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[[File:lamarckgiraffe.jpg|400px|left|thumbnail|Lamark's giraffe]]
The few decades preceding the publication of Charles Darwin’s ''[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0486450066/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0486450066&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=69b2f35bde91f0a7071d1c0b2594219b On the Origin of Species]'' in 1859 played an important role in setting the stage for how Darwin’s treatise would be received amongst the general public. It is during this time that the working classes, in Britain and most of Western Europe, as well as America, were developing their own sense of identity. A new class unity was slowly forming, founded upon principles of separateness from the upper classes, or as British historian EP Thompson puts it, “the consciousness of an identity of interests as between all these diverse groups of working people and as against the interests of other classes.”<ref> Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class.</ref>
====CLASS, EDUCATION, & EVOLUTION====
Crucial to this new consciousness was the recognition of the power of knowledge and education. A combination of factors, ranging from new types of schooling to the wide readership of “penny” newspapers had created a more literate and political working class. The middle and upper classes feared that the tight grip they had on knowledge and its distribution was being loosened by men who had hitherto been mostly apathetic insofar as education and schooling were concerned.
