The preceding discussions show how a different reading of what Wallace wrote up through 1858 leads us to anticipate certain continuities in his positions after 1858. Ample references have been given in an effort to show that after that date his positions on most subjects did, in fact, remain consistent with his earlier-stated opinions. Significantly, it can hardly be viewed as inconsistent with these opinions--indeed, remembering his initial writing efforts of circa 1841 and 1843, the earliest-stated ones of which we have a record--that he became a spiritualist. The entire progression of his views on the special problem of biological evolution, moreover, can be attributed to his necessarily changing position on the relation of adaptive response to utility.

    These connections, I submit, provide a more than adequate prior argument as to why Wallace's views on natural selection should not have reversed at any time after 1858. It has long been maintained that they did, however, and we must now therefore take special notice of three related issues: (1) whether Wallace himself later admitted to a "change of mind;" (2) whether, in fact, Wallace ever actually stated a position that demanded such a change later; and (3) whether certain things he did write that have been pointed to as signifying a change might be more reasonably explained in other ways.

    The first subject can be disposed of rather quickly, as such evidence as exists on the matter clearly indicates that he himself felt otherwise. As far as I am aware (and I have now read just about everything Wallace wrote for publication), Wallace never specifically admitted to a "change of mind" in print--for example, he never uttered anything of the sort: "Before 1865 and my introduction to spiritualism, I believed natural selection accounted for the development of all human attributes." Neither, so far as I am aware, has anyone ever claimed he did write anything to this effect.

    He did directly contend, however, that the origin of his divergence from the views of Darwin on natural selection was not due to his acceptance of spiritualism. The following passages, drawn from the Preface to the first edition of On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism,¹ are seemingly clear enough on this point:

I am informed that, in an article entitled "Englische Kritiker und Anti-Kritiker des Darwinismus," published in 1861 [sic, an error for 1871], he has put forth the opinion that Spiritualism and Natural Selection are incompatible, and that my divergence from the views of Mr. Darwin arises from my belief in Spiritualism. He also supposes that in accepting the spiritual doctrines I have been to some extent influenced by clerical and religious prejudices. As Mr. Dohrn's views may be those of other scientific friends, I may perhaps be excused for entering into some personal details in reply.

From the age of fourteen I lived with an elder brother, of advanced liberal and philosophical opinions, and I soon lost (and have never since regained) all capacity of being affected in my judgments either by clerical influence or religious prejudice. Up to the time when I first became acquainted with the facts of Spiritualism, I was a confirmed philosophical sceptic, rejoicing in the works of Voltaire, Strauss, and Carl Vogt, and an ardent admirer (as I still am) of Herbert Spencer. I was so thorough and confirmed a materialist that I could not at that time find a place in my mind for the conception of spiritual existence, or for any other agencies in the universe than matter and force. Facts, however, are stubborn things. My curiosity was at first excited by some slight but inexplicable phenomena occurring in a friend's family, and my desire for knowledge and love of truth forced me to continue the inquiry. The facts became more and more assured, more and more varied, more and more removed from anything that modern science taught or modern philosophy speculated on. The facts beat me. They compelled me to accept them as facts long before I could accept the spiritual explanation of them; there was at that time "no place in my fabric of thought into which it could be fitted." By slow degrees a place was made; but it was made, not by any preconceived or theoretical opinions, but by the continuous action of fact after fact, which could not be got rid of in any other way. So much for Mr. Anton Dohrn's theory of the causes which led me to accept Spiritualism. Let us now consider the statement as to its incompatibility with Natural Selection.

Having, as above indicated, been led, by a strict induction from facts, to a belief--1stly, In the existence of a number of preterhuman intelligences of various grades and, 2ndly, That some of these intelligences, although usually invisible and intangible to us, can and do act on matter, and do influence our minds,--I am surely following a strictly logical and scientific course in seeing how far this doctrine will enable us to account for some of those residual phenomena which Natural Selection alone will not explain. In the 10th chapter of my Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection I have pointed out what I consider to be some of those residual phenomena; and I have suggested that they may be due to the action of some of the various intelligences above referred to. This view was, however, put forward with hesitation, and I myself suggested difficulties in the way of its acceptance; but I maintained, and still maintain, that it is one which is logically tenable, and is in no way inconsistent with a thorough acceptance of the grand doctrine of Evolution, through Natural Selection, although implying (as indeed many of the chief supporters of that doctrine admit) that it is not the all-powerful, all-sufficient, and only cause of the development of organic forms.

