even of so apparently purposive an organ as the eye, and as the one, therefore, on which it was most proper to insist.  And what is luck but absence of intention or design?  What, then, can Mr. Darwin’s title-page amount to when written out plainly, but to an assertion that the main means of modification has been the preservation of races whose variations have been unintentional, that is to say, not connected with effort or intention, devoid of mind or meaning, fortuitous, spontaneous, accidental, or whatever kindred word is least disagreeable to the reader?  It is impossible to conceive any more complete denial of mind as having had anything to do with organic development, than is involved in the title-page of the “Origin of Species” when its doubtless carefully considered words are studied—­ nor, let me add, is it possible to conceive a title-page more likely to make the reader’s attention rest much on the main doctrine of evolution, and little, to use the words now most in vogue concerning it, on Mr. Darwin’s own “distinctive feature.”

It should be remembered that the full title of the “Origin of Species” is, “On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.”  The significance of the expansion of the title escaped the greater number of Mr. Darwin’s readers.  Perhaps it ought not to have done so, but we certainly failed to catch it.  The very words themselves escaped us—­and yet there they were all the time if we had only chosen to look.  We thought the book was called “On the Origin of Species,” and so it was on the outside; so it was also on the inside fly-leaf; so it was on the title-page itself as long as the most prominent type was used; the expanded title was only given once, and then in smaller type; so the three big “Origins of Species” carried us with them to the exclusion of the rest.

The short and working title, “On the Origin of Species,” in effect claims descent with modification generally; the expanded and technically true title only claims the discovery that luck is the main means of organic modification, and this is a very different matter.  The book ought to have been entitled, “On Natural Selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life, as the main means of the origin of species;” this should have been the expanded title, and the short title should have been “On Natural Selection.”  The title would not then have involved an important difference between its working and its technical forms, and it would have better fulfilled the object of a title, which is, of course, to give, as far as may be, the essence of a book in a nutshell.  We learn on the authority of Mr. Darwin himself {83a} that the “Origin of Species” was originally intended to bear the title “Natural Selection;” nor is it easy to see why the change should have been made if an accurate expression of the contents of the book was the only thing which Mr. Darwin was considering.  It is curious that, writing the later chapters of “Life and Habit” in great haste, I should have accidentally referred to the “Origin of Species” as “Natural Selection;” it seems hard to believe that there was no intention in my thus unconsciously reverting to Mr. Darwin’s own original title, but there certainly was none, and I did not then know what the original title had been.