n" (1864).
In this he suggested that, Man having reached a state of physical
perfection through the progressive law of Natural Selection, thenceforth
Mind became the dominating factor, endowing Man with an ever-increasing
power of intelligence which, whilst the physical had remained
stationary, had continued to develop according to his needs. This
"in-breathing" of a divine Spirit, or the controlling force of a supreme
directive Mind and Purpose, which was one of the points of divergence
between his theory and that held by Darwin, is too well known to need
repetition.

This disagreement has a twofold interest from the fact that Darwin, in
his youth, studied theology with the full intention of taking holy
orders, and for some years retained his faith in the more or less
orthodox beliefs arising out of the Bible. But as time went by, an
ever-extending knowledge of the mystery of the natural laws governing
the development of man and nature led him to make the characteristically
frank avowal that he "found it more and more difficult ... to invent
evidence which would suffice to convince"; adding, "This disbelief crept
over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so
slow that I felt no distress."[57] With Wallace, however, his early
disbelief ended in a deep conviction that "as nothing in nature actually
'dies,' but renews its life in another and higher form, so Man, the
highest product of natural laws here, must by the power of mind and
intellect continue to develop hereafter."

The varied reasons leading up to this final conviction, as related by
himself in "Miracles and Modern Spiritualism" and "My Life," are,
however, too numerous and detailed to be retold in a brief summary in
this place.

The correspondence that follows deals entirely with investigations on
this side of the Atlantic, but a good deal of evidence which to him was
conclusive was obtained during his stay in America, where Spiritualism
has been more widely recognised, and for a much longer period than in
England.

Some of the letters addressed to Miss Buckley (afterwards Mrs. Fisher)
reveal the extreme caution which he both practised himself and advocated
in others when following up any experimental phase of spiritual
phenomena. The same correspondence also gives a fairly clear outline of
his faith in the ascending scale from the physical evidence of
spirit-existence to the communication of some actual knowledge of life
as it e