RECORD: Darwin, C. R. [1858.10.23-11.13]. Draft of Origin of species, Sect. VI, folio 226. UCL-PEARSON-10.2. Edited by John van Wyhe (Darwin Online, http://darwin-online.org.uk/)
REVISION HISTORY: Transcribed and edited by John van Wyhe. RN2
NOTE: See record in the Darwin Online manuscript catalogue, enter its Identifier here. Reproduced with permission of University College London and William Huxley Darwin. Written on the back of the mount: "The holograph was given to Karl Pearson by Charles Darwin's daughter Mrs Litchfield, August, 1923. (She was in contact with Karl Pearson when he was writing his Life, letters and Labours of Francis Galton) and to the Department of Statistics, University College London by Karl Pearson's son, Egon Sharpe Pearson November 1967". R. B. Freeman described this as a fair copy, as oppossed to a rough draft, "because it corresponds closely, with minor changes in proof, to the printed text." Darwin and Gower Street: an exhibition in the Flaxman Gallery of the Library, University College London, Monday 19 April 1982. London: UCL. A2955 PDF
See the introduction to the Origin of species drafts by John van Wyhe
The text of the draft corresponds to Origin, Chapter VI, Difficulties on theory, p. 203.
[226]
(226
Sect VI What selection can do
undoubtedly this is for the good of the community; & maternal love or maternal hatred, though fortunately most rare, is all the same to the inexorable principle of natural selection. If we admire the admirable most ingenious contrivances by which the orchis or & asclepias & many other flowers are fertilised through insect-agency; can we consider as equally perfect in our coniferous trees, if the elaboration of dense clouds of pollen by our fir-trees in order that a few granules may be wafted by a chance breeze on to the ovules?
Summary of chapter.— We have in this chapter considered some of the difficulties & objections which may most properly be urged against our theory. Many of them are most very grave; but I think that, here & there, light has been thrown on large classes of facts, which, on the theory of [illeg] separate acts of creation, are utterly obscure. We have seen that species are not now infinitely variable & are not linked together by an infinitude a multitude of intermediate gradations, partly because the process of natural selection must be very slow & will act at any one time only on a very few forms;
[226v]
[blank]
Citation: John van Wyhe, ed. 2002-. The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. (http://darwin-online.org.uk/)
File last updated 24 November, 2023