Nature and nurture conspire to form a naturalist. Predisposition, an
opportune period, and a happy series of events favored Alfred Russel
Wallace.
Wallace was the son of Thomas Vere Wallace, of Hanworth, Middlesex,
England, and Mary Anne Grennell, of Hertford. His ancestry is obscure.
On the paternal side he is probably descended from one of the branches
of Sir William Wallace, the popular national hero of Scotland, but
nothing is known back of his grandfather, who was probably keeper of the
inn on the estates of the Duke of St. Albans, of Hanworth. The burial
records of Hanworth mention an Admiral James Wallace. In his mother’s
family on the paternal side is the name Greenell, of Hertford, probably
the “Greenaile” in 1579, French Huguenot refugees after the massacre of
St. Bartholomew. Her grandfather was for many years alderman and twice
mayor of Hertford. One of the Greenells was an architect.
Wallace’s father took up the profession of the law, but did not
continue, and up to his marriage lived the life of a fairly well-to-do
middle-class gentleman. After his marriage he essayed the publishing of
two magazines apparently devoted to art, antiquities and general
literature, which were failures. He then moved from Marylebone to more
rural districts where living was less expensive, first to St. Georges,
Southwark, and then to Usk, Monmouthshire. In this village Alfred Russel
Wallace was born on January 8, 1823.
When Wallace was about six years of age the family moved to Hertford,
where his education was begun in the old grammar school that dated back
to 1617. He left school too young to begin Greek, but he studied Latin,
and next to Latin grammar the most painful subject he learned was
geography, principally because of the meaningless way in which it was
taught. During the last year of study at the grammar school, as the
family were then in very straitened circumstances, he assisted in the
teaching of the younger boys in reading, arithmetic, and writing.
Wallace considered that his home life in Hertford was in many ways more
educational than the time spent at school. His father was a man who
enjoyed the pleasure of literature and belonged to a book club through
which a constant stream of interesting books came to the house, from
which he read aloud to the family in the evenings. The father earned a
small income tutoring and as librarian of a small library, and the son
Alfred spent hours reading there, also.
At the age of thirteen young Wallace left school, with a view to
learning land surveying. He stayed in London a short time with his
brother John, who was apprenticed to a master builder, and their
evenings were most frequently spent in the “Hall of Science,” a kind of
mechanics institute for advanced thinkers among workmen. Here he heard
many lectures by Robert Owen, the founder of the socialist movement in
England, and took up philosophical reading, beginning with Paine’s “Age
of Reason,” among other books. In the summer of 1837 he went with his
brother William into Bedfordshire to begin his education as a land
surveyor, and practised for seven years in various parts of England and
Wales.
After a time it was decided that he should try to pursue the
clock-making business as well as surveying and general engineering, and
Wallace considered that this was the first of several turning-points in
his life, because changes in the business of the clock-making concern
with which he was connected at Leighton prevented his continuing this
work for more than a short period. He was delighted to take up again in
1839 the employment of land surveying because of the opportunities it
afforded for out-of-door life.
While at Neath, in Wales, there was not much demand for surveying, and
Wallace occupied himself in constructing a rude telescope with which he
was able to observe the moon and Jupiter’s satellites, and he developed
much interest in studying astronomy and in the development of
astronomical instruments. But he says that he was chiefly occupied with
what became more and more the solace and delight of his lonely rambles
among the moors and mountains, namely, his first introduction to the
variety, the beauty and the mystery of nature as manifested in the
vegetable kingdom.
