LIFE AND HABIT

PREFACE

Since Samuel Butler published "Life and Habit" thirty-three {1} yearshave elapsed--years fruitful in change and discovery, during whichmany of the mighty have been put down from their seat and many of thehumble have been exalted. I do not know that Butler can truthfullybe called humble, indeed, I think he had very few misgivings as tohis ultimate triumph, but he has certainly been exalted with arapidity that he himself can scarcely have foreseen. During hislifetime he was a literary pariah, the victim of an organizedconspiracy of silence. He is now, I think it may be said withoutexaggeration, universally accepted as one of the most remarkableEnglish writers of the latter part of the nineteenth century. I willnot weary my readers by quoting the numerous tributes paid bydistinguished contemporary writers to Butler's originality and forceof mind, but I cannot refrain from illustrating the changed attitudeof the scientific world to Butler and his theories by a reference to"Darwin and Modern Science, " the collection of essays published in1909 by the University of Cambridge, in commemoration of the Darwincentenary. In that work Professor Bateson, while referringrepeatedly to Butler's biological works, speaks of him as "the mostbrilliant and by far the most interesting of Darwin's opponents, whose works are at length emerging from oblivion. " With the growthof Butler's reputation "Life and Habit" has had much to do. It wasthe first and is undoubtedly the most important of his writings onevolution. From its loins, as it were, sprang his three later books, "Evolution Old and New, " "Unconscious Memory, " and "Luck or Cunning", which carried its arguments further afield. It will perhaps interestButler's readers if I here quote a passage from his note-books, lately published in the "New Quarterly Review" (Vol. III. No. 9), inwhich he summarizes his work in biology:

"To me it seems that my contributions to the theory of evolution havebeen mainly these

"1. The identification of heredity and memory, and the corollariesrelating to sports, the reversion to remote ancestors, the phenomenaof old age, the causes of the sterility of hybrids, and theprinciples underlying longevity--all of which follow as a matter ofcourse. This was 'Life and Habit' [1877]. 

"2. The re-introduction of teleology into organic life, which to meseems hardly, if at all, less important than the 'Life and Habit'theory. This was 'Evolution Old and New' [1879]. 

"3. An attempt to suggest an explanation of the physics of memory. This was Unconscious Memory' [1880]. I was alarmed by the suggestionand fathered it upon Professor Hering, who never, that I can see, meant to say anything of the kind, but I forced my view upon him, asit were, by taking hold of a sentence or two in his lecture, 'OnMemory as a Universal Function of Organised Matter, ' and thusconnected memory with vibrations. 

"What I want to do now (1885) is to connect vibrations not only withmemory but with the physical constitution of that body in which thememory resides, thus adopting Newland's law (sometimes calledMendelejeff's law) that there is only one substance, and that thecharacteristics of the vibrations going on within it at any giventime will determine whether it will appear to us as, we will say, hydrogen, or sodium, or chicken doing this, or chicken doing theother. " [This is touched upon in the concluding chapter of "Luck orCunning?" 1887]. 

The present edition of "Life and Habit" is practically a re-issue ofthat of 1878. I find that about the year 1890, although the originaledition was far from being exhausted, Butler began to makecorrections of the text of "Life and Habit, " presumably with theintention of publishing a revised edition. The copy of the book socorrected is now in my possession. In the first five chapters thereare numerous emendations, very few of which, however, affect themeaning to any appreciable extent, being mainly concerned with theexcision of redundancies and the simplification of style. I imaginethat by the time he had reached the end of the fifth chapter Butlerrealised that the corrections he had made were not of sufficientimportance to warrant a new edition, and determined to let the bookstand as it was. I believe, therefore, that I am carrying out hiswishes in reprinting the present edition from the original plates. Ihave found, however, among his papers three entirely new passages, which he probably wrote during the period of correction and no doubtintended to incorporate into the revised edition. Mr. Henry FestingJones has also given me a copy of a passage which Butler wrote andgummed into Mr. Jones's copy of "Life and Habit. " These fourpassages I have printed as an appendix at the end of the presentvolume. 

One more point deserves notice. Butler often refers in "Life andHabit" to Darwin's "Variations of Animals and Plants underDomestication. " When he does so it is always under the name "Plantsand Animals. " More often still he refers to Darwin's "Origin ofSpecies by means Natural Selection, " terming it at one time "Originof Species" and at another "Natural Selection, " sometimes, as on p. 278, using both names within a few lines of each other. Butler wasas a rule scrupulously careful about quotations, and I can offer noexplanation of this curious confusion of titles. 

R. A. STREATFEILD. November, 1910. 

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

The Italics in the passages quoted in this book are generally mine, but I found it almost impossible to call the reader's attention tothis upon every occasion. I have done so once or twice, as thinkingit necessary in these cases that there should be no mistake; on thewhole, however, I thought it better to content myself with callingattention in a preface to the fact that the author quoted is not, asa general rule, responsible for the Italics. 

S. BUTLER. November 13, 1877. 

CHAPTER I--ON CERTAIN ACQUIRED HABITS

It will be our business in the following chapters to consider whetherthe unconsciousness, or quasi-unconsciousness, with which we performcertain acquired actions, would seem to throw any light uponEmbryology and inherited instincts, and otherwise to follow the trainof thought which the class of actions above-mentioned would suggest;more especially in so far as they appear to bear upon the origin ofspecies and the continuation of life by successive generations, whether in the animal or vegetable kingdoms. 

In the outset, however, I would wish most distinctly to disclaim forthese pages the smallest pretension to scientific value, originality, or even to accuracy of more than a very rough and ready kind--forunless a matter be true enough to stand a good deal ofmisrepresentation, its truth is not of a very robust order, and theblame will rather lie with its own delicacy if it be crushed, thanwith the carelessness of the crusher. I have no wish to instruct, and not much to be instructed; my aim is simply to entertain andinterest the numerous class of people who, like myself, know nothingof science, but who enjoy speculating and reflecting (not too deeply)upon the phenomena around them. I have therefore allowed myself aloose rein, to run on with whatever came uppermost, without regard towhether it was new or old; feeling sure that if true, it must be veryold or it never could have occurred to one so little versed inscience as myself; and knowing that it is sometimes pleasanter tomeet the old under slightly changed conditions, than to go throughthe formalities and uncertainties of making new acquaintance. At thesame time, I should say that whatever I have knowingly taken from anyone else, I have always acknowledged. 

It is plain, therefore, that my book cannot be intended for theperusal of scientific people; it is intended for the general publiconly, with whom I believe myself to be in harmony, as knowing neithermuch more nor much less than they do. 

Taking then, the art of playing the piano as an example of the kindof action we are in search of, we observe that a practised playerwill perform very difficult pieces apparently without effort, often, indeed, while thinking and talking of something quite other than hismusic; yet he will play accurately and, possibly, with muchexpression. If he has been playing a fugue, say in four parts, hewill have kept each part well distinct, in such a manner as to provethat his mind was not prevented, by its other occupations, fromconsciously or unconsciously following four distinct trains ofmusical thought at the same time, nor from making his fingers act inexactly the required manner as regards each note of each part. 

It commonly happens that in the course of four or five minutes aplayer may have struck four or five thousand notes. If we take intoconsideration the rests, dotted notes, accidentals, variations oftime, &c. , we shall find his attention must have been exercised onmany more occasions than when he was actually striking notes: sothat it may not be too much to say that the attention of a first-rateplayer may have been exercised--to an infinitesimally small extent--but still truly exercised--on as many as ten thousand occasionswithin the space of five minutes, for no note can be struck nor pointattended to without a certain amount of attention, no matter howrapidly or unconsciously given. 

Moreover, each act of attention has been followed by an act ofvolition, and each act of volition by a muscular action, which iscomposed of many minor actions; some so small that we can no morefollow them than the player himself can perceive them; nevertheless, it may have been perfectly plain that the player was not attending towhat he was doing, but was listening to conversation on some othersubject, not to say joining in it himself. If he has been playingthe violin, he may have done all the above, and may also have beenwalking about. Herr Joachim would unquestionably be able to do allthat has here been described. 

So complete would the player's unconsciousness of the attention he isgiving, and the brain power he is exerting appear to be, that weshall find it difficult to awaken his attention to any particularpart of his performance without putting him out. Indeed we cannot doso. We shall observe that he finds it hardly less difficult tocompass a voluntary consciousness of what he has once learnt sothoroughly that it has passed, so to speak, into the domain ofunconsciousness, than he found it to learn the note or passage in thefirst instance. The effort after a second consciousness of detailbaffles him--compels him to turn to his music or play slowly. Infact it seems as though he knew the piece too well to be able to knowthat he knows it, and is only conscious of knowing those passageswhich he does not know so thoroughly. 

At the end of his performance, his memory would appear to be no lessannihilated than was his consciousness of attention and volition. For of the thousands of acts requiring the exercise of both the oneand the other, which he has done during the five minutes, we willsay, of his performance, he will remember hardly one when it is over. If he calls to mind anything beyond the main fact that he has playedsuch and such a piece, it will probably be some passage which he hasfound more difficult than the others, and with the like of which hehas not been so long familiar. All the rest he will forget ascompletely as the breath which he has drawn while playing. 

He finds it difficult to remember even the difficulties heexperienced in learning to play. A few may have so impressed himthat they remain with him, but the greater part will have escaped himas completely as the remembrance of what he ate, or how he put on hisclothes, this day ten years ago; nevertheless, it is plain heremembers more than he remembers remembering, for he avoids mistakeswhich he made at one time, and his performance proves that all thenotes are in his memory, though if called upon to play such and sucha bar at random from the middle of the piece, and neither more norless, he will probably say that he cannot remember it unless hebegins from the beginning of the phrase which leads to it. Verycommonly he will be obliged to begin from the beginning of themovement itself, and be unable to start at any other point unless hehave the music before him; and if disturbed, as we have seen above, he will have to start de novo from an accustomed starting-point. 

Yet nothing can be more obvious than that there must have been a timewhen what is now so easy as to be done without conscious effort ofthe brain was only done by means of brain work which was very keenlyperceived, even to fatigue and positive distress. Even now, if theplayer is playing something the like of which he has not met before, we observe he pauses and becomes immediately conscious of attention. 

We draw the inference, therefore, as regards pianoforte or violinplaying, that the more the familiarity or knowledge of the art, theless is there consciousness of such knowledge; even so far as thatthere should seem to be almost as much difficulty in awakeningconsciousness which has become, so to speak, latent, --a consciousnessof that which is known too well to admit of recognised self-analysiswhile the knowledge is being exercised--as in creating aconsciousness of that which is not yet well enough known to beproperly designated as known at all. On the other hand, we observethat the less the familiarly or knowledge, the greater theconsciousness of whatever knowledge there is. 

