The short and working title, “On the Origin of Species,” in effect claims descent with modification generally; the expanded and technically true title only claims the discovery that luck is the main means of organic modification, and this is a very different matter. The book ought to have been entitled, “On Natural Selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life, as the main means of the origin of species;” this should have been the expanded title, and the short title should have been “On Natural Selection.” The title would not then have involved an important difference between its working and its technical forms, and it would have better fulfilled the object of a title, which is, of course, to give, as far as may be, the essence of a book in a nutshell. We learn on the authority of Mr. Darwin himself {83a} that the “Origin of Species” was originally intended to bear the title “Natural Selection;” nor is it easy to see why the change should have been made if an accurate expression of the contents of the book was the only thing which Mr. Darwin was considering. It is curious that, writing the later chapters of “Life and Habit” in great haste, I should have accidentally referred to the “Origin of Species” as “Natural Selection;” it seems hard to believe that there was no intention in my thus unconsciously reverting to Mr. Darwin’s own original title, but there certainly was none, and I did not then know what the original title had been. If we had scrutinised Mr. Darwin’s title-page as closely as we should certainly scrutinise anything written by Mr. Darwin now, we should have seen that the title did not technically claim the theory of descent; practically, however, it so turned out that we unhesitatingly gave that theory to the author, being, as I have said, carried away by the three large “Origins of Species” (which we understood as much the same thing as descent with modification), and finding, as I shall show in a later chapter, that descent was ubiquitously claimed throughout the work, either expressly or by implication, as Mr. Darwin’s theory. It is not easy to see how any one with ordinary instincts could hesitate to believe that Mr. Darwin was entitled to claim what he claimed with so much insistance. If _ars est celare artem_ Mr. Darwin must be allowed to have been a consummate artist, for it took us years to understand the ins and outs of what had been done. I may say in passing that we never see the “Origin of Species” spoken of as “On the Origin of Species, &c.,” or as “The Origin of Species, &c.” (the word “on” being dropped in the latest editions). The distinctive feature of the book lies, according to its admirers, in the “&c.,” but they never give it. To avoid pedantry I shall continue to speak of the “Origin of Species.”