Darwin. Wallace Celebration. 7 



occurred to me at the moment, then copied on thin letter- 

 paper and sent off to Darwin all within one week. I was 

 then (as often since) the "young man in a hurry" : he, the 

 painstaking and patient student, seeking ever the full demon- 

 stration of the truth that he had discovered, rather than to 

 achieve immediate personal fame. 



Such being the actual facts of the case, I should have had 

 no cause for complaint if the respective shares of Darwin and 

 myself in regard to the elucidation of nature's method of 

 organic development had been thenceforth estimated as being, 

 roughly, proportional to the time we had each bestowed upon 

 it when it was thus first given to the world that is to say, 

 as 20 years is to one week. For, he had already made it his 

 own. If the persuasion of his friends had prevailed with 

 him, and he had published his theory, after 10 years' 15 years' 

 or even 18 years' elaboration of it I should have had no 

 part in it whatever, and he would have been at once recog- 

 nised, and should be ever recognised, as the sole and undisputed 

 discoverer and patient investigator of the great law of 

 " Natural Selection " 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 19th 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 intellects 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 Buff on 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 



