40 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. ' 



has merely offered some pretty speculations. While he has not established 

 anything, nobody is able to disprove what he says, because the opposite has 

 not been established. The assertions, on the face of them, are not based on 

 observational results. 



BY PROFESSOR PICKERING OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 



Boston, March 2. — It is not worth my while to take the time to upset 

 another man's theories. We collect facts here and do not devote much 

 time to theories. Dr. Wallace has not brought forward, as far as I can see, 

 any evidence whatever to support his theories, and to his statement that the 

 supreme end and purpose of this vast universe was the production and 

 development of the living soul in the perishable body of man, that is a 

 question for philosophy to solve, not for astronomy. 



Professor George Davidson, of the University of California, eminent in 

 astronomy and other natural sciences, says : 



"Dr. Alfred Russell Wallace is a great authority on birds. He has 

 collected enormously for years and has written largely on the birds and the 

 geographical distribution of animals. Two or three years ago I heard the 

 report that he had taken a sidetrack and gone into spiritualism. As to this 

 astronomical matter, he doesn't know what he is talking about. Along his 

 own lines, though, he is an authority." 



B. R. Baumgardt, secretary of the Southern California Academy of 

 Sciences, says : 



" Neither the earth, nor even the solar system, is the center of the solar 

 universe. To be sure, they are situated somewhere near the center of the 

 Milky Way; but it must be remembered that what is the center today will 

 not be the center tomorrow. As there is a constant flux of force throughout 

 the whole sweep of the sidereal universe, so, too, there is a constant motion 

 in the bodies that make up its matter. 



" As regards man and his soul, science teaches us the precise opposite 

 from the plan proposed by Dr. Wallace. Science tells us that not only man, 

 but even the evolution of the whole organic matter, is but one of a series of 

 fleeting phenomena making up a chain without beginning and without end. 

 The scientific man, be it remembered, sees nothing in the soul but the sum 

 total of his own psychic activity." 



Melville Dozier, secretary of the Astronomical Section, says : 



" The fact that the earth itself is in motion around the sun is sufficient 



refutation of Dr. Wallace's proposition that the earth is the center of the 



stellar universe. 



" As to Dr. Wallace's second conclusion, that the chief purpose of our 



earth is the creation and development of the human soul in the perishable 



body of man, there can be no question in my mind that this is the purpoFe 



of the Creator in bringing this earth into existence." 



