RECORD: S707ae. Wallace, A. R. 1894. [Extract of letter to Norman Douglas, dated 19 July 1894]. In: Douglas, Norman. 1922. Alone. New York: Robert M. McBride & Company, p. 127.
REVISION HISTORY: Body text helpfully provided by Charles H. Smith from his Alfred Russel Wallace Page http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/wallace/S707AE.htm
. . . There are things in [Arthur] Schopenhauer which make one blush for philosophy. The day may dawn when this man will be read not for what he says, but for how he says it; he being one of the few of his race who can write in their own
language. Impossible, of course, not to hit upon a good thing now and then, if you brood as much as he did. So I remember one passage wherein he adumbrates the theory of "Recognition Marks" propounded later by A. R. Wallace, who, when I drew his attention to it, wrote that he thought it a most interesting anticipation.1
He [Schopenhauer?] must have stumbled upon it by accident, during one of his excursions into the inane. . .
1. Parkstone, Dorset. July 19, 1894. "Many thanks for your reference to Schopenhauer's remarks on Recognition Marks, which I thought I was the first to fully point out. It is a most interesting anticipation. I do not read German, but from what I have heard of his works he was the last man I should have expected to make such an acute suggestion in Natural History.
Cite as: John van Wyhe, ed. 2012-. Wallace Online. (http://wallace-online.org/)
File last updated 27 April, 2026