Of the "Origin," four English editions, one or two American, two French,
two German, one Dutch, one Italian, and several (as I was told) Russian
editions. The translations of my book on "Variation under Domestication"
are the results of the "Origin;" and of these two English, one American,
one German, one French, one Italian, and one Russian have appeared, or
will soon appear. Ernst Hackel wrote to me a week or two ago, that new
discussions and reviews of the "Origin" are continually still coming
out in Germany, where the interest on the subject certainly does not
diminish. I have seen some of these discussions, and they are good ones.
I apprehend that the interest on the subject has not died out in North
America, from observing in Professor and Mrs. Agassiz's Book on Brazil
how exceedingly anxious he is to destroy me. In regard to this country,
every one can judge for himself, but you would not say interest was
dying out if you were to look at the last number of the "Anthropological
Review," in which I am incessantly sneered at. I think Lyell's
"Principles" will produce a considerable effect. I hope I have given
you the sort of information which you want. My head is rather unsteady,
which makes my handwriting worse than usual.
If you argue about the non-acceptance of Natural Selection, it seems to
me a very striking fact that the Newtonian theory of gravitation, which
seems to every one now so certain and plain, was rejected by a man
so extraordinarily able as Leibnitz. The truth will not penetrate a
preoccupied mind.
Wallace (222/2. Wallace, "Westminster Review," July, 1867. The
article begins: "There is no more convincing proof of the truth of a
comprehensive theory, than its power of absorbing and finding a place
for new facts, and its capability of interpreting phenomena, which had
been previously looked upon as unaccountable anomalies..." Mr. Wallace
illustrates his statement that "a false theory will never stand this
test," by Edward Forbes' "polarity" speculations (see page 84 of
the present volume) and Macleay's "Circular" and "Quinarian System"
published in his "Horae Entomologicae," 1821, and developed by Swainson
in the natural history volumes of "Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia."
Mr. Wallace says that a "considerable number of well-known naturalists
either spoke approvingly of it, or advocated similar principles, and for
a good many years it was decidedly in the ascendant...yet it quite died
out in a few short years, its very existence is now a matter of history,
and so rapid was its fall that...Swainson, perhaps, lived to be the last
man who believed in it. Such is the course of a false theory. That of
a true one is very different, as may be well seen by the progress of
opinion on the subject of Natural Selection."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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