This is undoubtedly the case, and I was surprised at finding Professor

Huxley say concerning this very eminent man that he could “hardly be said

to have made any real advance upon his predecessors.” Still more was I

surprised at remembering that, in the first edition of the “Origin of

Species,” Dr. Erasmus Darwin had never been so much as named; while in

the “brief but imperfect” sketch he was dismissed with a line of

half-contemptuous patronage, as though the mingled tribute of admiration

and curiosity which attaches to scientific prophecies, as distinguished

from discoveries, was the utmost he was entitled to. “It is curious,”

says Mr. Darwin innocently, in the middle of a note in the smallest

possible type, “how largely my grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin,

anticipated the views and erroneous grounds of opinion of Lamarck in his

‘Zoonomia’ (vol. i. pp. 500–510), published in 1794”; this was all he had

to say about the founder of “Darwinism,” until I myself unearthed Dr.

Erasmus Darwin, and put his work fairly before the present generation in

“Evolution, Old and New.” Six months after I had done this, I had the

satisfaction of seeing that Mr. Darwin had woke up to the propriety of

doing much the same thing, and that he had published an interesting and

charmingly written memoir of his grandfather, of which more anon.

Not that Dr. Darwin was the first to catch sight of a complete theory of

evolution. Buffon was the first to point out that, in view of the known

modifications which had been effected among our domesticated animals and

cultivated plants, the ass and the horse should be considered as, in all

probability, descended from a common ancestor; yet, if this is so, he

writes—if the point “were once gained that among animals and vegetables

there had been, I do not say several species, but even a single one,

which had been produced in the course of direct descent from another

species; if, for example, it could be once shown that the ass was but a

degeneration from the horse, then there is no further limit to be set to

the power of Nature, and we should not be wrong in supposing that, with

sufficient time, she has evolved all other organised forms from one

primordial type” {28a} (_et l’on n’auroit pas tort de supposer_, _que

d’un seul être elle a su tirer avec le temps tous les autres êtres

organisés_).

This, I imagine, in spite of Professor Huxley’s dictum, is contributing a

good deal to the general doctrine of evolution; for though Descartes and

Leibnitz may have thrown out hints pointing more or less broadly in the

direction of evolution, some of which Professor Huxley has quoted, he has

adduced nothing approaching to the passage from Buffon given above,

either in respect of the clearness with which the conclusion intended to

be arrived at is pointed out, or the breadth of view with which the whole

ground of animal and vegetable nature is covered. The passage referred

to is only one of many to the same effect, and must be connected with one

quoted in “Evolution, Old and New,” {28b} from p. 13 of Buffon’s first

volume, which appeared in 1749, and than which nothing can well point

more plainly in the direction of evolution. It is not easy, therefore,

to understand why Professor Huxley should give 1753–78 as the date of

Buffon’s work, nor yet why he should say that Buffon was “at first a

partisan of the absolute immutability of species,” {29a} unless, indeed,

we suppose he has been content to follow that very unsatisfactory writer,

Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire (who falls into this error, and says that

Buffon’s first volume on animals appeared 1753), without verifying him,

and without making any reference to him.

Professor Huxley quotes a passage from the “Palingénésie Philosophique”

of Bonnet, of which he says that, making allowance for his peculiar views

on the subject of generation, they bear no small resemblance to what is

understood by “evolution” at the present day. The most important parts

of the passage quoted are as follows:—

“Should I be going too far if I were to conjecture that the plants

and animals of the present day have arisen by a sort of natural

evolution from the organised beings which peopled the world in its

original state as it left the hands of the Creator? . . . In the

outset organised beings were probably very different from what they

are now—as different as the original world is from our present one.

We have no means of estimating the amount of these differences, but

it is possible that even our ablest naturalist, if transplanted to

the original world, would entirely fail to recognise our plants and

animals therein.” {29b}

But this is feeble in comparison with Buffon, and did not appear till

1769, when Buffon had been writing on evolution for fully twenty years

with the eyes of scientific Europe upon him. Whatever concession to the

opinion of Buffon Bonnet may have been inclined to make in 1769, in 1764,

when he published his “Contemplation de la Nature,” and in 1762 when his

“Considérations sur les Corps Organes” appeared, he cannot be considered

to have been a supporter of evolution. I went through these works in

1878 when I was writing “Evolution, Old and New,” to see whether I could

claim him as on my side; but though frequently delighted with his work, I

found it impossible to press him into my service.

The pre-eminent claim of Buffon to be considered as the father of the

modern doctrine of evolution cannot be reasonably disputed, though he was

doubtless led to his conclusions by the works of Descartes and Leibnitz,

of both of whom he was an avowed and very warm admirer. His claim does

not rest upon a passage here or there, but upon the spirit of forty

quartos written over a period of about as many years. Nevertheless he

wrote, as I have shown in “Evolution, Old and New,” of set purpose

enigmatically, whereas there was no beating about the bush with Dr.

Darwin. He speaks straight out, and Dr. Krause is justified in saying of

him “_that he was the first who proposed and persistently carried out a

well-rounded theory_” of evolution.

I now turned to Lamarck. I read the first volume of the “Philosophie

Zoologique,” analysed it and translated the most important parts. The

second volume was beside my purpose, dealing as it does rather with the

origin of life than of species, and travelling too fast and too far for

me to be able to keep up with him. Again I was astonished at the little

mention Mr. Darwin had made of this illustrious writer, at the manner in

which he had motioned him away, as it were, with his hand in the first

edition of the “Origin of Species,” and at the brevity and imperfection

of the remarks made upon him in the subsequent historical sketch.

I got Isidore Geoffroy’s “Histoire Naturelle Générale,” which Mr. Darwin

commends in the note on the second page of the historical sketch, as

giving “an excellent history of opinion” upon the subject of evolution,

and a full account of Buffon’s conclusions upon the same subject. This

at least is what I supposed Mr. Darwin to mean. What he said was that

Isidore Geoffroy gives an excellent history of opinion on the subject of

the date of the first publication of Lamarck, and that in his work there

is a full account of Buffon’s fluctuating conclusions upon _the same

subject_. {31} But Mr. Darwin is a more than commonly puzzling writer.

I read what M. Geoffroy had to say upon Buffon, and was surprised to find

that, after all, according to M. Geoffroy, Buffon, and not Lamarck, was

the founder of the theory of evolution. His name, as I have already

said, was never mentioned in the first edition of the “Origin of

Species.”

M. Geoffroy goes into the accusations of having fluctuated in his

opinions, which he tells us have been brought against Buffon, and comes

to the conclusion that they are unjust, as any one else will do who turns

to Buffon himself. Mr. Darwin, however, in the “brief but imperfect

sketch,” catches at the accusation, and repeats it while saying nothing

whatever about the defence. The following is still all he says: “The

first author who in modern times has treated” evolution “in a scientific

spirit was Buffon. But as his opinions fluctuated greatly at different

periods, and as he does not enter on the causes or means of the

transformation of species, I need not here enter on details.” On the

next page, in the note last quoted, Mr. Darwin originally repeated the

accusation of Buffon’s having been fluctuating in his opinions, and

appeared to give it the imprimatur of Isidore Geoffroy’s approval; the

fact being that Isidore Geoffroy only quoted the accusation in order to

refute it; and though, I suppose, meaning well, did not make half the

case he might have done, and abounds with misstatements. My readers will

find this matter particularly dealt with in “Evolution, Old and New,”

Chapter X.

I gather that some one must have complained to Mr. Darwin of his saying

that Isidore Geoffroy gave an account of Buffon’s “fluctuating

conclusions” concerning evolution, when he was doing all he knew to

maintain that Buffon’s conclusions did not fluctuate; for I see that in

the edition of 1876 the word “fluctuating” has dropped out of the note in

question, and we now learn that Isidore Geoffroy gives “a full account of

Buffon’s conclusions,” without the “fluctuating.” But Buffon has not

taken much by this, for his opinions are still left fluctuating greatly

at different periods on the preceding page, and though he still was the

first to treat evolution in a scientific spirit, he still does not enter

upon the causes or means of the transformation of species. No one can

understand Mr. Darwin who does not collate the different editions of the

“Origin of Species” with some attention. When he has done this, he will

know what Newton meant by saying he felt like a child playing with

pebbles upon the seashore.

One word more upon this note before I leave it. Mr. Darwin speaks of

Isidore Geoffroy’s history of opinion as “excellent,” and his account of

Buffon’s opinions as “full.” I wonder how well qualified he is to be a

judge of these matters? If he knows much about the earlier writers, he

is the more inexcusable for having said so little about them. If little,

what is his opinion worth?

To return to the “brief but imperfect sketch.” I do not think I can ever

again be surprised at anything Mr. Darwin may say or do, but if I could,

I should wonder how a writer who did not “enter upon the causes or means

of the transformation of species,” and whose opinions “fluctuated greatly

at different periods,” can be held to have treated evolution “in a

scientific spirit.” Nevertheless, when I reflect upon the scientific

reputation Mr. Darwin has attained, and the means by which he has won it,

I suppose the scientific spirit must be much what he here implies. I see

Mr. Darwin says of his own father, Dr. Robert Darwin of Shrewsbury, that

he does not consider him to have had a scientific mind. Mr. Darwin

cannot tell why he does not think his father’s mind to have been fitted

for advancing science, “for he was fond of theorising, and was

incomparably the best observer” Mr. Darwin ever knew. {33a} From the

hint given in the “brief but imperfect sketch,” I fancy I can help Mr.

Darwin to see why he does not think his father’s mind to have been a

scientific one. It is possible that Dr. Robert Darwin’s opinions did not

fluctuate sufficiently at different periods, and that Mr. Darwin

considered him as having in some way entered upon the causes or means of

the transformation of species. Certainly those who read Mr. Darwin’s own

works attentively will find no lack of fluctuation in his case; and

reflection will show them that a theory of evolution which relies mainly

on the accumulation of accidental variations comes very close to not

entering upon the causes or means of the transformation of species. {33b}

I have shown, however, in “Evolution, Old and New,” that the assertion

that Buffon does not enter on the causes or means of the transformation

of species is absolutely without foundation, and that, on the contrary,

he is continually dealing with this very matter, and devotes to it one of

his longest and most important chapters, {33c} but I admit that he is

less satisfactory on this head than either Dr. Erasmus Darwin or Lamarck.

As a matter of fact, Buffon is much more of a Neo-Darwinian than either

Dr. Erasmus Darwin or Lamarck, for with him the variations are sometimes

fortuitous. In the case of the dog, he speaks of them as making their

appearance “_by some chance_ common enough with Nature,” {33d} and being

perpetuated by man’s selection. This is exactly the “if any slight

favourable variation _happen_ to arise” of Mr. Charles Darwin. Buffon

also speaks of the variations among pigeons arising “_par hasard_.” But

these expressions are only ships; his main cause of variation is the

direct action of changed conditions of existence, while with Dr. Erasmus

Darwin and Lamarck the action of the conditions of existence is indirect,

the direct action being that of the animals or plants themselves, in

consequence of changed sense of need under changed conditions.

