It is difficult to be certain. I am inclined to think of him as a somewhat reluctant agnostic, but there are varying opinions about his religious leanings, and especially about his beliefs at the end of his life. After returning in 1836 from his famous sea voyage, Darwin spent the next twenty years brooding over his discoveries. In the Galapagos Archipelago six hundred miles west of Equador, he had carefully recorded how the finches there differed from