ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 535 



to civilization" has not advanced general human welfare. These 

 humanitarian and partly socialistic ideas are developed in a series of 

 recurrent essays between 1882 and 1903, including "The Nationaliza- 

 tion of Land," and " Studies Scientific and Social." 



He returned to this subject in what we believe to be his last pub- 

 lished essay, namely, his " Social Environment and Moral Progress " of 

 1913, wherein he considers the so-called "feministic" movement and 

 future of woman : 



The foregoing statement of the effect of established natural laws, if allowed 

 free play under rational conditions of civilization, clearly indicates that the posi- 

 tion of woman in the not distant future will be far higher and more important 

 than any which has been claimed for or by her in the past. 



While she will be conceded full political and social rights on an equality with 

 men, she will be placed in a position of responsibility and power which will 

 render her his superior, since the future moral progress of the race will so largely 

 depend upon her free choice in marriage. As time goes on, and she acquires more 

 and more economic independence, that alone will give her an effective choice 

 which she has never had before. But this choice will be further strengthened by 

 the fact that, with ever-increasing approach to equality of opportunity for every 

 child born in our country, that terrible excess of male deaths, in boyhood and 

 early manhood especially due to various preventable causes, will disappear, and 

 change the present majority of women to a majority of men. This will lead to 

 a greater rivalry for wives, and will give to women the power of rejecting all the 

 lower types of character among their suitors. 



It will be their special duty so to mould public opinion, through home train- 

 ing and social influence, as to render the women of the future the regenerators of 

 the entire human race. 



In closing this review of a great life, we can not refrain from re- 

 flecting on the pendulum of scientific opinion. The discovery of a great 

 truth such as the law of Selection is always followed by an over-valua- 

 tion, from which there is certain to be a reaction. We are in the midst 

 of such a reaction at the present time, in which the Darwin-Wallace 

 theory of natural selection is less appreciated than it will be in the 

 future when there comes a fresh readjustment of scientific values. 



It is well to remember that we may not estimate either the man of 

 science or his conclusions as of our own period, but must project our- 

 selves in imagination into the beginnings of his thought and into the 

 travails of his mind, considering how much larger he was than the men 

 about him, how far he was an innovator, breaking away from the tradi- 

 tions of his times, how far his direct observations apart from theory are 

 true and permanent, and how far his theories have contributed to the 

 great stream of biological thought. 



Our perspective has covered a long, honorable span of sixty-five years 

 into the beginnings of the thinking life of a natural philosopher whose 

 last volume, "The World of Life," of the year 1911, gives as clear a 

 portrayal of his final opinions as that which his first essay of 1858 

 portrays of his early opinions. 



