Volume Ii Part 4 (1/2)

a.s.sume that a dusky individual best escaped miasma, and you will readily see what I mean. I persuaded the Director-General of the Medical Department of the Army to send printed forms to the surgeons of all regiments in tropical countries to ascertain this point, but I daresay I shall never get any returns. Secondly, I suspect that a sort of s.e.xual selection has been the most powerful means of changing the races of man.

I can show that the different races have a widely different standard of beauty. Among savages the most powerful men will have the pick of the women, and they will generally leave the most descendants. I have collected a few notes on man, but I do not suppose I shall ever use them. Do you intend to follow out your views? and if so, would you like at some future time to have my few references and notes? I am sure I hardly know whether they are of any value, and they are at present in a state of chaos.

There is much more that I should like to write, but I have not strength.

P.S. Our aristocracy is handsomer (more hideous according to a Chinese or Negro) than the middle cla.s.ses, from [having the] pick of the women; but oh, what a scheme is primogeniture for destroying Natural Selection!

I fear my letter will be barely intelligible to you.

LETTER 406* A.R. WALLACE TO CHARLES DARWIN. 5, Westbourne Grove Terrace, W., May 29th [1864].

You are always so ready to appreciate what others do, and especially to overestimate my desultory efforts, that I cannot be surprised at your very kind and flattering remarks on my papers. I am glad, however, that you have made a few critical observations (and am only sorry that you were not well enough to make more), as that enables me to say a few words in explanation.

My great fault is haste. An idea strikes me, I think over it for a few days, and then write away with such ill.u.s.trations as occur to me while going on. I therefore look at the subject almost solely from one point of view. Thus, in my paper on Man (406*/1. Published in the ”Anthropological Review,” 1864.), I aim solely at showing that brutes are modified in a great variety of ways by Natural Selection, but that in none of these particular ways can Man be modified, because of the superiority of his intellect. I therefore no doubt overlook a few smaller points in which Natural Selection may still act on men and brutes alike. Colour is one of them, and I have alluded to this in correlation to const.i.tution, in an abstract I have made at Sclater's request for the ”Natural History Review.” (406*/2. ”Nat. Hist. Review,”

1864, page 328.) At the same time, there is so much evidence of migrations and displacements of races of man, and so many cases of peoples of distinct physical characters inhabiting the same or similar regions, and also of races of uniform physical characters inhabiting widely dissimilar regions,--that the external characteristics of the chief races of man must, I think, be older than his present geographical distribution, and the modifications produced by correlation to favourable variations of const.i.tution be only a secondary cause of external modification. I hope you may get the returns from the Army.

(406*/3. Measurements taken of more than one million soldiers in the United States showed that ”local influences of some kind act directly on structure.”--”Descent of Man,” 1901, page 45.) They would be very interesting, but I do not expect the results would be favourable to your view.

With regard to the constant battles of savages leading to selection of physical superiority, I think it would be very imperfect and subject to so many exceptions and irregularities that it would produce no definite result. For instance: the strongest and bravest men would lead, and expose themselves most, and would therefore be most subject to wounds and death. And the physical energy which led to any one tribe delighting in war, might lead to its extermination, by inducing quarrels with all surrounding tribes and leading them to combine against it. Again, superior cunning, stealth, and swiftness of foot, or even better weapons, would often lead to victory as well as mere physical strength.

Moreover, this kind of more or less perpetual war goes on amongst savage peoples. It could lead, therefore, to no differential characters, but merely to the keeping up of a certain average standard of bodily and mental health and vigour.

So with selection of variations adapted to special habits of life as fis.h.i.+ng, paddling, riding, climbing, etc., etc., in different races, no doubt it must act to some extent, but will it be ever so rigid as to induce a definite physical modification, and can we imagine it to have had any part in producing the distinct races that now exist?

The s.e.xual selection you allude to will also, I think, have been equally uncertain in its results. In the very lowest tribes there is rarely much polygamy, and women are more or less a matter of purchase. There is also little difference of social condition, and I think it rarely happens that any healthy and undeformed man remains without wife and children.

I very much doubt the often-repeated a.s.sertion that our aristocracy are more beautiful than the middle cla.s.ses. I allow that they present specimens of the highest kind of beauty, but I doubt the average. I have noticed in country places a greater average amount of good looks among the middle cla.s.ses, and besides we unavoidably combine in our idea of beauty, intellectual expression, and refinement of manner, which often makes the less appear the more beautiful. Mere physical beauty--i.e. a healthy and regular development of the body and features approaching to the mean and type of European man, I believe is quite as frequent in one cla.s.s of society as the other, and much more frequent in rural districts than in cities.

With regard to the rank of man in zoological cla.s.sification, I fear I have not made myself intelligible. I never meant to adopt Owen's or any other such views, but only to point out that from one point of view he was right. I hold that a distinct family for Man, as Huxley allows, is all that can possibly be given him zoologically. But at the same time, if my theory is true, that while the animals which surrounded him have been undergoing modification in all parts of their bodies to a generic or even family degree of difference, he has been changing almost wholly in the brain and head--then in geological antiquity the SPECIES man may be as old as many mammalian families, and the origin of the FAMILY man may date back to a period when some of the ORDERS first originated.

As to the theory of Natural Selection itself, I shall always maintain it to be actually yours and yours only. You had worked it out in details I had never thought of, years before I had a ray of light on the subject, and my paper would never have convinced anybody or been noticed as more than an ingenious speculation, whereas your book has revolutionised the study of Natural History, and carried away captive the best men of the present age. All the merit I claim is the having been the means of inducing you to write and publish at once. I may possibly some day go a little more into this subject (of Man), and if I do will accept the kind offer of your notes.

I am now, however, beginning to write the ”Narrative of my Travels,”

which will occupy me a long time, as I hate writing narrative, and after Bates' brilliant success rather fear to fail.

I shall introduce a few chapters on Geographical Distribution and other such topics. Sir C. Lyell, while agreeing with my main argument on Man, thinks I am wrong in wanting to put him back into Miocene times, and thinks I do not appreciate the immense interval even to the later Pliocene. But I still maintain my view, which in fact is a logical result of my theory; for if man originated in later Pliocene, when almost all mammalia were of closely allied species to those now living, and many even identical, then man has not been stationary in bodily structure while animals have been varying, and my theory will be proved to be all wrong.

In Murchison's address to the Geographical Society, just delivered, he points out Africa as being the oldest existing land. He says there is no evidence of its having been ever submerged during the Tertiary epoch.

Here then is evidently the place to find early man. I hope something good may be found in Borneo, and that the means may be found to explore the still more promising regions of tropical Africa, for we can expect nothing of man very early in Europe.

It has given me great pleasure to find that there are symptoms of improvement in your health. I hope you will not exert yourself too soon or write more than is quite agreeable to you. I think I made out every word of your letter, though it was not always easy.

(406*/4. For Wallace's later views see Letter 408, note.)

LETTER 407. TO W. TURNER.

(407/1. Sir William Turner is frequently referred to in the ”Descent of Man” as having supplied Mr. Darwin with information.)

Down, December 14th [1866].

Your kindness when I met you at the Royal Society makes me think that you would grant me the favour of a little information, if in your power.