
The phrase was first used by Darwin in the 5th edition of The Origin published in 1869, in which Chapter 4 describes "Natural Selection, or the Survival of the Fittest". Survival of the fittest would avoid this problem, but it "lost the analogy between nature's selection and the fanciers" (breeders). Natural selection personified nature, but was really about survival. Darwin agreed that the phrase survival of the fittest was better than natural selection. Spencer's Principles of Biology was the first to use the phrase survival of the fittest in print. It was his way of making an analogy with artificial selection (selective breeding), a practice which was well understood in England at that time.

In the first four editions of On the Origin of Species, Darwin used only the phrase natural selection. Thus by survival of the fittest, the militant type of society becomes characterized by profound confidence in the governing power, joined with a loyalty causing submission to it in all matters whatever. The way he uses the term suggests he is talking about a general principle.

There, he used the phrase to explain why societies of a militant type would not adopt his theories. Spencer later published a book called The Man versus the State. Darwin has called ‘natural selection’, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life". In that book (vol 1 p444) he wrote: "This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. He first used the term in his book Principles of Biology, published in 1864. Herbert Spencer was a British social philosopher who applied his personal conception of evolution to many other fields, from the origin of the solar system to economics. These metaphors stick in the mind, but they need to be properly understood, or they may be used wrongly.

Scientists often use such metaphors as shorthand for key ideas. It is a metaphor, as are the phrases struggle for existence, and natural selection, both of which were used by Charles Darwin. Survival of the fittest is a famous phrase of Herbert Spencer which describes the idea that, in nature, there is competition to survive and reproduce. Herbert Spencer coined the phrase, "survival of the fittest."
