Another point of comparison lies in the fact that at no time did the study of man or human nature, from the metaphysical and psychological point of view, appeal to Darwin as it did to Wallace; and this being so, the similarity between the impression made on them individually by their first contact with primitive human beings is of some interest.

Wallace’s words have already been quoted; here are Darwin’s:  “Nothing is more certain to create astonishment than the first sight in his native haunt of a barbarian, of man in his lowest and most savage state.  One asks:  ’Could our progenitors have been men like these—­men whose very signs and expressions are less intelligible to us than those of the domesticated animals; men who do not possess the instinct of those animals, nor yet appear to boast of human reason, or at least of arts consequent on that reason?’ I do not believe it is possible to describe or paint the difference between a savage and civilised man.  It is the difference between a wild and tame animal."[12]

The last words suggest the seed-thought eventually to be enlarged in “The Descent of Man,” and there is also perhaps a subtle suggestion of the points in which Wallace differed from Darwin when the time came for them to discuss this important section of the theory of Evolution.  It needed, however, the further eight years spent by Wallace in the Malay Archipelago to bring about a much wider knowledge of nature-science before he was prepared in any way to assume the position of exponent of theories not seriously thought of previously in the scientific world.

In the autumn of 1853, on the completion of his “Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro,” Wallace paid his first visit to Switzerland, on a walking tour in company with his friend George Silk.  On his return, and during the winter months, he was constant in his attendance at the meetings of the Entomological and Zoological Societies.  It was at one of these evening gatherings that he first met Huxley, and he also had a vague recollection of once meeting and speaking to Darwin at the British Museum.  Had it not been for his extreme shyness of disposition, and (according to his own estimation) “lack of conversational powers,” he would doubtless have become far more widely known, and have enjoyed the friendship of not a few of the eminent men who shared his interests, during this interval before starting on his journey to Singapore.

It was due to his close study of the Insect and Bird Departments of the British Museum that he decided on Singapore as a new starting-point for his natural history collections.  As the region was generally healthy, and no part of it (with the exception of the Island of Java) had been explored, it offered unlimited attractions for his special work.  But as the journey out would be an expensive one, he was advised to lay his plans before Sir Roderick Murchison, then President of the Royal Geographical Society, and it was through his kindly interest and personal