Politics: socialism
It was not Darwin’s habit to pontificate upon matters political, even though, as has been demonstrated, he abhorred social injustice and, in particular, the practice of slavery. Wallace, however, was prepared to ‘nail his colours to the mast’.
In 1837 the thirteen-year-old Wallace had been sent to London to reside with a master builder to whom his brother John was apprenticed as land surveyor. Here, he was introduced to the ‘Hall of Science’ in Tottenham Court Road – ‘a kind of club or mechanics’ institute for advanced thinkers among workmen, and especially for the followers of Robert Owen, the founder of the socialist movement in England’. (Socialism is defined as a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.12) In later life Wallace was to assert that he was ‘absolutely convinced’ as to the merits of socialism, which was ‘the only form of society worthy of civilized beings, and that it alone can secure for mankind continuous mental and moral advancement …’.13
God and religion
Whereas Darwin did not entirely dismiss the possibility of the existence of a god of sorts – or at any rate, a creator – Wallace was to strike out in an entirely different direction, writing,
my early home training was in a thoroughly religious but by no means rigid family where, however, no religious doubts were ever expressed, and where the word ‘atheist’ was used with bated breath as pertaining to a being too debased almost for human society.14
And he described his father as ‘very religious in the orthodox Church of England way, and with such a reliance on Providence as almost to amount to fatalism’.15
However, at the age of thirteen, he read a book or paper (unidentified) which posed the following questions:
Is God able to prevent evil but not willing? Then he is not benevolent. Is he willing but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?
This, said Wallace, ‘struck me very much, and it seemed quite unanswerable ….’16 As for ‘the horrible doctrine of eternal punishment as then commonly taught from thousands of pulpits by both the Church of England and Dissenters …’ this, in Wallace’s view, was both
degrading and hideous, and … the only true and wholly beneficial religion was that which inculcated the service of humanity, and whose only dogma was the brotherhood of man.17
As might have been expected, therefore, what little religious belief I had very quickly vanished under the influence of philosophical or scientific scepticism. This came first upon me when I spent a month in London with my brother John …; and during the seven years I lived with my brother William, though the subject of religion was not often mentioned, there was a pervading spirit of scepticism, or free-thought as it was then called, which strengthened and confirmed my doubts as to the truth or value of all ordinary religious teaching.18
Having heard a Unitarian minister lecture on the subject of a book by German theologian David F. Strauss, entitled The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (published in 1835), Wallace declared:
The now well-known argument, that all the miracles related in the Gospels were mere myths, which in periods of ignorance and credulity always grow up around all great men, and especially around all great moral teachers when the actual witnesses of his career are gone and his disciples begin to write about him, was set forth with great skill.19
Wallace and spiritualism
Spiritualism is defined as a system of belief or religious practice based on supposed communication with the spirits of the dead, especially through mediums – a medium being defined as a person claiming to be in contact with the spirits of the dead, and to be able to communicate between the dead and the living.20 It will be recalled that Darwin was thoroughly unimpressed by spiritualism, but not so Wallace, who came to the subject late in life.
Speaking of the ‘materializations’ (whereby a ghost, spirit, or similar entity appears in bodily form21) which he had observed at various seances (meetings at which people attempt to make contact with the dead, especially through the agency of a medium)22 which he had attended, Wallace declared,
the phenomena and the effect they produced upon me are fully described in the ‘Notes of Personal Evidence’, in my book on Miracles and Modern Spiritualism [published in 1874], …23 I had numerous opportunities of seeing phenomena with other mediums in various private houses in London.
These mediums included ‘Mrs Marshall and her daughter-in-law’, whom Wallace described as ‘two of the best public mediums for physical phenomena I have ever met with …’.24
Such phenomena, defined as a fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially one whose cause or explanation is in question,25 which, according to Wallace, ‘materialized’ before his very eyes, included a ‘stately East Indian figure in white robes’; ‘three female figures [which] appeared together’; ‘a female figure with a baby’; and ‘an Indian chief in war-paint and feathers’.26
In 1866, said Wallace, ‘I wrote a pamphlet entitled “The Scientific Aspects of the Supernatural”, which I distributed amongst my friends’.27 Furthermore, in May/June 1874, an article by Wallace, entitled ‘A Defence of Modern Spiritualism’ appeared in the Fortnightly Review.28 Wallace believed that
there was always an unknown intelligence behind the phenomena – an intelligence that showed a human character and individuality, and an individuality which almost invariably claimed to be that of some person who had lived on earth, and who, in many cases, was able to prove his or her identity.29
I feel myself that my character has continuously improved, and that this is owing chiefly to the teaching of spiritualism, that we are in every act and thought of our lives here building up a character which will largely determine our happiness or misery [in the life] hereafter; and also, that we obtain the greatest happiness ourselves by doing all we can to make those around us happy.30
Wallace and mesmerism
Wallace described how, during his time in London, he made the acquaintance of a dentist Dr Theodosius Purland, who ‘was a very powerful mesmerist’. (Mesmerism is a therapeutic system devised by Austrian physician Franz A. Mesmer (1734–1815), who believed that ‘magnetism’ could be used to cure diseases.) This so impressed Wallace that when, in 1849, physician Dr John Elliotson and others founded the Mesmeric Infirmary, Weymouth Street, London for the treatment of Epilepsy, Deafness, Rheumatism, and other diseases, Wallace gave them his support.31 Wallace’s book Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, was published in 1874.
