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I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection.

Charles Darwin

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Charles Darwin
Age: 73 †
Born: 1809
Born: February 12
Died: 1882
Died: April 19
Beekeeper
Botanist
Carcinologist
Entomologist
Ethologist
Explorer
Geologist
Naturalist
Philosopher
Travel Writer
The Mount
Shrewsbury
Charles Robert Darwin
Charles R. Darwin
Darwin
Principles
Preserved
Called
Slight
Term
Variation
Natural
Selection
Inspirational
Useful
Principle
Evolution
Hair

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It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds, which follows from the advance of science.
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It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant.
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We will now discuss in a little more detail the Struggle for Existence.
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...one doubts existence of free will [because] every action determined by heredity, constitution, example of others or teaching of others. This view should teach one profound humility, one deserves no credit for anything...nor ought one to blame others.
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A language, like a species, when extinct, never... reappears.
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Delight itself, however, is a weak term to express the feelings of a naturalist.
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You will be astonished to find how the whole mental disposition of your children changes with advancing years. A young child and the same when nearly grown, sometimes differ almost as much as do a caterpillar and butterfly.
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Till facts are grouped & called there can be no prediction. The only advantage of discovering laws is to foretell what will happen & to see bearing of scattered facts.
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Your words have come true with a vengeance that I shd [should] be forestalled ... I never saw a more striking coincidence. If Wallace had my M.S. sketch written out in 1842 he could not have made a better short abstract! Even his terms now stand as Heads of my Chapters.
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The season of love is that of battle. The roots of these fights run deep.
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The assumed instinctive belief in God has been used by many persons as an argument for his existence. But this is a rash argument, as we should thus be compelled to believe in the existence of many cruel and malignant spirits, only a little more powerful than man for the belief in them is far more general than in a beneficent deity.
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We thus learn that man is descended from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits, and an inhabitant of the Old World.
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On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created, we gain no scientific explanation.
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Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, ... I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the main but not exclusive means of modification.
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To my deep mortification my father once said to me, You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family.
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It is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.
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It has sometimes been said that the success of the Origin proved that the subject was in the air, or that men's minds were prepared for it. I do not think that this is strictly true, for I occasionally sounded not a few naturalists, and never happened to come across a single one who seemed to doubt about the permanence of species.
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But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created that a cat should play with mice.
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This preservation of favourable variations and the destruction of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest. Variations neither useful nor injurious would not be affected by natural selection and would be left a fluctuating element.
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