Revision of Wallace quotes from Fri, 2013-05-17 11:38

QUOTES FROM WALLACE’S WRITINGS COMPILED BY GEORGE
BECCALONI

These are some of my favorite
quotes from Wallace's published and unpublished writings. They provide an
overview of his life and work, as well as a sample of some of his best writing,
and they have been arranged to roughly reflect the chronology of the events to
which they refer. All have been carefully checked, but if you find any errors
then please let me know (blaberus1@ntlworld.com):

[Wallace, describing how he
became interested in botany whilst living near Neath, Wales in 1842...]
"But I soon found that by merely
identifying the plants I found in my walks I lost much time in gathering the
same species several times, and even then not being always quite sure that I
had found the same plant before. I therefore began to form a herbarium,
collecting good specimens and drying them carefully between drying papers and a
couple of boards weighted with books or stones. My brother [who was
Wallace's employer]
, however, did not approve of my devotion to this study,
even though I had absolutely nothing else to do, nor did he suggest any way in
which I could employ my leisure more profitably. He said very little to me on
the subject beyond a casual remark, but a letter from my mother showed me that
he thought I was wasting my time. Neither he nor I could foresee that it would
have any effect on my future life, and I myself only looked upon it as an
intensely interesting occupation for time that would be otherwise wasted. Even
when we were busy I had Sundays perfectly free, and used then to take long
walks over the mountains with my collecting box, which I brought home full of
treasures. I first named the species as nearly as I could do so, and then laid
them out to be pressed and dried. At such times I experienced the joy which
every discovery of a new form of life gives to the lover of nature, almost
equal to those raptures which I afterwards felt at every capture of new
butterflies on the Amazon, or at the constant stream of new species of birds,
beetles, and butterflies in Borneo, the Moluccas, and the Aru Islands...

Now, I have some reason to
believe that this was the turning-point of my life, the tide that carried me
on, not to fortune but to whatever reputation I have acquired, and which has
certainly been to me a never-failing source of much health of body and supreme
mental enjoyment." (From Wallace's 1905 book My Life).

........................................................................................................

[Wallace, writing to his friend
Henry Walter Bates about evolution in the mid-1840's...]
"'I have rather a more
favourable opinion of the 'Vestiges' than you appear to have. I do not consider
it a hasty generalization, but rather as an ingenious hypothesis strongly
supported by some striking facts and analogies, but which remains to be proved
by more facts and the additional light which more research may throw upon the
problem. It furnishes a subject for every observer of nature to attend to;
every fact he observes will make either for or against it, and it thus serves
both as an incitement to the collection of facts, and an object to which they
can be applied when collected...' [1845 letter]

'I begin to feel rather
dissatisfied with a mere local collection; little is to be learnt by it. I
should like to take some one family to study thoroughly, principally with a
view to the theory of the origin of species. By that means I am strongly of
opinion that some definite results might be arrived at...' [1847 letter]

These extracts from my early
letters 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." (From Wallace's 1905 book My Life).

........................................................................................................

[on the Amazon rainforest in
Brazil...]
"There is, however, one natural
feature of this country, the interest and grandeur of which may be fully appreciated
in a single walk: it is the "virgin forest." Here no one who has any
feeling of the magnificent and the sublime can be disappointed; the sombre
shade, scarce illumined by a single direct ray even of the tropical sun, the
enormous size and height of the trees, most of which rise like huge columns a
hundred feet or more without throwing out a single branch, the strange
buttresses around the base of some, the spiny or furrowed stems of others, the
curious and even extraordinary creepers and climbers which wind around them,
hanging in long festoons from branch to branch, sometimes curling and twisting
on the ground like great serpents, then mounting to the very tops of the trees,
thence throwing down roots and fibres which hang waving in the air, or twisting
round each other form ropes and cables of every variety of size and often of
the most perfect regularity. These, and many other novel features-the parasitic
plants growing on the trunks and branches, the wonderful variety of the
foliage, the strange fruits and seeds that lie rotting on the ground-taken
altogether surpass description, and produce feelings in the beholder of
admiration and awe. It is here, too, that the rarest birds, the most lovely
insects, and the most interesting mammals and reptiles are to be found. Here
lurk the jaguar and the boa-constrictor, and here amid the densest shade the
bell-bird tolls his peal." (From a 1849 letter from Wallace to the
members of the Mechanics' Institution in Neath, Wales published in Wallace's
1905 book My Life).

