Editing Development of Darwin's theory (section)

==Background==
[[File:Darwins first tree.jpg|right|thumb|250px|Darwin's first sketch of an evolutionary tree from his ''First Notebook on Transmutation of Species'' (1837)]]

[[Charles Darwin]] became a naturalist at a point in the [[history of evolutionary thought]] when theories of [[Transmutation of species|Transmutation]] were being developed to explain discrepancies in the established [[History of creationism|faith based explanations of species]]. He considered these problems at first hand during the [[Second voyage of HMS Beagle|''Beagle'' survey]]. On its return in 1836 his ideas developed rapidly. His collections and writings established him as an eminent geologist and collector.

Darwin read [[Thomas Malthus|Malthus's]] ''Essay on the Principle of Population'' in the context of his findings about species relating to localities, enquiries into animal breeding, and ideas of Natural "laws of harmony". Around late November 1838 he compared breeders selecting traits with a Malthusian Nature selecting from variants thrown up by "chance" so that "every part of newly acquired structure is fully practical & perfected",<ref>{{cite web |url=http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=CUL-DAR124.-&pageseq=63|title=Darwin transmutation notebook E p. 75|access-date=18 March 2009 }}</ref> thinking this "a beautiful part of my theory"<ref>{{cite web |url=http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?viewtype=text&itemID=CUL-DAR124.-&pageseq=61|title=Darwin transmutation notebook E p. 71|access-date=18 March 2009 }}</ref> of how species originated.

His theory of how species originated had now come together in principle, but he was vividly aware of the difficulties he would face in getting it accepted by his friends and colleagues in the scientific establishment. On 19 December 1838 as secretary of the [[Geological Society of London]] Darwin witnessed the vicious interrogation by [[Richard Owen]] and his allies of Darwin's old tutor [[Robert Edmund Grant]] in which they ridiculed Grant's Lamarckian heresy, showing establishment intolerance of materialist theories.