most offspring; both, therefore, hold that favourable modifications
will tend to be preserved and intensified in the course of many
generations, and that this leads to divergence of type; but these
opinions involve a theory of natural selection or quasi-selection,
whether the words "natural selection" are used or not; indeed it is
impossible to include wild species in any theory of descent with
modification without implying a quasi-selective power on the part of
nature; but even with Mr. Charles Darwin the power is only quasi-
selective; there is no conscious choice, and hence there is nothing
that can in strictness be called selection.

It is indeed true that the younger Darwin gave the words "natural
selection" the importance which of late years they have assumed; he
probably adopted them unconsciously from the passage of Mr.
Matthew's quoted above, but he ultimately said, {87a} "In the
literal sense of the word (sic) no doubt natural selection is a
false term," as personifying a fact, making it exercise the
conscious choice without which there can be no selection, and
generally crediting it with the discharge of functions which can
only be ascribed legitimately to living and reasoning beings.
Granted, however, that while Mr. Charles Darwin adopted the
expression natural selection and admitted it to be a bad one, his
grandfather did not use it at all; still Mr. Darwin did not mean the
natural selection which Mr. Matthew and those whose opinions he was
epitomising meant. Mr. Darwin meant the selection to be made from
variations into which purpose enters to only a small extent
comparatively. The difference, therefore, between the older
evolutionists and their successor does not lie in the acceptance by
the more recent writer of a quasi-selective power in nature which
his predecessors denied, but in the background--hidden behind the