Alfred Russel Wallace

“ Their progress was arrested at various points; but nowhere, not even in the hill-tribes of India, not even in the Andaman Islands, not even in the savages of Terra del Fuego, do we find men who have not got some way. They have made their little progress in a hundred different ways; they have framed with infinite assiduity a hundred curious habits; they have, so to say, screwed themselves into the uncomfortable corners of a complex life, which is odd and dreary, but yet is possible. ”

“ By the application of the above tests we can determine the comparative civilization of nations; but too much civilization is often a great danger, for it inevitably leads to such a softening of manners, such a hatred of bloodshed, cruelty, and injustice, as to expose a nation to conquest by its more warlike and less scrupulous neighbors. Progress in civilization must necessarily be very slow, and to be permanent must pervade all classes and all the surrounding nations ”

“ We need hardly be surprised, under these circumstances, if there has been a tendency among men of science to pass from one extreme to the other, from a profession (so few years ago) of total ignorance as to the mode of origin of all living things, to a claim to almost complete knowledge of the whole progress of the universe from the first speck of living protoplasm up to the highest development of the human intellect. ”

“ The facts of nature being what they are, it is impossible to imagine any slow change of environment to which the more populous species would not become automatically adjusted under the laws of multiplication, variation and survival of the fittest. Almost every objection that has been made to Darwinism assumes conditions of nature very unlike those which actually exist, and which must, under the same general laws of life, always have existed. ”

“ Great men are the products of their age and country, and the designer and constructors of this wonderful monument could never have arisen among an unintellectual and half-barbarous people. So perfect a work implies many preceding less perfect works which have disappeared. It marks the culminating point of an ancient civilization, of the early stages of which we have no record whatever. ”

“ So, any superstition or any custom, even if it originated in the grossest delusion, and produced positively bad results, might yet, by forming a bond of union more perfect than any other then existing, give the primitive tribe subject to it such a relative advantage over the disconnected families around them as to lead to their increase and permanent survival in the struggle for existence. In those early days war was perhaps the most powerful means of forcing men to combined action, and might therefore have been necessary for the ultimate development of civilization. ”

“ And as regards man, I have endeavored to fix your attention on a class of facts which indicate that the course of his development has been far less direct and simple than has hitherto been supposed; and that, instead of resembling a single tide with its advancing and receding ripples, it must rather be compared to the progress from neap to spring tides, both the rise and the depression being comparatively greater as the waters of true civilization slowly advance toward the highest level they can reach. ”

“ Nothing can be more striking than the fact that Easter Island and North America both give the same testimony as to the origin of the savage life found in them, although in all circumstances and surroundings the two cases are so different. If no stone monuments had been constructed in Easter Island, or mounds, containing a few relics saved from fire, in the United States, we might never have suspected the existence of these ancient peoples. ”

“ If we consider how much good science has done, and how much it is doing for mankind, and, if the over-activity of men is proved to be the cause why science came so late into the world, and is so small and scanty still, that will convince most people that our over-activity is a very great evil. ”

“ It is very much greater than the numbers inhabiting the whole of the West Indian Islands, or Madagascar, or the large, rich, and comparatively well-explored island of Borneo. Even Australia, so much more extensive and so varied in climate and vegetation, has only four hundred and eighty-five land-birds; and when we consider that the central mass of New Guinea, with its lofty mountain ranges and fine upland valleys, yet remains absolutely unexplored, it is not improbable that the birds of this wonderful island may be eventually found to be as numerous as those of its parent continent. ”

“ Beginning with small, independent states, we see a gradual fusion of these into larger and larger nations, sometimes voluntary, sometimes by conquest, but the fusion always goes on, and tends to become more and more complete, till we have enormous aggregations of people under one government, in which local institutions gradually disappear, and result in an almost complete political and social uniformity. Then commences decay; for the individual is so small a unit, and so powerless to influence the government, that the mass of men resign themselves to passive obedience. ”

“ There is one other striking example of a higher being succeeded by a lower degree of knowledge, which is in danger of being forgotten because it has been made the foundation of theories which seem wild and fantastic, and are probably in great part erroneous. I allude to the Great Pyramid of Egypt, whose form, dimensions, structure, and uses, have recently been the subject of elaborate works by Prof. Piazzi Smyth. Now, the admitted facts about this pyramid are so interesting and so apposite to the subject we are considering, that I beg to recall them to your attention. ”

