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Alfred Russel Wallace Biography

Alfred Russel Wallace

Alfred Russel Wallace OM FRS (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, and biologist. He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection; his paper on the subject was jointly published with some of Charles Darwin's writings in 1858. This prompted Darwin to publish his own ideas in On the Origin of Species. Wallace did extensive fieldwork, first in the Amazon River basin and then in the Malay Archipelago, where he identified the faunal divide now termed the Wallace Line, which separates the Indonesian archipelago into two distinct parts: a western portion in which the animals are largely of Asian origin, and an eastern portion where the fauna reflect Australasia.

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Alfred Russel Wallace Quotes

Civilisation has ever accompanied emigration and conquest - the conflict of opinion, of religion, or of race

Conflict, Conquest, Emigration, Race, Religion

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.

Age, Back, Look, Looks, People

In all works on Natural History, we constantly find details of the marvellous adaptation of animals to their food, their habits, and the localities in which they are found.

Adaptation, Animal, Details, Food, Habits, Marvellous

On the spiritual theory, man consists essentially of a spiritual nature or mind intimately associated with a spiritual body or soul, both of which are developed in and by means of a material organism

Consists, Intimately, Mean, Men, Nature, Spiritual

In less than eight years "The Origin of Species" has produced conviction in the minds of a majority of the most eminent living men of science. New facts, new problems, new difficulties as they arise are accepted, solved, or removed by this theory; and its principles are illustrated by the progress and conclusions of every well established branch of human knowledge.

Acceptance, Accepted, Knowledge, Minds, Science

There is, I conceive, no contradiction in believing that mind is at once the cause of matter and of the development of individualised human minds through the agency of matter

Agency, Believe, Cause, Conceive, Human, Mind

To say that mind is a product or function of protoplasm, or of its molecular changes, is to use words to which we can attach no clear conception

Changes, Conception, Function, Mind, Molecular, Use

Modification of form is admitted to be a matter of time

Form, Matter, Modification, Time

There is a tendency in nature to the continued progression of certain classes of varieties further and further from the original type.

Class, Continued, Progression, Type, Varieties

In my solitude I have pondered much on the incomprehensible subjects of space, eternity, life and death.

Life, Life And Death, Solitude, Space, Subjects

Truth is born into this world only with pangs and tribulations, and every fresh truth is received unwillingly.

Born, Pangs, Truth, Unwillingly, World

I am thankful I can see much to admire in all religions.

Admire, I Am Thankful, See, Thankful, Thankfulness

To the mass of mankind religion of some kind is a necessity

Kind, Mass, Religion

I hold with Henry George, that at the back of every great social evil will be found a great political wrong

Evil, Found, Henry, Hold, Political, Social

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 can see much to admire in all religions [. . . ] 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.

Soul, Suffer, Suffering, Thinking, Truth, Weighed

In one of my latest conversations with Darwin he expressed himself very gloomily on the future of humanity, on the ground that in our modern civilization natural selection had no play, and the fittest did not survive. Those who succeed in the race for wealth are by no means the best or the most intelligent, and it is notorious that our population is more largely renewed in each generation from the lower than from the middle and upper classes.

Civilization, Humanity, Intelligent, Mean, Race, Upper Class

What birds can have their bills more peculiarly formed than the ibis, the spoonbill, and the heron?

Bills, Bird, Birds, Formed, Heron, Herons

Why do some die and some live? 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, 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.

Famine, Generation, Race, Science, Self, Swiftest

But naturalists are now beginning to look beyond this, and to see that there must be some other principle regulating the infinitely varied forms of animal life.

Animal, Beginning, Looks, Principles, See, Varied

The white men in our colonies are too frequently the savages

Colonies, Frequently, Men, Savages, White Man

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