Transcript of Trailer
CHARLES
Actually I was remembering how the tropical seas teemed with living particles that seemed to surround the Beagle with a luminous glow and leave a glistening pathway through the night.
Puzzling. So much beauty for so little purpose
REVEREND INNES
So little purpose! They were helping to light the ship’s way.
EMMA
Well said, exactly.
CHARLES
John, are you familiar with the works of Thomas Malthus?
REVEREND INNES
He married his first cousin didn’t he?
EMMA
So did I.
REVEREND INNES
Yes, but I wasn’t suggesting that…
CHARLES
Course you weren’t. Anyway Thomas Malthus calculated that if… well, if every trout, say, had a hundred or so offspring and so on and so forth throughout the generations, we’d be knee deep in trout in just a few decades. How would you respond to that?
REVEREND INNES
I’d respond to that by saying that most of the eggs are destroyed or eaten so that the numbers remain stable. That’s the beauty of God’s plan.
CHARLES
It doesn’t strike you as an exceedingly wasteful plan, these myriad lives created only to be immediately extinguished?
REVEREND INNES
Providing food for others.
EMMA
Cheese and cucumber?
CHARLES
Thousands John. Thousands die so that only a few may live. Is not the general sum total of happiness in some sort of massive deficit?
REVEREND INNES
Charles, it is really not my duty to speculate on the mind of God but it does seem to me that nature is at peace.
JOSEPH HOOKER
* sighs * There is another view: that all of nature is a battlefield. Remind me where I read that.