ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION

The First edition. 1859. Darwin called it his “abominable volume” during the writing, but upon publication it became “my child”

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www.gutenberg.org/files/1228/1228-h/1228-h.htm

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Dinesh ^club

Charles Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life ; (1859) is as quintessentially Vioctorian as the Great Exhibition or the Albert Hall. its thesis is based upon the twin imperatives of struggle and competition, and in the consequent race of life the ‘northern forms were enabled to beat the less powerful southern forms’. There is nothing here of atonement, redemption or grace. It is a dark world indeed, dominated by the necessity of labour and the appetite for power, in which combat and slaughter are the principal components. To see Victorian civilization from the vantage point of Charles Darwin is to see it more clearly. He has also adopted Malthus’s doctrine that populations grow faster than their means of subsistence, and are thus doomed to extinction. This also is a key to Victorian melancholy, which was perhaps as influential as Victorian optimism. ~ Page 34

2 years ago.

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