Note
FOR many years a link in the chain of Samuel Butler’s biological works
has been missing. “Unconscious Memory” was originally published thirty
years ago, but for fully half that period it has been out of print, owing
to the destruction of a large number of the unbound sheets in a fire at
the premises of the printers some years ago. The present reprint comes,
I think, at a peculiarly fortunate moment, since the attention of the
general public has of late been drawn to Butler’s biological theories in
a marked manner by several distinguished men of science, notably by Dr.
Francis Darwin, who, in his presidential address to the British
Association in 1908, quoted from the translation of Hering’s address on
“Memory as a Universal Function of Original Matter,” which Butler
incorporated into “Unconscious Memory,” and spoke in the highest terms of
Butler himself. It is not necessary for me to do more than refer to the
changed attitude of scientific authorities with regard to Butler and his
theories, since Professor Marcus Hartog has most kindly consented to
contribute an introduction to the present edition of “Unconscious
Memory,” summarising Butler’s views upon biology, and defining his
position in the world of science. A word must be said as to the
controversy between Butler and Darwin, with which Chapter IV is
concerned. I have been told that in reissuing the book at all I am
committing a grievous error of taste, that the world is no longer
interested in these “old, unhappy far-off things and battles long ago,”
and that Butler himself, by refraining from republishing “Unconscious
Memory,” tacitly admitted that he wished the controversy to be consigned
to oblivion. This last suggestion, at any rate, has no foundation in
fact. Butler desired nothing less than that his vindication of himself
against what he considered unfair treatment should be forgotten. He
would have republished “Unconscious Memory” himself, had not the latter
years of his life been devoted to all-engrossing work in other fields.
In issuing the present edition I am fulfilling a wish that he expressed
to me shortly before his death.
R. A. STREATFEILD.
_April_, 1910.
Introduction
By Marcus Hartog, M.A., D.Sc., F.L.S., F.R.H.S.
IN reviewing Samuel Butler’s works, “Unconscious Memory” gives us an
invaluable lead; for it tells us (Chaps. II, III) how the author came to
write the Book of the Machines in “Erewhon” (1872), with its
foreshadowing of the later theory, “Life and Habit,” (1878), “Evolution,
Old and New” (1879), as well as “Unconscious Memory” (1880) itself. His
fourth book on biological theory was “Luck? or Cunning?” (1887). {0a}
Besides these books, his contributions to biology comprise several
essays: “Remarks on Romanes’ _Mental Evolution in Animals_, contained in
“Selections from Previous Works” (1884) incorporated into “Luck? or
Cunning,” “The Deadlock in Darwinism” (_Universal Review_, April-June,
1890), republished in the posthumous volume of “Essays on Life, Art, and
Science” (1904), and, finally, some of the “Extracts from the Notebooks
of the late Samuel Butler,” edited by Mr. H. Festing Jones, now in course
of publication in the _New Quarterly Review_.
* * * * *
Of all these, “LIFE AND HABIT” (1878) is the most important, the main
building to which the other writings are buttresses or, at most, annexes.
Its teaching has been summarised in “Unconscious Memory” in four main
principles: “(1) the oneness of personality between parent and offspring;
(2) memory on the part of the offspring of certain actions which it did
when in the persons of its forefathers; (3) the latency of that memory
until it is rekindled by a recurrence of the associated ideas; (4) the
unconsciousness with which habitual actions come to be performed.” To
these we must add a fifth: the purposiveness of the actions of living
beings, as of the machines which they make or select.
Butler tells (“Life and Habit,” p. 33) that he sometimes hoped “that this
book would be regarded as a valuable adjunct to Darwinism.” He was
bitterly disappointed in the event, for the book, as a whole, was
received by professional biologists as a gigantic joke—a joke, moreover,
not in the best possible taste. True, its central ideas, largely those
of Lamarck, had been presented by Hering in 1870 (as Butler found shortly
after his publication); they had been favourably received, developed by
Haeckel, expounded and praised by Ray Lankester. Coming from Butler,
they met with contumely, even from such men as Romanes, who, as Butler
had no difficulty in proving, were unconsciously inspired by the same
ideas—“_Nur mit ein bischen ander’n Wörter_.”
It is easy, looking back, to see why “Life and Habit” so missed its mark.
Charles Darwin’s presentation of the evolution theory had, for the first
time, rendered it possible for a “sound naturalist” to accept the
doctrine of common descent with divergence; and so given a real meaning
to the term “natural relationship,” which had forced itself upon the
older naturalists, despite their belief in special and independent
creations. The immediate aim of the naturalists of the day was now to
fill up the gaps in their knowledge, so as to strengthen the fabric of a
unified biology. For this purpose they found their actual scientific
equipment so inadequate that they were fully occupied in inventing fresh
technique, and working therewith at facts—save a few critics, such as St.
George Mivart, who was regarded as negligible, since he evidently held a
brief for a party standing outside the scientific world.
Butler introduced himself as what we now call “The Man in the Street,”
far too bare of scientific clothing to satisfy the Mrs. Grundy of the
domain: lacking all recognised tools of science and all sense of the
difficulties in his way, he proceeded to tackle the problems of science
with little save the deft pen of the literary expert in his hand. His
very failure to appreciate the difficulties gave greater power to his
work—much as Tartarin of Tarascon ascended the Jungfrau and faced
successfully all dangers of Alpine travel, so long as he believed them to
be the mere “blagues de réclame” of the wily Swiss host. His brilliant
qualities of style and irony themselves told heavily against him. Was he
not already known for having written the most trenchant satire that had
appeared since “Gulliver’s Travels”? Had he not sneered therein at the
very foundations of society, and followed up its success by a
pseudo-biography that had taken in the “Record” and the “Rock”? In “Life
and Habit,” at the very start, he goes out of his way to heap scorn at
the respected names of Marcus Aurelius, Lord Bacon, Goethe, Arnold of
Rugby, and Dr. W. B. Carpenter. He expressed the lowest opinion of the
Fellows of the Royal Society. To him the professional man of science,
with self-conscious knowledge for his ideal and aim, was a medicine-man,
priest, augur—useful, perhaps, in his way, but to be carefully watched by
all who value freedom of thought and person, lest with opportunity he
develop into a persecutor of the worst type. Not content with
blackguarding the audience to whom his work should most appeal, he went
on to depreciate that work itself and its author in his finest vein of
irony. Having argued that our best and highest knowledge is that of
whose possession we are most ignorant, he proceeds: “Above all, let no
unwary reader do me the injustice of believing in me. In that I write at
all I am among the damned.”
* * * * *
His writing of “EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW” (1879) was due to his conviction
that scant justice had been done by Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace and
their admirers to the pioneering work of Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and
Lamarck. To repair this he gives a brilliant exposition of what seemed
to him the most valuable portion of their teachings on evolution. His
analysis of Buffon’s true meaning, veiled by the reticences due to the
conditions under which he wrote, is as masterly as the English in which
he develops it. His sense of wounded justice explains the vigorous
polemic which here, as in all his later writings, he carries to the
extreme.
As a matter of fact, he never realised Charles Darwin’s utter lack of
sympathetic understanding of the work of his French precursors, let alone
his own grandfather, Erasmus. Yet this practical ignorance, which to
Butler was so strange as to transcend belief, was altogether genuine, and
easy to realise when we recall the position of Natural Science in the
early thirties in Darwin’s student days at Cambridge, and for a decade or
two later. Catastropharianism was the tenet of the day: to the last it
commended itself to his Professors of Botany and Geology,—for whom Darwin
held the fervent allegiance of the Indian scholar, or _chela_, to his
_guru_. As Geikie has recently pointed out, it was only later, when
Lyell had shown that the breaks in the succession of the rocks were only
partial and local, without involving the universal catastrophes that
destroyed all life and rendered fresh creations thereof necessary, that
any general acceptance of a descent theory could be expected. We may be
very sure that Darwin must have received many solemn warnings against the
dangerous speculations of the “French Revolutionary School.” He himself
was far too busy at the time with the reception and assimilation of new
facts to be awake to the deeper interest of far-reaching theories.
It is the more unfortunate that Butler’s lack of appreciation on these
points should have led to the enormous proportion of bitter personal
controversy that we find in the remainder of his biological writings.
Possibly, as suggested by George Bernard Shaw, his acquaintance and
admirer, he was also swayed by philosophical resentment at that
banishment of mind from the organic universe, which was generally thought
to have been achieved by Charles Darwin’s theory. Still, we must
remember that this mindless view is not implicit in Charles Darwin’s
presentment of his own theory, nor was it accepted by him as it has been
by so many of his professed disciples.
* * * * *
“UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY” (1880).—We have already alluded to an anticipation
of Butler’s main theses. In 1870 Dr. Ewald Hering, one of the most
eminent physiologists of the day, Professor at Vienna, gave an Inaugural
Address to the Imperial Royal Academy of Sciences: “Das Gedächtniss als
allgemeine Funktion der organisirter Substanz” (“Memory as a Universal
Function of Organised Matter”). When “Life and Habit” was well advanced,
Francis Darwin, at the time a frequent visitor, called Butler’s attention
to this essay, which he himself only knew from an article in “Nature.”
Herein Professor E. Ray Lankester had referred to it with admiring
sympathy in connection with its further development by Haeckel in a
pamphlet entitled “Die Perigenese der Plastidule.” We may note, however,
that in his collected Essays, “The Advancement of Science” (1890), Sir
Ray Lankester, while including this Essay, inserts on the blank page
{0b}—we had almost written “the white sheet”—at the back of it an apology
for having ever advocated the possibility of the transmission of acquired
characters.
“Unconscious Memory” was largely written to show the relation of Butler’s
views to Hering’s, and contains an exquisitely written translation of the
Address. Hering does, indeed, anticipate Butler, and that in language
far more suitable to the persuasion of the scientific public. It
contains a subsidiary hypothesis that memory has for its mechanism
special vibrations of the protoplasm, and the acquired capacity to
respond to such vibrations once felt upon their repetition. I do not
think that the theory gains anything by the introduction of this even as
a mere formal hypothesis; and there is no evidence for its being anything
more. Butler, however, gives it a warm, nay, enthusiastic, reception in
Chapter V (Introduction to Professor Hering’s lecture), and in his notes
to the translation of the Address, which bulks so large in this book, but
points out that he was “not committed to this hypothesis, though inclined
to accept it on a _prima facie_ view.” Later on, as we shall see, he
attached more importance to it.
