One day in 1862, Charles Darwin strolled into his drawing room, saw his son Leonard reading

something, and froze in horror. It wasn't some smutty magazine or a radical political tract.

No, Leonard was reading Darwin's own book, on the origin of species.

Leonard was 12 years old.

Before this age, he had been educated at home, and he had largely been shielded from the

controversies surrounding his father's book.

Controversies about whether the book promoted atheism, or reduced human beings to mere brutes.

Then, Leonard had enrolled in school for the first time.

Other students had been whispering about him, about his father's radical book.

Leonard naturally got curious, and he grabbed the book on his next visit home.

It was a heart-rending moment for Charles.

You try to shelter your children from your own actions,

but he couldn't protect little Leonard forever.

Still, rather than despair, the naturalist drew himself up.

He said, I bet you half a crown that you do not get to the end of that book.

Challenge accepted. Leonard dove back in. But as he later admitted, his father won the bet.

Leonard never finished origin. It wasn't just that the book was beyond a 12-year-old. The book was

beyond Leonard, period, even as an adult.

By his own account, he simply was not as bright as the other Darwin children.

He came from one of the most illustrious families in England,

and he was the dullest knife in the drawer.

That status eight at Leonard.

...