Then very suddenly, in the spring or early summer of 1837, Darwin had the answer. His comments on the data in his notebooks show a new confidence and a sense of direction. He realized it meant chucking the idea that life on earth began at an act of deliberate creation such as the one described in the Bible—or in Plato’s Timaeus. If that had been so, then men would not have been born with nipples (a puzzle that particularly fascinated Darwin). Unlike those of women, male nipples serve no possible purpose foreseen in the mind of a Creator. Instead, they must be a trace of a prior state when they
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