Considering other like instances of the habitual exercise ofintelligence and volition, which, from long familiarity with themethod of procedure, escape the notice of the person exercising them, we naturally think of writing. The formation of each letter requiresattention and volition, yet in a few minutes a practised writer willform several hundred letters, and be able to think and talk ofsomething else all the time he is doing so. It will not probablyremember the formation of a single character in any page that he haswritten; nor will he be able to give more than the substance of hiswriting if asked to do so. He knows how to form each letter so well, and he knows so well each word that he is about to write, that he hasceased to be conscious of his knowledge or to notice his acts ofvolition, each one of which is, nevertheless, followed by acorresponding muscular action. Yet the uniformity of ourhandwriting, and the manner in which we almost invariably adhere toone method of forming the same character, would seem to suggest thatduring the momentary formation of each letter our memories mustrevert (with an intensity too rapid for our perception) to many ifnot to all the occasions on which we have ever written the sameletter previously--the memory of these occasions dwelling in ourminds as what has been called a residuum--an unconsciously struckbalance or average of them all--a fused mass of individualreminiscences of which no trace can be found in our consciousness, and of which the only effect would seem to lie in the gradual changesof handwriting which are perceptible in most people till they havereached middle-age, and sometimes even later. So far are we fromconsciously remembering any one of the occasions on which we havewritten such and such a letter, that we are not even conscious ofexercising our memory at all, any more than we are in healthconscious of the action of our heart. But, if we are writing in someunfamiliar way, as when printing our letters instead of writing themin our usual running hand, our memory is so far awakened that webecome conscious of every character we form; sometimes it is evenperceptible as memory to ourselves, as when we try to remember how toprint some letter, for example a g, and cannot call to mind on whichside of the upper half of the letter we ought to put the link whichconnects it with the lower, and are successful in remembering; but ifwe become very conscious of remembering, it shows that we are on thebrink of only trying to remember, --that is to say, of not rememberingat all. 

As a general rule, we remember for a time the substance of what wehave written, for the subject is generally new to us; but if we arewriting what we have often written before, we lose consciousness ofthis too, as fully as we do of the characters necessary to convey thesubstance to another person, and we shall find ourselves writing onas it were mechanically while thinking and talking of something else. So a paid copyist, to whom the subject of what he is writing is of noimportance, does not even notice it. He deals only with familiarwords and familiar characters without caring to go behind them, andthereupon writes on in a quasi-unconscious manner; but if he comes toa word or to characters with which he is but little acquainted, hebecomes immediately awakened to the consciousness of eitherremembering or trying to remember. His consciousness of his ownknowledge or memory would seem to belong to a period, so to speak, oftwilight between the thick darkness of ignorance and the brilliancyof perfect knowledge; as colour which vanishes with extremes of lightor of shade. Perfect ignorance and perfect knowledge are alikeunselfconscious. 

The above holds good even more noticeably in respect of reading. Howmany thousands of individual letters do our eyes run over everymorning in the "Times" newspaper, how few of them do we notice, orremember having noticed? Yet there was a time when we had suchdifficulty in reading even the simplest words, that we had to takegreat pains to impress them upon our memory so as to know them whenwe came to then again. Now, not even a single word of all we haveseen will remain with us, unless it is a new one, or an old one usedin an unfamiliar sense, in which case we notice, and may very likelyremember it. Our memory retains the substance only, the substanceonly being unfamiliar. Nevertheless, although we do not perceivemore than the general result of our perception, there can be no doubtof our having perceived every letter in every word that we have readat all, for if we come upon a word misspelt our attention is at oncearoused; unless, indeed, we have actually corrected the misspelling, as well as noticed it, unconsciously, through exceeding familiaritywith the way in which it ought to be spelt. Not only do we perceivethe letters we have seen without noticing that we have perceivedthem, but we find it almost impossible to notice that we notice themwhen we have once learnt to read fluently. To try to do so puts usout, and prevents our being able to read. We may even go so far asto say that if a man can attend to the individual characters, it is asign that he cannot yet read fluently. If we know how to read well, we are as unconscious of the means and processes whereby we attainthe desired result as we are about the growth of our hair or thecirculation of our blood. So that here again it would seem that weonly know what we know still to some extent imperfectly, and thatwhat we know thoroughly escapes our conscious perception though nonethe less actually perceived. Our perception in fact passes into alatent stage, as also our memory and volition. 

Walking is another example of the rapid exercise of volition with butlittle perception of each individual act of exercise. We notice anyobstacle in our path, but it is plain we do not notice that weperceive much that we have nevertheless been perceiving; for if a mangoes down a lane by night he will stumble over many things which hewould have avoided by day, although he would not have noticed them. Yet time was when walking was to each one of us a new and arduoustask--as arduous as we should now find it to wheel a wheelbarrow on atight-rope; whereas, at present, though we can think of our steps toa certain extent without checking our power to walk, we certainlycannot consider our muscular action in detail without having to cometo a dead stop. 

Talking--especially in one's mother tongue--may serve as a lastexample. We find it impossible to follow the muscular action of themouth and tongue in framing every letter or syllable we utter. Wehave probably spoken for years and years before we became aware thatthe letter h is a labial sound, and until we have to utter a wordwhich is difficult from its unfamiliarity we speak "trippingly on thetongue" with no attention except to the substance of what we wish tosay. Yet talking was not always the easy matter to us which it is atpresent--as we perceive more readily when we are learning a newlanguage which it may take us months to master. Nevertheless, whenwe have once mastered it we speak it without further consciousness ofknowledge or memory, as regards the more common words, and withouteven noticing our consciousness. Here, as in the other instancesalready given, as long as we did not know perfectly, we wereconscious of our acts of perception, volition, and reflection, butwhen our knowledge has become perfect we no longer notice ourconsciousness, nor our volition; nor can we awaken a secondartificial consciousness without some effort, and disturbance of theprocess of which we are endeavouring to become conscious. We are nolonger, so to speak, under the law, but under grace. 

An ascending scale may be perceived in the above instances. 

In playing, we have an action acquired long after birth, difficult ofacquisition, and never thoroughly familiarised to the power ofabsolutely unconscious performance, except in the case of those whohave either an exceptional genius for music, or who have devoted thegreater part of their time to practising. Except in the case ofthese persons it is generally found easy to become more or lessconscious of any passage without disturbing the performance, and ouraction remains so completely within our control that we can stopplaying at any moment we please. 

In writing, we have an action generally acquired earlier, done forthe most part with great unconsciousness of detail, fairly wellwithin our control to stop at any moment; though not so completely aswould be imagined by those who have not made the experiment of tryingto stop in the middle of a given character when writing at fit speed. Also, we can notice our formation of any individual character withoutour writing being materially hindered. 

Reading is usually acquired earlier still. We read with moreunconsciousness of attention than we write. We find it moredifficult to become conscious of any character without discomfiture, and we cannot arrest ourselves in the middle of a word, for example, and hardly before the end of a sentence; nevertheless it is on thewhole well within our control. 

Walking is so early an acquisition that we cannot remember havingacquired it. In running fast over average ground we find it verydifficult to become conscious of each individual step, and shouldpossibly find it more difficult still, if the inequalities androughness of uncultured land had not perhaps caused the developmentof a power to create a second consciousness of our steps withouthindrance to our running or walking. Pursuit and flight, whether inthe chase or in war, must for many generations have played a muchmore prominent part in the lives of our ancestors than they do in ourown. If the ground over which they had to travel had been generallyas free from obstruction as our modern cultivated lands, it ispossible that we might not find it as easy to notice our severalsteps as we do at present. Even as it is, if while we are running wewould consider the action of our muscles, we come to a dead stop, andshould probably fall if we tried to observe too suddenly; for we muststop to do this, and running, when we have once committed ourselvesto it beyond a certain point, is not controllable to a step or twowithout loss of equilibrium. 

We learn to talk, much about the same time that we learn to walk, buttalking requires less muscular effort than walking, and makesgenerally less demand upon our powers. A man may talk a long whilebefore he has done the equivalent of a five-mile walk; it is natural, therefore, that we should have had more practice in talking than inwalking, and hence that we should find it harder to pay attention toour words than to our steps. Certainly it is very hard to becomeconscious of every syllable or indeed of every word we say; theattempt to do so will often bring us to a check at once; neverthelesswe can generally stop talking if we wish to do so, unless the cryingof infants be considered as a kind of quasi-speech: this comesearlier, and is often quite uncontrollable, or more truly perhaps isdone with such complete control over the muscles by the will, andwith such absolute certainty of his own purpose on the part of thewilier, that there is no longer any more doubt, uncertainty, orsuspense, and hence no power of perceiving any of the processeswhereby the result is attained--as a wheel which may look fast fixedbecause it is so fast revolving. {2}

We may observe therefore in this ascending scale, imperfect as it is, that the older the habit the longer the practice, the longer thepractice, the more knowledge--or, the less uncertainty; the lessuncertainty the less power of conscious self-analysis and control. 

It will occur to the reader that in all the instances given above, different individuals attain the unconscious stage of perfectknowledge with very different degrees of facility. Some have toattain it with a great sum; others are free born. Some learn toplay, to read, write, and talk, with hardly an effort--some show suchan instinctive aptitude for arithmetic that, like Zerah Colburn, ateight years old, they achieve results without instruction, which inthe case of most people would require a long education. The accountof Zerah Colburn, as quoted from Mr. Baily in Dr. Carpenter's "MentalPhysiology, " may perhaps be given here. 

"He raised any number consisting of ONE figure progressively to thetenth power, giving the results (by actual multiplication and not bymemory) FASTER THAN THEY COULD BE SET DOWN IN FIGURES by the personappointed to record them. He raised the number 8 progressively tothe SIXTEENTH power, and in naming the last result, which consistedof 15 figures, he was right in every one. Some numbers consisting ofTWO figures he raised as high as the eighth power, though he found adifficulty in proceeding when the products became very large. 

"On being asked the SQUARE ROOT of 106, 929, he answered 327 beforethe original number could be written down. He was then required tofind the cube root of 268, 336, 125, and with equal facility andpromptness he replied 645. 

"He was asked how many minutes there are in 48 years, and before thequestion could be taken down he replied 25, 228, 800, and immediatelyafterwards he gave the correct number of seconds. 

"On being requested to give the factors which would produce thenumber 247, 483, he immediately named 941 and 263, which are the onlytwo numbers from the multiplication of which it would result. On171, 395 being proposed, he named 5 x 34, 279, 7 x 24, 485, 59 x 2905, 83 x 2065, 35 x 4897, 295 x 581, and 413 x 415. 

