DARWIN. 



239 



deal more evidence to make me admit that forms 

 have often changed per saltum?^ 



The idea of the Survival of the Fittest came to 

 Darwin only through the suggestion of Malthus, 

 who, in turn, probably borrowed it from Buffon. 

 He was unaware of any of the distinct anticipa- 

 tions of his theory. His attention was called to 

 Matthew's article in 1860; to that of Wells in 

 1865; to Naudin's paper in 1859. Some one, 

 also, called his attention to Aristotle and Em- 

 pedocles. It is possible that his eye may have 

 caught the passage in St. Hilaire suggesting the 

 idea, without his conscious recollection of it. The 

 strong passage in Erasmus Darwin's poem may also 

 have survived in his memory, yet as far as Dar- 

 win knew, the idea of the * struggle for life ' came 

 first from Malthus ; it grew upon him in reading 

 De Candolle, W. Herbert, and Lyell, of whom he 

 said, " Even they have not written strongly enough." 

 The force of this 'struggle ' gradually intensified itself 

 in his mind to a point where he believed it was such 

 that not merely the entire adaptive form of the ani- 

 mal, but even a slight adaptive variation in a single 

 character, would turn the scale in favour of survival ! 

 This was during the period of his extreme faith 

 in the Natural Selection factor, which reached its 

 highest point about 1858. He gradually receded 

 from this extreme, as shown in a letter to Victor 

 Carus in 1869: "... I have been led to infer 



1 Life and Letters, Vol. II., p. 274 (1860). 



