n association. In other words, he was a very complicated individual, an unlikely candidate, to some extent, for such a controversial life. Indeed, according to one of his biographers, Charles Darwin seems to have been more suited for the life of a country parson than anything else (Clark, 1984). He was bougeouis to the core, born in an affluent pre Victorian upper middle class family. His friends and family were religious, traditional and quite conventional. Darwin himself seems to have been conventional in everything but his intellectual pursuits and conclusions.
Nonetheless, Darwin seems to have had a very clear sense of scientific purpose, even at the risk of his family's comfort. Even though he was continually attacked by friends, academics, clergy, and ordinary people, he continued to hold to his view of the interdependent and connected origin of all the species. He could have withdrawn his more controversial statements, as Freud later did when
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