Old Orchard, Broadstone, Wimborne.  February 20, 1911.

My dear Barrett,—­I wrote you yesterday on quite another matter, but having yours this morning in reply to my criticisms of your Address, I send a few lines of explanation.  Most of my queries to your statements apply solely to your expressing them so positively, as if they were absolute certainties which no psychical researcher doubted.  My main objection to the term “subliminal self” and its various synonyms is, that it is so dreadfully vague, and is an excuse for the assumption that a whole series of the most mysterious of psychical phenomena are held to be actually explained by it.  Thus it is applied to explain all cases of apparent “possession,” when the alleged “secondary self” has a totally different character, and uses the dialect of another social grade, from the normal self, sometimes even possesses knowledge that the real self could not have acquired, speaks a language that the normal self never learnt.  All this is, to me, the most gross travesty of science, and I therefore object totally to the use of the term which is so vaguely and absurdly used, and of which no clear and rational explanation has ever been given.

You are now one of my oldest friends, and one with whom I most sympathise; and I only regret that we have seen so little of each other.—­Yours very faithfully,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

* * * * *

TO MR. E. SMEDLEY

Old Orchard, Broadstone, Dorset.  October 2, 1911.

Dear Mr. Smedley,—­I am quite astonished at your wasting your money on an advertising astrologer.  In the horoscope sent you there is not a single definite fact that would apply to you any more than to thousands of other men.  All is vague, what “might be,” etc. etc.  It is just calculated to lead you on to send more money, and get in reply more words and nothing else....—­Yours very truly,

ALFRED R. WALLACE.

[Illustration:  A.R.  WALLACE ADMIRING EREMUS ROBUSTUS about 1905.]

PART VII

Characteristics

“There is a point of view so lofty or so peculiar that from it we are able to discern in men and women something more than and apart from creed and profession and formulated principle; which indeed directs and colours this creed and principle as decisively as it is in its turn acted on by them, and this is their character or humanity.”—­LORD MORLEY.

  “As sets the sun in fine autumnal calm
  So dost thou leave us.  Thou not least but last
  Link with that rare and gallant little band
  Of seekers after truth, whose days, though past,
  Shed lustre on the hist’ry of their land. 
  And thine, O Wallace, thine the added charm
  Of modesty, thy mem’ry to embalm.”—­Anonymous.