"The Devil under form of Baboon is our grandfather!"

50,000 pages of text and 40,000 images from Charles Darwin's pen, available–searchable–online. So go ahead, find out Everything You Wanted to Know About Evolution But Were Afraid to Ask.

Highlights from Darwin's notebooks, letters, and testimony:

* Our descent, then, is the origin of our evil passions!!–The Devil under form of Baboon is our grandfather! More

* Remember what risk the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is! The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world. More

* Chairman of a Royal Commission Hearing on vivisection: Then to hesitate to perform experiments, though painful in their nature, when the animal was rendered insensible, would not be, in your opinion, a judicious course to recommend to the Queen and Parliament?

Darwin: Certainly not. It is unintelligible to me how anybody could object to such experiments. I can understand a Hindoo, who would object to an animal being slaughtered for food, disapproving of such experiments, but it is absolutely unintelligible to me on what ground the objection is made in this country. More

This, and so much more, here.

Via Marginal Revolution, and Adam Gopnik's recent New Yorker article on Darwin (not online).