In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace ...

Uncertain Beginnings /47
dance. 42 Science periodicals of the time reflected this new “Republic of Science,”
where every man became his own scientist, adding a brick here and
some mortar there in the overall edifice of knowledge and truth, as science
was then seen in this progressivist perspective. Amateurs could participate
and share in the unsullied joy of discovery previously monopolized by the
minority elite. An issue of Popular Science Review of 1862 explained this
relationship between amateur and professional: “The principle of combination,
whilst it has lightened the labours of the student, has aided materially
to enrich our stores of knowledge, and the greater the harvest becomes, the
more numerous will be the husbandmen.” 43
This nascent form of night school would be a primary avenue for those
whose curiosity knew no boundaries and who also had the courage to be
upwardly mobile. The church, the rich, and the few supported and participated
in privately funded schools, leaving a gaping hole in the educational needs
of a rapidly expanding industrial society. Before compulsory mass education,
entrepreneurs rushed in to meet the demand in the form of these Mechanics’
Institutes. The figures are not insignificant. The Yorkshire Union, founded in
1837, within thirteen years controlled 109 Institutes catering to the needs of
nearly 18,500 enrollees. By 1851 there were over 700 “Literary and Mechanics’
Institutes” in Great Britain and Ireland, catering to the needs of over
120,000 students. 44 Most of them were from the working classes (though there
were some from the petite bourgeoisie), and they believed that knowledge
was for everyone and not, as the Edinburgh Review of 1825 described it, for
a “few superior minds, any more than being able to read or write now constitutes,
as it once did, the title to scholarship.” In time, such useful knowledge
even became a mark of social grace such that, as described in Stewart’s Philosophical
Essays of 1810–1811, a “man can scarcely pass current in the informed
circles of society, without knowing something of political economy,
chemistry, mineralogy, geology, and etymology,—having a small notion of
painting, sculpture, and architecture,—with some sort of taste for the picturesque,
and a smattering of German and Spanish literature, and even some
idea of Indian, Sanskrit and Chinese learning and history,—over and above
some little knowledge of trade and agriculture.” 45
Wallace drank from this Pierian spring, but his thirst knew no quenching
point until his life was interrupted by tragedy, as it so often would be, forcing
him once again to return to practical matters.
To Know the Cause of Things
In 1845 William Wallace died, forcing Alfred to forgo his education and
resign a temporary teaching post he had procured, in order to straighten out