Darwin's great work "On the Origin of Species by means of Natural
Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for
Life," was published in November, 1859. It begins with the simplest
narrative of the events leading to its publication, and an apology for
the imperfection of "this abstract." The author is well aware, he says,
that on most points he deals with, facts can be adduced which often
apparently lead to conclusions directly opposite to his own. He states
clearly the important truth that a mere belief in the origin of species
by descent from other species is unsatisfactory until it can be shown
_how_ species can have been modified so as to acquire their present
remarkable perfection of structure and coadaptation. Consequently cases
of observed modification of species are of the highest value, and
precedence is given to the variation of animals and plants in a state of
domestication.
The individuals belonging to the same variety of any of our
long-cultivated animals or plants differ much more from each other than
the individuals of any one species or variety in a state of nature.
Darwin explains this by the changed conditions of their life, excess or
changed quality of food, climate, changed habits, &c. Thus man has
effected remarkable changes in many species by consciously or
unconsciously selecting particular qualities in the animals or plants
kept for use or beauty. Domestic productions seem in fact to have become
plastic in man's hands, and the inheritance of acquired qualities by
offspring is reckoned on as almost certain. The breeds of cattle,
poultry, dogs, and pigeons, are striking examples.
Darwin, as he tells us, kept every breed of domestic pigeons he could
purchase or obtain, in order to study their variations. In this he was
himself reverting to the associations of childhood, when the beauty,
variety, and tameness of The Mount pigeons at Shrewsbury were well
known.
We can imagine the astonishment with which the "eminent fanciers" and
members of the London Pigeon Clubs, whose acquaintance the great
naturalist cultivated, received the simplicity, yet depth, of his
inquiries, as he came among them day after day, utilising all their
lore, and yet continually asking what they neither knew nor suspected
the drift of. He began his study with a prepossession against the idea
of the immense diversity of modern pigeons having originated from one
common stock. Yet if such modification has taken place in any creature,
pigeons may furnish an example, for they have been kept and bred for
thousands of years, being recorded in Egypt about 3000 B.C., and Pliny
relates that their pedigree and race could be reckoned by the Romans of
his time. "We cannot suppose that all the breeds were suddenly produced
as perfect and as useful as we now see them; indeed, in several cases
we know that this has not been their history. The key is man's power of
accumulative selection; nature gives successive variations; man adds
them up in certain directions useful to him." This is an undoubted fact,
to which breeders and fanciers give far more emphatic testimony even
than Darwin. As Lord Somerville said, speaking of what breeders have
done for sheep, "It would seem as if they had chalked upon a wall a form
perfect in itself, and then had given it existence."
Side by side with conscious selection goes unconscious. Two breeders,
breeding from similar stock, aiming at the same end, will get different
results. Aiming at a particular result, they find that with it is
associated some other of which they had not dreamed. Thus through long
ages our cultivated vegetables and flowers have been produced, by always
selecting the best variety, and sowing its seeds. The fact which Darwin
notes, that our cultivated plants and domestic breeds date from so
ancient a time that we know really nothing of their origin, has an
important bearing on the great antiquity of man, then scarcely imagined,
now generally accepted; seeing that all domestic development depends on
a variability in living creatures, which man can not produce, but can
only work upon.
That variation of species occurs in a state of nature Darwin proves not
only by recorded facts, but by a consideration of the chaotic condition
of species-description, owing to the differences between authors as to
what are species and what are varieties, one observer describing a
dozen species where another reckons only one. If such divergence of
opinion is possible between good observers, it is evident that there is
no sufficiently clear rule for deciding what a species is, although for
centuries naturalists have laboured to establish them. If species vary
continually, and become modified, then this difficulty is explained.
But what is there in nature to answer to the breeder's selection? Here
comes in Darwin's remarkable application and amplification of Malthus's
principle of population. "Nothing is easier," he says, "than to admit
in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more
difficult--at least I have found it so--than constantly to bear this
conclusion in mind. Yet unless it be thoroughly engrained in the mind, I
am convinced that the whole economy of nature, with every fact on
distribution, rarity, abundance, extinction, and variation will be dimly
seen or quite misunderstood. We behold the face of nature bright with
gladness; we often see superabundance of food; we do not see, or we
forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on
insects or seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life; or we forget
how largely these songsters, or their eggs, or their nestlings are
destroyed by birds and beasts of prey; we do not always bear in mind,
that though food may be now superabundant, it is not so at all seasons
of each recurring year." The proofs given of the enormous rate at which
animals and plants tend to increase in numbers are very striking; even
the elephant, the slowest breeder of all animals, would increase from
one pair to fifteen millions in the fifth century, if no check existed.
