WCP3445

Letter (WCP3445.2932)

[1]1

Geanies: Rosshire. N. B.

July 21 [18]902

Dear Mr. Wallace,

I am truly sorry to observe the tone of injury which pervades your letter of the 18th. inst[ant]3. just received. It certainly did not occur to me that I was hitting below the belt in alluding to matters so notorious; but after receiving this expression of your own opinion upon the matter, I shall assuredly never do so again. Unfortunately what has been done cannot be undone; but perhaps you will allow me to say that, rather than have offended you in this way, I would have suppressed the article altogether. Perhaps also I may [2] add that in giving public expression to my opinion on the relative values of your different lines of publication, it seemed to me that I was only making "fair comment". If you were to say that you thought my writings on Darwinism4 betokened "incapacity and absurdity", but my experiments in physiology the reverse, I do not think I should at all object. This, however, is a matter of feeling, about which it would be fruitless to argue. So all that I can now do is to express my sorrow, and promise never to allude to the subjects again.

"Astrology" I alluded to, because you once told me that you were investigating it, and thought there was something in it. You refused to hear arguments against it, and left [3]5 me with the impression that you believed in it6.

Touching my correspondence with Mr. Darwin7, 14 years is a long time to remember details, and I kept no copies. But I do clearly remember two points. The first is that the letters were to be strictly private, and the next is that they were to be regarded as provisional. Now, after the letters were written, further work with Williams showed him to be an imposter. I spent an immense deal of time and trouble over the matter, and in the end withdrew the opinions expressed in these letters.

If you have gained your knowledge of their contents by any occult process8, I hope you will publish them [4] as evidence, which in that case I would not be wanting in "courage" to back. But otherwise, in the event of your publishing them, I should require to know the source from which they were obtained. That it was not from Mr. Darwin himself I am already satisfied: if it was from any member of his family the conditions under which they were written, and some time afterwards (with my permission) submitted to their perusal, must have been forgotten. In any case I do not know that you ought to have read them — but am not sorry that you did, if only to show you that, although too credulous in the first instance, I was at any rate not unopen [sic] to an honest conviction.

Yours truly | Geo[rge]. J. Romanes9 [signature]

Page numbered 218 in pencil in top RH corner. A crest with the motto "Sero sed serio" (Late but in earnest) is positioned in the centre at the top of the page. This is the motto of clan Kerr, but the crest does not resemble that of the Kerr's.
Year deduced from birth and death dates of author.
This relates to the author's review of Wallace, A. R. (1889) Darwinism: an exposition of the theory of natural selection, with some of its applications, Macmillan & Co., London.
Darwinism could refer to ARW's book (see Endnote 3), or to the author's own views on Darwinism. For the most part the author supported Darwinism and the role of natural selection in speciation, but also made the point that Darwin had not actually shown how natural selection produced species. Natural selection could be the driver for adaptation, but still in question was the mechanism for speciation. Romanes' own solution to this was called 'physiological selection', i.e. that variation in reproductive ability, caused mainly by the prevention of interbreeding with parental forms, was the primary driving force in the production of new species. The majority view then (and now) was that geographical separation is the primary force in speciation and the increased sterility of crosses between incipient species was secondary.
Page numbered 219 in pencil in top RH corner
The supernatural speculations regarding mankind's origins in the final chapter of Darwinism (see Endnote 3), "Darwinism applied to man" were either ignored or ridiculed by contemporary reviewers. Romanes wrote: "It is in the concluding chapter of his book, much more than in any of the others, that we encounter the Wallace of spiritualism and astrology, the Wallace of vaccination and the land question, the Wallace of incapacity and absurdity." The accusation of belief in astrology was incorrect.
Darwin, Charles Robert (1809-1882). English naturalist and geologist, jointly with ARW originator of the theory of evolution by natural selection and author of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
A reference to ARW's belief in Spiritualism, often ridiculed by the scientific community.
British Museum stamp underneath.

Please cite as “WCP3445,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 29 March 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP3445