[betty boop]

In a letter to Joseph Dalton Hooker of February 1 1871, he made the suggestion that life may have begun in a "warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. present, [so] that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes".

The Hooker letter did not publicly surface until 1950. It is doubtful that Darwin took this speculation seriously, since he never put it in any of his published works. And from what he does include in his published works, it appears the origin of life was not a problem he engaged in his evolutionary theory.

Methinks you wish to keep the door open for abiogenesis, though as a Darwinist you aren't "required" to.

[js1138]

Methinks you wish to keep the door open for abiogenesis, though as a Darwinist you aren't "required" to.

I'm sure most biologists expect abiogenesis to be solved. Personally, I think it's a tough problem, and I don't expect to live to see it solved. Science is not for the impatient.

But such problems are never solved by people who don't look.

Your assessment of Darwin's speculation is as trustworthy as your quotations.