--Yours very truly,
ALFRED R. WALLACE.
* * * * *
TO PROF. POULTON
_Broadstone, Wimborne. December 18, 1907._
My dear Poulton,--The importance of Mendelism to Evolution seems to me
to be something of the same kind, but very much less in degree and
importance, as Galton's fine discovery of the law of the average share
each parent has in the characters of the child--one quarter, the four
grandparents each one-sixteenth, and so on. That illuminates the whole
problem of heredity, combined with individual diversity, in a way
nothing else does. I almost wish you could introduce that!--Yours very
truly,
ALFRED R. WALLACE.
* * * * *
TO DR. ARCHDALL REID
_Broadstone, Wimborne. January 19, 1908._
Dear Sir,-- ... I was much pleased the other day to read, in a review of
Mr. T. Rice Holmes's fine work on "Ancient Britain and the Invasions of
Julius Caesar," that the author has arrived by purely historical study at
the conclusion that we have not risen morally above our primitive
ancestors. It is a curious and important coincidence.
I myself got the germ of the idea many years ago, from a very acute
thinker, Mr. Albert Mott, who gave some very original and thoughtful
addresses as President of the Liverpool Philosophical Society, one of
which dealt with the question of savages being often, perhaps always,
the descendants of more civilised races, and therefore affording no
proof of progression.
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