The Hering Address is followed in “Unconscious Memory” by translations of
selected passages from Von Hartmann’s “Philosophy of the Unconscious,”
and annotations to explain the difference from this personification of
“_The Unconscious_” as a mighty all-ruling, all-creating personality, and
his own scientific recognition of the great part played by _unconscious
processes_ in the region of mind and memory.
These are the essentials of the book as a contribution to biological
philosophy. The closing chapters contain a lucid statement of objections
to his theory as they might be put by a rigid necessitarian, and a
refutation of that interpretation as applied to human action.
But in the second chapter Butler states his recession from the strong
logical position he had hitherto developed in his writings from “Erewhon”
onwards; so far he had not only distinguished the living from the
non-living, but distinguished among the latter _machines_ or _tools_ from
_things at large_. {0c} Machines or tools are the external organs of
living beings, as organs are their internal machines: they are fashioned,
assembled, or selected by the beings for a purposes so they have a
_future purpose_, as well as a _past history_. “Things at large” have a
past history, but no purpose (so long as some being does not convert them
into tools and give them a purpose): Machines have a Why? as well as a
How?: “things at large” have a How? only.
In “Unconscious Memory” the allurements of unitary or monistic views have
gained the upper hand, and Butler writes (p. 23):—
“The only thing of which I am sure is, that the distinction between
the organic and inorganic is arbitrary; that it is more coherent with
our other ideas, and therefore more acceptable, to start with every
molecule as a living thing, and then deduce death as the breaking up
of an association or corporation, than to start with inanimate
molecules and smuggle life into them; and that, therefore, what we
call the inorganic world must be regarded as up to a certain point
living, and instinct, within certain limits, with consciousness,
volition, and power of concerted action. _It is only of late_,
_however_, _that I have come to this opinion_.”
I have italicised the last sentence, to show that Butler was more or less
conscious of its irreconcilability with much of his most characteristic
doctrine. Again, in the closing chapter, Butler writes (p. 275):—
“We should endeavour to see the so-called inorganic as living in
respect of the qualities it has in common with the organic, rather
than the organic as non-living in respect of the qualities it has in
common with the inorganic.”
We conclude our survey of this book by mentioning the literary
controversial part chiefly to be found in Chapter IV, but cropping up
elsewhere. It refers to interpolations made in the authorised
translation of Krause’s “Life of Erasmus Darwin.” Only one side is
presented; and we are not called upon, here or elsewhere, to discuss the
merits of the question.
* * * * *
“LUCK, OR CUNNING, as the Main Means of Organic Modification? an Attempt
to throw Additional Light upon the late Mr. Charles Darwin’s Theory of
Natural Selection” (1887), completes the series of biological books.
This is mainly a book of strenuous polemic. It brings out still more
forcibly the Hering-Butler doctrine of continued personality from
generation to generation, and of the working of unconscious memory
throughout; and points out that, while this is implicit in much of the
teaching of Herbert Spencer, Romanes, and others, it was nowhere—even
after the appearance of “Life and Habit”—explicitly recognised by them,
but, on the contrary, masked by inconsistent statements and teaching.
Not Luck but Cunning, not the uninspired weeding out by Natural Selection
but the intelligent striving of the organism, is at the bottom of the
useful variety of organic life. And the parallel is drawn that not the
happy accident of time and place, but the Machiavellian cunning of
Charles Darwin, succeeded in imposing, as entirely his own, on the
civilised world an uninspired and inadequate theory of evolution wherein
luck played the leading part; while the more inspired and inspiring views
of the older evolutionists had failed by the inferiority of their luck.
On this controversy I am bound to say that I do not in the very least
share Butler’s opinions; and I must ascribe them to his lack of personal
familiarity with the biologists of the day and their modes of thought and
of work. Butler everywhere undervalues the important work of elimination
played by Natural Selection in its widest sense.
The “Conclusion” of “Luck, or Cunning?” shows a strong advance in
monistic views, and a yet more marked development in the vibration
hypothesis of memory given by Hering and only adopted with the greatest
reserve in “Unconscious Memory.”
“Our conception, then, concerning the nature of any matter depends
solely upon its kind and degree of unrest, that is to say, on the
characteristics of the vibrations that are going on within it. The
exterior object vibrating in a certain way imparts some of its
vibrations to our brain; but if the state of the thing itself depends
upon its vibrations, it [the thing] must be considered as to all
intents and purposes the vibrations themselves—plus, of course, the
underlying substance that is vibrating. . . . The same vibrations,
therefore, form the substance remembered, introduce an infinitesimal
dose of it within the brain, modify the substance remembering, and,
in the course of time, create and further modify the mechanism of
both the sensory and the motor nerves. Thought and thing are one.
“I commend these two last speculations to the reader’s charitable
consideration, as feeling that I am here travelling beyond the ground
on which I can safely venture. . . . I believe they are both
substantially true.”
In 1885 he had written an abstract of these ideas in his notebooks (see
_New Quarterly Review_, 1910, p. 116), and as in “Luck, or Cunning?”
associated them vaguely with the unitary conceptions introduced into
chemistry by Newlands and Mendelejeff. Judging himself as an outsider,
the author of “Life and Habit” would certainly have considered the mild
expression of faith, “I believe they are both substantially true,”
equivalent to one of extreme doubt. Thus “the fact of the Archbishop’s
recognising this as among the number of his beliefs is conclusive
evidence, with those who have devoted attention to the laws of thought,
that his mind is not yet clear” on the matter of the belief avowed (see
“Life and Habit,” pp. 24, 25).
To sum up: Butler’s fundamental attitude to the vibration hypothesis was
all through that taken in “Unconscious Memory”; he played with it as a
pretty pet, and fancied it more and more as time went on; but instead of
backing it for all he was worth, like the main theses of “Life and
Habit,” he put a big stake on it—and then hedged.
* * * * *
The last of Butler’s biological writings is the Essay, “THE DEADLOCK IN
DARWINISM,” containing much valuable criticism on Wallace and Weismann.
It is in allusion to the misnomer of Wallace’s book, “Darwinism,” that he
introduces the term “Wallaceism” {0d} for a theory of descent that
excludes the transmission of acquired characters. This was, indeed, the
chief factor that led Charles Darwin to invent his hypothesis of
pangenesis, which, unacceptable as it has proved, had far more to
recommend it as a formal hypothesis than the equally formal germ-plasm
hypothesis of Weismann.
* * * * *
The chief difficulty in accepting the main theses of Butler and Hering is
one familiar to every biologist, and not at all difficult to understand
by the layman. Everyone knows that the complicated beings that we term
“Animals” and “Plants,” consist of a number of more or less
individualised units, the cells, each analogous to a simpler being, a
Protist—save in so far as the character of the cell unit of the Higher
being is modified in accordance with the part it plays in that complex
being as a whole. Most people, too, are familiar with the fact that the
complex being starts as a single cell, separated from its parent; or,
where bisexual reproduction occurs, from a cell due to the fusion of two
cells, each detached from its parent. Such cells are called
“Germ-cells.” The germ-cell, whether of single or of dual origin, starts
by dividing repeatedly, so as to form the _primary embryonic cells_, a
complex mass of cells, at first essentially similar, which, however, as
they go on multiplying, undergo differentiations and migrations, losing
their simplicity as they do so. Those cells that are modified to take
part in the proper work of the whole are called tissue-cells. In virtue
of their activities, their growth and reproductive power are limited—much
more in Animals than in Plants, in Higher than in Lower beings. It is
these tissues, or some of them, that receive the impressions from the
outside which leave the imprint of memory. Other cells, which may be
closely associated into a continuous organ, or more or less surrounded by
tissue-cells, whose part it is to nourish them, are called “secondary
embryonic cells,” or “germ-cells.” The germ-cells may be differentiated
in the young organism at a very early stage, but in Plants they are
separated at a much later date from the less isolated embryonic regions
that provide for the Plant’s branching; in all cases we find embryonic
and germ-cells screened from the life processes of the complex organism,
or taking no very obvious part in it, save to form new tissues or new
organs, notably in Plants.
Again, in ourselves, and to a greater or less extent in all Animals, we
find a system of special tissues set apart for the reception and storage
of impressions from the outer world, and for guiding the other organs in
their appropriate responses—the “Nervous System”; and when this system is
ill-developed or out of gear the remaining organs work badly from lack of
proper skilled guidance and co-ordination. How can we, then, speak of
“memory” in a germ-cell which has been screened from the experiences of
the organism, which is too simple in structure to realise them if it were
exposed to them? My own answer is that we cannot form any theory on the
subject, the only question is whether we have any right to _infer_ this
“memory” from the _behaviour_ of living beings; and Butler, like Hering,
Haeckel, and some more modern authors, has shown that the inference is a
very strong presumption. Again, it is easy to over-value such complex
instruments as we possess. The possessor of an up-to-date camera, well
instructed in the function and manipulation of every part, but ignorant
of all optics save a hand-to-mouth knowledge of the properties of his own
lens, might say that _a priori_ no picture could be taken with a
cigar-box perforated by a pin-hole; and our ignorance of the mechanism of
the Psychology of any organism is greater by many times than that of my
supposed photographer. We know that Plants are able to do many things
that can only be accounted for by ascribing to them a “psyche,” and these
co-ordinated enough to satisfy their needs; and yet they possess no
central organ comparable to the brain, no highly specialised system for
intercommunication like our nerve trunks and fibres. As Oscar Hertwig
says, we are as ignorant of the mechanism of the development of the
individual as we are of that of hereditary transmission of acquired
characters, and the absence of such mechanism in either case is no reason
for rejecting the proven fact.
However, the relations of germ and body just described led Jäger,
Nussbaum, Galton, Lankester, and, above all, Weismann, to the view that
the germ-cells or “stirp” (Galton) were _in_ the body, but not _of_ it.
Indeed, in the body and out of it, whether as reproductive cells set
free, or in the developing embryo, they are regarded as forming one
continuous homogeneity, in contrast to the differentiation of the body;
and it is to these cells, regarded as a continuum, that the terms stirp,
germ-plasm, are especially applied. Yet on this view, so eagerly
advocated by its supporters, we have to substitute for the hypothesis of
memory, which they declare to have no real meaning here, the far more
fantastic hypotheses of Weismann: by these they explain the process of
differentiation in the young embryo into new germ and body; and in the
young body the differentiation of its cells, each in due time and place,
into the varied tissue cells and organs. Such views might perhaps be
acceptable if it could be shown that over each cell-division there
presided a wise all-guiding genie of transcending intellect, to which
Clerk-Maxwell’s sorting demons were mere infants. Yet these views have
so enchanted many distinguished biologists, that in dealing with the
subject they have actually ignored the existence of equally able workers
who hesitate to share the extremest of their views. The phenomenon is
one well known in hypnotic practice. So long as the non-Weismannians
deal with matters outside this discussion, their existence and their work
is rated at its just value; but any work of theirs on this point so
affects the orthodox Weismannite (whether he accept this label or reject
it does not matter), that for the time being their existence and the good
work they have done are alike non-existent. {0e}
Butler founded no school, and wished to found none. He desired that what
was true in his work should prevail, and he looked forward calmly to the
time when the recognition of that truth and of his share in advancing it
should give him in the lives of others that immortality for which alone
he craved.
