirical to imaginary. Beginning as the intimate and familiar voice of a pigeon keeper, a gardener, a trusted naturalist, Darwin asserts, at different moments, the ability to envision and narrate greater expanses of evolutionary history. As Stanley Hyman describes in his book The Tangled Bank: “Some of the book’s prophetic quality comes from Darwin’s predominant tone of personal testimony: I was there, I saw it, this happened to me” (35). Although Darwin’s argument is firstly situated in his position as a careful naturalist who has tested, observed, and collected impressive empirical data, it builds from an empirical foundation to speak more broadly for evolutionary history and against the view that species were created independently. Darwin’s practice of replacing the view of independent creation with that of natural selection is (as in the case of his empirical evidence) uniquely situated within his own perceptions. I would argue that, in this way, as Darwin’s focus shifts between describing empirical examples and inferring greater laws of nature, the consistency of Darwin’s personal point of view plays a valuable persuasive role in the argument. By establishing a perspective of 31 personal testimony which transitions to arguments for larger natural processes, Darwin argues for laws of nature in a similar way that he describes his domestic examples—making the shift from empirical evidence to inference rhetorically seamless for his readers. Darwin lays out carefully collected, empirical evidence on the subject of the hive-bee, concluding, “I believe that the hive-bee has acquired, through natural selection, her inimitable architectural powers” (188). So does he, in reference to the geographical distribution of species, more broadly express: “I believe this grand fact can receive no sort of explanation on the ordinary view of independent creation” (316). These connected expressions of belief, moving from the minute and intricate workings of the bee to the widespread placement of species, appear to present the varying degrees of Darwin’s evidence (from the directly observed to widely inferred) as equally capable of being believed in Darwin’s argument. Furthermore, in his chapter on the Laws of Variation, Darwin asserts: He who believes that each equine species was independently created, will, I presume, assert that each species has been created with a tendency to vary, both under nature and under domestication, in this particular manner, so as often to become striped like other species of the genus. (142) This idea of a flawed belief is striking, particularly in the way that Darwin follows up with a scathing correction of such a belief or view. Directly after his description of the faceless “He,” Darwin expresses: To admit this view is, as it seems to me, to reject a real for an unreal, or at least for an unknown, cause. It makes the works of God a mere mockery and deception; I would almost as soon believe with the old and ignorant cosmogonists, that fossil shells had never lived, but had been created in stone so as to mock the shells now living on the seashore. (142) While this passage exhibits the way in which Darwin fiercely critiques the view of independent creation, it also shows the way in which Darwin actually aligns theology, in some way, with his own argument for modification and natural selection. In other words, while those believing in 32 independent creation, but not understanding the laws of variation make a mockery of God, Darwin seems to suggest that his own theory does not. We see this pattern of correction once again in the chapter on Difficulties on Theory when Darwin declares that “He who believes in separate and innumerable acts of creation will say, that in these cases it has pleased the Creator to cause a being of one type to take the place of one of another type; but this seems to me only restating the fact in dignified language” (Darwin, 156). In both instances, the reflection back to Darwin himself—to his own impressions (“as it seems to me,” “but this seems to me”)—points again to Hyman’s argument about the connection between personal testimony and the text’s prophetic quality. There is a sense of personal assertion and boldness in Darwin’s language; he draws attention to himself and his perceptions while advancing claims about the works of God and faulty views of creation. Not only do these passages represent Darwin’s correction of a flawed view, they demonstrate what Hyman is describing when he says, “The effect of [the] tone of personal testimony is to heighten the immediacy of what is essentially a new religious message, a new testament or covenant” (36). Although we have seen the lengths to which Darwin’s argument depends on appeals to trust in evidence—even in absent evidence—Darwin’s prophetic tone amplifies the persuasive power of his larger claims. The scorn of “He who believes” conjoined with the “old and ignorant cosmologists” gives the passage a sense of Darwin redirecting an antiquated view of the world. In addition, the references to Darwin’s own perceptions of this antiquated conception call attention to his point of view as a crucial lens for his larger arguments. 