........................................................................................................

[Wallace, describing the
sinking of his ship on the way back to England from Brazil in a letter to his
friend the botanist Richard Spruce in 1852...]
"I cannot attempt to describe my
feelings and thoughts during these events. I was surprised to find myself very
cool and collected. I hardly thought it possible we should escape, and I
remember thinking it almost foolish to save my watch and the little money I had
at hand. However, after being in the boats some days I began to have more hope,
and regretted not having saved some new shoes, cloth coat and trousers, hat,
etc, which I might have done with a little trouble. My collections, however, were
in the hold, and were irretrievably lost. And now I began to think that almost
all the reward of my four years of privation and danger was lost. What I had
hitherto sent home had little more than paid my expenses, and what I had with
me in the Helen I estimated would have realized about £500. But even all
this might have gone with little regret had not by far the richest part of my
own private collection gone also. All my private collection of insects and
birds since I left Para was with me, and comprised hundreds of new and
beautiful species, which would have rendered (I had fondly hoped) my cabinet,
as far as regards American species, one of the finest in Europe. Fancy your
regrets had you lost all your Pyrenean mosses on your voyage home, or should
you now lose all your South American collection, and you will have some idea of
what I suffer. But besides this, I have lost a number of sketches, drawings,
notes, and observations on natural history, besides the three most interesting
years of my journal, the whole of which, unlike any pecuniary loss, can never
be replaced; so you will see that I have some need of philosophic resignation
to bear my fate with patience and equanimity." (From an 1852 letter
from Wallace to Spruce published in Wallace's 1905 book My Life).

........................................................................................................

[on a typical day's fieldwork
with his assistant Charles Allen in 1854...]
"Singapore is rich in beetles,
and before I leave I think I shall have a beautiful collection of them. I will
tell you how my day is now occupied. Get up at half-past five, bath, and
coffee. Sit down to arrange and put away my insects of the day before, and set
them in a safe place to dry. Charles mends our insect-nets, fills our
pin-cushions, and gets ready for the day. Breakfast at eight; out to the jungle
at nine. We have to walk about a quarter mile up a steep hill to reach it, and
arrive dripping with perspiration. Then we wander about in the delightful shade
along paths made by the Chinese wood-cutters till two or three in the
afternoon, generally returning with fifty or sixty beetles, some very rare or
beautiful, and perhaps a few butterflies. Change clothes and sit down to kill
and pin insects, Charles doing the flies, wasps, and bugs; I do not trust him
yet with beetles. Dinner at four, then at work again till six: coffee. Then
read or talk, or, if insects very numerous, work again till eight or nine. Then
to bed." (From an 1854 letter from Wallace to his mother published
in Wallace's 1905 book My Life).

........................................................................................................

