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Patrick Matthew’s Law of Natural Selection
Michael E. Weale
King's College London, Dept. of Medical & Molecular Genetics, 8th Floor, Tower Wing, Guy's
Hospital, London SE1 9RT
Suggested Running Title: Matthew’s Law of Natural Selection
Submitted as a Comment to Biological Journal of the Linnean Society
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: “Weale, M. (2015). Patrick Matthew's law of natural
selection. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 115(4), 785–791. 10.1111/bij.12524”, which has been
published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bij.12524/abstract. This article may be
used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.
Abstract
Patrick Matthew is the little-known first originator of macroevolution by natural selection. I
review his ideas, and introduce some previously unnoticed writings (catalogued at a new website:
http://smarturl.it/patrickmatthew) that clarify how they differ from Darwin’s and Wallace’s.
Matthew’s formulation emphasized natural selection as an axiomatic ‘law’ rather than a ‘theory’,
a distinction that could still be of use to us today.
Keywords: Patrick Matthew; History of Evolution; History of Natural Selection; Darwinism
In 1831, natural selection was a solution to a problem few people thought they had. As Darwin
(1861: xiii) remarked years later: “The great majority of naturalists believe that species are
immutable productions, and have been separately created”. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1809) and
some earlier Transmutationists had argued for evolution but convinced few. In parallel, some
writers had proposed natural selection as a stabilizing force that weeded out the unfit and kept
species to their intended form – for example Joseph Townsend (1786: 44-45) and later Edward
Blyth (1835). A few had gone further and speculated that natural selection could generate new
varieties or races, but this was ‘microevolution’ occurring within separately created species – in
particular James Hutton (1794: 497-506) (see also Pearson (2002)), Joseph Adams (1814: 32-33)
(see also Weiss (2008)) and William Charles Wells (1818) (although Wells advocated group
selection).
The great conceptual leap was to see natural selection as a mechanism for the origin of species, or
‘macroevolution’ (as defined here to include speciation). Famously, Charles Darwin and Alfred
Russel Wallace saw this, revealing it in their joint paper to the Linnean Society (Darwin &
Wallace, 1858). But the first person known to have made this leap, 27 years earlier, is also the
least famous. Patrick Matthew proves that the idea was accessible to someone from outside the
usual naturalist circles, but he is also proof of how inaccessible that idea was, for apparently no
fourth person thought of it in that 27-year period or appreciated his version of it, and even
Matthew appeared not to fully understand its implications. What little discussion there has been
of Matthew has tended to revolve around the twin questions of whether he deserves intellectual
priority and whether or not he influenced Darwin and Wallace (Eiseley, 1958; 1959; Wells, 1973;
Dempster, 1996; Davies, 2008; Wainwright, 2008; Dawkins, 2010; Sutton, 2014). I believe these
questions have overshadowed a potentially more fruitful point of view. It is not that Matthew
unfairly lost out to Darwin and Wallace – I think their intellectual contributions, especially
Darwin’s, were much greater and the evidence for Matthew’s influence is weak. Rather, we are
the ones who are losing out by disregarding Matthew’s work. It merits our interest precisely
because it is distinct from that of Darwin or Wallace. It is time for a reappraisal of Matthew’s
version of macroevolution by natural selection.
Patrick Matthew (1790-1874) was a Scottish landowner with a keen interest in politics and
agronomy. He established extensive orchards of apples and pears on his estate at Gourdie Hill,
Perthshire, and became adept in horticulture, silviculture and agriculture. Relative to Darwin and
Wallace, his outlook was both more practical (he was an agriculturist not a naturalist) and more
ideological (he saw his work as directly serving higher socio-political goals). On naval timber
and arboriculture; with critical notes on authors who have recently treated the subject of
planting (Matthew, 1831) addressed best practices for the cultivation of trees for ship building.
For Matthew, this was essential to ensure Britain’s rightful place as ruler of the waves and
civilizer of the world. Matthew was a man of conviction, and much of his book is a forthright
criticism of previous writers on the subject. Part of this criticism rested on his natural
“circumstance-adaptive law” (his preferred term for natural selection, although he also referred to
“a natural process of selection”, “a principle of selection” and “selection by the law of nature”).
