shall ever use them. Do you intend to follow out your views? and if so,
would you like at some future time to have my few references and notes? I
am sure I hardly know whether they are of any value, and they are at
present in a state of chaos.

There is much more that I should like to write, but I have not strength.

P.S. Our aristocracy is handsomer (more hideous according to a Chinese or
Negro) than the middle classes, from [having the] pick of the women; but
oh, what a scheme is primogeniture for destroying Natural Selection! I
fear my letter will be barely intelligible to you.


LETTER 406* A.R. WALLACE TO CHARLES DARWIN.
5, Westbourne Grove Terrace, W., May 29th [1864].

You are always so ready to appreciate what others do, and especially to
overestimate my desultory efforts, that I cannot be surprised at your very
kind and flattering remarks on my papers. I am glad, however, that you
have made a few critical observations (and am only sorry that you were not
well enough to make more), as that enables me to say a few words in
explanation.

My great fault is haste. An idea strikes me, I think over it for a few
days, and then write away with such illustrations as occur to me while
going on. I therefore look at the subject almost solely from one point of
view. Thus, in my paper on Man (406*/1. Published in the "Anthropological
Review," 1864.), I aim solely at showing that brutes are modified in a
great variety of ways by Natural Selection, but that in none of these
particular ways can Man be modified, because of the superiority of his