“ Again our author shows how valuable must have been the institution of caste in a certain stage of progress. It established the division of labor, led to great perfection in many arts, and rendered government easy. Caste nations would at first have a great advantage over non-caste nations, would conquer them, and increase at their expense. But a caste nation at last becomes stationary; for a habit of action and a type of mind which it can with difficulty get rid of are established in each caste. When this is the case, non-caste nations soon catch them up, and rapidly leave them far behind. ”

“ The subject of the dispersal of seeds through the agency of the wind, or of carriage by birds or mammals in a variety of ways, and often by most curious and varied arrangements, of hooks, spines or sticky exudations almost infinitely varied in the different species, was also briefly treated, since they are all readily explicable by the laws of variation and selection, while no other rational explanation of their formation has ever been given. ”

“ At all events, with such a proportion of land and sea surface as now exists, with such a small bulk of land above the enormous bulk of water, and with no known cause why the dry land rather than the sea-bottom should be constantly elevated, we must admit it to be almost certain that great fluctuations of the area of the land must occur, and that, while those fluctuations could not very considerably increase the area of the land they might immensely diminish it. ”

“ But here we have a building which marks the very dawn of history—which is the oldest authentic monument of man's genius and skill, and which, instead of being far inferior, is very much superior to all which followed it. ”

“ It is a somewhat curious fact that, while all modern writers admit the great antiquity of man, most of them maintain the very recent development of his intellect, and will hardly contemplate the possibility of men, equal in mental capacity to ourselves, having existed in prehistoric times. This question is generally assumed to be settled by such relics as have been preserved of the manufactures of the older races, showing a lower and lower state of the arts by the successive disappearance in early times of iron, bronze, and pottery; and by the ruder forms of the older flint implements. ”

“ Not only is the belief in man's vast and still unknown antiquity universal among men of science, but it is hardly disputed by any well-informed theologian; and the present generation of science-students must, we should think, be somewhat puzzled to understand what there was in the earliest discoveries that should have aroused such general opposition and been met with such universal incredulity. ”

“ As with most savages, ornament is more attended to than dress, and is more used by the men than by the women. They often pierce the sides of the nose, sticking in them pieces of bone, feathers, or tusks of the wild pig. The ears are also pierced, and either shell ear-rings are worn, or sticks ornamented with feathers are stuck through the lobes. Necklaces of teeth or shells are common, and heavy rings of white shell or plaited bands of grass or palm-leaf are worn on the arms. The hair of the men is always carefully attended to. ”

“ THE lecturer began by stating, that, although the theory of Darwinism is one of the most simple of comprehension in the whole range of science, there is none that is so widely and persistently misunderstood. ”

“ If we now take account of all the evidence yet obtained, we seem justified in concluding that the great mass of the inhabitants of New Guinea form one well-marked race—the Papuan—varying within comparatively narrow limits, and everywhere presenting distinctive features which separate it from all other races of mankind. ”

“ Assuming the undoubted fact that all our existing land is wearing away and being carried into the sea, but, by a strange over-sight, leaving out altogether the counteracting internal forces, which for countless ages past seem always to have raised ample tracts above the sea as fast as subaërial denudation has lowered them, it is argued that, even if all the land does not disappear and so man become finally extinct, yet the land will become less varied, and will consist chiefly of a few flat and parched-up plains, and volcanic or coralline islands. ”

“ He maintains that "our most distant glimpses of the past are still of a world peopled as now with men both civilized and savage;" and "that we have often entirely misread the past by supposing that the outward signs of civilization must always be the same, and must be such as are found among ourselves." In support of this view he adduces a variety of striking facts and ingenious arguments, a few of which I will briefly summarize. ”

“ There are also short but very interesting essays on methods of teaching drawing and developing the observing powers of children, on statistics and free-will, and on a few other subjects of less importance, all of which are treated in a thoughtful manner, and illustrate one of the views on which much stress is laid in this work, viz., that the mental faculties which render a man great in any science are not special, but would enable him to attain equal eminence in many other branches of science or in any professional or political career.—Nature. ”

“ If it had not been for quiet people, who sat still and studied the sections of the cone; if other people had not sat still and worked out the doctrine of chances, the most 'dreamy moonshine,' as the purely practical mind would consider, of all human pursuits; if 'idle star-gazers' had not watched long and carefully the motions of the heavenly bodies—our modern astronomy would have been impossible ”

