Sir James Marchant

“ It was a remarkable and momentous coincidence that both you and he should have independently arrived at the idea of Natural Selection after reading Malthus's book, and a most happy inspiration that you should have selected Mr. Darwin as the naturalist to whom to communicate your discovery. That theory, in spite of changes in the scientific fashion of the moment, you have always unflinchingly maintained, and still uphold as unshaken by all attacks. ”

“ I have for many years felt almost ashamed of the amount of reputation and honour that has been awarded me. I can understand the general public thinking too highly of me, because I know that I have the power of clear exposition, and, I think, also, of logical reasoning. But all the work I have done is more or less amateurish and founded almost wholly on other men's observations; and I always feel myself dreadfully inferior to men like Sir J. Hooker, Huxley, Flower, and scores of younger men who have extensive knowledge of whole departments of biology of which I am totally ignorant. ”

“ It is only the great leaves and the curious-looking plants, and the deep gloom of the forests and the mass of tangled vegetation that astonish and delight Europeans, and it is certainly grand and interesting and in a certain sense beautiful, but not the calm, sweet, warm beauty of our own fields, and there is none of the brightness of our own flowers; a field of buttercups, a hill of gorse or of heather, a bank of foxgloves and a hedge of wild roses and purple vetches surpass in beauty anything I have ever seen in the tropics. ”

“ His mind was great enough and his heart large enough to encompass all that lies between the visible horizons of human thought and activity, and even in his old age he lived upon the topmost peaks, eagerly looking for the horizon beyond. In the words of the late Mr. Gladstone, he "was inspired with the belief that life was a great and noble calling; not a mean and grovelling thing that we are to shuffle through as we can, but an elevated and lofty destiny." ”

“ Out of the wild confusion of facts and from behind the fog of guesses—contradicted almost as soon as they are born—a stately picture makes its appearance, like an Alpine chain suddenly emerging in all its grandeur from the mists which concealed it the moment before, glittering under the rays of the sun in all its simplicity and variety, in all its mightiness and beauty. ”

“ It is the undoubted benefit to all the members of a society of the greatest possible diversity of character, as a means both towards the greatest enjoyment and interest of association, and to the highest ultimate development of the race. If we are to suppose that man might have been created or developed with none of those extremes of character which now often result in what we call wickedness, vice, or crime, there would certainly have been a greater monotony in human nature, which would, perhaps, have led to less beneficial results than the variety which actually exists may lead to. ”

“ But I venture to express the opinion that they have none of them resulted in any serious modification of the great doctrine submitted to the Linnean Society on July 1st, 1858, by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. Not only do the main lines of the theory of Darwin and Wallace remain unchanged, but the more it is challenged by new suggestions and new hypotheses the more brilliantly do the novelty, the importance, and the permanent value of the work by those great men, to-day commemorated by us, shine forth as the one great epoch-making effort of human thought on this subject. ”

“ I am much pleased to hear that Huxley has taken to gardening. I have no doubt he will do some good work with his saxifrages. For myself the personal attention to my plants occupies all my spare time, and I derive constant enjoyment from the mere contemplation of the infinite variety of forms of leaf and flower, and modes of growth, and strange peculiarities of structure which are the source of fresh puzzles and fresh delights year by year. ”

“ My dear Darwin,—I have been so repeatedly struck by the utter inability of numbers of intelligent persons to see clearly, or at all, the self-acting and necessary effects of Natural Selection, that I am led to conclude that the term itself, and your mode of illustrating it, however clear and beautiful to many of us, are yet not the best adapted to impress it on the general naturalist public. ”

“ Dear Sir,—I look upon you as the one politician left to us, who, by his ability and integrity, his eloquence and love of truth, his high standing as a thinker and writer, and his openness of mind, is able to become the leader of the English people in their struggle for freedom against the monopolists of land, capital, and political power. ”

“ The human mind cannot go on for ever accumulating facts which remain unconnected and without any mutual bearing and bound together by no law. The evidence for the production of the organic world by the simple laws of inheritance is exactly of the same nature as that for the production of the present surface of the earth—hills and valleys, plains, rocks, strata, volcanoes, and all their fossil remains—by the slow and natural action of natural causes now in operation. The mind that will ultimately reject Darwin must (to be consistent) reject Lyell also. ”

