eory, it is necessary to understand distinctly what he means
by it. On this point he leaves us no room for doubt. On p. 92, he says:
"This preservation of favorable variations, and the destruction of
injurious variations, I call Natural Selection, or, the Survival of the
Fittest." "Owing to the struggle (for life) variations, however slight
and from whatever cause proceeding, if they be in any degree profitable
to the individuals of a species, in their infinitely complex relations
to other organic beings and to their physical conditions of life, will
tend to the preservation of such individuals, and will generally be
inherited by their offspring. The offspring also will thus have a better
chance of surviving, for, of the many individuals of any species which
are periodically born, but a small number can survive. I have called
this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved,
by the term Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's
power of selection. But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer
of the Survival of the Fittest, is more accurate, and sometimes is
equally convenient." (p. 72). "Slow though the progress of selection may
be, if feeble man can do so much by artificial selection, I can see no
limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and infinite complexity of
the co-adaptations between all organic beings, one with another, and
with their physical conditions of life, which may be effected in the
long course of time by nature's power of selection, or the survival of
the fittest." (p. 125). "It may be objected that if organic beings thus
tend to rise in the scale, how is it that throughout the world a
multitude of the lowest forms still exist; and how is it that in each
great class some forms are far more highly developed than others?... On
our theory the continuous existence of lowly forms offers no difficulty;
for natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, does not
necessarily include progressive development, it only takes advantage of
such variations as arise and are beneficial to each creature under its
complex relations of life.... Geology tells us that some of the lowest
forms, the infusoria and rhizopods, have remained for an enormous period
in nearly their present state." (p. 145). "The fact of little or no
modification having been effected since the glacial period would be of
some avail against those who believe in an innate and necessary law of
develo