Thus every animal and plant may be said to struggle for existence with
those with which it competes for space, food, light, air. The numbers
are kept down by heavy destruction at various periods of life. Take the
case of seedling plants. Darwin had a piece of ground three feet long
and two feet wide dug and cleared, so that no grown plants existed to
check the growth of seedlings of native plants as they came up. He
counted and marked all that came up, and out of 357 no fewer than 295
were destroyed, chiefly by slugs and insects. So in a little plot of
long-mown turf, allowed to grow freely, out of twenty species nine
perished in the struggle. Many further personal observations of the
author are given: such as that the winter of 1854-5 destroyed
four-fifths of the birds in his own grounds; that he has sometimes
failed to get a single seed from wheat or other plants in his garden.
On the estate of a relative in Staffordshire the changes consequent on
planting several hundred acres with Scotch fir were remarkable. In
twenty-five years twelve species of conspicuous plants, and six
different insectivorous birds had become settled and flourishing
inhabitants in the plantations. The characteristic of the philosopher,
who sees in the unconsidered trifles of others the material for his
choicest discoveries, is well exemplified in his mode of observing the
results of enclosure near Farnham, in Surrey. Here a multitude of
self-sown firs sprang up in the enclosures, and Darwin went to examine
into the cause of the strange phenomenon. Not a fir was in sight except
some distant clumps. "But on looking closely between the stems of the
heath, I found a multitude of seedlings and little trees, which had been
perpetually browsed down by the cattle. In one square yard, at a point
some hundred yards distant from one of the old clumps, I counted
thirty-two little trees; and one of them, judging from the rings of
growth, had during twenty-six years tried to raise its head above the
stems of the heath, and had failed."
The interdependence of animal upon animal, of animal upon plant, of
plant upon animal, is enforced in many ways by Darwin. For instance, the
visits of humble-bees are of special importance to the welfare of red
clover; humble-bees are largely destroyed by field-mice; cats largely
destroy field-mice near villages, and so favour humble-bees, and
secondarily red clover. Every paragraph of the chapter on the struggle
for existence is full of suggestion, and subversive of old imaginings.
But Darwin's knowledge is to him slight, his ignorance profound. Yet, he
says, notwithstanding our ignorance, "we may console ourselves with the
full belief that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is
felt, that death is generally prompt, and that the vigorous, the
healthy, and the happy survive and multiply."
The great chapter on Natural Selection, or the preservation of
favourable and the rejection of injurious variations, is crowded with
striking passages. One of these vividly contrasts man's selection with
nature's. "Man can act only on external and visible characters: nature
cares nothing for appearances, except in so far as they may be useful to
any being. She can act on every internal organ, on every shade of
constitutional difference, on the whole machinery of life. Man selects
only for his own good; nature only for that of the being she tends.
Every selected character is fully exercised by her; and the being is
placed under well-suited conditions of life.... Under nature, the
slightest difference of structure or constitution may well turn the
nicely-balanced scale in the struggle for life, and so be preserved. How
fleeting are the wishes and efforts of man! how short his time! and
consequently how poor will his products be, compared with those
accumulated by nature during whole geological periods. Can we wonder,
then, that nature's productions should be far 'truer' in character than
man's productions; that they should be infinitely better adapted to the
most complex conditions of life, and should _plainly bear the stamp of
far higher workmanship_?" The words in italics certainly are a good
answer to those who think Darwin had any tendency to depreciate the
marvels of nature by bringing them under the law of natural selection.
But we shall gain further light on this subject later on.
The main argument may be summed up thus: if variations beneficial to any
creature occur, which cannot be doubted, the individuals in whom they
occur will have the best chance of surviving and transmitting their
qualities to their offspring. This natural selection will tend to
produce divergence of character among offspring, and to intensify
differences until they equal those between species or even genera. The
same tendency to improvement brings about the decay and ultimate
extinction of many lower and unimproved forms of life.