    Complementary thoughts are presented in Wallace's 1885 essay "Are the Phenomena of Spiritualism in Harmony with Science?":

Science may be defined as knowledge of the universe in which we live--full and systematised knowledge leading to the discovery of laws and the comprehension of causes. The true student of science neglects nothing and despises nothing that may widen and deepen his knowledge of nature, and if he is wise as well as learned he will hesitate before he applies the term "impossible" to any facts which are widely believed and have been repeatedly observed by men as intelligent and honest as himself. Now, modern Spiritualism rests solely on the observation and comparison of facts in a domain of nature which has been hitherto little explored, and it is a contradiction in terms to say that such an investigation is opposed to science. Equally absurd is the allegation that some of the phenomena of Spiritualism "contradict the laws of nature," since there is no law of nature yet known to us but may be apparently contravened by the action of more recondite laws or forces...

This world-life not only lends itself to the production, by gradual evolution, of the physical body needed for the growth and nourishment of the human soul, but by its very imperfections tends to the continuous development of the higher spiritual nature of man. In a perfect and harmonious world perfect beings might possibly have been created but could hardly have been evolved, and it may well be that evolution is the great fundamental law of the universe of mind as well as of that of matter. The need for labour in order to live, the constant struggle against the forces of nature, the antagonism of the good and the bad, the oppression of the weak by the strong, the painstaking and devoted search required to wrest from nature her secret powers and hidden treasures--all directly assist in developing the varied powers of mind and body and the nobler impulses of our nature. Thus, all the material imperfections of our globe, the wintry blasts and summer heats, the volcano, the whirlwind and the flood, the barren desert and the gloomy forest, have each served as stimuli to develop and strengthen man's intellectual nature; while the oppression and wrong, the ignorance and crime, the misery and pain, that always and everywhere pervade the world, have been the means of exercising and strengthening the higher sentiments of justice, mercy, charity, and love, which we all feel to be our best and noblest characteristics, and which it is hardly possible to conceive could have been developed by any other means.²

Although the latter words do not prove that before 1864 Wallace did not hold a point of view that might have caused him to diverge from Darwin on the basis of spiritualism, they do suggest that he had little difficulty incorporating both Darwinian views and spiritualistic ones into the same general line of thought--that is, without actually reversing himself on the overall question.

    The second subject referred to earlier--whether Wallace ever actually stated a position that demanded a "change of mind" later--is a rather more difficult one to approach. As explained earlier, Wallace's lack of specific mention of man in "On the Tendency..." is at the least just as easy to contextualize as the initiation of a "special case" argument as it is evidence he considered man's situation to be the same as that of animals. Additional considerations, moreover, appear to make the first interpretation the more probably correct one.

    Schwartz,³ Kottler,⁴ and others have stated as if it were unequivocal fact that before 1864 Wallace felt natural selection accounted for man's evolution in the same fashion it did other living things. The detailed researches of Beddall, McKinney, Brooks, and others referred to earlier have reinforced this belief with their establishment that at the time of his recognition of the principle Wallace was giving as much consideration to the problem of human development as he was to animal origins. But again, this simple fact of correlation does not substantiate the conclusion that he believed the two problems could be disposed of through a model of proximate causes alone. As shown earlier there is reason to think he did not so believe. Further reason exists as well.

    Browne (1983) has written:

At the head of his 1858 paper on organic change he stated that wild varieties had a "tendency to depart indefinitely from the original type" and proceeded to set out his reasons for believing this to be the case. The theory of evolution and the concept of Malthusian selection of varieties were introduced as explanations--as the efficient cause--of this biological tendency.⁵

But in truth, the situation was probably just the opposite--at least with respect to evolution "as the efficient cause." Wallace more likely thought he had identified an "efficient cause" of evolution, was describing how this operated, and how it could be held to account for certain characteristics of adaptation and change in organisms. Nowhere in the essay does he in any way infer that this "biological tendency" is synonymous with evolution. In fact, no mention whatsoever is made of the 1855 paper "On the Law..." or its undeniably evolutionary orientation. Considering that a number of the studies he published between 1855 and 1858⁶ dwell on points made in that work, this is strange--that is, if the one is to be viewed merely as a conceptual extension of the thinking set out in the other.