Phrenology
Wallace also studied phrenology – the detailed study of the shape and size of the cranium as a supposed indicator of character and mental abilities.32
The origin of life
Wallace pondered over how it was that life on Earth began and wrote:
Soon after my return home [from the East], in 1862, [Henry W.] Bates and I, having both read [First Principles of a New System of Philosophy, published in 1862] and been immensely impressed by it, went together to call on Herbert Spencer … [its author]. Our thoughts were full of the great unsolved problem of the origin of life – a problem which Darwin’s Origin of Species left in as much obscurity as ever – and we looked to Spencer as the one man living who could give us some clue to it … . But … our hopes were dashed at once. That, he said, was too fundamental a problem to even think of solving at present.33
As for Darwin, he told Wallace that if it could be shown that life had generated itself spontaneously (i.e. rather than having been created), then this ‘would be a discovery of transcendent importance’.34 In other words, if it was proved that God was not necessary, even in the role of creator, then this would have troubled Darwin not one iota.
Was man continuing to evolve?
Wallace’s Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection (published in 1864), contained an article on ‘The Development of Human Races under the Law
of Natural Selection’, of which ‘the most original and important part’ was
that in which I showed that so soon as man’s intellect and physical structure led him to use fire, to make tools, to grow food, to domesticate animals, to use clothing, to 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. My paper shows why … the form and structure of our body is permanent, and that it is really the highest type now possible on the earth. The fact that we have not improved physically over the ancient Greeks, and that most savage races – even some of the lowest in material civilization – possess the human form in its fullest symmetry and perfection, affords evidence that my theory is the true one.35
What Wallace did not here take into account was that two to three millennia is an insignificant time period, when compared with the vastness of the evolutionary timescale.
Where Wallace differed from Darwin in matters scientific
In his autobiography Wallace summarized ‘the four chief points’ on which he ‘differed from Darwin’. Unlike Darwin, he
1. believed that some agency other than natural selection, and analogous to that which first produced organic life, had brought into being his [Man’s] moral and intellectual qualities.
2. Darwin believed that in the case of certain animals the males had obtained their bright colours, or other ornaments, by selection through female choice.
In other words, the sexual selection of brightly-coloured males by the females ensured that such characteristics were preserved (birds being known to have colour vision).
I, on the other hand, believe that natural selection had operated independently on the two sexes, and each had acquired colouration or form according to its need for protection. The females, being often more exposed to danger than the males (as in the case of sitting birds), had acquired [i.e. evolved] more subdued colouration whilst the males had remained bright and comparatively conspicuous.
3. Darwin thought that the arctic plants found on isolated mountain tops within the tropics could only be explained by the spreading of the arctic flora over the tropics during the glacial period. From a study of the flora of oceanic islands, I had come to the conclusion that the mountain flora had been derived by aerial transmission of seeds either by birds or by gales.
4. Darwin always believed in the inheritance of acquired characteristics, such as the results of use or disuse of organs, and the effects of climate, food, etc., on the individual. I also accepted this theory at first, but when I had studied Mr [Francis] Galton’s experiments and [German biologist] Dr [F. L. August] Weismann’s theory of the continuity of the germ-plasm I had to change my views.36
(According to Weismann’s ‘germ plasm theory’, in multicellular organisms only the ‘germ cells’ – ‘gametes’ – i.e. the cells of the ova and sperm, contribute to inheritance).
Eugenics
In his later years Wallace contributed to the Eugenics debate, as will be seen.