Lamarckian views have never lacked defenders here and in America. Of the
English, Herbert Spencer, who however, was averse to the vitalistic
attitude, Vines and Henslow among botanists, Cunningham among zoologists,
have always resisted Weismannism; but, I think, none of these was
distinctly influenced by Hering and Butler. In America the majority of
the great school of palæontologists have been strong Lamarckians, notably
Cope, who has pointed out, moreover, that the transformations of energy
in living beings are peculiar to them.
We have already adverted to Haeckel’s acceptance and development of
Hering’s ideas in his “Perigenese der Plastidule.” Oscar Hertwig has
been a consistent Lamarckian, like Yves Delage of the Sorbonne, and these
occupy pre-eminent positions not only as observers, but as discriminating
theorists and historians of the recent progress of biology. We may also
cite as a Lamarckian—of a sort—Felix Le Dantec, the leader of the
chemico-physical school of the present day.
But we must seek elsewhere for special attention to the points which
Butler regarded as the essentials of “Life and Habit.” In 1893 Henry P.
Orr, Professor of Biology in the University of Louisiana, published a
little book entitled “A Theory of Heredity.” Herein he insists on the
nervous control of the whole body, and on the transmission to the
reproductive cells of such stimuli, received by the body, as will guide
them on their path until they shall have acquired adequate experience of
their own in the new body they have formed. I have found the name of
neither Butler nor Hering, but the treatment is essentially on their
lines, and is both clear and interesting.
In 1896 I wrote an essay on “The Fundamental Principles of Heredity,”
primarily directed to the man in the street. This, after being held over
for more than a year by one leading review, was “declined with regret,”
and again after some weeks met the same fate from another editor. It
appeared in the pages of “Natural Science” for October, 1897, and in the
“Biologisches Centralblatt” for the same year. I reproduce its closing
paragraph:—
“This theory [Hering-Butler’s] has, indeed, a tentative character,
and lacks symmetrical completeness, but is the more welcome as not
aiming at the impossible. A whole series of phenomena in organic
beings are correlated under the term of _memory_, _conscious and
unconscious_, _patent and latent_. . . . Of the order of unconscious
memory, latent till the arrival of the appropriate stimulus, is all
the co-operative growth and work of the organism, including its
development from the reproductive cells. Concerning the _modus
operandi_ we know nothing: the phenomena may be due, as Hering
suggests, to molecular vibrations, which must be at least as distinct
from ordinary physical disturbances as Röntgen’s rays are from
ordinary light; or it may be correlated, as we ourselves are inclined
to think, with complex chemical changes in an intricate but orderly
succession. For the present, at least, the problem of heredity can
only be elucidated by the light of mental, and not material
processes.”
It will be seen that I express doubts as to the validity of Hering’s
invocation of molecular vibrations as the mechanism of memory, and
suggest as an alternative rhythmic chemical changes. This view has
recently been put forth in detail by J. J. Cunningham in his essay on the
“Hormone {0f} Theory of Heredity,” in the _Archiv für
Entwicklungsmechanik_ (1909), but I have failed to note any direct effect
of my essay on the trend of biological thought.
Among post-Darwinian controversies the one that has latterly assumed the
greatest prominence is that of the relative importance of small
variations in the way of more or less “fluctuations,” and of
“discontinuous variations,” or “mutations,” as De Vries has called them.
Darwin, in the first four editions of the “Origin of Species,” attached
more importance to the latter than in subsequent editions; he was swayed
in his attitude, as is well known, by an article of the physicist,
Fleeming Jenkin, which appeared in the _North British Review_. The
mathematics of this article were unimpeachable, but they were founded on
the assumption that exceptional variations would only occur in single
individuals, which is, indeed, often the case among those domesticated
races on which Darwin especially studied the phenomena of variation.
Darwin was no mathematician or physicist, and we are told in his
biography that he regarded every tool-shop rule or optician’s thermometer
as an instrument of precision: so he appears to have regarded Fleeming
Jenkin’s demonstration as a mathematical deduction which he was bound to
accept without criticism.
Mr. William Bateson, late Professor of Biology in the University of
Cambridge, as early as 1894 laid great stress on the importance of
discontinuous variations, collecting and collating the known facts in his
“Materials for the Study of Variations”; but this important work, now
become rare and valuable, at the time excited so little interest as to be
‘remaindered’ within a very few years after publication.
In 1901 Hugo De Vries, Professor of Botany in the University of
Amsterdam, published “Die Mutationstheorie,” wherein he showed that
mutations or discontinuous variations in various directions may appear
simultaneously in many individuals, and in various directions. In the
gardener’s phrase, the species may take to sporting in various directions
at the same time, and each sport may be represented by numerous
specimens.
De Vries shows the probability that species go on for long periods
showing only fluctuations, and then suddenly take to sporting in the way
described, short periods of mutation alternating with long intervals of
relative constancy. It is to mutations that De Vries and his school, as
well as Luther Burbank, the great former of new fruit- and flower-plants,
look for those variations which form the material of Natural Selection.
In “God the Known and God the Unknown,” which appeared in the _Examiner_
(May, June, and July), 1879, but though then revised was only published
posthumously in 1909, Butler anticipates this distinction:—
“Under these circumstances organism must act in one or other of these
two ways: it must either change slowly and continuously with the
surroundings, paying cash for everything, meeting the smallest change
with a corresponding modification, so far as is found convenient, or
it must put off change as long as possible, and then make larger and
more sweeping changes.
“Both these courses are the same in principle, the difference being
one of scale, and the one being a miniature of the other, as a ripple
is an Atlantic wave in little; both have their advantages and
disadvantages, so that most organisms will take the one course for
one set of things and the other for another. They will deal promptly
with things which they can get at easily, and which lie more upon the
surface; _those_, _however_, _which are more troublesome to reach_,
_and lie deeper_, _will be handled upon more cataclysmic principles_,
_being allowed longer periods of repose followed by short periods of
greater activity_ . . . it may be questioned whether what is called a
sport is not the organic expression of discontent which has been long
felt, but which has not been attended to, nor been met step by step
by as much small remedial modification as was found practicable: so
that when a change does come it comes by way of revolution. Or,
again (only that it comes to much the same thing), it may be compared
to one of those happy thoughts which sometimes come to us unbidden
after we have been thinking for a long time what to do, or how to
arrange our ideas, and have yet been unable to come to any
conclusion” (pp. 14, 15). {0g}
We come to another order of mind in Hans Driesch. At the time he began
his work biologists were largely busy in a region indicated by Darwin,
and roughly mapped out by Haeckel—that of phylogeny. From the facts of
development of the individual, from the comparison of fossils in
successive strata, they set to work at the construction of pedigrees, and
strove to bring into line the principles of classification with the more
or less hypothetical “stemtrees.” Driesch considered this futile, since
we never could reconstruct from such evidence anything certain in the
history of the past. He therefore asserted that a more complete
knowledge of the physics and chemistry of the organic world might give a
scientific explanation of the phenomena, and maintained that the proper
work of the biologist was to deepen our knowledge in these respects. He
embodied his views, seeking the explanation on this track, filling up
gaps and tracing projected roads along lines of probable truth in his
“Analytische Theorie der organische Entwicklung.” But his own work
convinced him of the hopelessness of the task he had undertaken, and he
has become as strenuous a vitalist as Butler. The most complete
statement of his present views is to be found in “The Philosophy of Life”
(1908–9), being the Giffold Lectures for 1907–8. Herein he postulates a
quality (“psychoid”) in all living beings, directing energy and matter
for the purpose of the organism, and to this he applies the Aristotelian
designation “Entelechy.” The question of the transmission of acquired
characters is regarded as doubtful, and he does not emphasise—if he
accepts—the doctrine of continuous personality. His early youthful
impatience with descent theories and hypotheses has, however,
disappeared.
* * * * *
In the next work the influence of Hering and Butler is definitely present
and recognised. In 1906 Signor Eugenio Rignano, an engineer keenly
interested in all branches of science, and a little later the founder of
the international review, _Rivistà di Scienza_ (now simply called
_Scientia_), published in French a volume entitled “Sur la
transmissibilité des Caractères acquis—Hypothèse d’un Centro-épigenèse.”
Into the details of the author’s work we will not enter fully. Suffice
it to know that he accepts the Hering-Butler theory, and makes a distinct
advance on Hering’s rather crude hypothesis of persistent vibrations by
suggesting that the remembering centres store slightly different forms of
energy, to give out energy of the same kind as they have received, like
electrical accumulators. The last chapter, “Le Phénomène mnémonique et
le Phénomène vital,” is frankly based on Hering.
In “The Lesson of Evolution” (1907, posthumous, and only published for
private circulation) Frederick Wollaston Hutton, F.R.S., late Professor
of Biology and Geology, first at Dunedin and after at Christchurch, New
Zealand, puts forward a strongly vitalistic view, and adopts Hering’s
teaching. After stating this he adds, “The same idea of heredity being
due to unconscious memory was advocated by Mr. Samuel Butler in his “Life
and Habit.”
Dr. James Mark Baldwin, Stuart Professor of Psychology in Princeton
University, U.S.A., called attention early in the 90’s to a reaction
characteristic of all living beings, which he terms the “Circular
Reaction.” We take his most recent account of this from his “Development
and Evolution” (1902):—{0h}
“The general fact is that the organism reacts by concentration upon
the locality stimulated for the _continuance_ of the conditions,
movements, stimulations, _which are vitally beneficial_, and for the
cessation of the conditions, movements, stimulations _which are
vitally depressing_.”
This amounts to saying in the terminology of Jenning (see below) that the
living organism alters its “physiological states” either for its direct
benefit, or for its indirect benefit in the reduction of harmful
conditions.
Again:—
“This form of concentration of energy on stimulated localities, with
the resulting renewal through movement of conditions that are
pleasure-giving and beneficial, and the consequent repetition of the
movements is called ‘circular reaction.’”
