The Darwinian notion that only those traits best suited to
perpetuate the species will endure to be passed along
indefinitely from generation to generation while those traits most detrimental to the good of the species will be
phased out after a few generations.
This preservation of favourable individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those which are
injurious, I have called Natural Selection, or the
Survival of the Fittest. -
Charles Darwin, Origin of Species
