s answered in the affirmative; and
arrives at this answer through the following conclusions.

The English political economist Malthus (1766-1834), in his "Essay on the
Principles of Population," established a law in regard to the growth of the
human race, which may be applied just as well to all the species of the
entire organic world: that population tends to increase in a geometrical
ratio, although the conditions of life for the individual remain the same
or at most increase in an arithmetical ratio. The consequence is that if
the species is to be preserved and the individuals of future generations
are to continue to find sufficient food and other means for sustaining
life, a great many individuals of each generation must perish very early,
and even as germ and seed, and only a minority will be preserved and
reproduced. This exuberant prodigality of life-germs, of which
proportionately only a few are preserved and reproduced, takes place in the
plant and {40} animal world in a very marked degree. There a continual
_struggle for existence_ prevails; each individual has to get access to his
conditions of life by wresting them from a whole series of other
individuals of his own or other species; and now the question arises: which
individuals will survive in this struggle? which will more probably be
preserved and procreate offspring? Evidently, the answer is, those
individuals which possess individual characteristics more favorable to the
preservation of the individual than those possessed by other individuals.
These individual characteristics are transmitted to the next generation. In
this there will be again individuals that have in a still higher degree the
characteristics thus transmitted and favorable for the preservation of the
individual, or that add to these favorable characteristics new
characteristics favorable in another direction to the survival of the
individual in the struggle for existence. While these individuals, with
more probability than the others, are thus preserved and reproduced, they
transmit to their offspring not only the old favorable characteristics
increased, but also those newly added. Among the favorable individual
qualities, Darwin reckons the divergence of character, the perfection of
organization, and the law of correlation; the latter, however, can not be
explained by natural selection, since according to this law a variation in
an organ brings about a corresponding variation in entirely