"He was then asked to give the factors of 36, 083, but he immediatelyreplied that it had none, which was really the case, this being aprime number. Other numbers being proposed to him indiscriminately, he always succeeded in giving the correct factors except in the caseof prime numbers, which he generally discovered almost as soon asthey were proposed to him. The number 4, 294, 967, 297, which is 2^32 +1, having been given him, he discovered, as Euler had previouslydone, that it was not the prime number which Fermat had supposed itto be, but that it is the product of the factors 6, 700, 417 x 641. The solution of this problem was only given after the lapse of someweeks, but the method he took to obtain it clearly showed that he hadnot derived his information from any extraneous source. 

"When he was asked to multiply together numbers both consisting ofmore than these figures, he seemed to decompose one or both of theminto its factors, and to work with them separately. Thus, on beingasked to give the square of 4395, he multiplied 293 by itself, andthen twice multiplied the product by 15. And on being asked to tellthe square of 999, 999 he obtained the correct result, 999, 998, 000, 001, by twice multiplying the square of 37, 037 by 27. Hethen of his own accord multiplied that product by 49, and said thatthe result (viz. , 48, 999, 902, 000, 049) was equal to the square of6, 999, 993. He afterwards multiplied this product by 49, and observedthat the result (viz. , 2, 400, 995, 198, 002, 401) was equal to the squareof 48, 999, 951. He was again asked to multiply the product by 25, andin naming the result (viz. , 60, 024, 879, 950, 060, 025) he said it wasequal to the square of 244, 999, 755. 

"On being interrogated as to the manner in which he obtained theseresults, the boy constantly said he did not know HOW the answers cameinto his mind. In the act of multiplying two numbers together, andin the raising of powers, it was evident (alike from the facts juststated and from the motion of his lips) that SOME operation was goingforward in his mind; yet that operation could not (from the readinesswith which his answers were furnished) have been at all allied to theusual modes of procedure, of which, indeed, he was entirely ignorant, not being able to perform on paper a simple sum in multiplication ordivision. But in the extraction of roots, and in the discovery ofthe factors of large numbers, it did not appear that any operationCOULD take place, since he gave answers IMMEDIATELY, or in a very fewseconds, which, according to the ordinary methods, would haverequired very difficult and laborious calculations, and prime numberscannot be recognised as such by any known rule. "

I should hope that many of the above figures are wrong. I haveverified them carefully with Dr. Carpenter's quotation, but furtherthan this I cannot and will not go. Also I am happy to find that inthe end the boy overcame the mathematics, and turned out a useful butby no means particularly calculating member of society. 

The case, however, is typical of others in which persons have beenfound able to do without apparent effort what in the great majorityof cases requires a long apprenticeship. It is needless to multiplyinstances; the point that concerns us is, that knowledge under suchcircumstances being very intense, and the ease with which the resultis produced extreme, it eludes the conscious apprehension of theperformer himself, who only becomes conscious when a difficultyarises which taxes even his abnormal power. Such a case, therefore, confirms rather than militates against our opinion that consciousnessof knowledge vanishes on the knowledge becoming perfect--the onlydifference between those possessed of any such remarkable specialpower and the general run of people being, that the first are bornwith such an unusual aptitude for their particular specialty thatthey are able to dispense with all or nearly all the preliminaryexercise of their faculty, while the latter must exercise it for aconsiderable time before they can get it to work smoothly and easily;but in either case when once the knowledge is intense it isunconscious. 

Nor again would such an instance as that of Zerah Colburn warrant usin believing that this white heat, as it were, of unconsciousknowledge can be attained by any one without his ever having beenoriginally cold. Young Colburn, for example, could not extract rootswhen he was an embryo of three weeks' standing. It is true we canseldom follow the process, but we know there must have been a time inevery case when even the desire for information or action had notbeen kindled; the forgetfulness of effort on the part of those withexceptional genius for a special subject is due to the smallness ofthe effort necessary, so that it makes no impression upon theindividual himself, rather than to the absence of any effort at all. {3}

It would, therefore, appear as though perfect knowledge and perfectignorance were extremes which meet and become indistinguishable fromone another; so also perfect volition and perfect absence ofvolition, perfect memory and utter forgetfulness; for we areunconscious of knowing, willing, or remembering, either from not yethaving known or willed, or from knowing and willing so well and sointensely as to be no longer conscious of either. Consciousknowledge and volition are of attention; attention is of suspense;suspense is of doubt; doubt is of uncertainty; uncertainty is ofignorance; so that the mere fact of conscious knowing or willingimplies the presence of more or less novelty and doubt. 

It would also appear as a general principle on a superficial view ofthe foregoing instances (and the reader may readily supply himselfwith others which are perhaps more to the purpose), that unconsciousknowledge and unconscious volition are never acquired otherwise thanas the result of experience, familiarity, or habit; so that wheneverwe observe a person able to do any complicated action unconsciously, we may assume both that he must have done it very often before hecould acquire so great proficiency, and also that there must havebeen a time when he did not know how to do it at all. 

We may assume that there was a time when he was yet so nearly on thepoint of neither knowing nor willing perfectly, that he was quitealive to whatever knowledge or volition he could exert; going furtherback, we shall find him still more keenly alive to a less perfectknowledge; earlier still, we find him well aware that he does notknow nor will correctly, but trying hard to do both the one and theother; and so on, back and back, till both difficulty andconsciousness become little more than a sound of going in the brain, a flitting to and fro of something barely recognisable as the desireto will or know at all--much less as the desire to know or willdefinitely this or that. Finally, they retreat beyond our ken intothe repose--the inorganic kingdom--of as yet unawakened interest. 

In either case, --the repose of perfect ignorance or of perfectknowledge--disturbance is troublesome. When first starting on anAtlantic steamer, our rest is hindered by the screw; after a shorttime, it is hindered if the screw stops. A uniform impression ispractically no impression. One cannot either learn or unlearnwithout pains or pain. 

CHAPTER II--CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS KNOWERS--THE LAW AND GRACE

In this chapter we shall show that the law, which we have observed tohold as to the vanishing tendency of knowledge upon becoming perfect, holds good not only concerning acquired actions or habits of body, but concerning opinions, modes of thought, and mental habitsgenerally, which are no more recognised as soon as firmly fixed, thanare the steps with which we go about our daily avocations. I amaware that I may appear in the latter part of the chapter to havewandered somewhat beyond the limits of my subject, but, on the whole, decide upon leaving what I have written, inasmuch as it serves toshow how far-reaching is the principle on which I am insisting. Having said so much, I shall during the remainder of the book keepmore closely to the point. 

Certain it is that we know best what we are least conscious ofknowing, or at any rate least able to prove, as, for example, our ownexistence, or that there is a country England. If any one asks usfor proof on matters of this sort, we have none ready, and are justlyannoyed at being called to consider what we regard as settledquestions. Again, there is hardly anything which so much affects ouractions as the centre of the earth (unless, perhaps, it be that stillhotter and more unprofitable spot the centre of the universe), for weare incessantly trying to get as near it as circumstances will allow, or to avoid getting nearer than is for the time being convenient. Walking, running, standing, sitting, lying, waking, or sleeping, frombirth till death it is a paramount object with us; even after death--if it be not fanciful to say so--it is one of the few things of whichwhat is left of us can still feel the influence; yet what can engrossless of our attention than this dark and distant spot so manythousands of miles away?

The air we breathe, so long as it is neither too hot nor cold, norrough, nor full of smoke--that is to say, so long as it is in thatstate within which we are best acquainted--seldom enters into ourthoughts; yet there is hardly anything with which we are moreincessantly occupied night and day. 

Indeed, it is not too much to say that we have no really profoundknowledge upon any subject--no knowledge on the strength of which weare ready to act at all moments unhesitatingly without eitherpreparation or after-thought--till we have left off feeling consciousof the possession of such knowledge, and of the grounds on which itrests. A lesson thoroughly learned must be like the air which feelsso light, though pressing so heavily against us, because every poreof our skin is saturated, so to speak, with it on all sides equally. This perfection of knowledge sometimes extends to positive disbeliefin the thing known, so that the most thorough knower shall believehimself altogether ignorant. No thief, for example, is such an utterthief--so GOOD a thief--as the kleptomaniac. Until he has become akleptomaniac, and can steal a horse as it were by a reflex action, heis still but half a thief, with many unthievish notions stillclinging to him. Yet the kleptomaniac is probably unaware that hecan steal at all, much less that he can steal so well. He would beshocked if he were to know the truth. So again, no man is a greathypocrite until he has left off knowing that he is a hypocrite. Thegreat hypocrites of the world are almost invariably under theimpression that they are among the very few really honest people tobe found and, as we must all have observed, it is rare to find anyone strongly under this impression without ourselves having goodreason to differ from him. 

Our own existence is another case in point. When we have once becomearticulately conscious of existing, it is an easy matter to begindoubting whether we exist at all. As long as man was toounreflecting a creature to articulate in words his consciousness ofhis own existence, he knew very well that he existed, but he did notknow that he knew it. With introspection, and the perceptionrecognised, for better or worse, that he was a fact, came also theperception that he had no solid ground for believing that he was afact at all. That nice, sensible, unintrospective people who weretoo busy trying to exist pleasantly to trouble their heads as towhether they existed or no--that this best part of mankind shouldhave gratefully caught at such a straw as "cogito ergo sum, " isintelligible enough. They felt the futility of the whole question, and were thankful to one who seemed to clench the matter with a cantcatchword, especially with a catchword in a foreign language; but howone, who was so far gone as to recognise that he could not prove hisown existence, should be able to comfort himself with such a beggingof the question, would seem unintelligible except upon the ground ofsheer exhaustion. 

At the risk of appearing to wander too far from the matter in hand, afew further examples may perhaps be given of that irony of nature, bywhich it comes about that we so often most know and are, what weleast think ourselves to know and be--and on the other hand hold moststrongly what we are least capable of demonstrating. 

