their development, and preserve the due order in each step which they
take, through memory of the course they took on past occasions when in
the persons of their ancestors. I am afraid I have already too often
said that if this memory remains for long periods together latent and
without effect, it is because the undulations of the molecular substance
of the body which are its supposed explanation are during these periods
too feeble to generate action, until they are augmented in force through
an accession of suitable undulations issuing from exterior objects; or,
in other words, until recollection is stimulated by a return of the
associated ideas. On this the eternal agitation becomes so much
enhanced, that equilibrium is visibly disturbed, and the action ensues
which is proper to the vibration of the particular substance under the
particular conditions. This, at least, is what I suppose Professor
Hering to intend.
Leaving the explanation of memory on one side, and confining ourselves to
the fact of memory only, a caterpillar on being just hatched is supposed,
according to this theory, to lose its memory of the time it was in the
egg, and to be stimulated by an intense but unconscious recollection of
the action taken by its ancestors when they were first hatched. It is
guided in the course it takes by the experience it can thus command.
Each step it takes recalls a new recollection, and thus it goes through
its development as a performer performs a piece of music, each bar
leading his recollection to the bar that should next follow.
In “Life and Habit” will be found examples of the manner in which this
view solves a number of difficulties for the explanation of which the
leading men of science express themselves at a loss. The following from
Professor Huxley’s recent work upon the crayfish may serve for an
example. Professor Huxley writes:—
“It is a widely received notion that the energies of living matter
have a tendency to decline and finally disappear, and that the death
of the body as a whole is a necessary correlate of its life. That
all living beings sooner or later perish needs no demonstration, but
it would be difficult to find satisfactory grounds for the belief
that they needs must do so. The analogy of a machine, that sooner or
later must be brought to a standstill by the wear and tear of its
parts, does not hold, inasmuch as the animal mechanism is continually
renewed and repaired; and though it is true that individual
components of the body are constantly dying, yet their places are
taken by vigorous successors. A city remains notwithstanding the
constant death-rate of its inhabitants; and such an organism as a
crayfish is only a corporate unity, made up of innumerable partially
independent individualities.”—_The Crayfish_, p. 127.
Surely the theory which I have indicated above makes the reason plain why
no organism can permanently outlive its experience of past lives. The
death of such a body corporate as the crayfish is due to the social
condition becoming more complex than there is memory of past experience
to deal with. Hence social disruption, insubordination, and decay. The
crayfish dies as a state dies, and all states that we have heard of die
sooner or later. There are some savages who have not yet arrived at the
conception that death is the necessary end of all living beings, and who
consider even the gentlest death from old age as violent and abnormal; so
Professor Huxley seems to find a difficulty in seeing that though a city
commonly outlives many generations of its citizens, yet cities and states
are in the end no less mortal than individuals. “The city,” he says,
“remains.” Yes, but not for ever. When Professor Huxley can find a city
that will last for ever, he may wonder that a crayfish does not last for
ever.
I have already here and elsewhere said all that I can yet bring forward
in support of Professor Hering’s theory; it now remains for me to meet
the most troublesome objection to it that I have been able to think of—an
objection which I had before me when I wrote “Life and Habit,” but which
then as now I believe to be unsound. Seeing, however, as I have pointed
out at the end of the preceding chapter, that Von Hartmann has touched
upon it, and being aware that a plausible case can be made out for it, I
will state it and refute it here. When I say refute it, I do not mean
that I shall have done with it—for it is plain that it opens up a vaster
question in the relations between the so-called organic and inorganic
worlds—but that I will refute the supposition that it any way militates
against Professor Hering’s theory.
Why, it may be asked, should we go out of our way to invent unconscious
memory—the existence of which must at the best remain an inference
{149}—when the observed fact that like antecedents are invariably
followed by like consequents should be sufficient for our purpose? Why
should the fact that a given kind of chrysalis in a given condition will
always become a butterfly within a certain time be connected with memory,
when it is not pretended that memory has anything to do with the
invariableness with which oxygen and hydrogen when mixed in certain
proportions make water?
We assume confidently that if a drop of water were decomposed into its
component parts, and if these were brought together again, and again
decomposed and again brought together any number of times over, the
results would be invariably the same, whether decomposition or
combination, yet no one will refer the invariableness of the action
during each repetition, to recollection by the gaseous molecules of the
course taken when the process was last repeated. On the contrary, we are
assured that molecules in some distant part of the world, which had never
entered into such and such a known combination themselves, nor held
concert with other molecules that had been so combined, and which,
therefore, could have had no experience and no memory, would none the
less act upon one another in that one way in which other like
combinations of atoms have acted under like circumstances, as readily as
though they had been combined and separated and recombined again a
hundred or a hundred thousand times. It is this assumption, tacitly made
by every man, beast, and plant in the universe, throughout all time and
in every action of their lives, that has made any action possible, lying,
as it does, at the root of all experience.
As we admit of no doubt concerning the main result, so we do not suppose
an alternative to lie before any atom of any molecule at any moment
during the process of their combination. This process is, in all
probability, an exceedingly complicated one, involving a multitude of
actions and subordinate processes, which follow one upon the other, and
each one of which has a beginning, a middle, and an end, though they all
come to pass in what appears to be an instant of time. Yet at no point
do we conceive of any atom as swerving ever such a little to right or
left of a determined course, but invest each one of them with so much of
the divine attributes as that with it there shall be no variableness,
neither shadow of turning.
We attribute this regularity of action to what we call the necessity of
things, as determined by the nature of the atoms and the circumstances in
which they are placed. We say that only one proximate result can ever
arise from any given combination. If, then, so great uniformity of
action as nothing can exceed is manifested by atoms to which no one will
impute memory, why this desire for memory, as though it were the only way
of accounting for regularity of action in living beings? Sameness of
action may be seen abundantly where there is no room for anything that we
can consistently call memory. In these cases we say that it is due to
sameness of substance in same circumstances.
The most cursory reflection upon our actions will show us that it is no
more possible for living action to have more than one set of proximate
consequents at any given time than for oxygen and hydrogen when mixed in
the proportions proper for the formation of water. Why, then, not
recognise this fact, and ascribe repeated similarity of living action to
the reproduction of the necessary antecedents, with no more sense of
connection between the steps in the action, or memory of similar action
taken before, than we suppose on the part of oxygen and hydrogen
molecules between the several occasions on which they may have been
disunited and reunited?
A boy catches the measles not because he remembers having caught them in
the persons of his father and mother, but because he is a fit soil for a
certain kind of seed to grow upon. In like manner he should be said to
grow his nose because he is a fit combination for a nose to spring from.
Dr. X—’s father died of _angina pectoris_ at the age of forty-nine; so
did Dr. X—. Can it be pretended that Dr. X— remembered having died of
_angina pectoris_ at the age of forty-nine when in the person of his
father, and accordingly, when he came to be forty-nine years old himself,
died also? For this to hold, Dr. X—’s father must have begotten him
after he was dead; for the son could not remember the father’s death
before it happened.
As for the diseases of old age, so very commonly inherited, they are
developed for the most part not only long after the average age of
reproduction, but at a time when no appreciable amount of memory of any
previous existence can remain; for a man will not have many male
ancestors who become parents at over sixty years old, nor female
ancestors who did so at over forty. By our own showing, therefore,
recollection can have nothing to do with the matter. Yet who can doubt
that gout is due to inheritance as much as eyes and noses? In what
respects do the two things differ so that we should refer the inheritance
of eyes and noses to memory, while denying any connection between memory
and gout? We may have a ghost of a pretence for saying that a man grew a
nose by rote, or even that he catches the measles or whooping-cough by
rote during his boyhood; but do we mean to say that he develops the gout
by rote in his old age if he comes of a gouty family? If, then, rote and
red-tape have nothing to do with the one, why should they with the other?
Remember also the cases in which aged females develop male
characteristics. Here are growths, often of not inconsiderable extent,
which make their appearance during the decay of the body, and grow with
greater and greater vigour in the extreme of old age, and even for days
after death itself. It can hardly be doubted that an especial tendency
to develop these characteristics runs as an inheritance in certain
families; here then is perhaps the best case that can be found of a
development strictly inherited, but having clearly nothing whatever to do
with memory. Why should not all development stand upon the same footing?
A friend who had been arguing with me for some time as above, concluded
with the following words:—
“If you cannot be content with the similar action of similar
substances (living or non-living) under similar circumstances—if you
cannot accept this as an ultimate fact, but consider it necessary to
connect repetition of similar action with memory before you can rest
in it and be thankful—be consistent, and introduce this memory which
you find so necessary into the inorganic world also. Either say that
a chrysalis becomes a butterfly because it is the thing that it is,
and, being that kind of thing, must act in such and such a manner and
in such a manner only, so that the act of one generation has no more
to do with the act of the next than the fact of cream being churned
into butter in a dairy one day has to do with other cream being
churnable into butter in the following week—either say this, or else
develop some mental condition—which I have no doubt you will be very
well able to do if you feel the want of it—in which you can make out
a case for saying that oxygen and hydrogen on being brought together,
and cream on being churned, are in some way acquainted with, and
mindful of, action taken by other cream and other oxygen and hydrogen
on past occasions.”
I felt inclined to reply that my friend need not twit me with being able
to develop a mental organism if I felt the need of it, for his own
ingenious attack on my position, and indeed every action of his life was
but an example of this omnipresent principle.
When he was gone, however, I thought over what he had been saying. I
endeavoured to see how far I could get on without volition and memory,
and reasoned as follows:—A repetition of like antecedents will be
certainly followed by a repetition of like consequents, whether the
agents be men and women or chemical substances. “If there be two cowards
perfectly similar in every respect, and if they be subjected in a
perfectly similar way to two terrifying agents, which are themselves
perfectly similar, there are few who will not expect a perfect similarity
in the running away, even though ten thousand years intervene between the
original combination and its repetition.” {153} Here certainly there is
no coming into play of memory, more than in the pan of cream on two
successive churning days, yet the action is similar.
A clerk in an office has an hour in the middle of the day for dinner.
About half-past twelve he begins to feel hungry; at once he takes down
his hat and leaves the office. He does not yet know the neighbourhood,
and on getting down into the street asks a policeman at the corner which
is the best eating-house within easy distance. The policeman tells him
of three houses, one of which is a little farther off than the other two,
but is cheaper. Money being a greater object to him than time, the clerk
decides on going to the cheaper house. He goes, is satisfied, and
returns.
