"It suddenly flashed upon me that this self-acting process would necessarily improve the race, because in every generation the inferior would inevitably be killed off and the superior would remain."
— Alfred Russel Wallace
It Suddenly Flashed Upon Me That
It suddenly flashed upon me that this self-acting process would necessarily improve the race, because in every generation the inferior would inevitably be killed off and the superior would remain.
About this quote
Alfred Russel Wallace described this moment of insight in his autobiography My Life (1905), recounting how he arrived independently at the theory of natural selection while feverish on the island of Ternate in February 1858. The insight came while recalling Thomas Malthus's essay on population — the same Malthus who had inspired Charles Darwin twenty years earlier. Wallace promptly wrote up his ideas and sent them to Darwin, triggering the joint publication at the Linnean Society in 1858.
Source
My Life, Volume 1, 1905