the genealogy of man [line of evolutionary development from earlier forms]24 to which you allude. It is not so awful & difficult to me, as it seems [to] most, partly from familiarity & partly, I think, from having seen a good many Barbarians. I declare the thought, when I first saw in T. [Tierra] del Fuego a naked painted, shivering hideous savage, that my ancestors must have been somewhat similar beings, was at that time as revolting to me, nay more revolting than my present belief that an incomparably more remote ancestor was a hairy beast. Monkeys have downright good hearts, at least sometimes, as I could show, if I had space. I have long attended to this subject, & have materials for a curious essay on Human expression, & a little on the relation in mind [i.e. of the mind] of man to the lower animals. How I shd be abused if I were to publish such an essay!
It is very true what you say about the higher races of men, when high enough, replacing & clearing off the lower races. In 500 years how the Anglo-Saxon race will have spread & exterminated whole nations; & in consequence how much the Human race, viewed as a unit, will have risen in rank.25
At first glance the contents of the above paragraph come as a shock. How could Darwin, this kindly and humane man who abhorred slavery and any kind of cruelty, speak about the extermination of whole nations? But it would be a mistake to assume from this that, just because Darwin foresaw such an eventuality, he necessarily condoned it, or that, as a scientist, he was doing anything other than predicting the future in the light of what had happened in the past.
When he wrote to Hooker on 18 March 1862 Darwin was still wrestling with the nagging, yet seemingly inexplicable, phenomenon of variability, which he had attempted on several occasions to explain, but without any true conviction. I think, said he, ‘that all variability is due to changes in the condition of life … [which] affect in an especial manner the reproductive organs, those organs which are to produce a new being’.26 Darwin had expressed this view previously, and was doubtless aware that it was pure speculation on his part.
In early April Wallace sent Darwin ‘a wild honeycomb from the island of Timor, not quite perfect but the best I could get’.27 That spring Wallace returned to England, having spent eight years in the Far East.28
To Asa Gray in June, Darwin wrote:
I received 2 or 3 days ago a French Translation of the Origin by a Madelle Royer [Clémence Auguste Royer, French author and economist], who must be one of the cleverest & oddest women in Europe: is [an] ardent Deist & hates Christianity, & declares that natural selection & the struggle for life will explain all morality, nature of man, [politics] &c &c!!! She makes some very curious & good hits [i.e. points], & says she shall publish a book on these subjects, & a strange production it will be.29
Darwin is doubtless grateful to Mademoiselle Royer for her support, but too much of a gentleman to expose her more extravagant claims on his behalf to ridicule.
Emma demonstrated that she was totally in agreement with her husband when she wrote to T. G. Appleton on 28 June:
We shall rejoice at the termination of the [American Civil] war & [even] if we cannot hope to see Slavery abolished I think it must at all events be prevented from Spreading.30
Darwin, in effervescent mood, told Hooker on Christmas Eve:
And now I am going to tell you a most important piece of news!! I have almost resolved to build a small hot-house: my neighbours really first-rate gardener has suggested it & offered to make me plans & see that it is well done … it will be grand amusement for me to experiment with plants.31
Following the discovery in Southern Germany of the fossilized bird Archaeopteryx (about which more will be said shortly), Darwin declared, ‘It shows how little we know [of] what lived during former times.’32
On 7 January 1863 Darwin told James D. Dana that he had been told by palaeontologist and botanist Hugh Falconer, that Owen had ‘not done the work well’ in respect of an examination which the latter had performed on the fossil of Archaeopteryx.33 This prompted him (Darwin) to write to Falconer to enquire, ‘Has God demented Owen, as a punishment for his crimes, that he should overlook such a point?’34 (It was alleged that the ‘jaw with teeth’ which Falconer described to Darwin in a previous letter, did not actually belong to Archaeopteryx at all; a point which Owen appears to have overlooked.35)
Less than three weeks later, on the 26th, Darwin congratulated entomologist Henry W. Bates on his marriage and declared, ‘Judging from my own experience [of that institution] it is [i.e. provides] the best & almost only chance for what share of happiness this world affords.’36
Darwin displayed another of his talents on 7 February when he wrote in French, to French botanist Charles V. Naudin, thanking him for supplying information on the cross-breeding of various types of melon.37
Throughout his working life Darwin had likewise been generous in giving his time and sharing his knowledge with others, as his immense correspondence testifies. However, he was not always able to satisfy their curiosity. For example, in 1882 he told Scottish physician and surgeon Robert S. Skirving of Edinburgh, ‘I am sorry to say that I know nothing of the habits of earwigs.’38
On 13 March Darwin declared to Hooker, in respect of Lyell, who evidently had remained a Creationist, ‘I feel sure that at times he no more believed in Creation than you or I.’39
A week later, Darwin wrote to Asa Gray ‘to thank you in my dear little man’s name for two precious stamps’. This was a reference by Darwin to his twelve-year-old son, Leonard, who was a collector of postage stamps.40
On 2 July Darwin advised John Scott, foreman of the Propagating Department at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh in respect of the latter’s botanical experiments, to stress the necessity for care, honesty and scrupulousness when it came to research.