[on insect collecting in
Simunjan, Sarawak, Borneo...]
"To give English entomologists some
idea of the collecting here, I will give a sketch of one good day's work. Till
breakfast I am occupied ticketing and noting the captures of the previous day,
examining boxes for ants, putting out drying-boxes and setting the insects of
any caught by lamp-light. About 10 o'clock I am ready to start. My equipment
is, a rug-net, large collecting-box hung by a strap over my shoulder, a pair of
pliers for Hymenoptera, two bottles with spirits, one large and wide-mouthed
for average Coleoptera, &c., the other very small for minute and active
insects, which are often lost by attempting to drop them into a large mouthed
bottle. These bottles are carried in pockets in my hunting-shirt, and are
attached by strings round my neck; the corks are each secured to the bottle by
a short string. The morning is fine, and thus equipped I first walk to some
dead trees close to the house frequented by Buprestidae. As I approach I see
the bright golden back of one, as he moves in sideway jerks along a prostrate
trunk,--I approach with caution, but before I can reach him, whizz!--he is off,
and flies humming round my head. After one or two circuits he settles again in
a place rendered impassable by sticks and bushes, and when he leaves it, it is
to fly off to some remote spot in the jungle. I then walk off into the swamp
along the path of logs and tree-trunks, picking my way cautiously, now glancing
right and left on the foliage...I now come to a bridge of logs across a little
stream; this is another favourite station of the Buprestidae, particularly of
the elegant Belionota sumptuosa. One of these is now on the bridge,--he rises
as I approach,-- flies with the rapidity of lightning around me, and settles on
the handle of my net! I watch him with quiet admiration,--to attempt to catch
him then is absurd; in a moment he is off again, and then settles within a yard
of me; I strike with all my force, he rises at the same moment, and is now
buzzing in my net, and in another instant is transferred in safety to my
bottle...In some distance now I walk on, looking out carefully for whatever may
appear; for near half-a-mile I see not an insect worth capturing; then suddenly
flies across the path a fine Longicorn, new to me, and settles on a trunk a few
yards off. I survey the soft brown mud between us, look anxiously for some root
to set my foot on, and then cautiously advance towards him: one more step and I
have him, but alas! My foot slips off the root, down I go into the bog and the
treasure escapes, perhaps a species I may never obtain again." (From an
1855 letter from Wallace published in Zoologist 13: 4803-4807)

........................................................................................................

[on the delights of eating
durian fruit...]
"When brought into a house the
smell is often so offensive that some persons can never bear to taste it. This
was my own case when I first tried it in Malacca, but in Borneo I found a ripe
fruit on the ground, and, eating it out-of-doors, I at once became a confirmed
durion eater...

[The] pulp is the eatable part, and
its consistency and flavour are indescribable. A rich butter-like custard
highly flavoured with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but
intermingled with it come wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese,
onion-sauce, brown-sherry, and other incongruities. Then there is a rich
glutinous smoothness in the pulp which nothing else possesses, but which adds
to its delicacy. It is neither acid, nor sweet, nor juicy; yet one feels the
want of none of these qualities, for it is perfect as it is. It produces no
nausea or other bad effect, and the more you eat of it the less you feel
inclined to stop. In fact, to eat durions, is a new sensation worth a voyage to
the East to experience." (From Wallace's 1869 book The Malay
Archipelago
).

........................................................................................................

[on dangerous fruits...] "Poets and moralists,
judging from our English trees and fruits, have thought that there existed an
inverse proportion between the size of the one and the other, so that their
fall should be harmless to man. Two of the most formidable fruits known,
however, the Brazil Nut (Bertholletia) and the Durian, grow on lofty
trees, from which they both fall as soon as they are ripe, and often wound or
kill those who seek to obtain them. From this we may learn two things:—first,
not to draw conclusions from a very partial view of Nature; and secondly, that
trees and fruits and all the varied productions of the animal and vegetable
kingdoms, have not been created solely for the use and convenience of
man." (From Wallace's 1856 article "On the bamboo and durian
of Borneo". Hooker's Journal of Botany 8(8): 225-230).

........................................................................................................

[on the capture of a new
birdwing butterfly (
Ornithoptera croesus) on Bacan Island, Indonesia...] "The beauty and brilliancy of
this insect are indescribable, and none but a naturalist can understand the
intense excitement I experienced when I at length captured it. On taking it out
of my net and opening the glorious wings, my heart began to beat violently, the
blood rushed to my head, and I felt much more like fainting than I have done
when in apprehension of immediate death. I had a headache the rest of the day,
so great was the excitement produced by what will appear to most people a very
inadequate cause." (From Wallace's 1869 book The Malay
Archipelago
)

........................................................................................................

[on caring for a baby
orang-utan whilst living in Simunjan, Sarawak, Borneo...]
"I must now tell you of the
addition to my household of an orphan baby...which I have nursed now more than
a month...I feed it four times a day, and wash it and brush its hair every day,
which it likes very much, only crying when it is hungry or dirty...I am afraid
you would call it an ugly baby, for it has a dark brown skin and red hair, a very
large mouth, but very pretty little hands and feet...It has powerful lungs, and
sometimes screams tremendously, so I hope it will live.

