WCP3187

[1]

[Postscript] I shall endeavour to get your Miracle¹ book from the Library.

16 Fielding Terrace

Pevensey Bay

Sussex

Aug^t 4. 1899

Dear Mr Wallace.

It was most kind of you to write² to me so fully, but I dont [sic] want you to think that I wished to bore you with my lucubrations³ or to insist on your reading them. I really sent the books as an expression of my sympathy & admiration; not to extort friendly criticism.

But since you have read the books, I thank you for your remarks about them — remarks of greatly value coming from one 'so strongly arm'd in honesty'. My only objection is to your suggestion that the two works are contradictory. I regard them as facets of the same conception, viz. [2] that all creation is governed by inexorable Law, agt which the creature strives in vain. The Devil's Case⁴ is an arraignment of the priestly dogma, that knowledge is evil in itself; the Devil being the adumbration⁵ of the human quest for truth & certainty, as well as the spirit of human pity. Mary the Mother⁶ is a reduction into natural terms of a supernatural tradition. In both books, something strong & living is found revolting in the very heart of the cosmic Law.

If you glance at the enclosed "Letter to Neitzsche",⁷ one of my letters to the Sunday Special, you will gather that I sympathise deeply with the [3] Christian⁸ conception, unable as I am to accept it on any kind of supernaturalism. What you say abt Spiritualism interests me deeply, coming from such a quarter; but all my personal experience is opposed to it, in every way. I would cut off my right hand to feel as you do on the subject. My whole life has been darkened and frustrated by the growing belief that there is no solution to the great problem. I am not a pessimist, but my optimism has no power to cheer my advancing age.

As to the preponderance of happiness, you are doubtless right — but if ninety-nine percent of living creatures were happy, & one only miserable, that would be enough to poison my cup. I see no moral justification for the horrible tortures by sentient⁹ things. And I fail altogether [4] to feel that pain is beneficent. On the contrary, I think that ^it is often corrupting & corroding, besides being ^generally capricious. — But this is too long a theme to traverse in a letter.

Your note abt technical defects in the poems is valuable, but you may be assured that I am never wilfully careless, & possibly some of the faults you observe are systematic. I have sent the books by me to refer to, so I cannot enter into detail. I can only say that in most cases where such objections are raised, the difference is one of opinion as to the true technique of verse.

Thanking you once more for your kind & thoughtful letter, I am as ever

yours most truly | Robert Buchanan¹⁰ [signature]

Alfred Russell [sic] Wallace Esq.