His earnings were very meagre and he had little money for the purchase
of books. During the seven years he worked with his brother he says he
“hardly ever had more than a few shillings for personal expenses.” It
was during this period, while most occupied out of doors with the
observation and collection of plants, that he began to write down more
or less systematically his ideas on various subjects that interested
him. His first literary efforts all bear dates of the autumn and winter
of 1843, when he was between twenty and twenty-one years of age. One of
his first productions was the rough sketch of a popular lecture on
botany addressed to an audience supposed to be as ignorant as he was
when he began his observation of the native flowers. A second of these
early lectures was on the subject “The Advantages of Varied Knowledge,”
which he considered of interest chiefly as showing the bent of his mind
at the time and indicating a disposition for discursive reading and
study. He also wrote at this time on the manners and customs of the
Welsh peasantry in Brecknockshire and Glamorganshire, and put the matter
in form for one of the London magazines, but it was declined.
These early and serious studies in botany, continuing for four years,
prepared him for the plant wonders of the tropics. At the age of
twenty-one he went to London. He afterward regarded his difficulty in
obtaining employment as a great turning-point in his career, “for
otherwise,” he writes, “it seems very unlikely that I should ever have
undertaken what at that time seemed rather a wild scheme, a journey to
the almost unknown forests of the Amazon in order to observe nature and
make a living by collecting.”
In his autobiographic volumes of 1905, “My Life, a Record of Events and
Opinions,” there is also an interesting sketch of his state of mind at
this time.
I do not think that at this formative period I could be said to have
shown special superiority in any of the higher mental faculties, but I
possessed a strong desire to know the causes of things, a great love
of beauty in form and color, and a considerable, but not excessive
desire for order and arrangement in whatever I had to do. If I had one
distinct mental faculty more prominent than another it was the power
of correct reasoning from a review of the known facts in any case to
the causes or laws which produced them, and also in detecting
fallacies in the reasoning of other persons.
Elsewhere in his autobiography he observes that whatever reputation in
science, literature and thought he may possess is the result of the
organs of comparison, causality and order, with firmness,
acquisitiveness, concentrativeness, constructiveness and wonder, all
above the average, but none of them excessively developed, combined with
a moderate faculty of language which
enables me to express my ideas and conclusions in writing though but
imperfectly in speech. I feel, myself, how curiously and persistently
these faculties have acted in various combinations to determine my
tastes, disposition and actions.
Wallace shared Darwin’s strong sentiment for justice as between man and
man, and abhorrence of tyranny and unnecessary interference with the
liberty of others. His retiring disposition enabled him to enjoy long
periods of reflection, receptiveness and solitude, both at home and in
the tropics, out of which have come the sudden illuminations or flashes
of light leading to the solution of the problems before him. As to this
wonderful mechanism of induction, Wallace observes:
I have long since come to see that no one deserves either praise or
blame for the _ideas_ that come to him, but only for the _actions_
resulting therefrom. Ideas and beliefs are certainly not voluntary
acts. They come to us—we hardly know _how_ or _whence_, and once they
have got possession of us we can not reject or change them at will.
Apart from Darwin’s education in Christ’s College, Cambridge, as
compared with Wallace’s self-education, the parallel between his
intellectual tendencies and environment and those of Charles Darwin is
extraordinary. They enjoyed a similar current of influence from men,
from books and from nature. Thus the next turning-point in his life was
his meeting with Henry Walter Bates, through whom he acquired his zest
for the wonders of insect life, which opened for the first time for him
the zoological windows of nature. In a measure Bates was to Wallace what
the Reverend John S. Henslow had been to Darwin. It is noteworthy that
the greater and most original part of his direct observations of nature
was upon the adaptations of insects.
Darwin and Wallace fell under the spell of the same books, first and
foremost those of Lyell, as noted above, then of Humboldt in his
“Personal Narrative” (1814–18), of Robert Chambers in his “Vestiges of
the Natural History of Creation” (1844), of Malthus in his “Essay on the
Principle of Population” (1798).