While Nature always selected the fittest to perpetuate the species, he argued that certain treecultivating practices selected the less fit and therefore led to long-term deterioration of
economically important tree species.
In parts of the book’s appendix, in amongst opinions on politics, human behaviour, race and
geology, Matthew expanded on his concept of natural selection. The very brevity of Matthew’s
exposition is noteworthy. The study of natural selection can be a lifetime’s work, yet the central
idea is so simple it can be written down in a few sentences. So one thing that Matthew’s work
gives us is a striking summary of the principle of natural selection – arguably more accessible
than any equivalent passage from Darwin or Wallace:
“THERE is a law universal in nature, tending to render every reproductive being the
best possibly suited to its condition that its kind, or that organized matter, is
susceptible of, which appears intended to model the physical and mental or
instinctive powers, to their highest perfection, and to continue them so. This law
sustains the lion in his strength, the hare in her swiftness, and the fox in his wiles.
As Nature, in all her modifications of life, has a power of increase far beyond what
is needed to supply the place of what falls by Time's decay, those individuals who
possess not the requisite strength, swiftness, hardihood, or cunning, fall prematurely
without reproducing — either a prey to their natural devourers, or sinking under
disease, generally induced by want of nourishment, their place being occupied by
the more perfect of their own kind, who are pressing on the means of subsistence.”
(Matthew, 1831: 364)
Table 1 summarises some of the conceptual similarities and differences between Darwin, Wallace
and Matthew, with an emphasis on those treated by Matthew. The first three address the
preconditions required for natural selection to act. The first of these – over-reproduction leading
to a struggle for existence – is well described both in the passage above and elsewhere. The
second – the need for variation as the raw ingredient for natural selection – is described, for
example, in a section of Matthew’s book titled “Infinite variety in what is called species” in its
Contents, and which starts: “The consequences are now being developed of our deplorable
ignorance of, or inattention to, one of the most evident traits of natural history, that vegetables as
well as animals are generally liable to an almost unlimited diversification, regulated by climate,
soil, nourishment, and new commixture of already formed varieties”. The third – heritability – is
briefly addressed in Matthew’s appendix when he lists “the tendency which the progeny have to
take the more particular qualities of the parents” as an important ingredient for natural selection
to work. Matthew’s combination of environmentally induced variation and heritability is
Lamarckian and ultimately flawed, but a proper understanding of heredity would come only
much later with the rediscovery of Mendel’s work.
The key fourth item – macroevolution by natural selection – is covered in an extraordinary
section at the end of the appendix, filled with remarkable speculation and deduction. Matthew
perhaps added it as an afterthought, since unlike the other sections in the appendix it neither
refers to nor is referred from any part of the main book – the Preface remarks simply: “The very
great interest of the question regarding species, variety, habit, has perhaps led him a little too
wide”. Here, Matthew restates the necessary preconditions for natural selection and applies them
to the fossil record as it was known at the time: “in such immense waste of primary and youthful
life, those only come forward to maturity from the strict ordeal by which Nature tests their
adaptation to her standard of perfection and fitness to continue their kind by reproduction”
(Matthew, 1831: 385). He argues that whilst his circumstance-adaptive law would in general
work to keep species in stasis during periods of environmental constancy (presumed to hold
within geological epochs), during periods of change (presumed to occur especially between
epochs) the same law would act on isolated groups to effect rapid evolution, thus generating the
large-scale transformations in fauna and flora observed in the fossil record. He concludes: “the
progeny of the same parents, under great difference of circumstance, might, in several
generations, even become distinct species, incapable of co-reproduction” (Matthew, 1831: 384).
Matthew was both helped and hindered by writing a quarter-century before Darwin and Wallace.
At that time, before Lyell’s Principles of geology had gained widespread acceptance,
Catastrophism prevailed and the transitions between geological epochs were assumed to be
marked by tumultuous environmental changes (Cuvier, 1812). Later Uniformitarians like Darwin
rejected the idea that these transitions were real, but our modern view has embraced once again
the notion of real and geologically rapid transitions, accompanied by mass extinction events and
large-scale changes in fauna and flora (Item 5 of Table 1, see also Rampino (2011)). By 1876,
Wallace (1876: 150-151) had also accepted this possibility. While Matthew’s earlier view is in
some respects prescient, it also reveals how his version of evolution was very much tied to the
physical environment rather than biological coevolution.
