Correspondence on Biology, etc. 



builds up within each organism, and from the few simple 

 elements available in air, earth, and water, innumerable 

 structures — bone, horn, hair, skin, blood, muscle, etc. etc. ; 

 and these are not amorphous — mere lumps of dead matter 

 — but organised to serve certain definite purposes in each 

 living organism. I have dwelt on this in my chapter on 

 " The Mystery of the Cell." Now I have been unable to 

 find any attempt by any biologist or physiologist to grapple 

 with this problem. One and all, they shirk it, or simply 

 state it to be insoluble. It is here that I state guidance 

 and organising power are essential. My little physiological 

 parable or allegory (p. 296) I think sets forth the difficulty 

 fairly, though by no means adequately, yet not one of about 

 fifty reviews I have read even mentions it. 



If you know of any writer of sufficient knowledge and 

 mental power, who has fully recognised and fairly grappled 

 with this fundamental problem, I should be very glad to be 

 referred to him. I have been able to find no approach to it. 

 Yet I am at once howled at, or sneered at, for pointing out 

 the facts that such problems exist, that they are not in any 

 way touched by Evolution, but are far before it, and the 

 forces, laws and agencies involved are those of existences 

 possessed of powers, mental and physical, far beyond those 

 mere mechanical, physical, or chemical forces we see at work 

 in nature —Yours very truly, Alfred R. Wallace. 



Sm W. T. Thiselton-Dyer to A. R. Wallace 



The Ferns, Witcombe, Gloucester. February 12, 1911. 



Dear Mr. Wallace, — . . . You must let me correct you 

 on one technical point in your letter. It is no longer pos- 

 sible to say that chemists effect the synthesis of organic 

 products " by the use of other organic substances." From 

 what has been already effected, it cannot be doubted that 

 eventually every organic substance will be built up from 



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