SOURCE: "Reshaping the Roles of Man, God, and Nature: Darwin's Rhetoric in On the Origin of Species," in Beyond the Two Cultures: Essays on Science, Technology, and Literature, edited by Joseph W. Slade and Judith Yaross Lee, Iowa State University Press, 1990, pp. 79-98.

In the following essay, originally delivered as a lecture in 1983 and revised in 1990 for publication, Bergmann discusses Darwin's rhetoric in Origin of Species, describing the ways in which he attempts to persuade his audience to accept a theory that implies human limitation and the possible absence of God.

A Letter from Charles Lyell to Charles Darwin upon Reading on the Origin of Species (1859):

My dear Darwin,—I have just finished your volume and right glad I am that I did my best with [Joseph] Hooker to persuade you to publish it without waiting for a time which probably could never have arrived, though you lived...