" The same objection has been made a score
of times by your chief opponents, and I have heard it as often stated
myself in conversation. Now, I think this arises almost entirely from
your choice of the term Natural Selection, and so constantly comparing
it in its effects to man's selection, and also to your so frequently
personifying nature as "selecting," as "preferring," as "seeking only
the good of the species," etc., etc. To the few this is as clear as
daylight, and beautifully suggestive, but to many it is evidently a
stumbling-block. I wish, therefore, to suggest to you the possibility of
entirely avoiding this source of misconception in your great work (if
not now too late), and also in any future editions of the "Origin," and
I think it may be done without difficulty and very effectually by
adopting Spencer's term (which he generally uses in preference to
Natural Selection), viz. "Survival of the Fittest." This term is the
plain expression of the _fact_; "Natural Selection" is a metaphorical
expression of it, and to a certain degree _indirect_ and _incorrect_,
since, even personifying Nature, she does not so much select special
variations as exterminate the most unfavourable ones.
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