The Wallace-Darwin Correspondence 



of the species/^ etc., etc. To the few this is as clear as 

 daylight, and beautifully suggestive, but to many it is evi- 

 dently a stumbling-block. I wish, therefore, to suggest to 

 you the possibility of entirely avoiding this source of mis- 

 conception in your great work (if not now too late), and 

 also in any future editions of the ** Origin,'' and I think 

 it may be done without difficulty and very effectually 

 by adopting Spencer's term (which he generally uses in 

 preference to Natural Selection), viz. '' Survival of the 

 Fittest." This term is the plain expression of the fact; 

 ^' Natural Selection " is a metaphorical expression of it, 

 and to a certain degree indirect and incorrect , since, even 

 personifying Nature, she does not so much select special 

 variations as exterminate the most unfavourable ones. 



Combined with the enormous multiplying powers of all 

 organisms, and the ^' struggle for existence," leading to 

 the constant destruction of by far the largest proportion 

 — facts which no one of your opponents, as far as I am 

 aware, has denied or misunderstood — *^ the survival of the 

 fittest," rather than of those which were less fit, could not 

 possibly be denied or misunderstood. Neither would it be 

 possible to say that to ensure the ^' survival of the fittest " 

 any intelligent chooser was necessary, whereas when you say 

 '' Natural Selection " acts so as to choose those that are 

 fittest it is misunderstood, and apparently always will be. 

 Kef erring to your book, I find such expressions as ^^ Man 

 selects only for his own good; Nature only for that of the 

 being which she tends." This, it seems, will always be 

 misunderstood; but if you had said, ^' Man selects only 

 for his own good; Nature, by the inevitable survival of 

 the fittest, only for that of the being she tends," it would 

 have been less liable to be so. 



I find you use the term Natural Selection in two senses — 

 (1) for the simple preservation of favourable and rejection 



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