Alfred Russel Wallace 



fervour, derived chiefly from the more picturesque and im- 

 passioned of the hymns which he occasionally heard sung 

 at a Nonconformist chapel, left no enduring impression. 

 Moreover, at the age of 14 he was brought suddenly into 

 close contact with Socialism as expounded by Eobert Owen, 

 which dispelled whatever glimmerings of the Christian faith 

 there may have been latent in his mind, leaving him for 

 many years a confirmed materialist. 



This fact, together with his early-aroused sense of the 

 social injustice and privations imposed upon the poorer 

 classes both in town and country, which he carefully 

 observed during his experience as a land-surveyor, might 

 easily have had an undesirable effect upon his general 

 character had not his intense love and reverence for 

 nature provided a stimulus to his moral and spiritual de- 

 velopment. But the '' directive Mind and Purpose " was 

 preparing him silently and unconsciously until his " fabric 

 of thought " was ready to receive spiritual impressions. 

 For, according to his own theory, as " the laws of nature 

 bring about continuous development, on the whole pro- 

 gressive, one of the subsidiary results of this mode of d<i- 

 velopment is that no organ, no sensation, no faculty arises 

 he fore it is needed, or in greater degree than it is needed."* 

 From this point of view we may make a brief outline of the 

 manner in which this particular " faculty " arose and was 

 developed in him. 



When at Leicester, in 1844, his curiosity was greatly ex- 

 cited by some lectures on mesmerism given by Mr. Spencer 

 Hall, and he soon discovered that he himself had consider- 

 able power in this direction, which he exercised on some of 

 his pupils. 



Later, when his brother Herbert joined him in South 

 America, he found that he also possessed this gift, and on 



» " Tlie World of Life," p. 374. 

 182 



