metals and gems, were
all foreseen and foreordained for the education and enjoyment of
man. The whole cumulative argument of my 'World of Life' is that
_in its every detail_ it calls for the agency of a mind ...
enormously above and beyond any human mind ... Whether this
Unknown Reality is a single Being and acts everywhere in the
universe as direct creator, organiser, and director of every
minutest motion ... or through 'infinite grades of beings,' as I
suggest, comes to much the same thing. Mine seems a more clear and
intelligible supposition ... and it is the teaching of the Bible,
of Swedenborg, and of Milton."--Letter from A.R. Wallace to JAMES
MARCHANT, written in 1913.

The letters on Spiritualism which Wallace wrote cast further light on
the personal attitude of mind which he maintained towards that subject.
He was an unbiased scientific investigator, commencing on the "lower
level" of spirit phenomena, such as raps and similar physical
manifestations of "force by unseen intelligences," and passing on to a
clearer understanding of the phenomena of mesmerism and telepathy; to
the materialisation of, and conversation with, the spirits of those who
had been known in the body, until the conviction of life after death, as
the inevitable crowning conclusion to the long process of evolution, was
reached in the remarkable chapter with which he concludes "The World of
Life"--an impressive prose poem.

Like that of many other children, Wallace's early childhood was spent in
an orthodox religious atmosphere, which, whilst awakening within him
vague emotions of religious fervour, derived chiefly from the more
picturesque and impassioned of the hymns which he occasionally heard
sung at a Nonconformist chapel, left no enduring impression. Moreover,
at the age of 14 he was brought suddenly into close contact with
Socialism as expounded by Robert Owen, which dispelled whatever
glimmerings of the Christian faith there may have been latent in his
mind, leaving him for many years a confirmed materialist.

This fact, together with his early-aroused sense of the social injustice
and privations imposed upon the poorer classes both in town and country,
which he carefully observed during his experience as a land-surveyor,
might easily have had an undesirable effect upon his general character
had not his intense love and reverence for nature provided a stimulus to
his moral and spirit