This view, of the combination of certain mental faculties and external conditions that led Darwin and myself to an identical conception, also serves to explain why none of our precursors or contemporaries hit upon what is really so very simple a solution of the great problem.  Such evolutionists as Robert Chambers, Herbert Spencer, and Huxley, though of great intellect, wide knowledge, and immense power of work, had none of them the special turn of mind that makes the collector and the species-man; while they all—­as well as the equally great thinker on similar lines, Sir Charles Lyell—­became in early life immersed in different lines of research which engaged their chief attention.

Neither did the actual precursors of Darwin in the statement of the principle—­Wells, Matthews and Prichard—­possess any adequate knowledge of the class of facts above referred to, or sufficient antecedent interest in the problem itself, which were both needed in order to perceive the application of the principle to the mode of development of the varied forms of life.

And now, to recur to my own position, I may be allowed to make a final remark.  I have long since come to see that no one deserves either praise or blame for the ideas that come to him, but only for the actions resulting therefrom.  Ideas and beliefs are certainly not voluntary acts.  They come to us—­we hardly know how or whence, and once they have got possession of us we cannot reject or change them at will.  It is for the common good that the promulgation of ideas should be free—­uninfluenced either by praise or blame, reward or punishment.

But the actions which result from our ideas may properly be so treated, because it is only by patient thought and work that new ideas, if good and true, become adapted and utilised; while if untrue, or if not adequately presented to the world, they are rejected or forgotten.

I therefore accept the crowning honour you have conferred on me to-day, not for the happy chance through which I became an independent originator of the doctrine of “survival of the fittest,” but as a too liberal recognition by you of the moderate amount of time and work I have given to explain and elucidate the theory, to point out some novel applications of it, and (I hope I may add) for my attempts to extend those applications, even in directions which somewhat diverged from those accepted by my honoured friend and teacher Charles Darwin.

Sir Joseph Hooker was now called upon by the President to receive the Darwin-Wallace Medal.  In acknowledging the honour that had been paid him, he said: