remember him saying that he was only a messenger. Perhaps later, when he
was reviewing his life, he connected his sudden inspirations with a
higher source, but for their realisation he relied upon a foundation of
veritable facts, facts patiently accumulated, a foundation laid broad
and deep. He had the vision of the prophet allied with the wisdom of the
philosopher and the calm mental detachment of the man of science.
Perhaps another explanation of his genius may be found in his
open-mindedness. Truth found ready access to his conscience, and always
a warm welcome, and he saw with open eyes where others were stone-blind.

He belonged to our common humanity. No caste or acquired pride or
unapproachable intellectualism cut him off from the people. His simple
humanness made him one with us all. And his humanity was singularly
comprehensive. It led him, for instance, to investigate the subject of
suffering in animals. He noticed that all good men and women rightly
shrank from giving pain to them, and he set himself to prove that the
capacity for pain decreased as we descended the scale of life, and that
poets and others were mistaken when they imputed acute suffering to the
lower creation, because of the very restricted response of their nervous
system. Even in the case of the human infant, he concluded that only
very slight sensations are at first required, and that such only are
therefore developed. The sensation of pain does not, probably, reach its
maximum till the whole organism is fully developed in the adult
individual. "This," he added, with that characteristic touch which made
him kin to all oppressed people, "is rather comforting in view of the
sufferings of so many infants needlessly sacrificed through the terrible
defects of our vicious social system."

To Wallace pain was the birth-cry of a soul's advance--the stamp of rank
in nature is capacity for pain. Pain, he held, was always strictly
subordinated to the law of utility, and was never developed beyond what
was actually needed for the protection and advance of life. This brings
the sensitive soul immense relief. Our susceptibility to the higher
agonies is a condition of our advance in life's pageant.

Take another instance. Amongst his numerous correspondents there were
not a few who decided not to take life, for food, or science, or in war.
One young man who went out with the assistance of Wallace to Trinidad
and Brazil to become a naturalist, and to who