namby-pamby, old-woman style of the cautious Oxford Professor. (404/5.
This no doubt refers to Professor Phillips' "Life on the Earth," 1860, a
book founded on the author's "Rede Lecture," given before the University
of Cambridge. Reference to this work will be found in "Life and
Letters," II., pages 309, 358, 373.)
LETTER 405. TO J.D. HOOKER.
(405/1. Mr. Wallace was, we believe, the first to treat the evolution of
Man in any detail from the point of view of Natural Selection,
namely, in a paper in the "Anthropological Review and Journal of the
Anthropological Society," May 1864, page clviii. The deep interest with
which Mr. Darwin read his copy is graphically recorded in the continuous
series of pencil-marks along the margins of the pages. His views are
fully given in Letter 406. The phrase, "in this case it is too far,"
refers to Mr. Wallace's habit of speaking of the theory of Natural
Selection as due entirely to Darwin.)
May 22nd 1864.
I have now read Wallace's paper on Man, and think it MOST striking and
original and forcible. I wish he had written Lyell's chapters on Man.
(405/2. See "Life and Letters," III., page 11 et seq. for Darwin's
disappointment over Lyell's treatment of the evolutionary question in
his "Antiquity of Man"; see also page 29 for Lyell's almost pathetic
words about his own position between the discarded faith of many years
and the new one not yet assimilated. See also Letters 132, 164, 170.) I
quite agree about his high-mindedness, and have long thought so; but in
this case it is too far, and I shall tell him so. I am not sure that
I fully agree with his views about Man, but there is no doubt, in my
opinion, on the remarkable genius shown by the paper. I agree, however,
to the main new leading idea.
LETTER 406. TO A.R. WALLACE.
(406/1. This letter was published in "Life and Letters," III., page 89.)
Down, [May] 28th [1864].
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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