Chapter VI

THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT ACCORDING TO LYELL
AND DARWIN.

Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology.—His Natural
History of the Earth’s Development.—Origin of the
Greatest Effects through the Multiplication of the
Smallest Causes.—Unlimited Extent of Geological
Periods.—Lyell’s Refutation of Cuvier’s History of
Creation.—The Establishment of the Uninterrupted
Connection of Historical Development by Lyell and
Darwin.—Biographical Notice of Charles Darwin.—His
Scientific Works.—His Theory of Coral
Reefs.—Development of the Theory of Selection.—A Letter
of Darwin’s.—The Contemporaneous Appearance of Darwin’s
and Alfred Wallace’s Theory of Selection.—Darwin’s Study
of Domestic Animals and Cultivated Plants.—Andreas
Wagner’s Notions as to the Special Creation of Cultivated
Organisms for the good of Man.—The Tree of Knowledge in
Paradise.—Comparison between Wild and Cultivated
Organisms.—Darwin’s Study of Domestic
Pigeons.—Importance of Pigeon Breeding.—Common Descent
of all Races of Pigeons 125

CHAPTER VII.

THE THEORY OF SELECTION (DARWINISM).

Darwinism (Theory of Selection) and Lamarckism (Theory of
Descent).—The Process of Artificial Breeding.—Selection
of the Different Individuals for After-breeding.—The
Active Causes of Transmutation.—Change connected with
Food and Transmission by Inheritance connected with
Propagation.—Mechanical Nature of these Two Physiological
Functions.—The Process of Natural Breeding: Selection in
the Struggle for Existence.—Malthus’ Theory of
Population.—The Proportion between the Numbers of
Potential and Actual Individuals of every Species of
Organisms.—General Struggle for Existence, or Competition
to attain the Necessaries of Life.—Transforming Force of
the Struggle for Existence.—Comparison of Natural and
Artificial Breeding.—Selection in the Life of
Man.—Military and Medical Selection 149