This preservation of favourable individual differences and
variations, and the destruction of those which are injurious, I have called
Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest. Variations neither
useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection, and would
be left either a fluctuating element, as perhaps we see in certain
polymorphic species, or would ultimately become fixed, owing to the nature
of the organism and the nature of the conditions.
Several writers have misapprehended or objected to the term Natural
Selection. Some have even imagined that natural selection induces
variability, whereas it implies only the preservation of such variations as
arise and are beneficial to the being under its conditions of life. No one
objects to agriculturists speaking of the potent effects of man's
selection; and in this case the individual differences given by nature,
which man for some object selects, must of necessity first occur. Others
have objected that the term selection implies conscious choice in the
animals which become modified; and it has even been urged that, as plants
have no volition, natural selection is not applicable to them! In the
literal sense of the word, no doubt, natural selection is a false term; but
who ever objected to chemists speaking of the elective affinities of the
various elements?--and yet an acid cannot strictly be said to elect the
base with which it in preference combines.
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