Alfred Russel Wallace, F. R. S., and his essays of 1858 and 1855

Abstract

IN 1858 Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin jointly and independently stated the principle of natural selection, and in 1859 Darwin published the Origin of species. In this essay I want to discuss the part played by Alfred Wallace in that great event: was he no more than a catalyst for Darwin, applied at a critical moment of his career? I shall try to show how much more than that he was and, up to a point, how similarly they pursued their great problem. That is the more remarkable because it would be hard to choose men more unlike in character than these two. Charles Darwin came of well-to-do parentage with a strong family tradition both to support and to bind him. His dominant father moulded the future pattern of his life. He went through the school and college training of a young gentleman for whom it seemed difficult to find a satisfactory calling. But all his life he was a man of property, and continued so through his common sense and his financial sagacity.