2.2 Darwinian Time 33 As Darwin corrects what he argues is a flawed view that makes “the works of God a mere mockery and deception,” we see the way in which his view—one that sees species in terms of natural selection—replaces the “ordinary” view, as Benjamin Bradley calls it, of independent creation (Bradley, 220). Not only does Darwin argue firmly for his theory as a more legitimate view of nature, one that doesn’t “mock” the Creator, Darwin’s view as it applies to time and change demonstrates the characteristic ability of Darwin’s sight to penetrate, more deeply that our sight is capable, into the workings of nature in order to guide his readers to see and comprehend what he is attempting to argue. Although he demonstrates an ability to compress time and argue for processes that are far beyond any powers of literal sight or observation, Darwin’s use of time also romantically and poetically demonstrates the complexities of nature. We often see Darwin’s compression of time into arguments that appear startlingly concise, considering the way he has addressed incomprehensibly vast periods. For example, concluding his chapter on “Geographical Distribution,” Darwin states: The endurance of each species and group of species is continuous in time; for the exceptions to the rule are so few, that they may fairly be attributed to our not having as yet discovered in an intermediate deposit the forms which are therein absent, but which occur above and below; so in space, it certainly is the general rule that the area inhabited by a single species, or by a group of species, is continuous. (325) Here Darwin speaks for vast periods of time, asserting to his readers the clear and continuous stretch of species development. In addition, the use of time within Darwin’s argument is not solely in regards to filling in gaps of the past. As he acknowledges that, spatially, it is “the general rule that the area…is continuous,” Darwin speaks for time as it projects forward—into continued endurance of species. “Both in time and space,” Darwin continues to tell us, “species and groups of species have their points of maximum development” (Darwin, 325). It is in such moments where we see Hyman’s idea of Darwin’s prophetic tone. Not only can Darwin illustrate 34 change in the past, he is able to describe continuous change, projecting beyond the present. Observing Darwin’s narrative handle of time and space as it applies to the development of species and the distribution of species around the globe, we also gain a sense of Darwin as uniquely clairvoyant in his rhetorical stance. The grandness of his language (“Both in time and space”) works in multiple ways; at once giving him the authority of a naturalist predicting change and development, and, additionally, giving him the authority of an imaginative, Romantic poet or epic narrator. As Gillian Beer explains, “Evolutionary history is first a form of imaginative history. It cannot be experimentally demonstrated sufficiently in any present moment. So it is closer to narrative than to drama” (8). Darwin is, in this way, presenting a narrative for evolutionary history. By inferring what he can from his domestic findings and weaving his inferences into broader illustrations of natural processes, Darwin is able to narrate spaces of evolutionary history that he can’t truly access with observational or empirical insight. Although Darwin occasionally compresses time for the sake of argumentative clarity, his prose also expresses poetic or prophetic grandeur. He draws us into an understanding of the world, newly derived, emphasizing the interconnectedness of living beings as he states, in “On the Geological Succession of Organic Beings,” that “We can understand how it is that all the forms of life, ancient and recent, make together one grand system; for all are connected by generation” (275). “We” are suddenly brought to an understanding of interconnectedness, of community with “all the forms of life.” And yet, there remains a second sense of community, subtly present in his argument: the community of “we” who are able to understand and accept the argument that Darwin is presenting to us. Although there remains the same sense of directness that occurs when Darwin speaks “Both of time and space,” as was earlier discussed, his attention to “one grand system” elevates his view of time as something profoundly philosophic and, I 35 arguably, poetically romanticized. Scholar Gary Willingham-McLain explains that “The vision of nature Darwin wants his readers to experience is only possible after a process of increasing self-consciousness on the part of the observer” (73). I would argue, Darwin’s narrative as it applies to time demonstrates