Take the existence of a Personal God, --one of the most profoundly-received and widely-spread ideas that have ever prevailed amongmankind. Has there ever been a DEMONSTRATION of the existence ofsuch a God as has satisfied any considerable section of thinkers forlong together? Hardly has what has been conceived to be ademonstration made its appearance and received a certain acceptanceas though it were actual proof, when it has been impugned withsufficient success to show that, however true the fact itself, thedemonstration is naught. I do not say that this is an argumentagainst the personality of God; the drift, indeed, of the presentreasoning would be towards an opposite conclusion, inasmuch as itinsists upon the fact that what is most true and best known is oftenleast susceptible of demonstration owing to the very perfectness withwhich it is known; nevertheless, the fact remains that many men inmany ages and countries--the subtlest thinkers over the whole worldfor some fifteen hundred years--have hunted for a demonstration ofGod's personal existence; yet though so many have sought, --so many, and so able, and for so long a time--none have found. There is nodemonstration which can be pointed to with any unanimity as settlingthe matter beyond power of reasonable cavil. On the contrary, it maybe observed that from the attempt to prove the existence of apersonal God to the denial of that existence altogether, the path iseasy. As in the case of our own existence, it will be found thatthey alone are perfect believers in a personal Deity and in theChristian religion who have not yet begun to feel that either standsin need of demonstration. We observe that most people, whetherChristians, or Jews, or Mohammedans, are unable to give their reasonsfor the faith that is in them with any readiness or completeness; andthis is sure proof that they really hold it so utterly as to have nofurther sense that it either can be demonstrated or ought to be so, but feel towards it as towards the air which they breathe but do notnotice. On the other hand, a living prelate was reported in the"Times" to have said in one of his latest charges: "My belief isthat a widely extended good practice must be founded upon Christiandoctrine. " The fact of the Archbishop's recognising this as amongthe number of his beliefs is conclusive evidence with those who havedevoted attention to the laws of thought, that his mind is not yetclear as to whether or no there is any connection at all betweenChristian doctrine and widely extended good practice. {4}

Again, it has been often and very truly said that it is not theconscious and self-styled sceptic, as Shelley for example, who is thetrue unbeliever. Such a man as Shelley will, as indeed his lifeabundantly proves, have more in common than not with the trueunselfconscious believer. Gallio again, whose indifference toreligious animosities has won him the cheapest immortality which, sofar as I can remember, was ever yet won, was probably if the truthwere known, a person of the sincerest piety. It is the unconsciousunbeliever who is the true infidel, however greatly he would besurprised to know the truth. Mr. Spurgeon was reported as havingrecently asked the Almighty to "change our rulers AS SOON ASPOSSIBLE. " There lurks a more profound distrust of God's power inthese words than in almost any open denial of His existence. 

So it rather shocks us to find Mr. Darwin writing ("Plants andAnimals under Domestication, " vol. Ii. , p. 275): "No doubt, in everycase there must have been some exciting cause. " And again, six orseven pages later: "No doubt, each slight variation must have itsefficient cause. " The repetition within so short a space of thisexpression of confidence in the impossibility of causeless effectswould suggest that Mr. Darwin's mind at the time of writing was, unconsciously to himself, in a state of more or less uneasiness as towhether effects could not occasionally come about of themselves, andwithout cause of any sort, --that he may have been standing, in fact, for a short time upon the brink of a denial of the indestructibilityof force and matter. 

In like manner, the most perfect humour and irony is generally quiteunconscious. Examples of both are frequently given by men whom theworld considers as deficient in humour; it is more probably true thatthese persons are unconscious of their own delightful power throughthe very mastery and perfection with which they hold it. There is aplay, for instance, of genuine fun in some of the more seriousscientific and theological journals which for some time past we havelooked for in vain in " --- . "

The following extract, from a journal which I will not advertise, mayserve as an example:

"Lycurgus, when they had abandoned to his revenge him who had put outhis eyes, took him home, and the punishment he inflicted upon him wassedulous instructions to virtue. " Yet this truly comic paper doesnot probably know that it is comic, any more than the kleptomaniacknows that he steals, or than John Milton knew he was a humorist whenhe wrote a hymn upon the circumcision, and spent his honeymoon incomposing a treatise on divorce. No more again did Goethe know howexquisitely humorous he was when he wrote, in his Wilhelm Meister, that a beautiful tear glistened in Theresa's right eye, and then wenton to explain that it glistened in her right eye and not in her left, because she had had a wart on her left which had been removed--andsuccessfully. Goethe probably wrote this without a chuckle; hebelieved what a good many people who have never read Wilhelm Meisterbelieve still, namely, that it was a work full of pathos, of fine andtender feeling; yet a less consummate humorist must have felt thatthere was scarcely a paragraph in it from first to last the chiefmerit of which did not lie in its absurdity. 

Another example may be taken from Bacon of the manner in whichsayings which drop from men unconsciously, give the key of theirinner thoughts to another person, though they themselves know notthat they have such thoughts at all; much less that these thoughtsare their only true convictions. In his Essay on Friendship thegreat philosopher writes: "Reading good books on morality is alittle flat and dead. " Innocent, not to say pathetic, as thispassage may sound it is pregnant with painful inferences concerningBacon's moral character. For if he knew that he found reading goodbooks of morality a little flat and dead, it follows he must havetried to read them; nor is he saved by the fact that he found them alittle flat and dead; for though this does indeed show that he hadbegun to be so familiar with a few first principles as to find itmore or less exhausting to have his attention directed to themfurther--yet his words prove that they were not so incorporate withhim that he should feel the loathing for further discourse upon thematter which honest people commonly feel now. It will be rememberedthat he took bribes when he came to be Lord Chancellor. 

It is on the same principle that we find it so distasteful to hearone praise another for earnestness. For such praise raises asuspicion in our minds (pace the late Dr. Arnold and his following)that the praiser's attention must have been arrested by sincerity, asby something more or less unfamiliar to himself. So universally isthis recognised that the world has for some time been discardedentirely by all reputable people. Truly, if there is one who cannotfind himself in the same room with the life and letters of an earnestperson without being made instantly unwell, the same is a just manand perfect in all his ways. 

But enough has perhaps been said. As the fish in the sea, or thebird in the air, so unreasoningly and inarticulately safe must a manfeel before he can be said to know. It is only those who areignorant and uncultivated who can know anything at all in a propersense of the words. Cultivation will breed in any man a certainty ofthe uncertainty even of his most assured convictions. It is perhapsfortunate for our comfort that we can none of us be cultivated uponvery many subjects, so that considerable scope for assurance willstill remain to us; but however this may be, we certainly observe itas a fact that the greatest men are they who are most uncertain inspite of certainty, and at the same time most certain in spite ofuncertainty, and who are thus best able to feel that there is nothingin such complete harmony with itself as a flat contradiction interms. For nature hates that any principle should breed, so tospeak, hermaphroditically, but will give to each an help meet for itwhich shall cross it and be the undoing of it; as in the case ofdescent with modification, of which the essence would appear to bethat every offspring should resemble its parents, and yet, at thesame time, that no offspring should resemble its parents. But forthe slightly irritating stimulant of this perpetual crossing, weshould pass our lives unconsciously as though in slumber. 

Until we have got to understand that though black is not white, yetit may be whiter than white itself (and any painter will readilypaint that which shall show obviously as black, yet it shall bewhiter than that which shall show no less obviously as white), we maybe good logicians, but we are still poor reasoners. Knowledge is inan inchoate state as long as it is capable of logical treatment; itmust be transmuted into that sense or instinct which rises altogetherabove the sphere in which words can have being at all, otherwise itis not yet vital. For sense is to knowledge what conscience is toreasoning about right and wrong; the reasoning must be so rapid as todefy conscious reference to first principles, and even at times to beapparently subversive of them altogether, or the action will halt. It must, in fact, become automatic before we are safe with it. Whilewe are fumbling for the grounds of our conviction, our conviction isprone to fall, as Peter for lack of faith sinking into the waves ofGalilee; so that the very power to prove at all is an a prioriargument against the truth--or at any rate the practical importanceto the vast majority of mankind--of all that is supported bydemonstration. For the power to prove implies a sense of the need ofproof, and things which the majority of mankind find practicallyimportant are in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred above proof. Theneed of proof becomes as obsolete in the case of assumed knowledge, as the practice of fortifying towns in the middle of an old and longsettled country. Who builds defences for that which is impregnableor little likely to be assailed? The answer is ready, that unlessthe defences had been built in former times it would be impossible todo without them now; but this does not touch the argument, which isnot that demonstration is unwise, but that as long as a demonstrationis still felt necessary, and therefore kept ready to hand, thesubject of such demonstration is not yet securely known. Quis'excuse, s'accuse; and unless a matter can hold its own without thebrag and self-assertion of continual demonstration, it is still moreor less of a parvenu, which we shall not lose much by neglecting tillit has less occasion to blow its own trumpet. The only alternativeis that it is an error in process of detection, for if evidenceconcerning any opinion has long been denied superfluous, and everafter this comes to be again felt necessary, we know that the opinionis doomed. 

If there is any truth in the above, it should follow that ourconception of the words "science" and "scientific" should undergosome modification. Not that we should speak slightingly of science, but that we should recognise more than we do, that there are twodistinct classes of scientific people corresponding not inaptly withthe two main parties unto which the political world is divided. Theone class is deeply versed in those sciences which have alreadybecome the common property of mankind; enjoying, enforcing, perpetuating, and engraving still more deeply unto the mind of manacquisitions already approved by common experience, but somewhatcareless about extension of empire, or at any rate disinclined, forthe most part, to active effort on their own part for the sake ofsuch extension--neither progressive, in fact, nor aggressive--butquiet, peaceable people, who wish to live and let live, as theirfathers before them; while the other class is chiefly intent uponpushing forward the boundaries of science, and is comparativelyindifferent to what is known already save in so far as necessary forpurposes of extension. These last are called pioneers of science, and to them alone is the title "scientific" commonly accorded; butpioneers, unimportant to an army as they are, are still not the armyitself; which can get on better without the pioneers than thepioneers without the army. Surely the class which knows thoroughlywell what it knows, and which adjudicates upon the value of thediscoveries made by the pioneers--surely this class has as good aright or better to be called scientific than the pioneers themselves. 

These two classes above described blend into one another with everyshade of gradation. Some are admirably proficient in the well-knownsciences--that is to say, they have good health, good looks, goodtemper, common sense, and energy, and they hold all these good thingsin such perfection as to lie altogether without introspection--to benot under the law, but so utterly and entirely under grace that everyone who sees them likes them. But such may, and perhaps morecommonly will, have very little inclination to extend the boundariesof human knowledge; their aim is in another direction altogether. Ofthe pioneers, on the other hand, some are agreeable people, wellversed in the older sciences, though still more eminent as pioneers, while others, whose services in this last capacity have been ofinestimable value, are noticeably ignorant of the sciences which havealready become current with the larger part of mankind--in otherwords, they are ugly, rude, and disagreeable people, veryprogressive, it may be, but very aggressive to boot. 