Matthew also espoused spontaneous generation, an idea that had waned by the mid-nineteenth
century. Thus on the question of a single evolutionary tree of life, which Darwin cautiously
admitted as possible although not certain, Matthew was silent because this did not arise in a
scheme where new life was constantly being generated from inanimate matter (Items 6 and 7 of
Table 1). Instead, Matthew presents us with a grand unifying theme of a dynamic and energetic
universe, constantly creating and evolving new life. Even if he did not have all the details right,
Matthew’s prose still resonates today:
“Does organized existence, and perhaps all material existence, consist of one
Proteus principle of life capable of gradual circumstance-suited modifications and
aggregations, without bound under the solvent or motion-giving principle, heat or
light? There is more beauty and unity of design in this continual balancing of life to
circumstance, and greater conformity to those dispositions of nature which are
manifest to us, than in total destruction and new creation.” (Matthew, 1831: 384)
There is little hard evidence that Matthew’s writings on evolution influenced others at the time.
His book is cited by Loudon (1838), Selby (1842) and others for its practical advice on timber
and arboriculture, but there is only one known critique of its evolutionary content, and the
reviewer professed himself unsure of whether anything original was being said (Loudon, 1832).
By 1860, one reviewer remarked that the book “is so little known that we were not aware of its
existence till quite lately” (Anonymous, 1860). Perhaps not surprisingly, then, only Matthew
(1860a) wrote to point out the parallels with his prior work, several months after the publication
of On the origin of species. It seems he is an object lesson in the perils of low-impact publishing.
Both then and now, some have questioned whether Matthew originated a version of
macroevolution by natural selection at all (Butler, 1879; Norman, 2013). But Darwin and
Wallace were in no doubt. Darwin (1860a) publically wrote “I freely acknowledge that Mr.
Matthew has anticipated by many years the explanation which I have offered of the origin of
species”, while Wallace (1879) wrote publically of “how fully and clearly Mr. Matthew
apprehended the theory of natural selection, as well as the existence of more obscure laws of
evolution, many years in advance of Mr. Darwin and myself”, and further declared Matthew to be
“one of the most original thinkers of the first half of the 19th century”. However, both asserted
their formulations were independent of Matthew’s, either by directly denying prior knowledge of
his book (Darwin, 1860a) or by describing an independent ‘eureka’ moment (Wallace, 1905: 361363).
Even if Matthew did not influence Darwin and Wallace, his writings provide a valuable third
point of reference for assessing the impact that macroevolution by natural selection might have
on one’s world view. This impact is perhaps best judged by considering their viewpoints later on
in their lives, allowing time for reflection and response to their co-originators’ ideas and those of
others. All three originators differed on the big questions of how exclusively did natural selection
dictate evolution and what role there might be for purposeful design (Items 8-11 of Table 1).
Both Darwin and Matthew admitted some form of inheritance of acquired characteristics in
addition to natural selection (Wallace did not). None saw natural selection as the exclusive
means of adaptive evolution, and previously unnoticed writings, mostly found in agricultural
journals, help to clarify Matthew’s views (catalogued for the first time at
http://smarturl.it/patrickmatthew). Matthew saw natural selection as universal in the sense that it
acted everywhere: “The great law of nature in organic life is competition, with a variation-power
in accommodation to circumstances: a law not fitted to earth alone, but I have no doubt extended
to the whole of the orbs of space that are in a condition to support material life” (Matthew,
1860c). But it wasn’t an exclusive mechanism – he did not think it capable of evolving complex
organs:
“The members of locomotion in the higher vertebrates are strikingly similar.
Under the law of competitive selection, fins can change to feet, feet to arms, and
arms to wings, and vice versa, but not this without a preordained capacity. This
law guides the organs to improvement, and alters them in accommodation to
circumstances should circumstances change, but cannot originate new organs. No
modification of this law could originate the hollow fang of the serpent, so formed
as in the forcible insertion to press upon the venom-bag at its root, and so squirt
the poison into the bottom of the wound; nor could it plant the rattle of warning
on the tail of the most dangerous snake.” (Matthew, 1861)
Likewise, natural beauty was governed by other laws and timing: “Competitive selection
embraces the line of utility, not of beauty. This law cannot account for the beauty of nature,
especially for flowery vegetable nature (it would seem only begun to be flowery when man, the
only organism that we know of, having an extended sense of the beautiful, came to exist)”
(Matthew, 1861). Matthew also thought that a vital force emanated from the Sun and drove the
progressive evolution of higher organisms: “Supposing this orb [Earth] to have gradually cooled,
a dense cloud of aqueous and other vapour must have existed after life had come to exist, the
gradual clearing away of which by condensation and increase of light may account for the
progression of being” (Matthew, 1861). He also speculated that natural variation sprung from a
“constructive power” which was “the great attribute of the Deity” (quoted in Hallier (1866)).
