Chapter I: Part 1

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

MEN OF THE OLD STONE AGE
THE ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF LIFE
THE AGE OF MAMMALS
EVOLUTION OF MAMMALIAN MOLAR TEETH
FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN
EVOLUTION AND RELIGION
HUXLEY AND EDUCATION

IMPRESSIONS OF
GREAT NATURALISTS

IMPRESSIONS OF GREAT NATURALISTS
REMINISCENCES OF DARWIN, HUXLEY, BALFOUR, COPE AND OTHERS

BY

HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN

RESEARCH PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY; SENIOR GEOLOGIST IN UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY; PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS

CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
NEW YORK · LONDON
1924

COPYRIGHT, 1913, 1924, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

COPYRIGHT, 1909, 1924, BY SCIENCE
COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY GINN AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1896, 1909, 1913, 1924, BY POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY

Printed in the United States of America

TO
THE MEMORY OF
THE NATURALISTS, EXPLORERS, AND AUTHORS
WHOSE CREATIVE LIVES
ARE BRIEFLY TOUCHED UPON HERE

“... those immortal dead who live again
In minds made better by their presence: live
In pulses stirr’d to generosity,
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn
For miserable aims that end with self,
In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars,
And with their mild persistence urge man’s search
To vaster issues.”
—GEORGE ELIOT

AUTOBIOGRAPHIC FOREWORD

There is no joy like the joy of creative work. To my mind all great men are creative, and among the greatest men are the creative naturalists from Aristotle to Darwin, whose self-effacing lives and enduring works are our most precious possessions. I like a naturalist better than a scientist, because there is less of the ego in him, and in a naturalist like Darwin the ego entirely disappears and through his vision we see Nature with the least human aberration. These “Impressions” may show the young and aspiring naturalists of our day that in the highest creative vision there is the least of self and the most of Nature. In the twelve lives chosen from the fifty-seven men and women of whom I have written,[1] I include Roosevelt, Bryce and Butler because as intrepid explorers and observers they show some of the highest qualities of the naturalist.

I had the good fortune to lead my student life between 1873 and 1880 under the spiritual, moral, and intellectual influence of the great men of the Victorian age, the poets Wordsworth and Tennyson, as well as the natural philosophers Wallace, Darwin, Huxley, and Cope. The scientific thought of the first half of the nineteenth century was permeated with the theism of the Special Creation theory of the universe. In those fateful days of intellectual doubt between the false theism of Special Creation and the true theism of Evolution, I fortunately came under the influence of a series of broad-minded teachers, of Arnold Guyot in geology, of James McCosh in psychology and philosophy, of William M. Sloane in the philosophy of Kant, of William H. Welch in anatomy and the study of the Cell; of each of these incomparable teachers I like to recall that “I too sat at the feet of Gamaliel.” McCosh numbered me in his favorite group of “eager young men” with the embryonic geologist Scott and the embryonic philosopher Ormond. Inspired with self-confidence by him in 1878, I took up original research in psychology and prepared a questionnaire on visual memory in co-operation with Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin, publishing four psychological papers at the same time that I was writing my first palæontological papers on fossil mammals discovered in the Rocky Mountains in 1877–1878. This work also fitted me to write, ten years later, “From the Greeks to Darwin,” my inaugural lectures in the Columbia University Professorship of Biology, the first of a series of volumes which I edited. While McCosh, to whom I dedicated this philosophical work, was eager and impetuous and urged the beginning of observation and research at once, Arnold Guyot, distinguished in the glaciology of Switzerland, taught that the way of learning is long and very arduous. I well recall the motto he gave me when I was groaning over the interminable difficulties of preparing fossils, a motto derived from Hippocrates and the patient Romans:

Art is long and difficult; criticism is short and easy.

This indeed is the message of Geology to the student mind and the underlying reason why Charles Lyell, a geologist, became the master of Charles Darwin, a biologist. Only from the eternal truths of the earth’s past history can the immediate present of Life be understood.

