At this time I had not been able to find that anything like what I was advancing had been said already. I asked many friends, but not one of them knew of anything more than I did; to them, as to me, it seemed an idea so new as to be almost preposterous; but knowing how things turn up after one has written, of the existence of which one had not known before, I was particularly careful to guard against being supposed to claim originality. I neither claimed it nor wished for it; for if a theory has any truth in it, it is almost sure to occur to several people much about the same time, and a reasonable person will look upon his work with great suspicion unless he can confirm it with the support of others who have gone before him. Still I knew of nothing in the least resembling it, and was so afraid of what I was doing, that though I could see no flaw in the argument, nor any loophole for escape from the conclusion it led to, yet I did not dare to put it forward with the seriousness and sobriety with which I should have treated the subject if I had not been in continual fear of a mine being sprung upon me from some unexpected quarter. I am exceedingly glad now that I knew nothing of Professor Hering's lecture, for it is much better that two people should think a thing out as far as they can independently before they become aware of each other's works but if I had seen it, I should either, as is most likely, not have written at all, or I should have pitched my book in another key.

Among the additions I intended making while the book was in the press, was a chapter on Mr. Darwin's provisional theory of Pangenesis, which I felt convinced must be right if it was Mr. Darwin's, and which I was sure, if I could once understand it, must have an important bearing on "Life and Habit." I had not as yet seen that the principle I was contending for was Darwinian, not Neo- Darwinian. My pages still teemed with allusions to "natural selection," and I sometimes allowed myself to hope that "Life and Habit" was going to be an adjunct to Darwinism which no one would welcome more gladly than Mr. Darwin himself. At this time I had a visit from a friend, who kindly called to answer a question of mine, relative, if I remember rightly, to "Pangenesis." He came, September 26, 1877. One of the first things he said was, that the theory which had pleased him more than anything he had heard of for some time was one referring all life to memory. I said that was exactly what I was doing myself, and inquired where he had met with his theory. He replied that Professor Ray Lankester had written a letter about it in Nature some time ago, but he could not remember exactly when, and had given extracts from a lecture by Professor Ewald Hering, who had originated the theory. I said I should not look at it, as I had completed that part of my work, and was on the point of going to press. I could not recast my work if, as was most likely, I should find something, when I saw what Professor Hering had said, which would make me wish to rewrite my own book; it was too late in the day and I did not feel equal to making any radical alteration; and so the matter ended with very little said upon either side. I wrote, however, afterwards to my friend asking him to tell me the number of Nature which contained the lecture if he could find it, but he was unable to do so, and I was well enough content.

A few days before this I had met another friend, and had explained to him what I was doing. He told me I ought to read Professor Mivart's "Genesis of Species," and that if I did so I should find there were two sides to "natural selection." Thinking, as so many people do— and no wonder—that "natural selection" and evolution were much the same thing, and having found so many attacks upon evolution produce no effect upon me, I declined to read it. I had as yet no idea that a writer could attack Neo-Darwinism without attacking evolution. But my friend kindly sent me a copy; and when I read it, I found myself in the presence of arguments different from those I had met with hitherto, and did not see my way to answering them. I had, however, read only a small part of Professor Mivart's work, and was not fully awake to the position, when the friend referred to in the preceding paragraph called on me.

When I had finished the "Genesis of Species," I felt that something was certainly wanted which should give a definite aim to the variations whose accumulation was to amount ultimately to specific and generic differences, and that without this there could have been no progress in organic development. I got the latest edition of the "Origin of Species" in order to see how Mr. Darwin met Professor Mivart, and found his answers in many respects unsatisfactory. I had lost my original copy of the "Origin of Species," and had not read the book for some years. I now set about reading it again, and came to the chapter on instinct, where I was horrified to find the following passage:-

"But it would be a serious error to suppose that the greater number of instincts have been acquired by habit in one generation and then transmitted by inheritance to the succeeding generations. It can be clearly shown that the most wonderful instincts with which we are acquainted, namely, those of the hive-bee and of many ants, could not possibly have been acquired by habit." {23a}

This showed that, according to Mr. Darwin, I had fallen into serious error, and my faith in him, though somewhat shaken, was far too great to be destroyed by a few days' course of Professor Mivart, the full importance of whose work I had not yet apprehended. I continued to read, and when I had finished the chapter felt sure that I must indeed have been blundering. The concluding words, "I am surprised that no one has hitherto advanced this demonstrative case of neuter insects against the well-known doctrine of inherited habit as advanced by Lamarck," {23b} were positively awful. There was a quiet consciousness of strength about them which was more convincing than any amount of more detailed explanation. This was the first I had heard of any doctrine of inherited habit as having been propounded by Lamarck (the passage stands in the first edition, "the well-known doctrine of Lamarck," p. 242); and now to find that I had been only busying myself with a stale theory of this long-since exploded charlatan—with my book three parts written and already in the press- -it was a serious scare.

On reflection, however, I was again met with the overwhelming weight of the evidence in favour of structure and habit being mainly due to memory. I accordingly gathered as much as I could second-hand of what Lamarck had said, reserving a study of his "Philosophie Zoologique" for another occasion, and read as much about ants and bees as I could find in readily accessible works. In a few days I saw my way again; and now, reading the "Origin of Species" more closely, and I may say more sceptically, the antagonism between Mr. Darwin and Lamarck became fully apparent to me, and I saw how incoherent and unworkable in practice the later view was in comparison with the earlier. Then I read Mr. Darwin's answers to miscellaneous objections, and was met, and this time brought up, by the passage beginning "In the earlier editions of this work," {24a} &c., on which I wrote very severely in "Life and Habit"; {24b} for I felt by this time that the difference of opinion between us was radical, and that the matter must be fought out according to the rules of the game. After this I went through the earlier part of my book, and cut out the expressions which I had used inadvertently, and which were inconsistent with a teleological view. This necessitated only verbal alterations; for, though I had not known it, the spirit of the book was throughout teleological.

I now saw that I had got my hands full, and abandoned my intention of touching upon "Pangenesis." I took up the words of Mr. Darwin quoted above, to the effect that it would be a serious error to ascribe the greater number of instincts to transmitted habit. I wrote chapter xi. of "Life and Habit," which is headed "Instincts as Inherited Memory"; I also wrote the four subsequent chapters, "Instincts of Neuter Insects," "Lamarck and Mr. Darwin," "Mr. Mivart and Mr. Darwin," and the concluding chapter, all of them in the month of October and the early part of November 1877, the complete book leaving the binder's hands December 4, 1877, but, according to trade custom, being dated 1878. It will be seen that these five concluding chapters were rapidly written, and this may account in part for the directness with which I said anything I had to say about Mr. Darwin; partly this, and partly I felt I was in for a penny and might as well be in for a pound. I therefore wrote about Mr. Darwin's work exactly as I should about any one else's, bearing in mind the inestimable services he had undoubtedly—and must always be counted to have— rendered to evolution.



CHAPTER III



How I came to write "Evolution, Old and New"—Mr Darwin's "brief but imperfect" sketch of the opinions of the writers on evolution who had preceded him—The reception which "Evolution, Old and New," met with.

Though my book was out in 1877, it was not till January 1878 that I took an opportunity of looking up Professor Ray Lankester's account of Professor Hering's lecture. I can hardly say how relieved I was to find that it sprung no mine upon me, but that, so far as I could gather, Professor Hering and I had come to pretty much the same conclusion. I had already found the passage in Dr. Erasmus Darwin which I quoted in "Evolution, Old and New," but may perhaps as well repeat it here. It runs -

"Owing to the imperfection of language, the offspring is termed a new animal; but is, in truth, a branch or elongation of the parent, since a part of the embryon animal is or was a part of the parent, and, therefore, in strict language, cannot be said to be entirely new at the time of its production, and, therefore, it may retain some of the habits of the parent system." {26}

When, then, the Athenaeum reviewed "Life and Habit" (January 26, 1878), I took the opportunity to write to that paper, calling attention to Professor Hering's lecture, and also to the passage just quoted from Dr. Erasmus Darwin. The editor kindly inserted my letter in his issue of February 9, 1878. I felt that I had now done all in the way of acknowledgment to Professor Hering which it was, for the time, in my power to do.

I again took up Mr. Darwin's "Origin of Species," this time, I admit, in a spirit of scepticism. I read his "brief but imperfect" sketch of the progress of opinion on the origin of species, and turned to each one of the writers he had mentioned. First, I read all the parts of the "Zoonomia" that were not purely medical, and was astonished to find that, as Dr. Krause has since said in his essay on Erasmus Darwin, "HE WAS THE FIRST WHO PROPOSED AND PERSISTENTLY CARRIED OUT A WELL-ROUNDED THEORY WITH REGARD TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE LIVING WORLD" {27} (italics in original).

