In a letter to Wallace dated 20th April, 1870, Darwin says, "There has
never been passed on me, or, indeed, on any one, a higher eulogium than
yours. I wish that I fully deserved it. Your modesty and candour are
very far from new to me. I hope it is a satisfaction to you to
reflect--and very few things in my life have been more satisfactory to
me--that we have never felt any jealousy towards each other, though in
one sense rivals. I believe I can say this of myself with truth, and I
am absolutely sure it is true of you."
* * * * *
But on one question, and that round which discussion still rages, the
friends were poles asunder. There had been correspondence between them
as to the bearing of the theory of natural selection on man, and in
April, 1869, Darwin wrote, "As you expected, I differ grievously from
you, and I am very sorry for it. I can see no necessity for calling in
an additional and proximate cause in regard to man." In the fifteenth
chapter of his comprehensive book on Darwinism, Wallace admits the
action of natural selection in man's physical structure. This structure
classes him among the vertebrates; the mode of human suckling classes
him among the mammals; his blood, his muscles, and his nerves, the
structure of his heart with its veins and arteries, his lungs and his
whole respiratory and circulatory systems, all closely correspond to
those of other mammals, and are often almost identical with them. He
possesses the same number of limbs, terminating in the same number of
digits, as belong fundamentally to the mammals. His senses are identical
with theirs, and his organs of sense are the same in number and occupy
the same relative position. Every detail of structure which is common to
the mammalia as a class is found also in man, while he differs from
them only in such ways and degrees as the various species or groups of
mammals differ from each other. He is, like them, begotten by sexual
conjugation; like them, developed from a fertilized egg, and in his
embryonic condition passes through stages recapitulating the variety of
enormously remote ancestors of whom he is the perfected descendant.
Full-grown, he appears as most nearly allied to the anthropoid or
man-like apes; so much does his skeleton resemble theirs that, comparing
him with the chimpanzee, we find, with very few exceptions, bone for
bone, differing only in size, arrangement, and proportion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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