My Life by Wallace Alfred Russell;

Author:Wallace, Alfred Russell;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Barakaldo Books
Published: 2022-06-14T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XV— REMARKS ON MY CHARACTER AT TWENTY-ONE

IN April, 1843, my father died at Hoddesdon, at the age of seventy-two, and was buried in the family vault in St. Andrews churchyard, Hertford. As my sisters school was not paying very well, and it was necessary to economize as much as possible, the house was given up early the following year, my mother took an engagement as housekeeper in a gentleman’s family at Isleworth, and my sister obtained a post as teacher at an episcopal college, then just founded by the Bishop of Georgia (Dr. Elliott), at Montpelier Springs, seventeen miles from Mâcon, and left England in August, 1844. In the following year, at the invitation of the parents of some of the pupils, she removed to Robinson, near Montgomery, Alabama, as mistress of a private school much needed in the district; and she remained there till she returned to England in 1846.

Shortly before I came of age in January, 1844, my brother told me that as he had no work in prospect it was necessary that I should leave him and look out for myself; so I determined to go up to London and endeavour to obtain some employment.

As the period of my home and school life and subsequent tutelage under my brother now came to an end, and I had for the future to make my own way in the world, this affords a suitable occasion for a brief review of the chief points in my character, which may now be considered to have been fairly determined, although some portions of it had not yet had opportunity for full development. I do not think that at this time I could be said to have shown special superiority in any of the higher mental faculties, but I possessed a strong desire to know the causes of things, a great love of beauty in form and colour, and a considerable but not excessive desire for order and arrangement in whatever I had to do. If I had one distinct mental faculty more prominent than another, it was the power of correct reasoning from a review of the known facts in any case to the causes or laws which produced them, and also in detecting fallacies in the reasoning of other persons. This power has greatly helped me in all my writings, especially those on natural history and sociology. The determination of the direction in which I should use these powers was due to my possession in a high degree of the two mental qualities usually termed emotional or moral, an intense appreciation of the beauty, harmony and variety in nature and in all natural phenomena, and an equally strong passion for justice as between man and man—an abhorrence of all tyranny, all compulsion, all unnecessary interference with the liberty of others. These characteristics, combined with certain favourable conditions, some of which have already been referred to, have determined the direction of the pursuits and inquiries in which I have spent a large portion of my life.

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