WCP4985

[1]¹ [p. 387]

Frith Hill, Godalming,

24^th March 1883.

Dear Mr. Croll,—I am glad to see you have such an array of signatures to your memorial. It must surely receive attention.

I shall be glad to read your article again, though I think I fully see the drift of your argument. No doubt force alone is no explanation of anything, but all materialists begin with definite forces acting according to definite laws, and the whole question is whether, these definite forces being infinite or practically infinite in number, the atoms of physicists would not by their interaction through infinite time produce all the results of the material universe without any further "determinism" than that implied in the definite nature of the original forces. This view, if I remember rightly, you do not discuss, and it affords a complete answer to some of your arguments. Is not this so?—Yours very truly,

Alfred R. Wallace.