Watching Republican presidential hopefuls straddle the issue of evolution is an amusing, if slightly sickening spectacle.

Take Mitt Romney, for example. In a recent interview, Mr. Romney clarified his views on evolution by saying, on the one hand, that “God designed the universe and created the universe,” and then, on the other hand, that “evolution is most likely the process he used to create the human body.”

Clear enough?

Politicians have been straddling the question of evolution since Darwin published his Origin of Species in 1859. But few have done it with better style than British statesman Benjamin Disraeli.

In a speech at Oxford University in November of 1864, Disraeli –- a Jew by birth, an Anglican by convention and a skeptic at heart -– said this about the furor provoked by Darwin’s ideas: “What is the question now placed before society with a glib assurance the most astounding? This question is this: Is man an ape or an angel? My Lord, I am on the side of the angels.”

This observation provoked a wave of laughter and rash of political cartoons, depicting Disraeli with wings and a harp. And yet, as his biographer Hesketh Pearson suggested, “he was being quite serious in his own way, for he believed that the spirit of man was more significant than the animal in man.”

Perhaps that’s the best way of responding to the question.