But I must now tell you how I
came to take charge of it. Don't be alarmed; I was the cause of its mother's
death. It happened as follows:-I was out shooting in the jungle and saw
something up a tree which I thought was a large monkey or orang-utan, so I
fired at it, and down fell this little baby-in its mother's arms...I have
preserved her skin and skeleton, and am trying to bring up her only daughter,
and hope some day to introduce her to fashionable society at the Zoological
Gardens. When its poor mother fell mortally wounded, the baby was plunged head
over ears in a swamp about the consistence of pea-soup, and when I got it out
looked very pitiful. It clung to me very hard when I carried it home, and
having got its little hands unawares into my beard, it clutched so tight that I
had great difficulty in extricating myself...From this short account you will
see that my baby is no common baby, and I can safely say, what so many have
said before with much less truth, 'There never was such a baby as my baby,' and
I am sure nobody ever had such a dear little duck of a darling of a little
brown hairy baby before." (From an 1855 letter from Wallace to his
mother published in Wallace's 1905 book My Life).

........................................................................................................

[on the writing of Wallace's
famous 'Sarawak Law' paper...]
"Before giving a general sketch of my
life and work in less known parts of the Archipelago, I must refer to an
article I wrote while in Sarawak, which formed my first contribution to the
great question of the origin of species. It was written during the wet season, while
I was staying in a little house at the mouth of the Sarawak river, at the foot
of the Santubong mountain. I was quite alone, with one Malay boy as cook, and
during the evenings and wet days I had nothing to do but to look over my books
and ponder over the problem which was rarely absent from my thoughts. Having
always been interested in the geographical distribution of animals and
plants...and having now myself a vivid impression of the fundamental
differences between the Eastern and Western tropics; and having also read
through such books as Bonaparte's "Conspectus,"...giving a mass of
facts as to the distribution of animals over the whole world, it occurred to me
that these facts had never been properly utilized as indications of the way in
which species had come into existence. The great work of Lyell had furnished me
with the main features of the succession of species in time, and by combining
the two I thought that some valuable conclusions might be reached. I
accordingly put my facts and ideas on paper, and the result seeming to me to be
of some importance, I sent it to The Annals and Magazine of Natural History,
in which it appeared in the following September (1855). Its title was "On
the Law which has regulated the Introduction of New Species," which law
was briefly stated (at the end) as follows: "Every species has come
into existence coincident both in space and 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." (From Wallace's 1905 book My Life).

........................................................................................................

[on the invisible line which
would later bear Wallace's name...]
"In this Archipelago there are two
distinct faunas rigidly circumscribed, which differ as much as those of South
America and Africa, and more than those of Europe and North America: yet there
is nothing on the map or on the face of the islands to mark their limits. The
boundary line often passes between islands closer than others in the same
group. I believe the western part to be a separated portion of continental
Asia, the eastern the fragmentary prolongation of a former Pacific continent.
In mammalia and birds the distinction is marked by genera, families, and even
orders confined to one region; in insects by a number of genera and
little groups of peculiar species, the families of insects having
generally a universal distribution." (From an 1858 letter from
Wallace to Henry Walter Bates published in James Marchant's 1916 book Alfred
Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences
).

........................................................................................................

[on Wallace's discovery of
natural selection...]
"At the
time in question [February 1858, on the island of Gilolo in Indonesia] I
was suffering from a sharp attack of intermittent fever, and every day during
the cold and succeeding hot fits had to lie down for several hours, during
which time I had nothing to do but to think over any subjects then particularly
interesting me. One day something brought to my recollection Malthus's
"Principles of Population," which I had read about twelve years
before. I thought of his clear exposition of "the positive checks to
increase" - disease, accidents, war, and famine - which keep down the
population of savage races to so much lower an average than that of more
civilized peoples. It then occurred to me that these causes or their equivalents
are continually acting in the case of animals also; and as animals usually
breed much more rapidly than does mankind, the destruction every year from
these causes must be enormous in order to keep down the numbers of each
species, since they evidently do not increase regularly from year to year, as
otherwise the world would long ago have been densely crowded with those that
breed most quickly. Vaguely thinking over the enormous and constant destruction
which this implied, it occurred to me to ask the question, Why do some die and
some live? And the answer was clearly, that on the whole the best fitted live.
From the effects of disease the most healthy escaped; from enemies, the
strongest, the swiftest, or the most cunning; from famine, the best hunters or
those with the best digestion; and so on. Then it suddenly flashed upon me that
this self-acting process would necessarily improve the race, because in
every generation the inferior would inevitably be killed off and the superior
would remain-that is, the fittest would survive...