Next day he wants his dinner at the same hour, and—it will be
said—remembering his satisfaction of yesterday, will go to the same place
as before. But what has his memory to do with it? Suppose him to have
entirely forgotten all the circumstances of the preceding day from the
moment of his beginning to feel hungry onward, though in other respects
sound in mind and body, and unchanged generally. At half-past twelve he
would begin to be hungry; but his beginning to be hungry cannot be
connected with his remembering having begun to be hungry yesterday. He
would begin to be hungry just as much whether he remembered or no. At
one o’clock he again takes down his hat and leaves the office, not
because he remembers having done so yesterday, but because he wants his
hat to go out with. Being again in the street, and again ignorant of the
neighbourhood (for he remembers nothing of yesterday), he sees the same
policeman at the corner of the street, and asks him the same question as
before; the policeman gives him the same answer, and money being still an
object to him, the cheapest eating-house is again selected; he goes
there, finds the same _menu_, makes the same choice for the same reasons,
eats, is satisfied, and returns.
What similarity of action can be greater than this, and at the same time
more incontrovertible? But it has nothing to do with memory; on the
contrary, it is just because the clerk has no memory that his action of
the second day so exactly resembles that of the first. As long as he has
no power of recollecting, he will day after day repeat the same actions
in exactly the same way, until some external circumstances, such as his
being sent away, modify the situation. Till this or some other
modification occurs, he will day after day go down into the street
without knowing where to go; day after day he will see the same policeman
at the corner of the same street, and (for we may as well suppose that
the policeman has no memory too) he will ask and be answered, and ask and
be answered, till he and the policeman die of old age. This similarity
of action is plainly due to that—whatever it is—which ensures that like
persons or things when placed in like circumstances shall behave in like
manner.
Allow the clerk ever such a little memory, and the similarity of action
will disappear; for the fact of remembering what happened to him on the
first day he went out in search of dinner will be a modification in him
in regard to his then condition when he next goes out to get his dinner.
He had no such memory on the first day, and he has upon the second. Some
modification of action must ensue upon this modification of the actor,
and this is immediately observable. He wants his dinner, indeed, goes
down into the street, and sees the policeman as yesterday, but he does
not ask the policeman; he remembers what the policeman told him and what
he did, and therefore goes straight to the eating-house without wasting
time: nor does he dine off the same dish two days running, for he
remembers what he had yesterday and likes variety. If, then, similarity
of action is rather hindered than promoted by memory, why introduce it
into such cases as the repetition of the embryonic processes by
successive generations? The embryos of a well-fixed breed, such as the
goose, are almost as much alike as water is to water, and by consequence
one goose comes to be almost as like another as water to water. Why
should it not be supposed to become so upon the same grounds—namely, that
it is made of the same stuffs, and put together in like proportions in
the same manner?
Chapter XI
On Cycles.
THE one faith on which all normal living beings consciously or
unconsciously act, is that like antecedents will be followed by like
consequents. This is the one true and catholic faith, undemonstrable,
but except a living being believe which, without doubt it shall perish
everlastingly. In the assurance of this all action is taken.
But if this fundamental article is admitted, and it cannot be gainsaid,
it follows that if ever a complete cycle were formed, so that the whole
universe of one instant were to repeat itself absolutely in a subsequent
one, no matter after what interval of time, then the course of the events
between these two moments would go on repeating itself for ever and ever
afterwards in due order, down to the minutest detail, in an endless
series of cycles like a circulating decimal. For the universe comprises
everything; there could therefore be no disturbance from without. Once a
cycle, always a cycle.
Let us suppose the earth, of given weight, moving with given momentum in
a given path, and under given conditions in every respect, to find itself
at any one time conditioned in all these respects as it was conditioned
at some past moment; then it must move exactly in the same path as the
one it took when at the beginning of the cycle it has just completed, and
must therefore in the course of time fulfil a second cycle, and therefore
a third, and so on for ever and ever, with no more chance of escape than
a circulating decimal has, if the circumstances have been reproduced with
perfect accuracy.
We see something very like this actually happen in the yearly revolutions
of the planets round the sun. But the relations between, we will say,
the earth and the sun are not reproduced absolutely. These relations
deal only with a small part of the universe, and even in this small part
the relation of the parts _inter se_ has never yet been reproduced with
the perfection of accuracy necessary for our argument. They are liable,
moreover, to disturbance from events which may or may not actually occur
(as, for example, our being struck by a comet, or the sun’s coming within
a certain distance of another sun), but of which, if they do occur, no
one can foresee the effects. Nevertheless the conditions have been so
nearly repeated that there is no appreciable difference in the relations
between the earth and sun on one New Year’s Day and on another, nor is
there reason for expecting such change within any reasonable time.
If there is to be an eternal series of cycles involving the whole
universe, it is plain that not one single atom must be excluded. Exclude
a single molecule of hydrogen from the ring, or vary the relative
positions of two molecules only, and the charm is broken; an element of
disturbance has been introduced, of which the utmost that can be said is
that it may not prevent the ensuing of a long series of very nearly
perfect cycles before similarity in recurrence is destroyed, but which
must inevitably prevent absolute identity of repetition. The movement of
the series becomes no longer a cycle, but spiral, and convergent or
divergent at a greater or less rate according to circumstances. We
cannot conceive of all the atoms in the universe standing twice over in
absolutely the same relation each one of them to every other. There are
too many of them and they are too much mixed; but, as has been just said,
in the planets and their satellites we do see large groups of atoms whose
movements recur with some approach to precision. The same holds good
also with certain comets and with the sun himself. The result is that
our days and nights and seasons follow one another with nearly perfect
regularity from year to year, and have done so for as long time as we
know anything for certain. A vast preponderance of all the action that
takes place around us is cycular action.
Within the great cycle of the planetary revolution of our own earth, and
as a consequence thereof, we have the minor cycle of the phenomena of the
seasons; these generate atmospheric cycles. Water is evaporated from the
ocean and conveyed to mountain ranges, where it is cooled, and whence it
returns again to the sea. This cycle of events is being repeated again
and again with little appreciable variation. The tides and winds in
certain latitudes go round and round the world with what amounts to
continuous regularity.—There are storms of wind and rain called cyclones.
In the case of these, the cycle is not very complete, the movement,
therefore, is spiral, and the tendency to recur is comparatively soon
lost. It is a common saying that history repeats itself, so that anarchy
will lead to despotism and despotism to anarchy; every nation can point
to instances of men’s minds having gone round and round so nearly in a
perfect cycle that many revolutions have occurred before the cessation of
a tendency to recur. Lastly, in the generation of plants and animals we
have, perhaps, the most striking and common example of the inevitable
tendency of all action to repeat itself when it has once proximately done
so. Let only one living being have once succeeded in producing a being
like itself, and thus have returned, so to speak, upon itself, and a
series of generations must follow of necessity, unless some matter
interfere which had no part in the original combination, and, as it may
happen, kill the first reproductive creature or all its descendants
within a few generations. If no such mishap occurs as this, and if the
recurrence of the conditions is sufficiently perfect, a series of
generations follows with as much certainty as a series of seasons follows
upon the cycle of the relations between the earth and sun. Let the first
periodically recurring substance—we will say A—be able to recur or
reproduce itself, not once only, but many times over, as A1, A2, &c.; let
A also have consciousness and a sense of self-interest, which qualities
must, _ex hypothesi_, be reproduced in each one of its offspring; let
these get placed in circumstances which differ sufficiently to destroy
the cycle in theory without doing so practically—that is to say, to
reduce the rotation to a spiral, but to a spiral with so little deviation
from perfect cycularity as for each revolution to appear practically a
cycle, though after many revolutions the deviation becomes perceptible;
then some such differentiations of animal and vegetable life as we
actually see follow as matters of course. A1 and A2 have a sense of
self-interest as A had, but they are not precisely in circumstances
similar to A’s, nor, it may be, to each other’s; they will therefore act
somewhat differently, and every living being is modified by a change of
action. Having become modified, they follow the spirit of A’s action
more essentially in begetting a creature like themselves than in
begetting one like A; for the essence of A’s act was not the reproduction
of A, but the reproduction of a creature like the one from which it
sprung—that is to say, a creature bearing traces in its body of the main
influences that have worked upon its parent.
Within the cycle of reproduction there are cycles upon cycles in the life
of each individual, whether animal or plant. Observe the action of our
lungs and heart, how regular it is, and how a cycle having been once
established, it is repeated many millions of times in an individual of
average health and longevity. Remember also that it is this
periodicity—this inevitable tendency of all atoms in combination to
repeat any combination which they have once repeated, unless forcibly
prevented from doing so—which alone renders nine-tenths of our mechanical
inventions of practical use to us. There is no internal periodicity
about a hammer or a saw, but there is in the steam-engine or watermill
when once set in motion. The actions of these machines recur in a
regular series, at regular intervals, with the unerringness of
circulating decimals.
When we bear in mind, then, the omnipresence of this tendency in the
world around us, the absolute freedom from exception which attends its
action, the manner in which it holds equally good upon the vastest and
the smallest scale, and the completeness of its accord with our ideas of
what must inevitably happen when a like combination is placed in
circumstances like those in which it was placed before—when we bear in
mind all this, is it possible not to connect the facts together, and to
refer cycles of living generations to the same unalterableness in the
action of like matter under like circumstances which makes Jupiter and
Saturn revolve round the sun, or the piston of a steam-engine move up and
down as long as the steam acts upon it?
But who will attribute memory to the hands of a clock, to a piston-rod,
to air or water in a storm or in course of evaporation, to the earth and
planets in their circuits round the sun, or to the atoms of the universe,
if they too be moving in a cycle vaster than we can take account of?
{160} And if not, why introduce it into the embryonic development of
living beings, when there is not a particle of evidence in support of its
actual presence, when regularity of action can be ensured just as well
without it as with it, and when at the best it is considered as existing
under circumstances which it baffles us to conceive, inasmuch as it is
supposed to be exercised without any conscious recollection? Surely a
memory which is exercised without any consciousness of recollecting is
only a periphrasis for the absence of any memory at all.
Chapter XII
Refutation—Memory at once a promoter and a disturber of uniformity of
action and structure.