It was, however, Darwin’s own “Journal of Researches,” published in
1845, and read by Wallace at the age of twenty-three, which determined
him to invite Bates to accompany him on his journey to the Amazon and
Rio Negro, which filled the four years 1848–52. In this wondrous
equatorial expanse, like Darwin he was profoundly impressed with the
forests, the butterflies and birds, and with his first meeting with man
in an absolute state of nature. Bates, himself a naturalist of high
order,[2] was closely observing the mimetic resemblances among insects
to animate and inanimate objects and introducing Wallace to a field
which he subsequently made his own. Bates remained several years after
Wallace’s departure and published his classical memoir on mimicry in
1860–61. Wallace’s own description of his South American experiences,
entitled “Narrative of Travels on the Amazon,” published in 1853 when he
was thirty years of age, does not display the ability of his later
writings and shows that his powers were slowly developing.
His eight years of travel between 1854 and 1862 in the Indo-Malay
Islands, the Timor Group, Celebes, the Moluccas and the Papuan Group
brought his powers to full maturity. It is apparent that his prolonged
observations on the natives, the forests, the birds and mammals, and
especially on the butterflies and beetles, were gradually storing his
mind for one of those discharges of generalization which come so
unexpectedly out of the vast accumulation of facts. “The Malay
Archipelago” of 1869, published seven years after the return, is
Wallace’s “journal of researches,” that is, it is to be compared with
Darwin’s great work of this title. Its fine breadth of treatment in
anthropology, zoology, botany and physiography gives it a rank second
only to Darwin’s “Journal” in a class of works repeatedly enriched by
British naturalists from the time of Burchell’s journey in Africa.
Wallace’s first trial at the evolution problem was his essay sent to the
_Annals and Magazine of Natural History_ in 1855, entitled “On the Law
Which Has Regulated the Introduction of New Species.” This paper
suggested the _when_ and _where_ of the occurrence of new forms, but not
the _how_. He concludes:
It has now been shown, though most briefly and imperfectly, how the
law that “_Every species has come into existence coincident both in
time and space with a preexisting closely allied species_,” connects
together and renders intelligible a vast number of independent and
hitherto unexplained facts.
In February, 1858, during a period of intermittent fever at Ternate, the
_how_ arose in his mind with the recollection of the “Essay” of Malthus,
and there flashed upon him all the possible effects of the struggle for
existence. Twenty years before the same idea, under similar
circumstances, had come into the mind of Darwin. The parallel is
extraordinary as shown in the following citations:
DARWIN WALLACE
In October, 1838, that is, fifteen In February, 1858, I was suffering
months after I had begun my from a rather severe attack of
systematic inquiry, I happened to intermittent fever at Ternate, in
read for amusement, “Malthus on the Moluccas; and one day, while
Population,” and being well lying on my bed during the cold
prepared to appreciate the struggle fit, wrapped in blankets, though
for existence which everywhere goes the thermometer was at 88° Fahr.,
on from long-continued observations the problem again presented itself
of the habits of animals and to me, and something led me to
plants, it at once struck me that think of the “positive checks”
under these circumstances favorable described by Malthus in his “Essay
variations would tend to be on Population,” a work I had read
preserved, and unfavorable ones to several years before, and which had
be destroyed. _The result of this made a deep and permanent
would be the formation of new impression on my mind. These
species._ Here, then, I had at last checks—war, disease, famine and the
got a theory by which to work; but like—must, it occurred to me, act
I was so anxious to avoid prejudice on animals as well as man. Then I
that I determined not for some time thought of the enormously rapid
to write even the briefest sketch multiplication of animals, causing
of it. In June, 1842, I first these checks to be much more
allowed myself the satisfaction of effective in them than in the case
writing a very brief abstract of my of man; and while pondering vaguely
theory in pencil, in thirty-five on this fact there suddenly flashed
pages, and this was enlarged during upon me the _idea_ of the survival
the summer of 1844 into one of 230 of the fittest—that the individuals
pages.—Darwin’s “Autobiography,” removed by these checks must be on
Chap. II. the whole inferior to those that
survived. In the two hours that
elapsed before my ague fit was
over, I had thought out almost the
whole of the theory; and the same
evening I sketched the draft of my
paper, and in the two succeeding
evenings wrote it out in full, and
sent it by the next post to Mr.