Of course, the inhibition of such movements as would be painful on
repetition is merely the negative case of the circular reaction. We must
not put too much of our own ideas into the author’s mind; he nowhere says
explicitly that the animal or plant shows its sense and does this because
it likes the one thing and wants it repeated, or dislikes the other and
stops its repetition, as Butler would have said. Baldwin is very strong
in insisting that no full explanation can be given of living processes,
any more than of history, on purely chemico-physical grounds.
The same view is put differently and independently by H. S. Jennings,
{0i} who started his investigations of living Protista, the simplest of
living beings, with the idea that only accurate and ample observation was
needed to enable us to explain all their activities on a mechanical
basis, and devised ingenious models of protoplastic movements. He was
led, like Driesch, to renounce such efforts as illusory, and has come to
the conviction that in the behaviour of these lowly beings there is a
purposive and a tentative character—a method of “trial and error”—that
can only be interpreted by the invocation of psychology. He points out
that after stimulation the “state” of the organism may be altered, so
that the response to the same stimulus on repetition is other. Or, as he
puts it, the first stimulus has caused the organism to pass into a new
“physiological state.” As the change of state from what we may call the
“primary indifferent state” is advantageous to the organism, we may
regard this as equivalent to the doctrine of the “circular reaction,” and
also as containing the essence of Semon’s doctrine of “engrams” or
imprints which we are about to consider. We cite one passage which for
audacity of thought (underlying, it is true, most guarded expression) may
well compare with many of the boldest flights in “Life and Habit”:—
“It may be noted that regulation in the manner we have set forth is
what, in the behaviour of higher organisms, at least, is called
intelligence [the examples have been taken from Protista, Corals, and
the Lowest Worms]. If the same method of regulation is found in
other fields, there is no reason for refusing to compare the action
to intelligence. Comparison of the regulatory processes that are
shown in internal physiological changes and in regeneration to
intelligence seems to be looked upon sometimes as heretical and
unscientific. Yet intelligence is a name applied to processes that
actually exist in the regulation of movements, and there is, _a
priori_, no reason why similar processes should not occur in
regulation in other fields. When we analyse regulation objectively
there seems indeed reason to think that the processes are of the same
character in behaviour as elsewhere. If the term intelligence be
reserved for the subjective accompaniments of such regulation, then
of course we have no direct knowledge of its existence in any of the
fields of regulation outside of the self, and in the self perhaps
only in behaviour. But in a purely objective consideration there
seems no reason to suppose that regulation in behaviour
(intelligence) is of a fundamentally different character from
regulation elsewhere.” (“Method of Regulation,” p. 492.)
Jennings makes no mention of questions of the theory of heredity. He has
made some experiments on the transmission of an acquired character in
Protozoa; but it was a mutilation-character, which is, as has been often
shown, {0j} not to the point.
* * * * *
One of the most obvious criticisms of Hering’s exposition is based upon
the extended use he makes of the word “Memory”: this he had foreseen and
deprecated.
“We have a perfect right,” he says, “to extend our conception of
memory so as to make it embrace involuntary [and also unconscious]
reproductions of sensations, ideas, perceptions, and efforts; but we
find, on having done so, that we have so far enlarged her boundaries
that she proves to be an ultimate and original power, the source and,
at the same time, the unifying bond, of our whole conscious life.”
(“Unconscious Memory,” p. 68.)
This sentence, coupled with Hering’s omission to give to the concept of
memory so enlarged a new name, clear alike of the limitations and of the
stains of habitual use, may well have been the inspiration of the next
work on our list. Richard Semon is a professional zoologist and
anthropologist of such high status for his original observations and
researches in the mere technical sense, that in these countries he would
assuredly have been acclaimed as one of the Fellows of the Royal Society
who were Samuel Butler’s special aversion. The full title of his book is
“DIE MNEME als erhaltende Prinzip im Wechsel des organischen Geschehens”
(Munich, Ed. 1, 1904; Ed. 2, 1908). We may translate it “MNEME, a
Principle of Conservation in the Transformations of Organic Existence.”
From this I quote in free translation the opening passage of Chapter II:—
“We have shown that in very many cases, whether in Protist, Plant, or
Animal, when an organism has passed into an indifferent state after
the reaction to a stimulus has ceased, its irritable substance has
suffered a lasting change: I call this after-action of the stimulus
its ‘imprint’ or ‘engraphic’ action, since it penetrates and imprints
itself in the organic substance; and I term the change so effected an
‘imprint’ or ‘engram’ of the stimulus; and the sum of all the
imprints possessed by the organism may be called its ‘store of
imprints,’ wherein we must distinguish between those which it has
inherited from its forbears and those which it has acquired itself.
Any phenomenon displayed by an organism as the result either of a
single imprint or of a sum of them, I term a ‘mnemic phenomenon’; and
the mnemic possibilities of an organism may be termed, collectively,
its ‘MNEME.’
“I have selected my own terms for the concepts that I have just
defined. On many grounds I refrain from making any use of the good
German terms ‘Gedächtniss, Erinnerungsbild.’ The first and chiefest
ground is that for my purpose I should have to employ the German
words in a much wider sense than what they usually convey, and thus
leave the door open to countless misunderstandings and idle
controversies. It would, indeed, even amount to an error of fact to
give to the wider concept the name already current in the narrower
sense—nay, actually limited, like ‘Erinnerungsbild,’ to phenomena of
consciousness. . . . In Animals, during the course of history, one
set of organs has, so to speak, specialised itself for the reception
and transmission of stimuli—the Nervous System. But from this
specialisation we are not justified in ascribing to the nervous
system any monopoly of the function, even when it is as highly
developed as in Man. . . . Just as the direct excitability of the
nervous system has progressed in the history of the race, so has its
capacity for receiving imprints; but neither susceptibility nor
retentiveness is its monopoly; and, indeed, retentiveness seems
inseparable from susceptibility in living matter.”
Semen here takes the instance of stimulus and imprint actions affecting
the nervous system of a dog
“who has up till now never experienced aught but kindness from the
Lord of Creation, and then one day that he is out alone is pelted
with stones by a boy. . . . Here he is affected at once by two sets
of stimuli: (1) the optic stimulus of seeing the boy stoop for stones
and throw them, and (2) the skin stimulus of the pain felt when they
hit him. Here both stimuli leave their imprints; and the organism is
permanently changed in relation to the recurrence of the stimuli.
Hitherto the sight of a human figure quickly stooping had produced no
constant special reaction. Now the reaction is constant, and may
remain so till death. . . . The dog tucks in its tail between its
legs and takes flight, often with a howl [as of] pain.”
“Here we gain on one side a deeper insight into the imprint action of
stimuli. It reposes on the lasting change in the conditions of the
living matter, so that the repetition of the immediate or synchronous
reaction to its first stimulus (in this case the stooping of the boy,
the flying stones, and the pain on the ribs), no longer demands, as
in the original state of indifference, the full stimulus _a_, but may
be called forth by a partial or different stimulus, _b_ (in this case
the mere stooping to the ground). I term the influences by which
such changed reaction are rendered possible, ‘outcome-reactions,’ and
when such influences assume the form of stimuli, ‘outcome-stimuli.’”
They are termed “outcome” (“ecphoria”) stimuli, because the author
regards them and would have us regard them as the outcome, manifestation,
or efference of an imprint of a previous stimulus. We have noted that
the imprint is equivalent to the changed “physiological state” of
Jennings. Again, the capacity for gaining imprints and revealing them by
outcomes favourable to the individual is the “circular reaction” of
Baldwin, but Semon gives no reference to either author. {0k}
In the preface to his first edition (reprinted in the second) Semon
writes, after discussing the work of Hering and Haeckel:—
“The problem received a more detailed treatment in Samuel Butler’s
book, ‘Life and Habit,’ published in 1878. Though he only made
acquaintance with Hering’s essay after this publication, Butler gave
what was in many respects a more detailed view of the coincidences of
these different phenomena of organic reproduction than did Hering.
With much that is untenable, Butler’s writings present many a
brilliant idea; yet, on the whole, they are rather a retrogression
than an advance upon Hering. Evidently they failed to exercise any
marked influence upon the literature of the day.”
This judgment needs a little examination. Butler claimed, justly, that
his “Life and Habit” was an advance on Hering in its dealing with
questions of hybridity, and of longevity puberty and sterility. Since
Semon’s extended treatment of the phenomena of crosses might almost be
regarded as the rewriting of the corresponding section of “Life and
Habit” in the “Mneme” terminology, we may infer that this view of the
question was one of Butler’s “brilliant ideas.” That Butler shrank from
accepting such a formal explanation of memory as Hering did with his
hypothesis should certainly be counted as a distinct “advance upon
Hering,” for Semon also avoids any attempt at an explanation of “Mneme.”
I think, however, we may gather the real meaning of Semon’s strictures
from the following passages:—
“I refrain here from a discussion of the development of this theory
of Lamarck’s by those Neo-Lamarckians who would ascribe to the
individual elementary organism an equipment of complex psychical
powers—so to say, anthropomorphic perception and volitions. This
treatment is no longer directed by the scientific principle of
referring complex phenomena to simpler laws, of deducing even human
intellect and will from simpler elements. On the contrary, they
follow that most abhorrent method of taking the most complex and
unresolved as a datum, and employing it as an explanation. The
adoption of such a method, as formerly by Samuel Butler, and recently
by Pauly, I regard as a big and dangerous step backward” (ed. 2, pp.
380–1, note).
Thus Butler’s alleged retrogressions belong to the same order of thinking
that we have seen shared by Driesch, Baldwin, and Jennings, and most
explicitly avowed, as we shall see, by Francis Darwin. Semon makes one
rather candid admission, “The impossibility of interpreting the phenomena
of physiological stimulation by those of direct reaction, and the
undeception of those who had put faith in this being possible, have led
many on the _backward path of vitalism_.” Semon assuredly will never be
able to complete his theory of “Mneme” until, guided by the experience of
Jennings and Driesch, he forsakes the blind alley of mechanisticism and
retraces his steps to reasonable vitalism.
* * * * *
But the most notable publications bearing on our matter are incidental to
the Darwin Celebrations of 1908–9. Dr. Francis Darwin, son,
collaborator, and biographer of Charles Darwin, was selected to preside
over the Meeting of the British Association held in Dublin in 1908, the
jubilee of the first publications on Natural Selection by his father and
Alfred Russel Wallace. In this address we find the theory of Hering,
Butler, Rignano, and Semon taking its proper place as a _vera causa_ of
that variation which Natural Selection must find before it can act, and
recognised as the basis of a rational theory of the development of the
individual and of the race. The organism is essentially purposive: the
impossibility of devising any adequate accounts of organic form and
function without taking account of the psychical side is most strenuously
asserted. And with our regret that past misunderstandings should be so
prominent in Butler’s works, it was very pleasant to hear Francis
Darwin’s quotation from Butler’s translation of Hering {0l} followed by a
personal tribute to Butler himself.
