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    The Origin of Species
    The Origin of Species
    The Origin of Species
    Ebook572 pages14 hours

    The Origin of Species

    By Charles Darwin and Jeff Wallace

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    With an Introduction by Jeff Wallace.

    'A grain in the balance will determine which individual shall live and which shall die...'.

    Darwin's theory of natural selection issued a profound challenge to orthodox thought and belief: no being or species has been specifically created; all are locked into a pitiless struggle for existence, with extinction looming for those not fitted for the task.

    Yet The Origin of Species (1859) is also a humane and inspirational vision of ecological interrelatedness, revealing the complex mutual interdependencies between animal and plant life, climate and physical environment, and - by implication - within the human world.

    Written for the general reader, in a style which combines the rigour of science with the subtlety of literature, The Origin of Species remains one of the founding documents of the modern age.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWordsworth Editions
    Release dateDec 1, 2012
    ISBN9781848704787
    Author

    Charles Darwin

    Charles Darwin (1809–1882) was an English naturalist and geologist best known for his contributions to the field of evolutionary biology. After sailing around the world on the HMS Beagle in 1831, Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species, which put forth his theory of natural selection.  

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    Reviews for The Origin of Species

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    • 3/5
      evolution has gone through many changes since darwin's original writing, but it is always good to go back to the source. darwin may not have been the first person to conceive of evolution, but he was the first to delineate it in such a complete form.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed reading the book that is the foundation of evolutionary biology, and it's fascinating to see what we used to believe and how far we've come.
    • 4/5
      Facsimile of first edition, with "An Historical Sketch" and "Glossary" from sixth edition.
    • 5/5
      OK, so maybe the book is a difficult read, as many Victorian books are. The language may strike a modern reader as a bit arcane, and the sheer length and breadth of the work may be staggering to those used to getting their information in short, pithy bits. Still, let's be honest. This is THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, and it completely revolutionized biology, so I think the least one can do is give it 5 stars (since that is all that's allowable). To anyone who really reads this book, it should be impossible to continue to parrot the popular canard that there is no evidence for evolution. In the days before DNA, and when hominid fossils were still fairly sparse, and we knew very little about the microscopic world, Darwin was able to compile an impressive array of evidence, most of it while sitting in his own library at Down House in England. This book is rightly considered a classic, not just for its style, but for its substance.
    • 4/5
      It is only fair that I divide my review into two parts: Writing and Content:Writing: Darwin is obviously writing from a different century. With complex syntax and extensive vocabulary, both scientific and non, his writing is dense, convoluted and so very boring. Even if one makes allowances for the difference in writing styles, I still find his writing to drag on and on. Darwin stated he wrote this work for the masses, and I grant that he gave it a valiant effort, however much he failed.Content: Brilliant. From someone who was raised (and remains) a believer in Creationism, I have to say his work is logical, scientific, and well-thought out. He answered well many of the main arguments against his ideas. He mentioned many experiments conducted to further study his findings, and mentioned many works by contemporary naturalist that he drew on to reach his conclusion. As someone trained in the sciences, this does much to improve my thoughts about his ideas. Despite what many people say - Evolutionist and Creationist alike - Darwin's work is factual and logical, and demands serious consideration from anyone claiming to want to know the truth. While I have not reconciled my belief in a creator-God and the evidence of evolution, reading Darwin is a start for me and I recommend it as a start for anyone wishing to find the truth.
    • 5/5
      I'm super glad to read this book - it was really enjoyable!One of the things I was struck by Darwin's writing was that it was eminently readable and was basically constructed as an essay with a prodigious amount of evidence lined up to back up the arguments made. I am impressed by his clarity in articulation that make his communication and message conveyable despite requisite nuance.The heart of this particular book is that animals and plants vary - that they are mutable over time via human control (i.e. breeding) but also do so naturally, and that selection pressures are the mechanism, and that over time variability, heredity, and selection are the underlying principles of evolution.It was quite clear that he was conscious of possible detractors - on both scientific and creationist grounds. And he readily admits that readers who simply are not already convinced of things like the vast age of the earth etc. are just not going to agree because of things like the imperfection of the geological record (which is still true, though some gaps have since been filled). This is still true today even with the accumulated knowledge of paleontology and geology due to (willful?) ignorance and/or disbelief regarding how fossils and rocks are aged.Aside from the assembly, synthesis, and description of a vast array of fascinating facts and evidence, was the ability to put forth a complicated argument fairly succinctly and then address potential detractions head on. What surprised me was that some of the things that he addressed were *still* being used as arguments against evolution of species via natural selection! For example I heard arguments by some espousing Intelligent Design talking about how the eye was something too complicated to have arisen or be selected for -- but Darwin addressed this fairly well (I thought!), noting several species that either had intermediate forms or uses for eyes and light sensitivity. The point being that for all the recent hubabaloo, we appear to be going around the same merry-go-round back and forth regarding whether or not we buy into this explanation of the natural world, without making much progress over the course of a century and a half.If you feel at all invested in the argument over evolution one way or the other, my feeling is that it's at least worth reading Darwin's original works rather than getting into a lather about bullet points that are only a poor shadow of their context.
    • 5/5
      On the Origin of Species is one of the most influential and fact-proven books of all-time. Unfortunately, some people don't think so and want to discredit Charles Darwin's work. However, facts and reason will prevail.
    • 4/5
      A handsome boxed cover edition by the Heritage Press of one of the landmark works of science. I read the book in college and while now I remember only the broad outlines of Darwin's ideas, I was impressed with the clarity of his presentation of the evidence and the theory that arose from it. I have this book already in an earlier 1906 edition. I just couldn't resist this edition I found at an estate sale, because of the lovely wood engravings throughout the book by Paul Landacre. He is a favorite artist of mine; his "Sultry Day" print hangs in my living room.
    • 5/5
      It's been criticized as unscientific, evil, and dry. I found it quite impressive. Though there are places where the detail might be too much for the casual reader, it is a very solid scientific work. He presents a hypothesis, shows significant supporting evidence, and defends it against the most common criticisms. It is not possible to prove that everything started from something simpler but it is now hard to refute that the natural process of natural selection is working on today's species. He leads his argument by showing the effectiveness that domestic breeders have achieved in altering species and guiding that process. Other highlights either new to me or especially interesting: the uniformity gained by consistent inter-crossing, the underlying ability of genetics to allow breakthrough changes and yet also to maintain uniformity, the complexity of larger areas in producing stronger more adaptable species, the effect of geographic changes (elevation, land forms, glaciers) on migration of living species and archival of fossil record, that fossils tend only to be saved during subsidence so only that direction of change is recorded, the species do not reappear once extinct (this seems to be in refutation of Lamarck), the phrase "grain in balance" to show the impact of small differences in the competition for survival, that it is the other species more than anything that determines a given organisms ability to survive in an area. Imagine his chart demonstrating how branching might work if he had had a PC at the time.
    • 5/5
      This isn't a book you'd read for fun, but for understanding and enrichment. Personally, I found it edifying to understand Darwin's thinking. In his younger days, he had traveled much of the world, and was primarily employed in collecting specimens from each region he visited. Over the years, he connected with farmers to discuss how different plants and animals were bred for certain traits. He catalogued the variations in species he would find in different areas having different "conditions of life". He studied and experimented as to how seeds, eggs, larvae, and adult creatures could travel from one place to another. He looked into the geological record and the fossil remains of creatures now extinct. He studies the embryos of plants and animals, and found that embryos of creatures of the same class had the same appearance and features, regardless of how different these creatures came to appear as adults. From a lifetime's study of all these factors, he came up with a unified theory of natural selection. In brief, that a creature's offspring will vary minutely in each generation, and that these miniscule variations give advantages to some and disadvantages to others. The most successful of these variations are passed on.
    • 4/5
      I recommend reading of this book because of the importance of it. When Charles Darwin published this in 1859 it rocked the English speaking world. Up to that point the religious idea of creation was unquestionably accepted. Religion held a lot of power over people and their lives. Then this book came out, and it put into question all that the English world held dear about God and creation. I don't know if any piece of literature has had such a profound affect on society and its beliefs. When I read it, I thought that it might be boring because of the scope of the work, but it's actually not boring because it's simply and plainly written. Remember the whole theory of evolution originated from this one work.
    • 2/5
      I'm an enthusiast of evolutionary biology and I appreciate Darwin's enormous contribution to our understanding of the natural world. But somehow the Origin of Species wasn't very interesting to read. Maybe it's because most of what Darwin says has so thoroughly diffused itself into modern science that there's little new to find here.
    • 2/5
      I marked this as 'Read' which isn't wholly true. If there was a 'Kinda, Sorta, Read' button I would have clicked that. Wow, I'm in awe of anyone who did read this cover to cover. Kudos to you, kudos to you.
    • 4/5
      Example after example for the explanation of life and how it has evolved. From plants to animals and everything in between. How climate and geography plays a role in the evolutionary process. He goes into many details that can be lengthy but overall a good representation of different species and their origin.
    • 5/5
      Important foundation for knowledge. An interesting read for me the summer after 8th grade.
    • 2/5
      The journey of Charles Darwin on the H.M.S. Beagle and his reports, discoveries and observations relating to natural science and evolution. Fairly interesting for a book on science even though it is rather dated. The stir it caused in the mid 1800s no longer carries the same groundbreaking impact.
    • 5/5
      Fantastic book.

      chapter 13 was probably my favorite chapter. Thats where everything comes to a head and he brings up the similarities between different species as well as vestigial organs and how it could have served previous generations but be rendered useless or redundant now.

      It was impressive that he noticed and brought up several things that would later be fully explained by science.

      One such thing was linked genes. When talking about pigeons he mentioned that beak size and foot size would always be correlated. He admits hes not sure why but in all cases with pigeon breeding if you have a small beak you have tiny feet.

      As an interesting note: he never brings up the finches. Ever. He hardly ever mentions the Galapagos. Mostly that he visited it and it had a small highly specialized group of species.

      For the most part he talks about fancy pigeons. So if you want an easier time reading the book go look up fancy pigeons, look at all the different breeds of domestic pigeons, memorize them, then read the book. Trust me he brings them up a lot.
    • 2/5
      Quite stunning in its way - but surely in need of an update in the light of genetics, DNA and plate techtonics. Not that the conclusions need to be changed, just that te argument becomes easier. That said, in the absence of knowledge on those points: that's what makes for the stunning.
    • 4/5
      It's amazing to me how much Darwin got right in this book, and also all that he got wrong.
    • 1/5
      Boring and stupid.
    • 4/5
      Rating this was not easy. I think this book is a 5 star for importance however this was a tough book to trudge through. I listened to it on audio and I don't think I could have finished it otherwise.
    • 4/5
      On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (free at Project Gutenberg).
      Drawing from my own reading library, this book a little like Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations in that the author is taking personal observations and anecdotes and developing a broader hypothesis as to how things work and how we got to where we are today. Many of the anecdotal observations and hypotheses have since been proven as false or mistaken, and we now know more about what was observed than the author possibly could have at the time, but the broader implications and the core of the central hypothesis remain intact.

      Darwin spends early part of the book discussing the difference between variations and species. Modern biological classification had not been completely developed at the time of publication. Genealogy was basically undeveloped, or is perhaps not Darwin's strong suit. His religious detractors at the time argued that species were immutable and that the geological record was perfect-- everything that could be known about the history of the earth was essentially already evident. I do not know how widespread the belief was at that time, but creation scientists today acknowledge mass migration, extinction, and "macroevolution," that from one species or phylum can come many different varieties.

      In Chapter 5, Darwin opines on why zebras have stripes in a greater context of how unique traits evolve in offspring and how offspring sometimes revert to the characteristics of their predecessors. There was no agreed-upon model of heredity back then. Scientists are still determining why zebras have stripes.

      Chapters 6 and 7 are interesting as Darwin pivots to address possible criticims of his theory of natural selection. development of organs and the imperfections in the fossil record. He admits that it's hard to believe that something as incredibly complex as the eye developed gradually, but contends that it is not impossible. He contends that whale's lungs developed from an organ that was originally a swim bladder. Since vertebrates have lungs, we must have all evolved from organisms that had swim bladders-- ie: sea-dwelling creatures:

      "The illustration of the swim bladder in fishes is a good one, because it shows us clearly the highly important fact that an organ originally constructed for one purpose, namely, flotation, may be converted into one for a widely different purpose, namely, respiration. The swim bladder has, also, been worked in as an accessory to the auditory organs of certain fishes. All physiologists admit that the swimbladder is homologous, or “ideally similar” in position and structure with the lungs of the higher vertebrate animals: hence there is no reason to doubt that the swim bladder has actually been converted into lungs, or an organ used exclusively for respiration. According to this view it may be inferred that all vertebrate animals with true lungs are descended by ordinary generation from an ancient and unknown prototype, which was furnished with a floating apparatus or swim bladder."



      In Chapter 7 Darwin writes that one discovery that would demolish Darwin's theory is if altruistic behavior were to be found in an organism-- if one species acted simply to benefit another. This would be impossible under natural selection since each species has developed by focusing on adapting solely on its own survival in the "battle for life." Some have purported that the behavior of one type of ant which serves as a slave to another type are an example of this. Darwin maintains that the enslaved variety is smaller and weaker, and kept alive by their masters due to their usefulness, and therefore acceptance of the slavery is necessary to their survival.

      One wonders, however, at the symbiotic relationships of many species. For example, I read an article recently about how botanists researching fungi have changed their belief in their relationship with trees:

      “The new theory pictures a more business-like relationship among multiple buyers and sellers connected in a network,” Franklin said in a press release. Instead of being a cooperative trade of carbon and nitrogen between organisms, trees are forced to export large amounts of carbon in order to unlock nitrogen stores from the fungi."


      The fact that mating behavior-- taking two to create offspring-- has evolved among so many species would seem to be problematic to natural selection. Wouldn't it be more efficient for survival if one could reproduce asexually with a relatively small gestation time? Why haven't the majority of species evolved that way? It seems that there are benefits to mating beyond reproduction. There is strength in symbiotic communal behavior, as Darwin gives the example of ants and hive bees. Since this behavior is so widespread, one can deduce that it is closer to the "perfection" eventually achieved by natural selection relative to the lower-order ancestors' way of producing.

      In Chapter 9 and onward, Darwin deals with the imperfection of the fossil record. We are missing transitional forms at every level to verify his theory. In some layers or time periods, species appear which do not appear in the previous time period. This would seem to suggest creation rather than systematic evolution. Darwin's response to such a criticism is :

      On this doctrine of the extermination of an infinitude of connecting links, between the living and extinct inhabitants of the world, and at each successive period between the extinct and still older species, why is not every geological formation charged with such links? Why does not every collection of fossil remains afford plain evidence of the gradation and mutation of the forms of life? Although geological research has undoubtedly revealed the former existence of many links, bringing numerous forms of life much closer together, it does not yield the infinitely many fine gradations between past and present species required on the theory, and this is the most obvious of the many objections which may be urged against it. Why, again, do whole groups of allied species appear, though this appearance is often false, to have come in suddenly on the successive geological stages? Although we now know that organic beings appeared on this globe, at a period incalculably remote, long before the lowest bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, why do we not find beneath this system great piles of strata stored with the remains of the progenitors of the Cambrian fossils? For on the theory, such strata must somewhere have been deposited at these ancient and utterly unknown epochs of the world's history. I can answer these questions and objections only on the supposition that the geological record is far more imperfect than most geologists believe.


      Much has been undiscovered, much may lay under the oceans, and many layers may be compressed due to constantly having more sediment deposited.


      Darwin concludes:

      "Authors of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied with the view that each species has been independently created. To my mind it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants of the world should have been due to secondary causes, like those determining the birth and death of the individual. When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled... There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling 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."


      Darwin's arguments still did not answer the question for me as to how the eye and other organs developed. How did the original cells know that that there were light and sound waves from which information could be gleaned if a complex structure were developed to capture it?

      Darwin either does not think about or chooses not to write about the ethical implications of his work. If we are not made in the image of God, do we have inalienable rights? Why should there be consequences if one murders another? The natural order is always engaged in a "struggle for life," and the end result is that it is leading us toward evolutionary "perfection." But what aspects of our society and behavior are evolutionary artifacts that will eventually die out and which are essential for our survival?

      I give this book 4 stars out of 5. Everyone should read it as it's a classic, definitely one of the most influential books on the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. I plan to read Michael Behe's Darwin's Black Box before the end of the year.

      On another note, I listened to this book on the freely-available audio files on Gutenberg. The text was read by a computer, each chapter alternated between a male and a female voice. This made it hard to listen to at my usual 2X speed as the cadence was a bit...unnatural...and some of the pronunciations were butchered. But I found it definitely doable.
    • 3/5
      What ages would I recommend it too? – Ten and up.

      Length? – Several days to read.

      Characters? – No.

      Setting? – Real World 1858 and previous

      Written approximately? – reprint 1958.

      Does the story leave questions in the readers mind? – Ready to read more.

      Any issues the author (or a more recent publisher) should cover? A little clean up. Wouldn't it be nice to highlight and announce new findings either for, or against, his ideas?

      Short storyline: The original "The Origin of Species" in full detail.

      Notes for the reader: In almost every chapter, he says he doesn't have room to go into detail. And yet, this is thoroughly indepth. Maybe a bit much. Some things he said almost 200 years ago have only recently been proven by science.

      For low vision readers - Not an easy read. Microscopic font on tiny pages.
    • 3/5
      In 1831, naturalist and geologist Charles Darwin joined the Beagle expedition to Tierra del Fuego. What he observed when he got to the new world would eventually lead him to formulate his theory of natural selection. Published in 1859, “On the Origin of the Species” is the controversial classic that revolutionized natural science and altered our understanding of the world.

    Book preview

    The Origin of Species - Charles Darwin

    The Origin of Species

    Charles Darwin

    with an Introduction by

    Jeff Wallace

    WORDSWORTH CLASSICS

    OF WORLD LITERATURE

    The Origin of Species first published

    by Wordsworth Editions Limited in 1998

    Published as an ePublication 2013

    ISBN 978 1 84870 478 7

    Introduction © Jeff Wallace 1998

    Wordsworth Editions Limited

    8B East Street, Ware, Hertfordshire SG12 9HJ

    Wordsworth® is a registered trademark of

    Wordsworth Editions Limited

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    MICHAEL TRAYLER

    All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publishers.

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    ANTHONY JOHN RANSON

    with love from your wife, the publisher

    Eternally grateful for your

    unconditional love

    Introduction

    Born in 1809 to Susannah, daughter of the Potteries industrial magnate Josiah Wedgwood, and Robert Darwin, wealthy Shropshire doctor and son of the colourful, free-thinking poet-scientist and physician Erasmus Darwin, Charles Robert Darwin cuts an initially unlikely figure as a revolutionary scientist. He belonged securely to the English gentry, albeit on the Whiggish, entrepreneurial and Dissenting side, and, after a relatively undistinguished career at Shrewsbury School, seemed set to follow in the paternal line when sent to Edinburgh University to study medicine. Two years later, in 1827, he was beginning a degree in divinity at Cambridge, his father having aborted his son’s diffident progress as a medic in favour of the more solid and sobering prospect of the Anglican Church. Darwin seemed at the time more attached to field sports than to his profession, and a rural ministry looked like the traditional safe haven for a drifting, privileged young gentleman. The seeds of Darwin’s true passion for natural history had, however, already been sown; in Edinburgh, as a member of the student-led Plinian Society, he was thrown into a world of radical materialist debate, and influenced in particular by Robert Grant, an evolutionist thinker and expert on marine invertebrates whom he accompanied on field trips and emulated in initial tentative observations and researches on sponges. These influences were enriched and deepened at Cambridge, where his own researches into plant and insect life were extended. He accompanied Adam Sedgwick, renowned professor of geology, on an expedition to North Wales, which cemented his own geological expertise; but most importantly, he became a close associate of the Rev. John Henslow, professor of botany, whose enthusiasm for all aspects of his work transmitted itself to Darwin. Henslow might also have stood for Darwin as a model of the Victorian clergyman-naturalist – that is, of the fertile, symbiotic relationship which could exist between the ministry of a small parish and the prosecution of one’s scientific researches. However, before Darwin could secure himself such a living, Henslow had recommended him as naturalist and companion to Captain James Fitzroy on the HMS Beagle expedition to the Southern hemisphere. The effects of the trip were to be all-consuming, in more ways than one.

    Between 1831 and 1836, Darwin’s position as naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle gave him an acquaintance with what seemed a wholly different world of nature; his scientific excursion into South American lands became a formative experience, exerting a deep and lasting influence on his imaginative envisioning of nature and decisively shaping the bold explanatory mechanism which came to fruition, over twenty years later, in The Origin of Species (1859). As he noted in the journal which became The Voyage of the ‘Beagle’ (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature, 1997): ‘How great would be the desire in every admirer of nature to behold, if such were possible, the scenery of another planet! yet to every person in Europe, it may be truly said, that at the distance of only a few degrees from his native soil, the glories of another world are opened to him.’

    In this light, readers new to the Origin, possibly the most revolutionary work of the modern scientific imagination, may be surprised at the outset to find themselves thrust into the world of mid-nineteenth century British pigeon fanciers. Darwin’s attempt to elucidate his theories to an educated but sceptical general readership begins, as it were, at home; his first chapter suggests that the actions of domestic breeders, in selecting over a number of generations the most favoured variations of their charges, can help us to understand how nature as a whole is in a state of continuous change. The reason for this opening gambit may be, pedagogically, clear: begin with the familiar. There remains, however, a sense in which the Origin begins, not with the London Pigeon Clubs, but with the primeval rainforests of Brazil and the volcanic islands of the Galapagos Archipelago. Readers thus soon find themselves continually shuttled to and fro across the distance between the ‘familiar’ and the ‘other’, the domestic and the exotic, in a text which seems to disdain the very boundary lines between such distinctions. With bewildering and unpredictable variation, we encounter the women-eating barbarians of Tierra del Fuego; the small Asiatic cockroach; the thickened stems of the common and Swedish turnip; the climbing hooks used by the trailing bamboo of the Malay Archipelago; the egg-carrying folds of skin of pedunculated cirripedes; the northern and southern downs of the Weald; the sedimented beds of the mouth of the Mississippi during the glacial period. Darwin’s task, at once scientifically central to his work and yet only to be achieved through a vivid and creative use of language, is to make strange or ‘astonishing’ the detail of the close and familiar natural world, and to bring the most extraordinary facets of the alien and unknown within the realm of common understanding. His success, in a text whose fascination is undiminished if not growing as we enter the peculiar concerns of the millenium, lies ultimately in indicating that these contrasting worlds are in fact one world. What, then, is the central theory to which this effort is dedicated?

    In its usual abbreviated title, The Origin of Species may be misleading to the modern reader. It would be more accurate, if a touch less enticing, to have named the book after the massive ongoing work of which it was a fairly hastily-written abstract: Natural Selection. For the Origin is Darwin’s explanation of his theory of natural selection. The principle underpinning this theory is that no species is immutable; all have evolved, and are continuing to evolve, over vast periods of time. This challenged the pervasive, creationist view of species as specially and separately created by Divine edict; nature, for Darwin, was a continuum, which made possible the speculation that ‘animals have descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number’, or even – though he hedged his bets here – that ‘probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed’

    Darwin was not, of course, the first to realise that things, fundamentally, change. A philosophical tradition can be traced back at least to the early Greek philosopher Heraclitus’ conception of the world in a perpetual state of flux or ‘fire’. Nor was he the first, in his own time, to put forward a ‘transformist’ or ‘transmutational’ theory from within natural history: as the ‘Historical Sketch’ added to the third edition of the Origin (and reprinted in this volume) indicates, the first half of the nineteenth century had seen the development of such a tradition of thought, and Darwin clearly saw himself within it. But his explanation of the means of change was what made the Origin unique. ‘Natural selection’ is defined as ‘the preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations’, where ‘preservation’ refers to the process by which stronger or ‘fitter’ organisms, equipped with useful variations however minute in proportion, are more likely to be able to survive and reproduce their kind than their weaker counterparts. Thus, over countless generations, species ‘change’, in the sense that those fitter entities have gradually displaced – or are continually displacing – those which are less able to generate and which therefore, in the natural course of things, become extinct. Darwin’s esteemed pigeon-fanciers follow a weaker, ‘artificial’ version of this selection process; a good breeder allows only his most perfect specimens to breed, discarding others. But ‘man can act only on external and visible characters’, whereas nature ‘can act on every internal organ, on every shade of constitutional difference, on the whole machinery of life’; the superior powers of natural selection are almost inestimable:

    It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving, and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life. We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapse of ages . . .

    The theory is held in place by a number of necessary factors. First, there is that ‘one primordial form’, the origin of ‘life’ itself, with which Darwin insisted his work had ‘nothing to do’. Then there is slowness, the ungraspable ‘lapse of time’ or what we now call ‘deep time’, through which the origin became diversified into a multiplicity of natural forms eventually embracing such organs of complexity and apparent ‘perfection’ as the human eye. In the venerable early nineteenth-century tradition of ‘natural theology’, formulated in William Paley’s work of the same name (1802) and subsequently enshrined in the variously-authored Bridgewater Treatises, phenomena such as the eye were explained by the concept of omnipotent design: they were products of God’s will unfolding in nature. Challenge came in the form of Charles Lyell’s three-volume Principles of Geology (1830–33), whose ‘uni-formitarian’ or gradualist theory of geological mutation seemed to demolish the Biblical earth-span of 6,000 years, replacing it with that ‘incomprehensibly vast’ period required for the evolution of such complex forms. Nor was it enough, claimed Darwin, simply to read Lyell and other treatises on rock formation in order to appreciate the immensity of deep evolutionary time: ‘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.’

    The process of selection was also confirmed by a consideration of what nature might look like in its absence. Essentially, more are born than can survive: on the principle of ‘geometrical increase’, if all individuals and their variously-numerous eggs and seeds could survive and reproduce unchecked, the earth would soon be overwhelmed – ‘covered’, in fact, ‘by the progeny of a single pair’, so that even the ponderous elephant, which in Darwin’s estimation produces three pairs of young in a sixty-year span, would give rise to a population of fifteen million by the end of the fifth century of its existence. To make this natural economy viable, a ‘struggle for existence’ was integral. Here, as with his pigeon fanciers, Darwin paradoxically used a ‘weak’ example from the human domain to illustrate the far stronger natural principle; in this case, controversially, the work of Thomas Malthus, whose Essay on Population (1798) insisted that human population would always exceed its means of subsistence unless subject to limiting interventions of a natural or consciously human kind. The struggle for existence was ‘the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms’ (51); with only so many places in nature to go round, natural selection in this sense could be seen to capitalise on any modification in conditions – from the introduction of a single tree in an area, to epidemic or long-term climatic change – in order to effect the necessary principle of destruction; for ‘extinction and natural selection . . . go hand in hand’.

    Finally, natural selection depends upon variation itself. For all that Darwin’s theory seems to offer an explanation of the multifarious dynamism of the living world, it nevertheless reflects only on the logical outcomes of variation, and does not, or could not, account for individual variation. To use one of the text’s own hypothetical illustrations: if a wolf, which preys on various animals through craft, strength and speed, should inhabit a region in which its swiftest prey, the deer, for some reason increases in its numbers at a time of dearth, and when other prey decrease in numbers, then we can assume that ‘the swiftest and slimmest wolves would have the best chance of surviving, and so be preserved or selected’; but what causes one wolf to be swifter and slimmer than its neighbour or, perhaps more to the point, than its parents, in the first place? As Darwin was obliged to confess, ‘our ignorance of the laws of variation’ – and, by implication, of the closely-related laws of heredity – ‘is profound’. The looming presence of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, one of his renowned transformist predecessors, is enough to indicate how far the issues of variation and heredity mattered to Darwin, and how important it was for him to wrestle with them in Chapter V of the Origin.

    In Philosophie Zoologique (1809), Lamarck had first articulated his theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Through use and habit, individual organisms could, it was claimed, not only modify their own constitutions in order to respond to the particular demands of their environment, but also pass on these improvements to their offspring. Elongated features are often those invoked to illustrate Lamarckianism, perhaps because of their direct visual appeal: the neck of the giraffe, the legs of the wading bird. Lamarck thus believed in an evolutionary gradualism which, like natural selection, undermined the fixity of species; yet his work also allowed for the spontaneous generation of new forms, and was rooted in a teleological model of aspiration and improvement which was, arguably, as metaphysical as speciesism itself. It has been argued that ‘Lamarck’s account of evolutionary process is still the popular one’. [1]

    Darwin’s notebooks of the 1840s suggest that he had little time for these aspects of Lamarck’s work, and in the ‘Laws of Variation’ chapter of the Origin we find him ranging over alternative ways of accounting for the ‘plastic condition’ of offspring: the susceptibility of the reproductive system to changes in the condition of life; or the principle of correlation of growth, whereby slight variations necessarily enact other kinds of structural change. On the other hand, returning to his pigeon fanciers, the practice of breeding under domestication leaves Darwin in ‘little doubt’ that ‘use in our domestic animals strengthens and enlarges certain parts, and disuse diminishes them; and that such modifications are inherited.’ It is intriguing to see Darwin, throughout the chapter, returning to and playing around the margins of habit and the ‘strong principles’ of inheritance; and the extent to which he leant upon variations of Lamarckianism continues to be a subject of debate amongst Darwin commentators. What remains clear is that, if natural selection is at some level predicated upon a degree of variation, however minute, between offspring and parent, then it needs to have some explanatory mechanism for the transference, and transformation, of material implicit in the process of reproduction. We would now call this mechanism ‘genetic’ – a word, and a science, which was in 1859 unavailable for Darwin to use. Following the work of Gregor Mendel, a Bohemian Augustinian monk, who laid the basis of this science in 1865 (not to find recognition until the beginning of this century), and as the day approaches when we will be able to map the hereditary template of the whole human organism, it behoves us to enrich our reading of the Origin today with our knowledge of genetics.

    In their vibrant biography, Adrian Desmond and James Moore have drawn attention to the curious pathology attending Darwin’s adult life. As he began, post-Beagle, to work through his reflections on transmutation, he was beset by migraines, which left him ‘writhing on his sick bed, fearing persecution’; in the end, ‘a third of his working life was spent doubled up, trembling, vomiting, and dowsing himself in icy water’. The inner turmoil and conflicts which accompanied the growing recognition of how far his ideas were at odds with orthodox Christian doctrine are evident in the progress towards the Origin itself. Having begun the Transmutation notebooks in 1837, Darwin had by 1844 completed two versions of a preliminary sketch. Neither, however, saw the light of day, and he pressed on with the publication of decidedly less controversial research, such as his work on the structure and location of coral reefs, and on barnacles, whilst fermenting in secret, or in close correspondence, his more incendiary theoretical reflections. The notebooks and letters of this period are punctuated with fears and admissions: he feels he has devoted his life to a ‘phantasy’, that it is like confessing a ‘murder’; ‘oh you Materialist’, he mockingly berates himself. By the 1850s, the research has turned into a massive ongoing book, Natural Selection, defensively amassing its evidence with such painstaking slowness that entry into the public domain must have seemed a distant possibility. But, famously, Darwin’s hand was forced, his reticence broken, by events outside himself.

    Alfred Russell Wallace, a young socialist naturalist collecting and researching in the Malay Archipelago, had been communicating with Darwin, and sending him specimens. He had also sketched out his own theories of the evolutionary mechanism, which Darwin, recognizing their similarity to his own, had complacently encouraged Wallace to develop. On 18 June 1858, a twenty-page letter arrived from Wallace, containing – in effect – an outline of the theory of natural selection. Incapable of acting dishonourably, Darwin proposed to help gain due public recognition for Wallace’s work, while having to confront the painful truth that his own dilatory perfectionism had led to him being upstaged. In consultation with Charles Lyell and the botanist Joseph Hooker, a delicate compromise was reached: Wallace’s letter and relevant extracts from Darwin’s work were read together at a meeting of the Linnean Society in London on 1 July 1858. Darwin’s absence was due to the death of his infant son, Charles, from scarlet fever. Yet, at this traumatic time, it was evident that he needed now to publish his work, and with haste. Between a family vacation on the Isle of Wight, rest and hydropathy treatment at Moor Park in Surrey, and home, Darwin wrote the Origin within the space of ten months, and mostly from memory. The book was published by John Murray in November 1859, and sold out so quickly that a second edition was immediately planned.

    Darwin’s own characterisation of his text as ‘one long argument’ confirms our experience of it as a multi-hued, multi-layered piece of writing – always meticulous, sometimes dull, but more often vivid and impassioned in its techniques of rhetorical persuasion. Aware of the myriad ‘difficulties’ in proving his theory – the apparent absence of transitional forms in nature, or the incompleteness of the geological record, to name but two of the most substantial – it sometimes seems that Darwin is more interested in declaring obstacles than in removing them. The Origin argues with itself, or rather with an imaginary interlocutor – ‘he who believes in separate and innumerable acts of creation’ – who is always on hand to put the necessary, creationist counter-argument. Yet the appearance of such unimpeachable honesty is, of course, always likely to impress the reader in Darwin’s favour. Moreover, when the creationist interlocutor is faced with explaining the persistence of evolved but obsolete characteristics on the principles of design, such as the webbed feet of upland geese, or the woodpecker which lives on the treeless plains of La Plata, we realise how that particular rhetorical strategy can work to Darwin’s advantage.

    The recent work of Gillian Beer on Darwin underlines the point that the scientist is in some crucial respects as dependent upon language as any other producer of knowledge. [3] Language embodies knowledge, and knowledge is power; but language is also a notoriously slippery and treacherous medium, always threatening to signify more, or less, or simply something other than that which we are struggling to say. Even ‘natural selection’ itself is a case in point, as this key quotation again illustrates:

    It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving, and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.

    Linguistically, ‘selection’ implies an element of conscious choice; someone or something has to do the selecting, especially when the process combines with verbs such as ‘scrutinising’, ‘rejecting’, ‘preserving’, ‘adding up’ and ‘working’. Were it not for the easy-to-miss term ‘insensibly’, or the slightly constraining ‘It may be said that’, the reader could be forgiven for assuming that Darwin in this passage wished to attribute a creative Design to the process, even though the whole drift of his work was to deny such metaphysical intervention. Moreover, at this point in Darwin’s prose, ‘natural selection’ emerges seamlessly from a more familiar way of speaking about ‘nature’s’ agency; that is, from the gendered discourse in which nature is the feminine, nurturing mother, who ‘selects’ only for the good of ‘the being which she tends’ (my emphasis): ‘Every selected character is fully exercised by her; and the being is placed under well-suited conditions of life’.

    Can we conclude here that Darwin was not fully in control of the language he was using ? Or, that the elements of agency in ‘selection’ and ‘nature’ helped him to assuage the orthodox reader whilst sneaking his real theories in under their cover ? The reality was more likely a complex fusion of the two, proceeding from the fact that language inevitably presents the world in anthropomorphic, or human-centred, terms. ‘I should premise,’ he insists at one point, ‘that I use the term Struggle for Existence in a large and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny’. Like ‘natural selection’, ‘struggle for existence’ is a metaphor; it is as if nature selects, or as if every creature perpetually struggles for its livelihood. Patterns of mutual dependence, and the operation of ‘struggle’ at a far more abstract level than simply the competition of two particular animals for a piece of territory, considerably modify the meaning of the metaphor. However, it was precisely that ‘large and metaphorical’ sense which made the Origin ripe for the kind of misunderstanding or creative appropriation that Darwin, in the five revised editions which followed the one we reproduce here, sought to limit and control. [4]

    Today, ‘Darwinism’ and ‘Darwinian’ have entered into our common vocabulary. To read the Origin is therefore to grasp an opportunity to estimate how closely that common understanding relates to its supposed source. For it may be that the mark of any great theory is found as much in the extent of its abuse as in its use; and there is much in ‘Darwinism’ and ‘Darwinian’ that we may not easily find in Darwin. Take, for example, this articulation of the general ‘Darwinian’ principle

    that natural selection is continually trying to economise in every part of the organisation. If under changed conditions of life a structure before useful becomes less useful, any diminution, however slight, in its development, will be seized on by natural selection, for it will profit the individual not to have its nutriment wasted in building up an useless structure.

    Thus decontextualised, it would be easy to read ‘organisation’ here in our habitual sense of a commercial company, even though the corporate body in question is an ‘individual’ life. In a very fundamental sense, the Origin is a work of economics, of nature-as-economy; and our recent history, embracing the rise of free-market neo-liberalism in the 1980s and, after the collapse of Soviet state communism, the apparently widespread acceptance of capitalist economic relations, can dispose us to read the text as if it were a confirmation that this particular socio-economic order is more ‘natural’ than others. Without suggesting that the language of the Origin has been the language of the modern boardroom, it seems undeniable that the tropes of new right managerialism – the streamlining and rationalising, in order to create leaner and fitter organisations capable of competing in a ruthless business world in which the strongest survive and the weakest go to the wall – have taken their colouring from a natural selection which ‘will always succeed in the long run in reducing and saving every part of the organisation, as soon as it is rendered superfluous’. What might not any business give for a touch of what Darwin called ‘the most wonderful of all known instincts’, that of the hive-bee?

    . . . natural selection having by slow degrees, more and more perfectly, led the bees to sweep equal spheres at a given distance from each other in a double layer, and to build up and excavate the wax along the planes of intersection. The bees, of course, no more knowing that they swept their spheres at one particular distance from each other, than they know what are the several angles of the hexagonal prisms and of the basal rhombic plates. The motive power of the process of natural selection having been the economy of wax; that individual swarm which wasted least honey in the secretion of the wax, having succeeded best, and having transmitted by inheritance its newly acquired economical instinct to new swarms, which in their turn will have had the best chance of succeeding in the struggle for existence.

    At stake here is of course the legitimacy of drawing, with such ease, parallels between the natural and the human world. Was not Darwin a naturalist? Can’t we therefore leave his science alone, resisting the temptation to map his theories onto human behaviour, whether individual or social? By the end of the nineteenth century, it had become clear that the answer to these questions was a complex negative. ‘Social Darwinism’ infiltrated and informed the development of new human sciences such as anthropology, proposing an evolutionary, hierarchical and conflictual model of the development of racial ‘types’ which went hand-in-hand with the rise of nation-states and the necessity of imperial expansion. Francis Galton’s work on hereditary intelligence, sparked by his reading of the Origin, gave rise to the movement of eugenics or ‘racial hygiene’, based on a principle of socio-biological engineering by which the weak (read ‘poor’, working class or racially ‘inferior’) are discouraged from reproduction while the strong (read prosperous and powerful) are encouraged. [5] After achieving some small measure of influence in British politics in the years leading up to the First World War, eugenics in a scientific sense seemed to fall into universal discredit. Yet world history in the twentieth century bears the terrible marks issuing from theories of racial superiority, and the principles of eugenics seem continually to haunt our most advanced scientific research. The progress of the Human Genome project has already been punctuated by anxious discussion about the potential for eugenic manipulation, and will undoubtedly elicit more such debate before its completion in the relatively near future.

    In this light, the argument that Darwin was ‘much too humane a man’ to endorse Social Darwinist appropriations of his name and work is, whilst probably true, almost beside the point: [6] a text as fertile in metaphor and suggestion as the Origin could never be tied down to its author’s essentially humanitarian intentions. Moreover, the appropriateness of the Origin to the free-market capitalism of our immediate past acts as a reminder that, for some, natural selection was itself a product of such historical vectors in their time and place of initial ascendancy: that is, of mid-Victorian Britain. On this view, Darwin’s science is an instance of a supremely confident bourgeoisie, at the helm of the world’s first industrial nation, and seeing in nature an image of its own thrift and ceaseless energy; natural selection is as much an expression of bourgeois, liberal capitalism, as it is a tool to be used by such an ideology. Recalling the Darwin family’s close associations with the Wedgwoods, the appropriateness of Malthus to Darwin’s developing work may seem little cause for surprise. It also looks like an eloquent coincidence that accompanying the Origin on Murray’s 1859 list was that landmark of individualistic entrepreneurialism, Samuel Smiles’s Self Help.

    Yet, if politics is at issue, the Origin can be seen to point, equally, in another direction. In Paraguay, a ‘certain fly’, which lays its eggs in the navels of wild horses, cattle and dogs, is more numerous than the insectivorous birds which prey upon it, and which in their turn are preyed upon by hawks and other hunters; if the fly were to decrease in numbers, the horses, cattle and dogs would increase, which would alter the vegetation, which would in turn affect insects, and the insectivorous birds, and so on ‘in ever-increasing circles of complexity’. In England, cats hunt mice, and field-mice destroy the combs and nests of humble-bees, which are the only bees capable of fertilising the common red clover; hence, ‘it is quite credible that the presence of a feline animal in large numbers in a district might determine, through the intervention first of mice and then of bees, the frequency of certain flowers in that district!’. This may be ‘the great battle of life’; but it is also a demonstration of that ‘web of complex relations’ which binds together ‘plants and animals, most remote in the scale of nature’ – in other words, of the ‘mutual relations of all organic beings’, so profound in their reach that the very structure of each being is a function of ‘all other organic beings, with which it comes into competition for food or residence, or from which it has to escape, or on which it preys’.

