The Poems of Thomas Howell, 1568-1581, Ed. by A.B. Grosart

For a start, evolution as a concept was already decades old by the 1830s. DarwinБЂ™s own grandfather, Erasmus, had paid tribute to evolutionary principles in a poem of inspired mediocrity called БЂњThe Temple of NatureБЂ«years before Charles was even born. It wasnБЂ™t until the younger Darwin was back in England and read Thomas MalthusБЂ™s Essay on the Principle of Population (which proposed that increases in food supply could never keep up with population growth for mathematical reasons) that the idea began to percolate through his mind that life is a perpetual struggle and that natural selection was the means by which some species prospered while others failed. Specifically what Darwin saw was that all organisms competed for resources, and those that had some innate advantage would prosper and pass on that advantage to their offspring. By such means would species continuously improve. It seems an awfully simple idea-it is an awfully simple idea-but it explained a great deal, and Darwin was prepared to devote his life to it ...»