“Darwinism”

Abstract

WHAT my “laborious essay” “distinctly professes to be” is, as its title-page announces, “an additional suggestion on the origin of species”; and this additional suggestion is forthwith stated to be that of “another factor in the formation of species, which, although quite independent of natural selection, is in no way opposed to natural selection, and may therefore be regarded as a factor supplementary to natural selection.” This passage occurs in the most conspicuous part of the paper, viz. at the close of the introduction. In the next most conspicuous part—viz., at the close of the paper itself—it is said, “Without natural selection, physiological selection would be powerless to create any differences of specific type, other than those of mutual sterility, and trivial details of structure, form, and colour.”