iv MODERN E VOL UTION 



2HJ 



the same agencies.' Then, by the introduction of a 

 physical analogy which is no analogy at all, he 

 suggests that the agent by which man was upraised 

 into a kingdom apart bears like relation to natural 

 selection as the glacial epoch bears to the ordinary 

 agents of denudation and other changes in producing 

 new effects which, though continuous with preceding 

 effects, were not due to the same causes. 



Applying this ' argument ' (drawn from natural 

 causes), as Mr. Wallace names it, 'to the case of 

 man's intellectual and moral nature,' he contends 

 that such special faculties as the mathematical, 

 musical, and artistic (is this faculty to be denied the 

 nest-decorating bower bird ?), and the high moral 

 qualities which have given the martyr his constancy, 

 the patriot his devotion, and the philanthropist his 

 unselfishness, are due to a * spiritual essence or 

 nature, superadded to the animal nature of man.' 

 We are not told at what stage in man's development 

 this was inserted ; whether, once and for all, in 

 ' primitive ' man, with potentiality of transmission 

 through Palaeolithic folk to all succeeding genera- 

 tions ; or whether there is special infusion of a 

 ' spiritual essence ' into every human being at birth. 



Any perplexity that might arise at the line thus 

 taken by Mr. Wallace vanishes before the fact, 

 already enlarged upon, that the author of the Malay 

 Archipelago and Island Life has written a book on 

 Miracles and Modern Spiritualism in defence of both. 

 The explanation lies in that duality of mind, which, 

 in one compartment, ranks Mr. Wallace foremost 

 among naturalists, and, in the other compartment, 

 places him among the most credulous of Spiritualists. 



