sentences:  William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, stated that Lincoln admired deists Thomas Paine and Voltaire.Herndon, an advocate of Darwin's, said Lincoln thought the works of authors like Darwin and Spencer "entirely too heavy for an ordinary mind to digest" but he read and was "interested ... greatly" in a book expounding on these ideas, ""Vestiges of Creation"", and he was "deeply impressed with the notion of the so-called 'universal law' — evolution... and he became a warm advocate of the new doctrine.