““My own interest in Herzen was sparked by an exception to this rule: Isaiah Berlin’s essays. These still seem to me to have best captured the distinctiveness of Herzen’s thought by identifying him as a precursor, spelling out truths too novel for most of his contemporaries to understand and far too frightening for them to accept. The present study will approach his ideas in the context of the revolution in European thinking on man’s place in nature that would culminate in Darwin’s treatise on the origin of species.””
![“I expect to think that I would rather be author of your book [The Origin of Species] than of any other on Nat. Hist. Science. [Letter to Charles Darwin 12 Dec 1859]” quote by Joseph Dalton Hooker](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/c5d/joseph-dalton-hooker-39139_author_i-expect-to-think-that-i-would-rather-be_3090262.jpg)
![“When it was first said that the sun stood still and world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei [the voice of the people is the voice of God], as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science.” quote by Charles Darwin](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/5f6/charles-darwin-507_agnosticism_when-it-was-first-said-that-the-sun-stoo_226722.jpg)