I should say that the sketch so often referred to is at first sight now

no longer imperfect in Mr. Darwin’s opinion. It was “brief but

imperfect” in 1861 and in 1866, but in 1876 I see that it is brief only.

Of course, discovering that it was no longer imperfect, I expected to

find it briefer. What, then, was my surprise at finding that it had

become rather longer? I have found no perfectly satisfactory explanation

of this inconsistency, but, on the whole, incline to think that the

“greatest of living men” felt himself unequal to prolonging his struggle

with the word “but,” and resolved to lay that conjunction at all hazards,

even though the doing so might cost him the balance of his adjectives;

for I think he must know that his sketch is still imperfect.

From Isidore Geoffroy I turned to Buffon himself, and had not long to

wait before I felt that I was now brought into communication with the

master-mind of all those who have up to the present time busied

themselves with evolution. For a brief and imperfect sketch of him, I

must refer my readers to “Evolution, Old and New.”

I have no great respect for the author of the “Vestiges of Creation,” who

behaved hardly better to the writers upon whom his own work was founded

than Mr. Darwin himself has done. Nevertheless, I could not forget the

gravity of the misrepresentation with which he was assailed on page 3 of

the first edition of the “Origin of Species,” nor impugn the justice of

his rejoinder in the following year, {34} when he replied that it was to

be regretted Mr. Darwin had read his work “almost as much amiss as if,

like its declared opponents, he had an interest in misrepresenting it.”

{35a} I could not, again, forget that, though Mr. Darwin did not venture

to stand by the passage in question, it was expunged without a word of

apology or explanation of how it was that he had come to write it. A

writer with any claim to our consideration will never fall into serious

error about another writer without hastening to make a public apology as

soon as he becomes aware of what he has done.

Reflecting upon the substance of what I have written in the last few

pages, I thought it right that people should have a chance of knowing

more about the earlier writers on evolution than they were likely to hear

from any of our leading scientists (no matter how many lectures they may

give on the coming of age of the “Origin of Species”) except Professor

Mivart. A book pointing the difference between teleological and

non-teleological views of evolution seemed likely to be useful, and would

afford me the opportunity I wanted for giving a _résumé_ of the views of

each one of the three chief founders of the theory, and of contrasting

them with those of Mr. Charles Darwin, as well as for calling attention

to Professor Hering’s lecture. I accordingly wrote “Evolution, Old and

New,” which was prominently announced in the leading literary periodicals

at the end of February, or on the very first days of March 1879, {35b} as

“a comparison of the theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck,

with that of Mr. Charles Darwin, with copious extracts from the works of

the three first-named writers.” In this book I was hardly able to

conceal the fact that, in spite of the obligations under which we must

always remain to Mr. Darwin, I had lost my respect for him and for his

work.

I should point out that this announcement, coupled with what I had

written in “Life and Habit,” would enable Mr. Darwin and his friends to

form a pretty shrewd guess as to what I was likely to say, and to quote

from Dr. Erasmus Darwin in my forthcoming book. The announcement,

indeed, would tell almost as much as the book itself to those who knew

the works of Erasmus Darwin.

As may be supposed, “Evolution, Old and New,” met with a very

unfavourable reception at the hands of many of its reviewers. The

_Saturday Review_ was furious. “When a writer,” it exclaimed, “who has

not given as many weeks to the subject as Mr. Darwin has given years, is

not content to air his own crude though clever fallacies, but assumes to

criticise Mr. Darwin with the superciliousness of a young schoolmaster

looking over a boy’s theme, it is difficult not to take him more

seriously than he deserves or perhaps desires. One would think that Mr.

Butler was the travelled and laborious observer of Nature, and Mr. Darwin

the pert speculator who takes all his facts at secondhand.” {36}

The lady or gentleman who writes in such a strain as this should not be

too hard upon others whom she or he may consider to write like

schoolmasters. It is true I have travelled—not much, but still as much

as many others, and have endeavoured to keep my eyes open to the facts

before me; but I cannot think that I made any reference to my travels in

“Evolution, Old and New.” I did not quite see what that had to do with

the matter. A man may get to know a good deal without ever going beyond

the four-mile radius from Charing Cross. Much less did I imply that Mr.

Darwin was pert: pert is one of the last words that can be applied to Mr.

Darwin. Nor, again, had I blamed him for taking his facts at secondhand;

no one is to be blamed for this, provided he takes well-established facts

and acknowledges his sources. Mr. Darwin has generally gone to good

sources. The ground of complaint against him is that he muddied the

water after he had drawn it, and tacitly claimed to be the rightful owner

of the spring, on the score of the damage he had effected.

Notwithstanding, however, the generally hostile, or more or less

contemptuous, reception which “Evolution, Old and New,” met with, there

were some reviews—as, for example, those in the _Field_, {37a} the _Daily

Chronicle_, {37b} the _Athenæum_, {37c} the _Journal of Science_, {37d}

the _British Journal of Homæopathy_, {37e} the _Daily News_, {37f} the

_Popular Science Review_ {37g}—which were all I could expect or wish.

Chapter IV

The manner in which Mr. Darwin met “Evolution, Old and New.”

BY far the most important notice of “Evolution, Old and New,” was that

taken by Mr. Darwin himself; for I can hardly be mistaken in believing

that Dr. Krause’s article would have been allowed to repose unaltered in

the pages of the well-known German scientific journal, _Kosmos_, unless

something had happened to make Mr. Darwin feel that his reticence

concerning his grandfather must now be ended.

Mr. Darwin, indeed, gives me the impression of wishing me to understand

that this is not the case. At the beginning of this year he wrote to me,

in a letter which I will presently give in full, that he had obtained Dr.

Krause’s consent for a translation, and had arranged with Mr. Dallas,

before my book was “announced.” “I remember this,” he continues,

“because Mr. Dallas wrote to tell me of the advertisement.” But Mr.

Darwin is not a clear writer, and it is impossible to say whether he is

referring to the announcement of “Evolution, Old and New”—in which case

he means that the arrangements for the translation of Dr. Krause’s

article were made before the end of February 1879, and before any public

intimation could have reached him as to the substance of the book on

which I was then engaged—or to the advertisements of its being now

published, which appeared at the beginning of May; in which case, as I

have said above, Mr. Darwin and his friends had for some time had full

opportunity of knowing what I was about. I believe, however, Mr. Darwin

to intend that he remembered the arrangements having been made before the

beginning of May—his use of the word “announced,” instead of

“advertised,” being an accident; but let this pass.

Some time after Mr. Darwin’s work appeared in November 1879, I got it,

and looking at the last page of the book, I read as follows:—

“They” (the elder Darwin and Lamarck) “explain the adaptation to

purpose of organisms by an obscure impulse or sense of what is

purpose-like; yet even with regard to man we are in the habit of

saying, that one can never know what so-and-so is good for. The

purpose-like is that which approves itself, and not always that which

is struggled for by obscure impulses and desires. Just in the same

way the beautiful is what pleases.”

I had a sort of feeling as though the writer of the above might have had

“Evolution, Old and New,” in his mind, but went on to the next sentence,

which ran—

“Erasmus Darwin’s system was in itself a most significant first step

in the path of knowledge which his grandson has opened up for us, but

to wish to revive it at the present day, as has actually been

seriously attempted, shows a weakness of thought and a mental

anachronism which no one can envy.”

“That’s me,” said I to myself promptly. I noticed also the position in

which the sentence stood, which made it both one of the first that would

be likely to catch a reader’s eye, and the last he would carry away with

him. I therefore expected to find an open reply to some parts of

“Evolution, Old and New,” and turned to Mr. Darwin’s preface.

To my surprise, I there found that what I had been reading could not by

any possibility refer to me, for the preface ran as follows:—

“In the February number of a well-known German scientific journal,

_Kosmos_, {39} Dr. Ernest Krause published a sketch of the ‘Life of

Erasmus Darwin,’ the author of the ‘Zoonomia,’ ‘Botanic Garden,’ and

other works. This article bears the title of a ‘Contribution to the

History of the Descent Theory’; and Dr. Krause has kindly allowed my

brother Erasmus and myself to have a translation made of it for

publication in this country.”

Then came a note as follows:—

“Mr. Dallas has undertaken the translation, and his scientific

reputation, together with his knowledge of German, is a guarantee for

its accuracy.”

I ought to have suspected inaccuracy where I found so much consciousness

of accuracy, but I did not. However this may be, Mr. Darwin pins himself

down with every circumstance of preciseness to giving Dr. Krause’s

article as it appeared in _Kosmos_,—the whole article, and nothing but

the article. No one could know this better than Mr. Darwin.

On the second page of Mr. Darwin’s preface there is a small-type note

saying that my work, “Evolution, Old and New,” had appeared since the

publication of Dr. Krause’s article. Mr. Darwin thus distinctly

precludes his readers from supposing that any passage they might meet

with could have been written in reference to, or by the light of, my

book. If anything appeared condemnatory of that book, it was an

undesigned coincidence, and would show how little worthy of consideration

I must be when my opinions were refuted in advance by one who could have

no bias in regard to them.

Knowing that if the article I was about to read appeared in February, it

must have been published before my book, which was not out till three

months later, I saw nothing in Mr. Darwin’s preface to complain of, and

felt that this was only another instance of my absurd vanity having led

me to rush to conclusions without sufficient grounds,—as if it was

likely, indeed, that Mr. Darwin should think what I had said of

sufficient importance to be affected by it. It was plain that some one

besides myself, of whom I as yet knew nothing, had been writing about the

elder Darwin, and had taken much the same line concerning him that I had

done. It was for the benefit of this person, then, that Dr. Krause’s

paragraph was intended. I returned to a becoming sense of my own

insignificance, and began to read what I supposed to be an accurate

translation of Dr. Krause’s article as it originally appeared, before

“Evolution, Old and New,” was published.

On pp. 3 and 4 of Dr. Krause’s part of Mr. Darwin’s book (pp. 133 and 134

of the book itself), I detected a sub-apologetic tone which a little

surprised me, and a notice of the fact that Coleridge when writing on

Stillingfleet had used the word “Darwinising.” Mr. R. Garnett had called

my attention to this, and I had mentioned it in “Evolution, Old and New,”

but the paragraph only struck me as being a little odd.

