Charles Darwin — "I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is pres…"
I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection.
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More from Charles Darwin
"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change."
"What a book a Devil's Chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horridly cruel works of nature!"
"We are not to be discouraged by the smallness of the means, but to remember that the greatest results are often produced by the accumulation of small effects."
"Great is the power of steady misrepresentation."
"He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than Locke."
About Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
British naturalist whose On the Origin of Species (1859) established evolution by natural selection — the unifying theory of modern biology. Closely associated with Thomas Henry Huxley (his 'bulldog' public defender) and Alfred Russel Wallace (independent co-discoverer of natural selection). For an intellectual contrast, see William Paley, Anglican theologian and Natural Theology author (1743-1805) — Origin of Species is structurally a 400-page reply to Paley — Darwin admired Paley's watchmaker-argument as an undergraduate at Cambridge and then spent 20 years building the empirical machinery to displace him. The cleanest 'design argument vs natural selection' founding rebuttal in science.
The standard scholarly entry points to Charles Darwin's work: Janet Browne (Harvard, history of science) — Charles Darwin: Voyaging (1995) and The Power of Place (2002); Adrian Desmond (UCL, biographer) — Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist (1991, with James Moore). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Charles Darwin.
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Each small, beneficial change in a living organism gets passed on because it helps survival and reproduction. Over generations, these tiny advantages accumulate, gradually transforming species. Darwin named this mechanism Natural Selection — nature itself acting as the selector, favoring traits that improve an organism's chances of surviving and leaving offspring, without any conscious intent or divine direction guiding the process.
Relevance to Charles Darwin
Darwin spent over two decades refining this concept after his Beagle voyage observations. His meticulous breeding experiments with pigeons and barnacle studies gave him confidence to name and defend this mechanism. The careful phrasing — 'I have called this principle' — reflects his characteristic precision and ownership of an idea he knew would overturn centuries of fixed-species thinking.
The era
Published in On the Origin of Species in 1859, this statement entered a world where natural theology dominated biology. Most educated Victorians believed species were divinely created and immutable. Darwin's naming of Natural Selection provided a materialist, testable mechanism for change that directly challenged religious orthodoxy, sparking fierce debate among clergy, scientists, and the public throughout the latter half of the 19th century.
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