10 Alfred Russel Wallace, LL. D. 



origin of the human mind; and from this standpoint he 

 takes a retrospect of the forces of creation in general. He 

 says : " These three distinct stages (life, consciousness, and 

 intellect) of progress from the inorganic world of matter 

 and motion up to man point clearly to an unseen universe, 

 to a world of spirit, to which the world of matter is alto- 

 gether subordinate. To this spiritual world we may refer 

 the marvelously complex forces which we know as gravita- 

 tion, cohesion, chemical force, radiant force, and electricity, 

 without which the material universe would not exist for a 

 moment in its present form, and perhaps not at all, since 

 without these forces, and perhaps others which may be 

 termed atomic, it is doubtful whether matter itself could 

 have any existence. And still more surely can we refer to 

 it those progressive manifestations of life in the vegetable 

 and the animal, and man, which we may classify as uncon- 

 scious consciousness and intellectual life, and which proba- 

 bly depend upon different degrees of spiritual influx. I 

 have shown that this involves no necessary infraction of the 

 law of continuity in physical or mental evolution, whence 

 it follows that any difficulty we may find in discriminating 

 the organic from the inorganic, the lower vegetable from 

 the lower animal organisms, or the higher animals from the 

 lowest types of man, has no bearing on the question. This 

 is to be decided by showing that a change in essential na- 

 ture (due probably to causes of a higher order than those of 

 the material universe) took place at the several stages of 

 progress which I have indicated a change which may be 

 none the less real because absolutely imperceptible at its 

 point of origin, as is the change which takes place in the 

 curve in which a body is moving where the application of 

 some new force causes the curve to be slightly altered." 



Dr. Wallace, like other lovers of his kind, has interested 

 himself in some questions of political economy, and has 

 written on Land Nationalization (1882) and on Bad Times, 

 an Essay on the Depression of Trade (1885). He also wrote 

 a book in opposition to vaccination in 1885. He is known 

 to be a believer in the verity of some of the phenomena of 

 Spiritualism or Spiritism, and was a coadjutor of Prof. 

 Crookes in the conduct of some of his experiments in this 

 field. Without being a Swedenborgian, he is an adherent 

 of one of the leading tenets of the founder of that body viz., 

 of the influx, upon man at least, of an influence from with- 

 out him, from a personal spiritual source. 