When I got a few pages farther on (p. 147 of Mr. Darwin’s book), I found

a long quotation from Buffon about rudimentary organs, which I had quoted

in “Evolution, Old and New.” I observed that Dr. Krause used the same

edition of Buffon that I did, and began his quotation two lines from the

beginning of Buffon’s paragraph, exactly as I had done; also that he had

taken his nominative from the omitted part of the sentence across a full

stop, as I had myself taken it. A little lower I found a line of

Buffon’s omitted which I had given, but I found that at that place I had

inadvertently left two pair of inverted commas which ought to have come

out, {41} having intended to end my quotation, but changed my mind and

continued it without erasing the commas. It seemed to me that these

commas had bothered Dr. Krause, and made him think it safer to leave

something out, for the line he omits is a very good one. I noticed that

he translated “Mais comme nous voulons toujours tout rapporter à un

certain but,” “But we, always wishing to refer,” &c., while I had it,

“But we, ever on the look-out to refer,” &c.; and “Nous ne faisons pas

attention que nous altérons la philosophie,” “We fail to see that thus we

deprive philosophy of her true character,” whereas I had “We fail to see

that we thus rob philosophy of her true character.” This last was too

much; and though it might turn out that Dr. Krause had quoted this

passage before I had done so, had used the same edition as I had, had

begun two lines from the beginning of a paragraph as I had done, and that

the later resemblances were merely due to Mr. Dallas having compared Dr.

Krause’s German translation of Buffon with my English, and very properly

made use of it when he thought fit, it looked _primâ facie_ more as

though my quotation had been copied in English as it stood, and then

altered, but not quite altered enough. This, in the face of the preface,

was incredible; but so many points had such an unpleasant aspect, that I

thought it better to send for _Kosmos_ and see what I could make out.

At this time I knew not one word of German. On the same day, therefore,

that I sent for _Kosmos_ I began acquire that language, and in the

fortnight before _Kosmos_ came had got far enough forward for all

practical purposes—that is to say, with the help of a translation and a

dictionary, I could see whether or no a German passage was the same as

what purported to be its translation.

When _Kosmos_ came I turned to the end of the article to see how the

sentence about mental anachronism and weakness of thought looked in

German. I found nothing of the kind, the original article ended with

some innocent rhyming doggerel about somebody going on and exploring

something with eagle eye; but ten lines from the end I found a sentence

which corresponded with one six pages from the end of the English

translation. After this there could be little doubt that the whole of

these last six English pages were spurious matter. What little doubt

remained was afterwards removed by my finding that they had no place in

any part of the genuine article. I looked for the passage about

Coleridge’s using the word “Darwinising”; it was not to be found in the

German. I looked for the piece I had quoted from Buffon about

rudimentary organs; but there was nothing of it, nor indeed any reference

to Buffon. It was plain, therefore, that the article which Mr. Darwin

had given was not the one he professed to be giving. I read Mr. Darwin’s

preface over again to see whether he left himself any loophole. There

was not a chink or cranny through which escape was possible. The only

inference that could be drawn was either that some one had imposed upon

Mr. Darwin, or that Mr. Darwin, although it was not possible to suppose

him ignorant of the interpolations that had been made, nor of the obvious

purpose of the concluding sentence, had nevertheless palmed off an

article which had been added to and made to attack “Evolution, Old and

New,” as though it were the original article which appeared before that

book was written. I could not and would not believe that Mr. Darwin had

condescended to this. Nevertheless, I saw it was necessary to sift the

whole matter, and began to compare the German and the English articles

paragraph by paragraph.

On the first page I found a passage omitted from the English, which with

great labour I managed to get through, and can now translate as follows:—

“Alexander Von Humboldt used to take pleasure in recounting how

powerfully Forster’s pictures of the South Sea Islands and St.

Pierre’s illustrations of Nature had provoked his ardour for travel

and influenced his career as a scientific investigator. How much

more impressively must the works of Dr. Erasmus Darwin, with their

reiterated foreshadowing of a more lofty interpretation of Nature,

have affected his grandson, who in his youth assuredly approached

them with the devotion due to the works of a renowned poet.” {43}

I then came upon a passage common to both German and English, which in

its turn was followed in the English by the sub-apologetic paragraph

which I had been struck with on first reading, and which was not in the

German, its place being taken by a much longer passage which had no place

in the English. A little farther on I was amused at coming upon the

following, and at finding it wholly transformed in the supposed accurate

translation:—

“How must this early and penetrating explanation of rudimentary

organs have affected the grandson when he read the poem of his

ancestor! But indeed the biological remarks of this accurate

observer in regard to certain definite natural objects must have

produced a still deeper impression upon him, pointing, as they do, to

questions which hay attained so great a prominence at the present

day; such as, Why is any creature anywhere such as we actually see it

and nothing else? Why has such and such a plant poisonous juices?

Why has such and such another thorns? Why have birds and fishes

light-coloured breasts and dark backs, and, Why does every creature

resemble the one from which it sprung?” {44a}

I will not weary the reader with further details as to the omissions from

and additions to the German text. Let it suffice that the so-called

translation begins on p. 131 and ends on p. 216 of Mr. Darwin’s book.

There is new matter on each one of the pp. 132–139, while almost the

whole of pp. 147–152 inclusive, and the whole of pp. 211–216 inclusive,

are spurious—that is to say, not what the purport to be, not translations

from an article that was published in February 1879, and before

“Evolution, Old and New,” but interpolations not published till six

months after that book.

Bearing in mind the contents of two of the added passages and the tenor

of the concluding sentence quoted above, {44b} I could no longer doubt

that the article had been altered by the light of and with a view to

“Evolution, Old and New.”

The steps are perfectly clear. First Dr. Krause published his article in

_Kosmos_ and my book was announced (its purport being thus made obvious),

both in the month of February 1879. Soon afterwards arrangements were

made for a translation of Dr. Krause’s essay, and were completed by the

end of April. Then my book came out, and in some way or other Dr. Krause

happened to get hold of it. He helped himself—not to much, but to

enough; made what other additions to and omissions from his article he

thought would best meet “Evolution, Old and New,” and then fell to

condemning that book in a finale that was meant to be crushing. Nothing

was said about the revision which Dr. Krause’s work had undergone, but it

was expressly and particularly declared in the preface that the English

translation was an accurate version of what appeared in the February

number of _Kosmos_, and no less expressly and particularly stated that my

book was published subsequently to this. Both these statements are

untrue; they are in Mr. Darwin’s favour and prejudicial to myself.

All this was done with that well-known “happy simplicity” of which the

_Pall Mall Gazette_, December 12, 1879, declared that Mr. Darwin was “a

master.” The final sentence, about the “weakness of thought and mental

anachronism which no one can envy,” was especially successful. The

reviewer in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ just quoted from gave it in full, and

said that it was thoroughly justified. He then mused forth a general

gnome that the “confidence of writers who deal in semi-scientific

paradoxes is commonly in inverse proportion to their grasp of the

subject.” Again my vanity suggested to me that I was the person for

whose benefit this gnome was intended. My vanity, indeed, was well fed

by the whole transaction; for I saw that not only did Mr. Darwin, who

should be the best judge, think my work worth notice, but that he did not

venture to meet it openly. As for Dr. Krause’s concluding sentence, I

thought that when a sentence had been antedated the less it contained

about anachronism the better.

Only one of the reviews that I saw of Mr. Darwin’s “Life of Erasmus

Darwin” showed any knowledge of the facts. The _Popular Science Review_

for January 1880, in flat contradiction to Mr. Darwin’s preface, said

that only part of Dr. Krause’s article was being given by Mr. Darwin.

This reviewer had plainly seen both _Kosmos_ and Mr. Darwin’s book.

In the same number of the _Popular Science Review_, and immediately

following the review of Mr. Darwin’s book, there is a review of

“Evolution, Old and New.” The writer of this review quotes the passage

about mental anachronism as quoted by the reviewer in the _Pall Mall

Gazette_, and adds immediately: “This anachronism has been committed by

Mr. Samuel Butler in a . . . little volume now before us, and it is

doubtless to this, _which appeared while his own work was in progress_

[italics mine] that Dr. Krause alludes in the foregoing passage.”

Considering that the editor of the _Popular Science Review_ and the

translator of Dr. Krause’s article for Mr. Darwin are one and the same

person, it is likely the _Popular Science Review_ is well informed in

saying that my book appeared before Dr. Krause’s article had been

transformed into its present shape, and that my book was intended by the

passage in question.

Unable to see any way of escaping from a conclusion which I could not

willingly adopt, I thought it best to write to Mr. Darwin, stating the

facts as they appeared to myself, and asking an explanation, which I

would have gladly strained a good many points to have accepted. It is

better, perhaps, that I should give my letter and Darwin’s answer in

full. My letter ran thus:—

_January_ 2, 1880.

CHARLES DARWIN, ESQ., F.R.S., &c.

DEAR SIR,—Will you kindly refer me to the edition of _Kosmos_ which

contains the text of Dr. Krause’s article on Dr. Erasmus Darwin, as

translated by Mr. W. S. Dallas?

I have before me the last February number of _Kosmos_, which appears

by your preface to be the one from which Mr. Dallas has translated,

but his translation contains long and important passages which are

not in the February number of _Kosmos_, while many passages in the

original article are omitted in the translation.

Among the passages introduced are the last six pages of the English

article, which seem to condemn by anticipation the position I have

taken as regards Dr. Erasmus Darwin in my book, “Evolution, Old and

New,” and which I believe I was the first to take. The concluding,

and therefore, perhaps, most prominent sentence of the translation

you have given to the public stands thus:—

“Erasmus Darwin’s system was in itself a most significant first step

in the path of knowledge which his grandson has opened up for us, but

to wish to revive it at the present day, as has actually been

seriously attempted, shows a weakness of thought and a mental

anachronism which no man can envy.”

The _Kosmos_ which has been sent me from Germany contains no such

passage.

As you have stated in your preface that my book, “Evolution, Old and

New,” appeared subsequently to Dr. Krause’s article, and as no

intimation is given that the article has been altered and added to

since its original appearance, while the accuracy of the translation

as though from the February number of _Kosmos_ is, as you expressly

say, guaranteed by Mr. Dallas’s “scientific reputation together with

his knowledge of German,” your readers will naturally suppose that

all they read in the translation appeared in February last, and

therefore before “Evolution, Old and New,” was written, and therefore

independently of, and necessarily without reference to, that book.

I do not doubt that this was actually the case, but have failed to

obtain the edition which contains the passage above referred to, and

several others which appear in the translation.

I have a personal interest in this matter, and venture, therefore, to

ask for the explanation which I do not doubt you will readily give

me.—Yours faithfully, S. BUTLER.

The following is Mr. Darwin’s answer:—

_January_ 3, 1880.