* * * * *
In commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and of
the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the “Origin of Species,”
at the suggestion of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, the University
Press published during the current year a volume entitled “Darwin and
Modern Science,” edited by Mr. A. C. Seward, Professor of Botany in the
University. Of the twenty-nine essays by men of science of the highest
distinction, one is of peculiar interest to the readers of Samuel Butler:
“Heredity and Variation in Modern Lights,” by Professor W. Bateson,
F.R.S., to whose work on “Discontinuous Variations” we have already
referred. Here once more Butler receives from an official biologist of
the first rank full recognition for his wonderful insight and keen
critical power. This is the more noteworthy because Bateson has
apparently no faith in the transmission of acquired characters; but such
a passage as this would have commended itself to Butler’s admiration:—
“All this indicates a definiteness and specific order in heredity,
and therefore in variation. This order cannot by the nature of the
case be dependent on Natural Selection for its existence, but must be
a consequence of the fundamental chemical and physical nature of
living things. The study of Variation had from the first shown that
an orderliness of this kind was present. The bodies and properties
of living things are cosmic, not chaotic. No matter how low in the
scale we go, never do we find the slightest hint of a diminution in
that all-pervading orderliness, nor can we conceive an organism
existing for one moment in any other state.”
We have now before us the materials to determine the problem of Butler’s
relation to biology and to biologists. He was, we have seen, anticipated
by Hering; but his attitude was his own, fresh and original. He did not
hamper his exposition, like Hering, by a subsidiary hypothesis of
vibrations which may or may not be true, which burdens the theory without
giving it greater carrying power or persuasiveness, which is based on no
objective facts, and which, as Semon has practically demonstrated, is
needless for the detailed working out of the theory. Butler failed to
impress the biologists of his day, even those on whom, like Romanes, he
might have reasonably counted for understanding and for support. But he
kept alive Hering’s work when it bade fair to sink into the limbo of
obsolete hypotheses. To use Oliver Wendell Holmes’s phrase, he
“depolarised” evolutionary thought. We quote the words of a young
biologist, who, when an ardent and dogmatic Weismannist of the most
pronounced type, was induced to read “Life and Habit”: “The book was to
me a transformation and an inspiration.” Such learned writings as
Semon’s or Hering’s could never produce such an effect: they do not
penetrate to the heart of man; they cannot carry conviction to the
intellect already filled full with rival theories, and with the
unreasoned faith that to-morrow or next day a new discovery will
obliterate all distinction between Man and his makings. The mind must
needs be open for the reception of truth, for the rejection of prejudice;
and the violence of a Samuel Butler may in the future as in the past be
needed to shatter the coat of mail forged by too exclusively professional
a training.
MARCUS HARTOG
_Cork_, _April_, 1910
Author’s Preface
NOT finding the “well-known German scientific journal _Kosmos_” {0m}
entered in the British Museum Catalogue, I have presented the Museum with
a copy of the number for February 1879, which contains the article by Dr.
Krause of which Mr. Charles Darwin has given a translation, the accuracy
of which is guaranteed—so he informs us—by the translator’s “scientific
reputation together with his knowledge of German.” {0n}
I have marked the copy, so that the reader can see at a glance what
passages has been suppressed and where matter has been interpolated.
I have also present a copy of “Erasmus Darwin.” I have marked this too,
so that the genuine and spurious passages can be easily distinguished.
I understand that both the “Erasmus Darwin” and the number of _Kosmos_
have been sent to the Keeper of Printed Books, with instructions that
they shall be at once catalogued and made accessible to readers, and do
not doubt that this will have been done before the present volume is
published. The reader, therefore, who may be sufficiently interested in
the matter to care to see exactly what has been done will now have an
opportunity of doing so.
_October_ 25, 1880.
Chapter I
Introduction—General ignorance on the subject of evolution at the time
the “Origin of Species” was published in 1859.
THERE are few things which strike us with more surprise, when we review
the course taken by opinion in the last century, than the suddenness with
which belief in witchcraft and demoniacal possession came to an end.
This has been often remarked upon, but I am not acquainted with any
record of the fact as it appeared to those under whose eyes the change
was taking place, nor have I seen any contemporary explanation of the
reasons which led to the apparently sudden overthrow of a belief which
had seemed hitherto to be deeply rooted in the minds of almost all men.
As a parallel to this, though in respect of the rapid spread of an
opinion, and not its decadence, it is probable that those of our
descendants who take an interest in ourselves will note the suddenness
with which the theory of evolution, from having been generally ridiculed
during a period of over a hundred years, came into popularity and almost
universal acceptance among educated people.
It is indisputable that this has been the case; nor is it less
indisputable that the works of Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace have been the
main agents in the change that has been brought about in our opinions.
The names of Cobden and Bright do not stand more prominently forward in
connection with the repeal of the Corn Laws than do those of Mr. Darwin
and Mr. Wallace in connection with the general acceptance of the theory
of evolution. There is no living philosopher who has anything like Mr.
Darwin’s popularity with Englishmen generally; and not only this, but his
power of fascination extends all over Europe, and indeed in every country
in which civilisation has obtained footing: not among the illiterate
masses, though these are rapidly following the suit of the educated
classes, but among experts and those who are most capable of judging.
France, indeed—the country of Buffon and Lamarck—must be counted an
exception to the general rule, but in England and Germany there are few
men of scientific reputation who do not accept Mr. Darwin as the founder
of what is commonly called “Darwinism,” and regard him as perhaps the
most penetrative and profound philosopher of modern times.
To quote an example from the last few weeks only, {2} I have observed
that Professor Huxley has celebrated the twenty-first year since the
“Origin of Species” was published by a lecture at the Royal Institution,
and am told that he described Mr. Darwin’s candour as something actually
“terrible” (I give Professor Huxley’s own word, as reported by one who
heard it); and on opening a small book entitled “Degeneration,” by
Professor Ray Lankester, published a few days before these lines were
written, I find the following passage amid more that is to the same
purport:—
“Suddenly one of those great guesses which occasionally appear in the
history of science was given to the science of biology by the
imaginative insight of that greatest of living naturalists—I would
say that greatest of living men—Charles Darwin.”—_Degeneration_, p.
10.
This is very strong language, but it is hardly stronger than that
habitually employed by the leading men of science when they speak of Mr.
Darwin. To go farther afield, in February 1879 the Germans devoted an
entire number of one of their scientific periodicals {3} to the
celebration of Mr. Darwin’s seventieth birthday. There is no other
Englishman now living who has been able to win such a compliment as this
from foreigners, who should be disinterested judges.
Under these circumstances, it must seem the height of presumption to
differ from so great an authority, and to join the small band of
malcontents who hold that Mr. Darwin’s reputation as a philosopher,
though it has grown up with the rapidity of Jonah’s gourd, will yet not
be permanent. I believe, however, that though we must always gladly and
gratefully owe it to Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace that the public mind has
been brought to accept evolution, the admiration now generally felt for
the “Origin of Species” will appear as unaccountable to our descendants
some fifty or eighty years hence as the enthusiasm of our grandfathers
for the poetry of Dr. Erasmus Darwin does to ourselves; and as one who
has yielded to none in respect of the fascination Mr. Darwin has
exercised over him, I would fain say a few words of explanation which may
make the matter clearer to our future historians. I do this the more
readily because I can at the same time explain thus better than in any
other way the steps which led me to the theory which I afterwards
advanced in “Life and Habit.”
This last, indeed, is perhaps the main purpose of the earlier chapters of
this book. I shall presently give a translation of a lecture by
Professor Ewald Hering of Prague, which appeared ten years ago, and which
contains so exactly the theory I subsequently advocated myself, that I am
half uneasy lest it should be supposed that I knew of Professor Hering’s
work and made no reference to it. A friend to whom I submitted my
translation in MS., asking him how closely he thought it resembled “Life
and Habit,” wrote back that it gave my own ideas almost in my own words.
As far as the ideas are concerned this is certainly the case, and
considering that Professor Hering wrote between seven and eight years
before I did, I think it due to him, and to my readers as well as to
myself, to explain the steps which led me to my conclusions, and, while
putting Professor Hering’s lecture before them, to show cause for
thinking that I arrived at an almost identical conclusion, as it would
appear, by an almost identical road, yet, nevertheless, quite
independently, I must ask the reader, therefore, to regard these earlier
chapters as in some measure a personal explanation, as well as a
contribution to the history of an important feature in the developments
of the last twenty years. I hope also, by showing the steps by which I
was led to my conclusions, to make the conclusions themselves more
acceptable and easy of comprehension.
Being on my way to New Zealand when the “Origin of Species” appeared, I
did not get it till 1860 or 1861. When I read it, I found “the theory of
natural selection” repeatedly spoken of as though it were a synonym for
“the theory of descent with modification”; this is especially the case in
the recapitulation chapter of the work. I failed to see how important it
was that these two theories—if indeed “natural selection” can be called a
theory—should not be confounded together, and that a “theory of descent
with modification” might be true, while a “theory of descent with
modification through natural selection” {4} might not stand being looked
into.
If any one had asked me to state in brief what Mr. Darwin’s theory was, I
am afraid I might have answered “natural selection,” or “descent with
modification,” whichever came first, as though the one meant much the
same as the other. I observe that most of the leading writers on the
subject are still unable to catch sight of the distinction here alluded
to, and console myself for my want of acumen by reflecting that, if I was
misled, I was misled in good company.
I—and I may add, the public generally—failed also to see what the unaided
reader who was new to the subject would be almost certain to overlook. I
mean, that, according to Mr. Darwin, the variations whose accumulation
resulted in diversity of species and genus were indefinite, fortuitous,
attributable but in small degree to any known causes, and without a
general principle underlying them which would cause them to appear
steadily in a given direction for many successive generations and in a
considerable number of individuals at the same time. We did not know
that the theory of evolution was one that had been quietly but steadily
gaining ground during the last hundred years. Buffon we knew by name,
but he sounded too like “buffoon” for any good to come from him. We had
heard also of Lamarck, and held him to be a kind of French Lord Monboddo;
but we knew nothing of his doctrine save through the caricatures
promulgated by his opponents, or the misrepresentations of those who had
another kind of interest in disparaging him. Dr. Erasmus Darwin we
believed to be a forgotten minor poet, but ninety-nine out of every
hundred of us had never so much as heard of the “Zoonomia.” We were
little likely, therefore, to know that Lamarck drew very largely from
Buffon, and probably also from Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and that this
last-named writer, though essentially original, was founded upon Buffon,
who was greatly more in advance of any predecessor than any successor has
been in advance of him.
