More Letters of Charles Darwin — Volume 1 A Record of His Work in a Series of Hitherto Unpublished Letters

xi. 10), the Investigator of the generation, the "bright son of the

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morning" (Isa. xiv. 12), Charles Darwin, may he live long!

"From the rising of the sun and from the west" (Isa. xlv. 6) all the nations know concerning the Torah (Theory) (277/2. Lit., instruction. The Torah is the Pentateuch, strictly speaking, the source of all knowledge.) which has "proceeded from thee for a light of the people" (Isa. li. 4), and the nations "hear and say, It is truth" (Isa. xliii. 9). But with "the portion of my people" (Jer. x. 16), Jacob, "the lot of my inheritance" (Deut. xxxii. 9), it is not so. This nation, "the ancient people" (Isa. xliv. 7), which "remembers the former things and considers the things of old (Isa. xliii. 18), "knows not, neither doth it understand" (Psalm lxxxii. 5), that by thy Torah (instruction or theory) thou hast thrown light upon their Torah (the Law), and that the eyes of the Hebrews (277/3. One letter in this word changed would make the word "blind," which is what Isaiah uses in the passage alluded to.) "can now see out of obscurity and out of darkness" (Isa. xxix. 18). Therefore "I arose" (Judges v. 7) and wrote this book, "Toledoth Adam" ("the generations of man," Gen. v. 1), to teach the children of my people, the seed of Jacob, the Torah (instruction) which thou hast given for an inheritance to all the nations of the earth.

And I have "proceeded to do a marvellous work among this people, even a marvellous work and a wonder" (Isa. xxix. 14), enabling them now to read in the Torah of Moses our teacher, "plainly and giving the sense" (Neh. viii. 8), that which thou hast given in thy Torahs (works of instruction). And when my people perceive that thy view has by no means "gone astray" (Num. v. 12, 19, etc.) from the Torah of God, they will hold thy name in the highest reverence, and "will at the same time glorify the God of Israel" (Isa. xxix. 23).

"The vision of all this" (Isa. xxix. 11) thou shalt see, O Prince of Wisdom, in this book, "which goeth before me" (Gen. xxxii. 21); and whatever thy large understanding finds to criticise in it, come, "write it in a table and note it in a book" (Isa. xxx. 8); and allow me to name my work with thy name, which is glorified and greatly revered by

Thy servant, Naphtali Hallevi [i.e. the Levite].

Dated here in the city of Radom, in the province of Poland, in the month of Nisan in the year 636, according to the lesser computation (i.e. A.M. [5]636 = A.D. 1876).