MY DEAR SIR,—Dr. Krause, soon after the appearance of his article in

_Kosmos_ told me that he intended to publish it separately and to

alter it considerably, and the altered MS. was sent to Mr. Dallas for

translation. This is so common a practice that it never occurred to

me to state that the article had been modified; but now I much regret

that I did not do so. The original will soon appear in German, and I

believe will be a much larger book than the English one; for, with

Dr. Krause’s consent, many long extracts from Miss Seward were

omitted (as well as much other matter), from being in my opinion

superfluous for the English reader. I believe that the omitted parts

will appear as notes in the German edition. Should there be a

reprint of the English Life I will state that the original as it

appeared in _Kosmos_ was modified by Dr. Krause before it was

translated. I may add that I had obtained Dr. Krause’s consent for a

translation, and had arranged with Mr. Dallas before your book was

announced. I remember this because Mr. Dallas wrote to tell me of

the advertisement.—I remain, yours faithfully, C. DARWIN.

This was not a letter I could accept. If Mr. Darwin had said that by

some inadvertence, which he was unable to excuse or account for, a

blunder had been made which he would at once correct so far as was in his

power by a letter to the _Times_ or the _Athenæum_, and that a notice of

the erratum should be printed on a flyleaf and pasted into all unsold

copies of the “Life of Erasmus Darwin,” there would have been no more

heard about the matter from me; but when Mr. Darwin maintained that it

was a common practice to take advantage of an opportunity of revising a

work to interpolate a covert attack upon an opponent, and at the same

time to misdate the interpolated matter by expressly stating that it

appeared months sooner than it actually did, and prior to the work which

it attacked; when he maintained that what was being done was “so common a

practice that it never occurred,” to him—the writer of some twenty

volumes—to do what all literary men must know to be inexorably requisite,

I thought this was going far beyond what was permissible in honourable

warfare, and that it was time, in the interests of literary and

scientific morality, even more than in my own, to appeal to public

opinion. I was particularly struck with the use of the words “it never

occurred to me,” and felt how completely of a piece it was with the

opening paragraph of the “Origin of Species.” It was not merely that it

did not occur to Mr. Darwin to state that the article had been modified

since it was written—this would have been bad enough under the

circumstances but that it did occur to him to go out of his way to say

what was not true. There was no necessity for him to have said anything

about my book. It appeared, moreover, inadequate to tell me that if a

reprint of the English Life was wanted (which might or might not be the

case, and if it was not the case, why, a shrug of the shoulders, and I

must make the best of it), Mr. Darwin might perhaps silently omit his

note about my book, as he omitted his misrepresentation of the author of

the “Vestiges of Creation,” and put the words “revised and corrected by

the author” on his title-page.

No matter how high a writer may stand, nor what services he may have

unquestionably rendered, it cannot be for the general well-being that he

should be allowed to set aside the fundamental principles of

straightforwardness and fair play. When I thought of Buffon, of Dr.

Erasmus Darwin, of Lamarck and even of the author of the “Vestiges of

Creation,” to all of whom Mr. Darwin had dealt the same measure which he

was now dealing to myself; when I thought of these great men, now dumb,

who had borne the burden and heat of the day, and whose laurels had been

filched from them; of the manner, too, in which Mr. Darwin had been

abetted by those who should have been the first to detect the fallacy

which had misled him; of the hotbed of intrigue which science has now

become; of the disrepute into which we English must fall as a nation if

such practices as Mr. Darwin had attempted in this case were to be

tolerated;—when I thought of all this, I felt that though prayers for the

repose of dead men’s souls might be unavailing, yet a defence of their

work and memory, no matter against what odds, might avail the living, and

resolved that I would do my utmost to make my countrymen aware of the

spirit now ruling among those whom they delight to honour.

At first I thought I ought to continue the correspondence privately with

Mr. Darwin, and explain to him that his letter was insufficient, but on

reflection I felt that little good was likely to come of a second letter,

if what I had already written was not enough. I therefore wrote to the

_Athenæum_ and gave a condensed account of the facts contained in the

last ten or a dozen pages. My letter appeared January 31, 1880. {50}

The accusation was a very grave one; it was made in a very public place.

I gave my name; I adduced the strongest _primâ facie_ grounds for the

acceptance of my statements; but there was no rejoinder, and for the best

of all reasons—that no rejoinder was possible. Besides, what is the good

of having a reputation for candour if one may not stand upon it at a

pinch? I never yet knew a person with an especial reputation for candour

without finding sooner or later that he had developed it as animals

develop their organs, through “sense of need.” Not only did Mr. Darwin

remain perfectly quiet, but all reviewers and _littérateurs_ remained

perfectly quiet also. It seemed—though I do not for a moment believe

that this is so—as if public opinion rather approved of what Mr. Darwin

had done, and of his silence than otherwise. I saw the “Life of Erasmus

Darwin” more frequently and more prominently advertised now than I had

seen it hitherto—perhaps in the hope of selling off the adulterated

copies, and being able to reprint the work with a corrected title page.

Presently I saw Professor Huxley hastening to the rescue with his lecture

on the coming of age of the “Origin of Species,” and by May it was easy

for Professor Ray Lankester to imply that Mr. Darwin was the greatest of

living men. I have since noticed two or three other controversies raging

in the _Athenæum_ and _Times_; in each of these cases I saw it assumed

that the defeated party, when proved to have publicly misrepresented his

adversary, should do his best to correct in public the injury which he

had publicly inflicted, but I noticed that in none of them had the beaten

side any especial reputation for candour. This probably made all the

difference. But however this may be, Mr. Darwin left me in possession of

the field, in the hope, doubtless, that the matter would blow over—which

it apparently soon did. Whether it has done so in reality or no, is a

matter which remains to be seen. My own belief is that people paid no

attention to what I said, as believing it simply incredible, and that

when they come to know that it is true, they will think as I do

concerning it.

From ladies and gentlemen of science I admit that I have no expectations.

There is no conduct so dishonourable that people will not deny it or

explain it away, if it has been committed by one whom they recognise as

of their own persuasion. It must be remembered that facts cannot be

respected by the scientist in the same way as by other people. It is his

business to familiarise himself with facts, and, as we all know, the path

from familiarity to contempt is an easy one.

Here, then, I take leave of this matter for the present. If it appears

that I have used language such as is rarely seen in controversy, let the

reader remember that the occasion is, so far as I know, unparalleled for

the cynicism and audacity with which the wrong complained of was

committed and persisted in. I trust, however, that, though not

indifferent to this, my indignation has been mainly roused, as when I

wrote “Evolution, Old and New,” before Mr. Darwin had given me personal

ground of complaint against him, by the wrongs he has inflicted on dead

men, on whose behalf I now fight, as I trust that some one—whom I thank

by anticipation—may one day fight on mine.

Chapter V

Introduction to Professor Hering’s lecture.

AFTER I had finished “Evolution, Old and New,” I wrote some articles for

the _Examiner_, {52} in which I carried out the idea put forward in “Life

and Habit,” that we are one person with our ancestors. It follows from

this, that all living animals and vegetables, being—as appears likely if

the theory of evolution is accepted—descended from a common ancestor, are

in reality one person, and unite to form a body corporate, of whose

existence, however, they are unconscious. There is an obvious analogy

between this and the manner in which the component cells of our bodies

unite to form our single individuality, of which it is not likely they

have a conception, and with which they have probably only the same

partial and imperfect sympathy as we, the body corporate, have with them.

In the articles above alluded to I separated the organic from the

inorganic, and when I came to rewrite them, I found that this could not

be done, and that I must reconstruct what I had written. I was at work

on this—to which I hope to return shortly—when Dr. Krause’s’ “Erasmus

Darwin,” with its preliminary notice by Mr. Charles Darwin, came out, and

having been compelled, as I have shown above, by Dr. Krause’s work to

look a little into the German language, the opportunity seemed favourable

for going on with it and becoming acquainted with Professor Hering’s

lecture. I therefore began to translate his lecture at once, with the

kind assistance of friends whose patience seemed inexhaustible, and found

myself well rewarded for my trouble.

Professor Hering and I, to use a metaphor of his own, are as men who have

observed the action of living beings upon the stage of the world, he from

the point of view at once of a spectator and of one who has free access

to much of what goes on behind the scenes, I from that of a spectator

only, with none but the vaguest notion of the actual manner in which the

stage machinery is worked. If two men so placed, after years of

reflection, arrive independently of one another at an identical

conclusion as regards the manner in which this machinery must have been

invented and perfected, it is natural that each should take a deep

interest in the arguments of the other, and be anxious to put them

forward with the utmost possible prominence. It seems to me that the

theory which Professor Hering and I are supporting in common, is one the

importance of which is hardly inferior to that of the theory of evolution

itself—for it puts the backbone, as it were, into the theory of

evolution. I shall therefore make no apology for laying my translation

of Professor Hering’s work before my reader.

Concerning the identity of the main idea put forward in “Life and Habit”

with that of Professor Hering’s lecture, there can hardly, I think, be

two opinions. We both of us maintain that we grow our limbs as we do,

and possess the instincts we possess, because we remember having grown

our limbs in this way, and having had these instincts in past generations

when we were in the persons of our forefathers—each individual life

adding a small (but so small, in any one lifetime, as to be hardly

appreciable) amount of new experience to the general store of memory;

that we have thus got into certain habits which we can now rarely break;

and that we do much of what we do unconsciously on the same principle as

that (whatever it is) on which we do all other habitual actions, with the

greater ease and unconsciousness the more often we repeat them. Not only

is the main idea the same, but I was surprised to find how often

Professor Hering and I had taken the same illustrations with which to

point our meaning.

Nevertheless, we have each of us left undealt with some points which the

other has treated of. Professor Hering, for example, goes into the

question of what memory is, and this I did not venture to do. I confined

myself to saying that whatever memory was, heredity was also. Professor

Hering adds that memory is due to vibrations of the molecules of the

nerve fibres, which under certain circumstances recur, and bring about a

corresponding recurrence of visible action.

This approaches closely to the theory concerning the physics of memory

which has been most generally adopted since the time of Bonnet, who wrote

as follows:—

“The soul never has a new sensation but by the inter position of the

senses. This sensation has been originally attached to the motion of

certain fibres. Its reproduction or recollection by the senses will

then be likewise connected with these same fibres.” . . . {54a}

And again:—

“It appeared to me that since this memory is connected with the body,

it must depend upon some change which must happen to the primitive

state of the sensible fibres by the action of objects. I have,

therefore, admitted as probable that the state of the fibres on which

an object has acted is not precisely the same after this action as it

was before I have conjectured that the sensible fibres experience

more or less durable modifications, which constitute the physics of

memory and recollection.” {54b}

Professor Hering comes near to endorsing this view, and uses it for the

purpose of explaining personal identity. This, at least, is what he does

in fact, though perhaps hardly in words. I did not say more upon the

essence of personality than that it was inseparable from the idea that

the various phases of our existence should have flowed one out of the

other, “in what we see as a continuous, though it may be at times a very

troubled, stream” {55} but I maintained that the identity between two

successive generations was of essentially the same kind as that existing

between an infant and an octogenarian. I thus left personal identity

unexplained, though insisting that it was the key to two apparently

distinct sets of phenomena, the one of which had been hitherto considered

incompatible with our ideas concerning it. Professor Hering insists on

this too, but he gives us farther insight into what personal identity is,

and explains how it is that the phenomena of heredity are phenomena also

of personal identity.

