...Itttt's Natural Selection (part II) (end of 3, Chapter 4)

Ok, so the ridiculousness of that sentence on page 79 can be explained as follows:

In Victorian England, as Darwin wrote The Origin, the popular view of Nature was one of love, harmony, and beauty. And then Darwin writes about all of the competition and destruction that occurs in Nature. In order to keep his readers happy, he ends the chapter (remember the importance and the first and last sentences of the chapters?) on a happy, albeit cheesy, note.

The last chapter for today is Chapter 4 "Natural Selection". His chapter titles are almost as creative as my post titles, right?

What I found interesting about this chapter was that it is really the crux of Darwin's theory, and yet it receives no extra attention, it has no asterisk next to the title saying *THIS IS IMPORTANT. It just falls straight in with the rest of the chapters. Of course, Darwin spent the last three chapters explaining domestic variation and natural variation and the struggle for existence, all so that he could explain natural selection. So it seems that chapter 4 is a logical place to put it. And perhaps Darwin did not want to direct the attention of his critics straight to his most valuable chapter. I just think it could have used a little more pomp and circumstance.

Chapter 4 is one of the longest in the books, and so you might expect that I would have a lot of commentary on it. However, most of the chapter contains examples of natural selection, numbers, calculations, and a chart. These scientific and mathematical sections were too much for my literary mind to comprehend, so I actually have less to say than the chapter might demand.

What I will comment on, however, is the metaphor at the end of the chapter. Darwin explains the lineage of organisms as if it was a tree. All limbs, branches, twigs, and buds of a tree are connected by the trunk. They are all related, some more than others, and they all compete with each other to survive (129). Darwin ends the chapter, returning to the beautiful images of Nature that he began in chapter 3:

"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" (130).