My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

THE MALAY ARCHIPELAGO 191climate, or of food-supply, or of enemies occurred—andwe know that such changes have always been takingplace—in conjunction with the amount of individualvariation that my experience as a collector had shownme to exist, then all the changes necessary for theadaptation of the species to the changing conditionswould be brought about ; and as great changes in theenvironment are always slow, there would be ampletime for the change to be effected by the survival ofthe best fitted in every generation. In this way eachpart of an animal's organization could be modifiedexactly as required, and in the very process of thismodification the unmodified would die out, and thusthe definite characters and the clear isolation of eachnew species would be explained. The more I thoughtover it the more I became convinced that I had atlength found the long-sought-for law of nature thatsolved the problem of the origin of species. For thenext hour I thought over the deficiencies in thetheories of Lamarck and of the author of the " Vestiges,"and I saw that my new theory supplementedthese views and obviatedevery important difficulty.I waited anxiously for the termination of my fit sothat Imight at once make notes for a paper on thesubject. The same evening I did this pretty fully,and on the two succeeding evenings wrote it outcarefully in order to send it to Darwin by the nextpost, which would leave in a day or two.I wrote a letter to him in which I said that Ihoped the idea would be as new to him as it was tome, and that it would supply the missing factor toexplain the origin of species. I asked him, if hethought it sufficiently important, to show it to SirCharles Lyell, who had thought so highly of myformer paper.