A HISTORY OF SCIENCE 



And then a strange thing happened. After Darwin 

 had been at work on his " abstract" about two years, 

 but before he had published a line of it, there came to 

 him one day a paper in manuscript, sent for his ap- 

 proval by a naturalist friend named Alfred Russel 

 Wallace, who had been for some time at work in the 

 East India Archipelago. He read the paper, and, to his 

 amazement, found that it contained an outline of the 

 same theory of "natural selection" which he himself 

 had originated and for twenty years had worked upon. 

 Working independently, on opposite sides of the globe, 

 Darwin and Wallace had hit upon the same explana- 

 tion of the cause of transmutation of species. " Were 

 Wallace's paper an abstract of my unpublished manu- 

 script of 1844," said Darwin, "it could not better ex- 

 press my ideas." 



Here was a dilemma. To publish this paper with no 

 word from Darwin would give Wallace priority, and 

 wrest from Darwin the credit of a discovery which he 

 had made years before his codiscoverer entered the 

 field. Yet, on the other hand, could Darwin honor- 

 ably do otherwise than publish his friend's paper and 

 himself remain silent? It was a complication well cal- 

 culated to try a man's soul. Darwin's was equal to 

 the test. Keenly alive to the delicacy of the position, 

 he placed the whole matter before his friends Hooker 

 and Lyell, and left the decision as to a course of action 

 absolutely to them. Needless to say, these great men 

 did the one thing which insured full justice to all con- 

 cerned. They counselled a joint publication, to in- 

 clude on the one hand Wallace's paper, and on the 

 other an abstract of Darwin's ideas, in the exact form 



172 



