for future philosophical outlooks on Man, as well as for the reigning science of Man which was to emerge only shortly after Descent's publication: psychology. In light of these claims, I believe it would be instructive to consider the theories regarding the origin of Man proposed by Darwin and Wallace not only in contrast to each other, but in comparison to two similarly contrasting theories proposed by another pair of great 19th Century thinkers, who approached the question from the humanitarian rather than from the biological perspective. I refer to the philosopher Sren Kierkegaard, known as the father of existentialism, and the afore-quoted Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. I choose these particular scholars for two reasons, the first being that their own theories of human existence have been analyzed in comparison on prior occasions. This was done notably in J. Preston Cole's The Problematic Self in Kierkegaard and Freud (1971) and F. J. Hacker's article "Freud, Marx, and Kierkegaard" (1957). Anthropologist Ernest Becker also devotes a large portion of his masterwork The Denial of Death to consideration of the differences in theory between what he referred to as "probably the two greatest students of human nature" (1973). The second reason for the choice is that the differences in theory between Kierkegaard and Freud on the subject of Man are remarkably similar to those between Darwin and Wallace, with striking parallels arising between the writings of Wallace and Kierkegaard on the one hand, and those of Darwin and Freud on the other. While it is clear that Darwin's ideas had a direct influence on Freud, it is unlikely that Kierkegaard's writing had any impact on Wallace; and yet, the two men arrived independently at conceptions of Man that are nearly identical, with Wallace only adding the mechanism of natural selection to Kierkegaard's philosophy.
I shall endeavor to show, then, not only that Darwin's biological arguments against Wallace influenced and were reiterated by Freud in all his important writings on the human mind; but also, and perhaps more significantly, that the neglected Wallace, who oft considered his own notions "heresies" (Shermer, 2002), and who was indeed outcast by his colleagues after daring to contest Darwin on the question of Man, formulated a theory of humanity that corresponds perfectly to that of no less a revered expert on the soul than Kierkegaard. I shall begin by delineating the points of contention on Man that existed between Darwin and Wallace, and conclude by demonstrating how their theories are excellently augmented by an understanding of the "humanists" Kierkegaard and Freud. Darwin and Wallace For those relative few who recognize the name of Alfred Russel Wallace, his contribution to evolutionary theory is well known. In 1858, having recovered from a serious bout of malaria while on the island of Ternate, Wallace composed a draft of a paper discussing his recently formulated ideas on the mechanisms by which individuals within a species are gradually modified over the course of generations. He sent the paper to Darwin, with whom he had been in correspondence, to procure an opinion on its significance. Darwin recognized immediately that Wallace had hit upon the idea of natural selection, which he himself had been preparing to present to the public in the form of a multi-volume work for the past two decades. After some deliberation over the issue of priority, it was decided that Wallace's paper would be presented alongside some outlines of the subject by Darwin at the next meeting of London's Linnean Society, so that the two men might be considered co-originators of the theory (see Eiseley, 1961, or

上一页下一页