The more I thought over it the
more I became convinced that I had at length found the long-sought-for law of
nature that solved the problem of the origin of species. For the next hour I
thought over the deficiencies in the theories of Lamarck and of the author of
the "Vestiges," and I saw that my new theory supplemented these views
and obviated every important difficulty. I waited anxiously for the termination
of my fit so that I might at once make notes for a paper on the subject. The
same evening I did this pretty fully, and on the two succeeding evenings wrote
it out carefully in order to send it to Darwin by the next post, which would
leave in a day or two." (From Wallace's 1905 book My Life).

........................................................................................................

[on the factors which led both
Wallace and Darwin to independently discover natural selection...]
"Why did so many of the
greatest intellects fail, while Darwin and myself hit upon the solution of this
problem-a solution which...proves to have been (and still to be) a satisfying
one to a large number of those best able to form a judgment on its merits?...

On a careful consideration, we
find a curious series of correspondences, both in mind and in environment,
which led Darwin and myself, alone among our contemporaries, to reach
identically the same theory.

First (and most important, as I
believe), in early life both Darwin and myself became ardent beetle-hunters.
Now there is certainly no group of organisms that so impresses the collector by
the almost infinite number of its specific forms, the endless modifications of
structure, shape, colour, and surface-markings that distinguish them from each
other, and their innumerable adaptations to diverse environments...

Again, both Darwin and myself
had, what he terms "the mere passion of collecting,"-not that of
studying the minutiæ of structure, either internal or external. I should
describe it rather as an intense interest in the mere variety of living
things-the variety that catches the eye of the observer even among those which
are very much alike, but which are soon found to differ in several distinct
characters...

[W]hen, as in the case of Darwin
and myself, the collectors were of a speculative turn of mind, they were
constantly led to think upon the "why" and the "how" of all
this wonderful variety in nature-this overwhelming, and, at first sight,
purposeless wealth of specific forms among the very humblest forms of life.

Then, a little later (and with
both of us almost accidentally) we became travellers, collectors, and
observers, in some of the richest and most interesting portions of the earth;
and we thus had forced upon our attention all the strange phenomena of local
and geographical distribution, with the numerous problems to which they give
rise. Thenceforward our interest in the great mystery of how species
came into existence was intensified, and-again to use Darwin's
expression-"haunted" us.

Finally, both Darwin and
myself, at the critical period when our minds were freshly stored with a
considerable body of personal observation and reflection bearing upon the
problem to be solved, had our attention directed to the system of positive
checks
as expounded by Malthus in his 'Principles of Population.' The
effect of this was analogous to that of friction upon the specially-prepared
match, producing that flash of insight which led us immediately to the simple
but universal law of the "survival of the fittest," as the long-sought
effective cause of the continuous modification and adaptation of living
things." (From Wallace's acceptance speech on receiving the
Darwin-Wallace Medal in 1908, in The Darwin-Wallace Celebration Held on
Thursday, 1st July 1908, by the Linnean Society of London
. 1909)

........................................................................................................

