The Question at Issue 83 
type; so the three big “ Origins of Species” carried us 
with them to the exclusion of the rest. 
The short and working title, ‘‘ On the Origin of Species,” 
in effect claims descent with modification generally ; the 
expanded and technically true title only claims the dis- 
covery that luck is the main means of organic modification, 
and this is a very different matter. The book ought to 
have been entitled, “‘ On Natural Selection, or the preserva- 
tion of favoured races in the struggle for life, as the main 
means of the origin of species ; ’’ this should have been the 
expanded title, and the short title should have been 
“On Natural Selection.” The title would not then have 
involved an important difference between its working and 
its technical forms, and it would have better fulfilled the 
object of a title, which is, of course, to give, as far as may 
be, the essence of a book in a nutshell. We learn on the 
authority of Mr. Darwin himself* that the “ Origin of 
Species ’’ was originally intended to bear the title “ Natural 
Selection ;”’ nor is it easy to see why the change should 
have been made if an accurate expression of the contents 
of the book was the only thing which Mr. Darwin was 
considering. It is curious that, writing the later chapters of 
“ Life and Habit ” in great haste, I should have accidentally 
referred to the “ Origin of Species ”’ as “‘ Natural Selection ;” 
it seems hard to believe that there was no intention in my 
thus unconsciously reverting to Mr. Darwin’s own original 
title, but there certainly was none, and I did not then know 
what the original title had been. 
t If we had scrutinised Mr. Darwin’s title-page as closely 
as we should certainly scrutinise anything written by Mr. 
Darwin now, we should have seen that the title did not 
technically claim the theory of descent ; practically, how- 
ever, it so turned out that we unhesitatingly gave that 
__ *® “T think it can be shown that there is such a power at work in 
* Natural Selection ’ (the title of my book),”—‘‘ Proceedings of the 
Linnean Society for 1858,” vol. iii,, p. 51. 
