_Proposed Mode of Treatment of the Subject_.
It is evidently of the most vital importance to any theory that its
foundations should be absolutely secure. It is therefore necessary to
show, by a wide and comprehensive array of facts, that animals and
plants _do_ perpetually vary in the manner and to the amount requisite;
and that this takes place in wild animals as well as in those which are
domesticated. It is necessary also to prove that all organisms _do_ tend
to increase at the great rate alleged, and that this increase actually
occurs, under favourable conditions. We have to prove, further, that
variations of all kinds can be increased and accumulated by selection;
and that the struggle for existence to the extent here indicated
actually occurs in nature, and leads to the continued preservation of
favourable variations.
These matters will be discussed in the four succeeding chapters, though
in a somewhat different order--the struggle for existence and the power
of rapid multiplication, which is its cause, occupying the first place,
as comprising those facts which are the most fundamental and those which
can be perfectly explained without any reference to the less generally
understood facts of variation.
Pages:
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46