ABSTRACT
Alfred Wallace discovered that the almost totally unexplored Malayan Archipelago, halfway around the world, was a bountiful source of biological material. Wallace searched for the Holy Grail of biology, while the chalice of speciation lay quietly in a cabinet in Down House at Kent. Charles Darwin applied induction, walking the small steps of discovery; Wallace devised hypotheses, jumping quickly to possible explanations. Darwin did arrive at the truth of natural selection, yet he refused to publish, a reluctance related to his uneasiness of challenging the Creationist view of the life. Methodology and temperament were the great differences between the two men, which makes potent the imagery of Darwin and Wallace reflecting each other in the mirror. The story of Darwin and Wallace is strange—two men so alike in their drive for understanding, both so courageous, yet worlds apart in temperament.
