Social environment and moral progress / by Alfred Russel Wallace.

  • Alfred Russel Wallace
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Social environment and moral progress / by Alfred Russel Wallace. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    95/180 page 83
    XIII] Selection in the Animal World abundance and character of the hair—coarse or fine, straight or curly, and of all colours between flaxen and intense black. To de¬ clare that variability among men and women, even of the same race and in the same country, is a rare phenomenon, and that in amount it is infinitesimal, would be a ludicrous misstatement of the facts or a wilful perversion of the truth. But, as regards animals or plants in a state of nature, this misstatement has been made and has been used as an argument against the Darwinian theory. It is, however, now well known, as a matter of direct observa¬ tion and measurement, that when a few scores or hundreds of individuals are com¬ pared, even in the same district and at the same season, they difíer in their proportions to about the same amount, and to some extent in every visible part or organ, as do human beings. This, however, was not well known when Darwin collected the materials for his various works, and he even sometimes makes the proviso— if they vary, for without variation selection can do no¬ thing ; and this has been taken as an admission that variation is a rare instead of being a universal phenomenon. He 83
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3