this need. In order to understand that all forms of life “are connected by generation,” Darwin’s reader must experience a certain degree of awareness, and even discomfort, in trying to grasp a concept that connects all living things across time. Similar to the way in which he corrects an “ordinary” view of independent creation with his argument for adaption and natural selection, the narrative that he provides for time emphasizes complexity, often through Romantic gestures. As Darwin closes his chapter on “Natural Selection,” he poetically reflects: As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications (Darwin, 114). Again, through his reference to generations, Darwin demonstrates a narrative strategy allowing him to speak for periods of time that have elapsed and changes that have occurred over such periods. This language, with its notable “Tree of Life” metaphor, demonstrates a Romantic nod to the complexities of nature in a way that adds a further sense of majesty to his argument. The passage, both an analogy (“As…so”) and a famous metaphor, is grounded in Darwin’s expression of subjective belief. Darwin situates himself in the midst of the poetic inference, once again utilizing “I believe” as a narrative position from which his inference develops. In addition, the “ever branching and beautiful ramifications” show the way in which Darwin’s narrative for evolutionary history does not counter the creationist view by disenchanting or simplifying the workings of nature. Rather, Darwin’s view adds a sublimely and infinitely more complex lens to natural processes—one fully understanding of the beauty unfolding. 36 2.3 “What the mind cannot grasp” Darwin’s poetic “Tree of Life,” with its “ever branching and beautiful ramifications,” provides a sense of fullness and complexity to the passage of time and to the continual changes occurring in nature. Although he is able, in this moment, to compress time and contain the natural profusion he is describing within the bounds of metaphor, his readers are given a sense of expanding beauty and continuous change. Darwin’s final metaphorical gesture demonstrates a similar simultaneous compression and exploration of complexity, as he muses, It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. (384) Within the early metaphor of The Tree of Life and this final view of an “entangled bank,” Darwin poetically and vividly expands our view of the world, although the metaphors are almost strikingly at odds—the orderly branching of a great tree juxtaposed with a tangled bank teeming with insects and worms. And yet, from the damp earth below to the upward reach of budding branches, these distinctive metaphors contain a common sense of knowingness about the complexities of generations. Even the reference to “laws acting around us” serves to contain and govern the natural profusion of such “elaborately constructed forms.” However, there is also an argument throughout Darwin’s text that, despite all that he has shown us of the natural diversity and interconnectedness of species in nature, there are spaces that neither his argument nor our own understanding can reach. Entwined with Darwin’s attempts to illustrate complexity is a lingering sense of mystery within the natural world and the expanse of the past that must be acknowledged and considered but that cannot be fully comprehended. Within the first pages of his great “Abstract,” Darwin hints, subtly, “The laws 37 governing inheritance are quite unknown” (Darwin, 22). Such small suggestions of what is “unknown” and what is beyond the scope of understanding build throughout the text—as the reminder of what we don’t know sometimes overpowers what we do. Despite a complicated narrative positioning in which he moves from “I” to “we” as he attempts to convince his readers of his theory, Darwin’s repeated use of “our ignorance” demonstrates limits that even Darwin is subject to. And yet, as we will see, by Darwin drawing attention to what cannot be known, we see a unique persuasive strategy unfold. By declaring what is beyond the mind’s grasp, Darwin quietly asserts his own evidence as a positive, as something that he believes can be known. Demonstrating the interconnectedness of species through descent with modification, Darwin draws a somewhat less poetic illustration of the world than the budding Tree of Life when he muses, “We can clearly see how it is that all living and extinct forms can be grouped together in one great system; and how the several members of each class are connected together by the most complex and radiating lines of affinities” (343). In contrast to his description of the “grand system” in which all forms of life are interconnected, this “great” system and its “several members of each class” appear more aligned with an ordered, Linnaean view of the world as opposed to a Romantic musing. Yet, such systematic or taxonomic certainty is challenged as Darwin continues to