He implies, though in the short space at his command he has hardly said

so in express terms, that personal identity as we commonly think of

it—that is to say, as confined to the single life of the

individual—consists in the uninterruptedness of a sufficient number of

vibrations, which have been communicated from molecule to molecule of the

nerve fibres, and which go on communicating each one of them its own

peculiar characteristic elements to the new matter which we introduce

into the body by way of nutrition. These vibrations may be so gentle as

to be imperceptible for years together; but they are there, and may

become perceived if they receive accession through the running into them

of a wave going the same way as themselves, which wave has been set up in

the ether by exterior objects and has been communicated to the organs of

sense.

As these pages are on the point of leaving my hands, I see the following

remarkable passage in _Mind_ for the current month, and introduce it

parenthetically here:—

“I followed the sluggish current of hyaline material issuing from

globules of most primitive living substance. Persistently it

followed its way into space, conquering, at first, the manifold

resistances opposed to it by its watery medium. Gradually, however,

its energies became exhausted, till at last, completely overwhelmed,

it stopped, an immovable projection stagnated to death-like rigidity.

Thus for hours, perhaps, it remained stationary, one of many such

rays of some of the many kinds of protoplasmic stars. By degrees,

then, or perhaps quite suddenly, _help would come to it from foreign

but congruous sources_. _It would seem to combine with outside

complemental matter_ drifted to it at random. Slowly it would regain

thereby its vital mobility. Shrinking at first, but gradually

completely restored and reincorporated into the onward tide of life,

it was ready to take part again in the progressive flow of a new

ray.” {56}

To return to the end of the last paragraph but one. If this is so—but I

should warn the reader that Professor Hering is not responsible for this

suggestion, though it seems to follow so naturally from what he has said

that I imagine he intended the inference to be drawn,—if this is so,

assimilation is nothing else than the communication of its own rhythms

from the assimilating to the assimilated substance, to the effacement of

the vibrations or rhythms heretofore existing in this last; and

suitability for food will depend upon whether the rhythms of the

substance eaten are such as to flow harmoniously into and chime in with

those of the body which has eaten it, or whether they will refuse to act

in concert with the new rhythms with which they have become associated,

and will persist obstinately in pursuing their own course. In this case

they will either be turned out of the body at once, or will disconcert

its arrangements, with perhaps fatal consequences. This comes round to

the conclusion I arrived at in “Life and Habit,” that assimilation was

nothing but the imbuing of one thing with the memories of another. (See

“Life and Habit,” pp. 136, 137, 140, &c.)

It will be noted that, as I resolved the phenomena of heredity into

phenomena of personal identity, and left the matter there, so Professor

Hering resolves the phenomena of personal identity into the phenomena of

a living mechanism whose equilibrium is disturbed by vibrations of a

certain character—and leaves it there. We now want to understand more

about the vibrations.

But if, according to Professor Hering, the personal identity of the

single life consists in the uninterruptedness of vibrations, so also do

the phenomena of heredity. For not only may vibrations of a certain

violence or character be persistent unperceived for many years in a

living body, and communicate themselves to the matter it has assimilated,

but they may, and will, under certain circumstances, extend to the

particle which is about to leave the parent body as the germ of its

future offspring. In this minute piece of matter there must, if

Professor Hering is right, be an infinity of rhythmic undulations

incessantly vibrating with more or less activity, and ready to be set in

more active agitation at a moment’s warning, under due accession of

vibration from exterior objects. On the occurrence of such stimulus,

that is to say, when a vibration of a suitable rhythm from without

concurs with one within the body so as to augment it, the agitation may

gather such strength that the touch, as it were, is given to a house of

cards, and the whole comes toppling over. This toppling over is what we

call action; and when it is the result of the disturbance of certain

usual arrangements in certain usual ways, we call it the habitual

development and instinctive characteristics of the race. In either case,

then, whether we consider the continued identity of the individual in

what we call his single life, or those features in his offspring which we

refer to heredity, the same explanation of the phenomena is applicable.

It follows from this as a matter of course, that the continuation of life

or personal identity in the individual and the race are fundamentally of

the same kind, or, in other words, that there is a veritable prolongation

of identity or oneness of personality between parents and offspring.

Professor Hering reaches his conclusion by physical methods, while I

reached mine, as I am told, by metaphysical. I never yet could

understand what “metaphysics” and “metaphysical” mean; but I should have

said I reached it by the exercise of a little common sense while

regarding certain facts which are open to every one. There is, however,

so far as I can see, no difference in the conclusion come to.

The view which connects memory with vibrations may tend to throw light

upon that difficult question, the manner in which neuter bees acquire

structures and instincts, not one of which was possessed by any of their

direct ancestors. Those who have read “Life and Habit” may remember, I

suggested that the food prepared in the stomachs of the nurse-bees, with

which the neuter working bees are fed, might thus acquire a quasi-seminal

character, and be made a means of communicating the instincts and

structures in question. {58} If assimilation be regarded as the

receiving by one substance of the rhythms or undulations from another,

the explanation just referred to receives an accession of probability.

If it is objected that Professor Hering’s theory as to continuity of

vibrations being the key to memory and heredity involves the action of

more wheels within wheels than our imagination can come near to

comprehending, and also that it supposes this complexity of action as

going on within a compass which no unaided eye can detect by reason of

its littleness, so that we are carried into a fairy land with which sober

people should have nothing to do, it may be answered that the case of

light affords us an example of our being truly aware of a multitude of

minute actions, the hundred million millionth part of which we should

have declared to be beyond our ken, could we not incontestably prove that

we notice and count them all with a very sufficient and creditable

accuracy.

“Who would not,” {59a} says Sir John Herschel, “ask for demonstration

when told that a gnat’s wing, in its ordinary flight, beats many hundred

times in a second? or that there exist animated and regularly organised

beings many thousands of whose bodies laid close together would not

extend to an inch? But what are these to the astonishing truths which

modern optical inquiries have disclosed, which teach us that every point

of a medium through which a ray of light passes is affected with a

succession of periodical movements, recurring regularly at equal

intervals, no less than five hundred millions of millions of times in a

second; that it is by such movements communicated to the nerves of our

eyes that we see; nay, more, that it is the _difference_ in the frequency

of their recurrence which affects us with the sense of the diversity of

colour; that, for instance, in acquiring the sensation of redness, our

eyes are affected four hundred and eighty-two millions of millions of

times; of yellowness, five hundred and forty-two millions of millions of

times; and of violet, seven hundred and seven millions of millions of

times per second? {59b} Do not such things sound more like the ravings

of madmen than the sober conclusions of people in their waking senses?

They are, nevertheless, conclusions to which any one may most certainly

arrive who will only be at the pains of examining the chain of reasoning

by which they have been obtained.”

A man counting as hard as he can repeat numbers one after another, and

never counting more than a hundred, so that he shall have no long words

to repeat, may perhaps count ten thousand, or a hundred a hundred times

over, in an hour. At this rate, counting night and day, and allowing no

time for rest or refreshment, he would count one million in four days and

four hours, or say four days only. To count a million a million times

over, he would require four million days, or roughly ten thousand years;

for five hundred millions of millions, he must have the utterly

unrealisable period of five million years. Yet he actually goes through

this stupendous piece of reckoning unconsciously hour after hour, day

after day, it may be for eighty years, _often in each second_ of

daylight; and how much more by artificial or subdued light I do not know.

He knows whether his eye is being struck five hundred millions of

millions of times, or only four hundred and eighty-two millions of

millions of times. He thus shows that he estimates or counts each set of

vibrations, and registers them according to his results. If a man writes

upon the back of a British Museum blotting-pad of the common _nonpareil_

pattern, on which there are some thousands of small spaces each differing

in colour from that which is immediately next to it, his eye will,

nevertheless, without an effort assign its true colour to each one of

these spaces. This implies that he is all the time counting and taking

tally of the difference in the numbers of the vibrations from each one of

the small spaces in question. Yet the mind that is capable of such

stupendous computations as these so long as it knows nothing about them,

makes no little fuss about the conscious adding together of such almost

inconceivably minute numbers as, we will say, 2730169 and 5790135—or, if

these be considered too large, as 27 and 19. Let the reader remember

that he cannot by any effort bring before his mind the units, not in

ones, _but in millions of millions_ of the processes which his visual

organs are undergoing second after second from dawn till dark, and then

let him demur if he will to the possibility of the existence in a germ,

of currents and undercurrents, and rhythms and counter rhythms, also by

the million of millions—each one of which, on being overtaken by the

rhythm from without that chimes in with and stimulates it, may be the

beginning of that unsettlement of equilibrium which results in the crash

of action, unless it is timely counteracted.

If another objector maintains that the vibrations within the germ as

above supposed must be continually crossing and interfering with one

another in such a manner as to destroy the continuity of any one series,

it may be replied that the vibrations of the light proceeding from the

objects that surround us traverse one another by the millions of millions

every second yet in no way interfere with one another. Nevertheless, it

must be admitted that the difficulties of the theory towards which I

suppose Professor Hering to incline are like those of all other theories

on the same subject—almost inconceivably great.

In “Life and Habit” I did not touch upon these vibrations, knowing

nothing about them. Here, then, is one important point of difference,

not between the conclusions arrived at, but between the aim and scope of

the work that Professor Hering and I severally attempted. Another

difference consists in the points at which we have left off. Professor

Hering, having established his main thesis, is content. I, on the other

hand, went on to maintain that if vigour was due to memory, want of

vigour was due to want of memory. Thus I was led to connect memory with

the phenomena of hybridism and of old age; to show that the sterility of

certain animals under domestication is only a phase of, and of a piece

with, the very common sterility of hybrids—phenomena which at first sight

have no connection either with each other or with memory, but the

connection between which will never be lost sight of by those who have

once laid hold of it. I also pointed out how exactly the phenomena of

development agreed with those of the abeyance and recurrence of memory,

and the rationale of the fact that puberty in so many animals and plants

comes about the end of development. The principle underlying longevity

follows as a matter of course. I have no idea how far Professor Hering

would agree with me in the position I have taken in respect of these

phenomena, but there is nothing in the above at variance with his

lecture.

Another matter on which Professor Hering has not touched is the bearing

of his theory on that view of evolution which is now commonly accepted.

It is plain he accepts evolution, but it does not appear that he sees how

fatal his theory is to any view of evolution except a teleological

one—the purpose residing within the animal and not without it. There is,

however, nothing in his lecture to indicate that he does not see this.

It should be remembered that the question whether memory is due to the

persistence within the body of certain vibrations, which have been

already set up within the bodies of its ancestors, is true or no, will

not affect the position I took up in “Life and Habit.” In that book I

have maintained nothing more than that whatever memory is heredity is

also. I am not committed to the vibration theory of memory, though

inclined to accept it on a _primâ facie_ view. All I am committed to is,

that if memory is due to persistence of vibrations, so is heredity; and

if memory is not so due, then no more is heredity.

Finally, I may say that Professor Hering’s lecture, the passage quoted

from Dr. Erasmus Darwin on p. 26 of this volume, and a few hints in the

extracts from Mr. Patrick Mathew which I have quoted in “Evolution, Old

and New,” are all that I yet know of in other writers as pointing to the

conclusion that the phenomena of heredity are phenomena also of memory.

Chapter VI

Professor Ewald Hering “On Memory.”

I WILL now lay before the reader a translation of Professor Hering’s own

words. I have had it carefully revised throughout by a gentleman whose

native language is German, but who has resided in England for many years

past. The original lecture is entitled “On Memory as a Universal

Function of Organised Matter,” and was delivered at the anniversary

meeting of the Imperial Academy of Sciences at Vienna, May 30, 1870. {63}

It is as follows:—

“When the student of Nature quits the narrow workshop of his own

particular inquiry, and sets out upon an excursion into the vast kingdom

of philosophical investigation, he does so, doubtless, in the hope of

finding the answer to that great riddle, to the solution of a small part

of which he devotes his life. Those, however, whom he leaves behind him

still working at their own special branch of inquiry, regard his

departure with secret misgivings on his behalf, while the born citizens

of the kingdom of speculation among whom he would naturalise himself,

receive him with well-authorised distrust. He is likely, therefore, to

lose ground with the first, while not gaining it with the second.

The subject to the consideration of which I would now solicit your

attention does certainly appear likely to lure us on towards the

flattering land of speculation, but bearing in mind what I have just

said, I will beware of quitting the department of natural science to

which I have devoted myself hitherto. I shall, however, endeavour to

attain its highest point, so as to take a freer view of the surrounding

territory.

It will soon appear that I should fail in this purpose if my remarks were

to confine themselves solely to physiology. I hope to show how far

psychological investigations also afford not only permissible, but

indispensable, aid to physiological inquiries.

Consciousness is an accompaniment of that animal and human organisation

and of that material mechanism which it is the province of physiology to

explore; and as long as the atoms of the brain follow their due course

according to certain definite laws, there arises an inner life which

springs from sensation and idea, from feeling and will.

We feel this in our own cases; it strikes us in our converse with other

people; we can see it plainly in the more highly organised animals; even

the lowest forms of life bear traces of it; and who can draw a line in

the kingdom of organic life, and say that it is here the soul ceases?

With what eyes, then, is physiology to regard this two-fold life of the

organised world? Shall she close them entirely to one whole side of it,

that she may fix them more intently on the other?

So long as the physiologist is content to be a physicist, and nothing

more—using the word “physicist” in its widest signification—his position

in regard to the organic world is one of extreme but legitimate

one-sidedness. As the crystal to the mineralogist or the vibrating

string to the acoustician, so from this point of view both man and the

lower animals are to the physiologist neither more nor less than the

matter of which they consist. That animals feel desire and repugnance,

that the material mechanism of the human frame is in chose connection

with emotions of pleasure or pain, and with the active idea-life of

consciousness—this cannot, in the eyes of the physicist, make the animal

or human body into anything more than what it actually is. To him it is

a combination of matter, subjected to the same inflexible laws as stones

and plants—a material combination, the outward and inward movements of

which interact as cause and effect, and are in as close connection with

each other and with their surroundings as the working of a machine with

the revolutions of the wheels that compose it.

Neither sensation, nor idea, nor yet conscious will, can form a link in

this chain of material occurrences which make up the physical life of an

organism. If I am asked a question and reply to it, the material process

which the nerve fibre conveys from the organ of hearing to the brain must

travel through my brain as an actual and material process before it can

reach the nerves which will act upon my organs of speech. It cannot, on

reaching a given place in the brain, change then and there into an

immaterial something, and turn up again some time afterwards in another

part of the brain as a material process. The traveller in the desert

might as well hope, before he again goes forth into the wilderness of

reality, to take rest and refreshment in the oasis with which the Fata

Morgana illudes him; or as well might a prisoner hope to escape from his

prison through a door reflected in a mirror.

So much for the physiologist in his capacity of pure physicist. As long

as he remains behind the scenes in painful exploration of the details of

the machinery—as long as he only observes the action of the players from

behind the stage—so long will he miss the spirit of the performance,

which is, nevertheless, caught easily by one who sees it from the front.

May he not, then, for once in a way, be allowed to change his standpoint?

True, he came not to see the representation of an imaginary world; he is

in search of the actual; but surely it must help him to a comprehension

of the dramatic apparatus itself, and of the manner in which it is

worked, if he were to view its action from in front as well as from

behind, or at least allow himself to hear what sober-minded spectators

can tell him upon the subject.

There can be no question as to the answer; and hence it comes that

psychology is such an indispensable help to physiology, whose fault it

only in small part is that she has hitherto made such little use of this

assistance; for psychology has been late in beginning to till her fertile

field with the plough of the inductive method, and it is only from ground

so tilled that fruits can spring which can be of service to physiology.

If, then, the student of nervous physiology takes his stand between the

physicist and the psychologist, and if the first of these rightly makes

the unbroken causative continuity of all material processes an axiom of

his system of investigation, the prudent psychologist, on the other hand,

will investigate the laws of conscious life according to the inductive

method, and will hence, as much as the physicist, make the existence of

fixed laws his initial assumption. If, again, the most superficial

introspection teaches the physiologist that his conscious life is

dependent upon the mechanical adjustments of his body, and that inversely

his body is subjected with certain limitations to his will, then it only

remains for him to make one assumption more, namely, _that this mutual

interdependence between the spiritual and the material is itself also

dependent on law_, and he has discovered the bond by which the science of

matter and the science of consciousness are united into a single whole.

Thus regarded, the phenomena of consciousness become functions of the

material changes of organised substance, and inversely—though this is

involved in the use of the word “function”—the material processes of

brain substance become functions of the phenomena of consciousness. For

when two variables are so dependent upon one another in the changes they

undergo in accordance with fixed laws that a change in either involves

simultaneous and corresponding change in the other, the one is called a

function of the other.

This, then, by no means implies that the two variables above-named—matter

and consciousness—stand in the relation of cause and effect, antecedent

and consequence, to one another. For on this subject we know nothing.

The materialist regards consciousness as a product or result of matter,

while the idealist holds matter to be a result of consciousness, and a

third maintains that matter and spirit are identical; with all this the

physiologist, as such, has nothing whatever to do; his sole concern is

with the fact that matter and consciousness are functions one of the

other.

By the help of this hypothesis of the functional interdependence of

matter and spirit, modern physiology is enabled to bring the phenomena of

consciousness within the domain of her investigations without leaving the

_terra firma_ of scientific methods. The physiologist, as physicist, can

follow the ray of light and the wave of sound or heat till they reach the

organ of sense. He can watch them entering upon the ends of the nerves,

and finding their way to the cells of the brain by means of the series of

undulations or vibrations which they establish in the nerve filaments.

Here, however, he loses all trace of them. On the other hand, still

looking with the eyes of a pure physicist, he sees sound waves of speech

issue from the mouth of a speaker; he observes the motion of his own

limbs, and finds how this is conditional upon muscular contractions

occasioned by the motor nerves, and how these nerves are in their turn

excited by the cells of the central organ. But here again his knowledge

comes to an end. True, he sees indications of the bridge which is to

carry him from excitation of the sensory to that of the motor nerves in

the labyrinth of intricately interwoven nerve cells, but he knows nothing

of the inconceivably complex process which is introduced at this stage.

Here the physiologist will change his standpoint; what matter will not

reveal to his inquiry, he will find in the mirror, as it were, of

consciousness; by way of a reflection, indeed, only, but a reflection,

nevertheless, which stands in intimate relation to the object of his

inquiry. When at this point he observes how one idea gives rise to

another, how closely idea is connected with sensation and sensation with

will, and how thought, again, and feeling are inseparable from one

another, he will be compelled to suppose corresponding successions of

material processes, which generate and are closely connected with one

another, and which attend the whole machinery of conscious life,

according to the law of the functional interdependence of matter and

consciousness.

* * * * *

After this explanation I shall venture to regard under a single aspect a

great series of phenomena which apparently have nothing to do with one

another, and which belong partly to the conscious and partly to the

unconscious life of organised beings. I shall regard them as the outcome

of one and the same primary force of organised matter—namely, its memory

or power of reproduction.

The word “memory” is often understood as though it meant nothing more

than our faculty of intentionally reproducing ideas or series of ideas.

But when the figures and events of bygone days rise up again unbidden in

our minds, is not this also an act of recollection or memory? We have a

perfect right to extend our conception of memory so as to make it embrace

involuntary 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.

We know that when an impression, or a series of impressions, has been

made upon our senses for a long time, and always in the same way, it may

come to impress itself in such a manner upon the so-called sense-memory

that hours afterwards, and though a hundred other things have occupied

our attention meanwhile, it will yet return suddenly to our consciousness

with all the force and freshness of the original sensation. A whole

group of sensations is sometimes reproduced in its due sequence as

regards time and space, with so much reality that it illudes us, as

though things were actually present which have long ceased to be so. We

have here a striking proof of the fact that after both conscious

sensation and perception have been extinguished, their material vestiges

yet remain in our nervous system by way of a change in its molecular or

atomic disposition, {69} that enables the nerve substance to reproduce

all the physical processes of the original sensation, and with these the

corresponding psychical processes of sensation and perception.

Every hour the phenomena of sense-memory are present with each one of us,

but in a less degree than this. We are all at times aware of a host of

more or less faded recollections of earlier impressions, which we either

summon intentionally or which come upon us involuntarily. Visions of

absent people come and go before us as faint and fleeting shadows, and

the notes of long-forgotten melodies float around us, not actually heard,

but yet perceptible.

