survival of the fittest

[edit] English

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(biology) by natural selection those individuals in a population which are best fitted will survive and produce progeny.
- 1872, Charles Darwin, “Chapter IV”, in The Origin of Species, Sixth London Edition:
  
  Slow though the process of selection may be, if feeble man can do much by artificial selection, I can see no limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and complexity of the coadaptations between all organic beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of life, which may have been effected in the long course of time through nature's power of selection, that is by the survival of the fittest.

Term created by philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) in 1864.