By no means modify even in the slightest degree any result. Accuracy is the soul of Natural History. It is hard to become accurate; he who modifies a hair’s breadth will never be accurate. It is a golden rule, which I try to follow, to put every fact which is opposed to one’s preconceived opinion in the strongest light. Absolute accuracy is the hardest merit to attain & the highest merit. Any deviation is ruin.41
Throughout the year 1864 Darwin was preoccupied mainly with the subject of botany, having an essay entitled ‘The Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants’ published in the Journal of the Linnaean Society. On 30 November, in his absence, he was awarded the Copley Medal by the Royal Society of London for his ‘important Researches in Geology, Zoology, and Botanical Physiology’.42
To Lyell, on 22 January 1865, Darwin wrote, with reference to variations found in humming birds on the one hand and orchids on the other, ‘The more I work the more I feel convinced that it is by the accumulation of such extremely slight variations that new species arise.’43
Darwin told Hooker on 9 February of the horror which he felt at what he presumed was the
certainty, of the sun some day cooling & we all freezing. To think of the progress of millions of years, with every continent swarming with good & enlightened men all ending in this; & with probably no fresh start until this our own planetary system has been again converted into red-hot gas. Sic transit gloria mundi [‘So passes away the glory of the world’], with a vengeance.44
Robert FitzRoy, Vice Admiral (retired), Fellow of the Royal Society and former commander of HMS Beagle, committed suicide on 30 April.
In late September Darwin told Hooker, following the death of the latter’s father on 12 August, ‘I do not think anyone could love a father much more than I did mine & I do not believe three or four days ever pass without my still thinking of him … .’45
Darwin wrote to Hooker on 22 December saying,
I have been so careless I have lost several diplomas & now I want to know what [Societies] I belong to, as I observe every[one] tacks their titles to their names in the Catalogue of The Royal [Society].46
It is interesting to note how Darwin could be so scrupulously meticulous on the one hand, and yet so absent-minded on the other!
To ‘a local landowner’ the following year, 1866, an outraged Darwin wrote:
As you are now so little on your Farm, you may not be aware that the necks of your horses are badly galled [chafed] … . I must for the sake of humanity attend to this. I sincerely hope that you will at once make enquiries & give strict orders to your Bailiff not to work any horse with a wounded neck.47
In his time, Darwin must have impaled hundreds of insects on tiny pins, shot and stuffed countless birds, bottled in preservative a myriad of small creatures, but this was all in the cause of science. The serious neglect of a horse, however, was something that this humane and sensitive man was not prepared to tolerate.
In reply to Hooker’s statement that ‘all botanists would agree that many tropical plants could not withstand a somewhat cooler climate’, Darwin replied, on 28 February 1866, ‘I have come not to care at all for general beliefs without the special facts.’48
On 28 April Emma described how her husband had embarked on a rare and special outing.
Charles went last night to the Soirée at the Royal Society, where assemble all the scientific men in London. The President presented him to the Prince of Wales. There were only three presented, and he was the first.49
That spring, Darwin was hard at work preparing for the production of the 4th edition of Origin.