TO meet the objections in the two foregoing chapters, I need do little
more than show that the fact of certain often inherited diseases and
developments, whether of youth or old age, being obviously not due to a
memory on the part of offspring of like diseases and developments in the
parents, does not militate against supposing that embryonic and youthful
development generally is due to memory.
This is the main part of the objection; the rest resolves itself into an
assertion that there is no evidence in support of instinct and embryonic
development being due to memory, and a contention that the necessity of
each particular moment in each particular case is sufficient to account
for the facts without the introduction of memory.
I will deal with these two last points briefly first. As regards the
evidence in support of the theory that instinct and growth are due to a
rapid unconscious memory of past experiences and developments in the
persons of the ancestors of the living form in which they appear, I must
refer my readers to “Life and Habit,” and to the translation of Professor
Hering’s lecture given in this volume. I will only repeat here that a
chrysalis, we will say, is as much one and the same person with the
chrysalis of its preceding generation, as this last is one and the same
person with the egg or caterpillar from which it sprang. You cannot deny
personal identity between two successive generations without sooner or
later denying it during the successive stages in the single life of what
we call one individual; nor can you admit personal identity through the
stages of a long and varied life (embryonic and postnatal) without
admitting it to endure through an endless series of generations.
The personal identity of successive generations being admitted, the
possibility of the second of two generations remembering what happened to
it in the first is obvious. The _à priori_ objection, therefore, is
removed, and the question becomes one of fact—does the offspring act as
if it remembered?
The answer to this question is not only that it does so act, but that it
is not possible to account for either its development or its early
instinctive actions upon any other hypothesis than that of its
remembering, and remembering exceedingly well.
The only alternative is to declare with Von Hartmann that a living being
may display a vast and varied information concerning all manner of
details, and be able to perform most intricate operations, independently
of experience and practice. Once admit knowledge independent of
experience, and farewell to sober sense and reason from that moment.
Firstly, then, we show that offspring has had every facility for
remembering; secondly, that it shows every appearance of having
remembered; thirdly, that no other hypothesis except memory can be
brought forward, so as to account for the phenomena of instinct and
heredity generally, which is not easily reducible to an absurdity.
Beyond this we do not care to go, and must allow those to differ from us
who require further evidence.
As regards the argument that the necessity of each moment will account
for likeness of result, without there being any need for introducing
memory, I admit that likeness of consequents is due to likeness of
antecedents, and I grant this will hold as good with embryos as with
oxygen and hydrogen gas; what will cover the one will cover the other,
for time writs of the laws common to all matter run within the womb as
freely as elsewhere; but admitting that there are combinations into which
living beings enter with a faculty called memory which has its effect
upon their conduct, and admitting that such combinations are from time to
time repeated (as we observe in the case of a practised performer playing
a piece of music which he has committed to memory), then I maintain that
though, indeed, the likeness of one performance to its immediate
predecessor is due to likeness of the combinations immediately preceding
the two performances, yet memory plays so important a part in both these
combinations as to make it a distinguishing feature in them, and
therefore proper to be insisted upon. We do not, for example, say that
Herr Joachim played such and such a sonata without the music, because he
was such and such an arrangement of matter in such and such
circumstances, resembling those under which he played without music on
some past occasion. This goes without saying; we say only that he played
the music by heart or by memory, as he had often played it before.
To the objector that a caterpillar becomes a chrysalis not because it
remembers and takes the action taken by its fathers and mothers in due
course before it, but because when matter is in such a physical and
mental state as to be called caterpillar, it must perforce assume
presently such another physical and mental state as to be called
chrysalis, and that therefore there is no memory in the case—to this
objector I rejoin that the offspring caterpillar would not have become so
like the parent as to make the next or chrysalis stage a matter of
necessity, unless both parent and offspring had been influenced by
something that we usually call memory. For it is this very possession of
a common memory which has guided the offspring into the path taken by,
and hence to a virtually same condition with, the parent, and which
guided the parent in its turn to a state virtually identical with a
corresponding state in the existence of its own parent. To memory,
therefore, the most prominent place in the transaction is assigned
rightly.
To deny that will guided by memory has anything to do with the
development of embryos seems like denying that a desire to obstruct has
anything to do with the recent conduct of certain members in the House of
Commons. What should we think of one who said that the action of these
gentlemen had nothing to do with a desire to embarrass the Government,
but was simply the necessary outcome of the chemical and mechanical
forces at work, which being such and such, the action which we see is
inevitable, and has therefore nothing to do with wilful obstruction? We
should answer that there was doubtless a great deal of chemical and
mechanical action in the matter; perhaps, for aught we knew or cared, it
was all chemical and mechanical; but if so, then a desire to obstruct
parliamentary business is involved in certain kinds of chemical and
mechanical action, and that the kinds involving this had preceded the
recent proceedings of the members in question. If asked to prove this,
we can get no further than that such action as has been taken has never
yet been seen except as following after and in consequence of a desire to
obstruct; that this is our nomenclature, and that we can no more be
expected to change it than to change our mother tongue at the bidding of
a foreigner.
A little reflection will convince the reader that he will be unable to
deny will and memory to the embryo without at the same time denying their
existence everywhere, and maintaining that they have no place in the
acquisition of a habit, nor indeed in any human action. He will feel
that the actions, and the relation of one action to another which he
observes in embryos is such as is never seen except in association with
and as a consequence of will and memory. He will therefore say that it
is due to will and memory. To say that these are the necessary outcome
of certain antecedents is not to destroy them: granted that they are—a
man does not cease to be a man when we reflect that he has had a father
and mother, nor do will and memory cease to be will and memory on the
ground that they cannot come causeless. They are manifest minute by
minute to the perception of all sane people, and this tribunal, though
not infallible, is nevertheless our ultimate court of appeal—the final
arbitrator in all disputed cases.
We must remember that there is no action, however original or peculiar,
which is not in respect of far the greater number of its details founded
upon memory. If a desperate man blows his brains out—an action which he
can do once in a lifetime only, and which none of his ancestors can have
done before leaving offspring—still nine hundred and ninety-nine
thousandths of the movements necessary to achieve his end consist of
habitual movements—movements, that is to say, which were once difficult,
but which have been practised and practised by the help of memory until
they are now performed automatically. We can no more have an action than
a creative effort of the imagination cut off from memory. Ideas and
actions seem almost to resemble matter and force in respect of the
impossibility of originating or destroying them; nearly all that are, are
memories of other ideas and actions, transmitted but not created,
disappearing but not perishing.
It appears, then, that when in Chapter X. we supposed the clerk who
wanted his dinner to forget on a second day the action he had taken the
day before, we still, without perhaps perceiving it, supposed him to be
guided by memory in all the details of his action, such as his taking
down his hat and going out into the street. We could not, indeed,
deprive him of all memory without absolutely paralysing his action.
Nevertheless new ideas, new faiths, and new actions do in the course of
time come about, the living expressions of which we may see in the new
forms of life which from time to time have arisen and are still arising,
and in the increase of our own knowledge and mechanical inventions. But
it is only a very little new that is added at a time, and that little is
generally due to the desire to attain an end which cannot be attained by
any of the means for which there exists a perceived precedent in the
memory. When this is the case, either the memory is further ransacked
for any forgotten shreds of details, a combination of which may serve the
desired purpose; or action is taken in the dark, which sometimes succeeds
and becomes a fertile source of further combinations; or we are brought
to a dead stop. All action is random in respect of any of the minute
actions which compose it that are not done in consequence of memory, real
or supposed. So that random, or action taken in the dark, or illusion,
lies at the very root of progress.
I will now consider the objection that the phenomena of instinct and
embryonic development ought not to be ascribed to memory, inasmuch as
certain other phenomena of heredity, such as gout, cannot be ascribed to
it.
Those who object in this way forget that our actions fall into two main
classes: those which we have often repeated before by means of a regular
series of subordinate actions beginning and ending at a certain tolerably
well-defined point—as when Herr Joachim plays a sonata in public, or when
we dress or undress ourselves; and actions the details of which are
indeed guided by memory, but which in their general scope and purpose are
new—as when we are being married or presented at court.
At each point in any action of the first of the two kinds above referred
to there is a memory (conscious or unconscious according to the less or
greater number of times the action has been repeated), not only of the
steps in the present and previous performances which have led up to the
particular point that may be selected, but also of the particular point
itself; there is, therefore, at each point in a habitual performance a
memory at once of like antecedents and of a like present.
If the memory, whether of the antecedent or the present, were absolutely
perfect; if the vibration (according to Professor Hering) on each
repetition existed in its full original strength and without having been
interfered with by any other vibration; and if, again, the new wave
running into it from exterior objects on each repetition of the action
were absolutely identical in character with the wave that ran in upon the
last occasion, then there would be no change in the action and no
modification or improvement could take place. For though indeed the
latest performance would always have one memory more than the latest but
one to guide it, yet the memories being identical, it would not matter
how many or how few they were.
On any repetition, however, the circumstances, external or internal, or
both, never are absolutely identical: there is some slight variation in
each individual case, and some part of this variation is remembered, with
approbation or disapprobation as the case may be.
The fact, therefore, that on each repetition of the action there is one
memory more than on the last but one, and that this memory is slightly
different from its predecessor, is seen to be an inherent and, _ex
hypothesi_, necessarily disturbing factor in all habitual action—and the
life of an organism should be regarded as the habitual action of a single
individual, namely, of the organism itself, and of its ancestors. This
is the key to accumulation of improvement, whether in the arts which we
assiduously practise during our single life, or in the structures and
instincts of successive generations. The memory does not complete a true
circle, but is, as it were, a spiral slightly divergent therefrom. It is
no longer a perfectly circulating decimal. Where, on the other hand,
there is no memory of a like present, where, in fact, the memory is not,
so to speak, spiral, there is no accumulation of improvement. The effect
of any variation is not transmitted, and is not thus pregnant of still
further change.
As regards the second of the two classes of actions above referred
to—those, namely, which are not recurrent or habitual, _and at no point
of which is there a memory of a past present like the one which is
present now_—there will have been no accumulation of strong and well-knit
memory as regards the action as a whole, but action, if taken at all,
will be taken upon disjointed fragments of individual actions (our own
and those of other people) pieced together with a result more or less
satisfactory according to circumstances.
