nhabited
or habitable.

(5) That the probabilities are almost as great against any other sun
possessing inhabited planets.

(6) That the nearly central position of our sun is probably a permanent
one, and has been specially favourable, perhaps absolutely essential, to
life-development on the earth.

Wallace never maintained that this earth alone in the whole universe is
the abode of life. What he maintained was, first, that our solar system
appears to be in or near the centre of the visible universe, and,
secondly, that all the available evidence supports the idea of the
extreme unlikelihood of there being on any star or planet revealed by
the telescope any intelligent life either identical with or analogous to
man. To suppose that this one particular type of universe extends over
all space was, he considered, to have a low idea of the Creator and His
power. Such a scheme would mean monotony instead of infinite variety,
the keynote of things as they are known to us. There might be a million
universes, but all different.

To his mind there was no difficulty in believing in the existence of
consciousness apart from material organism; though he could not readily
conceive of pure mind, or pure spirit, apart from some kind of
substantial envelope or substratum. Many of the views suggested in
"Man's Place in the Universe" as to man's spiritual progress hereafter,
the reason or ultimate purpose for which he was brought into existence,
were enlarged upon, later, in "The World of Life." 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 s