To Wallace, on 5 July, Darwin wrote:
I fully agree with all that you say on the advantages of H. Spencer’s excellent expression of ‘the survival of the fittest’. I wish I had received your letter two months ago for I would have worked in [i.e. included] ‘the survival etc’ often in the new edition of the Origin which is now almost printed off …. The term Natural selection has now been so largely used abroad & at home that I doubt whether it could be given up, & with all its faults I should be sorry to see the attempt made. Whether it will be rejected must now depend on the ‘survival of the fittest’.50
In Volume I of his book Principles of Biology published in 1864, philosopher and civil engineer Herbert Spencer had been the first to introduce the expression ‘survival of the fittest’.51 Now here was Darwin, humorously applying Spencer’s expression to the matter in hand!
NOTES
1. Darwin to Asa Gray, 22 July, Cor.8, p.299.
2. Darwin to John Murray, 3 August, Cor.8, p.309.
3. Darwin to Hooker, 23, Cor.9, p.100.
4. Darwin to Hooker, 25 January, Cor.10, p.48.
5. Darwin to Armand de Quatrefages, 11 July, Cor. 10, pp.313–14.
6. Cor. 11, pp.754–65.
7. Darwin to Athenaeum, 18 April, Cor. 11, p.324.
8. Darwin to George Bentham, 22 May, Cor.11, pp.432–3.
9. Darwin to George Bentham, 19 June, Cor.11, p.497.
10. Darwin to Henry Fawcett, 6 December [1860], Cor.18, p.375.
11. Wallace, Alfred Russel, op. cit., p.197.
12. Darwin to Hooker, 4 February, Cor.9, p.20.
13. Darwin to Jean L.A. Quatrefages de Bréau, 25 April, Cor.9, p.102.
14. Darwin to W. E. Darwin, 9 May, Cor.9, p. 123.
15. Darwin to Hooker, 18, Darwin Correspondence Project, Letter 3152.
16. Darwin to John S. W. Kershaw, 23 May, Cor.9, p.135.
17. Darwin to Bartholomew J. Sulivan, 24 May, Cor.9, p.138.
18. Darwin to Frances Julia Wedgwood, 11 July, Cor.9, p.200.
19. Darwin to Asa Gray, 17 September, Cor.9, p.267.
20. Darwin to Asa Gray (after 11 October 1861), Cor.9, p.302.
21. Darwin to Wallace, 30 November 1861, Cor.9, p.357.
22. Darwin to Hooker, Cor.9, p.367.
23. Darwin to Asa Gray, 22 January, Cor. 10, p.40.
24. Oxford Dictionaries Online.
25. Darwin to Charles Kingsley, 6 February, Cor. 10, pp.71–2.
26. Darwin to Hooker, 18 March, Cor.10, p.123.
27. Cor.10, p.146.
28. Cor.6, p.515, note 12.
29. Darwin to Asa Gray, 10–20 June, Cor.10, p.241.
30. Emma to T.G. Appleton, 28 June, Cor.10, p.275.
31. Darwin to Hooker 24 December, Cor. 10, p.625.
32. Darwin to James Dwight Dana, 7 January, Cor. 11, p.23.
33. Darwin to James Dwight Dana, 7 January, Cor. 11, p.23.
34. Darwin to Hugh Falconer, 28 January, Cor. 11, pp.61–2.
35. Hugh Falconer to Darwin, 18 January, Cor.11, p.55.
36. Darwin to H. W. Bates, 26 January, Cor. 11, p.83.
37. Cor.11, p.119.
38. Darwin to Robert Scot Skirving, 16 November, Cor.18, p.383.
39. Darwin to J.D. Hooker, 13, Cor.11, p.225.
40. Darwin to Asa Gray, 20 March, Cor. 11, p.247.
41. Darwin to John Scott, 2 July, Cor.11, p.519.
42. Cor. 12, p.455, note 3.
43. Darwin to Charles Lyell, 22 January, Cor. 11, p.35.
44. Darwin to Hooker, 9 February, Cor. 13, p.56.
45. Darwin to Hooker, 27, Cor. 13, pp.245–6.
46. Darwin to Hooker, 22 December, Cor. 13, p.329.
47. Cor. 14, pp.1–2.
48. Darwin to Hooker, Cor. 14, p.84.
49. Litchfield, op. cit., Volume II, pp.184–5.
50. Darwin to A. R. Wallace, 5 July [1866], Cor.14, pp.235–6.
51. Spencer, Herbert, Principles of Biology, 1864–7. I, pp.444–5.
Chapter 18
Alfred Russel Wallace
As has already been pointed out, there were many similarities in make up between Wallace and Darwin.
A modest man with an enquiring mind
Referring to his life as a young man in his early twenties, Wallace declared:
I do not think that at this time 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 … . If I had one distinct 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.1
A disciplined scientist: his powers of observation: a great collector