Some things and occurrences, especially if they have happened to us only

once and hurriedly, will be reproducible by the memory in respect only of

a few conspicuous qualities; in other cases those details alone will

recur to us which we have met with elsewhere, and for the reception of

which the brain is, so to speak, attuned. These last recollections find

themselves in fuller accord with our consciousness, and enter upon it

more easily and energetically; hence also their aptitude for reproduction

is enhanced; so that what is common to many things, and is therefore felt

and perceived with exceptional frequency, becomes reproduced so easily

that eventually the actual presence of the corresponding external

_stimuli_ is no longer necessary, and it will recur on the vibrations set

up by faint _stimuli_ from within. {70} Sensations arising in this way

from within, as, for example, an idea of whiteness, are not, indeed,

perceived with the full freshness of those raised by the actual presence

of white light without us, but they are of the same kind; they are feeble

repetitions of one and the same material brain process—of one and the

same conscious sensation. Thus the idea of whiteness arises in our mind

as a faint, almost extinct, sensation.

In this way those qualities which are common to many things become

separated, as it were, in our memory from the objects with which they

were originally associated, and attain an independent existence in our

consciousness as _ideas_ and _conceptions_, and thus the whole rich

superstructure of our ideas and conceptions is built up from materials

supplied by memory.

On examining more closely, we see plainly that memory is a faculty not

only of our conscious states, but also, and much more so, of our

unconscious ones. I was conscious of this or that yesterday, and am

again conscious of it to-day. Where has it been meanwhile? It does not

remain continuously within my consciousness, nevertheless it returns

after having quitted it. Our ideas tread but for a moment upon the stage

of consciousness, and then go back again behind the scenes, to make way

for others in their place. As the player is only a king when he is on

the stage, so they too exist as ideas so long only as they are

recognised. How do they live when they are off the stage? For we know

that they are living somewhere; give them their cue and they reappear

immediately. They do not exist continuously as ideas; what is continuous

is the special disposition of nerve substance in virtue of which this

substance gives out to-day the same sound which it gave yesterday if it

is rightly struck. {71} Countless reproductions of organic processes of

our brain connect themselves orderly together, so that one acts as a

stimulus to the next, but a phenomenon of consciousness is not

necessarily attached to every link in the chain. From this it arises

that a series of ideas may appear to disregard the order that would be

observed in purely material processes of brain substance unaccompanied by

consciousness; but on the other hand it becomes possible for a long chain

of recollections to have its due development without each link in the

chain being necessarily perceived by ourselves. One may emerge from the

bosom of our unconscious thoughts without fully entering upon the stage

of conscious perception; another dies away in unconsciousness, leaving no

successor to take its place. Between the “me” of to-day and the “me” of

yesterday lie night and sleep, abysses of unconsciousness; nor is there

any bridge but memory with which to span them. Who can hope after this

to disentangle the infinite intricacy of our inner life? For we can only

follow its threads so far as they have strayed over within the bounds of

consciousness. We might as well hope to familiarise ourselves with the

world of forms that teem within the bosom of the sea by observing the few

that now and again come to the surface and soon return into the deep.

The bond of union, therefore, which connects the individual phenomena of

our consciousness lies in our unconscious world; and as we know nothing

of this but what investigation into the laws of matter teach us—as, in

fact, for purely experimental purposes, “matter” and the “unconscious”

must be one and the same thing—so the physiologist has a full right to

denote memory as, in the wider sense of the word, a function of brain

substance, whose results, it is true, fall, as regards one part of them,

into the domain of consciousness, while another and not less essential

part escapes unperceived as purely material processes.

The perception of a body in space is a very complicated process. I see

suddenly before me, for example, a white ball. This has the effect of

conveying to me more than a mere sensation of whiteness. I deduce the

spherical character of the ball from the gradations of light and shade

upon its surface. I form a correct appreciation of its distance from my

eye, and hence again I deduce an inference as to the size of the ball.

What an expenditure of sensations, ideas, and inferences is found to be

necessary before all this can be brought about; yet the production of a

correct perception of the ball was the work only of a few seconds, and I

was unconscious of the individual processes by means of which it was

effected, the result as a whole being alone present in my consciousness.

The nerve substance preserves faithfully the memory of habitual actions.

{72} Perceptions which were once long and difficult, requiring constant

and conscious attention, come to reproduce themselves in transient and

abridged guise, without such duration and intensity that each link has to

pass over the threshold of our consciousness.

We have chains of material nerve processes to which eventually a link

becomes attached that is attended with conscious perception. This is

sufficiently established from the standpoint of the physiologist, and is

also proved by our unconsciousness of many whole series of ideas and of

the inferences we draw from them. If the soul is not to ship through the

fingers of physiology, she must hold fast to the considerations suggested

by our unconscious states. As far, however, as the investigations of the

pure physicist are concerned, the unconscious and matter are one and the

same thing, and the physiology of the unconscious is no “philosophy of

the unconscious.”

By far the greater number of our movements are the result of long and

arduous practice. The harmonious cooperation of the separate muscles,

the finely adjusted measure of participation which each contributes to

the working of the whole, must, as a rule, have been laboriously

acquired, in respect of most of the movements that are necessary in order

to effect it. How long does it not take each note to find its way from

the eyes to the fingers of one who is beginning to learn the pianoforte;

and, on the other hand, what an astonishing performance is the playing of

the professional pianist. The sight of each note occasions the

corresponding movement of the fingers with the speed of thought—a hurried

glance at the page of music before him suffices to give rise to a whole

series of harmonies; nay, when a melody has been long practised, it can

be played even while the player’s attention is being given to something

of a perfectly different character over and above his music.

The will need now no longer wend its way to each individual finger before

the desired movements can be extorted from it; no longer now does a

sustained attention keep watch over the movements of each limb; the will

need exercise a supervising control only. At the word of command the

muscles become active, with a due regard to time and proportion, and go

on working, so long as they are bidden to keep in their accustomed

groove, while a slight hint on the part of the will, will indicate to

them their further journey. How could all this be if every part of the

central nerve system, by means of which movement is effected, were not

able {74a} to reproduce whole series of vibrations, which at an earlier

date required the constant and continuous participation of consciousness,

but which are now set in motion automatically on a mere touch, as it

were, from consciousness—if it were not able to reproduce them the more

quickly and easily in proportion to the frequency of the repetitions—if,

in fact, there was no power of recollecting earlier performances? Our

perceptive faculties must have remained always at their lowest stage if

we had been compelled to build up consciously every process from the

details of the sensation-causing materials tendered to us by our senses;

nor could our voluntary movements have got beyond the helplessness of the

child, if the necessary impulses could only be imparted to every movement

through effort of the will and conscious reproduction of all the

corresponding ideas—if, in a word, the motor nerve system had not also

its memory, {74b} though that memory is unperceived by ourselves. The

power of this memory is what is called “the force of habit.”

It seems, then, that we owe to memory almost all that we either have or

are; that our ideas and conceptions are its work, and that our every

perception, thought, and movement is derived from this source. Memory

collects the countless phenomena of our existence into a single whole;

and as our bodies would be scattered into the dust of their component

atoms if they were not held together by the attraction of matter, so our

consciousness would be broken up into as many fragments as we had lived

seconds but for the binding and unifying force of memory.

We have already repeatedly seen that the reproductions of organic

processes, brought about by means of the memory of the nervous system,

enter but partly within the domain of consciousness, remaining

unperceived in other and not less important respects. This is also

confirmed by numerous facts in the life of that part of the nervous

system which ministers almost exclusively to our unconscious life

processes. For the memory of the so-called sympathetic ganglionic system

is no less rich than that of the brain and spinal marrow, and a great

part of the medical art consists in making wise use of the assistance

thus afforded us.

To bring, however, this part of my observations to a close, I will take

leave of the nervous system, and glance hurriedly at other phases of

organised matter, where we meet with the same powers of reproduction, but

in simpler guise.

Daily experience teaches us that a muscle becomes the stronger the more

we use it. The muscular fibre, which in the first instance may have

answered but feebly to the stimulus conducted to it by the motor nerve,

does so with the greater energy the more often it is stimulated,

provided, of course, that reasonable times are allowed for repose. After

each individual action it becomes more capable, more disposed towards the

same kind of work, and has a greater aptitude for repetition of the same

organic processes. It gains also in weight, for it assimilates more

matter than when constantly at rest. We have here, in its simplest form,

and in a phase which comes home most closely to the comprehension of the

physicist, the same power of reproduction which we encountered when we

were dealing with nerve substance, but under such far more complicated

conditions. And what is known thus certainly from muscle substance holds

good with greater or less plainness for all our organs. More especially

may we note the fact, that after increased use, alternated with times of

repose, there accrues to the organ in all animal economy an increased

power of execution with an increased power of assimilation and a gain in

size.

This gain in size consists not only in the enlargement of the individual

cells or fibres of which the organ is composed, but in the multiplication

of their number; for when cells have grown to a certain size they give

rise to others, which inherit more or less completely the qualities of

those from which they came, and therefore appear to be repetitions of the

same cell. This growth, and multiplication of cells is only a special

phase of those manifold functions which characterise organised matter,

and which consist not only in what goes on within the cell substance as

alterations or undulatory movement of the molecular disposition, but also

in that which becomes visible outside the cells as change of shape,

enlargement, or subdivision. Reproduction of performance, therefore,

manifests itself to us as reproduction of the cells themselves, as may be

seen most plainly in the case of plants, whose chief work consists in

growth, whereas with animal organism other faculties greatly

preponderate.

Let us now take a brief survey of a class of facts in the case of which

we may most abundantly observe the power of memory in organised matter.

We have ample evidence of the fact that characteristics of an organism

may descend to offspring which the organism did not inherit, but which it

acquired owing to the special circumstances under which it lived; and

that, in consequence, every organism imparts to the germ that issues from

it a small heritage of acquisitions which it has added during its own

lifetime to the gross inheritance of its race.

When we reflect that we are dealing with the heredity of acquired

qualities which came to development in the most diverse parts of the

parent organism, it must seem in a high degree mysterious how those parts

can have any kind of influence upon a germ which develops itself in an

entirely different place. Many mystical theories have been propounded

for the elucidation of this question, but the following reflections may

serve to bring the cause nearer to the comprehension of the physiologist.

The nerve substance, in spite of its thousandfold subdivision as cells

and fibres, forms, nevertheless, a united whole, which is present

directly in all organs—nay, as more recent histology conjectures, in each

cell of the more important organs—or is at least in ready communication

with them by means of the living, irritable, and therefore highly

conductive substance of other cells. Through the connection thus

established all organs find themselves in such a condition of more or

less mutual interdependence upon one another, that events which happen to

one are repeated in others, and a notification, however slight, of a

vibration set up {77} in one quarter is at once conveyed even to the

farthest parts of the body. With this easy and rapid intercourse between

all parts is associated the more difficult communication that goes on by

way of the circulation of sap or blood.

We see, further, that the process of the development of all germs that

are marked out for independent existence causes a powerful reaction, even

from the very beginning of that existence, on both the conscious and

unconscious life of the whole organism. We may see this from the fact

that the organ of reproduction stands in closer and more important

relation to the remaining parts, and especially to the nervous system,

than do the other organs; and, inversely, that both the perceived and

unperceived events affecting the whole organism find a more marked

response in the reproductive system than elsewhere.

