WCP4984

[1]¹ [p. 382]

Frith Hill, Godalming,

13^th January 1883.

Dear Mr. Croll,—I have much pleasure in signing your memorial, and sincerely hope you may be successful, as I think you have been very badly treated.

I read your article in the British Quarterly yesterday. It is very forcible and well reasoned, yet I doubt if it will produce much effect. The extreme materialists will reply that matter and its forces being eternal and infinite, all the motions of matter necessary to produce organised beings have been determined by preceding motions, back to all eternity. They will maintain that these conceptions of eternal matter and forces are no more difficult than the conception of a determining power, which is neither matter nor force.

I am very glad to hear you are better. Have you read Stallo's Concepts and Theories of Modern Physics, one of the International Scientific Series? It contains some most acute criticisms of modern scientific views, especially of the kinetic theory of gases and of non-Euclidean geometry. I think you would be interested in it.—With best wishes, yours faithfully.

Alfred R. Wallace.