HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF EVOLUTION THEORY 27 
former paper of Wallace. The ideas were expressed under the title 
On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original 
Type, and it proved to be an unusually concise and lucid statement of 
the main points of the natural-selection theory. Darwin at once 
wrote to Lyell as follows: 
“T never saw a more striking coincidence; if Wallace had my 
MS sketch, written in 1842, he could not have made a better short 
abstract! Even his terms now stand as heads of my chapters. Please 
return to 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 it 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.” 
Lyell insisted that Darwin publish an abstract of his own work 
simultaneously with that of Wallace, and this course was carried out. 
Darwin’s generosity was equaled by that of Wallace who wrote, in 
1870: 
“T have felt all my life and 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 the task.” 
Still later he wrote: “I was then (and often since) the ‘young 
man in a hurry,’ he [Darwin] the painstaking student, seeking ever 
the full demonstration of the truth he had discovered, rather than to 
achieve immediate personal fame.” 
One must perforce admit the nobility of character of both men; 
but there can be no serious competition between the two for the honor 
of being called the originator of the natural-selection theory. 
CONTEMPORARY OPINION REGARDING THE VALIDITY OF DARWIN’S VIEWS 
At first Darwin was inclined to believe that the selection factor 
was all-sufficient to account for the origin of species, as well as that of 
adaptations; but as time passed he modified his earlier more sanguine 
views and came to the conclusion “that natural selection has been the 
main but not the exclusive means of modification.”” Many of his 
followers went to such extremes in their advocacy of the all-sufficiency 
of natural selection as would not have met with Darwin’s approval. 