We can now see with sufficient plainness in what the material connection

is established between the acquired peculiarities of an organism, and the

proclivity on the part of the germ in virtue of which it develops the

special characteristics of its parent.

The microscope teaches us that no difference can be perceived between one

germ and another; it cannot, however, be objected on this account that

the determining cause of its ulterior development must be something

immaterial, rather than the specific kind of its material constitution.

The curves and surfaces which the mathematician conceives, or finds

conceivable, are more varied and infinite than the forms of animal life.

Let us suppose an infinitely small segment to be taken from every

possible curve; each one of these will appear as like every other as one

germ is to another, yet the whole of every curve lies dormant, as it

were, in each of them, and if the mathematician chooses to develop it, it

will take the path indicated by the elements of each segment.

It is an error, therefore, to suppose that such fine distinctions as

physiology must assume lie beyond the limits of what is conceivable by

the human mind. An infinitely small change of position on the part of a

point, or in the relations of the parts of a segment of a curve to one

another, suffices to alter the law of its whole path, and so in like

manner an infinitely small influence exercised by the parent organism on

the molecular disposition of the germ {78} may suffice to produce a

determining effect upon its whole farther development.

What is the descent of special peculiarities but a reproduction on the

part of organised matter of processes in which it once took part as a

germ in the germ-containing organs of its parent, and of which it seems

still to retain a recollection that reappears when time and the occasion

serve, inasmuch as it responds to the same or like stimuli in a like way

to that in which the parent organism responded, of which it was once

part, and in the events of whose history it was itself also an

accomplice? {79} When an action through long habit or continual practice

has become so much a second nature to any organisation that its effects

will penetrate, though ever so faintly, into the germ that lies within

it, and when this last comes to find itself in a new sphere, to extend

itself, and develop into a new creature—(the individual parts of which

are still always the creature itself and flesh of its flesh, so that what

is reproduced is the same being as that in company with which the germ

once lived, and of which it was once actually a part)—all this is as

wonderful as when a grey-haired man remembers the events of his own

childhood; but it is not more so. Whether we say that the same organised

substance is again reproducing its past experience, or whether we prefer

to hold that an offshoot or part of the original substance has waxed and

developed itself since separation from the parent stock, it is plain that

this will constitute a difference of degree, not kind.

When we reflect upon the fact that unimportant acquired characteristics

can be reproduced in offspring, we are apt to forget that offspring is

only a full-sized reproduction of the parent—a reproduction, moreover,

that goes as far as possible into detail. We are so accustomed to

consider family resemblance a matter of course, that we are sometimes

surprised when a child is in some respect unlike its parent; surely,

however, the infinite number of points in respect of which parents and

children resemble one another is a more reasonable ground for our

surprise.

But if the substance of the germ can reproduce characteristics acquired

by the parent during its single life, how much more will it not be able

to reproduce those that were congenital to the parent, and which have

happened through countless generations to the organised matter of which

the germ of to-day is a fragment? We cannot wonder that action already

taken on innumerable past occasions by organised matter is more deeply

impressed upon the recollection of the germ to which it gives rise than

action taken once only during a single lifetime. {80a}

We must bear in mind that every organised being now in existence

represents the last link of an inconceivably long series of organisms,

which come down in a direct line of descent, and of which each has

inherited a part of the acquired characteristics of its predecessor.

Everything, furthermore, points in the direction of our believing that at

the beginning of this chain there existed an organism of the very

simplest kind, something, in fact, like those which we call organised

germs. The chain of living beings thus appears to be the magnificent

achievement of the reproductive power of the original organic structure

from which they have all descended. As this subdivided itself and

transmitted its characteristics {80b} to its descendants, these acquired

new ones, and in their turn transmitted them—all new germs transmitting

the chief part of what had happened to their predecessors, while the

remaining part lapsed out of their memory, circumstances not stimulating

it to reproduce itself.

An organised being, therefore, stands before us a product of the

unconscious memory of organised matter, which, ever increasing and ever

dividing itself, ever assimilating new matter and returning it in changed

shape to the inorganic world, ever receiving some new thing into its

memory, and transmitting its acquisitions by the way of reproduction,

grows continually richer and richer the longer it lives.

Thus regarded, the development of one of the more highly organised

animals represents a continuous series of organised recollections

concerning the past development of the great chain of living forms, the

last link of which stands before us in the particular animal we may be

considering. As a complicated perception may arise by means of a rapid

and superficial reproduction of long and laboriously practised brain

processes, so a germ in the course of its development hurries through a

series of phases, hinting at them only. Often and long foreshadowed in

theories of varied characters, this conception has only now found correct

exposition from a naturalist of our own time. {81} For Truth hides

herself under many disguises from those who seek her, but in the end

stands unveiled before the eyes of him whom she has chosen.

Not only is there a reproduction of form, outward and inner conformation

of body, organs, and cells, but the habitual actions of the parent are

also reproduced. The chicken on emerging from the eggshell runs off as

its mother ran off before it; yet what an extraordinary complication of

emotions and sensations is necessary in order to preserve equilibrium in

running. Surely the supposition of an inborn capacity for the

reproduction of these intricate actions can alone explain the facts. As

habitual practice becomes a second nature to the individual during his

single lifetime, so the often-repeated action of each generation becomes

a second nature to the race.

The chicken not only displays great dexterity in the performance of

movements for the effecting of which it has an innate capacity, but it

exhibits also a tolerably high perceptive power. It immediately picks up

any grain that may be thrown to it. Yet, in order to do this, more is

wanted than a mere visual perception of the grains; there must be an

accurate apprehension of the direction and distance of the precise spot

in which each grain is lying, and there must be no less accuracy in the

adjustment of the movements of the head and of the whole body. The

chicken cannot have gained experience in these respects while it was

still in the egg. It gained it rather from the thousands of thousands of

beings that have lived before it, and from which it is directly

descended.

The memory of organised substance displays itself here in the most

surprising fashion. The gentle stimulus of the light proceeding from the

grain that affects the retina of the chicken, {82} gives occasion for the

reproduction of a many-linked chain of sensations, perceptions, and

emotions, which were never yet brought together in the case of the

individual before us. We are accustomed to regard these surprising

performances of animals as manifestations of what we call instinct, and

the mysticism of natural philosophy has ever shown a predilection for

this theme; but if we regard instinct as the outcome of the memory or

reproductive power of organised substance, and if we ascribe a memory to

the race as we already ascribe it to the individual, then instinct

becomes at once intelligible, and the physiologist at the same time finds

a point of contact which will bring it into connection with the great

series of facts indicated above as phenomena of the reproductive faculty.

Here, then, we have a physical explanation which has not, indeed, been

given yet, but the time for which appears to be rapidly approaching.

When, in accordance with its instinct, the caterpillar becomes a

chrysalis, or the bird builds its nest, or the bee its cell, these

creatures act consciously and not as blind machines. They know how to

vary their proceedings within certain limits in conformity with altered

circumstances, and they are thus liable to make mistakes. They feel

pleasure when their work advances and pain if it is hindered; they learn

by the experience thus acquired, and build on a second occasion better

than on the first; but that even in the outset they hit so readily upon

the most judicious way of achieving their purpose, and that their

movements adapt themselves so admirably and automatically to the end they

have in view—surely this is owing to the inherited acquisitions of the

memory of their nerve substance, which requires but a touch and it will

fall at once to the most appropriate kind of activity, thinking always,

and directly, of whatever it is that may be wanted.

Man can readily acquire surprising kinds of dexterity if he confines his

attention to their acquisition. Specialisation is the mother of

proficiency. He who marvels at the skill with which the spider weaves

her web should bear in mind that she did not learn her art all on a

sudden, but that innumerable generations of spiders acquired it

toilsomely and step by step—this being about all that, as a general rule,

they did acquire. Man took to bows and arrows if his nets failed him—the

spider starved. Thus we see the body and—what most concerns us—the whole

nervous system of the new-born animal constructed beforehand, and, as it

were, ready attuned for intercourse with the outside world in which it is

about to play its part, by means of its tendency to respond to external

stimuli in the same manner as it has often heretofore responded in the

persons of its ancestors.

We naturally ask whether the brain and nervous system of the human infant

are subjected to the principles we have laid down above? Man certainly

finds it difficult to acquire arts of which the lower animals are born

masters; but the brain of man at birth is much farther from its highest

development than is the brain of an animal. It not only grows for a

longer time, but it becomes stronger than that of other living beings.

The brain of man may be said to be exceptionally young at birth. The

lower animal is born precocious, and acts precociously; it resembles

those infant prodigies whose brain, as it were, is born old into the

world, but who, in spite of, or rather in addition to, their rich

endowment at birth, in after life develop as much mental power as others

who were less splendidly furnished to start with, but born with greater

freshness of youth. Man’s brain, and indeed his whole body, affords

greater scope for individuality, inasmuch as a relatively greater part of

it is of post-natal growth. It develops under the influence of

impressions made by the environment upon its senses, and thus makes its

acquisitions in a more special and individual manner, whereas the animal

receives them ready made, and of a more final, stereotyped character.

Nevertheless, it is plain we must ascribe both to the brain and body of

the new-born infant a far-reaching power of remembering or reproducing

things which have already come to their development thousands of times

over in the persons of its ancestors. It is in virtue of this that it

acquires proficiency in the actions necessary for its existence—so far as

it was not already at birth proficient in them—much more quickly and

easily than would be otherwise possible; but what we call instinct in the

case of animals takes in man the looser form of aptitude, talent, and

genius. {84} Granted that certain ideas are not innate, yet the fact of

their taking form so easily and certainly from out of the chaos of his

sensations, is due not to his own labour, but to that of the brain

substance of the thousands of thousands of generations from whom he is

descended. Theories concerning the development of individual

consciousness which deny heredity or the power of transmission, and

insist upon an entirely fresh start for every human soul, as though the

infinite number of generations that have gone before us might as well

have never lived for all the effect they have had upon ourselves,—such

theories will contradict the facts of our daily experience at every touch

and turn.

The brain processes and phenomena of consciousness which ennoble man in

the eyes of his fellows have had a less ancient history than those

connected with his physical needs. Hunger and the reproductive instinct

affected the oldest and simplest forms of the organic world. It is in

respect of these instincts, therefore, and of the means to gratify them,

that the memory of organised substance is strongest—the impulses and

instincts that arise hence having still paramount power over the minds of

men. The spiritual life has been superadded slowly; its most splendid

outcome belongs to the latest epoch in the history of organised matter,

nor has any very great length of time elapsed since the nervous system

was first crowned with the glory of a large and well-developed brain.