How To Read A Book- A Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading - Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren [185]
"time and temper" by avoiding the fray.
In his work, however, he stayed close to his thesis. He expanded the material of the first chapter of the Origin into a book, Variation of Plants and Animals under Domestication ( 1868 ) . In The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex ( 1871 ) , Dar-Appendix B 395
win fulfilled his statement in the Origin that "light would be thrown on the origin of man and his history." The Expression of the Emotions ( 1872) offered a natural explanation of phenomena which appeared to be a difficulty in the way of acceptance of evolution.
His last works were concerned with the form, movement, and fertilization of plants.
Darwin's existence at Down was peculiarly adapted to preserve his energy and give direct order to his activity. Because of his continual ill-health, his wife took pains "to shield him from every avoidable annoyance." He observed the same routine for nearly forty years, his days being carefully parcelled into intervals of exercise and light reading in such proportions that he could utilize to his fullest capacity the four hours he devoted to work. His scientific reading and experimentation, as well, were organized with the most rigorous economy. Even the phases of his intellectual life non-essential to his work became, as he put it, "atrophied," a fact which he regretted as "a loss of happiness." Such non-scientific reading as he did was purely for relaxation, and he thought that "a law ought to be passed" against unhappy endings to novels.
With his wife and seven children his manner was so unusually
"affectionate and delighful" that his son, Francis, marvelled that he could preserve it "with such an undemonstrative race as we are."
When he died on April 19, 1882, his family wanted him to be buried at Down; public feeling decreed that he should be interred in Westminster Abbey, where he was laid beside Sir Isaac Newton.
TABLE OF CoNTENTS OF The Origin of Species AN HISTORICAL SKETCH
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I. VARIATION UNDER DoMESTICATION
Causes of variability. Effects of habit and the use or disuse of parts. Correlated variation. Inheritance. Character of domestic varieties. Difficulty of distinguishing between varieties and species.
Origin of domestic varieties from one or more species. Domestic pigeons, their differences and origin. Principles of selection, anciently followed, their effects. Methodical and unconscious selection.
Unknown origin of our domesic productions. Circumstances favourable to man's power of selection.
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CHAPTER II. VARIATION UNDER NATURE
Variability. Individual differences. Doubtful species. Wide ranging, much diffused, and common species vary most. Species of the larger genera in each country vary more frequently than the species of the smaller genera. Many of the species of the larger genera resemble varieties in being very closely, but unequally, related to each other, and in having restricted ranges.
CHAPTER III. STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE
Its bearing on natural selection. The term used in a wide sense.
Geometrical ratio of increase. Rapid increase of naturalized animals and plants. Nature of the checks to increase. Competition universal.
Effects of climate. Protection from the number of individuals. Complex relations of all animals and plants throughout nature. Struggle for life most severe between individuals and varieties of the same species: often severe between species of the same genus. The relation of organism to organism the most important of all relations.
CHAPTER IV. NATURAL SELECTION;
OR THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
Natural selection. Its power compared with man's selection. Its power on characters of trilling importance. Its power at all ages and on both sexes. Sexual selection. On the generality of intercrosses between individuals of the same species. Circumstances favourable and unfavourable to the results of Natural Selection, namely, intercrossing, isolation, number of individuals. Slow