Having returned to London from the Far East in the spring of 1862, Wallace, employing a methodology similar to that of Darwin in the Galapagos Islands, described how he
had determined to keep a complete set of certain groups [of ‘birds, butterflies, beetles, and land-shells’] from every island or district locality which I visited for my own study on my return home, as I felt sure they would afford me very valuable materials for working out the geographical distribution of animals in the [Malay] archipelago …2
During the succeeding five years I continued the study of my collections, writing many papers … five or six on the special applications of the theory of natural selection.3
Just as, at the Galapagos, Darwin had described how particular species of birds varied from island to island, so Wallace said of the butterflies of Malaya,
the family presents us with examples of differences of size, form, and colour, characteristic of certain localities, which are among the most singular and mysterious phenomena known to naturalists.4
Authorship
Wallace’s literary output was nothing like as prodigious as that of Darwin but, nevertheless, he wrote many books, including The Geographical Distribution of Animals (1876), Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro (1889) and Man’s Place in the Universe (a volume about astronomy, 1903).
His generous attitude towards Darwin as a fellow scientist
On 6 October 1858 Wallace, demonstrating a degree of generosity and selflessness to rival that of Darwin himself, told Hooker,
I … look upon it as a most fortunate circumstance that I had a short time ago commenced a correspondence with Mr Darwin on the subject of ‘Varieties’, since it has led to the earlier publication of a portion of his researches & has secured to him a claim to priority which an independent publication either by myself or some other party might have injuriously affected … .<
br />
It would have caused me much pain & regret had Mr Darwin’s excess of generosity led him to make public my paper unaccompanied by his own …5
As already indicated Darwin was equally generous in respect of Wallace’s achievements, saying,
I hope it is a satisfaction to you to reflect – & very few things in my life have been more satisfactory to me – that we have never felt any jealousy towards each other, though [we are] in one sense rivals. I believe that I can say this of myself with truth, & I am absolutely sure that it is true of you.6
Did Darwin and Wallace ever meet? The answer is yes – at Down House on 12 September 1868, and in London on numerous occasions when Darwin visited his brother Erasmus.7
His colleagues
As with Darwin, Wallace included amongst the ‘scientific friends … with whom I became most intimate’, Lubbock (Darwin’s neighbour at Downe, about whom more will be said shortly), Hooker, and Francis Galton,8 but especially Huxley, who he said was ‘as kind and genial a friend and companion as Darwin himself’.9
Compassion towards his fellow human beings
Of the eight-year-long expedition which he undertook to the Malay archipelago (commencing in 1854), Wallace declared
The more I see of uncivilized people, the better I think of human nature on the whole, and the essential differences between civilized and savage man seem to disappear. [And of the Chinese of Malaya] … the great majority of them are quiet, honest, decent sort of people.10
As for colonialism, Wallace evidently regarded it with a benign resignation, as is indicated in a letter which he wrote to George Silk, his friend from childhood, from East Sumatra (Sumatra being an Indonesian island then administered by the Dutch East India Company).
Personally, I do not much like the Dutch out here, or the Dutch officials; but I cannot help bearing witness to the excellence of their government of native races, gentle yet firm, treating their manners, customs, and prejudices with respect, yet introducing everywhere European law, order and industry.11
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