He came from a wealthy family of Robert Darwin, a physician and financier, and Susannah Wedgwood - he was the fifth of six children. His grandfather was Erasmus Darwin, naturalist, physician, inventor and poet, who died seven years before Charles was born.
Charles probably inherited his love of nature from his grandfather. Erasmus Darwin firmly believed that humans, like animals or plants, inherit certain characteristic, acquired traits. He often used the word 'evolution', which appears in his poetic-philosophical work The Temple of Nature.