The main difference between these two classes lies in the fact thatthe knowledge of the one, so far as it is new, is known consciously, while that of the other is unconscious, consisting of sense andinstinct rather than of recognised knowledge. So long as a man hasthese, and of the same kind as the more powerful body of his fellow-countrymen, he is a true man of science, though he can hardly read orwrite. As my great namesake said so well, "He knows what's what, andthat's as high as metaphysic wit can fly. " As usual, these true andthorough knowers do not know that they are scientific, and can seldomgive a reason for the faith that is in them. They believe themselvesto be ignorant, uncultured men, nor can even the professors whom theysometimes outwit in their own professorial domain perceive that theyhave been outwitted by men of superior scientific attainments totheir own. The following passage from Dr. Carpenter's "Mesmerism, Spiritualism, " &c. , may serve as an illustration:-

"It is well known that persons who are conversant with the geologicalstructure of a district are often able to indicate with considerablecertainty in what spot and at what depth water will be found; and menOF LESS SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE, BUT OF CONSIDERABLE PRACTICALEXPERIENCE"--(so that in Dr. Carpenter's mind there seems to be somesort of contrast or difference in kind between the knowledge which isderived from observation of facts and scientific knowledge)--"frequently arrive at a true conclusion upon this point without beingable to assign reasons for their opinions. 

"Exactly the same may be said in regard to the mineral structure of amining district; the course of a metallic vein being often correctlyindicated by the shrewd guess of an OBSERVANT workman, when THESCIENTIFIC REASONING of the mining engineer altogether fails. "

Precisely. Here we have exactly the kind of thing we are in searchof: the man who has observed and observed till the facts are sothoroughly in his head that through familiarity he has lost sightboth of them and of the processes whereby he deduced his conclusionsfrom them--is apparently not considered scientific, though he knowshow to solve the problem before him; the mining engineer, on theother hand, who reasons scientifically--that is to say, with aknowledge of his own knowledge--is found not to know, and to fail indiscovering the mineral. 

"It is an experience we are continually encountering in other walksof life, " continues Dr. Carpenter, "that particular persons areguided--some apparently by an original and others by AN ACQUIREDINTUITION--to conclusions for which they can give no adequate reason, but which subsequent events prove to have been correct. " And this, Itake it, implies what I have been above insisting on, namely, that onbecoming intense, knowledge seems also to become unaware of thegrounds on which it rests, or that it has or requires grounds at all, or indeed even exists. The only issue between myself and Dr. Carpenter would appear to be, that Dr. Carpenter, himself anacknowledged leader in the scientific world, restricts the term"scientific" to the people who know that they know, but are beaten bythose who are not so conscious of their own knowledge; while I saythat the term "scientific" should be applied (only that they wouldnot like it) to the nice sensible people who know what's what ratherthan to the discovering class. 

And this is easily understood when we remember that the pioneercannot hope to acquire any of the new sciences in a single lifetimeso perfectly as to become unaware of his own knowledge. As a generalrule, we observe him to be still in a state of active consciousnessconcerning whatever particular science he is extending, and as longas he is in this state he cannot know utterly. It is, as I havealready so often insisted on, those who do not know that they know somuch who have the firmest grip of their knowledge: the best class, for example, of our English youth, who live much in the open air, and, as Lord Beaconsfield finely said, never read. These are thepeople who know best those things which are best worth knowing--thatis to say, they are the most truly scientific. Unfortunately, theapparatus necessary for this kind of science is so costly as to bewithin the reach of few, involving, as it does, an experience in theuse of it for some preceding generations. Even those who are bornwith the means within their reach must take no less pains, andexercise no less self-control, before they can attain the perfectunconscious use of them, than would go to the making of a James Wattor a Stephenson; it is vain, therefore, to hope that this best kindof science can ever be put within the reach of the many; neverthelessit may be safely said that all the other and more generallyrecognised kinds of science are valueless except in so far as theytend to minister to this the highest kind. They have no raisond'etre except so far as they tend to do away with the necessity forwork, and to diffuse good health, and that good sense which is aboveself-consciousness. They are to be encouraged because they haverendered the most fortunate kind of modern European possible, andbecause they tend to make possible a still more fortunate kind thanany now existing. But the man who devotes himself to science cannot--with the rarest, if any, exceptions--belong to this most fortunateclass himself. He occupies a lower place, both scientifically andmorally, for it is not possible but that his drudgery should somewhatsoil him both in mind and health of body, or, if this be denied, surely it must let him and hinder him in running the race forunconsciousness. We do not feel that it increases the glory of aking or great nobleman that he should excel in what is commonlycalled science. Certainly he should not go further than PrinceRupert's drops. Nor should he excel in music, art, literature, ortheology--all which things are more or less parts of science. Heshould be above them all, save in so far as he can without effortreap renown from the labours of others. It is a lache in him that heshould write music or books, or paint pictures at all; but if he mustdo so, his work should be at best contemptible. Much as we mustcondemn Marcus Aurelius, we condemn James I. Ever more severely. 

It is a pity there should exist so general a confusion of thoughtupon this subject, for it may be asserted without fear ofcontradiction that there is hardly any form of immorality now rifewhich produces more disastrous effects upon those who give themselvesup to it, and upon society in general, than the so-called science ofthose who know that they know too well to be able to know truly. With very clever people--the people who know that they know--it ismuch as with the members of the early Corinthian Church, to whom St. Paul wrote, that if they looked their numbers over, they would notfind many wise, nor powerful, nor well-born people among them. Dog-fanciers tell us that performing dogs never carry their tails; suchdogs have eaten of the tree of knowledge, and are convinced of sinaccordingly--they know that they know things, in respect of which, therefore, they are no longer under grace, but under the law, andthey have yet so much grace left as to be ashamed. So with the humanclever dog; he may speak with the tongues of men and angels, but solong as he knows that he knows, his tail will droop. More especiallydoes this hold in the case of those who are born to wealth and of oldfamily. We must all feel that a rich young nobleman with a taste forscience and principles is rarely a pleasant object. We do not evenlike the rich young man in the Bible who wanted to inherit eternallife, unless, indeed, he merely wanted to know whether there was notsome way by which he could avoid dying, and even so he is hardlyworth considering. Principles are like logic, which never yet made agood reasoner of a bad one, but might still be occasionally useful ifthey did not invariably contradict each other whenever there is anytemptation to appeal to them. They are like fire, good servants butbad masters. As many people or more have been wrecked on principleas from want of principle. They are, as their name implies, of anelementary character, suitable for beginners only, and he who has solittle mastered them as to have occasion to refer to themconsciously, is out of place in the society of well-educated people. The truly scientific invariably hate him, and, for the most part, themore profoundly in proportion to the unconsciousness with which theydo so. 

If the reader hesitates, let him go down into the streets and look inthe shop-windows at the photographs of eminent men, whether literary, artistic, or scientific, and note the work which the consciousness ofknowledge has wrought on nine out of every ten of them; then let himgo to the masterpieces of Greek and Italian art, the truest preachersof the truest gospel of grace; let him look at the Venus of Milo, theDiscobolus, the St. George of Donatello. If it had pleased thesepeople to wish to study, there was no lack of brains to do it with;but imagine "what a deal of scorn" would "look beautiful" upon theVenus of Milo's face if it were suggested to her that she shouldlearn to read. Which, think you, knows most, the Theseus, or anymodern professor taken at random? True, the advancement of learningmust have had a great share in the advancement of beauty, inasmuch asbeauty is but knowledge perfected and incarnate--but with thepioneers it is sic vos non vobis; the grace is not for them, but forthose who come after. Science is like offences. It must needs come, but woe unto that man through whom it comes; for there cannot be muchbeauty where there is consciousness of knowledge, and while knowledgeis still new it must in the nature of things involve muchconsciousness. 

It is not knowledge, then, that is incompatible with beauty; therecannot be too much knowledge, but it must have passed through manypeople who it is to be feared must be more or less disagreeable, before beauty or grace will have anything to say to it; it must be soincarnate in a man's whole being that he shall not be aware of it, orit will fit him constrainedly as one under the law, and not as oneunder grace. 

And grace is best, for where grace is, love is not distant. Grace!the old Pagan ideal whose charm even unlovely Paul could notunderstand, but, as the legend tells us, his soul fainted within him, his heart misgave him, and, standing alone on the seashore at dusk, he "troubled deaf heaven with his bootless cries, " his thin voicepleading for grace after the flesh. 

The waves came in one after another, the sea-gulls cried togetherafter their kind, the wind rustled among the dried canes upon thesandbanks, and there came a voice from heaven saying, "Let My gracebe sufficient for thee. " Whereon, failing of the thing itself, hestole the word and strove to crush its meaning to the measure of hisown limitations. But the true grace, with her groves and highplaces, and troups of young men and maidens crowned with flowers, andsinging of love and youth and wine--the true grace he drove out intothe wilderness--high up, it may be, into Piora, and into such-likeplaces. Happy they who harboured her in her ill report. 

It is common to hear men wonder what new faith will be adopted bymankind if disbelief in the Christian religion should become general. They seem to expect that some new theological or quasi-theologicalsystem will arise, which, mutatis mutandis, shall be Christianityover again. It is a frequent reproach against those who maintainthat the supernatural element of Christianity is without foundation, that they bring forward no such system of their own. They pull downbut cannot build. We sometimes hear even those who have come to thesame conclusions as the destroyers say, that having nothing new toset up, they will not attack the old. But how can people set up anew superstition, knowing it to be a superstition? Without faith intheir own platform, a faith as intense as that manifested by theearly Christians, how can they preach? A new superstition will come, but it is in the very essence of things that its apostles should haveno suspicion of its real nature; that they should no more recognisethe common element between the new and the old than the earlyChristians recognised it between their faith and Paganism. If theydid, they would be paralysed. Others say that the new fabric may beseen rising on every side, and that the coming religion is science. Certainly its apostles preach it without misgiving, but it is not onthat account less possible that it may prove only to be the comingsuperstition--like Christianity, true to its true votaries, and, likeChristianity, false to those who follow it introspectively. 

It may well be we shall find we have escaped from one set oftaskmasters to fall into the hands of others far more ruthless. Thetyranny of the Church is light in comparison with that which futuregenerations may have to undergo at the hands of the doctrinaires. The Church did uphold a grace of some sort as the summum bonum, incomparison with which all so-called earthly knowledge--knowledge, that is to say, which had not passed through so many people as tohave become living and incarnate--was unimportant. Do what we may, we are still drawn to the unspoken teaching of her less introspectiveages with a force which no falsehood could command. Her buildings, her music, her architecture, touch us as none other on the whole cando; when she speaks there are many of us who think that she deniesthe deeper truths of her own profounder mind, and unfortunately hertendency is now towards more rather than less introspection. Themore she gives way to this--the more she becomes conscious ofknowing--the less she will know. But still her ideal is in grace. 

The so-called man of science, on the other hand, seems now generallyinclined to make light of all knowledge, save of the pioneercharacter. His ideal is in self-conscious knowledge. Let us have nomore Lo, here, with the professor; he very rarely knows what he sayshe knows; no sooner has he misled the world for a sufficient timewith a great flourish of trumpets than he is toppled over by one moreplausible than himself. He is but medicine-man, augur, priest, inits latest development; useful it may be, but requiring to be wellwatched by those who value freedom. Wait till he has become morepowerful, and note the vagaries which his conceit of knowledge willindulge in. The Church did not persecute while she was still weak. Of course every system has had, and will have, its heroes, but, as weall very well know, the heroism of the hero is but remotely due tosystem; it is due not to arguments, nor reasoning, nor to anyconsciously recognised perceptions, but to those deeper scienceswhich lie far beyond the reach of self-analysis, and for the sturdyof which there is but one schooling--to have had good forefathers formany generations. 

Above all things, let no unwary reader do me the injustice ofbelieving in ME. In that I write at all I am among the dammed. Ifhe must believe in anything, let him believe in the music of Handel, the painting of Giovanni Bellini, and in the thirteenth chapter ofSt. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians. 

But to return. Whenever we find people knowing that they know thisor that, we have the same story over and over again. They do not yetknow it perfectly. 

We come, therefore, to the conclusion that our knowledge andreasoning thereupon, only become perfect, assured, unhesitating, whenthey have become automatic, and are thus exercised without furtherconscious effort of the mind, much in the same way as we cannot walknor read nor write perfectly till we can do so automatically. 

CHAPTER III--APPLICATION OF FOREGOING CHAPTERS TO CERTAIN HABITSACQUIRED AFTER BIRTH WHICH ARE COMMONLY CONSIDERED INSTINCTIVE. 

What is true of knowing is also true of willing. The more intenselywe will, the less is our will deliberate and capable of beingrecognised as will at all. So that it is common to hear men declareunder certain circumstances that they had no will, but were forcedinto their own action under stress of passion or temptation. But inthe more ordinary actions of life, we observe, as in walking orbreathing, that we do not will anything utterly and without remnantof hesitation, till we have lost sight of the fact that we areexercising our will. 

The question, therefore, is forced upon us, how far this principleextends, and whether there may not be unheeded examples of itsoperation which, if we consider them, will land us in ratherunexpected conclusions. If it be granted that consciousness ofknowledge and of volition vanishes when the knowledge and thevolition have become intense and perfect, may it not be possible thatmany actions which we do without knowing how we do them, and withoutany conscious exercise of the will--actions which we certainly couldnot do if we tried to do them, nor refrain from doing if for anyreason we wished to do so--are done so easily and so unconsciouslyowing to excess of knowledge or experience rather than deficiency, wehaving done them too often, knowing how to do them too well, andhaving too little hesitation as to the method of procedure, to becapable of following our own action without the utter derangement ofsuch action altogether; or, in other cases, because we have so longsettled the question, that we have stowed away the whole apparatuswith which we work in corners of our system which we cannot nowconveniently reach?

It may be interesting to see whether we can find any class or classesof actions which would seem to link actions which for some time afterbirth we could not do at all, and in which our proficiency hasreached the stage of unconscious performance obviously throughrepeated effort and failure, and through this only, with actionswhich we could do as soon as we were born, and concerning which itwould at first sight appear absurd to say that they can have beenacquired by any process in the least analogous to that which wecommonly call experience, inasmuch as the creature itself which doesthem has only just begun to exist, and cannot, therefore, in the verynature of things, have had experience. 

Can we see that actions, for the acquisition of which experience issuch an obvious necessity, that whenever we see the acquisition weassume the experience, gradate away imperceptibly into actions whichwould seem, according to all reasonable analogy, to presupposeexperience, of which, however, the time and place seem obscure, ifnot impossible?

Eating and drinking would appear to be such actions. The new-bornchild cannot eat, and cannot drink, but he can swallow as soon as heis born; and swallowing would appear (as we may remark in passing) tohave been an earlier faculty of animal life than that of eating withteeth. The ease and unconsciousness with which we eat and drink isclearly attributable to practice; but a very little practice seems togo a long way--a suspiciously small amount of practice--as thoughsomewhere or at some other time there must have been more practicethan we can account for. We can very readily stop eating ordrinking, and can follow our own action without difficulty in eitherprocess; but, as regards swallowing, which is the earlier habit, wehave less power of self-analysis and control: when we have oncecommitted ourselves beyond a certain point to swallowing, we mustfinish doing so, --that is to say, our control over the operationceases. Also, a still smaller experience seems necessary for theacquisition of the power to swallow than appeared necessary in thecase of eating; and if we get into a difficulty we choke, and aremore at a loss how to become introspective than we are about eatingand drinking. 

Why should a baby be able to swallow--which one would have said wasthe more complicated process of the two--with so much less practicethan it takes him to learn to eat? How comes it that he exhibits inthe case of the more difficult operation all the phenomena whichordinarily accompany a more complete mastery and longer practice?Analogy would certainly seem to point in the direction of thinkingthat the necessary experience cannot have been wanting, and that, too, not in such a quibbling sort as when people talk about inheritedhabit or the experience of the race, which, without explanation, isto plain-speaking persons very much the same, in regard to theindividual, as no experience at all, but bona fide in the child's ownperson. 

Breathing, again, is an action acquired after birth, generally withsome little hesitation and difficulty, but still acquired in a timeseldom longer, as I am informed, than ten minutes or a quarter of anhour. For an ant which has to be acquired at all, there would seemhere, as in the case of eating, to be a disproportion between, on theone hand, the intricacy of the process performed, and on the other, the shortness of the time taken to acquire the practice, and the easeand unconsciousness with which its exercise is continued from themoment of acquisition. 

We observe that in later life much less difficult and intricateoperations than breathing acquire much longer practice before theycan be mastered to the extent of unconscious performance. We observealso that the phenomena attendant on the learning by an infant tobreathe are extremely like those attendant upon the repetition ofsome performance by one who has done it very often before, but whorequires just a little prompting to set him off, on getting which, the whole familiar routine presents itself before him, and he repeatshis task by rote. Surely then we are justified in suspecting thatthere must have been more bona fide personal recollection andexperience, with more effort and failure on the part of the infantitself than meet the eye. 

It should be noticed, also, that our control over breathing is verylimited. We can hold our breath a little, or breathe a little fasterfor a short time, but we cannot do this for long, and after havinggone without air for a certain time we must breath. 

Seeing and hearing require some practice before their free use ismastered, but not very much. They are so far within our control thatwe can see more by looking harder, and hear more by listeningattentively--but they are beyond our control in so far as that wemust see and hear the greater part of what presents itself to us asnear, and at the same time unfamiliar, unless we turn away or shutour eyes, or stop our ears by a mechanical process; and when we dothis it is a sign that we have already involuntarily seen or heardmore than we wished. The familiar, whether sight or sound, verycommonly escapes us. 

Take again the processes of digestion, the action of the heart, andthe oxygenisation of the blood--processes of extreme intricacy, donealmost entirely unconsciously, and quite beyond the control of ourvolition. 

Is it possible that our unconsciousness concerning our ownperformance of all these processes arises from over-experience?

Is there anything in digestion, or the oxygenisation of the blood, different in kind to the rapid unconscious action of a man playing adifficult piece of music on the piano? There may be in degree, butas a man who sits down to play what he well knows, plays on, whenonce started, almost, as we say, mechanically, so, having eaten hisdinner, he digests it as a matter of course, unless it has been insome way unfamiliar to him, or he to it, owing to some derangement oroccurrence with which he is unfamiliar, and under which therefore heis at a loss now to comport himself, as a player would be at a losshow to play with gloves on, or with gout in his fingers, or if set toplay music upside down. 

Can we show that all the acquired actions of childhood and after-life, which we now do unconsciously, or without conscious exercise ofthe will, are familiar acts--acts which we have already done a verygreat number of times?

Can we also show that there are no acquired actions which we canperform in this automatic manner, which were not at one timedifficult, requiring attention, and liable to repeated failure, ourvolition failing to command obedience from the members which shouldcarry its purposes into execution?

If so, analogy will point in the direction of thinking that otheracts which we do even more unconsciously may only escape our power ofself-examination and control because they are even more familiar--because we have done them oftener; and we may imagine that if therewere a microscope which could show us the minutest atoms ofconsciousness and volition, we should find that even the apparentlymost automatic actions were yet done in due course, upon a balance ofconsiderations, and under the deliberate exercise of the will. 

We should also incline to think that even such an action as theoxygenisation of its blood by an infant of ten minutes' old, can onlybe done so well and so unconsciously, after repeated failures on thepart of the infant itself. 

True, as has been already implied, we do not immediately see when thebaby could have made the necessary mistakes and acquired thatinfinite practice without which it could never go through suchcomplex processes satisfactorily; we have therefore invented thewords "hereditary instinct, " and consider them as accounting for thephenomenon; but a very little reflection will show that though thesewords may be a very good way of stating the difficulty, they dolittle or nothing towards removing it. 

Why should hereditary instinct enable a creature to dispense with theexperience which we see to be necessary in all other cases beforedifficult operations can be performed successfully?

What is this talk that is made about the experience OF THE RACE, asthough the experience of one man could profit another who knowsnothing about him? If a man eats his dinner, it nourishes HIM andnot his neighbour; if he learns a different art, it is HE that can doit and not his neighbour. Yet, practically, we see that thevicarious experience, which seems so contrary to our commonobservation, does nevertheless appear to hold good in the case ofcreatures and their descendants. Is there, then, any way of bringingthese apparently conflicting phenomena under the operation of onelaw? Is there any way of showing that this experience of the race, of which so much is said without the least attempt to show in whatway it may or does become the experience of the individual, is insober seriousness the experience of one single being only, repeatingin a great many different ways certain performances with which he hasbecome exceedingly familiar?

It would seem that we must either suppose the conditions ofexperience to differ during the earlier stages of life from thosewhich we observe them to become during the heyday of any existence--and this would appear very gratuitous, tolerable only as a suggestionbecause the beginnings of life are so obscure, that in such twilightwe may do pretty much whatever we please without danger ofconfutation--or that we must suppose the continuity of life andsameness between living beings, whether plants or animals, and theirdescendants, to be far closer than we have hitherto believed; so thatthe experience of one person is not enjoyed by his successor, so muchas that the successor is bona fide but a part of the life of hisprogenitor, imbued with all his memories, profiting by all hisexperiences--which are, in fact, his own--and only unconscious of theextent of his own memories and experiences owing to their vastnessand already infinite repetitions. 