    Moreover, and just as strangely, no reference is made in "On the Tendency..." to any of these other studies either. And although, as stated just above, we know that Wallace did have man's evolutionary development very much on his mind just prior to writing "On the Tendency...", neither is there any reference, in one fashion or another, to the evolution of man in the paper. One is very tempted to conclude from these facts that at the time of writing "On the Tendency..." Wallace strongly distinguished between his newly discovered principle and evolution per se. This impression is further strengthened by remembering that he certainly had connected man to the arguments of "On the Law...", as is plainly evident from commentary presented in "On the Habits of the Orang-Utan...",⁷ his letters to Bates,⁸ and his "Species Notebook."⁹

    Nor should one ignore the otherwise puzzling fact that practically all of his evolution-oriented writings between early 1858 and late 1863, including one long paper on man,¹⁰ reflect extensions of the line of thought present in "On the Law..." rather than that evident in "On the Tendency...".¹¹

    I conclude from all this that the species divergence discussion in "On the Tendency..." was never intended for application to man--that is, to the extent of accounting for our uniquely human "higher nature." On reading On the Origin of Species while still in the East, and after further communications with Darwin, Wallace certainly must have surmised that Darwin intended natural selection to account equally for the development of man's higher faculties and the development of his purely biological structure. With this application of the theory he surely disagreed, but until he had clarified his own thoughts on the matter it would be pointless to object. On this view, it is therefore not surprising that Wallace published not a single word between 1858 and 1864 that functionally connected the Darwinian model of natural selection to man--recall that during this period Wallace wrote only one article in which natural selection itself is the focus of attention in any respect: "Remarks on the Rev. Haughton's Paper on the Bee's Cell,"¹² in late 1863--much less anything suggesting that he felt natural selection accounted for the evolution of man's higher faculties.¹³

    In the absence of any direct positive evidence bearing on the general question of a possible change of mind, we are reduced to examining some Wallace writings that might secondarily be interpreted as supporting the "change of mind" hypothesis. This must now be done in some detail, with two especially well-known passages given primacy in the discussion.

    Malcolm Kottler has stated that "Wallace wrote to Darwin in 1869 that his new view was solely the result of his new belief in spiritualism."¹⁴ The source of this impression is a letter from Wallace to Darwin dated April 18, 1869.¹⁵ In this letter Wallace says:

I can quite comprehend your feelings with regard to my "unscientific" opinions as to Man, because a few years back I should myself have looked at them as equally wild and uncalled for... My opinions on the subject have been modified solely by the consideration of a series of remarkable phenomena, physical and mental, which I have now had every opportunity of fully testing, and which demonstrate the existence of forces and influences not yet recognised by science.

Here, I submit, Wallace says no more than what he says: that the now "fully tested" phenomena have led him to a theory which "a few years back" he would have considered "wild and uncalled for" (i.e., in the absence of relatable evidence). In presenting this as indicative of a change of mind, Kottler has assumed that prior to 1864 Wallace believed that natural selection could be applied to man's evolution in exactly the same fashion it could to other living things. There is no reason to doubt that Wallace's opinions were, as he put it, "modified" (rather than "reversed") from an earlier position, but the nature of that earlier position must be established, not assumed as a function of a correlation in time. Again, it should be emphasized that Wallace himself directly denied the reversal interpretation in the Preface to Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, as discussed earlier.

    The main evidence that has been used to support the "change of mind" hypothesis, however, consists of certain passages in "On the Origin of Human Races..." and the particular additions and changes in wording that were made for the 1870 version of that paper entitled "The Development of Human Races under the Law of Natural Selection."¹⁶ When Wallace decided to include the 1864 paper in his collection Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, he made many revisions. Most were relatively minor and are easily accounted for; some, however, are suggestive of a possible change in position. Nevertheless, in speaking of "On the Origin of Human Races..." in the Preface to Contributions... he writes:

I had intended to have considerably extended this essay, but on attempting it I found that I should probably weaken the effect without adding much to the argument. I have therefore preferred to leave it as it was first written, with the exception of a few ill-considered passages which never fully expressed my meaning.¹⁷

Note Wallace's deliberate employ of the word "extended"--not "reversed" or "changed"--and the fact that he is apparently more worried about "weakening" the effect than not "adding" to it. The inference is pretty clearly that he considered the existing (1864 version) argument sound, and was reluctant to do anything that would detract from it. He finally decided to end the book with the entirely new essay "The Limits of Natural Selection...".¹⁸ Why, if his opinion had "changed": (1) would he have decided to leave the essay more or less as it was; or (2) chosen to include it in Contributions... at all? Obviously, Wallace himself did not feel his position had changed.