explain: “We shall never, probably, disentangle the inextricable web of affinities between the members of any one class” (343). Regarding the intricate system of beings—living and extinct—what Darwin chooses to emphasize is not our ability to fully comprehend the intricate interconnectedness of natural beings, but rather the impossibility of it. In fact, Darwin’s argument demands, to some degree, the acknowledgment and understanding of our own ignorance. He directly addresses the limits of what we can fully know or reason. As Gillian Beer describes: “His text is an unusually extensive fiction—one which 38 deliberately extends itself towards the boundaries of the literally unthinkable, which displaces the absoluteness of man’s power of reason as an instrument for measuring the world” (Beer, 99). Yet in this “extensive fiction,” Darwin’s subjective point of view—his unique abilities to imagine, infer, and believe—becomes its own “instrument for measuring the world.” The scale of a world covered by the ever-branching “Tree of Life” cannot, in other words, be explained through reason grounded in observation —not even through the piles of empirical evidence Darwin has gathered. Just as he reasons for processes of continuous change and infinite complexity—processes far beyond empiricism—Darwin boldly reflects on what is beyond our (or perhaps, more importantly, his) reason. Darwin directly and repeatedly invokes this disruption. He remarks, “We should not forget that only a small portion of the world is known with accuracy”; later, he adds that “The mind cannot possibly grasp the full meaning of the term of a hundred million years; it cannot add up and perceive the full effects of many slight variations, accumulated during an almost infinite number of generations” (Darwin, 247, 378). Beyond merely acknowledging the complexity of the world and generations of species, these moments require us to recognize incomprehensibility in the natural world. In this way, we are reminded again of the prophetic quality in Darwin’s rhetoric. He argues with force and conviction about processes that extend beyond empirical observation, while boldly declaring what cannot be known. In this way, contained in this acknowledgment of what is beyond the mind’s grasp, is also a subtle argument that what Darwin has presented in his text is not unreasonable, but rather contained within the bounds of what can be understood as true. In his chapter “On the Imperfection of the Geological Record,” Darwin draws particular attention to the limits of what we can understand with regard to the expanse and age of the world. Within his section On the lapse of Time, Darwin boldly declares that 39 He who can read Sir Charles Lyell’s grand work on the Principles of Geology, which the future historian will recognise as having produced a revolution in natural science, yet does not admit how incomprehensibly vast have been the past periods of time, may at once close this volume. (228) It is in this moment that Darwin draws overt attention to our acceptance of what we cannot fully comprehend. Although Darwin prophetically peers ahead in time, deciding what the “future historian” will recognize as valuable, he places a demand on his readers to acknowledge time as an “incomprehensibly vast” force. In fact, this demand is so striking that, on Darwin’s terms, it requires a conscious self-evaluation by the reader. What a reader must accept in this moment is a world that is beyond the reach of reason—we are directly required to accept a world that is incomprehensibly vast. If we won’t accept it, Darwin quite gruffly suggests that we find a new book. As the section on time continues, we are met with a unique narrative, as Darwin muses on the wearing away of rocky cliffs over time. “It is good,” we are told, “to wander along lines of sea-coast, when formed of moderately hard rocks, and mark the process of degradation” (Darwin, 229). And yet, watching hard rock worn away presents itself as a sort of poetic fiction that Darwin has constructed. The literal “process” of degradation is, arguably, too slow to witness with the naked eye, in the same way that the natural selection is a slow process of minute change. . It is endeavor that extends beyond one lifetime or many, in the same way that Darwin’s own evolutionary theory attempts to illustrate a process that we have not been witness to. What Darwin’s poetic narrative draws our attention to is an understanding of the world that is ungraspable, out of reach. Continuing, Darwin asserts: A man must for years examine for himself great piles of superimposed strata, and watch the sea at work grinding down old rocks and making fresh sediment, before he can hope to comprehend anything of the lapse of time, the monuments of which we see around us. (229) 40 The objective that Darwin describes, that of comprehending such a lapse of time, is an impossible one. We must survey geological layers of