Returned Letter1
Old Orchard,
Broadstone,
Dorset.
Jany.. 18th. 1913
Ben. R. Miller Esq.
Dear Sir
Thanks for your kind congratulations, & for the small pamphlet you have sent me. I have read it with much interest, as the writer was evidently a man of thought and talent. The first lecture certainly gives an approach to Darwin’s theory, perhaps neater[?] than any other, as he almost implies the "Survival of the fittest" as the cause of progressive modification. But his language is imaginative & obscure. He uses "Education" apparently in [2] the sense of what we should term "effect of the environment".
The second lecture is even a more exact anticipation of the modern views as to microbes, including their transmissions by fleas & other insects, and the probability that the blood of healthy persons contains a sufficiency of destroyers of the pathogenic germs, such as the white blood corpuscles — to preserve us in health.
But he is so anti-clerical & anti-Biblical that it is no wonder he could not get a hearing in Boston [3] in 1847.
Yours very truly| Alfred R. Wallace [signature]
Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP4459.4767)]
For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon
[1] [p. 98]
Old Orchard
Broadstone,
Dorset
January 18, 1913
Dear Sir,—Thanks for your kind congratulations, and for the small pamphlet1 you have sent me. I have read it with much interest, as the writer was evidently a man of thought and talent. The first lecture certainly gives [2] [p. 99] an approach to Darwin's theory, perhaps nearer than any other, as he almost implies the "survival of the fittest" as the cause of progressive modification. But his language is imaginative and obscure. He uses "education" apparently in the sense of what we should term "effect of the environment."
The second lecture is even a more exact anticipation of the modern views as to microbes, including their transmission by flies and other insects and the probability that the blood of healthy persons contains a sufficiency of destroyers of the pathogenic germs—such as the white blood-corpuscles—to preserve us in health.
But he is so anti-clerical and anti-Biblical that it is no wonder he could not get a hearing in Boston in 1847.—Yours very truly,
Alfred R. Wallace
Status: Draft transcription [Published letter (WCP4459.6457)]
For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon
Please cite as “WCP4459,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 27 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP4459