    There is, however, the important matter of just what it was that Wallace's intended "meaning" was, and exactly which passages were "ill-conceived." Recall that in 1864 the individualist thinking of Spencer was consuming his attention,¹⁹ and on this basis he appears to have attempted to extend a Darwinian line on natural selection as far as he felt he could to account for the manner of human evolution. But this discussion pointedly avoided any explanation of the reasons behind the emergence of intellect or moral behavior. That their presence influenced man in ways that would be subjected to the influence of natural selection he did not doubt (nor did he in 1870, as expressed in the later version of the paper). Again, Wallace had for many years recognized that man exhibited many "above nature" qualities; "The Origin of Human Races..." was his attempt to describe how these qualities, once in existence, could be expected to aid or retard natural selection.²⁰ The manner of their own origin and the connection of this to evolution in general, however, he still had no handle on and deliberately avoided.

    Wallace's basic model of the physical evolution of mankind--including the chronology of racial differentiation, the emergence of the higher characters, and the cessation of physical bodily change--remained largely unchanged between 1864 and 1870. In the 1864 essay on man, Wallace writes:

But while these [physical] changes had been going on, his mental development had correspondingly advanced, and had now reached that condition in which it began powerfully to influence his whole existence, and would, therefore, become subject to the irresistible action of "natural selection."²¹

In the 1870 version this passage had been changed to:

But while these changes had been going on, his mental development had, from some unknown cause, greatly advanced, and had now reached that condition in which it began powerfully to influence his whole existence, and would therefore become subject to the irresistible action of "natural selection."²²

The subtle but important substitution of "from some unknown cause, greatly" for "correspondingly" suggests that Wallace had settled on a model for the origin of man's higher faculties. The emergence of intellect and morality-based decision-making signaled the beginning of humankind's participation in the causal domain of a higher level of existence. This emergence was implicit in the evolutionary scheme, much as life had been when physical conditions had reached a satisfactory degree of complexity and stability. The immediate impact of intellect was to produce various kinds of "above nature" behavior, but eventually most such behaviors initiated negative feedback that would ultimately cause society to reject them (failure of entire societies being the consequence when rejection did not take place). Materialism was one such behavior. Though counterproductive as an all-consuming individual or societal goal, it had the vital effect of producing a gradual societal increase of knowledge, and through the latter a greater understanding of others leading to an elevation of tolerance and the moral sense. For example, in an 1894 review of Benjamin Kidd's Social Evolution,²³ Wallace speaks approvingly of Kidd's idea that religious belief produced an influence fundamental to the development of civilization through its support of centralization of power. This, despite the fact that at no point in his life did Wallace have more than nominal respect for the idea of religious belief as a goal of itself.

    Eventually, man's moral capacity would "catch up" with his intellectual excesses, at which point natural selection could again act in a fully positive fashion (rejecting, for example, those self-serving, "others-neglecting" materialistic tendencies that remained). This last concept was integrally connected to the "equality of opportunity" idea Wallace supported in such works as "Human Selection."²⁴ In a letter printed in Nature in 1903,²⁵ Wallace dubbed this entirely "positive" form of selection, destined to "supersede" natural selection, "perpetuation of the fittest."

    When Wallace used the wording "modification" of position rather than "change" of position in his 18 April 1869 letter to Darwin, therefore, he was stating the situation as a matter of record. He had been unable to associate the meaning of the origin of man's intellectual and moral capacities with a general evolutionary model since he had taken up the question in the 1840s; the concepts stated in 1855's "On the Law...", 1858's "On the Tendency...", and 1864's "The Origin of Human Races..." show that his formulation of natural selection had not solved--or even addressed--this problem. The 1864 version of the essay on man was "ill-conceived" to the extent that it still did not address the problem of hierarchical causation; i.e., like "On the Law...", it dwelled on results whose efficient causes could be directly inferred, but whose final causes could not. Thus, Wallace's "modification of position": to one in which both final and efficient causes for man's higher faculties were specified.

