On the Origin of Species

Charles Darwin's book setting out the theory that species are not fixed but have descended, with modification, from earlier forms through natural selection, the survival of the variations best fitted to the struggle for life.

Start reading16 chapters, about 151,000 words

Famous quotes

• This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection.

  Chapter IV (1 of 2)In context

  • Nature
  • Science

• It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.

  Chapter IV (1 of 2)In context

  • Nature
  • Science

• As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all sides many a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the great Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications.

  Chapter IV (2 of 2)In context

  • Life & Death
  • Nature

• One general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.

  Chapter VIIIn context

  • Life & Death
  • Nature

• What can be more curious than that the hand of a man, formed for grasping, that of a mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle of the porpoise, and the wing of the bat, should all be constructed on the same pattern, and should include the same bones, in the same relative positions?

  Chapter XIIIIn context

  • Nature
  • Science

• When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled.

  Chapter XIVIn context

  • Nature

• There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

  Chapter XIVIn context

  • Life & Death
  • Nature
  • Science

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Chapter IVariation Under Domestication
3. Chapter IIVariation Under Nature
4. Chapter IIIStruggle for Existence
5. Chapter IV (1 of 2)Natural Selection
6. Chapter IV (2 of 2)
7. Chapter VLaws of Variation
8. Chapter VIDifficulties on Theory
9. Chapter VIIInstinct
10. Chapter VIIIHybridism
11. Chapter IXOn the Imperfection of the Geological Record
12. Chapter XOn the Geological Succession of Organic Beings
13. Chapter XIGeographical Distribution
14. Chapter XIIGeographical Distribution—continued
15. Chapter XIIIMutual Affinities of Organic Beings: Morphology: Embryology: Rudimentary Organs
16. Chapter XIVRecapitulation and Conclusion