CONCERNING EVOLUTION. 1 



is the selection. But Darwin throws up the 

 sponge : ' ' In the literal sense of the word, no 

 doubt, Natural Selection is a false term,' 1 

 and so again he seeks to eliminate the psychi- 

 cal implication of his own great vocable : 

 "Natural Selection is the preservation of 

 favorable individual differences and varia- 

 tions, and the destruction of those which are 

 injurious. ' ; Thus he thinks he has eliminated 

 that insidious personal equation which has 

 already given him so much bother. Still it 

 remains and must ever remain, for it is not 

 merely his own, or subjective, but it has its 

 counterpart in Nature herself. Another com- 

 plaint he utters in the same paragraph: "It 

 has been said that I speak of Natural Selec- 

 tion as an active power or deity," that is, as 

 a supreme Person ruling all living things, 

 vegetal and animal. Better and more pro- 

 phetic it would have been to make Evolution 

 a kind of God dominating Darwin and the 

 whole Nineteenth Century. 



It is not often that we can catch Darwin 

 examining the ultimate categories by which 

 he does his thinking. On the whole he picks 

 them up without criticism, for which he evi- 

 dently had little taste or aptitude. Still his 

 instinct for the right word is correct; Natural 

 Selection must be deemed a very happy term 

 which helped make the fortune of the author's 



