Page:A biographical dictionary of modern rationalists.djvu/468

 WALKEE

WALLACE

WALKER, Ernest, M.A., D.Mus., com poser. B. July 15, 1870. Ed. privately and Oxford (Balliol). Dr. Walker has been on the staff at Balliol since he graduated there in 1891. He is now Director of Music at Balliol, Choragus and Lecturer in Harmony and Composition to Oxford University, and a member of the Music Advisory Board to the Girls Public Day Schools Trust. He edits the Musical Gazette, and, besides a number of articles and musical compositions, has published Beethoven (1905) and A History of Music in England (1907). He is a member of the Eationalist Press Asociation, and has expressed his Rationalist views in an article in the Almanacco del Cosnobium for 1913.

WALKER, John, M.D., physician and writer. B. July 31, 1759. Ed. Cocker- mouth Grammar School. Walker was at first a blacksmith, like his father, but in 1779 he went to Dublin and apprenticed himself to an engraver. He then became a Quaker, and abandoned art for teaching. His admiration of Quakerism seems to have been purely ethical, as, although he adopted their dress, the Friends refused to admit him to their Society. He settled in London in 1794 and began the study of medicine. He went on to Paris, where he was friendly with Paine ; and he showed his Deistic belief by translating into English The Manual of the Theophilanthropes (1897). He then graduated at Leyden University, travelled for two years in Italy and Egypt, and settled in practice at London in 1802. Walker was an ardent vaccinationist, and President of the London Vaccine Institu tion. He was admitted to the Royal College of Physicians in 1812. Munk has a sketch of him in his Boll (vol. iii), and notes his Deism. He strongly opposed the slave-trade, and was an ardent humani tarian. D. June 23, 1830.

WALLACE, Alfred Russel, O.M.,

LL.D., D.C.L., F.R.S., naturalist. B. Jan. 8, 1823. Ed. Hertford Grammar School. From 1838 to 1844 he worked as a land

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surveyor and architect, and he then taught for a few years in a school at Leicester. In 1848 he went out to the Amazon with Bates [SEE], and he remained there until 1852. His notes and collections were lost in a shipwreck, but he described his expe riences in Travels on the Amazon (1853). From 1854 to 1862 he was engaged in exploring in the Malay Archipelago (The Malay Archipelago, 1869), and it was there that he made his independent discovery of natural selection. An essay which he wrote in 1855 (On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species) merely stresses the gradual evolution, but does not assign the agency. He afterwards read Malthus, and he saw that struggle and selection were the clues to evolution. In February, 1858, he wrote his paper &quot; On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart indefinitely from the Original Type,&quot; which led Darwin to draw up a statement of his theory ; and the Linnasan Society published both in August (1858). The phrase &quot;natural selection &quot; was used by Darwin only, and one may justly wonder what would have been the fate of the theory if it had not had the support of Darwin s twenty years of accumulation of evidence. In the later defence and elaboration of the theory Wallace played an important part (Natural Selection, 1870 ; The Geographical Distribu tion of Animals, 187 6; etc.). Unfortunately, he had been seduced by one of the early mediums, Miss Nichol (afterwards Mrs. Guppy, a shameless adventuress), into accepting Spiritualism, and it spoiled his later work. He maintained that the human mind was not evolved, but infused into the prehistoric savage. The works of his last years (Man s Place in the Universe, 1903 ; My Life, 2 vols., 1905 ; The World of Life, 1910 ; etc.) are much enfeebled by this mysticism and Theism. Wallace, however, remained outside all the Churches, and took a sympathetic interest in the work of the R. P. A. He was distinguished among the scientific men of his generation for his zeal for practical reforms as well as the advance of knowledge. D. Nov. 7, 1913. 864