WCP1711

Envelope addressed to "Sir Oliver J. Lodge F.R.S., &c. &c, Mariemont, Edgbaston, Birmingham", with stamp, postmarked "BROADSTONE | 8.30 [?] | OC 10 | 13". Five notes are written on the front of envelope in various hands, in pencil: "Dr A R Wallace"; "Lady L to see | seen"; "Answered"; "JAH please return" and in pen: "seen J.A.H". One pencil note on back of envelope: "Copied WGW"; postmark on back. [Envelope (WCP1711.1594)]

[1] [p. 178]

To SIR OLIVER LODGE

Old Orchard, Broadstone, Dorset. October 9, 1913.

Dear Sir Oliver Lodge, — Owing to ill-health and other causes I have only now been able to finish the perusal of your intensely interesting and instructive Address to the British Association. I cannot, however, refrain from writing to you to express my admiration of it, and especially of the first half of it, in which you discuss the almost infinite variety and complexity of the physical problems involved in the great principle of "continuity " in so clear a manner that outsiders like myself are able to some extent to apprehend them. I am especially pleased to find that you uphold the actual existence and continuity of the ether as scientifically established¹, and reject the doubts of some mathematicians as to the reality and perfect continuity of space and time as unthinkable.

The latter part of the Address is even more important, and is especially notable for your clear and positive statements as to the evidence in all life-process of a "guiding" Mind. I can hardly suppose that you can have found time to read my rather discursive and laboured volume on "The [2] World of Life," written mainly for the purpose of enforcing not only the proofs of a "guiding" but also of a "foreseeing" and "designing" Mind by evidence which will be thought by most men of science to be unduly strained. It is, therefore, the more interesting to me to find that you have yourself (on pp. 33-34 of your Address) used the very same form of analogical illustration as I have done (at p. 296 of "The World of Life") under the heading of "A Physiological Allegory," as being a very close representation of what really occurs in nature.

To conclude: your last paragraph rises to a height of grandeur and eloquence to which I cannot attain, but which excites my highest admiration.

Should you have a separate copy to spare of your Romanes Lecture at Oxford, I should be glad to have it to refer to. — Believe me yours very truly, ALFRED R. WALLACE.

Marchant, James (1916) VI Some further problems, I. Astronomy, In: Marchant, James Alfred Russel Wallace Letters and Reminiscences. Cassell and Company, Ltd, London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne, 167-180 (p. 178-179).