Alfred Russel Wallace 



there were definite limits to its range^ that, indeed, there 

 were two lines of development — one affecting the visible 

 world of form and colour and the other the invisible world 

 of life and spirit — two worlds springing from two opposite 

 poles of being and developing pari passUj or, rather, the 

 spiritual dominating the material, life originating and con- 

 trolling organisation. It was, in short, his peculiar task 

 to reveal something of the Why as well as the How of the 

 evolutionary process, and in doing so verily to bring im- 

 mortality to light. 



The immediate exciting cause of this discovery of the 



inadequacy of evolution from the material side alone to 



account for the world of life may seem to many to have 



been trivial and unworthy of the serious attention of a 



great scientist. How, it might be asked, could the crude 



and doubtful phenomena of Spiritualism afford reasonably 



adequate grounds for challenging its supremacy and for 



setting a limit to its range ? But spiritualistic phenomena 



were only the accidental modes in which the other side of 



evolution struck in upon his vision. They set him upon the 



other track and opened up to him the vaster kingdom of life 



which is without beginning, limit or end ; in which perchance 



the sequence of life from the simple to the complex, from 



living germ to living God, may also be the law of growth. 



It is in the light of this ultimate end that we must judge 



the stumbling steps guided by raps and visions which led 



him to the ladder set up to the stars by which connection 



was established with the inner reality of being. That was 



the distinctive contribution which he made to human beliefs 



over and above his advocacy of pure Darwinism. 



Reading almost everything he could obtain upon occult 

 phenomena, Wallace found that there was such a mass of 

 testimony by men of the highest character and ability in 



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