With it Wallace sent Darwin a memoir, asking him to present it to
the Linnaean Society: on examining it, Darwin found that Wallace
had independently arrived at conclusions similar to his
own--possibly had deprived him of fame; but Darwin was loyal to his
friend, and his friend remained ever loyal to him. He publicly
presented the paper from Wallace, with his own conclusions; and the
date of this presentation--July 1, 1858--separates two epochs in the
history, not merely of natural science, but of human thought.
In the following year, 1859, came the first instalment of his work
in its fuller development--his book on _The Origin of Species_. In
this book one at least of the main secrets at the heart of the
evolutionary process, which had baffled the long line of
investigators and philosophers from the days of Aristotle, was more
broadly revealed. The effective mechanism of evolution was shown at
work in three ascertained facts: in the struggle for existence
among organized beings; in the survival of the fittest; and in
heredity.
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