Certainly it presents itself to us at once as a singular coincidence-

I. That we are MOST CONSCIOUS OF, AND HAVE MOST CONTROL OVER, suchhabits as speech, the upright position, the arts and sciences, whichare acquisitions peculiar to the human race, always acquired afterbirth, and not common to ourselves and any ancestor who had notbecome entirely human. 

II. That we are LESS CONSCIOUS OF, AND HAVE LESS CONTROL OVER, eating and drinking, swallowing, breathing, seeing and hearing, whichwere acquisitions of our prehuman ancestry, and for which we hadprovided ourselves with all the necessary apparatus before we sawlight, but which are still, geologically speaking, recent, orcomparatively recent. 

III. That we are MOST UNCONSCIOUS OF, AND HAVE LEAST CONTROL OVER, our digestion and circulation, which belonged even to ourinvertebrate ancestry, and which are habits, geologically speaking, of extreme antiquity. 

There is something too like method in this for it to be taken as theresult of mere chance--chance again being but another illustration ofNature's love of a contradiction in terms; for everything is chance, and nothing is chance. And you may take it that all is chance ornothing chance, according as you please, but you must not have halfchance and half not chance. 

Does it not seem as though the older and more confirmed the habit, the more unquestioning the act of volition, till, in the case of theoldest habits, the practice of succeeding existences has soformulated the procedure, that, on being once committed to such andsuch a line beyond a certain point, the subsequent course is so clearas to be open to no further doubt, to admit of no alternative, tillthe very power of questioning is gone, and even the consciousness ofvolition? And this too upon matters which, in earlier stages of aman's existence, admitted of passionate argument and anxiousdeliberation whether to resolve them thus or thus, with heroic hazardand experiment, which on the losing side proved to be vice, and onthe winning virtue. For there was passionate argument once whatshape a man's teeth should be, nor can the colour of his hair beconsidered as ever yet settled, or likely to be settled for a verylong time. 

It is one against legion when a creature tries to differ from his ownpast selves. He must yield or die if he wants to differ widely, soas to lack natural instincts, such as hunger or thirst, or not togratify them. It is more righteous in a man that he should "eatstrange food, " and that his cheek should "so much as lank not, " thanthat he should starve if the strange food be at his command. Hispast selves are living in him at this moment with the accumulatedlife of centuries. "Do this, this, this, which we too have done, andfound our profit in it, " cry the souls of his forefathers within him. Faint are the far ones, coming and going as the sound of bells waftedon to a high mountain; loud and clear are the near ones, urgent as analarm of fire. "Withhold, " cry some. "Go on boldly, " cry others. "Me, me, me, revert hitherward, my descendant, " shouts one as it werefrom some high vantage-ground over the heads of the clamorousmultitude. "Nay, but me, me, me, " echoes another; and our formerselves fight within us and wrangle for our possession. Have we nothere what is commonly called an INTERNAL TUMULT, when dead pleasuresand pains tug within us hither and thither? Then may the battle bedecided by what people are pleased to call our own experience. Ourown indeed! What is our own save by mere courtesy of speech? Amatter of fashion. Sanction sanctifieth and fashion fashioneth. Andso with death--the most inexorable of all conventions. 

However this may be, we may assume it as an axiom with regard toactions acquired after birth, that we never do them automaticallysave as the result of long practice, and after having thus acquiredperfect mastery over the action in question. 

But given the practice or experience, and the intricacy of theprocess to be performed appears to matter very little. There ishardly anything conceivable as being done by man, which a certainamount of familiarity will not enable him to do, as it weremechanically and without conscious effort. "The most complex anddifficult movements, " writes Mr Darwin, "can in time be performedwithout the least effort or consciousness. " All the main business oflife is done thus unconsciously or semi-unconsciously. For what isthe main business of life? We work that we may eat and digest, rather than eat and digest that we may work; this, at any rate, isthe normal state of things: the more important business then is thatwhich is carried on unconsciously. So again the action of the brain, which goes on prior to our realising the idea in which it results, isnot perceived by the individual. So also all the deeper springs ofaction and conviction. The residuum with which we fret and worryourselves is a mere matter of detail, as the higgling and haggling ofthe market, which is not over the bulk of the price, but over thelast halfpenny. 

Shall we say, then, that a baby of a day old sucks (which involvesthe whole principle of the pump, and hence a profound practicalknowledge of the laws of pneumatics and hydrostatics), digests, oxygenises its blood (millions of years before Sir Humphry Davydiscovered oxygen), sees and hears--all most difficult andcomplicated operations, involving a knowledge of the facts concerningoptics and acoustics, compared with which the discoveries of Newtonsink into utter insignificance? Shall we say that a baby can do allthese things at once, doing them so well and so regularly, withoutbeing even able to direct its attention to them, and without mistake, and at the same time not know how to do them, and never have donethem before?

Such an assertion would be a contradiction to the whole experience ofmankind. Surely the onus probandi must rest with him who makes it. 

A man may make a lucky hit now and again by what is called a fluke, but even this must be only a little in advance of his otherperformances of the same kind. He may multiply seven by eight by afluke after a little study of the multiplication table, but he willnot be able to extract the cube root of 4913 by a fluke, without longtraining in arithmetic, any more than an agricultural labourer wouldbe able to operate successfully for cataract. If, then, a grown mancannot perform so simple an operation as that we will say, forcataract, unless he have been long trained in other similaroperations, and until he has done what comes to the same thing manytimes over, with what show of reason can we maintain that one who isso far less capable than a grown man, can perform such vastly moredifficult operations, without knowing how to do them, and withoutever having done them before? There is no sign of "fluke" about thecirculation of a baby's blood. There may perhaps be some littlehesitation about its earliest breathing, but this, as a general rule, soon passes over, both breathing and circulation, within an hourafter birth, being as regular and easy as at any time during life. Is it reasonable, then, to say that the baby does these thingswithout knowing how to do them, and without ever having done thembefore, and continues to do them by a series of lifelong flukes?

It would be well if those who feel inclined to hazard such anassertion would find some other instances of intricate processes gonethrough by people who know nothing about them, and never had anypractice therein. What IS to know how to do a thing? Surely to doit. What is proof that we know how to do a thing? Surely the factthat we can do it. A man shows that he knows how to throw theboomerang by throwing the boomerang. No amount of talking or writingcan get over this; ipso facto, that a baby breathes and makes itsblood circulate, it knows how to do so and the fact that it does notknow its own knowledge is only proof of the perfection of thatknowledge, and of the vast number of past occasions on which it musthave been exercised already. As we have said already, it is lessobvious when the baby could have gained its experience, so as to beable so readily to remember exactly what to do; but it is more easyto suppose that the necessary occasions cannot have been wanting, than that the power which we observe should have been obtainedwithout practice and memory. 

If we saw any self-consciousness on the baby's part about itsbreathing or circulation, we might suspect that it had had lessexperience, or profited less by its experience, than its neighbours--exactly in the same manner as we suspect a deficiency of any qualitywhich we see a man inclined to parade. We all become introspectivewhen we find that we do not know our business, and whenever we areintrospective we may generally suspect that we are on the verge ofunproficiency. Unfortunately, in the case of sickly children, weobserve that they sometimes do become conscious of their breathingand circulation, just as in later life we become conscious that wehave a liver or a digestion. In that case there is always somethingwrong. The baby that becomes aware of its breathing does not knowhow to breathe, and will suffer for his ignorance and incapacity, exactly in the same way as he will suffer in later life for ignoranceand incapacity in any other respect in which his peers are commonlyknowing and capable. In the case of inability to breath, thepunishment is corporal, breathing being a matter of fashion, so oldand long settled that nature can admit of no departure from theestablished custom, and the procedure in case of failure is as muchformulated as the fashion itself in the case of the circulation, thewhole performance has become one so utterly of rote, that the merediscovery that we could do it at all was considered one of thehighest flights of human genius. 

It has been said a day will come when the Polar ice shall haveaccumulated, till it forms vast continents many thousands of feetabove the level of the sea, all of solid ice. The weight of thismass will, it is believed, cause the world to topple over on itsaxis, so that the earth will be upset as an ant-heap overturned by aploughshare. In that day time icebergs will come crunching againstour proudest cities, razing them from off the face of the earth asthough they were made of rotten blotting-paper. There is no respectnow of Handel nor of Shakespeare; the works of Rembrandt and Bellinifossilise at the bottom of the sea. Grace, beauty, and wit, all thatis precious in music, literature, and art--all gone. In the morningthere was Europe. In the evening there are no more populous citiesnor busy hum of men, but a sea of jagged ice, a lurid sunset, and thedoom of many ages. Then shall a scared remnant escape in places, andsettle upon the changed continent when the waters have subsided--asimple people, busy hunting shellfish on the drying ocean beds, andwith little time for introspection yet they can read and write andsum, for by that time these accomplishments will have becomeuniversal, and will be acquired as easily as we now learn to talk;but they do so as a matter of course, and without self-consciousness. Also they make the simpler kinds of machinery too easily to be ableto follow their own operations--the manner of their ownapprenticeship being to them as a buried city. May we not imaginethat, after the lapse of another ten thousand years or so, some oneof them may again become cursed with lust of introspection, and asecond Harvey may astonish the world by discovering that it can readand write, and that steam-engines do not grow, but are made? It maybe safely prophesied that he will die a martyr, and be honoured inthe fourth generation. 

CHAPTER IV--APPLICATION OF THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES TO ACTIONS ANDHABITS ACQUIRED BEFORE BIRTH

But if we once admit the principle that consciousness and volitionhave a tendency to vanish as soon as practice has rendered any habitexceedingly familiar, so that the mere presence of an elaborate butunconscious performance shall carry with it a presumption of infinitepractice, we shall find it impossible to draw the line at thoseactions which we see acquired after birth, no matter at how early aperiod. The whole history and development of the embryo in all itsstages forces itself on our consideration. Birth has been made toomuch of. It is a salient feature in the history of the individual, but not more salient than a hundred others, and far less so than thecommencement of his existence as a single cell uniting in itselfelements derived from both parents, or perhaps than any point in hiswhole existence as an embryo. For many years after we are born weare still very incomplete. We cease to oxygenise our bloodvicariously as soon as we are born, but we still derive oursustenance from our mothers. Birth is but the beginning of doubt, the first hankering after scepticism, the dreaming of a dawn oftrouble, the end of certainty and of settled convictions. Not butwhat before birth there have been unsettled convictions (more's thepity) with not a few, and after birth we have still so made up ourminds upon many points as to have no further need of reflectionconcerning them; nevertheless, in the main, birth is the end of thattime when we really knew our business, and the beginning of the dayswherein we know not what we would do, or do. It is therefore thebeginning of consciousness, and infancy is as the dosing of one whoturns in his bed on waking, and takes another short sleep before herises. When we were yet unborn, our thoughts kept the roadwaydecently enough; then were we blessed; we thought as every manthinks, and held the same opinions as our fathers and mothers haddone upon nearly every subject. Life was not an art--and a verydifficult art--much too difficult to be acquired in a lifetime; itwas a science of which we were consummate masters. 

