Search Results - The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online

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F1552.2 Book: Litchfield, H. E. ed. 1904. Emma Darwin, wife of Charles Darwin. A century of family letters. Cambridge: University Press printed. Volume 2. Text Image PDF

. My dear Frank, There is one sentence in the Autobiography which I very much wish to omit, no doubt partly because your father's opinion that all morality has grown up by evolution is painful to me; but also because where this sentence comes in, it gives one a sort of shock and would give an opening to say, however unjustly, that he considered all spiritual beliefs no higher than hereditary aversions or likings, such as the fear of monkeys towards snakes. I think the disrespectful aspect would

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F1552.2 Book: Litchfield, H. E. ed. 1904. Emma Darwin, wife of Charles Darwin. A century of family letters. Cambridge: University Press printed. Volume 2. Text Image PDF

truth to feel if mere self-love or pride makes him adhere obstinately to his views, after seeing the sacrifices which such a man was ready to make for what he believed to be truth. This is the moral I draw from the book. Lyell showed his own readiness to act in the spirit of this moral when he accepted the doctrine of evolution late in life, recanting many of his published views and opinions. Charles Darwin to his sister Susan Darwin. Wednesday, 3 Sept. 1845. My dear Susan, It is long since I have

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F1552.2 Book: Litchfield, H. E. ed. 1904. Emma Darwin, wife of Charles Darwin. A century of family letters. Cambridge: University Press printed. Volume 2. Text Image PDF

; the evolution of morality, ii. 360 letter to his children, ii. 302; letter to his son Francis, ii. 276; letters to his son George, ii. 216, 279, 290, 298, 314, 318; letters to his son Horace, ii. 221, 253; letter to Susan Darwin, ii. 82; letters to his son William, ii. 157, 171, 172, 177, 179, 185, 191, 291; letter to Rev. J. S. Henslow, ii. 125; letters to Mrs Litchfield, ii. 230, 240, 247, 251, 256, 283; letter to Sir Charles Lyell, i. 413; letter to Mrs Thorley, ii. 150; letter to Elizabeth

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A237.2 Book: Wallace, A. R. 1905. My life: A record of events and opinions. London: Chapman and Hall. vol. 2. Text Image PDF

origin of irregular flowers, and of spines and prickles, in Natural Science (September), the three articles being included in my Studies. I also reviewed James Hutchinson Stirling's Darwinianism in Nature (February 8), and Mr. Benjamin Kidd's Social Evolution in the same paper (April 12), as well as an anonymous volume, entitled Nature's Method in the Evolution of Life, by a writer who suggests vague theories, less intelligible even than those of Lucretius, as a substitute for the luminous work of

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A237.2 Book: Wallace, A. R. 1905. My life: A record of events and opinions. London: Chapman and Hall. vol. 2. Text Image PDF

that everything pointed to its having been a development out of matter a phase of that continuous process of evolution by which the whole universe had been brought to its present condition. So we had to wait and work contentedly at minor problems. And now, after forty years, though Spencer and Darwin and Weismann have thrown floods of light on the phenomena of life, its essential nature and its origin remain as great a mystery as ever. Whatever light we do possess is from a source which

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A237.2 Book: Wallace, A. R. 1905. My life: A record of events and opinions. London: Chapman and Hall. vol. 2. Text Image PDF

Life and Habit, and Evolution Old and New, both of which I reviewed in Nature in the year 1879. The former is a wonderfully ingenious, brilliant, and witty application of the theory of Haeckel and others, that every animal cell, or even every organic molecule, is an independent conscious organism, with its likes and dislikes, its habits and instincts like the higher animals. He explains instincts as inherited memories, which, at the time he wrote, was a permissible hypothesis, but is now almost

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A237.2 Book: Wallace, A. R. 1905. My life: A record of events and opinions. London: Chapman and Hall. vol. 2. Text Image PDF

specific characters has arisen (see Studies, vol. i.). I also reviewed Copes' Primary Factors of Evolution and Dr. G. Archdall Reid's Present Evolution of Man in Nature (April 16), and wrote a long letter in Nature [page] 21

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A237.2 Book: Wallace, A. R. 1905. My life: A record of events and opinions. London: Chapman and Hall. vol. 2. Text Image PDF

in August, 1862, and our correspondence was very extensive during the period occupied in writing or correcting his earlier books on evolution, down to the publication of The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, in 1872, and afterwards, at longer intervals, to within less than a year of his death. A considerable selection of our VOL. II. B [page]

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A237.2 Book: Wallace, A. R. 1905. My life: A record of events and opinions. London: Chapman and Hall. vol. 2. Text Image PDF

Marshall, Mrs., medium, ii. 277 Marshall Pass, Rocky Mountains, ii. 178 Marshman, Mr., s ance with, ii. 296 Martigny, i. 325, 413 Martin, builder, i. 14; John Wallace apprenticed to, i. 14 Mascarene Islands, the plants of, studied by Mr. J. C. Baker, ii. 100 Massey, Gerald, A. R. Wallace on, ii. 261, 262; as socialist, ii. 272 Materialized Apparitions, by E. A. Brackett, ii. 337 Mathematics and Evolution, by Mr. Iles, ii. 189 Matthew, Mr. Patrick, Samuel Butler's exposition of the doctrines of

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A237.2 Book: Wallace, A. R. 1905. My life: A record of events and opinions. London: Chapman and Hall. vol. 2. Text Image PDF

