Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace
Alfred Russel Wallace OM FRSwas a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, and biologist. He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection; his paper on the subject was jointly published with some of Charles Darwin's writings in 1858. This prompted Darwin to publish his own ideas in On the Origin of Species. Wallace did extensive fieldwork, first in the Amazon River basin and then in the Malay Archipelago, where he identified the faunal divide now...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth8 January 1823
evil political social
I hold with Henry George, that at the back of every great social evil will be found a great political wrong
kind mass mankind
To the mass of mankind religion of some kind is a necessity
mean intelligent race
In one of my latest conversations with Darwin he expressed himself very gloomily on the future of humanity, on the ground that in our modern civilization natural selection had no play, and the fittest did not survive. Those who succeed in the race for wealth are by no means the best or the most intelligent, and it is notorious that our population is more largely renewed in each generation from the lower than from the middle and upper classes.
law tree ignorant
As well might it be said that, because we are ignorant of the laws by which metals are produced and trees developed, we cannot know anything of the origin of steamships and railways
spiritual mean men
On the spiritual theory, man consists essentially of a spiritual nature or mind intimately associated with a spiritual body or soul, both of which are developed in and by means of a material organism
class progression tendencies
There is a tendency in nature to the continued progression of certain classes of varieties further and further from the original type.
success bird opinion
I am decidedly of the opinion that in very many instances we can trace such a necessary connexion, especially among birds, and often with more complete success than in the case which I have here attempted to explain.
believe men different
There might have been a hundred or a thousand life-bearing planets, had the course of evolution of the universe been a little different, or there might have been none at all. They would probably add, that, as life and man have been produced, that shows that their production was possible; and therefore, if not now then at some other time, if not here then in some other planet of some other sun, we should be sure to have come into existence; or if not precisely the same as we are, then something a little better or a little worse.
acceptance men eight
In less than eight years "The Origin of Species" has produced conviction in the minds of a majority of the most eminent living men of science. New facts, new problems, new difficulties as they arise are accepted, solved, or removed by this theory; and its principles are illustrated by the progress and conclusions of every well established branch of human knowledge.
race emigration opinion
Civilisation has ever accompanied emigration and conquest - the conflict of opinion, of religion, or of race
i-am-thankful admire i-can
I am thankful I can see much to admire in all religions.
thinking soul suffering
I think I have fairly heard and fairly weighed the evidence on both sides, and I remain an utter disbeliever in almost all that you consider the most sacred truths [...] I can see much to admire in all religions [...] But whether there be a God and whatever be His nature; whether we have an immortal soul or not, or whatever may be our state after death, I can have no fear of having to suffer for the study of nature and the search for truth.
men white-man savages
The white men in our colonies are too frequently the savages
mind use function
To say that mind is a product or function of protoplasm, or of its molecular changes, is to use words to which we can attach no clear conception