But it does not follow that the action of two people who have had
tolerably similar antecedents and are placed in tolerably similar
circumstances should be more unlike each other in this second case than
in the first. On the contrary, nothing is more common than to observe
the same kind of people making the same kind of mistake when placed for
the first time in the same kind of new circumstances. I did not say that
there would be no sameness of action without memory of a like present.
There may be sameness of action proceeding from a memory, conscious or
unconscious, of like antecedents, and _a presence only of like presents
without recollection of the same_.
The sameness of action of like persons placed under like circumstances
for the first time, resembles the sameness of action of inorganic matter
under the same combinations. Let us for the moment suppose what we call
non-living substances to be capable of remembering their antecedents, and
that the changes they undergo are the expressions of their recollections.
Then I admit, of course, that there is not memory in any cream, we will
say, that is about to be churned of the cream of the preceding week, but
the common absence of such memory from each week’s cream is an element of
sameness between the two. And though no cream can remember having been
churned before, yet all cream in all time has had nearly identical
antecedents, and has therefore nearly the same memories, and nearly the
same proclivities. Thus, in fact, the cream of one week is as truly the
same as the cream of another week from the same cow, pasture, &c., as
anything is ever the same with anything; for the having been subjected to
like antecedents engenders the closest similarity that we can conceive
of, if the substances were like to start with.
The manifest absence of any connecting memory (or memory of like
presents) from certain of the phenomena of heredity, such as, for
example, the diseases of old age, is now seen to be no valid reason for
saying that such other and far more numerous and important phenomena as
those of embryonic development are not phenomena of memory. Growth and
the diseases of old age do indeed, at first sight, appear to stand on the
same footing, but reflection shows us that the question whether a certain
result is due to memory or no must be settled not by showing that
combinations into which memory does not certainly enter may yet generate
like results, and therefore considering the memory theory disposed of,
but by the evidence we may be able to adduce in support of the fact that
the second agent has actually remembered the conduct of the first,
inasmuch as he cannot be supposed able to do what it is plain he can do,
except under the guidance of memory or experience, and can also be shown
to have had every opportunity of remembering. When either of these tests
fails, similarity of action on the part of two agents need not be
connected with memory of a like present as well as of like antecedents,
but must, or at any rate may, be referred to memory of like antecedents
only.
Returning to a parenthesis a few pages back, in which I said that
consciousness of memory would be less or greater according to the greater
or fewer number of times that the act had been repeated, it may be
observed as a corollary to this, that the less consciousness of memory
the greater the uniformity of action, and _vice versa_. For the less
consciousness involves the memory’s being more perfect, through a larger
number (generally) of repetitions of the act that is remembered; there is
therefore a less proportionate difference in respect of the number of
recollections of this particular act between the most recent actor and
the most recent but one. This is why very old civilisations, as those of
many insects, and the greater number of now living organisms, appear to
the eye not to change at all.
For example, if an action has been performed only ten times, we will say
by A, B, C, &c., who are similar in all respects, except that A acts
without recollection, B with recollection of A’s action, C with
recollection of both B’s and A’s, while J remembers the course taken by
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, and I—the possession of a memory by B will indeed
so change his action, as compared with A’s, that it may well be hardly
recognisable. We saw this in our example of the clerk who asked the
policeman the way to the eating-house on one day, but did not ask him the
next, because he remembered; but C’s action will not be so different from
B’s as B’s from A’s, for though C will act with a memory of two occasions
on which the action has been performed, while B recollects only the
original performance by A, yet B and C both act with the guidance of a
memory and experience of some kind, while A acted without any. Thus the
clerk referred to in Chapter X. will act on the third day much as he
acted on the second—that is to say, he will see the policeman at the
corner of the street, but will not question him.
When the action is repeated by J for the tenth time, the difference
between J’s repetition of it and I’s will be due solely to the difference
between a recollection of nine past performances by J against only eight
by I, and this is so much proportionately less than the difference
between a recollection of two performances and of only one, that a less
modification of action should be expected. At the same time
consciousness concerning an action repeated for the tenth time should be
less acute than on the first repetition. Memory, therefore, though
tending to disturb similarity of action less and less continually, must
always cause some disturbance. At the same time the possession of a
memory on the successive repetitions of an action after the first, and,
perhaps, the first two or three, during which the recollection may be
supposed still imperfect, will tend to ensure uniformity, for it will be
one of the elements of sameness in the agents—they both acting by the
light of experience and memory.
During the embryonic stages and in childhood we are almost entirely under
the guidance of a practised and powerful memory of circumstances which
have been often repeated, not only in detail and piecemeal, but as a
whole, and under many slightly varying conditions; thus the performance
has become well averaged and matured in its arrangements, so as to meet
all ordinary emergencies. We therefore act with great unconsciousness
and vary our performances little. Babies are much more alike than
persons of middle age.
Up to the average age at which our ancestors have had children during
many generations, we are still guided in great measure by memory; but the
variations in external circumstances begin to make themselves perceptible
in our characters. In middle life we live more and more continually upon
the piecing together of details of memory drawn from our personal
experience, that is to say, upon the memory of our own antecedents; and
this resembles the kind of memory we hypothetically attached to cream a
little time ago. It is not surprising, then, that a son who has
inherited his father’s tastes and constitution, and who lives much as his
father had done, should make the same mistakes as his father did when he
reaches his father’s age—we will say of seventy—though he cannot possibly
remember his father’s having made the mistakes. It were to be wished we
could, for then we might know better how to avoid gout, cancer, or what
not. And it is to be noticed that the developments of old age are
generally things we should be glad enough to avoid if we knew how to do
so.
Chapter XIII
Conclusion.
IF we observed the resemblance between successive generations to be as
close as that between distilled water and distilled water through all
time, and if we observed that perfect unchangeableness in the action of
living beings which we see in what we call chemical and mechanical
combinations, we might indeed suspect that memory had as little place
among the causes of their action as it can have in anything, and that
each repetition, whether of a habit or the practice of art, or of an
embryonic process in successive generations, was an original performance,
for all that memory had to do with it. I submit, however, that in the
case of the reproductive forms of life we see just so much variety, in
spite of uniformity, as is consistent with a repetition involving not
only a nearly perfect similarity in the agents and their circumstances,
but also the little departure therefrom that is inevitably involved in
the supposition that a memory of like presents as well as of like
antecedents (as distinguished from a memory of like antecedents only) has
played a part in their development—a cyclonic memory, if the expression
may be pardoned.
There is life infinitely lower and more minute than any which our most
powerful microscopes reveal to us, but let us leave this upon one side
and begin with the amœba. Let us suppose that this structureless morsel
of protoplasm is, for all its structurelessness, composed of an infinite
number of living molecules, each one of them with hopes and fears of its
own, and all dwelling together like Tekke Turcomans, of whom we read that
they live for plunder only, and that each man of them is entirely
independent, acknowledging no constituted authority, but that some among
them exercise a tacit and undefined influence over the others. Let us
suppose these molecules capable of memory, both in their capacity as
individuals, and as societies, and able to transmit their memories to
their descendants, from the traditions of the dimmest past to the
experiences of their own lifetime. Some of these societies will remain
simple, as having had no history, but to the greater number unfamiliar,
and therefore striking, incidents will from time to time occur, which,
when they do not disturb memory so greatly as to kill, will leave their
impression upon it. The body or society will remember these incidents,
and be modified by them in its conduct, and therefore more or less in its
internal arrangements, which will tend inevitably to specialisation.
This memory of the most striking events of varied lifetimes I maintain,
with Professor Hering, to be the differentiating cause, which,
accumulated in countless generations, has led up from the amœba to man.
If there had been no such memory, the amœba of one generation would have
exactly resembled time amœba of the preceding, and a perfect cycle would
have been established; the modifying effects of an additional memory in
each generation have made the cycle into a spiral, and into a spiral
whose eccentricity, in the outset hardly perceptible, is becoming greater
and greater with increasing longevity and more complex social and
mechanical inventions.
We say that the chicken grows the horny tip to its beak with which it
ultimately pecks its way out of its shell, because it remembers having
grown it before, and the use it made of it. We say that it made it on
the same principles as a man makes a spade or a hammer, that is to say,
as the joint result both of desire and experience. When I say
experience, I mean experience not only of what will be wanted, but also
of the details of all the means that must be taken in order to effect
this. Memory, therefore, is supposed to guide the chicken not only in
respect of the main design, but in respect also of every atomic action,
so to speak, which goes to make up the execution of this design. It is
not only the suggestion of a plan which is due to memory, but, as
Professor Hering has so well said, it is the binding power of memory
which alone renders any consolidation or coherence of action possible,
inasmuch as without this no action could have parts subordinate one to
another, yet bearing upon a common end; no part of an action, great or
small, could have reference to any other part, much less to a combination
of all the parts; nothing, in fact, but ultimate atoms of actions could
ever happen—these bearing the same relation to such an action, we will
say, as a railway journey from London to Edinburgh as a single molecule
of hydrogen to a gallon of water. If asked how it is that the chicken
shows no sign of consciousness concerning this design, nor yet of the
steps it is taking to carry it out, we reply that such unconsciousness is
usual in all cases where an action, and the design which prompts it, have
been repeated exceedingly often. If, again, we are asked how we account
for the regularity with which each step is taken in its due order, we
answer that this too is characteristic of actions that are done
habitually—they being very rarely misplaced in respect of any part.
When I wrote “Life and Habit,” I had arrived at the conclusion that
memory was the most essential characteristic of life, and went so far as
to say, “Life is that property of matter whereby it can remember—matter
which can remember is living.” I should perhaps have written, “Life is
the being possessed of a memory—the life of a thing at any moment is the
memories which at that moment it retains”; and I would modify the words
that immediately follow, namely, “Matter which cannot remember is dead”;
for they imply that there is such a thing as matter which cannot remember
anything at all, and this on fuller consideration I do not believe to be
the case; I can conceive of no matter which is not able to remember a
little, and which is not living in respect of what it can remember. I do
not see how action of any kind is conceivable without the supposition
that every atom retains a memory of certain antecedents. I cannot,
however, at this point, enter upon the reasons which have compelled me to
this conclusion. Whether these would be deemed sufficient or no, at any
rate we cannot believe that a system of self-reproducing associations
should develop from the simplicity of the amœba to the complexity of the
human body without the presence of that memory which can alone account at
once for the resemblances and the differences between successive
generations, for the arising and the accumulation of divergences—for the
tendency to differ and the tendency not to differ.
