Alfred Russel Wallace 



him, and lie had published his theory after ten years' — fifteen 

 years' — or even eighteen years' elaboration of it — / should 

 have had no part in it whatever, and he would have been at 

 once recognised as the sole and undisputed discoverer and 

 patient investigator of this great law of '^Natural Selec- 

 tion " in all its far-reaching consequences. 



It was really a singular piece of good luck that gave to 

 me any share whatever in the discovery. During the first 

 half of the nineteenth century (and even earlier) many great 

 biological thinkers and workers had been pondering over the 

 problem and had even suggested ingenious but inadequate 

 solutions. Some of these men were among the greatest in- 

 tellects of our time, yet, till Darwin, all had failed ; and it 

 was only Darwin's extreme desire to perfect his work that 

 allowed me to come in, as a very bad second, in the truly 

 Olympian race in which all philosophical biologists, from 

 Buffon and Erasmus Darwin to Richard Owen and Robert 

 Chambers, were more or less actively engaged. 



And this brings me to the very interesting question : 

 Why did so many of the greatest intellects fail, while 

 Darwin and myself hit upon the solution of this problem 

 — a solution which this Celebration proves to have been 

 (and still to be) a satisfying one to a large number of 

 those best able to form a judgment on its merits ? As I 

 have found what seems to me a good and precise answer 

 to this question, and one which is of some psychological 

 interest, I will, with your permission, briefly state what 

 it is. 



On a careful consideration, we find a curious series of 

 correspondences, both in mind and in environment, which 

 led Darwin and myself, alone among our contemporaries, 

 to reach identically the same theory. 



First (and most important, as I believe), in early life 

 both Darwin and myself became ardent beetle-hunters. 

 Now there is certainly no group of organisms that so im- 

 presses the collector by the almost infinite number of its 

 specific forms, the endless modifications of structure, 

 shape, colour, and surface-markings that distinguish them 

 from each other, and their innumerable adaptations to 



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