Darwin.—Wallace’s “My Life,” p.
212.
Darwin had been working upon the verification of the same idea for
twenty years. We owe to Sir Joseph Hooker and to Lyell the bringing
together of these independent but strikingly similar manuscripts. The
noble episode which followed of the joint publication of the discovery
was prophetic of the continued care for truth and carelessness of self,
of the friendship, mutual admiration and co-operation between these two
high-minded men, which affords a golden example for our own and future
ages. Each loved his own creations, yet undervalued his own work; each
accorded enthusiastic praise to the work of the other.
It is a striking circumstance in the history of biology that Wallace’s
rapidly produced sketch of 1858 “On the Tendencies of Varieties to Part
Indefinitely from the Original Type” not only pursues a line of thought
parallel to that of Darwin, except in excluding the analogy of natural
with human selection, but embodies the permanent substance of the
selection theory as it is today after fifty-four years of world-wide
research. It may be regarded as his masterpiece. The attempt has been
made by De Vries and others to show that Wallace in his “Darwinism” of
1889 differed from Darwin on important points, but whatever may be true
of this final modification of the theory, a very careful comparison of
the Darwin-Wallace sketches of 1858 shows that they both involve the
principle of discontinuity; in fact, fluctuation in the sense of plus
and minus variation was not recognized at the time; the notion of
variation was that derived directly from field rather than from
laboratory notes. This is repeatedly implied in Wallace’s language and
especially in his sketch of 1858:
... there is a general principle in nature which will cause many
_varieties_ to survive the parent species, and to give rise to
successive variations departing further and further from the original
type, and which also produces, in domesticated animals, the tendency
of varieties to return to the parent form....
Most or perhaps all the variations from the typical form of a species
must have some definite effect, however slight, on the habits or
capacities of the individuals. Even a change of color might, by
rendering them more or less distinguishable, affect their safety; a
greater or less development of hair might modify their habits.... The
superior variety would then alone remain, and on a return to favorable
circumstances would rapidly increase in numbers and occupy the place
of the extinct species and variety.
The _variety_ would now have replaced the _species_, of which it would
be a more perfectly developed and more highly organized form.... Here,
then, we have _progression and continued divergence_ deduced from the
general laws which regulate the existence of animals in a state of
nature, and from the undisputed fact that varieties do frequently
occur.... Variations in unimportant parts might also occur, having no
perceptible effect on the life-preserving powers; and the varieties so
furnished might run a course parallel with the parent species, either
giving rise to further variations or returning to the former type....
In the wild animal, on the contrary, all its faculties and powers
being brought into full action for the necessities of existence, any
increase becomes immediately available, is strengthened by exercise,
and must even slightly modify the food, the habits and the whole
economy of the race. It creates, as it were, a new animal, one of
superior powers, and which will necessarily increase in numbers and
outlive those inferior to it....
We see, then, that no inferences as to varieties in a state of nature
can be deduced from the observation of those occurring among domestic
animals.... Domestic animals are abnormal, irregular, artificial; they
are subject to varieties which never occur and never can occur in a
state of nature; their very existence depends altogether on human
care.... An origin such as is here advocated will also agree with the
peculiar character of the modifications of form and structure which
obtain in organized beings—the many lines of divergence from a central
type, the increasing efficiency and power of a particular organ
through a succession of allied species, and the remarkable persistence
of unimportant parts, such as color, texture of plumage and hair, form
of horns or crests, through a series of species differing considerably
in more essential characters.... This progression, by minute steps, in
various directions, but always checked and balanced by the necessary
conditions, subject to which alone existence can be preserved, may, it
is believed, be followed out so as to agree with all the phenomena....
It is true that Wallace subsequently modified his theory, adopted the
selection of plus and minus fluctuations, and became a determined
opponent of the mutation hypothesis of De Vries.
The distinctive features of the later development of the theory in
Wallace’s mind were his more implicit faith in selection, his insistence
on utility or selection value of new or varying characters, his flat
rejection of Lamarckism, his reliance on spontaneous variations as
supplying all the materials for selection. This confidence appears in
the following passages from his militant reply in the volume of 1889 to
the critics of Darwinism:
The right or favorable variations are so frequently present that the
unerring power of natural selection never wants materials to work
upon.... Weismann’s theory ... adds greatly to the importance of
natural selection as the one invariable and ever-present factor in all
organic change and that which can alone have produced the temporary
fixity combined with the secular modification of species.
The principle of discontinuity is less clearly brought out than in the
first sketch of 1858; the selection of fluctuation is favorably
considered. The laws and causes of variation are, however, assumed
rather than taken up as a subject of inquiry. These opinions of 1889
were the summation of twenty-nine years of work.
To return to the life-narrative, the autumn of 1860 found Wallace in the
Moluccas reading the “Origin of Species” through five or six times, each
time with increasing admiration. A letter of September 1 to his friend
George Silk contains the key to the subsequent direction of his
research, namely, his recognition of the vast breadth of Darwin’s
principles and his determination to devote his life to their exposition:
I could _never have approached_ the completeness of his book, its vast
accumulation of evidence, its overwhelming argument, and its admirable
tone and spirit. I really feel thankful that it has _not_ been left to
me to give the theory to the world. Mr. Darwin has created a new
science and a new philosophy; and I believe that never has such a
complete illustration of a new branch of human knowledge been due to
the labors and researches of a single man. Never have such vast masses
of widely scattered and hitherto quite unconnected facts been combined
into a system and brought to bear upon the establishment of such a
grand and new and simple philosophy.
The discovery of “Natural Selection” again turned the course of
Wallace’s life. In his autobiography he writes:
I had, in fact, been bitten with the passion for species and their
description, and if neither Darwin nor myself had hit upon “natural
selection,” I might have spent the best years of my life in this
comparatively profitless work, but the new ideas swept all this
away.... This outline of the paper will perhaps enable my readers to
understand the intense interest I felt in working out all these
strange phenomena, and showing how they could almost all be explained
by that law of “Natural Selection” which Darwin had discovered many
years before, and which I also had been so fortunate as to hit upon.
The coloring of animals as observed in the tropics and the Malayan
Islands was the subject in which Wallace made his most extensive and
original contributions to Darwinism. In his sketch of 1858 he wrote:
Even the peculiar colors of many animals, especially insects, so
closely resembling the soil or the leaves or the trunks on which they
habitually reside, are explained on the same principle; for though in
the course of ages varieties of many tints may have occurred, _yet
those races having colors best adapted to concealment from their
enemies would inevitably survive the longest_.
Returning from the Archipelago in 1862, he published in 1864 his pioneer
paper, “The Malayan Papilionidæ or Swallow-tailed Butterflies, as
illustrative of the Theory of Natural Selection,” in which he at once
took rank beside Bates and Müller as one of the great contributors to
the color characteristics of animals. We see him step by step developing
the ideas of protective resemblance which he had fully discussed with
Bates, of alluring and warning colors, and of mimicry, pointing out the
prevalence of mimicry in the female rather than in the male. The whole
series of phenomena is believed to depend upon the great principle of
the utility of every character, upon the need of color protection by
almost all animals, and upon the known fact that no characteristic is so
variable as color, that, therefore, concealment is most easily obtained
by color modification. Protective resemblance in all its manifold forms
has ever been dominant in his mind as a greater principle than that of
the sexual selection of color which Darwin favored.