“ The birds, like the mammalia, are mostly of Australian types, but nevertheless present many peculiarities. Most celebrated of all are the birds of paradise, forming a distinct family, containing more than twenty-five different species, all confined to this island and the immediately surrounding lands. These singular birds are really allied to our crows and magpies, but are remarkable for their special and varied developments of plumage. In most cases tufts of feathers spring from the sides of the body or breast, forming fans, or shields, or trains of extreme beauty. ”

“ Selection among barbarous nations will often favor cunning, lying, and baseness; vice will gain the advantage, and nothing good will be selected but physical beauty. Civilization is defined by the preponderance of three facts—the restriction of the use of force to legitimate defence and the repression of illegitimate violence, speciality of professions and of functions, and individual liberty of opinion and action under the general restriction of not injuring others. ”

“ It is not therefore surprising that unknown armed visitors to these coasts should be treated as enemies to be resisted and if possible exterminated. Even Europeans have sometimes increased this feeling of enmity through ignorance of native habits and customs. Cocoanut-trees have been cut down to obtain the fruit, apparently under the impression that they grew wild and were so abundant as to be of little value x whereas every tree is considered as private property, as they supply an important article of food, and are even more valued than the choicest fruit trees among ourselves. ”

“ Darwin calculated that the slowest breeding of all animals, the elephant, would in 750 years from a single pair produce nineteen millions. Rabbits, which have several litters a year would produce a million from a single pair in four or five years, as they have probably done in Australia, where they have become a national calamity. As illustrative of this part of the subject, the lecturer referred at some length to the cases of the bison and the passenger pigeon in North America, and the lemmings of Scandinavia. In the insect tribes still more rapid powers of increase exist. ”

“ The sculptured heads are especially remarkable, because they present to us the features of an intellectual and civilized people. The nose in some is perfectly straight, and neither prominent nor dilated, the mouth is small, and the lips thin, the chin and upper lip are short, contrasting with the ponderous jaw of the modern Indian, while the cheek-bones present no marked prominence. ”

“ It is a very remarkable fact that woolly-haired people should be found in two such widely separated areas, and, with very few exceptions, nowhere else in the world. In Africa they occupy the larger portion of the continent, extending over all the tropical and southern regions; while in the East they are found only in a group of islands of which New Guinea is the center, extending westward as far as Flores and eastward to the Feejees. There are also a few outlying groups of woolly-haired people, which are of great importance as indicating that this type once had a wider extension than now. ”

“ It is the fact of the adaptation of almost all existing species to a continually fluctuating environment—fluctuating between periodical extremes of great severity—that has produced an amount of adaptation that in ordinary seasons is superfluously complete. ”

“ In the straight-haired races and in most Europeans the hair has a circular section, which becomes slightly oval where it is naturally curly; but in the negro and Papuan it is much flattened, and has besides irregular wavy margins, which seem to produce the strong spiral twist. Those who possess a large mop of hair are very proud of it, keeping it continually combed out with a kind of bamboo fork, and using a narrow wooden pillow on which to rest the nape of the neck, so as to preserve the hair from being squeezed out of shape. ”

“ Those who have devoted years to the almost exclusive study of anatomy, physiology or embryology, and that equally large class, who make the lower forms of life (mostly aquatic) the subject of microscopical investigation, are naturally disposed to think that a theory which can dispense with all their work (though often strikingly supported by it) , can not be so important and far-reaching as it is found to be. ”

“ The 800 or 1,000 years estimate from the growth of existing vegetation is a minimum which has no bearing whatever on the actual age of these mounds, and we might almost as well attempt to determine, the time of the glacial epoch from the age of the pines or oaks which now grow on the moraines.
The important thing for us, however, is, that when North America was first settled by Europeans, the Indian tribes inhabiting it had no knowledge or tradition of any preceding race of higher civilization than themselves. Yet we find that such a race existed ”

“ The forests of New Guinea are everywhere grand and luxuriant, rivaling those of Borneo and Brazil in the beauty of their forms of vegetable life; and we can not consider the collections yet made as affording more than very imperfect samples of the treasures they contain.
The animal life of this great island is better known, and is perhaps more interesting. Its terrestrial mammalia are, however, singularly few, and, with the exception of a peculiar kind of wild pig, all belong to the marsupial tribe or the still lower monotremes of Australia. ”

“ The belief in the independent origin of man held its ground somewhat longer, but the publication of Mr. Darwin's great work gave even that its death-blow, for hardly any one capable of judging of the evidence now doubts the derivative nature of man's bodily structure as a whole, although many believe that his mind and even some of his physical characteristics may be due to the action of other forces than have acted in the case of the lower animals. ”