which Darwin explains that he has now given up on completing the large work or
magnum opus representing his twenty years of studies:
My Dear Sir,
I was extremely much pleased at receiving three days ago your letter to me
and that to Dr. Hooker. Permit me to say how heartily I admire the spirit in which they are
written. Though I had absolutely nothing whatever to do in leading Lyell and Hooker to
what they thought a fair course of action, yet I naturally could not but feel anxious to hear
what your impression would be. I owe indirectly much to you and them; for I almost think
that Lyell would have proved right and I should never have completed my larger work ...
My abstract will make a small volume of 400 hundred or 500 pages. Whenever published, I
will of course send you a copy.Darwin wanted to get into print as soon as possible and in twelve months he
completed his smaller volume and rushed it to the printer. On the Origin of Species
or in its full title On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the
Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life was published in November
- It sold out on the first day of publication and has never been out of print since.
His theory is simply stated in the introduction:
As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as,
consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any
being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and
sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be
naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to
propagate its new and modified form.In his book he acknowledged Wallace’s field work, but Darwin’s name was forever
linked with the theory of evolution by natural selection. Darwin was careful to point
out that he had come to the decision to publish his ideas over a long period of time, as
his introduction to On the Origin of Species reads:
When on board HMS Beagle, as a naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the
distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the
present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts seemed to throw some light on
the origin of species – that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest
philosophers. On my return home, it occurred to me, in 1837, that something might be madeCharles Darwin – On the Origin of Species 177