424 THE STUDY OF ANIMAL LIFE CHAP. 



more prominent of Darwin's fellow-workers Wallace, 

 Spencer, Haeckel, and Huxley. 



ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE (1822-1913) was contem- 

 porary with Darwin, not only in years, but in emphasising 

 the truth of evolutionary conceptions, and in recognising 

 the fact of natural selection. Of his magnanimity in 

 collaboration, the late Mr. Romanes has said : 



" It was in the highest degree dramatic that the great idea 

 of natural selection should have occurred independently and in 

 precisely the same form to two working naturalists ; that these 

 naturalists should have been countrymen ; that they should have 

 agreed to publish their theory on the same day ; and last, but 

 not least, that, through the many years of strife and turmoil which 

 followed, these two English naturalists consistently maintained to- 

 wards each other such feelings of magnanimous recognition that it 

 is hard to say whether we should most admire the intellectual 

 or the moral qualities which, in relation to their common labours, 

 they have displayed." 



Mr. Wallace was a naturalist in the old and truest 

 sense, rich in a world-wide experience of animal life, at 

 once specialist and generaliser, a fearless thinker and a 

 social striver, and a man of science who realised the 

 spiritual aspect of the world. 



He believed in the " overwhelming importance of 

 natural selection over all other agencies in the production 

 of new species," differed from Darwin in regard to sexual 

 selection, to which he attached little importance, and 

 agreed with Weismann in regard to the non-transmission 

 of individually acquired characters. 



But the exceptional feature in Wallace's scientific philo- 

 sophy was his contention that the higher characteristics 

 of man are due to a special evolution hardly distinguish- 

 able from creation. 



HERBERT SPENCER (1820-1903) published as early as 

 1852 a plea for the theory of organic evolution which is 

 very remarkable in its strength and clearness. The work 



*' ^j 



of Darwin supplied corroboration and fresh material, 

 and in the Principles oj Biology (1863-66) the theory of 

 organic evolution first found philosophic, as distinguished 

 from merely scientific expression. To Spencer we 



