[1]1
THE VICARAGE,
ROWINGTON,
WARWICK
13 April 1911
Dear Sir.
I do not suppose you remember corresponding with me about 2 years ago in respect to some articles on agricultural land & labour, one of which reappeared in our organ "Land & Labour", April 1909 2 I wrote & thanked you then for your kind letter, & now I wish to thank you most sincerely for your "World of Life" which I have just read through for the first time, & which as you will see from the enclosed, our Classical Society of Leamington, Warwick & district is to discuss at Warwick on Easter Wednesday.
I am sure the paper will be a good one & the discussion thereon interesting & profitable. but I cannot help wondering as I look at your face before me in the January Review of Reviews whether or not [2] your presentation & proofs of a Personal Deity — behind the scenes (as disclosed in the first few words of Holy Writ) have led you into intimate relations with Him first of all through Him Who is the Way, the Truth & the Life, & also immediately through the celestial beings who always do Him service.
What a wonderful book the old Bible is & how it seems to have in it all the truths (scientific etc.) which each generation can bear & is inspired to discover — A book like Capron's "Conflict of Truth" opens one's eyes to the up to date science of Gen I. while a book like Pember's "Earth's Earliest Ages" shows us the obvious references to the Preadamite world of Life.
Your own latest special contribution is I think that of postulating, if not proving, the existence of spiritual Powers making for rightness in the mineral vegetable animal & human kingdoms.
And of course the Bible supports such a view of things though much of the unspiritual teaching even in Christianity [3] seems to obscure it.
Dr. Joseph Parker once dealt with the materialists or semi-materialists in these words —
"When a traveller tells us that he saw Padan-Ayam we believe him: when he tells us that he there saw a 'ladder' reaching to heaven, connecting the worlds, we turn away from him with distrust.
Why believe about stones & not about thoughts?
Why the less than we need be? Why thrust from us a man who tells us he has news of heaven?
Why carry away the loneliest of our race, when we might come to an innumerable company of angels & the spirits of the just made perfect?["]
I am afraid I shall be wearying you with all this but I do sincerely thank you for bringing out into such strong relief, for myself & countless others, the ladder of angels connecting the infinitely Great. with the almost infinitely small.
Yours very truly | Arthur Pritchard [signature]
Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP3306.3274)]
For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon
[1]1
SYLLABUS OF A PAPER ON LIFE AND MIND
With special reference to A.R. Wallace's "Life of Mind"2
By the
Rev. J. M. Mello3, MA., F.G.S, Etc.
I. INTRODUCTION — Man as a rational being must from his earliest existence have questioned Nature as to its meaning.
(b)4 We to-day are asking similar questions, and seeking an answer to "the Riddle of the Universe" and to its greatest problem "What is Life?"
(c) The Materialistic tendency of much Scientific thought.
II. Three ways of accounting for the existence of things.
1 — Chance 2 — Necessity 3 — Design
(a) Chance or Accident an unreasonable solution.
(b) Necessity equally irrational.
(c) The Atheistic teaching of Haeckel5 and others.
(d) The theory of Design; the Universe the "Externalisation of the Thought of God" the only reasonable explanation of the Mysteries of Nature.
(e) All nature "a Manifestation of Creative Power, a Directive Mind and an Ultimate Purpose.
III. A.R. Wallace's conclusion, viz., The only adequate Cause of all, "A Ruling and Creative Power; and man, the summit of a fore-ordained Evolution, could not as an intellectual and moral being, have been the result of Natural selection."
IV. "The World of Life"
(a) Two distinct states of Matter: The Living and the non-living.
V. The question "What is Life?"
(a) Wallace's definition, insufficient, this describes its manifestation, not what Life is.
(b) No Chemical analysis can discover it.
(c) Haeckel, Arrhenius6 and others look on Life as the product of Matter. Even Consciousness is relagated to the domain of Physics, etc.
(d) Haeckel's adminssion of a Psychic side to Matter, and speaks of Matter, and Spirit, or Thinking Substance, of "Unconscious atoms yet possessed of Sensation and Will!"
An amazing contradiction.
(e) Prof. L. Beale's7 definition of Life-power as distinct from all material properties and Forces.[2]
VI. The Seat of Vital action
(a) Structureless living matter, between which and all Physical agencies and forces, the difference is absolute.
(b) Life cannot have originated spontaneously.
VII. The origin of Man an evidence of Infinite Power and Purpose.
VIII.
(a) The Marvel and Mystery of Living Matter, The Bioplasts.
(b) The Bioplasts and their work manifest Directive Force.
(c) What Power gives the living Protoplasm Life, and organized it?
(d) The processes by which the Living body is built up, unintelligible without the assumption of a Directive Organizing Power.
(e) An eternal Material Universe an impossibility.
(f) Life depends upon God, it is the cause of Organization, therefore antecedent to it.
(g) Must be connected with Spirit and Thought.
(h) The cause of Life independent of the Organism.
IX.
(a) The theory of Evolution not Atheistic, but the very reverse.
(b) Difficulties unsolved by Evolutionists.
X. Wallace's conclusions as to the Adaptation of the Earth for Man.
(a) Evidences of Adaptation.
(b) They postulate not only Force but Guidance.
(c) Mind and Purpose behind all Natural Phenomena.
(d) The Ultimate Purpose, "the development of Mankind for an enduring Spiritual existence."
(e) The Material World subserves Man's progress.
(f) The responsibility of Man with respect to Nature.
XI. Man a Spiritual being, and differs not only in degree but fundamentally from the lower animals.
XII. Wallace's view as the Manner of God's working.
(a) The existence of Grades of Spiritual Beings above Man (Angels).
(b) May not God have created the Universe through Angelic agency?
(c) The Cosmos a Manifestation of God, but through the agency of many grades of Ministering Angels.
(d) The teaching of the Bible upon the Ministry of Angels.
(e) The Infinite God the Ultimate Cause.
CONCLUSION,
The Faith of the Ancient World.
The Creed of the Ancient Egyptians.
"God is the End and Beginning of all things."
A true Faith which is the answer to the Unbelief of to-day.
Status: Draft transcription [Enclosure (WCP3306.5723)]
For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon
Please cite as “WCP3306,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 3 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP3306