Discussion Questions:
1347:

• Why did it take Darwin over twenty years to compile and publish The Origin of the Species (1859)?

Chapter Ten: Tierra del Fuego
1348:

• What is the difference between "savage and civilized man" (1348)?

• Describe Darwin's attitude toward the Fuegians.

• Is Captain Fitz Roy's "capture" of a party of natives justified?  Explain.

• Why does Darwin compare one of the Fuegians to an ourang-outang?
• Explain:  "Viewing such man, one can hardly make oneself believe that they are fellow-creatures, and inhabitants of the same world" (1351).

• Explain:  "Nature by making habit omnipotent, and its effects hereditary, has fitted the Fuegian to the climate and the productions of his miserable country" (1352).

• Why was it "obviously impossible" for the Fuegians to stay with the Englishmen?

• Why are different species on different islands?

• Why does the "wildness of birds with respect to man" become hereditary "in the course of successive generations" (1357)?
• What is "acquired hereditary knowledge" (1352)?

Chapter Three:  Struggle for Existence
1358:

• What is natural selection?
• How is it "immeasurably superior to man's feeble efforts" (1358)?
• What is "Struggle for Existence" (1358)?

• Explain:  "The structure of every organic being is related, in the most essential yet often hidden manner, to that of all organic beings, with which it comes into competition for food or residence, or from which it has to escape, or on which it preys" (1361).

• Explain:  "At every stage in the process of modification, all the individuals which were in any way best fitted for their conditions in life, though in different degrees, would have survived in greater numbers than the less fitted" (1363).
• Explain:  "The mental powers of the higher animals, which are the same in kind with those of mankind, though so different in degree, are capable of advancement" (1363).

• Explain:  The foundation of the moral qualities "lies in the social instincts" (1364).

• According to Darwin, is belief in God instinctive?  Explain.

• What, according to Darwin, is the difference between natural and sexual selection?

• Explain:  "Both sexes ought to refrain from marriage if in any marked degree inferior in body or mind" (1367).
• Why, according to Darwin, should people living in poverty not get married?

• Explain:  "Man still bears in  his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin" (1368).