The Evening Star TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1913.

Evening Star, Issue 15343, 18 November 1913, Page 4

The Evening Star TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1913.

Nothing so transparently exhibits tho weakness of a. proposition Unfairly Put. as a. resort to arguments th.it are not based on fact and are palpably absurd. Overjoyed at the pas-sage of Mr Zinsser's Land BUI, tho Auckland 'Weekly Xnrs' rerently remarked : i>-n' 1 ' J ,°. £0 ' ,!l Walxl scents tho freehold hill which his iollowers are powerless to check, but lie still believes in something which he calls "limited freehold," and is stUl convinced that "it is right tor those with leasehold views to be considered equally with believers in the h-eehold.-' This is tho rock on which ■Sir Joseph Ward's party was wrecked «fc last election. The parti/ always believed that leasehold theorists who hare, never farmed and never intend to farm have, a perfect riqhl to dictate, to the man whose life is to be spent o„ the land not only the conditions of hi., ten[ire but the rotation of his crops. This is the right which Sir Joseph Ward"", sneaking as the mouthpiece of the Opposition, still claims for the leaseholders of his party. A more deliberate misrepresentation of facts than is contained in this extract could hardly be imagined. The question of Land Tenure was certainly not the rock on I which the Ward party were wrecked at I the last General Election, but there is a possibility that it is the question on which another party will be wrecked at the next election. For A g 0!X l manv rears the universal freehold has been' used as a bribe, but at last election it was pretty carefully kept out of sight, so far as the Reform party wore concerned. Is not the suggestion of leasehold theorists dictating tho rotation of crops a pure effort of the imagination? Tt i« Wiie that under the Land for Settlements •Vet { regulations have been imposed to prevent unscrupulous tenants ruining their 'land and then abandoning their sections. Regulations of the kind-are obviously necessary, no matter- what Government "may be "in power. But who ever heard of difficulties of a genuine kind occurring between tenants of tho Crown, or Harbor Boards or the Education Department on account <-f the way i„ which their land was fanned' lho suggested oppression of the Leasehold party ls a pare effort of the imagination. For what do tho Leasehold party contend' Are they adverse to the welfare of the tanner? ] )o they wish to interfere with thproper tillage of his land? What is the nature of their opposition to (he freehold' Can our contemporary plead ignorance when he submits that the party are inimical to larming as an industry? Are not his arguments directed deliberately to mislead? Why do the Leasehold party object to the freehold? Is their object to injure! agriculture, ov impose restrictions on'tho cultivator that will interfere with the productiveness of hi?, property? Why not admit freely and honestly that, the. wish of the Leasehold party is not to injure the tarmer, but to curtail, if not suppress the operations of .% class who have been the deadly enemy of the farmer in every part of the world ? The contention of the Leasehold party, as we understand it is that land .should not he converted into private property which the owner can turn, if he likes, to mischievous account. J-ho Leaseholders maintain that the land must not be placed beyond the control of iho people. The Leaseholders assert the right of the community to control tho administration of the land in such a way that monopoly, speculation, .ind maintenance ol land for sport or iri" ,m unproductive state will he rendered \impossible Jhe probability i s that whatever t fn tenure, this will eventually be insisted upon.

It js only , la . tllra .i that „ rm . .^.^ |j™i< w, s i, to sccllro lho " frcohal(L isobwlj l :as ever denied this. Tts a*seti«n and reiteration have nothing to do wth he , lU estio.i at issue, ,-hich is one of nght and privilege. Js it T ; hfc U|afc should outweigh the intent and powcr [u the community? That is really the r" 6 a \ 6t , ak °.\ AS regards Ilw *■«"« -ho s tempted ,nth the freehold, ho must con*d« whether-it, conversion from a W W bT *£", '*' Irapl ' OVO his Titian. mo b0 J'."" « debtor, to raceivfl more comidera ;oil f rom %the mort than he would ho likely to obtain had he renamed ~ tenant of the State? These are awkward questions for our Northern contemporary to answer, if ho will but do so m a non-party spirit.

Ihe passing over to the great majority . _ of that famous A Famous Scientist, naturalist, Alfred . . Kussel Wallace, besides attracting world-wido notice, lias special interest to dwellers *a British Dominions that flourish under the Southern Cross. The deceased 'nonagenarian will, ;is a matter of course, be- held in continual remembraneo in the popular mind as one of the famous pioneers of Evolution. While Charles Darwin, in his quiet Kentish home, was accumulating facts in support of his new theory, Wallace, at the other end of the world—in the Moluccas:—suffering from intermittent fever, was reading Malthus's 'Essay on Population 1 when the pains of ague would permit. ' there suddenly flashed on me," ho wrote, '-the idea of the survival of tho httcst, and in two hours that elapsed beforo my ague fit was over I had thought out the whole of the theory, and in the two succeeding evenings wrote it out in full, and sent it by the next post to Air Darwin." .Never in the history of literature was there a more strange coincidence than this. . Darwin had been studying the question for 20 years, but on receiving fcno essay from Tomato he, had to confess that ''if Wallace had mv MS. sketch written out in 1842, he could (not have made a better short abstract! Eiven his terms now stand as heads of my chapters." The natures of both men wore far removed from pettiness; and, in tho interests of science, both papers were read at a meeting of the Lmncan Society on July I, 'ISoS. The joint communication was 'titWJ • ; On