At parting, therefore, I would recommend the reader to see every atom in
the universe as living and able to feel and to remember, but in a humble
way. He must have life eternal, as well as matter eternal; and the life
and the matter must be joined together inseparably as body and soul to
one another. Thus he will see God everywhere, not as those who repeat
phrases conventionally, but as people who would have their words taken
according to their most natural and legitimate meaning; and he will feel
that the main difference between him and many of those who oppose him
lies in the fact that whereas both he and they use the same language, his
opponents only half mean what they say, while he means it entirely.
The attempt to get a higher form of a life from a lower one is in
accordance with our observation and experience. It is therefore proper
to be believed. The attempt to get it from that which has absolutely no
life is like trying to get something out of nothing. The millionth part
of a farthing put out to interest at ten per cent, will in five hundred
years become over a million pounds, and so long as we have any millionth
of a millionth of the farthing to start with, our getting as many million
pounds as we have a fancy for is only a question of time, but without the
initial millionth of a millionth of a millionth part, we shall get no
increment whatever. A little leaven will leaven the whole lump, but
there must be _some_ leaven.
I will here quote two passages from an article already quoted from on
page 55 of this book. They run:—
“We are growing conscious that our earnest and most determined
efforts to make motion produce sensation and volition have proved a
failure, and now we want to rest a little in the opposite, much less
laborious conjecture, and allow any kind of motion to start into
existence, or at least to receive its specific direction from
psychical sources; sensation and volition being for the purpose
quietly insinuated into the constitution of the ultimately moving
particles.” {177a}
And:—
“In this light it can remain no longer surprising that we actually
find motility and sensibility so intimately interblended in nature.”
{177b}
We should endeavour to see the so-called inorganic as living, in respect
of the qualities it has in common with the organic, rather than the
organic as non-living in respect of the qualities it has in common with
the inorganic. True, it would be hard to place one’s self on the same
moral platform as a stone, but this is not necessary; it is enough that
we should feel the stone to have a moral platform of its own, though that
platform embraces little more than a profound respect for the laws of
gravitation, chemical affinity, &c. As for the difficulty of conceiving
a body as living that has not got a reproductive system—we should
remember that neuter insects are living but are believed to have no
reproductive system. Again, we should bear in mind that mere
assimilation involves all the essentials of reproduction, and that both
air and water possess this power in a very high degree. The essence of a
reproductive system, then, is found low down in the scheme of nature.
At present our leading men of science are in this difficulty; on the one
hand their experiments and their theories alike teach them that
spontaneous generation ought not to be accepted; on the other, they must
have an origin for the life of the living forms, which, by their own
theory, have been evolved, and they can at present get this origin in no
other way than by the _Deus ex machinâ_ method, which they reject as
unproved, or a spontaneous generation of living from non-living matter,
which is no less foreign to their experience. As a general rule, they
prefer the latter alternative. So Professor Tyndall, in his celebrated
article (_Nineteenth Century_, November 1878), wrote:—
“It is generally conceded (and seems to be a necessary inference from
the lessons of science) that _spontaneous generation must at one time
have taken place_” (italics mine).
No inference can well be more unnecessary or unscientific. I suppose
spontaneous generation ceases to be objectionable if it was “only a very
little one,” and came off a long time ago in a foreign country. The
proper inference is, that there is a low kind of livingness in every atom
of matter. Life eternal is as inevitable a conclusion as matter eternal.
It should not be doubted that wherever there is vibration or motion there
is life and memory, and that there is vibration and motion at all times
in all things.
The reader who takes the above position will find that he can explain the
entry of what he calls death among what he calls the living, whereas he
could by no means introduce life into his system if he started without
it. Death is deducible; life is not deducible. Death is a change of
memories; it is not the destruction of all memory. It is as the
liquidation of one company, each member of which will presently join a
new one, and retain a trifle even of the old cancelled memory, by way of
greater aptitude for working in concert with other molecules. This is
why animals feed on grass and on each other, and cannot proselytise or
convert the rude ground before it has been tutored in the first
principles of the higher kinds of association.
Again, I would recommend the reader to beware of believing anything in
this book unless he either likes it, or feels angry at being told it. If
required belief in this or that makes a man angry, I suppose he should,
as a general rule, swallow it whole then and there upon the spot,
otherwise he may take it or leave it as he likes. I have not gone far
for my facts, nor yet far from them; all on which I rest are as open to
the reader as to me. If I have sometimes used hard terms, the
probability is that I have not understood them, but have done so by a
slip, as one who has caught a bad habit from the company he has been
lately keeping. They should be skipped.
Do not let him be too much cast down by the bad language with which
professional scientists obscure the issue, nor by their seeming to make
it their business to fog us under the pretext of removing our
difficulties. It is not the ratcatcher’s interest to catch all the rats;
and, as Handel observed so sensibly, “Every professional gentleman must
do his best for to live.” The art of some of our philosophers, however,
is sufficiently transparent, and consists too often in saying “organism
which must be classified among fishes,” instead of “fish,” {179a} and
then proclaiming that they have “an ineradicable tendency to try to make
things clear.” {179b}
If another example is required, here is the following from an article
than which I have seen few with which I more completely agree, or which
have given me greater pleasure. If our men of science would take to
writing in this way, we should be glad enough to follow them. The
passage I refer to runs thus:—
“Professor Huxley speaks of a ‘verbal fog by which the question at
issue may be hidden’; is there no verbal fog in the statement that
_the ætiology of crayfishes resolves itself into a gradual evolution
in the course of the mesosoic and subsequent epochs of the world’s
history of these animals from a primitive astacomorphous form_?
Would it be fog or light that would envelop the history of man if we
said that the existence of man was explained by the hypothesis of his
gradual evolution from a primitive anthropomorphous form? I should
call this fog, not light.” {180}
Especially let him mistrust those who are holding forth about protoplasm,
and maintaining that this is the only living substance. Protoplasm may
be, and perhaps is, the _most_ living part of an organism, as the most
capable of retaining vibrations, but this is the utmost that can be
claimed for it.
Having mentioned protoplasm, I may ask the reader to note the breakdown
of that school of philosophy which divided the _ego_ from the _non ego_.
The protoplasmists, on the one hand, are whittling away at the _ego_,
till they have reduced it to a little jelly in certain parts of the body,
and they will whittle away this too presently, if they go on as they are
doing now.
Others, again, are so unifying the _ego_ and the _non ego_, that with
them there will soon be as little of the _non ego_ left as there is of
the _ego_ with their opponents. Both, however, are so far agreed as that
we know not where to draw the line between the two, and this renders
nugatory any system which is founded upon a distinction between them.
The truth is, that all classification whatever, when we examine its
_raison d’être_ closely, is found to be arbitrary—to depend on our sense
of our own convenience, and not on any inherent distinction in the nature
of the things themselves. Strictly speaking, there is only one thing and
one action. The universe, or God, and the action of the universe as a
whole.
Lastly, I may predict with some certainty that before long we shall find
the original Darwinism of Dr. Erasmus Darwin (with an infusion of
Professor Hering into the bargain) generally accepted instead of the
neo-Darwinism of to-day, and that the variations whose accumulation
results in species will be recognised as due to the wants and endeavours
of the living forms in which they appear, instead of being ascribed to
chance, or, in other words, to unknown causes, as by Mr. Charles Darwin’s
system. We shall have some idyllic young naturalist bringing up Dr.
Erasmus Darwin’s note on _Trapa natans_, {181a} and Lamarck’s kindred
passage on the descent of _Ranunculus hederaceus_ from _Ranunculus
aquatilis_ {181b} as fresh discoveries, and be told, with much happy
simplicity, that those animals and plants which have felt the need of
such or such a structure have developed it, while those which have not
wanted it have gone without it. Thus, it will be declared, every leaf we
see around us, every structure of the minutest insect, will bear witness
to the truth of the “great guess” of the greatest of naturalists
concerning the memory of living matter.
I dare say the public will not object to this, and am very sure that none
of the admirers of Mr. Charles Darwin or Mr. Wallace will protest against
it; but it may be as well to point out that this was not the view of the
matter taken by Mr. Wallace in 1858 when he and Mr. Darwin first came
forward as preachers of natural selection. At that time Mr. Wallace saw
clearly enough the difference between the theory of “natural selection”
and that of Lamarck. He wrote:—
“The hypothesis of Lamarck—that progressive changes in species have
been produced by the attempts of animals to increase the development
of their own organs, and thus modify their structure and habits—has
been repeatedly and easily refuted by all writers on the subject of
varieties and species, . . . but the view here developed tenders such
an hypothesis quite unnecessary. . . . The powerful retractile
talons of the falcon and the cat tribes have not been produced or
increased by the volition of those animals, neither did the giraffe
acquire its long neck by desiring to reach the foliage of the more
lofty shrubs, and constantly stretching its neck for this purpose,
but because any varieties which occurred among its antitypes with a
longer neck than usual _at once secured a fresh range of pasture over
the same ground as their shorter-necked companions_, _and on the
first scarcity of food were thereby enabled to outlive them_”
(italics in original). {182a}
This is absolutely the neo-Darwinian doctrine, and a denial of the mainly
fortuitous character of the variations in animal and vegetable forms cuts
at its root. That Mr. Wallace, after years of reflection, still adhered
to this view, is proved by his heading a reprint of the paragraph just
quoted from {182b} with the words “Lamarck’s hypothesis very different
from that now advanced”; nor do any of his more recent works show that he
has modified his opinion. It should be noted that Mr. Wallace does not
call his work “Contributions to the Theory of Evolution,” but to that of
“Natural Selection.”
