At the time Darwin voyaged on HMS Beagle, the popularly accepted theory in Western culture that explained the origin of Earth's plants and animals held that the various species __________.

• A. arose continually from nonliving materials by spontaneous generation
• B. had evolved from now-extinct organisms
• C. arose from a single species that had survived the biblical flood
• D. are all related to one another
• E. had been created by divine intervention a few thousand years before