his Teachings" in
the last _Quarterly Journal of Science_, which, though very well written
and on the whole appreciative, yet concludes with a charge of something
like blindness, in your not seeing that Natural Selection requires the
constant watching of an intelligent "chooser," like man's selection to
which you so often compare it; and (2) in Janet's recent work on the
"Materialism of the Present Day," reviewed in last Saturday's _Reader_,
by an extract from which I see that he considers your weak point to be
that you do not see that "thought and direction are essential to the
action of Natural Selection." The same objection has been made a score
of times by your chief opponents, and I have heard it as often stated
myself in conversation. Now, I think this arises almost entirely from
your choice of the term Natural Selection, and so constantly comparing
it in its effects to man's selection, and also to your so frequently
personifying nature as "selecting," as "preferring," as "seeking only
the good of the species," etc., etc. To the few this is as clear as
daylight, and beautifully suggestive, but to many it is evidently a
stumbling-block. I wish, therefore, to suggest to you the possibility of
entirely avoiding this source of misconception in your great work (if
not now too late), and also in any future editions of the "Origin," and
I think it may be done without difficulty and very effectually by
adopting Spencer's term (which he generally uses in preference to
Natural Selection), viz. "Survival of the Fittest." This term is the
plain expression of the _fact_; "Natural Selection" is a metaphorical
expression of it, and to a certain degree _indirect_ and _incorrect_,
since, even personifying Nature, she does not so much select special
variations as exterminate the most unfavourable ones.

Combined with the enormous multiplying powers of all organisms, and the
"struggle for existence," leading to the constant destruction of by far
the largest proportion--facts which no one of your opponents, as far as
I am aware, has denied or misunderstood--"the survival of the fittest,"
rather than of those which were less fit, could not possibly be denied
or misunderstood. Neither would it be possible to say that to ensure the
"survival of the fittest" any _intelligent chooser_ was necessary,
whereas when you say "Natural Selection" acts so as to choose those that
are fittest it _is_ misunderstood, and apparently always will be.
Re