![]() ![]() Wallace attempted to reconcile the two, and his reputation suffered accordingly." He did not conform to the pattern of the modern scientist, who, on seeing the evolutionary light, was supposed to shed any illusion about the supernatural. In 1869, he published a review of a new edition of Lyell’s 'Principles.' In it, Wallace explained the mechanism of evolution and defended the laws of natural selection that accounted for it, but he also expressed the opinion that 'there yet seems to be evidence of a Power which has guided the action of those laws in definite directions and for special ends.' This was one of the first public expressions of a mystical turn that Wallace called his 'little heresy.' Darwin, warned in advance, had written anxiously to Wallace, 'I hope you have not murdered too completely your own and my child.' Wallace never did abandon natural selection, but later generations came to find him an unfit parent. "In 1866, Wallace, never one to keep his opinions to himself, produced a pamphlet, 'The Scientific Aspect of the Supernatural,' which he sent to his eminent colleagues. His friend Darwin even contacted Wallace, expressing regret that Wallace's new emphasis on the supernatural might doom the theory of evolution. Wallace called his advocacy for a Creator his "little heresy" because of the opposition it drew from the scientific community. To them it is real enough, but to us it is not corporeal." Paul speaks of a 'spiritual body' that is a body possessed by disembodied spirits. ![]() At the same time, I have a difficulty in conceiving-though there is no reason why it should not exist-pure mind, pure spirit, apart from any substantial envelope or substratum. 'Then, as a scientist, you have no difficulty in believing in the existence of consciousness apart from material organism?' None whatever. We are all agreed that ether is the fundamental, matter being its product and it is possible that ether may have other products which are not perceptible by us. ![]() There may be a million universes, but they may all be different-certainly, I should say, not all matter. That would mean monotony, instead of infinite variety, which is the keynote of things as they are known to us. To suppose that this one particular type of universe extends over all space is, I consider, to have a low idea of the Creator and His power. Evolution seems to me to fail to account for these tremendous transitions. I believe this influx took place at three stages in evolution-the change (1) from the inorganic to the organic, (2) from the plant to the animal, (3) from the animal to the soul of man. I do not think it is possible to form any idea beyond this, that when man's body was prepared to receive it, there occurred an inbreathing of spirit-call it what you will. I maintain, on the other hand, that there are indications of man having received something that he could not have derived from the lower animals. ![]() Darwin believed that the mental, moral, and spiritual nature of man were alike developed from the lower animals, automatically, by the same processes that evolved his physical structure. "My whole argument tends in that direction, though my object in writing 'Man's Place in the Universe' was purely scientific, not religious. The following interview with Wallace in 1903 contains a very thorough revelation of Wallace's religious beliefs: Unlike Darwin, Wallace believed a Creator guided the process of evolution, playing a key role throughout history in the inbreathing of spirit in mankind and bestowing mental faculties to humans. ![]()
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