Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species: By Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. New American Library: Mentor: New York, 1958.

On the back cover of this book is a promotion from Ashley Montagu: "Next to the Bible no work has been quite as influential, in virtually every aspect of human thought, as The Origin of Species." Whether this assertion is true is a point open for debate, but it is certainly a critical foundation work of contemporary Western culture.

Although Origin of Species should be read by anyone who would claim to be socially and culturally literate, it is a frustrating read for anyone looking for deeper answers. It is, perhaps, far more amazing to observe what has been read into the work than to address the work itself. It is even more amazing that it could still generate as much controversy as it does, presumably out of ignorance, fear, and pure human hubris.

It should be noted that the book begins with an historical sketch that acknowledges the chorus of voices and theories that preceded or were contemporaneous with this work that also addressed the ideas of evolution and natural selection. It is meant, presumably, to prove that the ideas are not as totally out of the blue as might be assumed in this current ahistorical age.

The Origin of Species is not about Evolution so much as it is about the process of Natural Selection, of which Evolution is a by-product. The Theory of Natural Selection runs, simply, as follows: Domesticated animals and plants can be bred to favor certain traits and features. There must be some mechanism which allows this. The mechanism, as Darwin interpreted it, was the fact that biological reproduction produces imperfect copies of the parent(s) in the resultant offspring. This is to say that there is "variation," or a "divergence of character" in the offspring of biological reproduction. By selective breeding for desired variations in offspring, varieties with desired traits can be developed.

But this raises the question of why there is such variation on offspring. What purpose does it serve? Darwin's answer is that Nature does the same thing, through Natural Selection, as humans do through breeding. Living organisms seek to survive in a changing environment and therefore need to be adaptable. The way they adapt to long term changes in the environment is through Natural Selection. Natural Selection is a process, not an act of will or decision making. What is means is that, given a group of offspring, those best fit to survive in a given environment will be the ones most likely to survive and have offspring of their own. Thereby, through competition to survive, organisms in nature are bred selectively in a process analogous to domestic breeding. Since different environmental conditions call for different modes of survival, and since there is a random element to the process of variation and divergence, this process of evolution leads to a diversity of interrelated organisms that tend to increase in complexity and divergence.

That, simply put, is the Theory of Evolution. Humans can breed domestic plants and animals because that is what the organisms were designed to do in order to survive in the natural setting. On the other hand, it seems to be his other major work, The Descent of Man, which perhaps has created the furor over evolution, which in and of itself is a theory that is, in retrospect, common sense.

Some salient quotes:

I am fully convinces that species are not immutable; but that those belonging to what are called the same genera are lineal descendants of some other and generally extinct species, in the same manner as the acknowledged varieties of any one species are descendants of that species. Furthermore, I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the most important, but not the exclusive, means of modification. [p.30]

Breeders habitually speak of an animal's organization as something plastic, which they can model almost as they please. [p.48]

Owing to this struggle, variations, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if they be in any degree profitable to the individuals of a species, in their infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to their physical conditions of life, will tend to the preservation of such individuals, and will generally be inherited by the offspring. [p.74]

[man] can neither originate varieties, nor prevent their occurrence; he can preserve and accumulate such as do occur. Unintentionally, he exposes organic beings to new and changing conditions of life, and variability ensues. [p.87]

[...] the greatest amount of life can be supported by great diversification of structure. [p.113]

Natural Selection acts exclusively by the preservation and accumulation of variations, which are beneficial under the organic and inorganic conditions to which each creature is exposed at all periods of its life. [p.122]

Natural Selection cannot possibly produce any modification in a species exclusively for the good of another species; though throughout nature one species incessantly takes advantage of, and profits by, the structures of others. [p.186]

For my part, following out Lyell's metaphor, I look at the geological record as a history of the world imperfectly kept, and written in a changing dialect, of this history we possess the last volume alone, relating only to two or three countries. Of this volume, only here and there a short chapter has been preserved; and of each page, only here and there a few lines. Each word of the slowly changing language, more or less different in the successive chapters, may represent the forms of life, which are entombed in our consecutive formations, and which falsely appear to have been abruptly introduced. [p.312]

If man can by patience select variations useful to him, why, under changing and complex conditions of life, should not variations useful to nature's living productions often arise and be preserved or selected? What limit can be put to this power, acting during long ages and rigidly scrutinising the whole constitution, structure, and habits of the creature. [p.434]

Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of higher animals, directly follows. There is a 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, whilst 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. [p.450]