148 CHARLES DARWIN. 



man could not put on it his own interpretation, and because it 

 at once connects variation under domestication and nature. . . . 

 Man has altered, and thus improved the Enojlish race-horse by 

 selecting successive fleeter individuals ; and I believe, owing to 

 the struggle for existence, that similar slight variations in a 

 wild horse, if advantageous to it, would be selected or preserved 

 by nature ; hence Natural Selection." 



In 1866 he wrote to Wallace, comparing the term 

 with that which we owe to Herbert Spencer : — 



" I fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of 

 H. Spencer's excellent expression of ' the survival of the fittest.' 

 This however had not occurred to me till reading your letter. 

 It is, however, a great objection to this term that it cannot be 

 used as a substantive governing a verb ; and that it is a real 

 objection I infer from H. Spencer continually using the words, 

 natural selection. I formerly thought, probably in an exagger- 

 ated degree, that it was a great advantage to bring into con- 

 nection natural and artificial selection ; this indeed led me 

 to use a term in common, and I still think it some advan- 

 tage. . . . The term Natural Selection has now been so 

 largely used abroad and at home, that I doubt whether it could 

 be given up, and with all its faults I should be sorry to see the 

 attempt made. Whether it will be rejected must now depend 

 ' on the survival of the fittest.' As in time the term must grow 

 intelligible the objections to its use will grow weaker and 

 weaker. I doubt whether the use of any term would have 

 made the subject intelligible to some minds, clear as it is to 

 others ; for do we not see even to the present day Malthus on 

 Population absurdly misunderstood 1 This reflection about 

 Malthus has often comforted me when I have been vexed at 

 the mis-statement of my own views." 



A large number of critics not only failed, to under- 

 stand natural selection, but they asserted that it was 

 precisely the same theory as that advanced by 

 Lamarck or one of the other writers on evolution 