One of the best examples of Darwin's style is in the passage comparing
all members of the same class of beings to a great tree. "I believe this
simile largely speaks the truth. The green and budding twigs may
represent existing species; and those produced during each former year
may represent the long succession of extinct species. At each period of
growth all the growing twigs have tried to branch out on all sides, and
to overtop and kill the surrounding twigs and branches, in the same
manner as species and groups of species have tried to overmaster other
species in the great battle for life. The limbs divided into great
branches, and these into lesser and lesser branches, were themselves
once, when the tree was small, budding twigs; and this connexion of the
former and present buds by ramifying branches may well represent the
classification of all extinct and living species in groups subordinate
to groups. Of the many twigs which flourished when the tree was a mere
bush, only two or three, now grown into great branches, yet survive and
bear all the other branches; so with the species which lived during
long-past geological periods, very few now have living and modified
descendants. From the first growth of the tree many a limb and branch
has decayed and dropped off; and these lost branches of various sizes
may represent those whole orders, families, and genera which have now no
living representatives, and which are known to us only from having been
found in a fossil state. As we here and there see a thin straggling
branch springing from a fork low down in a tree, and which by some
chance has been favoured and is still alive on its summit, so we
occasionally see an animal like the Ornithorhynchus or Lepidosiren,
which in some small degree connects by its affinities two large branches
of life, and which has apparently been saved from fatal competition by
having inhabited a protected station. As buds give rise by growth to
fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides
many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the
great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the
crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever-branching and
beautiful ramifications."
What may be the laws controlling or producing variation Darwin candidly
tells us he does not know. Some authors, he says, believe it to be as
much the function of the reproductive system to produce individual
differences, or very slight deviations of structure, as to make the
child like its parents. But we certainly do not know the precise effect
of any change of conditions, or what changes may be entailed in other
parts of an organism by given changes in one part.[9]
Why, if species are continually being modified, do we not see multitudes
of transitional forms around us? How can the elaborate structure and
special habits of a bat have been formed by the modification of some
animal of entirely different habits? How can the marvellous perfections
of the human eye or that of one of the higher animals be supposed to
have arisen through natural selection? These questions Darwin answers
with powerful effect; but for the details we must refer the reader to
the book itself. Incidentally he refers to objections urged against the
view that every detail of structure has been produced for the good of
its possessor. He says plainly that if structures have been created for
beauty in the eyes of man, or for mere variety, that is fatal to his
theory. Yet he admits that many structures are of no direct use to their
possessors; but they have been inherited from ancestors to whom they
were of use, or they have arisen as correlated changes or in dependence
on some other cause, where use and benefit have been primary.
In dealing with Instinct, we see Darwin personally studying ants and
bees in their social habits. The idea of ants making slaves is to him
"odious," which we can well understand after his references to slavery
in South America. For three years, during June and July, he watched for
many hours several ants' nests in Surrey and Sussex to see whether the
slaves ever left the nest. One day he witnessed a migration of ants from
one nest to another, the masters carefully carrying their slaves in
their jaws. Again, he saw a party attempting to carry off slaves,
succeeding, however, only in carrying their corpses off for food to the
nest. Darwin then dug up a small group of pupæ of the slave species from
another nest, and put them down near the place of combat. They were
eagerly seized and carried off by the tyrants, "who perhaps fancied
that, after all, they had been victorious in their late combat." At the
same time the slave-owners were able to distinguish instantly the pupæ
of another species, showing much terror at sight of them; yet they
ultimately took heart, and carried them off.
The cell-making instinct of the hive-bee, "the most wonderful of all
known instincts," as Darwin terms it, was closely studied. The comb,
"so beautifully adapted to its end," he enthusiastically admired. Yet he
finds gradation among bees, and can imagine a method by which this
beautiful construction, has been gradually developed. His ideas were
tested by setting bees to work on a solid piece of wax between two
combs. The detailed account of these experiments is most instructive. It
is quite charming to mentally follow the patient experimenter covering
the edges of a single cell or the extreme margin of a growing comb with
a thin layer of vermilion wax, and soon proving that many bees work in
succession at a single cell by the rapid diffusion of the vermilion
colouring as delicately as a painter could have done it, atoms of the
coloured wax being removed and worked into the growing cells all
round.[10] "It was really curious," Darwin says, "to note in cases of
difficulty, as when two pieces of comb met at an angle, how often the
bees would entirely pull down and rebuild in different ways the same
cell, sometimes recurring to a shape which they had at first rejected."
Here surely he was watching evolution in that slow, gradual process
which appears to be the rule.