earth, observing the sea grind rock to sediment, before we can even hope to comprehend the passage of time. These moments capture a sense of the sublimity of nature, as Darwin himself demonstrates the limits of comprehension when he reflects on the scale to which “the surface of the land has been so completely planed down by the action of the sea” (230), declaring: “The consideration of these facts impresses my mind almost in the same manner as does the vain endeavor to grapple with the idea of eternity” (231). Once again, Darwin inserts his own perceptions, draws attention to his own mind, as he makes his argument. Subtly, he emphasizes the “facts,” even as he acknowledges the immense and even impossible weight of fully bearing them in mind. Demonstrating such a difficulty—grappling with even the idea of eternity—Darwin once again draws a reader’s attention to a sense of the incomprehensible expanse of time. Even more excitedly, Darwin exclaims, “What an infinite number of generations, which the mind cannot grasp, must have succeeded each other in the long roll of years!” (232) By acknowledging what our minds cannot grasp and through a reminder of how vast and ever changing have been generations over time, our view of the complexities of the natural world is expanded—perhaps even more than it is through the poetic metaphors of tree or entangled bank. As he suggests to us what we cannot fully understand, his use of what is incomprehensible serves, not only to expand his readers’ views of the natural world, but as a subtle mechanism of asserting his argument. While Willingham-McLain argues that Darwin asks his readers “to accumulate and comprehend what large groups of these elements present in their totality—even as he emphasizes the impossibility of such a totalizing view”(69). However, he fails to see the power of this impossibility with regards to Darwin’s argument. The impossibility of a totalizing view or 41 gesture to the incomprehensible sublime is, I would argue, of two-fold importance. On one hand, it serves Darwin’s argument by emphasizing the infinite complexity present in the nature world—an awareness that requires imaginative leaps of faith. On the other, it serves to contain Darwin’s own evidence and argument within the bounds of what we can understand. Darwin summarizes his chapter on “Geographical Distribution” declaring: [I]f we make due allowance for our ignorance of the full effects of all the changes of climate and of the level of the land… if we remember how profoundly ignorant we are with respect to the many and curious means of occasional transport… I think the difficulties in believing that all the individuals of the same species, wherever located, have descended from the same parents, are not insuperable. (322) Within this passage, and in similar moments, the idea of “our ignorance” directly serves as a means of comprehending the argument Darwin is making and the world he is attempting to describe. In telling us that if we “make due allowance” for our ignorance, and, furthermore, if we “remember” how ignorant we are, believing in what Darwin is arguing is made easier. Ignorance is not denied or pushed away, but appears, instead, as a tool in Darwin’s argument, allowing us to acknowledge and face the limits of what we can’t fully know. In this way, as Darwin sections off what is “incomprehensible,” he uses this vastness not only to expand our view of nature’s complexity—complexity that expands beyond what we can reasonably comprehend—but also to place his own argument in the bounds of what can be more easily believed and understood. Darwin has already metaphorically and prophetically addressed vast complexities in nature (i.e. the “ever branching and beautiful ramifications” of the great Tree of Life). By acknowledging that which what cannot know, that of which we are “ignorant,” Darwin indirectly keeps his own complex arguments about the natural world in the scope of what we can know, or at least infer. In other words, by sectioning off what we can’t comprehend, his own argument and evidence— even if withheld or appearing as “imaginary illustration[s]”—quietly and persuasively become 42 what we can comprehend. As Darwin moves beyond the empirical evidence that forms the foundation of his argument, his poetic and prophetic musings add a lens of infinite complexity to the natural processes he is describing. Combining vivid, empirical proofs with imagined, metaphorical evidence, Darwin continually utilizes a personal perspective from which to assert belief in broader natural processes. Through this point of view, Darwin’s expresses the same belief and conviction in his imagined, analogous examples—even in the limits of what we can know—as he does in his domestic proofs. These continuous expressions of personal conviction and appeals to greater belief allow Darwin to weave together his empiricism and poeticism into larger arguments about general laws of nature.