Natural Selection

Natural Selection, Darwin describes, is the “preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations.” The process of natural selection encourages the survival of the fittest within the conditions of life by which our environment thrives and prospers. By the selection in which individuals of any species survive and prosper, Darwin sees a “free scope for the work of improvement” (88). Regardless of species and positions of hierarchy, the struggle for existence is inevitable. It is that struggle for survival that feeds natural selection and grows with the “high rate at which all organic beings tend to increase” (86). Though “characters and structures of…trifling importance may thus be acted upon,” Darwin identifies Natural Selection as acting solely through and for the good of each being. He argues that the leaf-eating insects and bark-feeders have their place in nature by the keeping of true colour; just as it is essential that the flock of white sheep “destroy every lamb with the faintest trace of black” (89). Natural Selection, Darwin points out, secures modifications without the extinction of species; its selection being based upon survival within the conditions of the environment. For, Darwin writes, “Man selects for his own good; Nature only for that of the being which she tends. Every selected character is fully exercised by her; and the being is placed under well-suited conditions for life” (88).