He says almost the same thing in a letter to Lyell (June 6th):—
“... I am beginning to despair of ever making the majority understand my notions.... I must be a very bad explainer. I hope to Heaven that you will succeed better. Several reviews and several letters have shown me too clearly how little I am understood. I suppose ‘Natural Selection’ was a bad term; ... I can only hope by reiterated explanations finally to make the matter clearer.”
Writing to Asa Gray, he says:—
“... I have had a letter of fourteen folio pages from Harvey against my book, with some ingenious and new remarks; but it is an extraordinary fact that he does not understand at all what I mean by Natural Selection.”
Later on, he again wrote to Lyell:—
“Talking of ‘natural selection’; if I had to commence de novo, I would have used ‘natural preservation.’ For I find men like Harvey of Dublin cannot understand me, though he has read the book twice. Dr. Gray of the British Museum remarked to me that, ‘selection was obviously impossible with plants! No one could tell him how it could be possible!’ And he may now add that the author did not attempt it to him!”
And still later he wrote asking Lyell’s advice as to additions to a new edition of the “Origin,” saying:—“I would also put a note to ‘Natural Selection,’ and show how variously it has been misunderstood.” This note is to be found on page 63 of the sixth edition. In it he tells us that some writers have “even imagined that natural selection induces variability,” instead of merely preserving it; others that natural selection “implies conscious choice in the animals which become modified”; others that it is set up “as an active power or Deity.” In writing (December) to Murray about a new edition of the “Origin,” he alludes to the “many corrections, or rather additions, which I have made in hopes of making my many rather stupid reviewers at least understand what is meant.”
He seems to have retained a very vivid recollection of the difficulty with which his theory was understood at first; thus he tells us in his “Autobiography”:—
“I tried once or twice to explain to able men what I meant by Natural Selection, but signally failed.”
Why the term “natural selection” was chosen by Darwin is very clearly shown in the three following quotations from letters to distinguished scientific men, which were probably written in answer to attacks or criticisms on this very point.