The castes of neuter ants, constituting as they did "by far the most
serious special difficulty" Darwin had encountered, were similarly
studied; but, as expected, gradations were found connecting them,
although the extremes differ markedly in shape and size. The case is
most interesting, because these castes could only be developed if the
variations which produced them were profitable to the community; "for no
amount of exercise, or habit, or volition, in the utterly sterile
members of a community could possibly have affected the structure or
instincts of the fertile members, which alone leave descendants." This
fact Darwin considers to be demonstrative against Lamarck's doctrine. At
the same time, he admits that instincts are not always perfect, and are
liable to make mistakes; and that no instinct has been produced for the
exclusive good of other animals, but that each animal takes advantage of
the instincts of others. It is to him "far more satisfactory to look at
such instincts as the young cuckoo ejecting its foster-brothers, ants
making slaves, the larvæ of ichneumonidæ feeding within the live bodies
of caterpillars, not as specially endowed or created instincts, but as
small consequences of one general law, leading to the advancement of all
organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the
weakest die." And here Darwin strikes one of his truest and most helpful
notes. It _is_ far more satisfactory to contemplate the rapine and war
of nature as incidents which aid in working out a grand progress than as
multitudinous cruelties, working no good, and in past ages of unknown
length merely preluding the struggle and rapine through which man works
out his rise or fall. If we agonise that we and our descendants may
rise, life is worth living.
We cannot follow in detail the profoundly suggestive chapters on
Hybridism, on the Imperfection of the Geological Record, on the
Geological Succession of Organic Beings, on the Geographical
Distribution, and on the Mutual Affinity of Plants and Animals. The
first of these is one of the most difficult portions of the subject, and
yet remains as a stumbling-block of science by its apparently
inexplicable phenomena. The author throws on the past history of life on
the earth the glamour of a fairy record, as he contemplates the infinite
number of generations, which the mind cannot grasp, which must have
succeeded one another in the long roll of years, the limited extent to
which at any time fossil remains have been preserved, the immense amount
of destruction of such records which has taken place; and hence argues
most powerfully how improbable it is that the transitional stages from
species to species should have been handed down and also (another rare
chance) have been laid open to us. The great array of facts about
extinct animals and plants is shown to be consistent with, and to
be largely explained by, descent with modification, and to be
incomprehensible on any other view. The eccentric contrasts and
parallelisms displayed in the geographical distribution of plants and
animals, the striking effects of barriers such as mountains, deserts,
and seas, the phenomena of dispersion of living creatures, the
indications of old glacial periods in the present distribution of Alpine
plants, the strange distribution of fresh-water animals and plants, the
specialities of oceanic islands, and many other subjects of a like kind,
are dealt with, all being turned to advantage, and shown to give strong
support to Darwin's view.
Classification and classifiers are all made to bear testimony in the
same direction. Morphology, which, in the hands of Huxley, Haeckel,
Gegenbaur, Ray Lankester, and Balfour has, since the first issue of the
"Origin of Species," grown into a coherent science, based on embryology,
was even then seen by Darwin to yield evidence for his views. Examining
very young animals, he found that in very distinct races of dogs and
horses the young had by no means acquired their adult differences. He
compared pigeons of extremely various breeds twelve hours after being
hatched, and found their differences incomparably less than in the
full-grown birds. How immensely morphological science has progressed
since Darwin directed investigation into this profitable line would need
a separate treatise to show; but it is not too much to say that
embryology alone, without other evidence, would now suffice to prove the
doctrine of descent with adaptive modification.
Rudimentary organs, again, strange appearances, like the presence of
teeth in unborn whales and in the front of the upper jaws of unborn
calves, the rudimentary wings of many insects, the rudimentary stamens
or pistils of many flowers, are all swept into the Darwinian net.
"Nothing can be plainer than that wings are formed for flight; yet in
how many insects do we see wings so reduced in size as to be utterly
incapable of flight, and not rarely lying under wing-cases, firmly
soldered together?" These phenomena are all explicable if descent with
modification is true.
Approaching the close of his work, the author expressed his doubts of
being able to convert naturalists of long standing to his views; but
based his main hopes on young and rising men approaching these questions
without prejudices. He put some puzzling questions, however, to those
who might oppose him. Did they really believe that at innumerable
periods in the earth's history certain atoms had been commanded suddenly
to flash into living tissues? Were animals and plants created as eggs or
seed or as full grown? At each act of creation was one individual or
were many produced? For himself, he came to the conclusion that all
organic beings had descended from some one primordial form into which
life was first breathed.