We did not know, then, that according to the earlier writers the
variations whose accumulation results in species were not fortuitous and
definite, but were due to a known principle of universal
application—namely, “sense of need”—or apprehend the difference between a
theory of evolution which has a backbone, as it were, in the tolerably
constant or slowly varying needs of large numbers of individuals for long
periods together, and one which has no such backbone, but according to
which the progress of one generation is always liable to be cancelled and
obliterated by that of the next. We did not know that the new theory in
a quiet way professed to tell us less than the old had done, and declared
that it could throw little if any light upon the matter which the earlier
writers had endeavoured to illuminate as the central point in their
system. We took it for granted that more light must be being thrown
instead of less; and reading in perfect good faith, we rose from our
perusal with the impression that Mr. Darwin was advocating the descent of
all existing forms of life from a single, or from, at any rate, a very
few primordial types; that no one else had done this hitherto, or that,
if they had, they had got the whole subject into a mess, which mess,
whatever it was—for we were never told this—was now being removed once
for all by Mr. Darwin.
The evolution part of the story, that is to say, the fact of evolution,
remained in our minds as by far the most prominent feature in Mr.
Darwin’s book; and being grateful for it, we were very ready to take Mr.
Darwin’s work at the estimate tacitly claimed for it by himself, and
vehemently insisted upon by reviewers in influential journals, who took
much the same line towards the earlier writers on evolution as Mr. Darwin
himself had taken. But perhaps nothing more prepossessed us in Mr.
Darwin’s favour than the air of candour that was omnipresent throughout
his work. The prominence given to the arguments of opponents completely
carried us away; it was this which threw us off our guard. It never
occurred to us that there might be other and more dangerous opponents who
were not brought forward. Mr. Darwin did not tell us what his
grandfather and Lamarck would have had to say to this or that. Moreover,
there was an unobtrusive parade of hidden learning and of difficulties at
last overcome which was particularly grateful to us. Whatever opinion
might be ultimately come to concerning the value of his theory, there
could be but one about the value of the example he had set to men of
science generally by the perfect frankness and unselfishness of his work.
Friends and foes alike combined to do homage to Mr. Darwin in this
respect.
For, brilliant as the reception of the “Origin of Species” was, it met in
the first instance with hardly less hostile than friendly criticism. But
the attacks were ill-directed; they came from a suspected quarter, and
those who led them did not detect more than the general public had done
what were the really weak places in Mr. Darwin’s armour. They attacked
him where he was strongest; and above all, they were, as a general rule,
stamped with a disingenuousness which at that time we believed to be
peculiar to theological writers and alien to the spirit of science.
Seeing, therefore, that the men of science ranged themselves more and
more decidedly on Mr. Darwin’s side, while his opponents had
manifestly—so far as I can remember, all the more prominent among them—a
bias to which their hostility was attributable, we left off looking at
the arguments against “Darwinism,” as we now began to call it, and
pigeon-holed the matter to the effect that there was one evolution, and
that Mr. Darwin was its prophet.
The blame of our errors and oversights rests primarily with Mr. Darwin
himself. The first, and far the most important, edition of the “Origin
of Species” came out as a kind of literary Melchisedec, without father
and without mother in the works of other people. Here is its opening
paragraph:—
“When on board H.M.S. ‘Beagle’ as naturalist, I was much struck with
certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South
America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past
inhabitants of that continent. These facts seemed to me to throw
some light on the origin of species—that mystery of mysteries, as it
has been called by one of our greatest philosophers. On my return
home, it occurred to me, in 1837, that something might be made out on
this question by patiently accumulating and reflecting upon all sorts
of facts which could possibly have any bearing on it. After five
years’ work I allowed myself to speculate on the subject, and drew up
some short notes; these I enlarged in 1844 into a sketch of the
conclusions which then seemed to me probable: from that period to the
present day I have steadily pursued the same object. I hope that I
may be excused for entering on these personal details, as I give them
to show that I have not been hasty in coming to a decision.” {8a}
In the latest edition this passage remains unaltered, except in one
unimportant respect. What could more completely throw us off the scent
of the earlier writers? If they had written anything worthy of our
attention, or indeed if there had been any earlier writers at all, Mr.
Darwin would have been the first to tell us about them, and to award them
their due meed of recognition. But, no; the whole thing was an original
growth in Mr. Darwin’s mind, and he had never so much as heard of his
grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin.
Dr. Krause, indeed, thought otherwise. In the number of _Kosmos_ for
February 1879 he represented Mr. Darwin as in his youth approaching the
works of his grandfather with all the devotion which people usually feel
for the writings of a renowned poet. {8b} This should perhaps be a
delicately ironical way of hinting that Mr. Darwin did not read his
grandfather’s books closely; but I hardly think that Dr. Krause looked at
the matter in this light, for he goes on to say that “almost every single
work of the younger Darwin may be paralleled by at least a chapter in the
works of his ancestor: the mystery of heredity, adaptation, the
protective arrangements of animals and plants, sexual selection,
insectivorous plants, and the analysis of the emotions and sociological
impulses; nay, even the studies on infants are to be found already
discussed in the pages of the elder Darwin.” {8c}
Nevertheless, innocent as Mr. Darwin’s opening sentence appeared, it
contained enough to have put us upon our guard. When he informed us
that, on his return from a long voyage, “it occurred to” him that the way
to make anything out about his subject was to collect and reflect upon
the facts that bore upon it, it should have occurred to us in our turn,
that when people betray a return of consciousness upon such matters as
this, they are on the confines of that state in which other and not less
elementary matters will not “occur to” them. The introduction of the
word “patiently” should have been conclusive. I will not analyse more of
the sentence, but will repeat the next two lines:—“After five years of
work, I allowed myself to speculate upon the subject, and drew up some
short notes.” We read this, thousands of us, and were blind.
If Dr. Erasmus Darwin’s name was not mentioned in the first edition of
the “Origin of Species,” we should not be surprised at there being no
notice taken of Buffon, or at Lamarck’s being referred to only twice—on
the first occasion to be serenely waved aside, he and all his works; {9a}
on the second, {9b} to be commended on a point of detail. The author of
the “Vestiges of Creation” was more widely known to English readers,
having written more recently and nearer home. He was dealt with
summarily, on an early and prominent page, by a misrepresentation, which
was silently expunged in later editions of the “Origin of Species.” In
his later editions (I believe first in his third, when 6000 copies had
been already sold), Mr. Darwin did indeed introduce a few pages in which
he gave what he designated as a “brief but imperfect sketch” of the
progress of opinion on the origin of species prior to the appearance of
his own work; but the general impression which a book conveys to, and
leaves upon, the public is conveyed by the first edition—the one which is
alone, with rare exceptions, reviewed; and in the first edition of the
“Origin of Species” Mr. Darwin’s great precursors were all either ignored
or misrepresented. Moreover, the “brief but imperfect sketch,” when it
did come, was so very brief, but, in spite of this (for this is what I
suppose Mr. Darwin must mean), so very imperfect, that it might as well
have been left unwritten for all the help it gave the reader to see the
true question at issue between the original propounders of the theory of
evolution and Mr. Charles Darwin himself.
That question is this: Whether variation is in the main attributable to a
known general principle, or whether it is not?—whether the minute
variations whose accumulation results in specific and generic differences
are referable to something which will ensure their appearing in a certain
definite direction, or in certain definite directions, for long periods
together, and in many individuals, or whether they are not?—whether, in a
word, these variations are in the main definite or indefinite?
It is observable that the leading men of science seem rarely to
understand this even now. I am told that Professor Huxley, in his recent
lecture on the coming of age of the “Origin of Species,” never so much as
alluded to the existence of any such division of opinion as this. He did
not even, I am assured, mention “natural selection,” but appeared to
believe, with Professor Tyndall, {10a} that “evolution” is “Mr. Darwin’s
theory.” In his article on evolution in the latest edition of the
“Encyclopædia Britannica,” I find only a veiled perception of the point
wherein Mr. Darwin is at variance with his precursors. Professor Huxley
evidently knows little of these writers beyond their names; if he had
known more, it is impossible he should have written that “Buffon
contributed nothing to the general doctrine of evolution,” {10b} and that
Erasmus Darwin, “though a zealous evolutionist, can hardly be said to
have made any real advance on his predecessors.” {11} The article is in
a high degree unsatisfactory, and betrays at once an amount of ignorance
and of perception which leaves an uncomfortable impression.
If this is the state of things that prevails even now, it is not
surprising that in 1860 the general public should, with few exceptions,
have known of only one evolution, namely, that propounded by Mr. Darwin.
As a member of the general public, at that time residing eighteen miles
from the nearest human habitation, and three days’ journey on horseback
from a bookseller’s shop, I became one of Mr. Darwin’s many enthusiastic
admirers, and wrote a philosophical dialogue (the most offensive form,
except poetry and books of travel into supposed unknown countries, that
even literature can assume) upon the “Origin of Species.” This
production appeared in the _Press_, Canterbury, New Zealand, in 1861 or
1862, but I have long lost the only copy I had.
Chapter II
How I came to write “Life and Habit,” and the circumstances of its
completion.
IT was impossible, however, for Mr. Darwin’s readers to leave the matter
as Mr. Darwin had left it. We wanted to know whence came that germ or
those germs of life which, if Mr. Darwin was right, were once the world’s
only inhabitants. They could hardly have come hither from some other
world; they could not in their wet, cold, slimy state have travelled
through the dry ethereal medium which we call space, and yet remained
alive. If they travelled slowly, they would die; if fast, they would
catch fire, as meteors do on entering the earth’s atmosphere. The idea,
again, of their having been created by a quasi-anthropomorphic being out
of the matter upon the earth was at variance with the whole spirit of
evolution, which indicated that no such being could exist except as
himself the result, and not the cause, of evolution. Having got back
from ourselves to the monad, we were suddenly to begin again with
something which was either unthinkable, or was only ourselves again upon
a larger scale—to return to the same point as that from which we had
started, only made harder for us to stand upon.
There was only one other conception possible, namely, that the germs had
been developed in the course of time from some thing or things that were
not what we called living at all; that they had grown up, in fact, out of
the material substances and forces of the world in some manner more or
less analogous to that in which man had been developed from themselves.