This is undoubtedly the case, and I was surprised at finding Professor Huxley say concerning this very eminent man that he could "hardly be said to have made any real advance upon his predecessors." Still more was I surprised at remembering that, in the first edition of the "Origin of Species," Dr. Erasmus Darwin had never been so much as named; while in the "brief but imperfect" sketch he was dismissed with a line of half-contemptuous patronage, as though the mingled tribute of admiration and curiosity which attaches to scientific prophecies, as distinguished from discoveries, was the utmost he was entitled to. "It is curious," says Mr. Darwin innocently, in the middle of a note in the smallest possible type, "how largely my grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, anticipated the views and erroneous grounds of opinion of Lamarck in his 'Zoonomia' (vol. i. pp. 500- 510), published in 1794"; this was all he had to say about the founder of "Darwinism," until I myself unearthed Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and put his work fairly before the present generation in "Evolution, Old and New." Six months after I had done this, I had the satisfaction of seeing that Mr. Darwin had woke up to the propriety of doing much the same thing, and that he had published an interesting and charmingly written memoir of his grandfather, of which more anon.

Not that Dr. Darwin was the first to catch sight of a complete theory of evolution. Buffon was the first to point out that, in view of the known modifications which had been effected among our domesticated animals and cultivated plants, the ass and the horse should be considered as, in all probability, descended from a common ancestor; yet, if this is so, he writes—if the point "were once gained that among animals and vegetables there had been, I do not say several species, but even a single one, which had been produced in the course of direct descent from another species; if, for example, it could be once shown that the ass was but a degeneration from the horse, then there is no further limit to be set to the power of Nature, and we should not be wrong in supposing that, with sufficient time, she has evolved all other organised forms from one primordial type" {28a} (et l'on n'auroit pas tort de supposer, que d'un seul etre elle a su tirer avec le temps tous les autres etres organises).

This, I imagine, in spite of Professor Huxley's dictum, is contributing a good deal to the general doctrine of evolution; for though Descartes and Leibnitz may have thrown out hints pointing more or less broadly in the direction of evolution, some of which Professor Huxley has quoted, he has adduced nothing approaching to the passage from Buffon given above, either in respect of the clearness with which the conclusion intended to be arrived at is pointed out, or the breadth of view with which the whole ground of animal and vegetable nature is covered. The passage referred to is only one of many to the same effect, and must be connected with one quoted in "Evolution, Old and New," {28b} from p. 13 of Buffon's first volume, which appeared in 1749, and than which nothing can well point more plainly in the direction of evolution. It is not easy, therefore, to understand why Professor Huxley should give 1753-78 as the date of Buffon's work, nor yet why he should say that Buffon was "at first a partisan of the absolute immutability of species," {29a} unless, indeed, we suppose he has been content to follow that very unsatisfactory writer, Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire (who falls into this error, and says that Buffon's first volume on animals appeared 1753), without verifying him, and without making any reference to him.

Professor Huxley quotes a passage from the "Palingenesie Philosophique" of Bonnet, of which he says that, making allowance for his peculiar views on the subject of generation, they bear no small resemblance to what is understood by "evolution" at the present day. The most important parts of the passage quoted are as follows:-

"Should I be going too far if I were to conjecture that the plants and animals of the present day have arisen by a sort of natural evolution from the organised beings which peopled the world in its original state as it left the hands of the Creator? . . . In the outset organised beings were probably very different from what they are now—as different as the original world is from our present one. We have no means of estimating the amount of these differences, but it is possible that even our ablest naturalist, if transplanted to the original world, would entirely fail to recognise our plants and animals therein." {29b}

But this is feeble in comparison with Buffon, and did not appear till 1769, when Buffon had been writing on evolution for fully twenty years with the eyes of scientific Europe upon him. Whatever concession to the opinion of Buffon Bonnet may have been inclined to make in 1769, in 1764, when he published his "Contemplation de la Nature," and in 1762 when his "Considerations sur les Corps Organes" appeared, he cannot be considered to have been a supporter of evolution. I went through these works in 1878 when I was writing "Evolution, Old and New," to see whether I could claim him as on my side; but though frequently delighted with his work, I found it impossible to press him into my service.

The pre-eminent claim of Buffon to be considered as the father of the modern doctrine of evolution cannot be reasonably disputed, though he was doubtless led to his conclusions by the works of Descartes and Leibnitz, of both of whom he was an avowed and very warm admirer. His claim does not rest upon a passage here or there, but upon the spirit of forty quartos written over a period of about as many years. Nevertheless he wrote, as I have shown in "Evolution, Old and New," of set purpose enigmatically, whereas there was no beating about the bush with Dr. Darwin. He speaks straight out, and Dr. Krause is justified in saying of him "THAT HE WAS THE FIRST WHO PROPOSED AND PERSISTENTLY CARRIED OUT A WELL-ROUNDED THEORY" of evolution.

I now turned to Lamarck. I read the first volume of the "Philosophie Zoologique," analysed it and translated the most important parts. The second volume was beside my purpose, dealing as it does rather with the origin of life than of species, and travelling too fast and too far for me to be able to keep up with him. Again I was astonished at the little mention Mr. Darwin had made of this illustrious writer, at the manner in which he had motioned him away, as it were, with his hand in the first edition of the "Origin of Species," and at the brevity and imperfection of the remarks made upon him in the subsequent historical sketch.

I got Isidore Geoffroy's "Histoire Naturelle Generale," which Mr. Darwin commends in the note on the second page of the historical sketch, as giving "an excellent history of opinion" upon the subject of evolution, and a full account of Buffon's conclusions upon the same subject. This at least is what I supposed Mr. Darwin to mean. What he said was that Isidore Geoffroy gives an excellent history of opinion on the subject of the date of the first publication of Lamarck, and that in his work there is a full account of Buffon's fluctuating conclusions upon THE SAME SUBJECT. {31} But Mr. Darwin is a more than commonly puzzling writer. I read what M. Geoffroy had to say upon Buffon, and was surprised to find that, after all, according to M. Geoffroy, Buffon, and not Lamarck, was the founder of the theory of evolution. His name, as I have already said, was never mentioned in the first edition of the "Origin of Species."

M. Geoffroy goes into the accusations of having fluctuated in his opinions, which he tells us have been brought against Buffon, and comes to the conclusion that they are unjust, as any one else will do who turns to Buffon himself. Mr. Darwin, however, in the "brief but imperfect sketch," catches at the accusation, and repeats it while saying nothing whatever about the defence. The following is still all he says: "The first author who in modern times has treated" evolution "in a scientific spirit was Buffon. But as his opinions fluctuated greatly at different periods, and as he does not enter on the causes or means of the transformation of species, I need not here enter on details." On the next page, in the note last quoted, Mr. Darwin originally repeated the accusation of Buffon's having been fluctuating in his opinions, and appeared to give it the imprimatur of Isidore Geoffroy's approval; the fact being that Isidore Geoffroy only quoted the accusation in order to refute it; and though, I suppose, meaning well, did not make half the case he might have done, and abounds with misstatements. My readers will find this matter particularly dealt with in "Evolution, Old and New," Chapter X.

I gather that some one must have complained to Mr. Darwin of his saying that Isidore Geoffroy gave an account of Buffon's "fluctuating conclusions" concerning evolution, when he was doing all he knew to maintain that Buffon's conclusions did not fluctuate; for I see that in the edition of 1876 the word "fluctuating" has dropped out of the note in question, and we now learn that Isidore Geoffroy gives "a full account of Buffon's conclusions," without the "fluctuating." But Buffon has not taken much by this, for his opinions are still left fluctuating greatly at different periods on the preceding page, and though he still was the first to treat evolution in a scientific spirit, he still does not enter upon the causes or means of the transformation of species. No one can understand Mr. Darwin who does not collate the different editions of the "Origin of Species" with some attention. When he has done this, he will know what Newton meant by saying he felt like a child playing with pebbles upon the seashore.

One word more upon this note before I leave it. Mr. Darwin speaks of Isidore Geoffroy's history of opinion as "excellent," and his account of Buffon's opinions as "full." I wonder how well qualified he is to be a judge of these matters? If he knows much about the earlier writers, he is the more inexcusable for having said so little about them. If little, what is his opinion worth?

To return to the "brief but imperfect sketch." I do not think I can ever again be surprised at anything Mr. Darwin may say or do, but if I could, I should wonder how a writer who did not "enter upon the causes or means of the transformation of species," and whose opinions "fluctuated greatly at different periods," can be held to have treated evolution "in a scientific spirit." Nevertheless, when I reflect upon the scientific reputation Mr. Darwin has attained, and the means by which he has won it, I suppose the scientific spirit must be much what he here implies. I see Mr. Darwin says of his own father, Dr. Robert Darwin of Shrewsbury, that he does not consider him to have had a scientific mind. Mr. Darwin cannot tell why he does not think his father's mind to have been fitted for advancing science, "for he was fond of theorising, and was incomparably the best observer" Mr. Darwin ever knew. {33a} From the hint given in the "brief but imperfect sketch," I fancy I can help Mr. Darwin to see why he does not think his father's mind to have been a scientific one. It is possible that Dr. Robert Darwin's opinions did not fluctuate sufficiently at different periods, and that Mr. Darwin considered him as having in some way entered upon the causes or means of the transformation of species. Certainly those who read Mr. Darwin's own works attentively will find no lack of fluctuation in his case; and reflection will show them that a theory of evolution which relies mainly on the accumulation of accidental variations comes very close to not entering upon the causes or means of the transformation of species. {33b}

I have shown, however, in "Evolution, Old and New," that the assertion that Buffon does not enter on the causes or means of the transformation of species is absolutely without foundation, and that, on the contrary, he is continually dealing with this very matter, and devotes to it one of his longest and most important chapters, {33c} but I admit that he is less satisfactory on this head than either Dr. Erasmus Darwin or Lamarck.

As a matter of fact, Buffon is much more of a Neo-Darwinian than either Dr. Erasmus Darwin or Lamarck, for with him the variations are sometimes fortuitous. In the case of the dog, he speaks of them as making their appearance "BY SOME CHANCE common enough with Nature," {33d} and being perpetuated by man's selection. This is exactly the "if any slight favourable variation HAPPEN to arise" of Mr. Charles Darwin. Buffon also speaks of the variations among pigeons arising "par hasard." But these expressions are only ships; his main cause of variation is the direct action of changed conditions of existence, while with Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck the action of the conditions of existence is indirect, the direct action being that of the animals or plants themselves, in consequence of changed sense of need under changed conditions.

I should say that the sketch so often referred to is at first sight now no longer imperfect in Mr. Darwin's opinion. It was "brief but imperfect" in 1861 and in 1866, but in 1876 I see that it is brief only. Of course, discovering that it was no longer imperfect, I expected to find it briefer. What, then, was my surprise at finding that it had become rather longer? I have found no perfectly satisfactory explanation of this inconsistency, but, on the whole, incline to think that the "greatest of living men" felt himself unequal to prolonging his struggle with the word "but," and resolved to lay that conjunction at all hazards, even though the doing so might cost him the balance of his adjectives; for I think he must know that his sketch is still imperfect.

From Isidore Geoffroy I turned to Buffon himself, and had not long to wait before I felt that I was now brought into communication with the master-mind of all those who have up to the present time busied themselves with evolution. For a brief and imperfect sketch of him, I must refer my readers to "Evolution, Old and New."

I have no great respect for the author of the "Vestiges of Creation," who behaved hardly better to the writers upon whom his own work was founded than Mr. Darwin himself has done. Nevertheless, I could not forget the gravity of the misrepresentation with which he was assailed on page 3 of the first edition of the "Origin of Species," nor impugn the justice of his rejoinder in the following year, {34} when he replied that it was to be regretted Mr. Darwin had read his work "almost as much amiss as if, like its declared opponents, he had an interest in misrepresenting it." {35a} I could not, again, forget that, though Mr. Darwin did not venture to stand by the passage in question, it was expunged without a word of apology or explanation of how it was that he had come to write it. A writer with any claim to our consideration will never fall into serious error about another writer without hastening to make a public apology as soon as he becomes aware of what he has done.

Reflecting upon the substance of what I have written in the last few pages, I thought it right that people should have a chance of knowing more about the earlier writers on evolution than they were likely to hear from any of our leading scientists (no matter how many lectures they may give on the coming of age of the "Origin of Species") except Professor Mivart. A book pointing the difference between teleological and non-teleological views of evolution seemed likely to be useful, and would afford me the opportunity I wanted for giving a resume of the views of each one of the three chief founders of the theory, and of contrasting them with those of Mr. Charles Darwin, as well as for calling attention to Professor Hering's lecture. I accordingly wrote "Evolution, Old and New," which was prominently announced in the leading literary periodicals at the end of February, or on the very first days of March 1879, {35b} as "a comparison of the theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck, with that of Mr. Charles Darwin, with copious extracts from the works of the three first-named writers." In this book I was hardly able to conceal the fact that, in spite of the obligations under which we must always remain to Mr. Darwin, I had lost my respect for him and for his work.

I should point out that this announcement, coupled with what I had written in "Life and Habit," would enable Mr. Darwin and his friends to form a pretty shrewd guess as to what I was likely to say, and to quote from Dr. Erasmus Darwin in my forthcoming book. The announcement, indeed, would tell almost as much as the book itself to those who knew the works of Erasmus Darwin.

As may be supposed, "Evolution, Old and New," met with a very unfavourable reception at the hands of many of its reviewers. The Saturday Review was furious. "When a writer," it exclaimed, "who has not given as many weeks to the subject as Mr. Darwin has given years, is not content to air his own crude though clever fallacies, but assumes to criticise Mr. Darwin with the superciliousness of a young schoolmaster looking over a boy's theme, it is difficult not to take him more seriously than he deserves or perhaps desires. One would think that Mr. Butler was the travelled and laborious observer of Nature, and Mr. Darwin the pert speculator who takes all his facts at secondhand." {36}

The lady or gentleman who writes in such a strain as this should not be too hard upon others whom she or he may consider to write like schoolmasters. It is true I have travelled—not much, but still as much as many others, and have endeavoured to keep my eyes open to the facts before me; but I cannot think that I made any reference to my travels in "Evolution, Old and New." I did not quite see what that had to do with the matter. A man may get to know a good deal without ever going beyond the four-mile radius from Charing Cross. Much less did I imply that Mr. Darwin was pert: pert is one of the last words that can be applied to Mr. Darwin. Nor, again, had I blamed him for taking his facts at secondhand; no one is to be blamed for this, provided he takes well-established facts and acknowledges his sources. Mr. Darwin has generally gone to good sources. The ground of complaint against him is that he muddied the water after he had drawn it, and tacitly claimed to be the rightful owner of the spring, on the score of the damage he had effected.

Notwithstanding, however, the generally hostile, or more or less contemptuous, reception which "Evolution, Old and New," met with, there were some reviews—as, for example, those in the Field, {37a} the Daily Chronicle, {37b} the Athenaeum, {37c} the Journal of Science, {37d} the British Journal of Homaeopathy, {37e} the Daily News, {37f} the Popular Science Review {37g}—which were all I could expect or wish.



CHAPTER IV



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

By far the most important notice of "Evolution, Old and New," was that taken by Mr. Darwin himself; for I can hardly be mistaken in believing that Dr. Krause's article would have been allowed to repose unaltered in the pages of the well-known German scientific journal, Kosmos, unless something had happened to make Mr. Darwin feel that his reticence concerning his grandfather must now be ended

Mr. Darwin, indeed, gives me the impression of wishing me to understand that this is not the case. At the beginning of this year he wrote to me, in a letter which I will presently give in full, that he had obtained Dr. Krause's consent for a translation, and had arranged with Mr. Dallas, before my book was "announced." "I remember this," he continues, "because Mr. Dallas wrote to tell me of the advertisement." But Mr. Darwin is not a clear writer, and it is impossible to say whether he is referring to the announcement of "Evolution, Old and New"—in which case he means that the arrangements for the translation of Dr. Krause's article were made before the end of February 1879, and before any public intimation could have reached him as to the substance of the book on which I was then engaged—or to the advertisements of its being now published, which appeared at the beginning of May; in which case, as I have said above, Mr. Darwin and his friends had for some time had full opportunity of knowing what I was about. I believe, however, Mr. Darwin to intend that he remembered the arrangements having been made before the beginning of May—his use of the word "announced," instead of "advertised," being an accident; but let this pass.

Some time after Mr. Darwin's work appeared in November 1879, I got it, and looking at the last page of the book, I read as follows:-

"They" (the elder Darwin and Lamarck) "explain the adaptation to purpose of organisms by an obscure impulse or sense of what is purpose-like; yet even with regard to man we are in the habit of saying, that one can never know what so-and-so is good for. The purpose-like is that which approves itself, and not always that which is struggled for by obscure impulses and desires. Just in the same way the beautiful is what pleases."

I had a sort of feeling as though the writer of the above might have had "Evolution, Old and New," in his mind, but went on to the next sentence, which ran -

"Erasmus Darwin's system was in itself a most significant first step in the path of knowledge which his grandson has opened up for us, but to wish to revive it at the present day, as has actually been seriously attempted, shows a weakness of thought and a mental anachronism which no one can envy."

"That's me," said I to myself promptly. I noticed also the position in which the sentence stood, which made it both one of the first that would be likely to catch a reader's eye, and the last he would carry away with him. I therefore expected to find an open reply to some parts of "Evolution, Old and New," and turned to Mr. Darwin's preface.

To my surprise, I there found that what I had been reading could not by any possibility refer to me, for the preface ran as follows:-

"In the February number of a well-known German scientific journal, Kosmos, {39} Dr. Ernest Krause published a sketch of the 'Life of Erasmus Darwin,' the author of the 'Zoonomia,' 'Botanic Garden,' and other works. This article bears the title of a 'Contribution to the History of the Descent Theory'; and Dr. Krause has kindly allowed my brother Erasmus and myself to have a translation made of it for publication in this country."

Then came a note as follows:-

"Mr. Dallas has undertaken the translation, and his scientific reputation, together with his knowledge of German, is a guarantee for its accuracy."

I ought to have suspected inaccuracy where I found so much consciousness of accuracy, but I did not. However this may be, Mr. Darwin pins himself down with every circumstance of preciseness to giving Dr. Krause's article as it appeared in Kosmos,—the whole article, and nothing but the article. No one could know this better than Mr. Darwin.

On the second page of Mr. Darwin's preface there is a small-type note saying that my work, "Evolution, Old and New," had appeared since the publication of Dr. Krause's article. Mr. Darwin thus distinctly precludes his readers from supposing that any passage they might meet with could have been written in reference to, or by the light of, my book. If anything appeared condemnatory of that book, it was an undesigned coincidence, and would show how little worthy of consideration I must be when my opinions were refuted in advance by one who could have no bias in regard to them.

Knowing that if the article I was about to read appeared in February, it must have been published before my book, which was not out till three months later, I saw nothing in Mr. Darwin's preface to complain of, and felt that this was only another instance of my absurd vanity having led me to rush to conclusions without sufficient grounds,—as if it was likely, indeed, that Mr. Darwin should think what I had said of sufficient importance to be affected by it. It was plain that some one besides myself, of whom I as yet knew nothing, had been writing about the elder Darwin, and had taken much the same line concerning him that I had done. It was for the benefit of this person, then, that Dr. Krause's paragraph was intended. I returned to a becoming sense of my own insignificance, and began to read what I supposed to be an accurate translation of Dr. Krause's article as it originally appeared, before "Evolution, Old and New," was published.

On pp. 3 and 4 of Dr. Krause's part of Mr. Darwin's book (pp. 133 and 134 of the book itself), I detected a sub-apologetic tone which a little surprised me, and a notice of the fact that Coleridge when writing on Stillingfleet had used the word "Darwinising." Mr. R. Garnett had called my attention to this, and I had mentioned it in "Evolution, Old and New," but the paragraph only struck me as being a little odd.

When I got a few pages farther on (p. 147 of Mr. Darwin's book), I found a long quotation from Buffon about rudimentary organs, which I had quoted in "Evolution, Old and New." I observed that Dr. Krause used the same edition of Buffon that I did, and began his quotation two lines from the beginning of Buffon's paragraph, exactly as I had done; also that he had taken his nominative from the omitted part of the sentence across a full stop, as I had myself taken it. A little lower I found a line of Buffon's omitted which I had given, but I found that at that place I had inadvertently left two pair of inverted commas which ought to have come out, {41} having intended to end my quotation, but changed my mind and continued it without erasing the commas. It seemed to me that these commas had bothered Dr. Krause, and made him think it safer to leave something out, for the line he omits is a very good one. I noticed that he translated "Mais comme nous voulons toujours tout rapporter a un certain but," "But we, always wishing to refer," &c., while I had it, "But we, ever on the look-out to refer," &c.; and "Nous ne faisons pas attention que nous alterons la philosophie," "We fail to see that thus we deprive philosophy of her true character," whereas I had "We fail to see that we thus rob philosophy of her true character." This last was too much; and though it might turn out that Dr. Krause had quoted this passage before I had done so, had used the same edition as I had, had begun two lines from the beginning of a paragraph as I had done, and that the later resemblances were merely due to Mr. Dallas having compared Dr. Krause's German translation of Buffon with my English, and very properly made use of it when he thought fit, it looked prima facie more as though my quotation had been copied in English as it stood, and then altered, but not quite altered enough. This, in the face of the preface, was incredible; but so many points had such an unpleasant aspect, that I thought it better to send for Kosmos and see what I could make out.

At this time I knew not one word of German. On the same day, therefore, that I sent for Kosmos I began acquire that language, and in the fortnight before Kosmos came had got far enough forward for all practical purposes—that is to say, with the help of a translation and a dictionary, I could see whether or no a German passage was the same as what purported to be its translation.

When Kosmos came I turned to the end of the article to see how the sentence about mental anachronism and weakness of thought looked in German. I found nothing of the kind, the original article ended with some innocent rhyming doggerel about somebody going on and exploring something with eagle eye; but ten lines from the end I found a sentence which corresponded with one six pages from the end of the English translation. After this there could be little doubt that the whole of these last six English pages were spurious matter. What little doubt remained was afterwards removed by my finding that they had no place in any part of the genuine article. I looked for the passage about Coleridge's using the word "Darwinising"; it was not to be found in the German. I looked for the piece I had quoted from Buffon about rudimentary organs; but there was nothing of it, nor indeed any reference to Buffon. It was plain, therefore, that the article which Mr. Darwin had given was not the one he professed to be giving. I read Mr. Darwin's preface over again to see whether he left himself any loophole. There was not a chink or cranny through which escape was possible. The only inference that could be drawn was either that some one had imposed upon Mr. Darwin, or that Mr. Darwin, although it was not possible to suppose him ignorant of the interpolations that had been made, nor of the obvious purpose of the concluding sentence, had nevertheless palmed off an article which had been added to and made to attack "Evolution, Old and New," as though it were the original article which appeared before that book was written. I could not and would not believe that Mr. Darwin had condescended to this. Nevertheless, I saw it was necessary to sift the whole matter, and began to compare the German and the English articles paragraph by paragraph.

On the first page I found a passage omitted from the English, which with great labour I managed to get through, and can now translate as follows:-

"Alexander Von Humboldt used to take pleasure in recounting how powerfully Forster's pictures of the South Sea Islands and St. Pierre's illustrations of Nature had provoked his ardour for travel and influenced his career as a scientific investigator. How much more impressively must the works of Dr. Erasmus Darwin, with their reiterated foreshadowing of a more lofty interpretation of Nature, have affected his grandson, who in his youth assuredly approached them with the devotion due to the works of a renowned poet." {43}

I then came upon a passage common to both German and English, which in its turn was followed in the English by the sub-apologetic paragraph which I had been struck with on first reading, and which was not in the German, its place being taken by a much longer passage which had no place in the English. A little farther on I was amused at coming upon the following, and at finding it wholly transformed in the supposed accurate translation

"How must this early and penetrating explanation of rudimentary organs have affected the grandson when he read the poem of his ancestor! But indeed the biological remarks of this accurate observer in regard to certain definite natural objects must have produced a still deeper impression upon him, pointing, as they do, to questions which hay attained so great a prominence at the present day; such as, Why is any creature anywhere such as we actually see it and nothing else? Why has such and such a plant poisonous juices? Why has such and such another thorns? Why have birds and fishes light-coloured breasts and dark backs, and, Why does every creature resemble the one from which it sprung?" {44a}

I will not weary the reader with further details as to the omissions from and additions to the German text. Let it suffice that the so- called translation begins on p. 131 and ends on p. 216 of Mr. Darwin's book. There is new matter on each one of the pp. 132-139, while almost the whole of pp. 147-152 inclusive, and the whole of pp. 211-216 inclusive, are spurious—that is to say, not what the purport to be, not translations from an article that was published in February 1879, and before "Evolution, Old and New," but interpolations not published till six months after that book.

Bearing in mind the contents of two of the added passages and the tenor of the concluding sentence quoted above, {44b} I could no longer doubt that the article had been altered by the light of and with a view to "Evolution, Old and New."

The steps are perfectly clear. First Dr. Krause published his article in Kosmos and my book was announced (its purport being thus made obvious), both in the month of February 1879. Soon afterwards arrangements were made for a translation of Dr. Krause's essay, and were completed by the end of April. Then my book came out, and in some way or other Dr. Krause happened to get hold of it. He helped himself—not to much, but to enough; made what other additions to and omissions from his article he thought would best meet "Evolution, Old and New," and then fell to condemning that book in a finale that was meant to be crushing. Nothing was said about the revision which Dr. Krause's work had undergone, but it was expressly and particularly declared in the preface that the English translation was an accurate version of what appeared in the February number of Kosmos, and no less expressly and particularly stated that my book was published subsequently to this. Both these statements are untrue; they are in Mr. Darwin's favour and prejudicial to myself.

All this was done with that well-known "happy simplicity" of which the Pall Mall Gazette, December 12, 1879, declared that Mr. Darwin was "a master." The final sentence, about the "weakness of thought and mental anachronism which no one can envy," was especially successful. The reviewer in the Pall Mall Gazette just quoted from gave it in full, and said that it was thoroughly justified. He then mused forth a general gnome that the "confidence of writers who deal in semi-scientific paradoxes is commonly in inverse proportion to their grasp of the subject." Again my vanity suggested to me that I was the person for whose benefit this gnome was intended. My vanity, indeed, was well fed by the whole transaction; for I saw that not only did Mr. Darwin, who should be the best judge, think my work worth notice, but that he did not venture to meet it openly. As for Dr. Krause's concluding sentence, I thought that when a sentence had been antedated the less it contained about anachronism the better.

Only one of the reviews that I saw of Mr. Darwin's "Life of Erasmus Darwin" showed any knowledge of the facts. The Popular Science Review for January 1880, in flat contradiction to Mr. Darwin's preface, said that only part of Dr. Krause's article was being given by Mr. Darwin. This reviewer had plainly seen both Kosmos and Mr. Darwin's book.

In the same number of the Popular Science Review, and immediately following the review of Mr. Darwin's book, there is a review of "Evolution, Old and New." The writer of this review quotes the passage about mental anachronism as quoted by the reviewer in the Pall Mall Gazette, and adds immediately: "This anachronism has been committed by Mr. Samuel Butler in a . . . little volume now before us, and it is doubtless to this, WHICH APPEARED WHILE HIS OWN WORK WAS IN PROGRESS [italics mine] that Dr. Krause alludes in the foregoing passage." Considering that the editor of the Popular Science Review and the translator of Dr. Krause's article for Mr. Darwin are one and the same person, it is likely the Popular Science Review is well informed in saying that my book appeared before Dr. Krause's article had been transformed into its present shape, and that my book was intended by the passage in question.

Unable to see any way of escaping from a conclusion which I could not willingly adopt, I thought it best to write to Mr. Darwin, stating the facts as they appeared to myself, and asking an explanation, which I would have gladly strained a good many points to have accepted. It is better, perhaps, that I should give my letter and Darwin's answer in full. My letter ran thus:-

January 2, 1880.

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

Dear Sir,—Will you kindly refer me to the edition of Kosmos which contains the text of Dr. Krause's article on Dr. Erasmus Darwin, as translated by Mr. W. S. Dallas?

I have before me the last February number of Kosmos, which appears by your preface to be the one from which Mr. Dallas has translated, but his translation contains long and important passages which are not in the February number of Kosmos, while many passages in the original article are omitted in the translation.

Among the passages introduced are the last six pages of the English article, which seem to condemn by anticipation the position I have taken as regards Dr. Erasmus Darwin in my book, "Evolution, Old and New," and which I believe I was the first to take. The concluding, and therefore, perhaps, most prominent sentence of the translation you have given to the public stands thus:-

"Erasmus Darwin's system was in itself a most significant first step in the path of knowledge which his grandson has opened up for us, but to wish to revive it at the present day, as has actually been seriously attempted, shows a weakness of thought and a mental anachronism which no man can envy."

The Kosmos which has been sent me from Germany contains no such passage.

As you have stated in your preface that my book, "Evolution, Old and New," appeared subsequently to Dr. Krause's article, and as no intimation is given that the article has been altered and added to since its original appearance, while the accuracy of the translation as though from the February number of Kosmos is, as you expressly say, guaranteed by Mr. Dallas's "scientific reputation together with his knowledge of German," your readers will naturally suppose that all they read in the translation appeared in February last, and therefore before "Evolution, Old and New," was written, and therefore independently of, and necessarily without reference to, that book.

I do not doubt that this was actually the case, but have failed to obtain the edition which contains the passage above referred to, and several others which appear in the translation.

I have a personal interest in this matter, and venture, therefore, to ask for the explanation which I do not doubt you will readily give me.—Yours faithfully,

S. BUTLER.

The following is Mr. Darwin's answer:-

January 3, 1880.

My Dear Sir, Dr. Krause, soon after the appearance of his article in Kosmos told me that he intended to publish it separately and to alter it considerably, and the altered MS. was sent to Mr. Dallas for translation. This is so common a practice that it never occurred to me to state that the article had been modified; but now I much regret that I did not do so. The original will soon appear in German, and I believe will be a much larger book than the English one; for, with Dr. Krause's consent, many long extracts from Miss Seward were omitted (as well as much other matter), from being in my opinion superfluous for the English reader. I believe that the omitted parts will appear as notes in the German edition. Should there be a reprint of the English Life I will state that the original as it appeared in Kosmos was modified by Dr. Krause before it was translated. I may add that I had obtained Dr. Krause's consent for a translation, and had arranged with Mr. Dallas before your book was announced. I remember this because Mr. Dallas wrote to tell me of the advertisement.—I remain, yours faithfully,

C. DARWIN."

This was not a letter I could accept. If Mr. Darwin had said that by some inadvertence, which he was unable to excuse or account for, a blunder had been made which he would at once correct so far as was in his power by a letter to the Times or the Athenaeum, and that a notice of the erratum should be printed on a flyleaf and pasted into all unsold copies of the "Life of Erasmus Darwin," there would have been no more heard about the matter from me; but when Mr. Darwin maintained that it was a common practice to take advantage of an opportunity of revising a work to interpolate a covert attack upon an opponent, and at the same time to misdate the interpolated matter by expressly stating that it appeared months sooner than it actually did, and prior to the work which it attacked; when he maintained that what was being done was "so common a practice that it never occurred," to him—the writer of some twenty volumes—to do what all literary men must know to be inexorably requisite, I thought this was going far beyond what was permissible in honourable warfare, and that it was time, in the interests of literary and scientific morality, even more than in my own, to appeal to public opinion. I was particularly struck with the use of the words "it never occurred to me," and felt how completely of a piece it was with the opening paragraph of the "Origin of Species." It was not merely that it did not occur to Mr. Darwin to state that the article had been modified since it was written—this would have been bad enough under the circumstances but that it did occur to him to go out of his way to say what was not true. There was no necessity for him to have said anything about my book. It appeared, moreover, inadequate to tell me that if a reprint of the English Life was wanted (which might or might not be the case, and if it was not the case, why, a shrug of the shoulders, and I must make the best of it), Mr. Darwin might perhaps silently omit his note about my book, as he omitted his misrepresentation of the author of the "Vestiges of Creation," and put the words "revised and corrected by the author" on his title- page.

No matter how high a writer may stand, nor what services he may have unquestionably rendered, it cannot be for the general well-being that he should be allowed to set aside the fundamental principles of straightforwardness and fair play. When I thought of Buffon, of Dr. Erasmus Darwin, of Lamarck and even of the author of the "Vestiges of Creation," to all of whom Mr. Darwin had dealt the same measure which he was now dealing to myself; when I thought of these great men, now dumb, who had borne the burden and heat of the day, and whose laurels had been filched from them; of the manner, too, in which Mr. Darwin had been abetted by those who should have been the first to detect the fallacy which had misled him; of the hotbed of intrigue which science has now become; of the disrepute into which we English must fall as a nation if such practices as Mr. Darwin had attempted in this case were to be tolerated;—when I thought of all this, I felt that though prayers for the repose of dead men's souls might be unavailing, yet a defence of their work and memory, no matter against what odds, might avail the living, and resolved that I would do my utmost to make my countrymen aware of the spirit now ruling among those whom they delight to honour.

At first I thought I ought to continue the correspondence privately with Mr. Darwin, and explain to him that his letter was insufficient, but on reflection I felt that little good was likely to come of a second letter, if what I had already written was not enough. I therefore wrote to the Athenaeum and gave a condensed account of the facts contained in the last ten or a dozen pages. My letter appeared January 31, 1880. {50}

The accusation was a very grave one; it was made in a very public place. I gave my name; I adduced the strongest prima facie grounds for the acceptance of my statements; but there was no rejoinder, and for the best of all reasons—that no rejoinder was possible. Besides, what is the good of having a reputation for candour if one may not stand upon it at a pinch? I never yet knew a person with an especial reputation for candour without finding sooner or later that he had developed it as animals develop their organs, through "sense of need." Not only did Mr. Darwin remain perfectly quiet, but all reviewers and litterateurs remained perfectly quiet also. It seemed- -though I do not for a moment believe that this is so—as if public opinion rather approved of what Mr. Darwin had done, and of his silence than otherwise. I saw the "Life of Erasmus Darwin" more frequently and more prominently advertised now than I had seen it hitherto—perhaps in the hope of selling off the adulterated copies, and being able to reprint the work with a corrected title page. Presently I saw Professor Huxley hastening to the rescue with his lecture on the coming of age of the "Origin of Species," and by May it was easy for Professor Ray Lankester to imply that Mr. Darwin was the greatest of living men. I have since noticed two or three other controversies raging in the Athenaeum and Times; in each of these cases I saw it assumed that the defeated party, when proved to have publicly misrepresented his adversary, should do his best to correct in public the injury which he had publicly inflicted, but I noticed that in none of them had the beaten side any especial reputation for candour. This probably made all the difference. But however this may be, Mr. Darwin left me in possession of the field, in the hope, doubtless, that the matter would blow over—which it apparently soon did. Whether it has done so in reality or no, is a matter which remains to be seen. My own belief is that people paid no attention to what I said, as believing it simply incredible, and that when they come to know that it is true, they will think as I do concerning it.

From ladies and gentlemen of science I admit that I have no expectations. There is no conduct so dishonourable that people will not deny it or explain it away, if it has been committed by one whom they recognise as of their own persuasion. It must be remembered that facts cannot be respected by the scientist in the same way as by other people. It is his business to familiarise himself with facts, and, as we all know, the path from familiarity to contempt is an easy one.

Here, then, I take leave of this matter for the present. If it appears that I have used language such as is rarely seen in controversy, let the reader remember that the occasion is, so far as I know, unparalleled for the cynicism and audacity with which the wrong complained of was committed and persisted in. I trust, however, that, though not indifferent to this, my indignation has been mainly roused, as when I wrote "Evolution, Old and New," before Mr. Darwin had given me personal ground of complaint against him, by the wrongs he has inflicted on dead men, on whose behalf I now fight, as I trust that some one—whom I thank by anticipation—may one day fight on mine.



CHAPTER V



Introduction to Professor Hering's lecture.

After I had finished "Evolution, Old and New," I wrote some articles for the Examiner, {52} in which I carried out the idea put forward in "Life and Habit," that we are one person with our ancestors. It follows from this, that all living animals and vegetables, being—as appears likely if the theory of evolution is accepted—descended from a common ancestor, are in reality one person, and unite to form a body corporate, of whose existence, however, they are unconscious. There is an obvious analogy between this and the manner in which the component cells of our bodies unite to form our single individuality, of which it is not likely they have a conception, and with which they have probably only the same partial and imperfect sympathy as we, the body corporate, have with them. In the articles above alluded to I separated the organic from the inorganic, and when I came to rewrite them, I found that this could not be done, and that I must reconstruct what I had written. I was at work on this—to which I hope to return shortly—when Dr. Krause's' "Erasmus Darwin," with its preliminary notice by Mr. Charles Darwin, came out, and having been compelled, as I have shown above, by Dr. Krause's work to look a little into the German language, the opportunity seemed favourable for going on with it and becoming acquainted with Professor Hering's lecture. I therefore began to translate his lecture at once, with the kind assistance of friends whose patience seemed inexhaustible, and found myself well rewarded for my trouble.

Professor Hering and I, to use a metaphor of his own, are as men who have observed the action of living beings upon the stage of the world, he from the point of view at once of a spectator and of one who has free access to much of what goes on behind the scenes, I from that of a spectator only, with none but the vaguest notion of the actual manner in which the stage machinery is worked. If two men so placed, after years of reflection, arrive independently of one another at an identical conclusion as regards the manner in which this machinery must have been invented and perfected, it is natural that each should take a deep interest in the arguments of the other, and be anxious to put them forward with the utmost possible prominence. It seems to me that the theory which Professor Hering and I are supporting in common, is one the importance of which is hardly inferior to that of the theory of evolution itself—for it puts the backbone, as it were, into the theory of evolution. I shall therefore make no apology for laying my translation of Professor Hering's work before my reader.

Concerning the identity of the main idea put forward in "Life and Habit" with that of Professor Hering's lecture, there can hardly, I think, be two opinions. We both of us maintain that we grow our limbs as we do, and possess the instincts we possess, because we remember having grown our limbs in this way, and having had these instincts in past generations when we were in the persons of our forefathers—each individual life adding a small (but so small, in any one lifetime, as to be hardly appreciable) amount of new experience to the general store of memory; that we have thus got into certain habits which we can now rarely break; and that we do much of what we do unconsciously on the same principle as that (whatever it is) on which we do all other habitual actions, with the greater ease and unconsciousness the more often we repeat them. Not only is the main idea the same, but I was surprised to find how often Professor Hering and I had taken the same illustrations with which to point our meaning.

Nevertheless, we have each of us left undealt with some points which the other has treated of. Professor Hering, for example, goes into the question of what memory is, and this I did not venture to do. I confined myself to saying that whatever memory was, heredity was also. Professor Hering adds that memory is due to vibrations of the molecules of the nerve fibres, which under certain circumstances recur, and bring about a corresponding recurrence of visible action.

This approaches closely to the theory concerning the physics of memory which has been most generally adopted since the time of Bonnet, who wrote as follows:-

"The soul never has a new sensation but by the inter position of the senses. This sensation has been originally attached to the motion of certain fibres. Its reproduction or recollection by the senses will then be likewise connected with these same fibres." . . . {54a}

And again:-

"It appeared to me that since this memory is connected with the body, it must depend upon some change which must happen to the primitive state of the sensible fibres by the action of objects. I have, therefore, admitted as probable that the state of the fibres on which an object has acted is not precisely the same after this action as it was before I have conjectured that the sensible fibres experience more or less durable modifications, which constitute the physics of memory and recollection." {54b}

Professor Hering comes near to endorsing this view, and uses it for the purpose of explaining personal identity. This, at least, is what he does in fact, though perhaps hardly in words. I did not say more upon the essence of personality than that it was inseparable from the idea that the various phases of our existence should have flowed one out of the other, "in what we see as a continuous, though it may be at times a very troubled, stream" {55} but I maintained that the identity between two successive generations was of essentially the same kind as that existing between an infant and an octogenarian. I thus left personal identity unexplained, though insisting that it was the key to two apparently distinct sets of phenomena, the one of which had been hitherto considered incompatible with our ideas concerning it. Professor Hering insists on this too, but he gives us farther insight into what personal identity is, and explains how it is that the phenomena of heredity are phenomena also of personal identity.

He implies, though in the short space at his command he has hardly said so in express terms, that personal identity as we commonly think of it—that is to say, as confined to the single life of the individual—consists in the uninterruptedness of a sufficient number of vibrations, which have been communicated from molecule to molecule of the nerve fibres, and which go on communicating each one of them its own peculiar characteristic elements to the new matter which we introduce into the body by way of nutrition. These vibrations may be so gentle as to be imperceptible for years together; but they are there, and may become perceived if they receive accession through the running into them of a wave going the same way as themselves, which wave has been set up in the ether by exterior objects and has been communicated to the organs of sense.

As these pages are on the point of leaving my hands, I see the following remarkable passage in Mind for the current month, and introduce it parenthetically here:-

"I followed the sluggish current of hyaline material issuing from globules of most primitive living substance. Persistently it followed its way into space, conquering, at first, the manifold resistances opposed to it by its watery medium. Gradually, however, its energies became exhausted, till at last, completely overwhelmed, it stopped, an immovable projection stagnated to death-like rigidity. Thus for hours, perhaps, it remained stationary, one of many such rays of some of the many kinds of protoplasmic stars. By degrees, then, or perhaps quite suddenly, HELP WOULD COME TO IT FROM FOREIGN BUT CONGRUOUS SOURCES. IT WOULD SEEM TO COMBINE WITH OUTSIDE COMPLEMENTAL MATTER drifted to it at random. Slowly it would regain thereby its vital mobility. Shrinking at first, but gradually completely restored and reincorporated into the onward tide of life, it was ready to take part again in the progressive flow of a new ray." {56}

To return to the end of the last paragraph but one. If this is so— but I should warn the reader that Professor Hering is not responsible for this suggestion, though it seems to follow so naturally from what he has said that I imagine he intended the inference to be drawn,—if this is so, assimilation is nothing else than the communication of its own rhythms from the assimilating to the assimilated substance, to the effacement of the vibrations or rhythms heretofore existing in this last; and suitability for food will depend upon whether the rhythms of the substance eaten are such as to flow harmoniously into and chime in with those of the body which has eaten it, or whether they will refuse to act in concert with the new rhythms with which they have become associated, and will persist obstinately in pursuing their own course. In this case they will either be turned out of the body at once, or will disconcert its arrangements, with perhaps fatal consequences. This comes round to the conclusion I arrived at in "Life and Habit," that assimilation was nothing but the imbuing of one thing with the memories of another. (See "Life and Habit," pp. 136, 137, 140, &c.)

It will be noted that, as I resolved the phenomena of heredity into phenomena of personal identity, and left the matter there, so Professor Hering resolves the phenomena of personal identity into the phenomena of a living mechanism whose equilibrium is disturbed by vibrations of a certain character—and leaves it there. We now want to understand more about the vibrations.

But if, according to Professor Hering, the personal identity of the single life consists in the uninterruptedness of vibrations, so also do the phenomena of heredity. For not only may vibrations of a certain violence or character be persistent unperceived for many years in a living body, and communicate themselves to the matter it has assimilated, but they may, and will, under certain circumstances, extend to the particle which is about to leave the parent body as the germ of its future offspring. In this minute piece of matter there must, if Professor Hering is right, be an infinity of rhythmic undulations incessantly vibrating with more or less activity, and ready to be set in more active agitation at a moment's warning, under due accession of vibration from exterior objects. On the occurrence of such stimulus, that is to say, when a vibration of a suitable rhythm from without concurs with one within the body so as to augment it, the agitation may gather such strength that the touch, as it were, is given to a house of cards, and the whole comes toppling over. This toppling over is what we call action; and when it is the result of the disturbance of certain usual arrangements in certain usual ways, we call it the habitual development and instinctive characteristics of the race. In either case, then, whether we consider the continued identity of the individual in what we call his single life, or those features in his offspring which we refer to heredity, the same explanation of the phenomena is applicable. It follows from this as a matter of course, that the continuation of life or personal identity in the individual and the race are fundamentally of the same kind, or, in other words, that there is a veritable prolongation of identity or oneness of personality between parents and offspring. Professor Hering reaches his conclusion by physical methods, while I reached mine, as I am told, by metaphysical. I never yet could understand what "metaphysics" and "metaphysical" mean; but I should have said I reached it by the exercise of a little common sense while regarding certain facts which are open to every one. There is, however, so far as I can see, no difference in the conclusion come to.

The view which connects memory with vibrations may tend to throw light upon that difficult question, the manner in which neuter bees acquire structures and instincts, not one of which was possessed by any of their direct ancestors. Those who have read "Life and Habit" may remember, I suggested that the food prepared in the stomachs of the nurse-bees, with which the neuter working bees are fed, might thus acquire a quasi-seminal character, and be made a means of communicating the instincts and structures in question. {58} If assimilation be regarded as the receiving by one substance of the rhythms or undulations from another, the explanation just referred to receives an accession of probability.

If it is objected that Professor Hering's theory as to continuity of vibrations being the key to memory and heredity involves the action of more wheels within wheels than our imagination can come near to comprehending, and also that it supposes this complexity of action as going on within a compass which no unaided eye can detect by reason of its littleness, so that we are carried into a fairy land with which sober people should have nothing to do, it may be answered that the case of light affords us an example of our being truly aware of a multitude of minute actions, the hundred million millionth part of which we should have declared to be beyond our ken, could we not incontestably prove that we notice and count them all with a very sufficient and creditable accuracy.

"Who would not," {59a} says Sir John Herschel, "ask for demonstration when told that a gnat's wing, in its ordinary flight, beats many hundred times in a second? or that there exist animated and regularly organised beings many thousands of whose bodies laid close together would not extend to an inch? But what are these to the astonishing truths which modern optical inquiries have disclosed, which teach us that every point of a medium through which a ray of light passes is affected with a succession of periodical movements, recurring regularly at equal intervals, no less than five hundred millions of millions of times in a second; that it is by such movements communicated to the nerves of our eyes that we see; nay, more, that it is the DIFFERENCE in the frequency of their recurrence which affects us with the sense of the diversity of colour; that, for instance, in acquiring the sensation of redness, our eyes are affected four hundred and eighty-two millions of millions of times; of yellowness, five hundred and forty-two millions of millions of times; and of violet, seven hundred and seven millions of millions of times per second? {59b} Do not such things sound more like the ravings of madmen than the sober conclusions of people in their waking senses? They are, nevertheless, conclusions to which any one may most certainly arrive who will only be at the pains of examining the chain of reasoning by which they have been obtained."

A man counting as hard as he can repeat numbers one after another, and never counting more than a hundred, so that he shall have no long words to repeat, may perhaps count ten thousand, or a hundred a hundred times over, in an hour. At this rate, counting night and day, and allowing no time for rest or refreshment, he would count one million in four days and four hours, or say four days only. To count a million a million times over, he would require four million days, or roughly ten thousand years; for five hundred millions of millions, he must have the utterly unrealisable period of five million years. Yet he actually goes through this stupendous piece of reckoning unconsciously hour after hour, day after day, it may be for eighty years, OFTEN IN EACH SECOND of daylight; and how much more by artificial or subdued light I do not know. He knows whether his eye is being struck five hundred millions of millions of times, or only four hundred and eighty-two millions of millions of times. He thus shows that he estimates or counts each set of vibrations, and registers them according to his results. If a man writes upon the back of a British Museum blotting-pad of the common nonpareil pattern, on which there are some thousands of small spaces each differing in colour from that which is immediately next to it, his eye will, nevertheless, without an effort assign its true colour to each one of these spaces. This implies that he is all the time counting and taking tally of the difference in the numbers of the vibrations from each one of the small spaces in question. Yet the mind that is capable of such stupendous computations as these so long as it knows nothing about them, makes no little fuss about the conscious adding together of such almost inconceivably minute numbers as, we will say, 2730169 and 5790135—or, if these be considered too large, as 27 and 19. Let the reader remember that he cannot by any effort bring before his mind the units, not in ones, BUT IN MILLIONS OF MILLIONS of the processes which his visual organs are undergoing second after second from dawn till dark, and then let him demur if he will to the possibility of the existence in a germ, of currents and undercurrents, and rhythms and counter rhythms, also by the million of millions—each one of which, on being overtaken by the rhythm from without that chimes in with and stimulates it, may be the beginning of that unsettlement of equilibrium which results in the crash of action, unless it is timely counteracted.

If another objector maintains that the vibrations within the germ as above supposed must be continually crossing and interfering with one another in such a manner as to destroy the continuity of any one series, it may be replied that the vibrations of the light proceeding from the objects that surround us traverse one another by the millions of millions every second yet in no way interfere with one another. Nevertheless, it must be admitted that the difficulties of the theory towards which I suppose Professor Hering to incline are like those of all other theories on the same subject—almost inconceivably great.

In "Life and Habit" I did not touch upon these vibrations, knowing nothing about them. Here, then, is one important point of difference, not between the conclusions arrived at, but between the aim and scope of the work that Professor Hering and I severally attempted. Another difference consists in the points at which we have left off. Professor Hering, having established his main thesis, is content. I, on the other hand, went on to maintain that if vigour was due to memory, want of vigour was due to want of memory. Thus I was led to connect memory with the phenomena of hybridism and of old age; to show that the sterility of certain animals under domestication is only a phase of, and of a piece with, the very common sterility of hybrids—phenomena which at first sight have no connection either with each other or with memory, but the connection between which will never be lost sight of by those who have once laid hold of it. I also pointed out how exactly the phenomena of development agreed with those of the abeyance and recurrence of memory, and the rationale of the fact that puberty in so many animals and plants comes about the end of development. The principle underlying longevity follows as a matter of course. I have no idea how far Professor Hering would agree with me in the position I have taken in respect of these phenomena, but there is nothing in the above at variance with his lecture.

Another matter on which Professor Hering has not touched is the bearing of his theory on that view of evolution which is now commonly accepted. It is plain he accepts evolution, but it does not appear that he sees how fatal his theory is to any view of evolution except a teleological one—the purpose residing within the animal and not without it. There is, however, nothing in his lecture to indicate that he does not see this.

It should be remembered that the question whether memory is due to the persistence within the body of certain vibrations, which have been already set up within the bodies of its ancestors, is true or no, will not affect the position I took up in "Life and Habit." In that book I have maintained nothing more than that whatever memory is heredity is also. I am not committed to the vibration theory of memory, though inclined to accept it on a prima facie view. All I am committed to is, that if memory is due to persistence of vibrations, so is heredity; and if memory is not so due, then no more is heredity.

Finally, I may say that Professor Hering's lecture, the passage quoted from Dr. Erasmus Darwin on p. 26 of this volume, and a few hints in the extracts from Mr. Patrick Mathew which I have quoted in "Evolution, Old and New," are all that I yet know of in other writers as pointing to the conclusion that the phenomena of heredity are phenomena also of memory.



CHAPTER VI



Professor Ewald Hering "On Memory."

I will now lay before the reader a translation of Professor Hering's own words. I have had it carefully revised throughout by a gentleman whose native language is German, but who has resided in England for many years past. The original lecture is entitled "On Memory as a Universal Function of Organised Matter," and was delivered at the anniversary meeting of the Imperial Academy of Sciences at Vienna, May 30, 1870. {63} It is as follows:-

"When the student of Nature quits the narrow workshop of his own particular inquiry, and sets out upon an excursion into the vast kingdom of philosophical investigation, he does so, doubtless, in the hope of finding the answer to that great riddle, to the solution of a small part of which he devotes his life. Those, however, whom he leaves behind him still working at their own special branch of inquiry, regard his departure with secret misgivings on his behalf, while the born citizens of the kingdom of speculation among whom he would naturalise himself, receive him with well-authorised distrust. He is likely, therefore, to lose ground with the first, while not gaining it with the second.

The subject to the consideration of which I would now solicit your attention does certainly appear likely to lure us on towards the flattering land of speculation, but bearing in mind what I have just said, I will beware of quitting the department of natural science to which I have devoted myself hitherto. I shall, however, endeavour to attain its highest point, so as to take a freer view of the surrounding territory.

It will soon appear that I should fail in this purpose if my remarks were to confine themselves solely to physiology. I hope to show how far psychological investigations also afford not only permissible, but indispensable, aid to physiological inquiries.

Consciousness is an accompaniment of that animal and human organisation and of that material mechanism which it is the province of physiology to explore; and as long as the atoms of the brain follow their due course according to certain definite laws, there arises an inner life which springs from sensation and idea, from feeling and will.

We feel this in our own cases; it strikes us in our converse with other people; we can see it plainly in the more highly organised animals; even the lowest forms of life bear traces of it; and who can draw a line in the kingdom of organic life, and say that it is here the soul ceases?

With what eyes, then, is physiology to regard this two-fold life of the organised world? Shall she close them entirely to one whole side of it, that she may fix them more intently on the other?

So long as the physiologist is content to be a physicist, and nothing more—using the word "physicist" in its widest signification—his position in regard to the organic world is one of extreme but legitimate one-sidedness. As the crystal to the mineralogist or the vibrating string to the acoustician, so from this point of view both man and the lower animals are to the physiologist neither more nor less than the matter of which they consist. That animals feel desire and repugnance, that the material mechanism of the human frame is in chose connection with emotions of pleasure or pain, and with the active idea-life of consciousness—this cannot, in the eyes of the physicist, make the animal or human body into anything more than what it actually is. To him it is a combination of matter, subjected to the same inflexible laws as stones and plants—a material combination, the outward and inward movements of which interact as cause and effect, and are in as close connection with each other and with their surroundings as the working of a machine with the revolutions of the wheels that compose it.

