Transcriber’s Note: Sidenotes are shown enclosed in square brackets, above the paragraphs to which they apply. Italic text is enclosed in _underscores_. DARWINISM STATED BY DARWIN HIMSELF. _CHARACTERISTIC PASSAGES FROM THE WRITINGS OF CHARLES DARWIN._ SELECTED AND ARRANGED BY NATHAN SHEPPARD, AUTHOR OF “SHUT UP IN PARIS,” EDITOR OF “THE DICKENS READER,” “CHARACTER READINGS FROM GEORGE ELIOT,” AND “GEORGE ELIOT’S ESSAYS.” “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, while this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.”--_The Origin of Species_, page 429. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 1, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET. 1884. COPYRIGHT, 1884, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY. PREFACE. While these selections can not but be useful to those who are perfectly familiar with the writings of Darwin, they are designed especially for those who know little, or nothing, about his line of research and argument, and yet would like to obtain a general idea of it in a form which shall be at once authentic, brief, and inexpensive. This volume contains, of course, only an outline of the contents of the twelve volumes from which it is compiled, and for which it is by no means intended as a substitute. It will, on the contrary, we should hope, create an appetite which can be satisfied only by a careful reading of the works themselves. Darwin’s repetitions, necessitated by his method of investigation and publication, and his unexampled candor in controversy, have been something of an embarrassment in the classification of these passages; so that we have been obliged in some instances to sacrifice continuity to perspicuity. But, as one object of this book is to correct misrepresentations by giving Darwin’s views in his own language, some of his own repetitions must be given also, in order to leave no doubt as to precisely what he said and did not say. It will probably be a long while before the dispute over the theory that he advocated will cease, but there is certainly no excuse for a difference of opinion with regard to the language that he used, and the meaning he attached to it. That language and that meaning will be found in these pages. Darwinism stated by its opponents is one thing, Darwinism stated by Darwin himself will be found to be quite another thing, for, to use his own exclamation, “great is the power of steady misrepresentation!” The order followed in the arrangement of these extracts is not that of the books, but the one naturally suggested by our plan, which is designed to conduct the reader through the vegetable up to the animal kingdom, and up from the lowest to the highest animal, man, “the wonder and glory of the universe.”