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.
C

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