Endless Forms Most Beautiful

The title track and opening song of Nightwish's eighth album, the record was primarily inspired by the work of naturalist Charles Darwin. The "Endless Forms Most Beautiful" title is an excerpt from Darwin's The Origin Of Species book, where he wrote: There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, while this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. Commented Nighwish keyboardist and main songwriter Tuomas Holopainen: "This classic quote is where it all began."

Asked by Germany's EMP Rock Invasion whether Endless Forms Most Beautiful is based on a lyrical concept or a theme, Holopainen replied: "A very loose one, maybe. It's all about the beauty of life, the beauty of existence, nature, science… A comparison would be that if the previous album, [2011's] Imaginaerum, was a tribute to the power of imagination, 'Endless Forms Most Beautiful' would be an equal tribute to science and the power of reason."

Here are some fun facts about The Origin of Species from The Encyclopedia of Trivia: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection on the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life was written in layman's terms and published in November 1859. Darwin had agonized over his prose, constantly rewriting passages and the result was one of the clearest written, most lucid scientific books ever. An early draft of Origin of Species languished for twenty years in a broom cupboard by the back door of Downe house, where Darwin and his family lived. Darwin let his children use the original manuscript of Origin of Species as drawing paper. On the publication of The Origin of Species, Darwin fled to the Yorkshire moors and was covered in stress related boils. He was afraid of being thought a French Republican blasphemist with his evolutionary views and was upset that people were saying that his book claimed there is no God. Despite his own religious skepticism, Darwin believed that his theory revealed the way God created us all. All 1250 copies of The Origin of Species sold out on first day of publication. In Darwin's lifetime there were 35 printings translated into 11 languages. Today there have been over 400 printings in around 30 languages. "Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution" is an anagram of "Oh-ho! Words verify Natural Selection."