mode of handling it, that set the tide of his influence wrong beyond his power of righting.
For one thing, Darwin was unfortunate in the title chosen for his foundation book. "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life" is the title in full. A little reflection discovers ambiguity in this. Is the author concerned primarily with the origin of species or with a particular way of accounting for their origin? One piece of internal evidence of a general character is to the effect that the second alternative is the true one. The explanatory hypothesis is treated first and occupies fully half the work, while the observed proofs of origin by natural modification are given second place. Why did not Darwin present his proofs of evolution first and his hypothesis second, thus making his title and order of treatment correspond? The fact is he wavered as to where the emphasis should be laid touching the relative importance of the two objects he tells us he had in view in writing the "Origin." This wavering he never to the end of his life was able to fully correct.
We can point out specifically how this equivocal meaning of the title has operated to make Darwin a natural selectionist in a sense that he himself resisted. One biologist, a particularly strong pro-natural selectionist, has written:
This title is of interest, as has been pointed out by Professor E. Ray Lankester, in relation to the controversy upon the exact meaning of the word "Darwinism." Some writers have argued that the term "Darwinism" includes the whole of the causes of evolution accepted by Darwin—the supposed inherited effects of use and disuse and the direct influence of environment, which find a subordinate place in the "Origin," as well as natural selection, which is the real subject of the book and which is fully defined in the title. It would seem appropriate to use the term "Darwinism" as Wallace uses it, to indicate the causes of evolution which were suggested by Darwin himself, excluding those supposed causes which had been previously brought forward by earlier writers, and especially by Lamarck.[1] (Italics mine.)
The large conception that "Darwinism" might be "evolutionism" has no place in this author's mind, so it would seem from this statement. Darwinism according to such a view must have sole reference to certain specified causes of evolution instead of evolution itself through any and all causes that may be behind it. The power of mental bias to lead men unconsciously wrong is not often more strikingly illustrated than in this; for here it goes to the extent of making professed followers and admirers of Darwin do him grave injustice. What meaning can Darwinians who thus circumscribe "Darwinism" put into such of their prophet's language as this?
- ↑ "Poulton, "Charles Darwin," p. 99.