Far from seeing evolution by natural selection as disproving intelligent design, Matthew saw it as
proof surpassing even the renowned Bridgewater Treatises on Natural Theology: “I challenge
anything of Bridgwater prize origin, or of any other higher origin, as showing grandeur of design
— means to end — display of infinite wisdom equal, or to be compared to the great selfmodifying-adaptive scheme of Nature which I many years ago pointed out in ‘Naval Timber and
Arboriculture’, and which Mr. Darwin has in his recent work so ably brought forward” (Matthew,
1860c). However, there was no place for supernatural interference in the laws of nature. Those
laws were designed, but their inviolability provided instruction: “The laws of nature are
necessarily inflexible and unchangeable. Wisdom and provision in man depend entirely upon
Nature's truth — upon the unalterable security of these laws” (Matthew, 1860c). Furthermore, a
competitive spirit had been “implanted in our nature for wise ends” (Matthew, 1849). Not
surprisingly, therefore, Matthew adopted views akin to Social Darwinism before Darwinism even
existed, using natural selection to justify his belief in free market economics, the rightful
superiority of some races over others, and the wrongful quashing of competition implied by land
tenure, hereditary nobility and primogeniture. Indeed, Matthew’s concise passage describing his
universal natural law (the first quoted passage of this Comment) was simply a preamble to
illustrate how unnatural and unfit were the human laws of entail (inheritance to the first-born
male, regardless of ability) (Matthew, 1831: 364).
Wallace shared many views with Matthew. Both believed in a designed, anthropocentric
universe, and consequently shared a wonder of its natural beauty and held environmentalist and
reformist sensibilities. Matthew may have delivered the first ever warning on man-induced
global mass extinctions, both past and future: “As far back as history reaches, man had already
had considerable influence, and had made encroachments upon his fellow denizens, probably
occasioning the destruction of many species … He has now acquired a dominion over the
material world, and a consequent power of increase, so as to render it probable that the whole
surface of the earth may soon be overrun by this engrossing anomaly, to the annihilation of every
wonderful and beautiful variety of animated existence, which does not administer to his wants
principally as laboratories of preparation to befit cruder elemental matter for assimilation by his
organs” (Matthew, 1831: 387-388). But Wallace stands apart for believing that intervention by
superior intelligences (the spirit world) was required to explain the inception of life, animal
consciousness, and the human intellect (Wallace, 1889: 474-478). Neither Darwin nor Matthew
advocated special intervention, and privately Darwin was agnostic on whether an intelligence had
designed the laws of the universe, deeming it beyond our ken (Darwin, 1860b; 1863).
Matthew thought himself rather superior to academic scientists – a doer rather than a navel-gazer:
“I have shown that we [farmers] can go ahead of college-bred, closet-taught naturalists, and leave
them to follow in our wake at the distance of thirty years. This is nothing remarkable, as most of
them are mere bundles of old-world prejudices.” (Matthew, 1861). An excellent example of
Matthew’s adversarial attitude can be seen in his public spat with Baron Justus von Liebig, one of
the pioneers of organic chemistry, over the merits of natural versus artificial fertilizers for
maintaining the “vegetable mould” (fertile soil) in agriculture (uncovered by the author, details at
http://smarturl.it/patrickmatthew). This sense of superiority can even be found in certain backhanded comments from his occasional private correspondence with Darwin. Matthew wrote that
“there existed in scientific men a strong vis inertiæ & retiring inclination which I had no right to
disturb” (Matthew, 1862), and “I also fear that I am not sufficiently a restricted Naturalist as to be
able to enter into the minutiæ of the science” (Matthew, 1871). Perhaps the ultimate back-hander
was in one of Matthew’s public letters, which contrasts his own mercurial top-down approach to
Darwin’s plodding bottom-up one. It seems this connotation was lost on Darwin, who
approvingly quoted the passage verbatim in his Historical Sketch included in the third edition of
On the origin of species (Darwin, 1861: xv):
“To me the conception of this law of Nature came intuitively as a self-evident fact,
almost without an effort of concentrated thought. Mr. Darwin here seems to have
more merit in the discovery than I have had — to me it did not appear a discovery.
