He is now preparing a volume on the subject
which will contain the most valuable series of observations yet made on
this question. Another point of some importance where I cannot agree
with you is your treating dipsomania as a disease, only to be eliminated
by drunkenness and its effects. It appears to me to be only a vicious
habit or indulgence which would cease to exist in a state of society in
which the habit were almost universally reprobated, and the means for
its indulgence almost absent. But this is a matter of comparatively
small importance.--Believe me yours very truly,
ALFRED R. WALLACE.
* * * * *
TO DR. ARCHDALL REID
_Parkstone. April 28, 1896._
Dear Sir,--"We can but reason from the facts we know." We know a good
deal of the senses of the higher animals, very little of those of
insects. If we find--as I think we do--that all cases of supposed
"instinctive knowledge" in the former turn out to be merely intuitive
reactions to various kinds of stimulus, combined with very rapidly
acquired experience, we shall be justified in thinking that the actions
of the latter will some day be similarly explained. When Lloyd Morgan's
book is published we shall have much information on this question.
(_See_ "Natural Selection and Tropical Nature," pp. 91-7.)--Yours truly,
ALFRED R. WALLACE.
* * * * *
TO PROF.
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