x OBITUARY 281 



by natural selection necessarily involves the diverg- 

 ence of the forms selected. An individual which 

 varies, ipso facto diverges from the type of its 

 species ; and its progeny, in which the variation 

 becomes intensified by selection, must diverge still 

 more, not only from the parent stock, but from 

 any other race of that stock starting from a varia- 

 tion of a different character. The selective process 

 could not take place unless the selected variety 

 was either better adapted to the conditions than 

 the original stock, or adapted to other conditions 

 than the original stock. In the first case, the 

 original stock would be sooner or later extirpated ; 

 in the second, the type, as represented by the 

 original stock and the variety, would occupy more 

 diversified stations than it did before. 



The theory, essentially such as it was published 

 fourteen years later, was written out in 1844, and 

 Darwin was so fully convinced of the importance 

 of his work, as it then stood, that he made special 

 arrangements for its publication in case of his 

 death. But it is a singular example of reticent 

 fortitude, that, although for the next fourteen years 

 the subject never left his mind, and during the 

 latter half of that period he was constantly en- 

 gaged in amassing facts bearing upon it from wide 

 reading, a colossal correspondence, and a long series 

 of experiments, only two or three friends were 

 cognisant of his views. To the outside world he 

 seemed to have his hands quite sufficiently full of 



