My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

298 MY LIFEthirty feet higher, there being on the east a highbank, with oak trees and pines, producing a verypretty effect. This bank, as well as the lower partof the garden, was peat or peaty sand, and as I knewthis was good for rhododendrons and heaths, I wasmuch pleased to be able to grow these plants. I didnot then know, however, that this peaty soil was quiteunsuited to a great many other plants, and only learntthis by the long experience which every gardener hasto go through.It was in the early part of my residence at Parkstonethat I received a visit from the great FrenchGeographer, Elisee Reclus, who had, I think, come toEngland to receive the gold medal of the RoyalGeographical Society. He was a rather small andvery delicate-looking man, highly intellectual, but veryquiet in speech and manner. I really did not knowthat it was he with whose name I had been familiarfor twenty years as the greatest of geographers, thinkingit must have been his father or elder brother; and Iwas surprised when, on asking him, he said that it washimself. However, we did not talk of geography duringthe afternoon we spent together, but of Anarchism, ofwhich he was one of the most convinced advocates, andI was very anxious to ascertain his exact views, whichI found were really not very different from my own.We agreed that almost all social evils—all poverty,misery, and crime—were the creation of governmentsand of bad social systems ;and that under a law ofabsolute justice, involving equality of opportunity andthe best training for all, each local community wouldorganize itself for mutual aid, and no great centralgovernments would be needed, except as they grewup from the voluntary association of their parts forgeneral and national purposes.