Neither sensation, nor idea, nor yet conscious will, can form a link in this chain of material occurrences which make up the physical life of an organism. If I am asked a question and reply to it, the material process which the nerve fibre conveys from the organ of hearing to the brain must travel through my brain as an actual and material process before it can reach the nerves which will act upon my organs of speech. It cannot, on reaching a given place in the brain, change then and there into an immaterial something, and turn up again some time afterwards in another part of the brain as a material process. The traveller in the desert might as well hope, before he again goes forth into the wilderness of reality, to take rest and refreshment in the oasis with which the Fata Morgana illudes him; or as well might a prisoner hope to escape from his prison through a door reflected in a mirror.

So much for the physiologist in his capacity of pure physicist. As long as he remains behind the scenes in painful exploration of the details of the machinery—as long as he only observes the action of the players from behind the stage—so long will he miss the spirit of the performance, which is, nevertheless, caught easily by one who sees it from the front. May he not, then, for once in a way, be allowed to change his standpoint? True, he came not to see the representation of an imaginary world; he is in search of the actual; but surely it must help him to a comprehension of the dramatic apparatus itself, and of the manner in which it is worked, if he were to view its action from in front as well as from behind, or at least allow himself to hear what sober-minded spectators can tell him upon the subject.

There can be no question as to the answer; and hence it comes that psychology is such an indispensable help to physiology, whose fault it only in small part is that she has hitherto made such little use of this assistance; for psychology has been late in beginning to till her fertile field with the plough of the inductive method, and it is only from ground so tilled that fruits can spring which can be of service to physiology.

If, then, the student of nervous physiology takes his stand between the physicist and the psychologist, and if the first of these rightly makes the unbroken causative continuity of all material processes an axiom of his system of investigation, the prudent psychologist, on the other hand, will investigate the laws of conscious life according to the inductive method, and will hence, as much as the physicist, make the existence of fixed laws his initial assumption. If, again, the most superficial introspection teaches the physiologist that his conscious life is dependent upon the mechanical adjustments of his body, and that inversely his body is subjected with certain limitations to his will, then it only remains for him to make one assumption more, namely, THAT THIS MUTUAL INTERDEPENDENCE BETWEEN THE SPIRITUAL AND THE MATERIAL IS ITSELF ALSO DEPENDENT ON LAW, and he has discovered the bond by which the science of matter and the science of consciousness are united into a single whole.

Thus regarded, the phenomena of consciousness become functions of the material changes of organised substance, and inversely—though this is involved in the use of the word "function"—the material processes of brain substance become functions of the phenomena of consciousness. For when two variables are so dependent upon one another in the changes they undergo in accordance with fixed laws that a change in either involves simultaneous and corresponding change in the other, the one is called a function of the other.

This, then, by no means implies that the two variables above-named— matter and consciousness—stand in the relation of cause and effect, antecedent and consequence, to one another. For on this subject we know nothing.

The materialist regards consciousness as a product or result of matter, while the idealist holds matter to be a result of consciousness, and a third maintains that matter and spirit are identical; with all this the physiologist, as such, has nothing whatever to do; his sole concern is with the fact that matter and consciousness are functions one of the other.

By the help of this hypothesis of the functional interdependence of matter and spirit, modern physiology is enabled to bring the phenomena of consciousness within the domain of her investigations without leaving the terra firma of scientific methods. The physiologist, as physicist, can follow the ray of light and the wave of sound or heat till they reach the organ of sense. He can watch them entering upon the ends of the nerves, and finding their way to the cells of the brain by means of the series of undulations or vibrations which they establish in the nerve filaments. Here, however, he loses all trace of them. On the other hand, still looking with the eyes of a pure physicist, he sees sound waves of speech issue from the mouth of a speaker; he observes the motion of his own limbs, and finds how this is conditional upon muscular contractions occasioned by the motor nerves, and how these nerves are in their turn excited by the cells of the central organ. But here again his knowledge comes to an end. True, he sees indications of the bridge which is to carry him from excitation of the sensory to that of the motor nerves in the labyrinth of intricately interwoven nerve cells, but he knows nothing of the inconceivably complex process which is introduced at this stage. Here the physiologist will change his standpoint; what matter will not reveal to his inquiry, he will find in the mirror, as it were, of consciousness; by way of a reflection, indeed, only, but a reflection, nevertheless, which stands in intimate relation to the object of his inquiry. When at this point he observes how one idea gives rise to another, how closely idea is connected with sensation and sensation with will, and how thought, again, and feeling are inseparable from one another, he will be compelled to suppose corresponding successions of material processes, which generate and are closely connected with one another, and which attend the whole machinery of conscious life, according to the law of the functional interdependence of matter and consciousness.

After this explanation I shall venture to regard under a single aspect a great series of phenomena which apparently have nothing to do with one another, and which belong partly to the conscious and partly to the unconscious life of organised beings. I shall regard them as the outcome of one and the same primary force of organised matter—namely, its memory or power of reproduction.

The word "memory" is often understood as though it meant nothing more than our faculty of intentionally reproducing ideas or series of ideas. But when the figures and events of bygone days rise up again unbidden in our minds, is not this also an act of recollection or memory? We have a perfect right to extend our conception of memory so as to make it embrace involuntary reproductions, of sensations, ideas, perceptions, and efforts; but we find, on having done so, that we have so far enlarged her boundaries that she proves to be an ultimate and original power, the source, and at the same time the unifying bond, of our whole conscious life.

We know that when an impression, or a series of impressions, has been made upon our senses for a long time, and always in the same way, it may come to impress itself in such a manner upon the so-called sense- memory that hours afterwards, and though a hundred other things have occupied our attention meanwhile, it will yet return suddenly to our consciousness with all the force and freshness of the original sensation. A whole group of sensations is sometimes reproduced in its due sequence as regards time and space, with so much reality that it illudes us, as though things were actually present which have long ceased to be so. We have here a striking proof of the fact that after both conscious sensation and perception have been extinguished, their material vestiges yet remain in our nervous system by way of a change in its molecular or atomic disposition, {69} that enables the nerve substance to reproduce all the physical processes of the original sensation, and with these the corresponding psychical processes of sensation and perception.

Every hour the phenomena of sense-memory are present with each one of us, but in a less degree than this. We are all at times aware of a host of more or less faded recollections of earlier impressions, which we either summon intentionally or which come upon us involuntarily. Visions of absent people come and go before us as faint and fleeting shadows, and the notes of long-forgotten melodies float around us, not actually heard, but yet perceptible.

Some things and occurrences, especially if they have happened to us only once and hurriedly, will be reproducible by the memory in respect only of a few conspicuous qualities; in other cases those details alone will recur to us which we have met with elsewhere, and for the reception of which the brain is, so to speak, attuned. These last recollections find themselves in fuller accord with our consciousness, and enter upon it more easily and energetically; hence also their aptitude for reproduction is enhanced; so that what is common to many things, and is therefore felt and perceived with exceptional frequency, becomes reproduced so easily that eventually the actual presence of the corresponding external stimuli is no longer necessary, and it will recur on the vibrations set up by faint stimuli from within. {70} Sensations arising in this way from within, as, for example, an idea of whiteness, are not, indeed, perceived with the full freshness of those raised by the actual presence of white light without us, but they are of the same kind; they are feeble repetitions of one and the same material brain process—of one and the same conscious sensation. Thus the idea of whiteness arises in our mind as a faint, almost extinct, sensation.

In this way those qualities which are common to many things become separated, as it were, in our memory from the objects with which they were originally associated, and attain an independent existence in our consciousness as IDEAS and CONCEPTIONS, and thus the whole rich superstructure of our ideas and conceptions is built up from materials supplied by memory.

On examining more closely, we see plainly that memory is a faculty not only of our conscious states, but also, and much more so, of our unconscious ones. I was conscious of this or that yesterday, and am again conscious of it to-day. Where has it been meanwhile? It does not remain continuously within my consciousness, nevertheless it returns after having quitted it. Our ideas tread but for a moment upon the stage of consciousness, and then go back again behind the scenes, to make way for others in their place. As the player is only a king when he is on the stage, so they too exist as ideas so long only as they are recognised. How do they live when they are off the stage? For we know that they are living somewhere; give them their cue and they reappear immediately. They do not exist continuously as ideas; what is continuous is the special disposition of nerve substance in virtue of which this substance gives out to-day the same sound which it gave yesterday if it is rightly struck. {71} Countless reproductions of organic processes of our brain connect themselves orderly together, so that one acts as a stimulus to the next, but a phenomenon of consciousness is not necessarily attached to every link in the chain. From this it arises that a series of ideas may appear to disregard the order that would be observed in purely material processes of brain substance unaccompanied by consciousness; but on the other hand it becomes possible for a long chain of recollections to have its due development without each link in the chain being necessarily perceived by ourselves. One may emerge from the bosom of our unconscious thoughts without fully entering upon the stage of conscious perception; another dies away in unconsciousness, leaving no successor to take its place. Between the "me" of to-day and the "me" of yesterday lie night and sleep, abysses of unconsciousness; nor is there any bridge but memory with which to span them. Who can hope after this to disentangle the infinite intricacy of our inner life? For we can only follow its threads so far as they have strayed over within the bounds of consciousness. We might as well hope to familiarise ourselves with the world of forms that teem within the bosom of the sea by observing the few that now and again come to the surface and soon return into the deep.