, ii. 202 Powell, Major, A. R. Wallace's acquaintance with, ii. 118, 119; invites A. R. Wallace to lecture, ii. 129 Praed, W. Mackworth, Herbert Wallace's imitation of, i. 283, 289 Prescott, William H., his History of the Conquests of Mexico and Peru, i. 232 Presteign, i. 144 Present Evolution of Man, by Dr. G. Archdall Reid, ii. 215 Price, Mr., i. 186, 188, 190 Primary Factors of Evolution, by Cope, ii. 215 Principles of Biology, by Herbert Spencer, ii. 26 Principles of Geology, by Sir Charles

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A237.2 Book: Wallace, A. R. 1905. My life: A record of events and opinions. London: Chapman and Hall. vol. 2. Text Image PDF

Social Economy versus Political Economy, lecture given by A. R. Wallace, ii. 129 Social Evolution in Twentieth Century An Anticipation, by A. R. Wallace in the New York Journal, ii. 220 Social Evolution, by Benjamin Kidd, reviewed by A. R. Wallace, ii. 212 Social Statics, by Herbert Spencer, ii. 27; its influence on A. R. Wallace, ii. 235 Soda Springs described, ii. 179 Solovyoff, V. S., visits at Grays, ii. 93 Soubirous, Bernadotte, of Lourdes, ii. 305 Soulbury, land survey of, i. 131 Sourabaya

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A237.2 Book: Wallace, A. R. 1905. My life: A record of events and opinions. London: Chapman and Hall. vol. 2. Text Image PDF

of his work, and that as young students of nature we wished to have the honour of his acquaintance. He was very pleasant, spoke appreciatively of what we had both done for the practical exposition of evolution, and hoped we would continue to work at the subject. But when we ventured to touch upon the great problem, and whether he had arrived at even one of the first steps towards its solution, our hopes were dashed at once. That, he said, was too fundamental a problem to even think of solving

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A237.2 Book: Wallace, A. R. 1905. My life: A record of events and opinions. London: Chapman and Hall. vol. 2. Text Image PDF

meeting, in company with a party of scientific friends, chiefly ornithologists. This was both my first visit to Cambridge and to the Association, and under such pleasant conditions I thoroughly enjoyed both. Besides the number of eminent men of science I had the opportunity of hearing or seeing, I had the pleasure of spending an evening with Charles Kingsley in his own house, and enjoying his stimulating conversation. There was also a slight recrudescence of the evolution controversy in the

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A237.2 Book: Wallace, A. R. 1905. My life: A record of events and opinions. London: Chapman and Hall. vol. 2. Text Image PDF

circumstances to write novels, reviews, and magazine articles for a living, would probably have become one of our greatest philosophical naturalists and expounders of evolution. But, like myself, he was more than a land nationalizer, and my first knowledge of his political and social views was derived from an article he wrote on the condition of India somewhere about 1880. Through my friend, the late Sir David Wedderburn, I had become aware of the terrible defects of our government of that country owing to

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A237.1 Book: Wallace, A. R. 1905. My life: A record of events and opinions. London: Chapman and Hall. vol. 1. Text Image PDF

. and his History of America, and a number of other standard works. But perhaps the most important book I read was Malthuss Principles of Population, which I greatly admired for its masterly summary of facts and logical induction to conclusions. It was the first work I had yet read treating of any of the problems of philosophical biology, and its main principles remained with me as a permanent possession, and twenty years later gave me the long-sought clue to the effective agent in the evolution of

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A237.1 Book: Wallace, A. R. 1905. My life: A record of events and opinions. London: Chapman and Hall. vol. 1. Text Image PDF

to Bates suffice to show that the great problem of the origin of species was already distinctly formulated in my mind; that I was not satisfied with the more or less vague solutions at that time offered; that I believed the conception of evolution through natural law so clearly formulated in the Vestiges to be, so far as it went, a true one; and that I firmly believed that a full and careful study of the facts of nature would ultimately lead to a solution of the mystery. There is one other

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A237.1 Book: Wallace, A. R. 1905. My life: A record of events and opinions. London: Chapman and Hall. vol. 1. Text Image PDF

time with a pre-existing closely-allied species. This clearly pointed to some kind of evolution. It suggested the when and the where of its occurrence, and that it could only be through natural generation, as was also suggested in the Vestiges ; but the how was still a secret only to be penetrated some years later. Soon after this article appeared, Mr. Stevens wrote me that he had heard several naturalists express regret that I was theorizing, when what we had to do was to collect more facts

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A237.1 Book: Wallace, A. R. 1905. My life: A record of events and opinions. London: Chapman and Hall. vol. 1. Text Image PDF

again have crimson or golden patches, which when viewed at certain angles change to quite different opalescent hues, unsurpassed by the rarest gems. But it is not this grand development of size and colour that constitutes the attraction of these insects to the student of evolution, but the fact that they exhibit, in a remarkable degree, almost every kind of variation, as well as some of the most beautiful examples of polymorphism and of mimicry. Besides these features, the family presents us with

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A237.1 Book: Wallace, A. R. 1905. My life: A record of events and opinions. London: Chapman and Hall. vol. 1. Text Image PDF

evolution, distribution, physical geography, anthropology, the glacial period, geological time, sociology, and several others I might have spent the rest of my life upon similar work, for which my own collection afforded ample materials, and thus settled down into a regular species-monger. For even in this humble occupation there is a great fascination; constant difficulties are encountered in unravelling the mistakes of previous describers who have had imperfect materials, while the detection

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A237.2 Book: Wallace, A. R. 1905. My life: A record of events and opinions. London: Chapman and Hall. vol. 2. Text Image PDF

will lead to a public reaction against the doctrine of evolution at large. As I still declined to go into this controversy, having dealt with the whole matter in my Darwinism, and still being sceptical as to any great effects being produced by the address in question, he wrote me a month later as follows: As I cannot get you to deal with Lord Salisbury, I have decided to do it myself, having been finally exasperated into doing it by this honour paid to his address in France the presentation of a