“ No one can overlook the fact that Spiritualism has many scientific exponents—Myers, Crookes, Lodge, Barrett and others. Prejudices against Spiritualism are as unscientific as the credulity which swallows the mutterings of every medium. Podmore's two ponderous volumes on the History of Spritualism are marred by an obvious anxiety to make the very least, if not the very worst, of every phenomenon alleged to be spiritualistic. That kind of deliberate and obstinate blindness which prided itself on being the clear cold light of science Wallace scorned and denounced. ”

“ Certainly collecting is the best sport in the world. I shall be astonished if your book has not a great success; and your splendid generalisations on geographical distribution, with which I am familiar from your papers, will be new to most of your readers. I think I enjoyed most the Timor case, as it is best demonstrated; but perhaps Celebes is really the most valuable. I should prefer looking at the whole Asiatic continent as having formerly been more African in its fauna, than admitting the former existence of a continent across the Indian Ocean. ”

“ My dear Mr. Spencer,—After leaving you yesterday I thought a little over your objections to the Duke of Argyll's theory of flight on the ground that it does not apply to insects, and it seems to me that exactly the same general principles do apply to insects as to birds. I read over the Duke's book without paying special attention to that part of it, but as far as I remember, the case of insects offers no difficulty in the way of applying his principles. If any wing were a rigid plane surface, it appears to me that there are only two ways in which it could be made to produce flight. ”

“ Darwin, you, if I may say so, are above all a naturalist, a student and lover of living animals and plants, as shown in later years by your enthusiasm and success in gardening. It is to such men, those who have learnt the ways of Nature, as Nature really is in the open, to whom your doctrine of Natural Selection specially appeals, and therein lies its great and lasting strength. ”

“ Our position in the solar system appeared to him to be peculiar and unique because, he thought, we may be almost sure that these conditions do not coexist on any other planet, and that we have no good reason to believe that other planets could have maintained over a period of millions of years the complex and equable conditions absolutely necessary to the existence of the higher forms of terrestrial life. Therefore it appeared to him to be proved that our earth does really stand alone in the solar system by reason of its special adaptation for the development of human life. ”

“ I wish that you had visited Timor: it has been asserted that a fossil mastodon or elephant's tooth (I forget which) had been found there, which would be a grand fact. I was aware that Celebes was very peculiar; but the relation to Africa is quite new to me and marvellous, and almost passes belief. It is as anomalous as the relation of plants in South-West Australia to the Cape of Good Hope.
I differ wholly from you on colonisation of oceanic islands, but you will have everyone else on your side. I quite agree with respect to all islands not situated far in ocean. ”

“ I am rather perplexed by Darwin speculating on the possibility of New Zealand having once been united with Australia (p. 446, 4th Ed.) . The puzzle is greater than I can get over, even looking upon it as an oceanic island. Why should there have been no mammalia, rodents and marsupials, or only one mouse? Even if the Glacial period was such that it was enveloped in a Greenlandic winding-sheet, there would have been some Antarctic animals? It cannot be modern, seeing the height of those alps. It may have been a set of separate smaller islands, an archipelago since united into fewer. ”

“ I do not suppose that I shall be able to attend the Linnean Society to-morrow.
I have been working hard in collecting facts on sexual selection every morning in London, and have done a good deal; but the subject grows more and more complex, and in many respects more difficult and doubtful. I have had grand success this morning in tracing gradational steps by which the peacock tail has been developed: I quite feel as if I had seen a long line of its progenitors.
I do not feel that I shall grapple with the sterility argument till my return home ”

“ When Henslow died, Huxley wrote to Hooker: "He had intellect to comprehend his highest duty distinctly, and force of character to do it; which of us dare ask for a higher summary of his life than that? For such a man there can be no fear in facing the great unknown; his life has been one long experience of the substantial justice of the laws by which this world is governed, and he will calmly trust to them still as he lays his head down for his long sleep." Let that also stand as the estimate of Wallace by his contemporaries, an estimate which we believe posterity will confirm. ”

