Now, these passages show a very much clearer perception of the all-important distinction between monotypic and polytypic evolution than any which occur in the _Origin of Species_; and they likewise show that he was led to this perception through what he supposed to be a somewhat analogous distinction between "unconscious" and "methodical" selection by man. The analogy, I need hardly say, is radically unsound; and it is a curious result of its unsoundness that, whereas in the _Origin of Species_ it is adduced to illustrate the process of polytypic evolution, as previously remarked, in the letters above quoted we find it adduced to illustrate the process of monotypic evolution. But the fact of this analogy being unsound does not affect the validity of the distinction between monotypic and polytypic evolution to which it led Darwin, in his later years, so clearly to express[33]. [33] The analogy is radically unsound because unconscious selection differs from methodical selection only in the _degree_ of "separation" which it effects. These two forms of selection do not necessarily differ from one another in regard to the _number_ of characters which are being simultaneously diversified; for while it may be the object of methodical selection to breed for modification of a single character alone, it may, on the other hand, be the result of unconscious selection to diversify an originally uniform stock, as Darwin himself observes with regard to horse-breeding. The real distinction between monotypic and polytypic evolution is, not at all with reference to the _degree_ of isolation (i. e. _amount_ of "separation"), but to the _number of cases_ in which any efficient degree of it occurs (i. e. whether in but a single case, or in two or more cases). Turning next to the second point which we have to notice, it is easy to show that in the earlier editions of his works Darwin did not sufficiently recognize the levelling effects of free intercrossing, and consequently failed to perceive the importance of isolation (in any of its forms) as a factor of organic evolution. This may be most briefly shown by quoting his own more matured opinion upon the subject. Thus, with reference to the swamping effects of intercrossing, he wrote to Mr. Wallace in 1867 as follows:--