" As early, however, as
1903, Wallace did not hesitate to express his own firm conviction that
Science and Spiritualism were in many ways closely akin.
He believed that the near future would show the strong tendency of
scientists to become more religious or spiritual. The process, he
thought, would be slow, as the general attitude has never been more
materialistic than now. A few have been bold enough to assert their
belief in some outside power, but the leading scientific men are, as a
rule, dead against them. "They seem," he once remarked, "to think, and
to like to think, that the whole phenomena of life will one day be
reduced to terms of matter and motion, and that every vegetable, animal,
and human product will be explained, and may some day be artificially
produced, by chemical action. But even if this were so, behind it all
there would still remain an unexplained mystery."
Closely associated with "Man's Place in the Universe" is a small volume,
"Is Mars Habitable?" This was first commenced as a review of Professor
Percival Lowell's book, "Mars and its Canals," with the object of
showing that the large amount of new and interesting facts contained in
this work did not invalidate the conclusion that he (Wallace) had
reached in 1903--that Mars is not habitable. The conclusions to which
his argument led him were these:
(1) All physicists are agreed that ... Mars would have a mean
temperature of about 35 deg.
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