NOTES
1. Wallace, My Life; a Record of Events and Opinions, p.115.
2. Ibid, p.201.
3. Ibid, p.205.
4. Ibid, p.208.
5. Wallace to Hooker. 6 October [1858], Cor.7, p.166.
6. Darwin to Wallace, 20 April [1870], Cor.18, pp.100–1.
7. Information kindly supplied by Darwin Correspondence Project.
8. Wallace, op. cit., p.245.
9. Ibid, p.247.
10. Ibid, p.178.
11. Ibid, p.201.
12. Oxford Dictionaries Online.
13. Wallace, op. cit., p.327.
14. Ibid, p.118.
15. Ibid, p.11.
16. Ibid, p.45.
17. Ibid, p.46.
18. Ibid, p.119.
19. Ibid, p.119.
20. Oxford Dictionaries Online.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Wallace, op. cit., p.334.
24. Ibid, p.335.
25. Oxford Dictionaries Online.
26. Wallace, op. cit., pp.340, 345–6.
27. Ibid, p.336.
28. Ibid, p.338.
29. Ibid, p.355.
30. Ibid, p.380.
31. Ibid, p.252.
32. Oxford Dictionaries Online.
33. Wallace, op. cit., pp.239–40.
34. Darwin, Francis, op. cit., Volume III, pp.368–9.
35. Wallace, op. cit., p.381.
36. Ibid, pp.236–7.
Chapter 19
Variation: The Theory of Pangenesis
On 30 January 1868 Darwin’s book The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication was published by John Murray. The ‘object of this work’, he said, was to show ‘the amount and nature of the changes which animals and plants have undergone whilst under man’s dominion, or which bear on the general principles of variation’.1
There was no doubt that variation (or variability) was a feature of the natural world. The question was, how do variations come about? But first, Darwin turned his attention to the origin of life itself. Reiterating what he had said on a previous occasion, he declared that not only was it possible to
conclude that at least all the members of the same class have descended from a single ancestor … [but also] as the members of quite distinct classes have something in common in structure and much in common in constitution, analogy would lead us one step further, and to infer as probable that all living creatures are descended from a single prototype.2
However, ‘the first origin of life on this earth, as well as the continued life of each individual, is at present quite beyond the scope of science … .’3
Darwin declared that ‘variability … mainly depends on changed conditions of life’, but he confessed that it was ‘governed by infinitely complex and unknown laws’.4 Elaborating on this further, he declared that:
Changes of any kind in the conditions of life, even extremely slight changes, often suffice to cause variability. Excessive of nutriment is perhaps the most efficient single exciting [i.e. that which brings out or give rise to5] cause.6 We have reason to suspect that an habitual excess of highly nutritious food, or an excess relatively to the wear and tear of the organisation from exercise [i.e. excessive exertion], is a powerful exciting cause of variability.7
(Today, in the twenty-first century and with the advancement of science, it is becoming increasingly apparent that Darwin’s views about the role which factors external to the body – such as food, exercise, the environment, etc., play in producing variations are not as far-fetched as might once have been be supposed, as will shortly be seen.)
It was also Darwin’s view that ‘Variation often depends … on the reproductive organs being injuriously affected by changed conditions … .’8 These notions were ‘shots in the dark’ on the part of Darwin, who admitted as much by observing that
certain extraordinary peculiarities have … appeared in a single individual out of many millions, all exposed in the same country to the same general conditions of life … [This led him] to conclude that such peculiarities are not directly due to the action of the surrounding conditions, but to unknown laws acting on the organisation or constitution of the individual … .9
Finally, in a letter to Wallace dated 22 November 1870, Darwin appears resigned to the fact that, in his words, ‘we know nothing about [the] precise cause of each variation’.10 (In this particular case he was referring to changes in colour of butterflies with succeeding generations.)
The truth was that, in his efforts to explain ‘variation’, Darwin was attempting the impossible, for the science of this subject was as yet in its infancy.
The inheritance of variations
Wrote Darwin
When a new peculiarity [‘variation’] first appears, we can never predict whether it will be inherited. If both parents from their birth present the same peculiarity, the probability is strong that it will be transmitted to at least some of their offs
pring.11
Here, Darwin was reflecting the fact that some genes are ‘dominant’ in nature, whilst others are ‘recessive’. (Gene is a term coined in 1909 by Danish botanist Wilhelm Johannsen and now defined as a unit of heredity that is transferred from a parent to offspring and is held to determine some characteristic of the offspring.12) In the meantime, to him, the fact that not every feature of the parents was inherited by the offspring (what Darwin referred to as ‘non-inheritance’) was ‘intelligible [only] on the principle, that a strong tendency to inheritance does exist, but that it is overborne by hostile or unfavourable conditions of life’.13
Darwin also declared, without supporting evidence and in a manner reminiscent of Lamarck, that ‘the increased use of a muscle with its various detached parts, and the increased activity of a gland or other organ, lead to their increased development’. On the other hand ‘disuse has a contrary effect’ and ‘a part becomes diminished by disuse for [i.e. over] many generations …’.14
I do not believe any other person has taken such pain to show that the effects of use & disuse are inherited, as I have done.15
Other questions which occupied Darwin’s mind were:
a. What was it that determined which characteristics were inherited when two different breeds were crossed (e.g. grey mice and white mice)?
b. Why it was that ‘long-continued close interbreeding between the nearest relations diminishes the constitutional vigour, size, and fertility of the offspring; and occasionally leads to malformations …?’16
c. How may a characteristic ‘of so grave a nature as to deserve to be called a monstrosity [a grossly malformed animal, plant, or person]’17 suddenly present itself?18
d. ‘How it was possible for a character possessed by some remote ancestor suddenly to reappear in the offspring …’19 – a phenomenon that he termed ‘reversion’,20 meaning a return to a previous state.
Charles Darwin Page 16