On this view Darwin predicted that a great increase of interest in many
departments of natural history would arise. "When we no longer look at
an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly
beyond his comprehension; when we regard every production of nature as
one which has had a history; when we contemplate every complex structure
and instinct as the summing up of many contrivances, each useful to the
possessor, nearly in the same way as when we look at any great
mechanical invention as the summing up of the labour, the experience,
the reason, and even the blunders of numerous workmen; when we thus
view each organic being, how far more interesting--I speak from
experience--will the study of natural history become.... The whole
history of the world, as at present known, although of a length quite
incomprehensible to us, will hereafter be recognized as a mere fragment
of time compared with the ages which have elapsed since the first
creature, the progenitor of innumerable extinct and living descendants,
was created.... We may look forward with some confidence to a secure
future of equally inappreciable length. And as natural selection works
solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental
endowments will tend to progress towards perfection." The concluding
sentence of the "Origin of Species" has become one of our classical
quotations. "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several
powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one;
and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed
law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful
and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
This is not the place to give a history of the criticisms and
discussions which arose in regard to "The Origin of Species," especially
as Darwin himself took no public part in them, except by the alterations
made in successive editions. As indicating the tone of prominent
critical organs, we may note that _The Athenæum_ (November 19, 1859)
acknowledges there is something poetical in the theory. "If a monkey has
become a man, what may not a man become?" Neither book, author, nor
subject being ordinary, "the work deserves attention." _The Edinburgh
Review_ considered that the author left the question very nearly where
he found it. Failing to find original observations adequate even to give
a colour to the hypothesis, the reviewer sought to find flaws in the
author's mode of reasoning, and concluded that "we are called upon to
accept a hypothesis on the plea of want of knowledge." Defective
information, vagueness, and incompleteness are charged upon the man whom
we now delight to honour; "intellectual husks," we are told; are all
that he offers. Professor Huxley, who lectured at the Royal Institution,
on February 10, 1860, on "Species and Races and their Origin," and
brought forward Darwin's investigations as exemplifying that application
of science to which England owes her greatness, was told that it more
truly paralleled "the abuse of science to which a neighbouring
nation--some seventy years since--owed its temporary degradation." And
the professor was accused of audaciously seeking to blind his audience.
Samuel Wilberforce, then Bishop of Oxford, was equally denunciatory in
_The Quarterly_. He hopes that "this flimsy speculation" will be
completely put down. "It is a dishonouring view of nature.... Under such
influences," says the courtly bishop, "a man soon goes back to the
marvelling stare of childhood at the centaurs and hippogriffs of fancy;
or, if he is of a philosophic turn, he comes, like Oken, to write a
scheme of creation under a 'sort of inspiration,' but it is the frenzied
inspiration of the inhaler of mephitic gas. The whole world of nature is
laid for such a man under a fantastic law of glamour, and he becomes
capable of believing anything; and he is able, with a continually
growing neglect of all the facts around him, with equal confidence and
equal delusion, to look back to any past and to look on to any
future."[11]
_The Saturday Review_ was much more moderate, by no means sharing the
anxiety of those who regarded evolutionary theories as hostile to
Christianity. The author is said to have encountered the difficulties
of his theory "with admirable skill and ability," and though _The
Saturday_ remained unconvinced of his general argument, yet it
acknowledged itself "persuaded that natural selection must henceforward
be admitted as the chief mode by which the structure of organised beings
is modified in a state of nature;" and thought it very possible that,
through its agency, considerable groups of nearly allied species might
have been derived from a single progenitor: but there _The Saturday_
stopped, believing in limits to this power.
The second edition of "The Origin of Species," which appeared in
January, 1860, only six weeks after the first, contained but few
alterations; the third, in March, 1861, had received extensive additions
and corrections. The most important of these discussed the so-called
tendency of organisation to advance, and explained the present
coexistence of high and lowly organised forms. A valuable historical
sketch of the modern progress of opinion on the subject, from Lamarck's
time, was prefixed to the book. It was further enlarged in subsequent
editions, as evidences accumulated that various thinkers had
independently adopted the evolution theory, or the more special one of
natural selection. Notable instances of anticipation were those of Dr.