Mr. Darwin, with characteristic caution, only commits himself to saying
that Mr. Wallace has arrived at _almost_ (italics mine) the same general
conclusions as he, Mr. Darwin, has done; {182c} but he still, as in 1859,
declares that it would be “a serious error to suppose that the greater
number of instincts have been acquired by habit in one generation, and
then transmitted by inheritance to succeeding generations,” {183a} and he
still comprehensively condemns the “well-known doctrine of inherited
habit, as advanced by Lamarck.” {183b}
As for the statement in the passage quoted from Mr. Wallace, to the
effect that Lamarck’s hypothesis “has been repeatedly and easily refuted
by all writers on the subject of varieties and species,” it is a very
surprising one. I have searched Evolution literature in vain for any
refutation of the Erasmus Darwinian system (for this is what Lamarck’s
hypothesis really is) which need make the defenders of that system at all
uneasy. The best attempt at an answer to Erasmus Darwin that has yet
been made is “Paley’s Natural Theology,” which was throughout obviously
written to meet Buffon and the “Zoonomia.” It is the manner of
theologians to say that such and such an objection “has been refuted over
and over again,” without at the same time telling us when and where; it
is to be regretted that Mr. Wallace has here taken a leaf out of the
theologians’ book. His statement is one which will not pass muster with
those whom public opinion is sure in the end to follow.
Did Mr. Herbert Spencer, for example, “repeatedly and easily refute”
Lamarck’s hypothesis in his brilliant article in the _Leader_, March 20,
1852? On the contrary, that article is expressly directed against those
“who cavalierly reject the hypothesis of Lamarck and his followers.”
This article was written six years before the words last quoted from Mr.
Wallace; how absolutely, however, does the word “cavalierly” apply to
them!
Does Isidore Geoffroy, again, bear Mr. Wallace’s assertion out better?
In 1859—that is to say, but a short time after Mr. Wallace had written—he
wrote as follows:—
“Such was the language which Lamarck heard during his protracted old
age, saddened alike by the weight of years and blindness; this was
what people did not hesitate to utter over his grave yet barely
closed, and what indeed they are still saying—commonly too without
any knowledge of what Lamarck maintained, but merely repeating at
secondhand bad caricatures of his teaching.
“When will the time come when we may see Lamarck’s theory
discussed—and, I may as well at once say, refuted in some important
points {184a}—with at any rate the respect due to one of the most
illustrious masters of our science? And when will this theory, the
hardihood of which has been greatly exaggerated, become freed from
the interpretations and commentaries by the false light of which so
many naturalists have formed their opinion concerning it? If its
author is to be condemned, let it be, at any rate, not before he has
been heard.” {184b}
In 1873 M. Martin published his edition of Lamarck’s “Philosophie
Zoologique.” He was still able to say, with, I believe, perfect truth,
that Lamarck’s theory has “never yet had the honour of being discussed
seriously.” {184c}
Professor Huxley in his article on Evolution is no less cavalier than Mr.
Wallace. He writes:—{184d}
“Lamarck introduced the conception of the action of an animal on
itself as a factor in producing modification.”
[Lamarck did nothing of the kind. It was Buffon and Dr. Darwin who
introduced this, but more especially Dr. Darwin.]
“But _a little consideration showed_” (italics mine) “that though
Lamarck had seized what, as far as it goes, is a true cause of
modification, it is a cause the actual effects of which are wholly
inadequate to account for any considerable modification in animals,
and which can have no influence whatever in the vegetable world, &c.”
I should be very glad to come across some of the “little consideration”
which will show this. I have searched for it far and wide, and have
never been able to find it.
I think Professor Huxley has been exercising some of his ineradicable
tendency to try to make things clear in the article on Evolution, already
so often quoted from. We find him (p. 750) pooh-poohing Lamarck, yet on
the next page he says, “How far ‘natural selection’ suffices for the
production of species remains to be seen.” And this when “natural
selection” was already so nearly of age! Why, to those who know how to
read between a philosopher’s lines, the sentence comes to very nearly the
same as a declaration that the writer has no great opinion of “natural
selection.” Professor Huxley continues, “Few can doubt that, if not the
whole cause, it is a very important factor in that operation.” A
philosopher’s words should be weighed carefully, and when Professor
Huxley says “few can doubt,” we must remember that he may be including
himself among the few whom he considers to have the power of doubting on
this matter. He does not say “few will,” but “few can” doubt, as though
it were only the enlightened who would have the power of doing so.
Certainly “nature,”—for this is what “natural selection” comes to,—is
rather an important factor in the operation, but we do not gain much by
being told so. If, however, Professor Huxley neither believes in the
origin of species, through sense of need on the part of animals
themselves, nor yet in “natural selection,” we should be glad to know
what he does believe in.
The battle is one of greater importance than appears at first sight. It
is a battle between teleology and non-teleology, between the
purposiveness and the non-purposiveness of the organs in animal and
vegetable bodies. According to Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, and Paley,
organs are purposive; according to Mr. Darwin and his followers, they are
not purposive. But the main arguments against the system of Dr. Erasmus
Darwin are arguments which, so far as they have any weight, tell against
evolution generally. Now that these have been disposed of, and the
prejudice against evolution has been overcome, it will be seen that there
is nothing to be said against the system of Dr. Darwin and Lamarck which
does not tell with far greater force against that of Mr. Charles Darwin
and Mr. Wallace.
* * * * *
THE END.
* * * * *
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.
PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH
Footnotes
{0a} This is the date on the title-page. The preface is dated October
15, 1886, and the first copy was issued in November of the same year.
All the dates are taken from the Bibliography by Mr. H. Festing Jones
prefixed to the “Extracts” in the _New Quarterly Review_ (1909).
{0b} I.e. after p. 285: it bears no number of its own!
{0c} The distinction was merely implicit in his published writings, but
has been printed since his death from his “Notebooks,” _New Quarterly
Review_, April, 1908. I had developed this thesis, without knowing of
Butler’s explicit anticipation in an article then in the press:
“Mechanism and Life,” _Contemporary Review_, May, 1908.
{0d} The term has recently been revived by Prof. Hubrecht and by myself
(_Contemporary Review_, November 1908).
{0e} See _Fortnightly Review_, February 1908, and _Contemporary Review_,
September and November 1909. Since these publications the hypnosis seems
to have somewhat weakened.
{0f} A “hormone” is a chemical substance which, formed in one part of
the body, alters the reactions of another part, normally for the good of
the organism.
{0g} Mr. H. Festing Jones first directed my attention to these passages
and their bearing on the Mutation Theory.
{0i} He says in a note, “This general type of reaction was described and
illustrated in a different connection by Pfluger in ‘Pfluger’s Archiv.
f.d. ges. Physiologie,’ Bd. XV.” The essay bears the significant title
“Die teleologische Mechanik der lebendigen Natur,” and is a very
remarkable one, as coming from an official physiologist in 1877, when the
chemico-physical school was nearly at its zenith.
{0j} “Contributions to the Study of the Lower Animals” (1904),
“Modifiability in Behaviour” and “Method of Regulability in Behaviour and
in other Fields,” in _Journ. Experimental Zoology_, vol. ii. (1905).
{0h} See “The Hereditary Transmission of Acquired Characters” in
_Contemporary Review_, September and November 1908, in which references
are given to earlier statements.
{0k} Semon’s technical terms are exclusively taken from the Greek, but
as experience tells that plain men in England have a special dread of
suchlike, I have substituted “imprint” for “engram,” “outcome” for
“ecphoria”; for the latter term I had thought of “efference,”
“manifestation,” etc., but decided on what looked more homely, and at the
same time was quite distinctive enough to avoid that confusion which
Semon has dodged with his Græcisms.
{0l} “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.”—_Unconscious Memory_, p. 71.
{0m} Preface by Mr. Charles Darwin to “Erasmus Darwin.” The Museum has
copies of a _Kosmos_ that was published 1857–60 and then discontinued;
but this is clearly not the _Kosmos_ referred to by Mr. Darwin, which
began to appear in 1878.
{0n} Preface to “Erasmus Darwin.”
{2} May 1880.
{3} _Kosmos_, February 1879, Leipsic.
{4} Origin of Species, ed. i., p. 459.
{8a} Origin of Species, ed. i., p. 1.
{8b} _Kosmos_, February 1879, p. 397.
{8c} Erasmus Darwin, by Ernest Krause, pp. 132, 133.
{9a} Origin of Species, ed. i., p. 242.
{9b} Ibid., p. 427.
{10a} _Nineteenth Century_, November 1878; Evolution, Old and New, pp.
360. 361.
{10b} Encyclopædia Britannica, ed. ix., art. “Evolution,” p. 748.
{11} Ibid.
{17} Encycl. Brit., ed. ix., art. “Evolution,” p. 750.
{23a} Origin of Species, 6th ed., 1876, p. 206.
{23b} Ibid., p. 233.
{24a} Origin of Species, 6th ed., p. 171, 1876.
{24b} Pp. 258–260.
{26} Zoonomia, vol. i. p. 484; Evolution, Old and New, p. 214.
{27} “Erasmus Darwin,” by Ernest Krause, p. 211, London, 1879.
{28a} See “Evolution, Old and New,” p. 91, and Buffon, tom. iv. p. 383,
ed. 1753.
{28b} Evolution, Old and New, p. 104.
{29a} Encycl. Brit., 9th ed., art. “Evolution,” p. 748.
{29b} Palingénésie Philosophique, part x. chap. ii. (quoted from
Professor Huxley’s article on “Evolution,” Encycl. Brit., 9th ed., p.
745).
{31} The note began thus: “I have taken the date of the first
publication of Lamarck from Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire’s (Hist. Nat.
Générale tom. ii. p. 405, 1859) excellent history of opinion upon this
subject. In this work a full account is given of Buffon’s fluctuating
conclusions upon the same subject.”—_Origin of Species_, 3d ed., 1861, p.
xiv.
{33a} Life of Erasmus Darwin, pp. 84, 85.
{33b} See Life and Habit, p. 264 and pp. 276, 277.
{33c} See Evolution, Old and New, pp. 159–165.
{33d} Ibid., p. 122.
{34} See Evolution, Old and New, pp. 247, 248.
{35a} Vestiges of Creation, ed. 1860, “Proofs, Illustrations, &c.,” p.
lxiv.
{35b} The first announcement was in the _Examiner_, February 22, 1879.
{36} _Saturday Review_, May 31, 1879.
{37a} May 26, 1879.
{37b} May 31, 1879.
{37c} July 26, 1879.
{37d} July 1879.
{37e} July 1879.
{37f} July 29, 1879.
{37g} January 1880.
{39} How far _Kosmos_ was “a well-known” journal, I cannot determine.
It had just entered upon its second year.
{41} Evolution, Old and New, p. 120, line 5.
{43} _Kosmos_, February 1879, p. 397.
{44a} _Kosmos_, February 1879, p. 404.
