AbstractThe power of Darwin's writing in his culture is best understood when it is seen not as a single source or “origin,” but in its shifting relations to other areas of study and creativity. Darwin was immensely alive to concurrent work in a range of disciplines, including race theory, historiography, psychology, and literature. Equally, the problems raised by his writing may manifest themselves more acutely when they are transferred into another field. In her last novel,Daniel Deronda, George Eliot explored the anxieties generated by connections newly perceived in the wake of Darwinian controversy—connections such as those between origins and ending, language and race, and sexual selection and the psychology of