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25 Darwin's Singular Notion
第二十五章 達爾文的非凡見解
In the late summer or early autumn of 1859, Whitwell Elwin, editor of the respected British journal the Quarterly Review, was sent an advance copy of a new book by the naturalist Charles Darwin. Elwin read the book with interest and agreed that it had merit, but feared that the subject matter was too narrow to attract a wide audience. He urged Darwin to write a book about pigeons instead. "Everyone is interested in pigeons," he observed helpfully.
1859年夏秋之交，英國一家很有名的雜志《季度評論》的編輯威特惠爾·艾爾文收到了博物學家查爾斯·達爾文一本新書的樣本。艾爾文饒有興致地讀完了這本書，認為它有一些價值，可是又擔心它的主題過于狹窄，恐怕不足以吸引廣大讀者的目光。他要求達爾文寫一本有關鴿子的書，“每個人都對鴿子感興趣。”他熱情地建議說。
Elwin's sage advice was ignored, and On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life was published in late November 1859, priced at fifteen shillings. The first edition of 1,250 copies sold out on the first day. It has never been out of print, and scarcely out of controversy, in all the time since — not bad going for a man whose principal other interest was earthworms and who, but for a single impetuous decision to sail around the world, would very probably have passed his life as an anonymous country parson known for, well, for an interest in earthworms.
艾爾文的熱情建議沒有被采納，1859年11月底，《物種起源由自然淘汰的作用而來，或優良的族類在生存競爭中保存》正式出版了，每本定價為15先令。第一版上市的第一天就賣出了l250本，自那以后就一直未曾絕版過，而且由它所引發的爭議，也一直從未停息過——對于一個喜歡蚯蚓到了無以復加的程度，要不是出于一時沖動環游了世界，終其一生很可能只是一個默默無聞的鄉村牧師的人來說，這實在是一件非常了不起的事。
Charles Robert Darwin was born on February 12, 1809(An auspicious date in history: on the same day in Kentucky, Abraham Lincoln was born.), in Shrewsbury, a sedate market town in the west Midlands of England. His father was a prosperous and well-regarded physician. His mother, who died when Charles was only eight, was the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, of pottery fame.
查爾斯·羅伯特·達爾文1809年2月12日出生（注：那是歷史上一個吉利的日子：亞伯拉罕·林肯同一天出生在美國肯塔基州。）在英格蘭中部偏西一個寧靜的小市鎮什魯斯伯里。他的父親是一位受人尊敬的內科醫師，母親是著名的制陶世家喬西亞·韋茲伍德的女兒，她在達爾文年僅8歲的時候就去世了。