Two of my eager Princeton comrades felt the need of anatomy as much as I did, and without the aid of a teacher we started the dissection of a fish, guided by Huxley’s “Comparative Anatomy of the Vertebrates.” This laborious work on the porgy was followed by an anatomical escapade on the limb of _Homo sapiens_, part of a human cadaver, in one of the unused rooms of the Astronomical Observatory which we converted into a dissecting-room. The venerable astronomer, Professor Stephen Alexander, wondered at the source of the strange odors that filled the observatory, but never discovered the cause! These untaught and surreptitious studies in anatomy led to my coming, in the autumn of 1878, under one of the greatest teachers of anatomy this country has produced, William H. Welch, then a junior officer in the Bellevue Medical College. Fresh from the leading laboratories of Germany, Welch used the Teutonic method I had not known before, of introducing each of his discourses on the various kinds of cells with an historical review of discovery, showing how step by step one discovery in science leads to another. I felt for the first time the inspiration of the special virtue of German research, the most thorough and painstaking the world has ever known, the virtue of _grundlichkeit_, of going to the very bottom of things. Thus were drawing to a close my six American years when the question of whether I should go to Germany or to England was decided by a letter from Kitchen Parker, the distinguished English comparative anatomist and friend of Huxley, who personally advised me to go to London to study under Huxley and to Cambridge to study under Balfour.

Never shall I forget my first impression of Francis Maitland Balfour as I met him in the great court of Trinity College of Cambridge, in the spring of 1879, to apply for admission to his course in embryology. At the time he was twenty-eight years of age and I was twenty-one. I felt that I was in the presence of a superior being, of a type to which I could never possibly attain, and I did not lose this impression throughout the spring months in which he lectured on comparative embryology at Cambridge and in which we enjoyed many long afternoons of bicycle riding on the level roads of the Fens. I always felt that Balfour lived in a higher atmosphere, in another dimension of intellectual space. Not that he was aloof—far from it, for he was always in closest and most generous touch with the minds of his students; he made you feel that you had a mind and that your opinion and observation were of value, although you knew all the while that your mind was still embryonic and your opinions of the most tentative order. His was by far the most balanced mind among all the English biologists. He was at the time absorbed in embryology, which was the reigning biological discipline of the day. His untimely death in the Swiss Alps in the year 1882 was a tragic loss, because English biologic thought soon entered the long period of confusion and lack of balance that have characterized it to the present time. The other great lesson taught by Balfour was that of the balanced daily life: the morning lecture and tour of the laboratory, the five quiet hours devoted to his own writing and research, the vigorous afternoon exercise, and the delightful care-free and shop-free evening. At the time Balfour was turning out the great volumes of his “Comparative Embryology,” a monumental work, I asked him how many hours a day he gave to writing; he replied: “Never more than five hours.” A fresh mind is far more creative than a jaded mind.

In the autumn of 1879 I moved to London, which was then in the full and glorious tide of Victorian life. Not a member had fallen out of the great ranks. I had the good fortune to hear in the scientific societies some of these great men, such as Clark Maxwell in physics, to meet all the leading biologists except Wallace, and especially to come under the commanding personal influence of Huxley. Huxley especially imparted philosophic breadth, grasp of the whole subject, the force and value of expression, the wisdom and perception that come from survey of a very broad field, from both the philosophic and the anatomical standpoint. His sense of humor was delightful and brightened many of the most difficult passages in his discourses. By his way of living and by the unlimited personal sacrifices he made he taught me that we men of science must do our part in public education. To public service Huxley sacrificed his life, for not long after his great lecture course of 1879–1880, which I attended and of which I took the fullest notes, he broke down in health. When I last met him in Cambridge, at the British Association meeting of 1894, he shook his head sadly and said: “Osborn, I no longer can keep up with the progress of biology.” Soon after his death, in 1895, I wrote the reminiscences which appear in this volume without change.

To Huxley I owe the greatest biological impression that came to me in England, namely, a few words with Charles Darwin in Huxley’s laboratory. From the large number of students working there at the time, Huxley singled me out, perhaps because I was the only American, perhaps because of my early palæontological writing. I realized that I must make the most of the opportunity, and for a few moments I gazed steadily into Darwin’s face and especially into his benevolent blue eyes, which were almost concealed below the overhanging brows, eyes that seemed to have a vision of the entire living world and that gave one the impression of translucent truthfulness. In my address at the Darwin Centenary at Cambridge I endeavored to convey this profound impression of translucent truthfulness. Darwin arrived at Evolution not because he desired to do so, but because he was forced into it by his own observations of Nature. He came of a long line of compellingly truthful ancestors, and certainly “truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” is a distinctly English and Scotch trait. In my fifty years’ experience with scientific men I have found them neither more nor less truthful than other men, because truthfulness does not go on all fours with genius, with powers of observation and of generalization. Darwin always kept in the realm of fact; he was equally sincere in the realm of opinion and of theory. If in the relatively small part of his life that he devoted to speculation and to theory his contributions are less permanent, it is because, after all, Nature is unreasonable and irrational in her methods.

