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Lot 224

DARWINIAN EVOLUTION and THE CREATION

22 November 2011, 10:30 GMT
London, New Bond Street

Sold for £475 inc. premium

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DARWINIAN EVOLUTION and THE CREATION

Autograph manuscript by George Sayle of "Creation Scientifically considered illustrating the greatness & wisdom of God as therein manifested", signed and dated from King's Staithe Square, Lynn, 4 February 1851; the treatise concluding: "if it has imparted the least information to any one it will be a source of much gratification & if by this endeavour any should become more convinced of the existence of a Supreme Creator that gratification will be everlasting"; with deletions and autograph revisions to the text, 28 pages, wrappers within cloth-board, leather label, dust-staining and minor wear, small 4to, King's Lynn, 4 February 1851

Footnotes

A treatise written at the beginning of the decade that was to see publication of The Origin of Species, and illustrating something of the intellectual climate prevailing at the time. Sayle's belief is that Creation took place according to certain laws, and that these could be discerned by human reason. He attempts to relate the Days of Genesis with the scientific periods being suggested by research in his own day. He also seems to contemplate a period when mankind was not greatly superior to animals and lived in "caverns of the earth". He acknowledges the influence of Chambers's evolutionist Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), and the works of Kepley, William Herschel and Alexander von Humboldt, but does not mention the work of Lyell on the age of the earth or Hutton on the uniform processes of geology.

Sayle was born in around 1822 and died at King's Lynn in 1857, training as a doctor at St George's Hospital, London, where he was for some time Curator of the Anatomical Museum; transferring to Lynn Hospital by 1846. The manuscript is marked in pencil as "unpublished".

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