    In 1974 Malcolm Kottler reached a different conclusion regarding the changes Wallace made in his 1870 version of the essay:

By 1870 Wallace was doubtful about natural selection's ability to produce such a future. The mediocre were, after all, the ones who reproduced most prolifically in civilized nations despite the fact that there was an indubitable advance, "on the whole a steady and a permanent one--both in the influence on public opinion of a high morality, and in general desire for intellectual evolution." Wallace was led to invoke an "...inherent progressive power of those glorious qualities which raise us so immeasurably above our fellow animals, and at the same time afford us the surest proof that there are other and higher existences than ourselves, from whom these qualities may have been derived, and towards whom we may be ever tending." The only other relevant change in the essay was Wallace's inclusion of the words "from some unknown cause" to explain the development of man's mind from its near-animal condition to the point at which it began to shield man's body from natural selection. Therefore this essay in its new form was contradictory. It still included passages describing natural selection's accumulation of slight variations in man's intellectual and moral nature leading to ever-higher human types. But in its final paragraph it referred to an inherent progressive power of development in man's intellectual and moral nature handed down from on high. With such an inherent power, man's intellectual and moral nature was independent of external conditions and the "chance" appearance of favorable variations. Therefore it was independent of and inexplicable by natural selection.²⁶

Kottler is guilty of two important errors in this assessment. First, there is again his assumption (as pervades the rest of his otherwise excellent analysis) that before 1858--and 1864--Wallace had been treating the evolution of humankind's higher characters in basically the same fashion as he had purely biological adaptations such as leg length or thickness of coat. I have already indicated there is good reason to seriously question this assumption. It is easier to look at the 1864 to 1870 shift as a return to his suspicions before the former date that something was going on at that level that the 1858 essay was not equipped to deal with.

    Second, and more importantly, Kottler has mis-interpreted Wallace's position as indicating that the influences received "from on high" both interrupted the physical operation of natural selection, and superseded it to the extent that the effects it had on human were deterministic; i.e., independent of the operation of free will at the level of the individual. There is no reason to think that Wallace ever thought in these terms at any point in his career. As discussed earlier, it appears that in Wallace's version of natural selection the process operated by seizing upon--amplifying--the advantages accrued by any adaptational array that might pass into existence by the mere chance interaction of those forces underlying variation. Without initial aid "from on high" helping to expose humankind to subtle, unselfish activities "transcending time and space," selection for such activities would never come about. Still, the means by which such "aid" would manifest itself would yet lead to many dead-ends of application as human beings continued to act without a full appreciation of the longer term, larger scale, implications of those acts. Aid "from on high" might indeed be interpreted as a "progressive power" in operation, but it was no surer in its unfolding at any time or place than were the more rotely accumulated adaptations shaped through biological natural selection.

    Before quitting this subject I should note one more time that Wallace's "modification of position" was by no means an abrupt event that happened suddenly and without prior warning sometime between 1864 and 1869 (though I do believe that his recognition of spiritualism as a key element in the process took place fairly suddenly, as discussed earlier). In addition to the works (S140 and S142a) discussed in Chapter Five that related to the beginning inference in "The Origin of Human Races..." that mankind might be in some respects "above nature," there is a further publication that sent this message, "Mr. Wallace on Natural Selection Applied to Anthropology,"²⁷ a letter printed in Anthropological Review early in 1867. This contains similar, though less directly expressed ideas. In this work Wallace states:

...since that early period at which the ancestors of mankind formed a single homogeneous race, all the very distinct forms now existing (and perhaps others now extinct) were produced by "natural selection," till the process was checked by the development of the mind of man, causing changes of his external form to be less important than advances in his intellectual and moral nature... I cannot believe that the progress of civilisation and science will stop, and I can see no end to such progress, but the absorption and displacement of lower races by higher, till the world again become inhabited by a "homogeneous race," whose command over nature and whose powers of intercommunication will be such as to prevent local conditions affecting, to more than a very slight degree, its external characteristics.²⁸

    Finally, let us reflect quickly on the basic underpinnings of the "change of mind/no change of mind" question. Forgetting for a moment Darwin, and all of Wallace's writings before those from about 1870 on expressing a full endorsement of the equally "natural" status of things spiritual and physical, what is the least one should expect in terms of pre-1870 evidence to support a "change of mind" hypothesis? Clearly, that evidence should consist of reversing expressed opinions on the relation of natural selection to the origin of stated unique human characteristics. But in point of fact, Wallace never expressed any such opinions before 1869. From 1864 on, it is true, he did begin to consider how already developing human characters might be further modified, but his opinions even on this matter never truly reversed either; they merely became more focussed (especially as regards utility, as discussed earlier). The only opinion on remotely related matters that he truly did reverse was the question of necessary biological utility, which before 1856, at least, he had clearly rejected.

    To my mind, the "change of mind" hypothesis not only represents a poor mis-reading of the available facts with respect to Wallace's intellectual evolution, but nothing less than a tragedy in the history of human thought. My reasons for making this assertion will become apparent in the next and concluding chapter.

Notes, Chapter Six