On returning to America as a young comparative anatomist I was privileged to work as a comrade with men with whom I had started as a disciple. I became more intimate than ever with the Scotchman James McCosh and enjoyed his eager freshness of mind and desire to gain new ideas. For a gift on his eightieth birthday his students paraphrased the lines of Aristophanes: “Honor to the old man who in the declining vigor of years seeks to learn new subjects and to add to his wisdom.” I had great reverence for another Scotchman, James Bryce, with his enthusiasm, his broad learning and experience, his eager reception of new ideas, to the very end of his life; finally, for that very unique Scotchman, John Muir. From their simple and hardy mode of living the Scotch contribute to the students of life enduring impressions of energy, vigor, youthfulness, and of the most genial and whole-hearted friendship.

In reprinting these “Impressions,” extending over a very long period of years, from my youthful tribute to Balfour in 1883 to those of John Muir, John Burroughs, Theodore Roosevelt, and Howard Crosby Butler in the present decade, may I claim that years of observation have given me far deeper penetration into the sources of human character and personality? This penetration is due to my studies in heredity and my observations on the difference in races and racial characteristics, which, for example, separate the Scotch from the English and both from the Irish. Such penetration is carried as far as I am able to do at present in appreciation of the peculiar genius of John Muir and of John Burroughs. In contrasting these two friends I asked myself the question: “Why are they so much alike and why so different?” I believe I have partly answered this question, but we may go much farther in the sympathetic biographic analysis of the future. Since I wrote the first of my biographic studies, the principal titles of which are included in the appendix of this volume, I have been attempting to penetrate into human nature along a number of paths: first, along studies of heredity, already alluded to; second, along studies of the men of the Old Stone Age and their forebears; third, with the increasing conviction that our intellectual, moral, and spiritual reactions are extremely ancient and that they have been built up not in hundreds but in thousands—perhaps hundreds of thousands—of years. It would, however, take me far beyond the limits of a foreword to enter upon this deeper interpretation of the impressions and influences which great minds of great men of different kinds have exerted upon me.

In these “Impressions” I am not in any case attempting to portray the whole man, but only one principal aspect of each life. The nearest approach to a full biographic treatment is the centenary address on the life and works of Charles Darwin and the memorial address on his comrade, Alfred Russel Wallace. It was an appreciation which I received in a letter from Wallace, reproduced in facsimile at the beginning of this volume, also letters from Mrs. Huxley and her son, from Lady Bryce, and from friends of John Burroughs and John Muir that first led me to believe that these biographical sketches would be helpful to young men and young women who aspire to greatness along different lines of intellectual endeavor. I have omitted many of my biographic essays because I was not confident that they would be of interest to laymen as well as to young scientists, to whom this work is addressed, but I cannot pass by two of my great palæontological predecessors, Joseph Leidy and Edward Drinker Cope, because the resemblances and contrasts between these two men are especially illuminating in scientific life.

Cope was certainly the most brilliant creative mind in comparative anatomy and evolution that America has produced. Quaker by birth, he was a fighter by nature, both in theory and in fact. On one occasion, in the American Philosophical Society, a difference of opinion with his friend Persifor Frazer led to such a violent controversy that the two scientists retired to the hallway and came to blows! On the following morning I happened to meet Cope and could not help remarking on a blackened eye. “Osborn,” he said, “don’t look at my eye. If you think my eye is black, you ought to see Frazer this morning!” But such differences of opinion did not sever the lifelong friendship, and when Cope died Frazer was the first to pay a glowing tribute to his genius. Cope was not a single but a multiple personality; he presents the widest possible contrast to a retiring nature like that of Alfred Russel Wallace, a sketch of whom opens this volume. Wallace, the last survivor of the great trio of British naturalists of the nineteenth century, survived by only a few months another member of the group, Sir Joseph Hooker, who introduced the famous Darwin-Wallace papers on Natural Selection to the Linnæan Society in 1858. Lyell, Darwin, and Wallace were three successive but closely kindred spirits, whose work began and ended with what will be known as the second great epoch of evolutionary thought, the first being that of the precursors of Darwin and the third that in which we live. They established Evolution through a continued line of attack by precisely similar methods of observation and reasoning over an extremely broad field.

