230 SPREAD OF EVOLUTION. [1866. 



had not occurred to me till reading your letter. It is, how- 

 ever, a great objection to this term that it cannot be used as 

 a substantive governing a verb ; and that this is a real ob- 

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

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

 gerated 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 advantage. 

 I wish I had received your letter two months ago, for I would 

 have worked in "the survival, &c.," often in the new edition 

 of the * Origin,' which is now almost printed off, and of which 

 I will of course send you a copy. I will use the term in 

 my next book on Domestic Animals, &c., from which, by the 

 way, I plainly see that you expect much, too much. 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 sur- 

 vival of the fittest." As in time the term must grow intelli- 

 gible 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 Popu- 

 lation absurdly misunderstood ? This reflection about Mal- 

 thus has often comforted me when I have been vexed at the 

 misstatement of my views. As for M. Janet,* he is a meta- 

 physician, and such gentlemen are so acute that I think they 

 often misunderstand common folk. Your criticism on the 

 double sense f in which I have used Natural Selection is new 

 to me and unanswerable ; but my blunder has done no harm, 

 for I do not believe that any one, excepting you, has ever 



* This no doubt refers to Janet's ' Materialisme Contemporain.' 

 f " I find you use ' Natural Selection ' in two senses. 1st, for the sim- 

 ple preservation of favourable and rejection of unfavourable variations, in 

 which case it is equivalent to the 'survival of the fittest,' and 2ndly, for 

 the effect or change produced by this preservation." Extract from Mr. 

 Wallace's letter above quoted. 