I first asked myself whether life might not, after all, resolve itself
into the complexity of arrangement of an inconceivably intricate
mechanism. Kittens think our shoe-strings are alive when they see us
lacing them, because they see the tag at the end jump about without
understanding all the ins and outs of how it comes to do so. “Of
course,” they argue, “if we cannot understand how a thing comes to move,
it must move of itself, for there can be no motion beyond our
comprehension but what is spontaneous; if the motion is spontaneous, the
thing moving must he alive, for nothing can move of itself or without our
understanding why unless it is alive. Everything that is alive and not
too large can be tortured, and perhaps eaten; let us therefore spring
upon the tag” and they spring upon it. Cats are above this; yet give the
cat something which presents a few more of those appearances which she is
accustomed to see whenever she sees life, and she will fall as easy a
prey to the power which association exercises over all that lives as the
kitten itself. Show her a toy-mouse that can run a few yards after being
wound up; the form, colour, and action of a mouse being here, there is no
good cat which will not conclude that so many of the appearances of
mousehood could not be present at the same time without the presence also
of the remainder. She will, therefore, spring upon the toy as eagerly as
the kitten upon the tag.
Suppose the toy more complex still, so that it might run a few yards,
stop, and run on again without an additional winding up; and suppose it
so constructed that it could imitate eating and drinking, and could make
as though the mouse were cleaning its face with its paws. Should we not
at first be taken in ourselves, and assume the presence of the remaining
facts of life, though in reality they were not there? Query, therefore,
whether a machine so complex as to be prepared with a corresponding
manner of action for each one of the successive emergencies of life as it
arose, would not take us in for good and all, and look so much as if it
were alive that, whether we liked it or not, we should be compelled to
think it and call it so; and whether the being alive was not simply the
being an exceedingly complicated machine, whose parts were set in motion
by the action upon them of exterior circumstances; whether, in fact, man
was not a kind of toy-mouse in the shape of a man, only capable of going
for seventy or eighty years, instead of half as many seconds, and as much
more versatile as he is more durable? Of course I had an uneasy feeling
that if I thus made all plants and men into machines, these machines must
have what all other machines have if they are machines at all—a designer,
and some one to wind them up and work them; but I thought this might wait
for the present, and was perfectly ready then, as now, to accept a
designer from without, if the facts upon examination rendered such a
belief reasonable.
If, then, men were not really alive after all, but were only machines of
so complicated a make that it was less trouble to us to cut the
difficulty and say that that kind of mechanism was “being alive,” why
should not machines ultimately become as complicated as we are, or at any
rate complicated enough to be called living, and to be indeed as living
as it was in the nature of anything at all to be? If it was only a case
of their becoming more complicated, we were certainly doing our best to
make them so.
I do not suppose I at that time saw that this view comes to much the same
as denying that there are such qualities as life and consciousness at
all, and that this, again, works round to the assertion of their
omnipresence in every molecule of matter, inasmuch as it destroys the
separation between the organic and inorganic, and maintains that whatever
the organic is the inorganic is also. Deny it in theory as much as we
please, we shall still always feel that an organic body, unless dead, is
living and conscious to a greater or less degree. Therefore, if we once
break down the wall of partition between the organic and inorganic, the
inorganic must be living and conscious also, up to a certain point.
I have been at work on this subject now for nearly twenty years, what I
have published being only a small part of what I have written and
destroyed. I cannot, therefore, remember exactly how I stood in 1863.
Nor can I pretend to see far into the matter even now; for when I think
of life, I find it so difficult, that I take refuge in death or
mechanism; and when I think of death or mechanism, I find it so
inconceivable, that it is easier to call it life again. The only thing
of which I am sure is, that the distinction between the organic and
inorganic is arbitrary; that it is more coherent with our other ideas,
and therefore more acceptable, to start with every molecule as a living
thing, and then deduce death as the breaking up of an association or
corporation, than to start with inanimate molecules and smuggle life into
them; and that, therefore, what we call the inorganic world must be
regarded as up to a certain point living, and instinct, within certain
limits, with consciousness, volition, and power of concerted action. It
is only of late, however, that I have come to this opinion.
One must start with a hypothesis, no matter how much one distrusts it; so
I started with man as a mechanism, this being the strand of the knot that
I could then pick at most easily. Having worked upon it a certain time,
I drew the inference about machines becoming animate, and in 1862 or 1863
wrote the sketch of the chapter on machines which I afterwards rewrote in
“Erewhon.” This sketch appeared in the _Press_, Canterbury, N.Z., June
13, 1863; a copy of it is in the British Museum.
I soon felt that though there was plenty of amusement to be got out of
this line, it was one that I should have to leave sooner or later; I
therefore left it at once for the view that machines were limbs which we
had made, and carried outside our bodies instead of incorporating them
with ourselves. A few days or weeks later than June 13, 1863, I
published a second letter in the _Press_ putting this view forward. Of
this letter I have lost the only copy I had; I have not seen it for
years. The first was certainly not good; the second, if I remember
rightly, was a good deal worse, though I believed more in the views it
put forward than in those of the first letter. I had lost my copy before
I wrote “Erewhon,” and therefore only gave a couple of pages to it in
that book; besides, there was more amusement in the other view. I should
perhaps say there was an intermediate extension of the first letter which
appeared in the _Reasoner_, July 1, 1865.
In 1870 and 1871, when I was writing “Erewhon,” I thought the best way of
looking at machines was to see them as limbs which we had made and
carried about with us or left at home at pleasure. I was not, however,
satisfied, and should have gone on with the subject at once if I had not
been anxious to write “The Fair Haven,” a book which is a development of
a pamphlet I wrote in New Zealand and published in London in 1865.
As soon as I had finished this, I returned to the old subject, on which I
had already been engaged for nearly a dozen years as continuously as
other business would allow, and proposed to myself to see not only
machines as limbs, but also limbs as machines. I felt immediately that I
was upon firmer ground. The use of the word “organ” for a limb told its
own story; the word could not have become so current under this meaning
unless the idea of a limb as a tool or machine had been agreeable to
common sense. What would follow, then, if we regarded our limbs and
organs as things that we had ourselves manufactured for our convenience?
The first question that suggested itself was, how did we come to make
them without knowing anything about it? And this raised another, namely,
how comes anybody to do anything unconsciously? The answer “habit” was
not far to seek. But can a person be said to do a thing by force of
habit or routine when it is his ancestors, and not he, that has done it
hitherto? Not unless he and his ancestors are one and the same person.
Perhaps, then, they _are_ the same person after all. What is sameness?
I remembered Bishop Butler’s sermon on “Personal Identity,” read it
again, and saw very plainly that if a man of eighty may consider himself
identical with the baby from whom he has developed, so that he may say,
“I am the person who at six months old did this or that,” then the baby
may just as fairly claim identity with its father and mother, and say to
its parents on being born, “I was you only a few months ago.” By parity
of reasoning each living form now on the earth must be able to claim
identity with each generation of its ancestors up to the primordial cell
inclusive.
Again, if the octogenarian may claim personal identity with the infant,
the infant may certainly do so with the impregnate ovum from which it has
developed. If so, the octogenarian will prove to have been a fish once
in this his present life. This is as certain as that he was living
yesterday, and stands on exactly the same foundation.
I am aware that Professor Huxley maintains otherwise. He writes: “It is
not true, for example, . . . that a reptile was ever a fish, but it is
true that the reptile embryo” (and what is said here of the reptile holds
good also for the human embryo), “at one stage of its development, is an
organism, which, if it had an independent existence, must be classified
among fishes.” {17}
This is like saying, “It is not true that such and such a picture was
rejected for the Academy, but it is true that it was submitted to the
President and Council of the Royal Academy, with a view to acceptance at
their next forthcoming annual exhibition, and that the President and
Council regretted they were unable through want of space, &c., &c.”—and
as much more as the reader chooses. I shall venture, therefore, to stick
to it that the octogenarian was once a fish, or if Professor Huxley
prefers it, “an organism which must be classified among fishes.”
But if a man was a fish once, he may have been a fish a million times
over, for aught he knows; for he must admit that his conscious
recollection is at fault, and has nothing whatever to do with the matter,
which must be decided, not, as it were, upon his own evidence as to what
deeds he may or may not recollect having executed, but by the production
of his signatures in court, with satisfactory proof that he has delivered
each document as his act and deed.
This made things very much simpler. The processes of embryonic
development, and instinctive actions, might be now seen as repetitions of
the same kind of action by the same individual in successive generations.
It was natural, therefore, that they should come in the course of time to
be done unconsciously, and a consideration of the most obvious facts of
memory removed all further doubt that habit—which is based on memory—was
at the bottom of all the phenomena of heredity.
I had got to this point about the spring of 1874, and had begun to write,
when I was compelled to go to Canada, and for the next year and a half
did hardly any writing. The first passage in “Life and Habit” which I
can date with certainty is the one on page 52, which runs as follows:—
“It is one against legion when a man tries to differ from his own
past selves. He must yield or die if he wants to differ widely, so
as to lack natural instincts, such as hunger or thirst, and not to
gratify them. It is more righteous in a man that he should ‘eat
strange food,’ and that his cheek should ‘so much as lank not,’ than
that he should starve if the strange food be at his command. His
past selves are living in him at this moment with the accumulated
life of centuries. ‘Do this, this, this, which we too have done, and
found out profit in it,’ cry the souls of his forefathers within him.
Faint are the far ones, coming and going as the sound of bells wafted
on to a high mountain; loud and clear are the near ones, urgent as an
alarm of fire.”
This was written a few days after my arrival in Canada, June 1874. I was
on Montreal mountain for the first time, and was struck with its extreme
beauty. It was a magnificent Summer’s evening; the noble St. Lawrence
flowed almost immediately beneath, and the vast expanse of country beyond
it was suffused with a colour which even Italy cannot surpass. Sitting
down for a while, I began making notes for “Life and Habit,” of which I
was then continually thinking, and had written the first few lines of the
above, when the bells of Notre Dame in Montreal began to ring, and their
sound was carried to and fro in a remarkably beautiful manner. I took
advantage of the incident to insert then and there the last lines of the
piece just quoted. I kept the whole passage with hardly any alteration,
and am thus able to date it accurately.
Though so occupied in Canada that writing a book was impossible, I
nevertheless got many notes together for future use. I left Canada at
the end of 1875, and early in 1876 began putting these notes into more
coherent form. I did this in thirty pages of closely written matter, of
which a pressed copy remains in my commonplace-book. I find two dates
among them—the first, “Sunday, Feb. 6, 1876”; and the second, at the end
of the notes, “Feb. 12, 1876.”
From these notes I find that by this time I had the theory contained in
“Life and Habit” completely before me, with the four main principles
which it involves, namely, the oneness of personality between parents and
offspring; memory on the part of offspring of certain actions which it
did when in the persons of its forefathers; the latency of that memory
until it is rekindled by a recurrence of the associated ideas; and the
unconsciousness with which habitual actions come to be performed.
