plain expression of the _fact_; "Natural Selection" is a metaphorical expression of it, and to a certain degree _indirect_ and _incorrect_, since, even personifying Nature, she does not so much select special variations as exterminate the most unfavourable ones. Combined with the enormous multiplying powers of all organisms, and the "struggle for existence," leading to the constant destruction of by far the largest proportion--facts which no one of your opponents, as far as I am aware, has denied or misunderstood--"the survival of the fittest," rather than of those which were less fit, could not possibly be denied or misunderstood. Neither would it be possible to say that to ensure the "survival of the fittest" any _intelligent chooser_ was necessary, whereas when you say "Natural Selection" acts so as to choose those that are fittest it _is_ misunderstood, and apparently always will be. Referring to your book, I find such expressions as "Man selects only for his own good; Nature only for that of the being which she tends." This, it seems, will always be misunderstood; but if you had said, "Man selects only for his own good; Nature, by the inevitable survival of the fittest, only for that of the being she tends," it would have been less liable to be so. I find you use the term Natural Selection in two senses--(1) for the simple preservation of favourable and rejection of unfavourable variations, in which case it is equivalent to "survival of the fittest"; (2) for the _effect or change_ produced by this preservation, as when you say, "To sum up the circumstances favourable or unfavourable to natural selection," and, again, "Isolation, also, is an important element in the process of natural selection": here it is not merely "survival of the fittest," but _change_ produced by survival of the fittest, that is meant. On looking over your fourth chapter, I find that these alterations of terms can be in most cases easily made, while in some cases the addition of "or survival of the fittest" after "natural selection" would be best; and in others, less likely to be misunderstood, the original term might stand alone. I could not venture to propose to any other person so great an alteration of terms, but you, I am sure, will give it an impartial consideration, and, if you really think the change will produce a better understanding of your work, will not hesitate to adopt it. It is evidently also necessary not to personify "nature" too much, though I am very apt to do it myself, since people will not understand that all such phrases are metaphors. Natural Selection is, when understood, so necessary and self-evident a principle that it is a pity it should be in any way obscured; and it therefore occurs to me that the free use of "survival of the fittest", which is a compact and accurate definition of it, would tend much to its being more widely accepted and prevent its being so much misrepresented and misunderstood.