the insane, will gain it
one of the highest places in the hierarchy of the sciences; and its
persistent neglect and obloquy during the last sixty years of the
nineteenth century will be referred to as an example of the almost
incredible narrowness and prejudice which prevailed among men of science
at the very time they were making such splendid advances in other fields
of thought and discovery."[67]

Wallace was not even scared out of his wits by ghosts, for, unlike
Coleridge, he believed in them although he thought he had seen many.
Whether truth came from the scaffold or the throne, the seance or the
sky, it did not alter the truth, and did not prejudice or overbear his
judgment. He shed his early materialism (which temporarily took
possession of him as it did of many others as a result of the shock
following the overwhelming discoveries of that period) when he was
brought face to face with the phenomena of the spiritual kingdom which
withstood the searching test of his keen observation and reasoning
powers. Prejudices, preconceived notions, respect for his scientific
position or the opinions of his eminent friends or the reputation of the
learned societies to which he belonged--all were quietly and firmly put
aside when he saw what he recognised to be the truth. If his
fellow-workers did not accept it, so much the worse for them. He stood
four-square against the onslaught of quasi-scientific rationalism, which
once threatened to obliterate all the ancient landmarks of morality and
religion alike. He made mistakes, and he admitted and corrected them,
because he verily loved Truth for her own sake. And to the very end of
his long life he kept the windows of his soul wide open to what he
believed to be the light of this and other worlds.

He was, then, a man of lofty ideals, and his idealism was at the base
of his opposition to the materialism which boasted that Natural
Selection explained all adaptation, and that Physics could give the
solution of Huxley's poser to Spencer: "Given the molecular forces in a
mutton chop, deduce Hamlet and Faust therefrom," and which regarded mind
as a quality of matter as brightness is a quality of steel, and life as
the result of the organisation of matter and not its cause.

"We have ourselves," wrote Prof. H.F. Osborn in an account of Wallace's
scientific work which Wallace praised, "experienced a loss of confidence
with advancing years, an increasing humility in the face of
transf