THE LIFE AND WORK OF DARWIN 213 



more effective in them than in the case of man ; and 

 while pondering vaguely on this fact there suddenly- 

 flashed upon me the idea of the survival of the 

 fittest — that the individuals removed by these checks 

 must be on the whole inferior to those that survived. 

 In the two hours that elapsed before my ague fit 

 was over, I had thought out almost the whole of the 

 theory ; and the same evening I sketched the draft 

 of my paper, and in the two succeeding evenings 

 wrote it out in full, and sent it by the next post to 

 Mr. Darwin." 



Thus we see that Malthus was the turning-point 

 with both authors ; and all historically inclined will 

 place this famous essay on their shelves, alongside 

 the works of Darwin and Wallace. To me it has 

 always been a striking fact, that with both authors, 

 and perfectly independently, the turning-point in the 

 argument should have been the application to the 

 whole animal world of principles already established 

 and accepted in regard to man. This is curiously 

 significant in view of the objection, so often and so 

 ignorantly brought against Darwinism, that it is 

 degrading, because it applies to man laws governing 

 the structure and habits of animals. 



From 1S46 to 1S54 Darwin devoted himself 

 to a monograph on Barnacles, consisting of four 

 large volumes, two on recent and two on fossil 

 species : a heavy task which he was led to under- 

 take, largely, through "a sense of presumption in 

 accumulating facts and speculating on the subject 

 of variation without having worked out my due 

 share of species." "No one," he says, " has a right 