    The Origin is never more striking than in these moments of reflection upon the extraordinary interdependencies which characterise ecosystems. We are reminded also that the ecological groundwork of the text, laid on the Beagle voyage, lies in the domain of biogeography, the study of the spatial distribution of life forms. [7] As Darwin explains in the Origin’s opening statement, ‘certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America’ had puzzled and preoccupied him throughout the voyage. Chapters XI and XII elaborate on the problems. The sea creatures of the east and west coasts of South and Central America were almost totally distinct, despite being separated only by the narrow isthmus of Panama; conversely, plants inhabiting the mountain peaks of America and Europe could be identical. There seemed to be no easy way of accounting for, on the one hand, the vast differences between living forms inhabiting very similar climates or latitudes in close proximity, and, on the other, the relative similarities between forms living in different continents.

    The concept which unlocks these enigmas is migration. Organic communities or ecosystems have more or less permeable boundaries, either allowing or restricting immigration and emigration. We glimpse here another fascinating niche of Darwinian research: that into the means by which seeds might be dispersed across oceans. Some readers might decide to skip Darwin’s statistical conclusions (Joseph Hooker’s children teased him about the unreadability of these sections); yet there is a compelling mixture of the mundane and the lyrical in his account of earth adhering to the feet of birds – ‘in one instance I removed twenty-two grains of dry argillaceous earth from one foot of a partridge, and in this earth there was a pebble quite as large as the seed of a vetch’ – and in his invitation to ‘reflect for a moment on the millions of quails which annually cross the Mediterranean; and can we doubt that the earth adhering to their feet would sometimes include a few minute seeds?’. Alternating with this mode of analysis, migration also requires an understanding of geological processes occurring through climatic changes over vast periods of time. From seeds in the feet of birds, therefore, Darwin’s perspective moves within a few pages to the Glacial Period, and the shifting locations of arctic and temperate beings as they respond to cooling and warming, resulting in the curious isolation of some in distant but parallel locations.

    The point of such painstaking work on migration was this: however unimaginably complex are the forces at work within a natural economy, that community is always a closed physical system. Convenient though it might sometimes seem to posit the special or metaphysical creation of the same species at different points on the globe, there is always an adequate physical explanation, if we are prepared to look hard enough, just as natural selection is always an adequate explanation of the complexity of any living organism. Darwin sets about his task of re-educating our vision, of helping us to see afresh the world in all its complex mutual interrelatedness, with the firm if paradoxical belief that reason ought to ‘conquer’ imagination – a version, undoubtedly, of the old maxim that truth is stranger and more wondrous than fiction. By implication if not by explicit statement, then, his is a godless universe, in which the checks and balances of the natural economy are indeed all we have; the concept of the ‘Creator’ as it appears in the Origin is clearly under as much semantic strain as the undermining of it caused physical strain to Darwin himself. But there are versions or interpretations of this economy: the ruthless competitive struggle; the mutually-interdependent community. [8] Eschewing any possibility of divine intervention, any complacently benign or sentimentalised mediation, Darwin nevertheless believed that change for the good was possible, and that it could be found in the very source of evolutionary theory itself – human intelligence.

    The great deafening silence or structuring absence in The Origin of Species is the human animal. Readers will look in vain for speculations on our descent from the apes; the credit for the extension of the natural selection debate into such controversies should in the first instance go to Darwin’s fiery colleague and disciple, T. H. Huxley. Darwin allowed himself to foresee a ‘considerable revolution in natural history’ as a result of the Origin’s publication, with a boldness still somewhat arresting in relation to the text as a whole; but that ‘Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history’ remained the only direct reference to humanity. Then again, this was scarcely needed: the public furore which immediately surrounded the Origin showed that evolutionary debate was always a debate about human origins. The recent work of the historian Alfred W. Crosby has also suggested how far Darwin’s perceptions of the natural world on the Beagle voyage would have been inseparable from an awareness of human intervention. [9] Crosby’s thesis is that European imperialism of the nineteenth century had a crucial biological dimension as well as political, economic and cultural; human colonisation involved, whether by chance or design, the importation of flora and fauna from the Old World to the New. Such forms invariably prevailed over their indigenous competitors, effecting a subtle and fundamental means of making over the colonised in the image of their masters, and thereby facilitating the order and control essential for imperial hegemony. ‘From the extraordinary manner in which European productions have recently spread over New Zealand,’ writes Darwin in the Origin, ‘and have seized on places which must have been previously occupied, we may believe, if all the animals and plants of Great Britain were set free in New Zealand, that in the course of time a multitude of British forms would become thoroughly naturalised there, and would exterminate many of the natives.’

    Darwin could not have remained indifferent to the deep interlinking of biological and political imperialism in his time. In many ways committed to, and a product of, the Western bourgeois enlightenment, he nevertheless knew, from first-hand experience, that the sustainability of a rich diversity of life on earth was incompatible with a project which sought to use its knowledge and power to dominate and subdue. ‘Man’s place in nature’, the keynote of much educated debate in the late nineteenth century, was indeed crucial; the endowments of language and high in-telligence, through which a godlike power to intervene and design seemed possible, nevertheless did not divorce humans from the natural world: they remained an elaborate accident of its complex evolution, a part of its continuum. At our present juncture, when the importance of contesting imperialistic attitudes to nature seems ever more urgent, and as we attempt to take stock of the economic and political imperatives of our immediate past, The Origin of Species, with its passionate and intense sympathies, open and in-clusive approach to all phenomena, and its seemingly inexhaustible range of applications and concerns, provides a model of the ecological knowledge we continue to need.

    Jeff Wallace

    University of Glamorgan

    Notes to the Introduction

    1 Gillian Beer, Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction, p. 25, Ark, London 1985.

    2 Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin, p. xviii, Michael Joseph, London 1991.

    3 See e.g. Beer, Darwin’s Plots, and Open Fields: Science in Cultural Encounter, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1996.

    4 See Robert Young, Darwin’s Metaphor: Nature’s place in Victorian culture, Cambridge University Press, 1985; especially chapter 4, ‘Darwin’s metaphor: does nature select?’

    5 See e.g. Francis Galton, Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into its Laws and Consequences, Julian Friedmann Publishers, London 1979; Frank Mort, ‘Health and Hygiene: The Edwardian State and Medico-Moral Politics’, in eds Jane Beckett and Deborah Cherry, The Edwardian Era, pp. 26–33, Phaidon Press and Barbican Art Gallery, Oxford and London 1987.

    6 Raymond Williams, ‘Social Darwinism’, in Problems in Materialism and Culture: Selected Essays, p. 89, Verso, London 1980.

    7 See e.g. Michael Ghiselin, The Triumph of the Darwinian Method, Chapter 2, ‘Biogeography and Evolution’, University of Chicago Press, 1984.

