Darwiniana : essays / by Thomas H. Huxley.

  • Huxley Thomas Henry, 1825-1895.
Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Darwiniana : essays / by Thomas H. Huxley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    THE DARWINIAN HYPOTHESIS [1859] The hypothesis of which the present work of Mr. Darwin is but the preliminary outline, may be stated in his own language as follows :— Species originated by means of natural selection, or through the preservation of the favoured races in the straggle for life. To render this thesis intelligible, it is necessary to interpret its terms. In the first place, what is a species ? The question is a simple one, but the right answer to it is hard to find, even if we appeal to those who should know most about it. It is all those animals or plants which have descended from a single pair of parents; it is the smallest distinctly definable group of living organisms; it is an eternal and immutable entity ; it is a mere abstraction of the human intellect having no existence in nature. Such are a few of the significations attached to