He seems to have worked it out by inductive reason, slowly and with due caution
to have made his way synthetically from fact to fact onwards; while with me it
was by a general glance at the scheme of Nature that I estimated this select
production of species as an a priori recognisable fact — an axiom, requiring only
to be pointed out to be admitted by unprejudiced minds of sufficient grasp.”
(Matthew, 1860b)
Matthew proves that macroevolution by natural selection was, at least in principle, an idea open
to anyone who could join the dots. Natural selection is uniquely amenable to being deduced in
this way. Ruse (1979) has called this the “deductive core” of natural selection. Darwin slowly
unfolds it in Chapters 2-4 of On the origin of species, Wallace (1870: 302) neatly tabulates it, but
Matthew encapsulates it by describing it as a ‘law’ (Darwin and Wallace preferred ‘theory’). The
axioms required for natural selection to be true are themselves observable properties of living
things: they reproduce, they vary and pass on traits, they compete for limited resources, and some
of those traits influence their ability to do so. This arrangement contrasts with, say, special
relativity, where the key axiom (the universal constancy of the speed of light in a vacuum, under
all inertial conditions) is not directly observable but rather affirmed by successful tests of the
hypotheses generated by special relativity. Natural selection is therefore a certainty whereas
special relativity is not. It is truly an inescapable law and this is a valuable starting point for
teaching the concept today. One can question whether natural selection is powerful enough to
drive all adaptive evolution (and in different ways, all three originators did just that) but one
cannot question natural selection itself.
The “Matthew Effect” describes how discoveries are disproportionately accredited to the more
renowned scientist (Merton, 1968). The name derives from St Matthew (“For unto every one that
hath shall be given, … from him that hath not shall be taken away …”) but the coincidence is
striking. Matthew was an outsider, but that doesn’t mean we should keep him out in the cold. His
version is brief and incomplete, but we could still benefit from recognising his vision of natural
selection, as a ‘law’ rather than a ‘theory’, as a self-evident and inescapable principle given that
organisms manifestly compete, vary and reproduce. Scientifically both terms are valid, but in
public perception laws are concrete and certain, and theories less so. We should use the
differences in Matthew’s vision to our advantage, rather than to dismiss him. Darwin, the epitome
of the cautious and methodical scientific thinker, amassed volumes of corroborating evidence,
delved deeper into evolutionary mechanisms such as sexual selection and coevolution, convinced
the world of evolution by natural selection and rightly deserves his primacy. Wallace, the more
unconventional thinker, was a great naturalist and also deserves recognition for his contributions.
Matthew, the outsider and ideologue who deduced his idea as part of a grand scheme of a
purposeful universe, is the overlooked third man in the story. We ignore him to our detriment.
Despite its brevity, and to some extent because of it, Matthew’s work merits our renewed
attention.
Acknowledgements
I would like to warmly thank Gene Waddell and four anonymous reviewers for their insightful
comments and suggestions, and John Allen for his kind editorial assistance. I would also like to
thank Mike Sutton and Joachim Dagg, two people at opposite ends of the “plagiarism” debate, for
stimulating discussions and useful suggestions.
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Table 1: Darwin, Wallace and Matthew: some conceptual similarities and differences.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Concept
Over-reproduction leads to competition
Variation within species
Heritability of traits
Macroevolution by natural selection
Mass extinctions
Spontaneous generation
Single tree of life
Inheritance of acquired characteristics
Progressive evolution
Designed universal laws
Intelligent intervention in evolution
Page numbers (in brackets) refer to Matthew (1831).
Darwin









?

Wallace











Matthew
 (364, 384)
 (106, 385)
 (385)
 (381)
 (383)
 (383)

 (385)


