Alexander Sutherland, Australian polymath
Alexander Sutherland (reference CO 1069/593)
Alexander Sutherland (born 1852) was the son of Scottish immigrants to Australia who settled in Sydney during 1864. Sutherland trained as a schoolteacher and had successful careers in teaching and journalism, during which he was particularly associated with Melbourne, where his family had moved.
In spite of his busy working career and relatively early death in 1902, Sutherland emerged as a colonial intellectual and important local cultural figure. He co-wrote a standard school text, A History of Australia, which was published in 1877 and retained currency into the 20th century. Apart from producing other historical and biographical material, Sutherland published in 1898 The Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct. Here he sought to associate the development of human morality with Darwinian evolutionary theory.