PART VI 



Some Further Problems 



I.— Astronomy 



OF the varied subjects upon which Wallace wrote, none, 

 perhaps, came with greater freshness to the general 

 reader than his books written when he was nearly 

 eighty upon the ancient science of astronomy. 



Perhaps he would have said that the " directive Mind 

 and Purpose -' kept these subjects back until the closing 

 years of his life in order that he might bring to bear 

 upon them his wider knowledge of nature, enlightened 

 by that spiritual perception which led him to link the 

 heavens and the earth in one common bond of evolution, 

 culminating in the development of moral and spiritual 

 intelligences. 



'' Man's Place in the Universe " (1903) was in effect a 

 prelude to ''The World of Life" (1910). Wallace saw 

 afterwards that one grew out of the other, as we find him 

 frequently saying with regard to his other books and 

 essays. 



As with Spiritualism, so with Astronomy, the seed- 

 interest practically lay dormant in his mind for many 

 years; with this difference, however, that temperament 

 and training caused a speedy unfolding of his mind when 

 once a scientific subject gripped him, whereas with Spirit- 

 ualism he felt the need of moving slowly and cautiously 

 before fully accepting the phenomena as verifiable facts. 



It was during the later period of his land-surveying, 

 when he was somewhere between the ages of 18 and 20, 

 that he became distinctly interested in the stars. Being 



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