On the origin of species_ by means of natural selection
On the Origin of Species
Charles Darwin
Introduction
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He also began to think about breeding in another sense: marriage. Darwin’s bachelor years in London were productive but lonely and, in characteristic fashion, he debated with himself the pros and cons of marriage. It was a male, egocentric view, although he became a loving and caring husband and father. Against the demands that a wife and children would make on his work, he concluded that the companionship and stability were worth the effort: ‘Marry, marry, marry,’ he decided, after totting up the pluses and minuses. And the choice was not far to seek: his cousin and childhood friend, Emma Wedgwood. They married on 29 January 1839: bride and bridegroom were both past the first flush of youth. Darwin was just short of his thirty-first birthday, and his bride was nine months older than him.
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Darwin did not use the philosopher Herbert Spencer’s (1820–1903) phrase ‘survival of the fittest’13 in the first edition of Origin, although he later rather reluctantly adopted it. However, it does sum up succinctly the message of those two powerful chapters in his book. Hereditary variation produces change throughout nature and, in both domesticated organisms and nature at large, ‘a well-marked variety may be justly called an incipient species’ (p. 56).
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He returned on more than one occasion to the old biological adage ‘Natura non facit saltum’ – ‘Nature makes no leaps’. Its traditional use was within the context of the notion of the chain of being, the doctrine that Creation is so full that everything that can exist does exist.
CHAPTER IV: Natural Selection
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Man selects only for his own good; Nature only for that of the being which she tends.
Times and again, Darwin attributed nature with 'intention'. However, it is commonly claimed that Natural selection is blind.
CHAPTER VI: Difficulties on Theory
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firstly, because new varieties are very slowly formed, for variation is a very slow process, and natural selection can do nothing until favourable variations chance to occur,
So, the previous highlight, where I have raised my concern regarding wheather Darwin invoked some sort of teleology seems to be just figure of speech.
CHAPTER IX: On the Imperfection of the Geological Record
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On the lapse of Time – Independently of our not finding fossil remains of such infinitely numerous connecting links, it may be objected, that time will not have sufficed for so great an amount of organic change, all changes having been effected very slowly through natural selection. It is hardly possible for me even to recall to the reader, who may not be a practical geologist, the facts leading the mind feebly to comprehend the lapse of time. He who can read Sir Charles Lyell’s grand work on the Principles of Geology, which the future historian will recognise as having produced a revolution in natural science, yet does not admit how incomprehensibly vast have been the past periods of time, may at once close this volume. Not that it suffices to study the Principles of Geology, or to read special treatises by different observers on separate formations, and to mark how each author attempts to give an inadequate idea of the duration of each formation or even each stratum. A man must for years examine for himself great piles of superimposed strata, and watch the sea at work grinding down old rocks and making fresh sediment, before he can hope to comprehend anything of the lapse of time, the monuments of which we see around us.
A rather unexpectedly stylish paragraph on the lapse of time.
CHAPTER X: On the Geological Succession of Organic Beings
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On the theory of descent, the full meaning of the fact of fossil remains from closely consecutive formations, though ranked as distinct species, being closely related, is obvious. As the accumulation of each formation has often been interrupted, and as long blank intervals have intervened between successive formations, we ought not to expect to find, as I attempted to show in the last chapter, in any one or two formations all the intermediate varieties between the species which appeared at the commencement and close of these periods; but we ought to find after intervals, very long as measured by years, but only moderately long as measured geologically, closely allied forms, or, as they have been called by some authors, representative species; and these we assuredly do find. We find, in short, such evidence of the slow and scarcely sensible mutation of specific forms, as we have a just right to expect to find.
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On the state of Development of Ancient Forms – There has been much discussion whether recent forms are more highly developed than ancient. I will not here enter on this subject, for naturalists have not as yet defined to each other’s satisfaction what is meant by high and low forms. But in one particular sense the more recent forms must, on my theory, be higher than the more ancient; for each new species is formed by having had some advantage in the struggle for life over other and preceding forms.
Given a long period of time, even this definition of 'higher' doesn't hold. 'Complex', or 'better adopted' may will be more appropriate.
CHAPTER XIII: Mutual Affinities of Organic Beings: Morphology: Embryology: Rudimentary Organs
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Nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to explain this similarity of pattern in members of the same class, by utility or by the doctrine of final causes.
Here, not only Darwin denies religious creation theories, he also denies teleology.
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Descent being on my view the hidden bond of connexion which naturalists have been seeking under the term of the natural system.
CHAPTER XIV: Recapitulation and Conclusion
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Nothing at first can appear more difficult to believe than that the more complex organs and instincts should have been perfected, not by means superior to, though analogous with, human reason, but by the accumulation of innumerable slight variations, each good for the individual possessor. Nevertheless, this difficulty, though appearing to our imagination insuperably great, cannot be considered real if we admit the following propositions, namely – that gradations in the perfection of any organ or instinct, which we may consider, either do now exist or could have existed, each good of its kind – that all organs and instincts are, in ever so slight a degree, variable – and, lastly, that there is a struggle for existence leading to the preservation of each profitable deviation of structure or instinct. The truth of these propositions cannot, I think, be disputed.
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But the chief cause of our natural unwillingness to admit that one species has given birth to other and distinct species, is that we are always slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the intermediate steps. The difficulty is the same as that felt by so many geologists, when Lyell first insisted that long lines of inland cliffs had been formed, and great valleys excavated, by the slow action of the coast-waves. The mind cannot possibly grasp the full meaning of the term of a hundred million years; it cannot add up and perceive the full effects of many slight variations, accumulated during an almost infinite number of generations.
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Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume under the form of an abstract, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as the ‘plan of creation’, ‘unity of design,’ &c., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject my theory. A few naturalists, endowed with much flexibility of mind, and who have already begun to doubt on the immutability of species, may be influenced by this volume; but I look with confidence to the future, to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality. Whoever is led to believe that species are mutable will do good service by conscientiously expressing his conviction; for only thus can the load of prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed.
APPENDIX I: An Historical Sketch
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It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. 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.