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 " On
the Tendency of Varieties to Depart
indefinitely from the Original Type," which
led Darwin to draw up a statement of his
theory ; and the Linnasan Society published
both in August (1858). The phrase "natural
selection " 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.
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