'I never saw a more striking coincidence; if Wallace had my MS. sketch written out in 1842, he could not have made a better short abstract! Even his terms now stand as heads of my chapters. Please return me the MS., which he does not say he wishes me to publish, but I shall, of course, at once write and offer to send to any journal. So all my originality, whatever it may amount to, will be smashed, though my book, if it ever have any value, will not be deteriorated, as all the labour consists in the application of the theory. I hope you will approve of Wallace's sketch, that I may tell him what to say[115].' And Wallace--what was the line taken by him in the unfortunate complication that had thus arisen? From the very first his action was all that is generous and noble. Not only did he, from the first, entirely acquiesce in the course taken by Lyell and Hooker, but, writing in 1870, when the fame of Darwin's work had reached its full height, he said:-- 'I have felt all my life and I still feel, the most sincere satisfaction that Mr Darwin had been at work long before me, and that it was not left for me to attempt to write _The Origin of Species_. I have long since measured my own strength and know well that it would be quite unequal to that task. For abler men than myself may confess, that they have not that untiring patience in accumulating, and that wonderful skill in using, large masses of facts of the most varied kind,--that wide and accurate physiological knowledge,--that acuteness in devising and skill in carrying out experiments,--and that admirable style of composition, at once clear, persuasive and judicial,--qualities which in their harmonious combination mark out Mr Darwin as the man, perhaps of all men now living, best fitted for the great work he has undertaken and accomplished[116].' And fifty years after the joint publication of the theory of Natural Selection to the Linnean Society he said: '_I_ was then (as often since) the "young man in a hurry," _he_' (Darwin) 'the painstaking and patient student, seeking ever the full demonstration of the truth he had discovered, rather than to achieve immediate personal fame[117].' And when he referred to the respective shares of Darwin and himself to the credit of having brought forward the theory of natural selection, he actually suggests as a fair proportion '_twenty years to one week_'--those being the periods each had devoted to the subject[118]! Never surely was such a noble example of personal abnegation! We admire the generosity, though we cannot accept the estimate, for do we not know that, for at least half the period of Darwin's patient quest, Wallace had spent in deeply pondering upon the same great question? CHAPTER X THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES