KŌBE, April, 1895.
DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--The factors of evolution are multitudinous beyond
enumeration, and no one with a ghost of knowledge of the modern
scientific researches on the subject could hold (as you suggest I do)
that heredity is a first cause and "exclusive"(!) Heredity is a result,
and the vehicle of transmission, as well as the "Karma" (which Huxley
calls it). Degeneration, atrophy, atavism, are quite as much factors in
evolution as variation and natural selection and development;--but the
flowing of the eternal stream, the river of life, is heredity,--whatever
form the ripples take. As I have given some twenty years' study
to these subjects, I am not likely to overlook any such thing as
environment or climate or diet. You cannot, however, get a grasp of
the system by reading only a digest of results--a study of biology and
physiology is absolutely necessary before the psychology of the thing
can be clearly perceived. Now you say you will accept anything Spencer
writes on the subject. Well, he writes that "a child" playing with its
"toys" experiences "presentative-representative feelings." What are
presentative-representative feelings? They are feelings chiefly "deeper
than individual experience." What are feelings deeper than individual
experience? Mr. Spencer tells us they are "inherited feelings,"--the sum
of ancestral experiences,--the aggregates of race-experience. Therefore
when I said the child's delight in its toys was "hereditary-ancestral,"
I said precisely what Spencer says, but what you would never acknowledge
so long as "only I" said it.
On this subject of emotions inherited as distinguished from others,
and from those changes in states of consciousness generally which we
call reasoning or constructive imagination, the definite utterances of
Spencer as physiologist are electrically reënforced by the startling
theory of Schopenhauer, by the system of Hartmann, and by the views of
Janet and his rapidly growing school. Indeed, the mere fact that a child
cries at the sight of a frowning face and laughs at a smiling one could
be explained in no other manner.
You are not quite correct in saying that Spencer could not obtain
a hearing before Darwin. Before Darwin, Spencer had already been
recognized by Lewes as the mightiest of all English thinkers, with
the remarkable observation that he was too large and near to be
justly estimated even in his lifetime. Darwin did much, of course, to
illuminate one factor of evolution; but I need hardly say that one
factor, though the most commonly identified with evolution, is but one
of myriads. Natural selection can explain but a very small part of
the thing. The colossal brain which first detected the necessity of
evolution as a cosmic law,--governing the growth of a solar system as
well as the growth of a gnat,--the brain of Spencer, discerned that law
by pure mathematical study of the laws of force. And the work of the
Darwins and Huxleys and Tyndalls is but detail--small detail--in that
tremendous system which has abolished all preëxisting philosophy and
transformed all science and education.
I need scarcely say, however, that I should not be able, as a literary
dreamer, to derive the inspiration needed from Spencer alone: he is best
illuminated, I think, by the aid of Schopenhauer and the new French
school which considers the so-called individual as really an infinite
multiple. These men have said nothing of value which Spencer has not
said much better scientifically,--but they are infinitely suggestive
when they happen to coincide with him. So, after a fashion, is the
Vedantic philosophy (much more so than Buddhism), and so also some few
dreams of the old Greek schools.
Your criticisms also show that you take me as confusing changes
of relation of integrated states of consciousness with inherited
integrations of emotional feeling. These are absolutely distinct. But
don't think that I pretend to be invariably a state of facts: without
theory, a very large part of life's poetry could never be adequately
uttered.
I knew that the music of the "_Kimi ga yo_" was new,--though I did not
know the story of the German bandmaster. But I did not know that the
words once had no reference to the Emperor. I was more careful, however,
than you give me credit for,--since I wrote only "the syllables made
sacred by the reverential love of a century of generations," which,
allowing for poetical exaggeration, seems to be all right anyhow, even
if the words did not refer to the Emperor. Of course the implication to
the foreign reader would, however, be wrong.
Still, on the subject of loyalty, I cannot see that the existence of
the feeling as inborn is invalidated by the fact of transference.
The feeling is the thing,--not the object, not the Emperor nor the
Daimyō,--which, I imagine, must have survived all the changes.
Trained from the time of the gods to obedience and loyalty to somebody,
the feeling of the military classes would not have been instantly
dissipated or annihilated by the change of government, but simply
transferred. Indeed, that strikes me as having been what the Government
worked for. It could not afford to ignore or throw away so enormous
a source of power as the inherited feeling of the race offered, and
attempted (I think very successfully) to transfer it to the Emperor. The
fact in no way affects the truth or falsehood of the sketch "Yūho."
Your criticism is only a re-denial of inherited feeling as a possibility.
Ever very truly,
LAFCADIO HEARN.