lity
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 who 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. Referring
to your book, I find such expressions as "Man selects only for his
own good; Nature only for that of the being which she tends." This, it
seems, will always be misunderstood; but if you had said "Man selects
only for his own good; Nature, by the inevitable 'survival of the
fittest,' only for that of the being she tends," it would have been less
liable to be so.

I find you use the term "Natural Selection" in two senses: (1) for
the simple preservation of favourable and rejection of unfavourable
variations, in which case it is equivalent to "survival of the fittest";
and (2) for the effect or change produced by this preservation, as when
you say, "To sum up the circumstances favourable or unfavourable to
Natural Selection," and again, "Isolation, also, is an important element
in the process of Natural Selection." Here it is not merely "survival
of the fittest," but change produced by survival of the fittest, that
is meant. On looking over your fourth chapter, I find that these
alterations of terms can be in most cases easily made, while in some
cases the addition of "or survival of the fittest" after "Natural
Selection" would be best; and in others, less likely to be
misunderstood, the original