Here may be cited Wallace’s own account of his famous observation of
mimicry in the leaf butterfly from his volume of 1869, “The Malay
Archipelago”:
The other species to which I have to direct attention is the _Kallima
paralekta_, a butterfly of the same family group as our Purple
Emperor, and of about the same size or larger. Its upper surface is of
a rich purple, variously tinged with ash color, and across the fore
wings there is a broad bar of deep orange, so that when on the wing it
is very conspicuous. This species was not uncommon in dry woods and
thickets, and I often endeavored to capture it without success, for
after flying a short distance it would enter a bush among dry or dead
leaves, and however carefully I crept up to the spot I could never
discover it till it would suddenly start out again and then disappear
in a similar place. At length I was fortunate enough to see the exact
spot where the butterfly settled, and though I lost sight of it for
some time, I at length discovered that it was close before my eyes,
but that in its position of repose it so closely resembled a dead leaf
attached to a twig as almost certainly to deceive the eye even when
gazing full upon it. I captured several specimens on the wing, and was
able fully to understand the way in which this wonderful resemblance
is produced.... All these varied details combine to produce a disguise
that is so complete and marvellous as to astonish every one who
observes it; and the habits of the insects are such as to utilize all
these peculiarities, and render them available in such a manner as to
remove all doubt of the purpose of this singular case of mimicry,
which is undoubtedly a protection to the insect.
In 1867, in a manner which delighted Darwin, Wallace advanced his
provisional solution of the cause of the gay and even gaudy colors of
caterpillars as warnings of distastefulness. In 1868 he propounded his
explanation of the colors of nesting birds, that when both sexes are
conspicuously colored, the nest conceals the sitting bird, but when the
male is conspicuously colored and the nest is open to view, the female
is plainly colored and inconspicuous. His theory of recognition colors
as of importance in enabling the young birds and mammals to find their
parents was set forth in 1878, and he came to regard it as of very great
importance.
In “Tropical Nature” (1878) the whole subject of the colors of animals
in relation to natural and sexual selection is reviewed, and the general
principle is brought out that the exquisite beauty and variety of insect
colors has not been developed through their own visual perceptions, but
mainly and perhaps exclusively through those of the higher animals which
prey upon them. This conception of color origin, rather than that of the
general influence of solar light and heat or the special action of any
form of environment, leads him to his functional and biological
classification of the colors of living organisms into five groups, which
forms the foundation of the modern, more extensive and critical
classification of Poulton. He concluded (p. 172):
We find, then, that neither the general influence of solar light and
heat, nor the special action of variously tinted rays, are adequate
causes for the wonderful variety, intensity and complexity of the
colors that everywhere meet us in the animal and vegetable worlds. Let
us, therefore, take a wider view of these colors, grouping them into
classes determined by what we know of their actual uses or special
relations to the habits of their possessors. This, which may be termed
the functional and biological classification of the colors of living
organisms, seems to be best expressed by a division into five groups,
as follows:
Animals.│1. Protective colors.
„ │2. Warning colors. │_a._ Of creatures specially protected.
„ │ „ │_b._ Of defenseless creatures mimicking
│ │ _a_.
„ │3. Sexual colors.
„ │4. Typical colors.
────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
Plants. │5. Attractive colors.
Twelve years later he devoted four chapters of his “Darwinism” to the
colors of animals and plants, still maintaining the hypotheses of
utility, of spontaneous variation and of selection.
The study of geographic distribution of animals also sprang from the
inspiration of the Malayan journey and from the suggestiveness of the
eleventh and twelfth chapters of “The Origin of Species,” which Wallace
determined to work out in an exhaustive manner. Following the
preliminary treatises of Buffon, of Cuvier and Forbes, and the early
regional classification of Sclater, Wallace takes rank as the founder of
the science of zoogeography in his two great works, “The Geographical
Distribution of Animals” of 1876, and “Island Life” of 1881, the latter
volume following the first as the result of four years of additional
thought and research. His early observations on insular distribution
were sketched out in his article of 1860, “The Zoological Geography of
the Malayan Archipelago.”