As to the closeness of the intellectual sequence between these three men, those who know the original edition of the second volume of Lyell’s “The Principles of Geology,” published in 1832, must regard it as the second biologic classic of the century—the first being Lamarck’s “Philosophie Zoologique,” of 1809—on which Darwin through his higher and much more creative vision built up his “Journal of Researches.” When Lyell faltered in the application of his own principles Darwin went on and was followed by Wallace. The two older men may be considered to have united in guiding the mind of Wallace, because the young naturalist, fourteen years the junior of Darwin, took both “The Principles” of Lyell and “The Journal” of Darwin with him on his journey to South America, during which his career fairly began.

From his record of observations during his life in the tropics of America and of Asia Wallace will be remembered not only as one of the independent discoverers of the theory of Natural Selection but next to Darwin as one of the great naturalists of the nineteenth century. His range and originality are astounding in these days of specialization. His main lines of thought, although in many instances suggested to his mind somewhat suddenly, were developed and presented in a deliberate and masterly way through the series of papers and books extending from 1850 to 1913. The highest level of his creative life was, however, reached at the age of thirty-five, when with Darwin he published his sketch of the theory of Natural Selection. This outburst of original thought, on which his reputation will chiefly rest, came as an almost automatic generalization from his twelve years in the tropics.

The two most powerful men I have known intimately were J. Pierpont Morgan and Theodore Roosevelt. I had the privilege of calling the former “Uncle Pierpont” and have vivid recollections of him as he was in 1867, when I was a boy, and in the last two brilliant decades of his life. Theodore Roosevelt I knew slightly as a boy, as an intimate friend of my naturalist brother, Frederick, and in the last two and great decades of his life as my own friend. Although the man in the street would say that no two Americans could be further apart than these two, in many characteristics they were closely similar. The outstanding point of likeness was their courage in facing obstacles, their dominance in overcoming difficulties of all kinds. There was no “I can’t” in the vocabulary of either man; rather “I can and I will.” Close contact with both of these men enforced the life motto which became my own: _Whatever is right can be done, and shall be done._ Powerful as both were in leadership, they always sought the counsel of their friends and were apt to be governed by it, unless it was the counsel of timidity or of irresolution. Neither was dominant in the sense that Woodrow Wilson was dominant and autistic—to use the professional phrase. Both won the devoted friendship and admiration of hundreds of men and women, and both made many enemies; through similar virtues Roosevelt became the opponent of Morgan and Morgan became the opponent of Roosevelt. Both were intensely patriotic and willing to make any sacrifice, however great, for their country. Both were deeply religious and were guided by an unfaltering faith in Divine Providence. The most surprising likeness I observed was their humility; I never saw a trace of conceit in either Pierpont Morgan or Theodore Roosevelt. The assurance and self-confidence they both displayed in critical and commanding moments were part of the great game of life. Leaders must have broad shoulders, firm necks, and confident and determined faces when the world is full of doubting Thomases, as it always is. A marked point of likeness was the power of immediate, almost instantaneous, decision, which sometimes led both men astray. Contrasting with their power of command were their simplicity, their unselfish devotion to their friends, and their love of children and fascination for children. Both had a deep interest in science; with Morgan it was mathematics, minerals, and gems, and, in later years, archæology. Natural history was the first and last love of Theodore Roosevelt, in all its branches, and special study of birds and mammals constituted the greatest pleasure of his life.

It will surprise many of my readers that I have instituted such a comparison, that I have found resemblances amidst the many violent contrasts in the lives and characters of these two great Americans. It was the love of nature and of human nature which made them alike. Few of us are single in our personalities; most of us are dual, and the rare men like Morgan and Roosevelt are multiple. Among great naturalists Wallace, Darwin, and Pasteur were men of single natures, whose whole lives were devoted to single great purposes, to the attainment of which all other objects in life gave way. They were neither combatant nor militant, nor did they ever seek to force their theories or opinions by militant methods. They sought seclusion, avoided public meetings and controversies, and were astonished by the world-wide acclaim of their discoveries. It is told of Darwin that after meeting Gladstone he expressed surprise that such a very great man had paid him so much attention. It appears that this simplicity of life and avoidance of renown are most favorable to that creative state of mind which most frequently engenders renown.

