This afternoon (March 7, 1884), the copies of this book being ready for
issue, I see Mr. Romanes' letter to the _Athenaeum_ of this day, and get
this postscript pasted into the book after binding.
Mr. Romanes corrects his reference to the passage in which he says that
Canon Kingsley first advanced the theory that instinct is inherited
memory ("M. E. in Animals," p. 296). Canon Kingsley's words are to be
found in _Fraser_, June, 1867, and are as follows:--
"Yon wood-wren has had enough to make him sad, if only he recollects
it, and if he can recollect his road from Morocco hither he maybe
recollects likewise what happened on the road: the long weary journey
up the Portuguese coast, and through the gap between the Pyrenees and
the Jaysquivel, and up the Landes of Bordeaux, and through Brittany,
flitting by night and hiding and feeding as he could by day; and how
his mates flew against the lighthouses and were killed by hundreds,
and how he essayed the British Channel and was blown back, shrivelled
up by bitter blasts; and how he felt, nevertheless, that 'that was
water he must cross,' he knew not why; but something told him that his
mother had done it before him, and he was flesh of her flesh, life of
her life, and had inherited her instinct (as we call hereditary memory
in order to avoid the trouble of finding out what it is and how it
comes). A duty was laid on him to go back to the place where he was
bred, and now it is done, and he is weary and sad and lonely, &c. &c.
This is a very interesting passage, and I am glad to quote it; but it
hardly amounts to advancing the theory that instinct is inherited memory.
Observing Mr. Romanes' words closely, I see he only says that Canon
Kingsley was the first to advance the theory "that many hundred miles of
landscape scenery" can "constitute an object of inherited memory;" but as
he proceeds to say that "_this_" has since "been independently suggested
by several writers," it is plain he intends to convey the idea that Canon
Kingsley advanced the theory that instinct generally is inherited memory,
which indeed his words do; but it is hardly credible that he should have
left them where he did if he had realized their importance.
Mr. Romanes proceeds to inform me personally that the reference to
"Nature" in his proof "originally indicated another writer who had
independently advanced the same theory as that of Canon Kingsley." After
this I have a right to ask him to tell me who the writer is, and where I
shall find what he said. I ask this, and at my earliest opportunity will
do my best to give this writer, too, the credit he doubtless deserves.
I have never professed to be the originator of the theory connecting
heredity with memory. I knew I knew so little that I was in great
trepidation when I wrote all the earlier chapters of "Life and Habit." I
put them paradoxically, because I did not dare to put them otherwise. As
the book went on, I saw I was on firm ground, and the paradox was
dropped. When I found what Professor Hering had done, I put him forward
as best I could at once. I then learned German, and translated him,
giving his words in full in "Unconscious Memory;" since then I have
always spoken of the theory as Professor Hering's.
Mr. Romanes says that "the theory in question forms the backbone of all
the previous literature on instinct by the above-named writers (not to
mention their numerous followers) and is by all of them elaborately
stated as clearly as any theory can be stated in words." Few except Mr.
Romanes will say this. I grant it ought to have formed the backbone "of
all previous literature on instinct by the above-named writers," but when
I wrote "Life and Habit" it was not understood to form it. If it had
been, I should not have found it necessary to come before the public this
fourth time during the last seven years to insist upon it. Of course the
theory is not new--it was in the air and bound to come; but when it came,
it came through Professor Hering of Prague, and not through those who,
great as are the services they have rendered, still did not render this
particular one of making memory the keystone of their system. Mr.
Romanes now says: "Why, of course, that's what they were meaning all the
time." Perhaps they were, but they did not say so, and
others--conspicuously Mr. Romanes himself--did not understand them to be
meaning what he now discovers that they meant. When Mr. Romanes attacked
me in _Nature_, January 27, 1881, he said I had "been anticipated by
Professor Hering," but he evidently did not understand that any one else
had anticipated me; and far from holding, as he now does, that "the
theory in question forms the backbone of all the previous" writers on
instinct, and "is by all of them elaborately stated as clearly as any
theory can be stated in words," he said (in a passage already quoted)
that it was "interesting, if advanced merely as an illustration, but to
imagine that it maintains any truth of profound significance, or that it
can possibly be fraught with any benefit to science, is absurd."
Considering how recently Mr. Romanes wrote the words just quoted, he has
soon forgotten them.
I do not, as I have said already, and never did, claim to have originated
the theory I put forward in "Life and Habit." I thought it out
independently, but I knew it must have occurred to many, and had probably
been worked out by many, before myself. My claim is to have brought it
perhaps into fuller light, and to have dwelt on its importance, bearings,
and developments with some persistence, and to have done so without much
recognition or encouragement, till lately. Of men of science, Mr. A. R.
Wallace and Professor Mivart gave me encouragement, but no one else has
done so. I sometimes saw, as in the Duke of Argyll's case, and in Mr.
Romanes' own, that men were writing at me, or borrowing from me, but with
the two exceptions already made, and that also of the Bishop of Carlisle,
not one of the literary and scientific notables of the day so much as
mentioned my name while making use of my work.
A few words more, and I will bring these remarks to a close, Mr. Romanes
says I represent "the phenomena of memory as occurring throughout the
inorganic world." This implies that I attribute all the phenomena of
memory as we see them in animals to such things as stones and gases. Mr.
Romanes knows very well that I have never said anything which could
warrant his attempting to put the absurdity into my mouth which he here
tries to do. The reader who wishes to see what I do maintain upon this
subject will find it on pp. 216-218 of the present volume.