The first half-page of these notes may serve as a sample, and runs thus:—
“Those habits and functions which we have in common with the lower
animals come mainly within the womb, or are done involuntarily, as
our [growth of] limbs, eyes, &c., and our power of digesting food,
&c. . . .
“We say of the chicken that it knows how to run about as soon as it
is hatched, . . . but had it no knowledge before it was hatched?
“It knew how to make a great many things before it was hatched.
“It grew eyes and feathers and bones.
“Yet we say it knew nothing about all this.
“After it is born it grows more feathers, and makes its bones larger,
and develops a reproductive system.
“Again we say it knows nothing about all this.
“What then does it know?
“Whatever it does not know so well as to be unconscious of knowing
it.
“Knowledge dwells upon the confines of uncertainty.
“When we are very certain, we do not know that we know. When we will
very strongly, we do not know that we will.”
I then began my book, but considering myself still a painter by
profession, I gave comparatively little time to writing, and got on but
slowly. I left England for North Italy in the middle of May 1876 and
returned early in August. It was perhaps thus that I failed to hear of
the account of Professor Hering’s lecture given by Professor Ray
Lankester in _Nature_, July 13 1876; though, never at that time seeing
_Nature_, I should probably have missed it under any circumstances. On
my return I continued slowly writing. By August 1877 I considered that I
had to all intents and purposes completed my book. My first proof bears
date October 13, 1877.
At this time I had not been able to find that anything like what I was
advancing had been said already. I asked many friends, but not one of
them knew of anything more than I did; to them, as to me, it seemed an
idea so new as to be almost preposterous; but knowing how things turn up
after one has written, of the existence of which one had not known
before, I was particularly careful to guard against being supposed to
claim originality. I neither claimed it nor wished for it; for if a
theory has any truth in it, it is almost sure to occur to several people
much about the same time, and a reasonable person will look upon his work
with great suspicion unless he can confirm it with the support of others
who have gone before him. Still I knew of nothing in the least
resembling it, and was so afraid of what I was doing, that though I could
see no flaw in the argument, nor any loophole for escape from the
conclusion it led to, yet I did not dare to put it forward with the
seriousness and sobriety with which I should have treated the subject if
I had not been in continual fear of a mine being sprung upon me from some
unexpected quarter. I am exceedingly glad now that I knew nothing of
Professor Hering’s lecture, for it is much better that two people should
think a thing out as far as they can independently before they become
aware of each other’s works but if I had seen it, I should either, as is
most likely, not have written at all, or I should have pitched my book in
another key.
Among the additions I intended making while the book was in the press,
was a chapter on Mr. Darwin’s provisional theory of Pangenesis, which I
felt convinced must be right if it was Mr. Darwin’s, and which I was
sure, if I could once understand it, must have an important bearing on
“Life and Habit.” I had not as yet seen that the principle I was
contending for was Darwinian, not Neo-Darwinian. My pages still teemed
with allusions to “natural selection,” and I sometimes allowed myself to
hope that “Life and Habit” was going to be an adjunct to Darwinism which
no one would welcome more gladly than Mr. Darwin himself. At this time I
had a visit from a friend, who kindly called to answer a question of
mine, relative, if I remember rightly, to “Pangenesis.” He came,
September 26, 1877. One of the first things he said was, that the theory
which had pleased him more than anything he had heard of for some time
was one referring all life to memory. I said that was exactly what I was
doing myself, and inquired where he had met with his theory. He replied
that Professor Ray Lankester had written a letter about it in _Nature_
some time ago, but he could not remember exactly when, and had given
extracts from a lecture by Professor Ewald Hering, who had originated the
theory. I said I should not look at it, as I had completed that part of
my work, and was on the point of going to press. I could not recast my
work if, as was most likely, I should find something, when I saw what
Professor Hering had said, which would make me wish to rewrite my own
book; it was too late in the day and I did not feel equal to making any
radical alteration; and so the matter ended with very little said upon
either side. I wrote, however, afterwards to my friend asking him to
tell me the number of _Nature_ which contained the lecture if he could
find it, but he was unable to do so, and I was well enough content.
A few days before this I had met another friend, and had explained to him
what I was doing. He told me I ought to read Professor Mivart’s “Genesis
of Species,” and that if I did so I should find there were two sides to
“natural selection.” Thinking, as so many people do—and no wonder—that
“natural selection” and evolution were much the same thing, and having
found so many attacks upon evolution produce no effect upon me, I
declined to read it. I had as yet no idea that a writer could attack
Neo-Darwinism without attacking evolution. But my friend kindly sent me
a copy; and when I read it, I found myself in the presence of arguments
different from those I had met with hitherto, and did not see my way to
answering them. I had, however, read only a small part of Professor
Mivart’s work, and was not fully awake to the position, when the friend
referred to in the preceding paragraph called on me.
When I had finished the “Genesis of Species,” I felt that something was
certainly wanted which should give a definite aim to the variations whose
accumulation was to amount ultimately to specific and generic
differences, and that without this there could have been no progress in
organic development. I got the latest edition of the “Origin of Species”
in order to see how Mr. Darwin met Professor Mivart, and found his
answers in many respects unsatisfactory. I had lost my original copy of
the “Origin of Species,” and had not read the book for some years. I now
set about reading it again, and came to the chapter on instinct, where I
was horrified to find the following passage:—
“But it would be a serious error to suppose that the greater number
of instincts have been acquired by habit in one generation and then
transmitted by inheritance to the succeeding generations. It can be
clearly shown that the most wonderful instincts with which we are
acquainted, namely, those of the hive-bee and of many ants, could not
possibly have been acquired by habit.” {23a}
This showed that, according to Mr. Darwin, I had fallen into serious
error, and my faith in him, though somewhat shaken, was far too great to
be destroyed by a few days’ course of Professor Mivart, the full
importance of whose work I had not yet apprehended. I continued to read,
and when I had finished the chapter felt sure that I must indeed have
been blundering. The concluding words, “I am surprised that no one has
hitherto advanced this demonstrative case of neuter insects against the
well-known doctrine of inherited habit as advanced by Lamarck,” {23b}
were positively awful. There was a quiet consciousness of strength about
them which was more convincing than any amount of more detailed
explanation. This was the first I had heard of any doctrine of inherited
habit as having been propounded by Lamarck (the passage stands in the
first edition, “the well-known doctrine of Lamarck,” p. 242); and now to
find that I had been only busying myself with a stale theory of this
long-since exploded charlatan—with my book three parts written and
already in the press—it was a serious scare.
On reflection, however, I was again met with the overwhelming weight of
the evidence in favour of structure and habit being mainly due to memory.
I accordingly gathered as much as I could second-hand of what Lamarck had
said, reserving a study of his “Philosophie Zoologique” for another
occasion, and read as much about ants and bees as I could find in readily
accessible works. In a few days I saw my way again; and now, reading the
“Origin of Species” more closely, and I may say more sceptically, the
antagonism between Mr. Darwin and Lamarck became fully apparent to me,
and I saw how incoherent and unworkable in practice the later view was in
comparison with the earlier. Then I read Mr. Darwin’s answers to
miscellaneous objections, and was met, and this time brought up, by the
passage beginning “In the earlier editions of this work,” {24a} &c., on
which I wrote very severely in “Life and Habit”; {24b} for I felt by this
time that the difference of opinion between us was radical, and that the
matter must be fought out according to the rules of the game. After this
I went through the earlier part of my book, and cut out the expressions
which I had used inadvertently, and which were inconsistent with a
teleological view. This necessitated only verbal alterations; for,
though I had not known it, the spirit of the book was throughout
teleological.
I now saw that I had got my hands full, and abandoned my intention of
touching upon “Pangenesis.” I took up the words of Mr. Darwin quoted
above, to the effect that it would be a serious error to ascribe the
greater number of instincts to transmitted habit. I wrote chapter xi. of
“Life and Habit,” which is headed “Instincts as Inherited Memory”; I also
wrote the four subsequent chapters, “Instincts of Neuter Insects,”
“Lamarck and Mr. Darwin,” “Mr. Mivart and Mr. Darwin,” and the concluding
chapter, all of them in the month of October and the early part of
November 1877, the complete book leaving the binder’s hands December 4,
1877, but, according to trade custom, being dated 1878. It will be seen
that these five concluding chapters were rapidly written, and this may
account in part for the directness with which I said anything I had to
say about Mr. Darwin; partly this, and partly I felt I was in for a penny
and might as well be in for a pound. I therefore wrote about Mr.
Darwin’s work exactly as I should about any one else’s, bearing in mind
the inestimable services he had undoubtedly—and must always be counted to
have—rendered to evolution.
Chapter III
How I came to write “Evolution, Old and New”—Mr Darwin’s “brief but
imperfect” sketch of the opinions of the writers on evolution who had
preceded him—The reception which “Evolution, Old and New,” met with.
THOUGH my book was out in 1877, it was not till January 1878 that I took
an opportunity of looking up Professor Ray Lankester’s account of
Professor Hering’s lecture. I can hardly say how relieved I was to find
that it sprung no mine upon me, but that, so far as I could gather,
Professor Hering and I had come to pretty much the same conclusion. I
had already found the passage in Dr. Erasmus Darwin which I quoted in
“Evolution, Old and New,” but may perhaps as well repeat it here. It
runs—
“Owing to the imperfection of language, the offspring is termed a new
animal; but is, in truth, a branch or elongation of the parent, since
a part of the embryon animal is or was a part of the parent, and,
therefore, in strict language, cannot be said to be entirely new at
the time of its production, and, therefore, it may retain some of the
habits of the parent system.” {26}
When, then, the _Athenæum_ reviewed “Life and Habit” (January 26, 1878),
I took the opportunity to write to that paper, calling attention to
Professor Hering’s lecture, and also to the passage just quoted from Dr.
Erasmus Darwin. The editor kindly inserted my letter in his issue of
February 9, 1878. I felt that I had now done all in the way of
acknowledgment to Professor Hering which it was, for the time, in my
power to do.
I again took up Mr. Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” this time, I admit, in
a spirit of scepticism. I read his “brief but imperfect” sketch of the
progress of opinion on the origin of species, and turned to each one of
the writers he had mentioned. First, I read all the parts of the
“Zoonomia” that were not purely medical, and was astonished to find that,
as Dr. Krause has since said in his essay on Erasmus Darwin, “_he was the
first who proposed and persistently carried out a well-rounded theory
with regard to the development of the living world_” {27} (italics in
original).