“ Dear Darwin,—Will you tell me where are Fleeming Jenkin's arguments on the importance of single variation? Because I at present hold most strongly the contrary opinion, that it is the individual differences or general variability of species that enables them to become modified and adapted to new conditions.
Variations or "sports" may be important in modifying an animal in one direction, as in colour for instance, but how it can possibly work in changes requiring co-ordination of many parts, as in Orchids for example, I cannot conceive. ”

“ It is not too much to say that our whole system of Society is rotten from top to bottom, and that the social environment as a whole in relation to our possibilities and our claims is the worst that the world has ever seen. ”

“ But the inherent tendencies of Darwin's nature drew him away from theology to the study of geology, entomology and botany. The ensuing four years at Cambridge were very happy ones. While fortunate in being able to follow his various mental and scientific pursuits with the freedom which a good social and financial position secured for him, he found himself by a natural seriousness of manner, balanced by a cheerful temperament and love of sport, the friend and companion of men many years his seniors and holding positions of authority in the world of science. ”

“ Dear Mr. Wallace,— ... I have just got F. Darwin's "Foundations." He tries to make out that his father could have dispensed with Malthus. But the selection death-rate in a slightly varying large population is the pith of the whole business. The Darwin-Wallace theory is, as you say, "the continuous adjustment of the organic to the inorganic world." It is what mathematicians call "a moving equilibrium." In fact, I have always maintained that it is a mathematical conception. ”

“ Is your essay on Variation in Man to be a supplement to your volume on Domesticated Animals and Cultivated Plants? I would rather see your second volume on "The Struggle for Existence, etc.," for I doubt if we have a sufficiency of fair and accurate facts to do anything with man. Huxley, I believe, is at work upon it.
I have been reading Murray's volume on the Geographical Distribution of Mammals. He has some good ideas here and there, but is quite unable to understand Natural Selection, and makes a most absurd mess of his criticism of your views on oceanic islands. ”

“ It is therefore quite possible that all the evil in the world is directly due [pg 149] to man, not to God, and that when we once realise this to its full extent we shall be able, not only to eliminate almost completely what we now term evil, but shall then clearly perceive that all those propensities and passions that under bad conditions of society inevitably led to it, will under good conditions add to the variety and the capacities of human nature, the enjoyment of life by all, and at the same time greatly increase the possibilities of development of the whole race. ”

“ My dear Wallace,—I am hard at work on sexual selection and am driven half mad by the number of collateral points which require investigation, such as the relative numbers of the two sexes, and especially on polygamy. Can you aid me with respect to birds which have strongly marked secondary sexual characters, such as birds of paradise, humming-birds, the rupicola or rock-thrush, or any other such cases? Many gallinaceous birds certainly are polygamous. ”

“ Dear Wallace,—You probably remember an article by Agassiz in an American periodical, the Christian Observer, on the diversity of human races, etc., to prove that each distinct race was originally created for each zoological and botanical province. But while he makes out a good case for the circumscription of the principal races to distinct provinces, he evades in a singular manner the community of the Red Indian race to North and South America. He takes pains to show that the same American race pervades North and South America, or at least all America south of the Arctic region. ”

“ Sir C. Lyell, while agreeing with my main argument on Man, thinks I am wrong in wanting to put him back into Miocene times, and thinks I do not appreciate the immense interval even to the later Pliocene. But I still maintain my view, which in fact is a logical result of my theory, for if man originated in later Pliocene times, when almost all mammalia were of closely allied species to those now living, and many even identical, then man has not been stationary in bodily structure while animals have been varying, and my theory will be proved to be all wrong. ”

“ Dear Mr. Wallace,—I cannot at all agree with you respecting the relative importance of the work you are doing and that which I wanted you to do. Various articles in the papers show that Lord Salisbury's argument is received with triumph, and, unless it is disposed of, it will lead to a public reaction against the doctrine of evolution at large, a far more serious evil than any error which you propose to rectify among biologists. Everybody will look to you for a reply, and if you make no reply it will be understood that Lord Salisbury's objection is valid. ”