Here is his discovery of the Bali-Lombok boundary line between the
Indian and the Australian zoological regions which has since been
generally known by his name.
In these fundamental geologic and geographic works Wallace appears as a
disciple of Lyell in uniformitarianism, and a follower of Dana as
regards the stability and permanence of continental and oceanic areas,
for which doctrine he advances much original evidence. He taxes his
ingenuity to discover every possible means of dispersal of animals and
plants other than those which would be afforded by hypothetical land
connections; he considers every possible cause of extinction other than
those which are sudden or cataclysmal.
The “Island Life” is in itself a great contribution to zoology and
zoogeography, the starting-point of all modern discussion of insular
faunas and floras. His conservative theory of dispersal is applied in an
original way to explain the arctic element in the mountain regions of
the tropics, as opposed to the low-temperature theory of tropical
lowlands during the Glacial Period; his explanation is founded on known
facts as to the dispersal and distribution of plants and does not
require the extreme changes in the climate of tropical lowlands during
the Glacial Period on which Darwin founded his interpretation. The
causes and influence of the Glacial Epoch are discussed in an exposition
of Croll’s theory. In this connection may be mentioned one of Wallace’s
original geological contributions, in the article “Glacial Erosions of
Lake Basins,” published in 1893, namely, his theory of glacial erosion
as a means of explaining the origin of valley lakes of glaciated
countries.
The original trend of Wallace’s thought as to the ascent of man is first
shown in the three anthropological essays of 1864, 1869 and 1870, which
were subsequently collected in the volume “Contributions to the Theory
of Natural Selection.” This work, published in 1871, includes all his
original essays from 1855 to 1869 on selection, on color and human
evolution, which foreshadow the later development of his speculative
philosophy.
A suggestive anthropological contribution is the article entitled “The
Expressiveness of Speech or Mouth Gesture as a Factor in the Origin of
Language,” in which is developed the theory of the origin of language in
connection with the motions of the lips, jaws and tongue. With Wallace
also arose the now widely accepted belief that the Australian aborigines
constitute a low and perhaps primitive type of the Caucasian race.
In the article of 1864, “The Development of Human Races under the Law of
Natural Selection,” Wallace first advanced the hypothesis which has
since proved to be untenable, that so soon as man learned to use fire
and make tools, to grow food, to domesticate animals, to use clothing
and build houses, the action of natural selection was diverted from his
body to his mind, and thenceforth his physical form remained stable,
while his mental faculties improved. His subsequent papers on human
evolution, “The Limits of Natural Selection as Applied to Man” of 1869,
“On Instinct in Man and Animals” of 1871, mark the gradual divergence of
his views from those of Darwin, for in his opinion natural selection is
believed to be inadequate to account for several of the physical as well
as psychical characteristics of man, for example his soft, sensitive
skin, his speech, his color sense, his mathematical, musical and moral
attributes. He concluded:
The inference I would draw from this class of phenomena is that a
superior intelligence has guided the development of man in a definite
direction, and for a special purpose, just as man guides the
development of many animal and vegetable forms.
It is also prophetic of his later indictments of the so-called
civilization of our times that we find at the end of the closing pages
of “The Malay Archipelago” the first statement of the feeling which so
many travelers have experienced from a comparison of the natural and
so-called civilized condition of man that “social evolution from
barbarism to civilization” has not advanced general human welfare. These
humanitarian and partly socialistic ideas are developed in a series of
recurrent essays between 1882 and 1903, including “The Nationalization
of Land” and “Studies Scientific and Social.”
He returned to this subject in what we believe to be his last published
essay, namely, his “Social Environment and Moral Progress” of 1913,
wherein he considers the so-called “feministic” movement and future of
woman:
The foregoing statement of the effect of established natural laws, if
allowed free play under rational conditions of civilization, clearly
indicates that the position of woman in the not distant future will be
far higher and more important than any which has been claimed for or
by her in the past.