[on the beauty of a bird of
paradise...]
"Thus one of my objects
in coming to the far East was accomplished. I had obtained a specimen of the King
Bird of Paradise...The remote island in which I found myself situated, in an
almost unvisited sea, far from the tracks of merchant-fleets and navies; the
wild luxuriant tropical forest, which stretched far away on every side; the
rude uncultured savages who gathered round me-all had their influence in
determining the emotions with which I gazed upon this "thing of
beauty." I thought of the long ages of the past, during which the
successive generations of this little creature had run their course-year by
year of being born, and living and dying amid these dark and gloomy woods, with
no intelligent eye to gaze upon their loveliness-to all appearance such a
wanton waste of beauty. Such ideas excite a feeling of melancholy. It seems sad
that on the one hand such exquisite creatures should live out their lives and
exhibit their charms only in these wild inhospitable regions, doomed for ages
yet to come to hopeless barbarism; while on the other hand, should civilized
man ever reach these distant lands, and bring moral, intellectual, and physical
light into the recesses of these virgin forests, we may be sure that he will so
disturbed the nicely-balanced relations of organic and inorganic nature as to
cause the disappearance, and finally the extinction, of these very beings whose
wonderful structure and beauty he alone is fitted to appreciate and enjoy. This
consideration must surely tell us that all living things were not made
for man. Many of them have no relation to him. The cycle of their existence has
gone on independently of his, and is disturbed or broken by every advance in
man's intellectual development; and their happiness and enjoyment, their loves
and hates, their struggles for existence, their vigorous life and early death,
would seem to be immediately related to their own well-being and perpetuation
alone, limited only by the equal well-being and perpetuation of the numberless
other organisms with which each is more or less intimately connected."
(From Wallace's 1869 book The Malay Archipelago).

........................................................................................................

[on the importance of
collecting natural history specimens...]
"It is for such inquiries that the modern
naturalist collects his materials; it is for this that he still wants to add to
the apparently boundless treasures of our national museums, and will never rest
satisfied as long as the native country, the geographical distribution, and the
amount of variation of any living thing remains imperfectly known. He looks
upon every species of animal and plant now living as the individual letters
which go to make up one of the volumes of our earth's history; and, as a few lost
letters may make a sentence unintelligible, so the extinction of numerous forms
of life which the progress of cultivation invariably entails will necessarily
obscure this invaluable record of the past. It is, therefore, an important
object, which governments and scientific institutions should immediately take
steps to secure, that in all tropical countries colonised by Europeans the most
perfect collections possible in every branch of natural history should be made
and deposited in national museums, where they may be available for study and
interpretation.

If this is not done, future
ages will certainly look back upon us as a people so immersed in the pursuit of
wealth as to be blind to higher considerations. They will charge us with having
culpably allowed the destruction of some of those records of Creation which we
had it in our power to preserve; and while professing to regard every living
thing as the direct handiwork and best evidence of a Creator, yet, with a
strange inconsistency, seeing many of them perish irrecoverably from the face
of the earth, uncared for and unknown." (From Wallace's 1863
article On the physical geography of the Malay Archipelago. Journal of the
Royal Geographical Society
33: 217-234).

........................................................................................................

[on the subject of religious
belief...]
"In my early youth I heard, as
ninety-nine-hundredths of the world do, only the evidence on one side, and
became impressed with a veneration for religion which has left some traces even
to this day. I have since heard and read much on both sides, and pondered much
upon the matter in all its bearings...I have since wandered among men of many
races and many religions. I have studied man, and nature in all its aspects,
and I have sought after truth. In my solitude I have pondered much on the
incomprehensible subjects of space, eternity, life and death. I think I have
fairly heard and fairly weighed the evidence on both sides, and I remain an utter
disbeliever
in almost all that you consider the most sacred truths. I will
pass over as utterly contemptible the oft-repeated accusation that sceptics
shut out evidence because they will not be governed by the morality of
Christianity. You I know will not believe that in my case, and I know
its falsehood as a general rule...To the mass of mankind religion of some kind
is a necessity. But whether there be a God and whatever be His nature; whether
we have an immortal soul or not, or whatever may be our state after death, I
can have no fear of having to suffer for the study of nature and the search for
truth, or believe that those will be better off in a future state who have
lived in the belief of doctrines inculcated from childhood, and which are to
them rather a matter of blind faith than intelligent conviction." (From
an 1861 letter from Wallace to his brother-in-law Thomas Sims published in
James Marchant's 1916 book Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences).

........................................................................................................

[on eugenics...] "Why, never by word or deed have
I given the slightest countenance to eugenics. Segregation of the unfit,
indeed! It is a mere excuse for establishing a medical tyranny. And we have
enough of this kind of tyranny already. Even now, the lunacy laws give
dangerous powers to the medical fraternity. At the present moment, there are
some perfectly sane people incarcerated in lunatic asylums simply for believing
in spiritualism. The world does not want the eugenist to set it straight. Give
the people good conditions, improve their environment, and all will tend
towards the highest type. Eugenics is simply the meddlesome interference of an
arrogant, scientific priestcraft." (From an interview with Wallace
in 1912 - see http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S750.htm).