{44b} Page 39 of this volume.
{50} See Appendix A.
{52} Since published as “God the Known and God the Unknown.” Fifield,
1s. 6d. net. 1909.
{54a} “Contemplation of Nature,” Engl. trans., Lond. 1776. Preface, p.
xxxvi.
{54b} _Ibid._, p. xxxviii.
{55} Life and Habit, p. 97.
{56} “The Unity of the Organic Individual,” by Edward Montgomery,
_Mind_, October 1880, p. 466.
{58} Life and Habit, p. 237.
{59a} Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy. Lardner’s Cab.
Cyclo., vol. xcix. p. 24.
{59b} Young’s Lectures on Natural Philosophy, ii. 627. See also Phil.
Trans., 1801–2.
{63} The lecture is published by Karl Gerold’s Sohn, Vienna.
{69} See quotation from Bonnet, p. 54 of this volume.
{70} Professor Hering is not clear here. Vibrations (if I understand
his theory rightly) should not be set up by faint _stimuli_ from within.
Whence and what are these _stimuli_? The vibrations within are already
existing, and it is they which are the _stimuli_ to action. On having
been once set up, they either continue in sufficient force to maintain
action, or they die down, and become too weak to cause further action,
and perhaps even to be perceived within the mind, until they receive an
accession of vibration from without. The only “stimulus from within”
that should be able to generate action is that which may follow when a
vibration already established in the body runs into another similar
vibration already so established. On this consciousness, and even
action, might be supposed to follow without the presence of an external
stimulus.
{71} This expression seems hardly applicable to the overtaking of an
internal by an external vibration, but it is not inconsistent with it.
Here, however, as frequently elsewhere, I doubt how far Professor Hering
has fully realised his conception, beyond being, like myself, convinced
that the phenomena of memory and of heredity have a common source.
{72} See quotation from Bonnet, p. 54 of this volume. By “preserving
the memory of habitual actions” Professor Hering probably means, retains
for a long while and repeats motion of a certain character when such
motion has been once communicated to it.
{74a} It should not be “if the central nerve system were not able to
reproduce whole series of vibrations,” but “if whole series of vibrations
do not persist though unperceived,” if Professor Hering intends what I
suppose him to intend.
{74b} Memory was in full operation for so long a time before anything
like what we call a nervous system can be detected, that Professor Hering
must not be supposed to be intending to confine memory to a motor nerve
system. His words do not even imply that he does, but it is as well to
be on one’s guard.
{77} It is from such passages as this, and those that follow on the next
few pages, that I collect the impression of Professor Hering’s meaning
which I have endeavoured to convey in the preceding chapter.
{78} That is to say, “an infinitely small change in the kind of
vibration communicated from the parent to the germ.”
{79} It may be asked what is meant by responding. I may repeat that I
understand Professor Hering to mean that there exists in the offspring
certain vibrations, which are many of them too faint to upset equilibrium
and thus generate action, until they receive an accession of force from
without by the running into them of vibrations of similar characteristics
to their own, which last vibrations have been set up by exterior objects.
On this they become strong enough to generate that corporeal earthquake
which we call action.
This may be true or not, but it is at any rate intelligible; whereas much
that is written about “fraying channels” raises no definite ideas in the
mind.
{80a} I interpret this, “We cannot wonder if often-repeated vibrations
gather strength, and become at once more lasting and requiring less
accession of vibration from without, in order to become strong enough to
generate action.”
{80b} “Characteristics” must, I imagine, according to Professor Hering,
resolve themselves ultimately into “vibrations,” for the characteristics
depend upon the character of the vibrations.
{81} Professor Hartog tells me that this probably refers to Fritz
Müller’s formulation of the “recapitulation process” in “Facts for
Darwin,” English edition (1869), p. 114.—R.A.S.
{82} This is the passage which makes me suppose Professor Hering to mean
that vibrations from exterior objects run into vibrations already
existing within the living body, and that the accession to power thus
derived is his key to an explanation of the physical basis of action.
{84} I interpret this: “There are fewer vibrations persistent within the
bodies of the lower animals; those that there are, therefore, are
stronger and more capable of generating action or upsetting the _status
in quo_. Hence also they require less accession of vibration from
without. Man is agitated by more and more varied vibrations; these,
interfering, as to some extent they must, with one another, are weaker,
and therefore require more accession from without before they can set the
mechanical adjustments of the body in motion.”
{89} I am obliged to Mr. Sully for this excellent translation of
“Hellsehen.”
{90a} _Westminster Review_, New Series, vol. xlix. p. 143.
{90b} Ibid., p. 145.
{90c} Ibid., p. 151.
{92a} “Instinct ist zweckmässiges Handeln ohne Bewusstsein des
Zwecks.”—_Philosophy of the Unconscious_, 3d ed., Berlin, 1871, p. 70.
{92b} “1. Eine blosse Folge der körperlichen Organisation.
“2. Ein von der Natur eingerichteter Gehirn-oder Geistesmechanismus.
“3. Eine Folge unbewusster Geistesthiitigkeit.”—_Philosophy of the
Unconscious_, 3d ed., p. 70.
{97} “Hiermit ist der Annahme das Urtheil gesprochen, welche die
unbewusste Vorstellung des Zwecks in jedem einzelnen Falle vorwiegt; denn
wollte man nun noch die Vorstellung des Geistesmechanismus festhalten so
müsste für jede Variation und Modification des Instincts, nach den
äusseren Umständen, eine besondere constante Vorrichtung . . . eingefügt
sein.”—_Philosophy of the Unconscious_ 3d ed., p. 74.
{99} “Indessen glaube ich, dass die angeführten Beispiele zur Genüge
beweisen, dass es auch viele Fälle giebt, wo ohne jede Complication mit
der bewussten Ueberlegung die gewöhnliche und aussergewöhnliche Handlung
aus derselben Quelle stammen, dass sie entweder beide wirklicher
Instinct, oder beide Resultate bewusster Ueberlegung sind.”—_Philosophy
of the Unconscious_, 3d ed., p. 76.
{100} “Dagegen haben wir nunmehr unseren Blick noch einmal schärfer auf
den Begriff eines psychischen Mechanismus zu richten, und da zeigt sich,
dass derselbe, abgesehen davon, wie viel er erklärt, so dunke list, dass
man sich kaum etwas dabei denken kann.”—_Philosophy of the Unconscious_,
3d ed., p. 76.
{101} “Das Endglied tritt als bewusster Wille zu irgend einer Handlung
auf; beide sind aber ganz ungleichartig und haben mit der gewöhnlichen
Motivation nichts zu thun, welche ausschliesslich darin besteht, dass die
Vorstellung einer Lust oder einer Unlust das Begehren erzeugr, erstere zu
erlangen, letztere sich fern zu halten.”—_Ibid._, p. 76.
{102a} “Diese causale Verbindung fällt erfahrungsmässig, wie wir von
unsern menschlichen Instincten wissen, nicht in’s Bewussisein; folglich
kann dieselbe, wenn sie ein Mechanismus sein soll, nur entweder ein nicht
in’s Bewusstsein fallende mechanische Leitung und Umwandlung der
Schwingungen des vorgestellten Motivs in die Schwingungen der gewollten
Handlung im Gehirn, oder ein unbewusster geistiger Mechanismus
sein.”—_Philosophy of the Unconscious_ 3d ed., p. 77.
{102b} “Man hat sich also zwischen dem bewussten Motiv, und dem Willen
zur Insticthandlung eine causale Verbindung durch unbewusstes Vorstellen
und Wollen zu denken, und ich weiss nicht, wie diese Verbindung einfacher
gedacht werden könnte, als durch den vorgestellten und gewollten Zweck.
Damit sind wir aber bei dem allen Geistern eigenthümlichen und immanenten
Mechanismus der Logik angelangt, und haben die unbewusster
Zweckvorstellung bei jeder einzelnen Instincthandlung als unentbehrliches
Glied gefunden; hiermit hat also der Begrift des todten, äusserlich
prädestinirten Geistesmechanismus sich selbst aufgehoben und in das
immanente Geistesleben der Logik umgewandelt, und wir sind bei der
letzten Möglichkeit angekommen, welche für die Auffassung eines
wirklichen Instincts übrig bleibt: der Instinct ist bewusstes Wollen des
Mittels zu einem unbewusst gewollten Zweck.”—_Philosophy of the
Unconscious_, 3d ed., p. 78.
{105a} “Also der Instinct ohne Hülfsmechanismus die Ursache der
Entstehung des Hülfsmechanismus ist.”—_Philosophy of the Unconscious_, 3d
ed., p. 79.
{105b} “Dass auch der fertige Hülfsmechanismus das Unbewusste nicht etwa
zu dieser bestimmten Instincthandlung necessirt, sondern blosse
prädisponirt.”—_Philosophy of the Unconscious_, 3d ed., p. 79.
{105c} “Giebt es einen wirklichen Instinct, oder sind die sogenannten
Instincthandlungen nur Resultate bewusster Ueberlegung?”—_Philosophy of
the Unconscious_, 3d ed., p. 79.
{111} “Dieser Beweis ist dadurch zu führen; erstens dass die
betreffenden Thatsachen in; der Zukunft liegen, und dem Verstande die
Anhaltepunkte fehlen, um ihr zukünftiges Eintreten aus den gegenwärtigen
Verhältnissen zu erschliessen; zweitens, dass die betreffenden Thatsachen
augenscheinlich der sinnlichen Wahrnehmung verschlossen liegen, weil nur
die Erfahrung früherer Fälle über sie belehren kann, und diese laut der
Beobachtung ausgeschlossen ist. Es würde für unsere Interessen keinen
Unterschied machen, wenn, was ich wahrscheinlich halte, bei
fortschreitender physiologischer Erkenntniss alle jetzt für den ersten
Fall anzuführenden Beispiele sich als solche des zweiten Falls ausweisen
sollten, wie dies unleugbar bei vielen früher gebrauchten Beispielen
schon geschehen ist; denn ein apriorisches Wissen ohne jeden sinnlichen
Anstoss ist wohl kaum wunderbarer zu nennen, als ein Wissen, welches zwar
_bei Gelegenheit_ gewisser sinnlicher Wahrnehmung zu Tage tritt, aber mit
diesen nur durch eine solche Kette von Schlüssen und angewandten
Kenntnissen in Verbindung stehend gedacht werden könnte, dass deren
Möglichkeit bei dem Zustande der Fähigkeiten und Bildung der betreffenden
Thiere entschieden geleugnet werden muss.”—_Philosophy of the
Unconscious_, 3d ed., p. 85.
