232 CHARLES DEKONINCK 



trying to possess and breed from the best individual animals, is 

 more important. [Notice, the breeding or deliberate improvement 

 of, say, the quality of wheat or the quality of horses is accom- 

 panied by an improvement that was not intended; that is not 

 deliberate, an unconscious selection is taking place.] Thus, a man 

 who intends keeping pointers naturally tries to get as good dogs 

 as he can, and afterwards breeds from his own best dogs, but he 

 has no wish or expectation of permanently altering the breed. 

 Nevertheless we may infer that this process continued during 

 centuries, would improve and modify any breed, in the same way 

 as Bakewell, Collins, etc., by this very same process, only carried 

 on more methodically, did greatly modify, even during their life- 

 times, the forms and qualities of their cattle.^ 



I have quoted this long passage because of the importance 

 of what Darwin calls " Unconscious Selection," unconscious 

 " insofar that the breeder could never have expected, or even 

 wished to produce the result that ensued — namely the pro- 

 duction of two distinct strains." This unconscious selection is 

 important to Darwin's second deduction, namely. Natural 

 Selection. The distinction which he makes brings us face to 

 face with two different types of selection; the first is deliberate, 

 with a distinct object in view; the second was unintended 

 unexpected, nor even wished for. So far as man's purpose in 

 this particular intervention is concerned, the new strains pro- 

 duced by the second type are fortuitous. Actually, they are 

 products of nature. The natural principle, as distinguished 

 from the conscious, deliberate one, is called Natural Selection. 



There is no doubt that Darwin was reasoning here on the 

 basis of an analogy or proportion between art and nature, and 

 that the term for transition was selection. In other words, 

 unconscious selection is first revealed as a by-product, so to 

 speak, of conscious selection, and an unconscious selection is 

 going on in nature all the time. This was sound reasoning, it 

 seems to me, given the observations — particularly the one that 

 all organisms tend to vary considerably — which should in fact 



^ Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, chap. I (New York: Modern Library, 

 n.d.). p. 32. 



