230 SPREAD OF EVOLUTION. [1S66. 



had not occurred to me till reading your letter. It is, how- 

 ever, a great objection to this term that it cannot be used as 

 a substantive governing a verb ; and that this is a real ob- 

 jection I infer from H. Spencer continually using the words, 

 natural selection. I formerly thought, probably in an exag- 

 gerated degree, that it was a great advantage to bring into con- 

 nection natural and artificial selection ; this indeed led me to 

 use a term in common, and I still think it some advantage. 

 I wish I had received your letter two months ago, for I would 

 have worked in "the survival, &c," often in the new edition 

 of the ' Origin,' which is now almost printed off, and of which 

 I will of course send you a copy. I will use the term in 

 my next book on Domestic Animals, &c, from which, by the 

 way, I plainly see that you expect much^ too much. The term 

 Natural Selection has now been so largely used abroad and 

 at home, that I doubt whether it could be given up, and with 

 all its faults I should be sorry to see the attempt made. 

 Whether it will be rejected must now depend "on the sur- 

 vival of the fittest." As in time the term must grow intelli- 

 gible the objections to its use will grow weaker and weaker. 

 I doubt whether the use of any term would have made the 

 subject intelligible to some minds, clear as it is to others ; 

 for do we not see even to the present day Malthus on Popu- 

 lation absurdly misunderstood ? This reflection about Mal- 

 thus has often comforted me when I have been vexed at the 

 misstatement of my views. As for M. Janet,* he is a meta- 

 physician, and such gentlemen are so acute that I think they 

 often misunderstand common folk. Your criticism on the 

 double sense f in which I have used Natural Selection is new 

 to me and unanswerable ; but my blunder has done no harm, 

 for I do not believe that any one, excepting you, has ever 



* This no doubt refers to Janet's ' Materialisme Contemporaine.' 

 f " I find you use ' Natural Selection ' in two senses. 1st, for the sim- 

 ple preservation of favourable and rejection of unfavourable variations, in 

 which case it is equivalent to the ' survival of the fittest,' — and 2ndly, for 

 the effect or change produced by this preservation." Extract from Mr. 

 Wallace's letter above quoted. 



