t, .^Ifred Russel Wallace 



was brought : nto existence, were enlarged upon, later, in 

 '' The World of Life." As early, however, as 1903, Wal- 

 lace did not hesitate to express his own firm conviction 

 that Science and Spiritualism were in many ways closely 

 akin. 



He believed that the near future would show the strong 

 tendency of scientists to become more religious or spiritual. 

 The process, hi thought, would be slow, as the general atti- 

 tude has never been more materialistic than now. A few 

 have been bold enough to assert their belief in some out- 

 side power, but the leading scientific men are, as a rule, 

 dead against them. " They seem," he once remarked, *' to 

 think, and to like to think, that the whole phenomena of 

 life will one c ay be reduced to terms of matter and motion, 

 and that every vegetable, animal, and human product will 

 be explained, and may some day be artificially produced, by 

 chemical action. But even if this were so, behind it all 

 there would still remain an unexplained mystery." 



Closely associated with " Man's Place in the Universe " 

 is a small volume, " Is Mars Habitable ? " This was first 

 commenced as a review of Professor Percival Lowell's book, 

 *' Mars and its Canals," with the object of showing that the 

 large amount of new and interesting facts contained in this 

 work did not invalidate the conclusion that he (Wallace) had 

 reached in 1903 — that Mars is not habitable. The conclusions 

 to which his argument led him were these : 



(1) All physicists are agreed that . . . Mars would have 

 a mean tempet-ature of about 35° F. owing to its distance 

 from the sun. 



(2) But the very low temperatures on the earth under 

 the equator at a height where the barometer stands at 

 about three times as high as on Mars, proves that from 

 scantiness of atmosphere alone Mars cannot possibly have 

 a temperature as high as the freezing-point of water. 



m 



