--W.F.B.
Perhaps it should be added to Sir William Barrett's reminiscences that
the movement which was set on foot to carry out this project was stayed
by Wallace's death.
During the last years of his life his pen was seldom dry. His interest
in science and in politics was fresh and keen to the closing week. He
wrote "Social Environment and Moral Progress" in 1912, at the age of 90.
The book had a remarkable reception. Leading articles and illustrated
reviews appeared in most of the daily newspapers. The book, into which
he had put his deepest thoughts and feelings upon the condition of
society, was hailed as a virile and notable production from a truly
great man. After this was issued, he saw another, "The Revolt of
Democracy," through the press. But this did not exhaust his activities.
He entered almost immediately into a contract to write a big volume upon
the social order, and as a side issue to help, as is mentioned in the
Introduction, in the production of an even larger book upon the writings
and position of Darwin and Wallace and the theory of Natural Selection
as an adequate explanation of organic evolution. Age did not seem to
weaken his amazing fertility of creative thought, nor to render him less
susceptible to the claims of humanity, which he faced with a noble
courage. In nobility of character and in magnitude, variety and richness
of mind he was amongst the foremost scientific men of the Victorian Age,
and with his death that great period, which was marked by wide and
illuminating generalisations and the grand style in science, came to an
end.
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