Darwin's Selection Theory. 35 



acquainted with the struggle for existence and the un- 

 ceasing destruction of countless individuals, he found in 

 that book the long sought solution. He came to the con- 

 clusion that selection played the same part among animals 

 and plants as it does amongst mankind, and that in this 

 manner species may have arisen. This conclusion, how- 

 ever, is simply the idea of a genius and does not directly 

 follow from Malthus's work. It has become one of 

 the main supports of the doctrine of descent. But it 

 was to the genius of the great thinker, not to the sound- 

 ness of the raw material that the magnificence of the 

 result was due. 



' In the light of what we know now^ this story of the 

 origin of the theory of selection often stands openly 

 contradicted by Darwin^s own view. Natural selection, 

 says he, works on ''chance variations''^ ''Unless such 

 occur natural selection can do nothing.''^ From such 

 utterances it is clear that Darwin attributed a very great 

 and often preponderating, perhaps even an exclusive, 

 significance to "single variations/' For individual varia- 

 bility always provides natural selection with the required 

 material in the form, sometimes of greater and some- 

 times of less deviations from the type; it is, moreover, 

 exhibited everywhere and in all directions. This fact 

 was known quite well at that time, and Darwin himself 

 was quite clear about it. But the laws formulated later 

 bv OuETELET wcrc not known ; and the p'eneral insidit 

 into the matter was much less deep than it is at present ; 

 no one however questioned the universal occurrence of 



* It was in 1838 that Darwin read Malthus's book, and Quete- 

 let's Anthropomctvie first appeared in 1870. 



^ Life and Letters, II, p. 87, etc. 



^ Origin, p. 64, etc. 



