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For anyone who is thinking about Darwin, 
Creation, evolution, religion, and related 
issues, Alfred Russell Wallace's obituary on 
Darwin is  worth reading in full. Here's the 
beginning and end to tempt you to read the whole 
thing. 

The  website, The Complete Work of Darwin 
On-Line, gives you the full searchable text and 
the facsimile of Century Magazine's text and 
illustrations. http://darwin-online.org.uk

The website has been invaluable to me while 
working on the section of the Linnaeus & America 
exhibition that deals with Darwin and Linnaeus. 
(If you are in Philadelphia this spring, please 
come see the show!)

Karen Reeds
Guest Curator
Come into a New World: Linnaeus & America (February 15-July 1, 2007)
American Swedish Historical Museum, Philadelphia
  215--389-1776, [log in to unmask]
http://www.americanswedish.org/  Free parking!
[log in to unmask]
====================

http://darwin-online.org.uk

RECORD: Wallace, A. R. 1883. The Debt of Science 
to Darwin. Century Magazine 25, 3 (January): 
420-432.

p 420
THE DEBT OF SCIENCE TO DARWIN.



THE great man so recently taken from us had 
achieved an amount of reputation and honor 
perhaps never before accorded to a contemporary 
writer on science. His name has given a new word 
to several languages, and his genius is 
acknowledged wherever civilization extends. Yet 
the very greatness of his fame, together with the 
number, variety, and scientific importance of his 
works, has caused him to be altogether 
misapprehended by the bulk of the reading public. 
Every book of Darwin's has been reviewed or 
noticed in almost every newspaper and periodical, 
while his theories have been the subject of so 
much criticism and so much dispute, that most 
educated persons have been able to obtain some 
general notion of his teachings, often without 
having read a single chapter of his works,-and 
very few, indeed, except professed students of 
science, have read the whole series of them. It 
has been so easy to learn something of the 
Darwinian theory at second-hand, that few have 
cared to study it as expounded by its author.

It thus happens that, while Darwin's name and 
fame are more widely known than in the case of 
any other modern man of science, the real 
character and importance of the work he did are 
as widely misunderstood....

p 432...Let us consider for a moment the state of 
mind induced by the new theory and that which 
preceded it. So long as men believed that every 
species was the immediate handiwork of the 
Creator, and was therefore absolutely perfect, 
they remained altogether blind to the meaning of 
the countless variations and adaptations of the 
parts and organs of plants and animals. They who 
were always repeating, parrot-like, that every 
organism was exactly adapted to its conditions 
and surroundings by an all-wise being, were 
apparently dulled or incapacitated by this belief 
from any inquiry into the inner meaning of what 
they saw around them, and were content to pass 
over whole classes of facts as inexplicable, and 
to ignore countless details of structure under 
vague notions of a "general plan," or of variety 
and beauty being "ends in themselves"; while he 
whose teachings were at first stigmatized as 
degrading or even atheistical, by devoting to the 
varied phenomena of living things the loving, 
patient, and reverent study of one who really had 
faith in the beauty and harmony and perfection of 
creation, was enabled to bring to light 
innumerable hidden adaptations, and to prove that 
the most insignificant parts of the meanest 
living things had a use and a purpose, were 
worthy of our earnest study, and fitted to excite 
our highest and most intelligent admiration.

That he has done this is the sufficient answer to 
his critics and to his few detractors. However 
much our knowledge of nature may advance in the 
future, it will certainly be by following in the 
pathways he has made clear for us, and for long 
years to come the name of Darwin will stand for 
the typical example of what the student of nature 
ought to be. And if we glance back over the whole 
domain of science, we shall find none to stand 
beside him as equals; for in him we find a 
patient observation and collection of facts, as 
in Tycho Brahe; the power of using those facts in 
the determination of laws, as in Kepler; combined 
with the inspirational genius of a Newton, 
through which he was enabled to grasp fundamental 
principles, and so apply them as to bring order 
out of chaos, and illuminate the world of life as 
Newton illuminated the material universe. 
Paraphrasing the eulogistic words of the poet, we 
may say, with perhaps a greater approximation to 
truth :

"Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night; God 
said, 'Let Darwin be' and all was light."

Alfred R. Wallace.
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© 2002-7 The Complete Work of Charles Darwin 
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