WCP1413

Letter (WCP1413.1192)

[1]1

Royal Institution of Great Britain

Monday2

My dear Wallace

Your sincerity & desire for the pure truth are perfectly manifest. If I know myself I am in the same vein. I would ask one question.

Supposing I join you will you undertake to make the effects evident to my senses; will you allow me to reject all testimony, no matter how solemn or respectable? Will you allow me to touch the effects with my own hands, see them with my own eyes and hear them with my own ears. Will [2] you in short permit me to act towards your phenomena as I act and successfully act — in other departments of nature?

I really wish to see the things which are able to produce this conviction on a mind like yours which I have always considered to be of so superior a quality.

Yours very faithfully | John Tyndall3 [signature]

1
The following text is written in pencil in a different hand at the top of the letter, 'about coming to sit with Miss Nicholl'.
2
This letter is dated to Monday, 11 May 1868 by relation to a letter from ARW dated Friday, 8 May 1868, in which ARW described to Tyndall the circumstances of a séance ([WCP1487_L1266] is a handwritten draft of the letter, while [WCP1487_P7857] is a published version). While ARW was favourable to spiritualist phenomena, Tyndall was a critic.
3
Tyndall, John (1820-1893). Irish physicist and mountaineer. Appointed Professor of natural philosophy at the Royal Institution in 1853, and Superintendent of the Royal Institution from the death of Michael Faraday in 1867 to his retirement in 1887.

Editorial information

Status: Edited (but not proofed) transcription [Letter (WCP1413.1192)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by Barton, Michael [2012-08-13] Transcription checked by Barton, Michael [2020-06-09]

Please cite as “WCP1413,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 5 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP1413