Wells, who, in a paper read before the Royal Society in 1813, but not
published till 1818, had expressed the opinion that all animals tend to
vary; that agriculturists improve breeds by selection; and that what
they do by art "seems to be done with equal efficacy, though more
slowly, by nature, in the formation of varieties of mankind." He then
goes on to exemplify the survival of the fittest, though in other words.
Mr. Patrick Matthew, in 1831, published a work on "Naval Timber and
Arboriculture," in which he expressed, in scattered passages, a view
nearly resembling Darwin's.
The fourth edition of "The Origin," in 1866, was longer, by fifty pages,
than its predecessor. Among the additions may be mentioned a fuller
treatment of the argument from embryology, which was made stronger by
later investigations. The fifth edition (1869) was comparatively little
increased in bulk, though altered in many details. In particular it
contained a somewhat important change relating to the extent of the
influence of natural selection. This is also referred to in "The Descent
of Man" (first edition, vol. i. pp. 152-3), where the author says he had
not formerly considered sufficiently the existence of many structures
which appeared to be neither beneficial nor injurious, and had
attributed too much to natural selection. "I was not able," he says, "to
annul the influence of my former belief, then widely prevalent, that
each species had been purposely created; and this led to my tacitly
assuming that every detail of structure, excepting rudiments, was of
some special, though unrecognised, service.... If I have erred in giving
to natural selection great power, which I am far from admitting, or in
having exaggerated its power, which is in itself probable, I have, at
least, as I hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of
separate creations."
The sixth edition (1872), in smaller type, was considerably revised and
altered, and remains permanent. A glossary of scientific terms was added
by Mr. W. S. Dallas. A new chapter was inserted after the sixth, and
entitled "Miscellaneous Objections to the Theory of Natural Selection."
It was partly derived from modified portions of chapter iv. of former
editions, but the latter and larger part was new, and relates chiefly to
the supposed incompetency of natural selection to account for the very
early stages of useful structures. Numerous cases, such as the
development of the giraffe's neck, the baleen of the whale, the mammary
glands, &c., are admirably discussed. Causes preventing the acquisition,
through natural selection, of useful structures in many cases are dealt
with, and reasons given for disbelieving in great and sudden
modifications. In the concluding chapter Darwin further admits that he
had formerly underrated the frequency and importance of use and disuse
of parts, of the direct action of external conditions, and of variations
which seem to us, in our ignorance, to arise spontaneously. He alludes
to misrepresentations of his views, and calls attention to the fact
that, in the first edition, at the close of the introduction, he stated
his conviction that natural selection had been the main, _but not the
exclusive_ means of modification. "This has been of no avail. Great is
the power of steady misrepresentation; but the history of science shows
that, fortunately, this power does not long endure." This is Darwin's
almost sole allusion in his works to the persistence with which views
not his had been attributed to him, or he had been calumniated for views
he did hold. But in his own lifetime--nay, within fifteen years--he
witnessed a sufficiently satisfying revolution. "I formerly spoke to
very many naturalists on the subject of evolution, and never once met
with any sympathetic agreement. It is probable that some did then
believe in evolution, but they were either silent or expressed
themselves so ambiguously, that it was not easy to understand their
meaning. Now things are wholly changed, and almost every naturalist
admits the great principle of evolution" ("Origin," sixth edition, p.
424). At present the sale of the book in this country approaches forty
thousand copies. Its sale in America has been very large; and numerous
translations into German, French, Italian, Russian, Dutch, and Swedish,
and even into Japanese and Hindustani, have been largely sold. It must
always be one of the most valued of all English classics.
FOOTNOTES:
[9: Mr. Romanes, in his paper on "Physiological Selection"
(Journal of the Linnean Society, Zoology, xix. 337-411), has entered
upon a most important discussion of this question.]
[10: The full text of a large part of Darwin's original chapter
on Instinct, which was omitted from the "Origin of Species" for the sake
of condensation, is published in Mr. Romanes' "Mental Evolution in
Animals," 1883, which also contains many other observations by Darwin.]
[11: The reader will thus be able to judge for himself how far
Darwin's "Origin of Species" gained, "from the very first outset,
universal respect and a fair hearing," as Mr. Grant Allen, with singular
forgetfulness, states ("Darwin," p. 112). The violence of the attacks
made upon Darwin by the majority of religious and orthodox journals is
well known.]