Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/12

viii sophy speculated on. The facts beat me." By slow degrees he came to believe in the existence of a number of preterhuman intelligences of various grades, and that some of these, though invisible and intangible to us, can and do act on matter and influence our minds. He was thus led to attack the à priori arguments against miracles, and to believe that many of the so-called spiritualistic phenomena are genuine and occasioned by. unseen beings. He further championed spiritualism as teaching valuable moral lessons, and leading to moral and spiritual improvement, when rightly followed out. Here he claims that he does not depart in any way from scientific principle. "The cardinal maxim of spiritualism," he says, "is that every one must find out the truth for himself. It makes no claim to be received on hearsay evidence; but on the other hand it demands that it be not rejected without patient, honest, and fearless inquiry."

In yet another field Mr. Wallace has proved himself a bold originator. His early gained knowledge of land-tenure and the condition of tenants and labourers gave him an experience which with riper years produced the conviction that there was no way to remedy the evils resulting from landlordism but the adoption of a properly guarded system of occupying ownership under the State as landlord. He has endeavoured to show the necessity and the practicability of his views in his work entitled "Land Nationalisation, its Necessity and its Aims," first published in 1882. In a third edition he has added an appendix on the nationalisation of house property, the State being destined, he believes, to become sole ground landlord. A later work of his on "Bad Times," 1885, is an essay on the then existing depression of trade, tracing it to the evils caused by great foreign loans, excessive war expenditure, the increase of speculation, and of millionaires, and the depopulation of the rural districts. Among other remedies he is strongly in favour of the increase of labourers' allotments, and of personal culture of the land by the occupier. In the same year his zeal and fearlessness in championing causes which he identifies with that of liberty, were exhibited in a pamphlet entitled "Forty-five Years of Registration Statistics," in which he sought to prove vaccination both useless and dangerous. Beside all this, Mr. Wallace has been a frequent contributor to scientific transactions, and to the leading magazines and reviews. Finally,