    8 For an example of a strong critique of the capitalist appropriation of natural selection, proposing instead that e.g. ‘sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle’, see the key work of the Russian anarchist writer, Petr Kropotkin: Mutual Aid: A Factor in Evolution, 1914 (reprinted by Porter Sargent Publishers Inc., Boston, Mass.).

    9 Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900, Cambridge University Press, 1986.

    Further Reading

    David Amigoni and Jeff Wallace (eds), Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays, Manchester University Press, 1995

    Gillian Beer, Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Ark, London 1985

    Alfred Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900, Cambridge University Press, 1986

    Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin, Michael Joseph, London 1991

    Michael T. Ghiselin, The Triumph of the Darwinian Method, University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London 1984

    Stephen Jay Gould, Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time, Penguin, Harmondsworth 1990

    Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native

    Steve Jones, The Language of the Genes: Biology, History and the Evolutionary Future, Flamingo, London 1994

    Ernst Mayr, One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought, Penguin, Harmondsworth 1993

    Cynthia Eagle Russett, Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood, Harvard University Press, 1989

    Note on the Text

    The text reprinted here is the first (November 1859) edition, fully entitled On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Darwin produced five revised editions, the sixth and final edition being published in February 1872. The first edition has been chosen for its clarity and directness, as well as for its historical significance – Darwin’s first attempt at explaining his theory to the world at large. Subsequent editions incorporated responses to various criticisms, and across the fourth, fifth and sixth editions, the text became much expanded. These later editions include detailed responses to specific critiques, and could thus be said to be less clearly orientated towards the general reader; commentators also seem largely to agree that they are neither so elegant nor so attractive as the first edition. However, Darwin did add two apparatuses of great value to the general reader, which are reproduced here: the ‘Historical Sketch of the Progress of Opinion on the Origin of Species’ (added to the third edition, April 1861), which attempted to place the text within a prior tradition of evolutionary thought; and the Glossary, added to the sixth edition, which was also the first edition to be re-set and re-priced for a popular market.

    For the most part we have followed Darwin’s capitalisation, spelling and punctuation. A few minor alterations have been made in the interests of clarity.

    The Origin of Species

    Author’s Introduction

    When on board HMS Beagle, as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts seemed to me to throw some light on the origin of species – that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers. On my return home, it occurred to me, in 1837, that something might perhaps be made out on this question by patiently accumulating and reflecting on all sorts of facts which could possibly have any bearing on it. After five years’ work I allowed myself to speculate on the subject, and drew up some short notes; these I enlarged in 1844 into a sketch of the conclusions, which then seemed to me probable: from that period to the present day I have steadily pursued the same object. I hope that I may be excused for entering on these personal details, as I give them to show that I have not been hasty in coming to a decision.

    My work is now nearly finished; but as it will take me two or three more years to complete it, and as my health is far from strong, I have been urged to publish this Abstract. I have more especially been induced to do this, as Mr Wallace, who is now studying the natural history of the Malay archipelago, has arrived at almost exactly the same general conclusions that I have on the origin of species. Last year he sent to me a memoir on this subject, with a request that I would forward it to Sir Charles Lyell, who sent it to the Linnean Society, and it is published in the third volume of the Journal of that Society. Sir C. Lyell and Dr Hooker, who both knew of my work – the latter having read my sketch of 1844 – honoured me by thinking it advisable to publish, with Mr Wallace’s excellent memoir, some brief extracts from my manuscripts.

    This Abstract, which I now publish, must necessarily be imperfect. I cannot here give references and authorities for my several statements; and I must trust to the reader reposing some confidence in my accuracy. No doubt errors will have crept in, though I hope I have always been cautious in trusting to good authorities alone. I can here give only the general conclusions at which I have arrived, with a few facts in illustration, but which, I hope, in most cases will suffice. No one can feel more sensible than I do of the necessity of hereafter publishing in detail all the facts, with references, on which my conclusions have been grounded; and I hope in a future work to do this. For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question; and this cannot possibly be here done.

    I much regret that want of space prevents my having the satisfaction of acknowledging the generous assistance which I have received from very many naturalists, some of them personally unknown to me. I cannot, however, let this opportunity pass without expressing my deep obligations to Dr Hooker, who for the last fifteen years has aided me in every possible way by his large stores of knowledge and his excellent judgment.

    In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist, reflecting on the mutual affinities of organic beings, on their embryological relations, their geographical distribution, geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the conclusion that each species had not been independently created, but had descended, like varieties, from other species. Nevertheless, such a conclusion, even if well founded, would be unsatisfactory, until it could be shown how the innumerable species inhabiting this world have been modified, so as to acquire that perfection of structure and coadaptation which most justly excites our admiration. Naturalists continually refer to external conditions, such as climate, food, etc., as the only possible cause of variation. In one very limited sense, as we shall hereafter see, this may be true; but it is preposterous to attribute to mere external conditions, the structure, for instance, of the woodpecker, with its feet, tail, beak, and tongue, so admirably adapted to catch insects under the bark of trees. In the case of the mistletoe, which draws its nourishment from certain trees, which has seeds that must be transported by certain birds, and which has flowers with separate sexes absolutely requiring the agency of certain insects to bring pollen from one flower to the other, it is equally preposterous to account for the structure of this parasite, with its relations to several distinct organic beings, by the effects of external conditions, or of habit, or of the volition of the plant itself.

    The author of Vestiges of Creation would, I presume, say that, after a certain unknown number of generations, some bird had given birth to a woodpecker, and some plant to the mistletoe, and that these had been produced perfect as we now see them; but this assumption seems to me to be no explanation, for it leaves the case of the coadaptations of organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life, untouched and unexplained.

    It is, therefore, of the highest importance to gain a clear insight into the means of modification and coadaptation. At the commencement of my observations it seemed to me probable that a careful study of domesticated animals and of cultivated plants would offer the best chance of making out this obscure problem. Nor have I been disappointed; in this and in all other perplexing cases I have invariably found that our knowledge, imperfect though it be, of variation under domestication, afforded the best and safest clue. I may venture to express my conviction of the high value of such studies, although they have been very commonly neglected by naturalists.

    From these considerations, I shall devote the first chapter of this Abstract to Variation under Domestication. We shall thus see that a large amount of hereditary modification is at least possible; and, what is equally or more important, we shall see how great is the power of man in accumulating by his Selection successive slight variations. I will then pass on to the variability of species in a state of nature; but I shall, unfortunately, be compelled to treat this subject far too briefly, as it can be treated properly only by giving long catalogues of facts. We shall, however, be enabled to discuss what circumstances are most favourable to variation. In the next chapter the Struggle for Existence amongst all organic beings throughout the world, which inevitably follows from their high geometrical powers of increase, will be treated of. This is the doctrine of Malthus, applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms. As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.

    This fundamental subject of Natural Selection will be treated at some length in the fourth chapter; and we shall then see how Natural Selection almost inevitably causes much Extinction of the less improved forms of life, and induces what I have called Divergence of Character. In the next chapter I shall discuss the complex and little known laws of variation and of correlation of growth. In the four succeeding chapters, the most apparent and gravest difficulties on the theory will be given: namely,

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