The Question at Issue 87 
this leads to divergence of type ; but these opinions involve 
a theory of natural selection or quasi-selection, whether the 
words . natural selection ’’ are used or not; indeed it is 
impossible to include wild species in any theory of descent 
with modification without implying a quasi-selective 
power on the part of nature; but even with Mr. Charles 
Darwin the power is only quasi-selective; there is no 
conscious choice, and hence there is nothing that can in 
strictness be called selection. 
It is indeed true that the younger Darwin gave the words 
“ natural selection ” the importance which of late years they 
have assumed ; he probably adopted them unconsciously 
from the passage of Mr. Matthew’s quoted above, but he 
ultimately said,* “‘ In the literal sense of the word (sic) no 
doubt natural selection is a false term,” as personifying 
a fact, making it exercise the conscious choice without which 
there can be no selection, and generally crediting it with 
the discharge of functions which can only be ascribed 
legitimately to living and reasoning beings. Granted, 
however, that while Mr. Charles Darwin adopted the expres- 
sion natural selection and admitted it to be a bad one, his 
grandfather did not use it at all; still Mr. Darwin did not 
mean the natural selection which Mr. Matthew and those 
whose opinions he was epitomising meant. Mr. Darwin 
meant the selection to be made from variations into which 
purpose enters to only a small extent comparatively. The 
difference, therefore, between the older evolutionists and 
their successor does not lie in the acceptance by the more 
recent writer of a quasi-selective power in nature which 
his predecessors denied, but in the background—hidden 
behind the words natural selection, which have served to 
cloak it—in the views which the old and the new writers 
severally took of the variations from among which they are 
alike agreed that a selection or quasi-selection is made.. 
It now appears that there is not one natural selection, 
* “ Origin of Species,’’ p. 49, ed. vi. 