the Tendencies of Species to Form Varieties and Species by Natural Selection.' Sir Joseph floorer, in describing thy gathering of savants, says: "Tho interest excited was intense, but the subject was too novel and too ominous for tho old school to enter the lists before armoring. After the meeting it was talked over with bated breath." How tiercelv, and at timc-s bitterly, the battle of' Evolution was fought in the Pulpit, on the Platform, find in the Press is a matter of common knowledge, but the theories advanced by Darwin and Wallace are to-day, with modifications, endorsed well-nigh universally. It is not a. little curious that it was the "Rev. Tl\o_m:ir. R. Malthus, Professor of History and Political Economy at Hailevbiny College, that supplied both Darwin and Wallace with clues in his advocacy of "positive checks" to population.' Tho two pioneers of Evolution did not travel the same road to the end. Wallace consented to go with Darwin one mile, but would "not go twain. They reached the parting of the wavs when Da: win published his ' Descent of Alan,' in which he traces the origin of conscience and. the growth of belief in spiritual beings whose nature ;md attributes are. revised as knowWh'v increases. This work was the natural corollary of the ' Origin of Species ' : but Wallace, while admitting unreservedly the action of natural selection in man's physical structure. would not allow that his spiritual and intellectual nature was evolved on such lines. "These," he argued, "must have had another origin, and for this origin w-a' can only rind an adequate cause in the unseen universe of Spirit." Wallace, although espousing tho cu't of spiritism in the most wholehearted manner, was bv no means an orthodox Christian. The idea of man's special creation ho regarded as entirely unsupported by facts, as well as boiiv in tho highest degree improbable. His views on the connection .of the Church with Education were, of n nature to raise the ire. of our Biblo-in-schools friends. Writing to Sir Charles Lvell in 1872, ho says:— Ever since the establishment of! Christianity the education of Europe has been wholly in tho hands of men hound down by penalties to fixed dogmas, that philosophy and science have been taught largely under the same influences, and that even in the present day, and amongst the most civilised nations, it causus th" greater part of the intellectual strength of the world to !>;• used in ci)de;'.vrn-i::g ,\-, reconcile old dogmas with :uod.';.i thought, while no stop in advance can be made without the fiercest opposition by those whose ' vested interests are bound up in these I dogmas. |

In,his book on 'Miracles and Modern Spiritualism," published in ISSI originally, and revised in 1895, Wallace contends that ,; spiritualism, if true," furnishes such proofs of the existence of ethereal beings, and of their powerto act on matter, as must, revolutionise philosophy; it demonstrates mind without brain, and intelligence disconnected from what wo know as the material body; that the so-called dead are still alive: that our friends arc still with us, though unseen; that it furnishes prior of a future life, and substitutes a definite, real, and practical conviction tor a vague, theoretical, and uusatisfving faith._ All Wallace's reasons for this belief of his are purelv experimental, and were openly scoffed at by many of his scientific friends who were pestered to attend seances in the hope that they would rejoice with him in having found a solution to the :: question of questions: the ascertainment of man's relation to the universe of things; whence our race has come,; to what goal wo are tending." Many of the "spook" stories told bv this'distinguished believer in his work 'My Life; a Record of Events and Opinions? aro so_ unconvincing in cold print that th-ore is no room for surprise that his best friends regretted that he remained to the end of his life, a tvpp of arrested development. There can be no quesj tion ot the deceased .scientist's honesty as a witness of mysterious manifestations ; but what can bo said for the competency of one who championed jMisapia Paladino? This Neapolitan medium puzzled Sir Oliver Lodo-e Professors, Riehet, Ocborowicz. and others in Franco so completely that the Society for Psychical Research invited her to England. At the Cambridge, seance she was detected as a vulgar impostor, and Mr Maskelyno declared— exporto credo—that the' whole business was the sorriest of trickeries. I his phase, of the departed naturalist's lire is the more inexplicable, because the position ho occupied in the scientific world was so eminent. In this connection, however, it should be remembered that the investigations of the Psychical Research Society arc coutessedly not carried out on scientific lines. Professor Henri Bergson. has quite recently,, been elected president ot that body," and in his inaugural address frankly described their methods as thoso followed by poets, detectives and Judges; in other words. Hie" judicial, not the scientific method. Bv thS former method evidence is taken as to the, occurrence or non-occurrence of certain phenomena, and inve.stigators run all the risks of being misled or duped by erring or nntrustworthv witnesses. By ;i , scientific method of investigation facts aro examined and hearsay disregarded ; the former can bo repeater, at will, hut imagination is out I of court. Mr Wallace, in 'My Life' j gives a convincing illustration of the I two methods, but the application lie | strangely left behind him when nttencl|ing_ Spiritualist seances. In 1870 Mr •John Hampden (a relative of Bishop Hampden) challenged scientific men to prove the convcxitv of the surface of any inland water, and offered to stake £ooo on the result. Mr Wallace accepted the challenge, and the demonstration took place on a straight sixmile stretch of the old Bedford Canal. Mr Wallace, by the aid of a Troughton's level, poved that the curvature was very nearly the amount calculated from the known dimensions of the earth and was awarded the £500; but the' flatearthists were not convinced, of course and Hampden recovered his money bv legal process, tho Judges deciding'that when a wager is given against a man by an umpire tho loser can claim his money back from tho stakeholder if tho latter has not already paid it away to tho winner. Tho mental activities of the late Mr Wallace wore- varied indeed. He was a strenuous anti-vaccinationist, advocated land nationalisation, long before Henry I

George was heard of, pleaded for the provision of laborers' allotments, discussed causes leading to the depression or trade, and many other social'subjects. While exploring in the Malav Arolnpclago for nearly eight years he discovered a deep channel separating the islands of Bali and Lombok. Tin! has since been known as Wallace's line which divides the Malay Archipelago into two main groups, Indo-Malaysia and Austro-Malaysia, marked by 'distinct species and groups of animals. AinV, f "?, fu tf hcr cast dividos the Malay from the Papuan races of man it is this important discovery that has assisted our knowledge of ' the races native to Now Zealand, and thiur migrations "*