On the other hand, Huxley and Cope were, above all, combatants in the new social and philosophical arena of Evolution. Huxley’s world-wide fame rests partly on his defense of freedom of thought and of research and on the brilliance of his rapier-like thrusts at some of the shams and hypocrisies of the Special Creation exponents of his day. His genius lay in polemics, in criticism, in exposition, rather than in creative discovery and generalization; it is a striking fact that he did not add a single new principle to the philosophy of Evolution. His life was one of enforced activity and public service, which left him little or no repose for creative thought, yet he added to anatomy a number of very important generalizations. There is no measuring what Huxley might have done if he had enjoyed the repose that was granted to Darwin. Cope was, above all, a creative naturalist of a high order, with a rapidity and originality of thought almost without parallel in the history of anatomy; great generalizations affecting the order and arrangement of the whole kingdom of backboned animals arose from his brain, while in philosophical analysis he was a tyro where Huxley was a master.

From these impressions of the lives of many naturalists we see that the naturalist is animated first of all by the joy of observation, without initial hope or thought of discovery but surely in the end leading to discovery; leading also to creative thought if observation is pursued with a single eye and unfaltering purpose, regardless of all obstacles or dangers and of the greatest impediment of all, namely, interest in self and in self-advancement.

CONTENTS

PAGE
DEDICATION v

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL FOREWORD vii

IMPRESSIONS:

ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 1
“Alfred Russel Wallace, 1823–1913”

CHARLES DARWIN 33
“Life and Works of Darwin”
“The Darwin Centenary at Cambridge”

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY 71
“A Student’s Reminiscences of Huxley”

FRANCIS MAITLAND BALFOUR 99

JAMES BRYCE 109

LOUIS PASTEUR 117
“The New Order of Sainthood”

JOSEPH LEIDY 131
“Joseph Leidy, Founder of Vertebrate Palæontology in America”

EDWARD DRINKER COPE 149
“A Great Naturalist”

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 165
“Theodore Roosevelt, Naturalist”

THE TWO JOHNS 183
“The Racial Soul of John Burroughs”
“John Muir”

HOWARD CROSBY BUTLER 207
“Howard Crosby Butler, Explorer”

BIOGRAPHIES BY THE AUTHOR 213

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

“The Life and Works of Darwin” was an address delivered at Columbia University on February 12, 1909, the hundredth anniversary of Darwin’s birth, as the first of a series of nine lectures on Charles Darwin and his influence on science. “The Darwin Centenary” is based on an address in reply to the reception of delegates at Cambridge. “A Student’s Reminiscences of Huxley” was a lecture delivered at the Marine Biological Laboratory of Wood’s Hole in the summer session of 1895. The address on James Bryce was delivered at the memorial service to Viscount Bryce at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, March 5, 1922. The address on Joseph Leidy was originally delivered at the Joseph Leidy Centenary, Philadelphia, December 6, 1923, and was later published in Science. The article on Howard Crosby Butler was an address delivered at the Graduate College of Princeton University, October 31, 1922. This address was afterward published in the Butler memorial volume by the Princeton University Press. The chapter on John Burroughs is an address which was delivered at the John Burroughs memorial meeting, American Academy of Arts and Letters, on November 18, 1921.

Other chapters of this book are based on articles published in the following magazines: _Popular Science Monthly_, _Science_, _The Century_, _The Sierra Club Bulletin_.

ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
]

ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE
1823–1913

I never had the pleasure of meeting Wallace, but I felt rewarded for
the time I devoted to the study of his works and the influences which
shaped his great career in preparing this Impression by his letter of
acknowledgment, which is reproduced in facsimile. Wallace was a great
man, although he was overshadowed by a much greater man, Darwin. The
scientific relations of these two men were ideal; their magnanimity
toward each other in the crisis of independent discovery of the great
principle of Natural Selection is one of the noblest episodes in the
history of biology.

ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE

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):