It was, in
short, his peculiar task to reveal something of the Why as well as the
How of the evolutionary process, and in doing so verily to bring
immortality to light.
The immediate exciting cause of this discovery of the inadequacy of
evolution from the material side alone to account for the world of life
may seem to many to have been trivial and unworthy of the serious
attention of a great scientist. How, it might be asked, could the crude
and doubtful phenomena of Spiritualism afford reasonably adequate
grounds for challenging its supremacy and for setting a limit to its
range? But spiritualistic phenomena were only the accidental modes in
which the other side of evolution struck in upon his vision. They set
him upon the other track and opened up to him the vaster kingdom of life
which is without beginning, limit or end; in which perchance the
sequence of life from the simple to the complex, from living germ to
living God, may also be the law of growth. It is in the light of this
ultimate end that we must judge the stumbling steps guided by raps and
visions which led him to the ladder set up to the stars by which
connection was established with the inner reality of being. That was the
distinctive contribution which he made to human beliefs over and above
his advocacy of pure Darwinism.
* * * * *
Reading almost everything he could obtain upon occult phenomena, Wallace
found that there was such a mass of testimony by men of the highest
character and ability in every department of human learning that he
thought it would be useful to bring this together in a connected sketch
of the whole subject.
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