While she will be conceded full political and social rights on an
equality with men, she will be placed in a position of responsibility
and power which will render her his superior, since the future moral
progress of the race will so largely depend upon her free choice in
marriage. As time goes on, and she acquires more and more economic
independence, _that_ alone will give her an effective choice which she
has never had before. But this choice will be further strengthened by
the fact that, with ever-increasing approach to equality of
opportunity for every child born in our country, that terrible excess
of male deaths, in boyhood and early manhood especially due to various
preventable causes, will disappear, and change the present majority of
women to a majority of men. This will lead to a greater rivalry for
wives, and will give to women the power of rejecting all the lower
types of character among their suitors.
It will be their special duty so to mould public opinion, through home
training and social influence, as to render the women of the future
the regenerators of the entire human race.
In closing this review of a great life, we cannot refrain from
reflecting on the pendulum of scientific opinion. The discovery of a
great truth such as the law of selection is always followed by an
over-valuation, from which there is certain to be a reaction. We are in
the midst of such a reaction at the present time, in which the
Darwin-Wallace theory of natural selection is less appreciated than it
will be in the future when there comes a fresh readjustment of
scientific values.
It is well to remember that we may not estimate either the man of
science or his conclusions as of our own period, but must project
ourselves in imagination into the beginnings of his thought and into the
travails of his mind, considering how much larger he was than the men
about him, how far he was an innovator, breaking away from the
traditions of his times, how far his direct observations apart from
theory are true and permanent, and how far his theories have contributed
to the great stream of biological thought.
Our perspective has covered a long, honorable span of sixty-five years
into the beginnings of the thinking life of a natural philosopher whose
last volume, “The World of Life,” of the year 1911, gives as clear a
portrayal of his final opinions as that which his first essay of 1858
portrays of his early opinions.
We follow the cycle of his reflection beginning with “adaptation” as the
great mystery to be solved; in the middle and sanguine period of life,
“adaptation” is regarded as fully explained by natural selection; in the
closing and conservative period of life “adaptation” is again regarded
in some of its phases as entirely beyond human powers of interpretation,
not only in the evolution of the mental and spiritual nature of man, but
in such marvellous manifestations as the scales of butterflies or the
wings of birds.
From our own intellectual experience we may sympathize with the rebound
of maturity from the buoyant confidence of the young man of thirty-five
who finds in natural selection the entire solution of the problem of
fitness which has vexed the mind and aroused the scientific curiosity of
man since the time of Empedocles. We have ourselves experienced a loss
of confidence with advancing years, an increasing humility in the face
of transformations which become more and more mysterious the more we
study them, although we may not join with this master in his appeal to
an organizing and directing supernatural principle. Younger men than
Wallace, both among the zoologists and philosophers of our own time, are
giving a somewhat similar metaphysical solution of the eternal problem
of adaptation, which still baffles and transcends our powers of
experiment and of reasoning.
[Illustration:
_Photographed by his son, Leonard Darwin_
CHARLES DARWIN
]
CHARLES DARWIN
1809–1882
I met Darwin in Huxley’s laboratory and my impression of his
personality is described in the address on the Life and Works of
Darwin, which was delivered at Columbia University on the hundredth
anniversary of his birth, as an introduction to a series of nine
lectures on Charles Darwin and his influence in science. The fact that
Lincoln and Darwin were born on the same day, February 12, 1809,
brought together these two great men, so widely different in their
vocations, so similar in their reverence for the truth, in their
simplicity and directness of life.
The address at the Darwin Centenary at Cambridge was delivered at the
request of my American colleagues, in reply to the reception of the
delegates. It was strictly limited as to time, presenting the problem
of speaking of Darwin to the men who knew him personally, who recalled
almost every detail of his life—to sum up in comparatively few words
the outstanding facts of his influence. The form of this address is
therefore quite in contrast to the preceding tribute, which was
without time limitation.