{113} “Man hat dieselbe jederzeit anerkannt und mit den Worten Vorgefühl
oder Ahnung bezeichnet; indess beziehen sich diese Wörte einerseits nur
auf zukünftiges, nicht auf gegenwärtiges, räumlich getrenntes
Unwahmehrnbares, anderseits bezeichnen sie nur die leise, dumpfe,
unbestimmte Resonanz des Bewusstseins mit dem unfehlbar bestimmten
Zustande der unbewussten Erkenntniss. Daher das Wort Vorgefühl in
Rücksicht auf die Dumpfheit und Unbestimmtheit, während doch leicht zu
sehen ist, dass das von allen, auch den unbewussten Vorstellungen
entblösste Gefühl für das Resultat gar keinen Einfluss haben kann,
sondern nur eine Vorstellung, weil diese allein Erkenntniss enthält. Die
in Bewusstsein mitklingende Ahnung kann allerdings unter Umständen
ziemlich deutlich sein, so dass sie sich beim Menschen in Gedanken und
Wort fixiren lässt; doch ist dies auch im Menschen erfahrungsmässig bei
den eigenthümlichen Instincten nicht der Fall, vielmehr ist bei diesen
die Resonanz der unbewussten Erkenntniss im Bewusstsein meistens so
schwach, dass sie sich wirklich nur in begleitenden Gefühlen oder der
Stimmung äussert, dass sie einen unendlich kleinen Bruchtheil des
Gemeingefühls bildet.”—_Philosophy of the Unconscious_, 3d ed., p. 86.
{115a} “In der Bestimmung des Willens durch einen im Unbewussten
liegenden Process . . . für welchen sich dieser Character der
zweifellosen Selbstgewissheit in allen folgenden Untersuchungen bewähren
wird.”—_Philosophy of the Unconscious_, p. 87.
{115b} “Sondern als unmittelbarer Besitz vorgefunden wird.”—_Philosophy
of the Unconscious_, p. 87.
{115c} “Hellsehen.”
{119a} “Das Hellsehon des Unbewussten hat sie den rechten Weg ahnen
lassen.”—_Philosophy of the Unconscious_, p. 90, 3d ed., 1871.
{119b} “Man wird doch wahrlich nicht den Thieren zumuthen wollen, durch
meteorologische Schlüsse das Wetter auf Monate im Voraus zu berechnen, ja
sogar Ueberschwemmungen vorauszusehen. Vielmehr ist eine solche
Gefühlswahrnehmung gegenwärtiger atmosphärischer Einflüsse nichts weiter
als die sinnliche Wahrnehmung, welche als Motiv wirkt, und ein Motiv muss
ja doch immer vorhanden sein, wenn ein Instinct functioniren soll. Es
bleibt also trotzdem bestehen dass das Voraussehen der Witterung ein
unbewusstes Hellsehen ist, von dem der Storch, der vier Wochen früher
nach Süden aufbricht, so wenig etwas weiss, als der Hirsch, der sich vor
einem kalten Winter einen dickeren Pelz als gewöhnlich wachsen lässt.
Die Thiere haben eben einerseits das gegenwärtige Witterungsgefühl im
Bewusstsein, daraus folgt andererseits ihr Handeln gerade so, als ob sie
die Vorstellung der zukünftigen Witterung hätten; im Bewusstsein haben
sie dieselbe aber nicht, also bietet sich als einzig natürliches
Mittelglied die unbewusste Vorstellung, die nun aber immer ein Hellsehen
ist, weil sie etwas enthält, was dem Thier weder dutch sinnliche
Wahrnehmung direct gegeben ist, noch durch seine Verstandesmittel aus der
Wahrnehmung geschlossen werden kann.”—_Philosophy of the Unconscious_, p.
91, 3d ed., 1871.
{124} “Meistentheils tritt aber hier der höheren Bewusstseinstufe der
Menschen entsprechend eine stärkete Resonanz des Bewusstseins mit dem
bewussten Hellsehen hervor, die sich also mehr odor minder deutliche
Ahnung darstellt. Ausserdem entspricht es der grösseren
Selbstständigkeit des menschlichen Intellects, dass diese Ahnung nicht
ausschliesslich Behufs der unmittelbaren Ausführung einer Handlung
eintritt, sondern bisweilen auch unabängig von der Bedingung einer
momentan zu leistenden That als blosse Vorstellung ohne bewussten Willen
sich zeigte, wenn nur die Bedingung erfüllt ist, dass der Gegenstand
dieses Ahnens den Willen des Ahnenden im Allgemeinen in hohem Grade
interessirt.”—_Philosophy of the Unconscious_, 3d ed., p. 94.
{126} “Häufig sind die Ahnungen, in denen das Hellsehen des Unbewussten
sich dem Bewusstsein offenbart, dunkel, unverständlich und symbolisch,
weil sie im Gehirn sinnliche Form annehmen müssen, während die unbewusste
Vorstellung an der Form der Sinnlichkeit kein Theil haben
kann.”—_Philosophy of the Unconscious_, 3d ed., p. 96.
{128} “Ebenso weil es diese Reihe nur in gesteigerter
Bewusstseinresonanz fortsetzt, stützt es jene Aussagen der
Instincthandlungen üher ihr eigenes Wesen ebenso sehr,” &c.—_Philosophy
of the Unconscious_, 3d ed., p. 97.
{129} “Wir werden trotzdem diese gomeinsame Wirkung eines
Masseninstincts in der Entstehung der Sprache und den grossen politischen
und socialen Bewegungen in der Woltgeschichte deutlich wieder erkennen;
hier handelt es sich um möglichst einfache und deutliche Beispiele, und
darum greifen wir zu niederen Thieren, wo die Mittel der
Gedankenmittheilung bei fehlender Stimme, Mimik und Physiognomie so
unvollkommen sind, dass die Uebereinstimmung und das Ineinandergreifen
der einzelnen Leistungen in den Hauptsachen unmöglich der bewussten
Verständigung durch Sprache zugeschrieben werden darf.”—_Philosophy of
the Unconscious_, 3d ed., p. 98.
{131a} “Und wie durch Instinct dot Plan des ganzen Stocks in unbewusstem
Hellsehen jeder einzelnen Biene einwohnt.”—_Philosophy of the
Unconscious_, 3d ed., p. 99.
{131b} “Indem jedes Individuum den Plan des Ganzen und Sämmtliche
gegenwartig zu ergreifende Mittel im unbewussten Hellsehen hat, wovon
aber nut das Eine, was ihm zu thun obliegt, in sein Bewusstsein
fällt.”—_Philosophy of the Unconscious_, 3d ed., p. 99.
{132} “Der Instinct ist nicht Resultat bewusster Ueberlegung, nicht
Folge der körperlichen Organisation, nicht blosses Resultat eines in der
Organisation des Gehirns gelegenen Mechanismus, nicht Wirkung eines dem
Geiste von aussen angeklebten todten, seinem innersten Wesen fremden
Mechanismus, sondern selbsteigene Leistung des Individuum aus seinem
innersten Wesen und Character entspringend.”—_Philosophy of the
Unconscious_, 3d ed., p. 100.
{133} “Häufig ist die Kenntniss des Zwecks der bewussten Erkenntniss
durch sinnliche Wahrnehmung gar nicht zugänglich; dann documentirt sich
die Eigenthümlichkeit des Unbewussten im Hellsehen, von welchem das
Bewusstsein theils nar eine verschwindend dumpfe, theils auch namentlich
beim Menschen mehr oder minder deutliche Resonanz als Ahnung
verspütt.”—_Philosophy of the Unconscious_, 3d ed., p. 100.
{135} “Und eine so dämonische Gewalt sollte durch etwas ausgeübt werden
könnon, was als ein dem inneren Wesen fremder Mechanismus dem Geiste
aufgepfropft ist, oder gar durch eine bewusste Ueberlegung, welche doch
stets nur im kahlen Egoismus stecken bleibt,” &c.—_Philosophy of the
Unconscious_, 3d ed., p. 101.
{139a} Page 100 of this vol.
{139b} Pp. 106, 107 of this vol.
{140} Page 100 of this vol.
{141} Page 99 of this vol.
{144a} See page 115 of this volume.
{144b} Page 104 of this vol.
{146} The Spirit of Nature. J. A. Churchill & Co., 1880, p. 39.
{149} I have put these words into the mouth of my supposed objector, and
shall put others like them, because they are characteristic; but nothing
can become so well known as to escape being an inference.
{153} Erewhon, chap. xxiii.
{160} It must be remembered that this passage is put as if in the mouth
of an objector.
{177a} “The Unity of the Organic Individual,” by Edward Montgomery.
_Mind_, October 1880, p. 477.
{177b} Ibid., p. 483.
{179a} Professor Huxley, Encycl. Brit., 9th ed., art. Evolution, p.
750.
{179b} “Hume,” by Professor Huxley, p. 45.
{180} “The Philosophy of Crayfishes,” by the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop
of Carlisle. _Nineteenth Century_ for October 1880, p. 636.
{181a} Les Amours des Plantes, p. 360. Paris, 1800.
{181b} Philosophie Zoologique, tom. i. p. 231. Ed. M. Martin. Paris,
1873.
{182a} Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society. Williams &
Norgate, 1858, p. 61.
{182b} Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, 2d ed., 1871,
p. 41.
{182c} Origin of Species, p. 1, ed. 1872.
{183a} Origin of Species, 6th ed., p. 206. I ought in fairness to Mr.
Darwin to say that he does not hold the error to be quite as serious as
he once did. It is now “a serious error” only; in 1859 it was “the most
serious error.”—Origin of Species, 1st ed., p. 209.
{183b} Origin of Species, 1st ed., p. 242; 6th ed., p. 233.
{184a} I never could find what these particular points were.
{184b} Isidore Geoffroy, Hist. Nat. Gen., tom. ii. p. 407, 1859.
{184c} M. Martin’s edition of the “Philosophie Zoologique” (Paris,
1873), Introduction, p. vi.
{184d} Encyclopædia Britannica, 9th ed., p. 750.