626 TRAVEL IN EUROPE AND AMERICA. [1872, 
TO JAMES D. DANA. 
June 22, 1872. 
My prEAR Dana, —I fancy you have got hold of 
a good topic for your handling, and have a promising 
inquiry before you, in codrdinating cephalization and 
natural selection as operative on the nervous system 
of animals. I expect you to get something interest- 
ing out of it. 
But every now and then something you write makes 
me doubt if you quite get hold just right of Dar- 
winian natural selection. What you still say about 
struggle not applicable to plants makes me think so. 
Suppose the term be a personification, as, no doubt, 
strictly it is. One so fond as you are of personifica- 
tion and good general expressions ought not to object 
to what seems to me a happy term. 
Speaking from general memory, I should say that 
the term, as used to express what we mean, was intro- 
duced by the elder De Candolle and applied in what 
I thought a happy way to the vegetable kingdom. I 
cannot drop it because you say there is no struggle 
where there is no will ; perhaps you mean without con- 
sciousness, and then the field of struggle will be much 
limited. But call the action what you please, — com- 
petition (that is open to the same objection), collision, 
or what not, — it is just what I should think Darwin 
was driving at. Read “ Origin” (4th ed.), pp. 72, 73, 
and so on, through the chapter, especially pp. 81-86. 
This is enough to show you that when you speak of 
“ Darwinian struggle” as occurring only “ when the 
faculties of an animal are called into requisition,” you 
take too limited a view of what Darwin means. 
For myself I should say that the faculties of the 
lowest animals and the faculties of plants were 