........................................................................................................

[on human avarice...] "The struggle for wealth...ha[s]
been accompanied by a reckless destruction of the stored-up products of nature,
which is even more deplorable because more irretrievable. Not only have
forest-growths of many hundreds of years been cleared away, often with
disastrous consequences, but the whole of the mineral treasures of the earth's
surface, the slow products of long-past eons of time and geological change,
have been and are still being exhausted, to an extent never before approached,
and probably not equalled in amount during the whole preceding period of human
history." (From Wallace's 1898 book The Wonderful Century; Its
Successes and Its Failures
).

........................................................................................................

[on the evils of capitalism...] "This variety and beauty,
even the strangeness, the ugliness, and the unexpectedness we find everywhere
in nature, are, and therefore were intended to be, an important factor in our
mental development; for they excite in us admiration wonder, and curiosity—the
three emotions which stimulate first our attention, then our determination to
learn the how and the why, which are the basis of observation and experiment
and therefore of all science and all philosophy. These considerations should
lead us to look upon all the works of nature, animate or inanimate, as invested
with a certain sanctity, to be used by us but not abused, and
never to be recklessly destroyed or defaced. To pollute a spring or a river, to
exterminate a bird or beast, should be treated as moral offences and as social
crimes; while all who profess religion or sincerely believe in the
Deity—the designer and maker of this world and of every living thing—should,
one would have thought, have placed this among the first of their
forbidden sins, since to deface or destroy that which has been brought into
existence for the use and enjoyment, the education and elevation of the human
race, is a direct denial of the wisdom and goodness of the Creator, about which
they so loudly and persistently prate and preach.

Yet during the past century,
which has seen those great advances in the knowledge of Nature of which
we are so proud, there has been no corresponding development of a love or
reverence for her works; so that never before has there been such widespread
ravage of the earth's surface by destruction of native vegetation and with it
of much animal life, and such wholesale defacement of the earth by mineral
workings and by pouring into our streams and rivers the refuse of manufactories
and of cities; and this has been done by all the greatest nations claiming the
first place for civilisation and religion! And what is worse, the greater part
of this waste and devastation has been and is being carried on, not for
any good or worthy purpose, but in the interest of personal greed and avarice;
so that in every case, while wealth has increased in the hands of the few,
millions are still living without the bare necessaries for a healthy or a
decent life, thousands dying yearly of actual starvation, and other thousands
being slowly or suddenly destroyed by hideous diseases or accidents, directly
caused in this cruel race for wealth, and in almost every case easily
preventable. Yet they are not prevented, solely because to do so would
somewhat diminish the profits of the capitalists and legislators who are
directly responsible for this almost world-wide defacement and destruction, and
virtual massacre of the ignorant and defenceless workers.

The nineteenth century saw the
rise, the development, and the culmination of these crimes against God and man.
Let us hope that the twentieth century will see the rise of a truer religion, a
purer Christianity; that the conscience of our rulers will no longer permit a
single man, woman, or child to have its life shortened or destroyed by any
preventable cause, however profitable the present system may be to their
employers; that no one shall be allowed to accumulate wealth by the labour of
others unless and until every labourer shall have received sufficient, not only
for a bare subsistence, but for all the reasonable comforts and enjoyments
of life, including ample recreation and provision for a restful and happy old
age. Briefly, the support of the labourers without any injury to health or
shortening of life should be a first charge upon the products of labour.
Every kind of labour that will not bear this charge is immoral and is unworthy
of a civilised community." (From Wallace's 1910 book The World of Life).

 For more quotes see http://www.iol.ie/~spice/quotes.htm and http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/quotes.htm

Scratchpads developed and conceived by (alphabetical): Ed Baker, Katherine Bouton Alice Heaton Dimitris Koureas, Laurence Livermore, Dave Roberts, Simon Rycroft, Ben Scott, Vince Smith