1864-1869] NATURAL SELECTION 269 



survival of the fittest, that is meant. On looking over your Letter 190 

 fourth chapter, I find that these alterations of terms can be in 

 most cases easily made, while in some cases the addition of 

 " or survival of the fittest " after " Natural Selection ' would 

 be best ; and in others, less likely to be misunderstood, the 

 original term may stand alone. 



I could not venture to propose to any other person so 

 great an alteration of terms, but you, I am sure, will give it 

 an impartial consideration, and if you really think the change 

 will produce a better understanding of your work, will not 

 hesitate to adopt it. 



It is evidently also necessary not to personify " Nature ' 

 too much though I am very apt to do it myself since people 

 will not understand that all such phrases are metaphors. 

 Natural Selection is, when understood, so necessary and 

 self-evident a principle, that it is a pity it should be in any 

 way obscured ; and it therefore seems to me that the free use 

 of " survival of the fittest," which is a compact and accurate 

 definition of it, would tend much to its being more widely 

 accepted, and prevent it being so much misrepresented and 

 misunderstood. 



There is another objection made by Janet which is also 

 a very common one. It is that the chances are almost infinite 

 against the particular kind of variation required being 

 coincident with each change of external conditions, to 

 enable an animal to become modified by Natural Selection in 

 harmony with such changed conditions ; especially when we 

 consider that, to have produced the almost infinite modifica- 

 tions of organic beings, this coincidence must have taken 

 place an almost infinite number of times. 



Now, it seems to me that you have yourself led to this 

 objection being made, by so often stating the case too strongly 

 against yourself. For example, at the commencement of 

 Chapter IV. you ask if it is "improbable that useful varia- 

 tions should sometimes occur in the course of thousands of 

 generations " ; and a little further on you say, " unless profit- 

 able variations do occur, Natural Selection can do nothing." 

 Now, such expressions have given your opponents the 

 advantage of assuming that favourable variations are rare 

 accidents, or may even for long periods never occur at all, 

 and thus Janet's argument would appear to many to have 