In this sense, then, birth may indeed be looked upon as the mostsalient feature in a man's life; but this is not at all the sense inwhich it is commonly so regarded. It is commonly considered as thepoint at which we begin to live. More truly it is the point at whichwe leave off knowing how to live. 

A chicken, for example, is never so full of consciousness, activity, reasoning faculty, and volition, as when it is an embryo in theeggshell, making bones, and flesh, and feathers, and eyes, and claws, with nothing but a little warmth and white of egg to make them from. This is indeed to make bricks with but a small modicum of straw. There is no man in the whole world who knows consciously andarticulately as much as a half-hatched hen's egg knows unconsciously. Surely the egg in its own way must know quite as much as the chickendoes. We say of the chicken that it knows how to run about as soonas it is hatched. So it does; but had it no knowledge before it washatched? What made it lay the foundations of those limbs whichshould enable it to run about? What made it grow a horny tip to itsbill before it was hatched, so that it might peck all round thelarger end of the eggshell and make a hole for itself to get out at?Having once got outside the eggshell, the chicken throws away thishorny tip; but is it reasonable to suppose that it would have grownit at all unless it had known that it would want something with whichto break the eggshell? And again, is it in the least agreeable toour experience that such elaborate machinery should be made withoutendeavour, failure, perseverance, intelligent contrivance, experience, and practice?

In the presence of such considerations, it seems impossible torefrain from thinking that there must be a closer continuity ofidentity, life, and memory, between successive generations than wegenerally imagine. To shear the thread of life, and hence of memory, between one generation and its successor, is so to speak, a brutalmeasure, an act of intellectual butchery, and like all such stronghigh-handed measures, a sign of weakness in him who is capable of ittill all other remedies have been exhausted. It is mere horsescience, akin to the theories of the convulsionists in the geologicalkingdom, and of the believers in the supernatural origin of thespecies of plants and animals. Yet it is to be feared that we havenot a few among us who would feel shocked rather at the attempttowards a milder treatment of the facts before them, than at acontinuance of the present crass tyranny with which we try to crushthem inside our preconceived opinions. It is quite common to hearmen of education maintain that not even when it was on the point ofbeing hatched, had the chicken sense enough to know that it wanted toget outside the eggshell. It did indeed peck all round the end ofthe shell, which, if it wanted to get out, would certainly be theeasiest way of effecting its purpose; but it did not, they say, peckbecause it was aware of this, but "promiscuously. " Curious, such auniformity of promiscuous action among so many eggs for so manygenerations. If we see a man knock a hole in a wall on finding thathe cannot get out of a place by any other means, and if we see himknock this hole in a very workmanlike way, with an implement withwhich he has been at great pains to make for a long the past, butwhich he throws away as soon as he has no longer use for it, thusshowing that he had made it expressly for the purpose of escape, dowe say that this person made the implement and broke the wall of hisprison promiscuously? No jury would acquit a burglar on thesegrounds. Then why, without much more evidence to the contrary thanwe have, or can hope to have, should we not suppose that withchickens, as with men, signs of contrivance are indeed signs ofcontrivance, however quick, subtle, and untraceable, the contrivancemay be? Again, I have heard people argue that though the chicken, when nearly hatched, had such a glimmering of sense that it peckedthe shell because it wanted to get out, yet that it is notconceivable that, so long before it was hatched, it should have hadthe sense to grow the horny tip to its bill for use when wanted. This, at any rate, they say, it must have grown, as the personspreviously referred to would maintain, promiscuously. 

Now no one indeed supposes that the chicken does what it does, withthe same self-consciousness with which a tailor makes a suit ofclothes. Not any one who has thought upon the subject is likely todo it so great an injustice. The probability is that it knows whatit is about to an extent greater than any tailor ever did or will, for, to say the least of it, many thousands of years to come. Itworks with such absolute certainty and so vast an experience, that itis utterly incapable of following the operations of its own mind--asaccountants have been known to add up long columns of pounds, shillings, and pence, running the three fingers of one hand, a fingerfor each column, up the page, and putting the result down correctlyat the bottom, apparently without an effort. In the case of theaccountant, we say that the processes which his mind goes through areso rapid and subtle as to elude his own power of observation as wellas ours. We do not deny that his mind goes though processes of somekind; we very readily admit that it must do so, and say that theseprocesses are so rapid and subtle, owing, as a general rule, to longexperience in addition. Why then should we find it so difficult toconceive that this principle, which we observe to play so large apart in mental physiology, wherever we can observe mental physiologyat all, may have a share also in the performance of intricateoperations otherwise inexplicable, though the creature performingthem is not man, or man only in embryo?

Again, after the chicken is hatched, it grows more feathers and bonesand blood, but we still say that it knows nothing about all this. What then do we say it DOES know? One is almost ashamed to confessthat we only credit it with knowing what it appears to know byprocesses which we find it exceedingly easy to follow, or perhapsrather, which we find it absolutely impossible to avoid following, asrecognising too great a family likeness between them, and those whichare most easily followed in our own minds, to be able to sit down incomfort under a denial of the resemblance. Thus, for example, if wesee a chicken running away from a fox, we do admit that the chickenknows the fox would kill it if it caught it. 

On the other hand, if we allow that the half-hatched chicken grew thehorny tip to be ready for use, with an intensity of unconsciouscontrivance which can be only attributed to experience, we are drivento admit that from the first moment the men began to sit upon it--andearlier too than this--the egg was always full of consciousness andvolition, and that during its embryological condition the unhatchedchicken is doing exactly what it continues doing from the moment itis hatched till it dies; that is to say, attempting to better itself, doing (as Aristotle says all creatures do all things upon alloccasions) what it considers most for its advantage under theexisting circumstances. What it may think most advantageous willdepend, while it is in the eggshell, upon exactly the same causes aswill influence its opinions in later life--to wit, upon its habits, its past circumstances and ways of thinking; for there is nothing, asShakespeare tells us, good or ill, but thinking makes it so. 

The egg thinks feathers much more to its advantage than hair or fur, and much more easily made. If it could speak, it would probably tellus that we could make them ourselves very easily after a few lessons, if we took the trouble to try, but that hair was another matter, which it really could not see how any protoplasm could be got tomake. Indeed, during the more intense and active part of ourexistence, in the earliest stages, that is to say, of ourembryological life, we could probably have turned our protoplasm intofeathers instead of hair if we had cared about doing so. If thechicken can make feathers, there seems no sufficient reason forthinking that we cannot do so, beyond the fact that we prefer hair, and have preferred it for so many ages that we have lost the artalong with the desire of making feathers, if indeed any of ourancestors ever possessed it. The stuff with which we make hair ispractically the same as that with which chickens make feathers. Itis nothing but protoplasm, and protoplasm is like certain prophecies, out of which anything can be made by the creature which wants to makeit. Everything depends upon whether a creature knows its own mindsufficiently well, and has enough faith in its own powers ofachievement. When these two requisites are wanting, the strongestgiant cannot lift a two-ounce weight; when they are given, a bullockcan take an eyelash out of its eye with its hind-foot, or a minutejelly speck can build itself a house out of various materials whichit will select according to its purpose with the nicest care, thoughit have neither brain to think with, nor eyes to see with, nor handsnor feet to work with, nor is it anything but a minute speck ofjelly--faith and protoplasm only. 

That this is indeed so, the following passage from Dr. Carpenter's"Mental Physiology" may serve to show:-

"The simplest type of an animal consists of a minute mass of'protoplasm, ' or living jelly, which is not yet DIFFERENTIATED into'organs;' every part having the same endowments, and taking an equalshare in every action which the creature performs. One of these'jelly specks, ' the amoeba, moves itself about by changing the formof its body, extemporising a foot (or pseudopodium), first in onedirection, and then in another; and then, when it has met with anutritive particle, extemporises a stomach for its reception, bywrapping its soft body around it. Another, instead of going about insearch of food, remains in one place, but projects its protoplasmicsubstance into long pseudopodia, which entrap and draw in very minuteparticles, or absorb nutrient material from the liquid through whichthey extend themselves, and are continually becoming fused (as itwere) into the central body, which is itself continually giving offnew pseudopodia. Now we can scarcely conceive that a creature ofsuch simplicity should possess any distinct CONSCIOUSNESS of itsneeds" (why not?), "or that its actions should be directed by anyINTENTION of its own; and yet the writer has lately found results ofthe most singular elaborateness to be wrought out by theinstrumentality of these minute jelly specks, which build up tests orcasings of the most regular geometrical symmetry of form, and of themost artificial construction. "

On this Dr. Carpenter remarks:- "Suppose a human mason to be put downby the side of a pile of stones of various shapes and sizes, and tobe told to build a dome of these, smooth on both surfaces, withoutusing more than the least possible quantity of a very tenacious, butvery costly, cement, in holding the stones together. If heaccomplished this well, he would receive credit for greatintelligence and skill. Yet this is exactly what these little 'jellyspecks' do on a most minute scale; the 'tests' they construct, whenhighly magnified, bearing comparison with the most skilful masonry ofman. From THE SAME SANDY BOTTOM one species picks up the COARSERquartz grains, cements them together with PHOSPHATE OF IRON secretedfrom its own substance" (should not this rather be, "which it hascontrived in some way or other to manufacture"?) and thus constructsa flask-shaped 'test, ' having a short neck and a large singleorifice. Another picks up the FINEST grains, and puts them together, with the same cement, into perfectly spherical 'tests' of the mostextraordinary finish, perforated with numerous small pores disposedat pretty regular intervals. Another selects the MINUTEST sandgrains and the terminal portions of sponge spicules, and works themup together--apparently with no cement at all, by the mere laying ofthe spicules--into perfect white spheres, like homoeopathic globules, each having a single-fissured orifice. And another, which makes astraight, many-chambered 'test, ' that resembles in form the chamberedshell of an orthoceratite--the conical mouth of each chamberprojecting into the cavity of the next--while forming the walls ofits chambers of ordinary sand grains rather loosely held together, shapes the conical mouth of the successive chambers by firmlycementing together grains of ferruginous quartz, which it must havepicked out from the general mass. "

"To give these actions, " continues Dr. Carpenter, "the vaguedesignation of 'instinctive' does not in the least help us to accountfor them, since what we want is to discover the MECHANISM by whichthey are worked out; and it is most difficult to conceive how soartificial a selection can be made by a creature so simple" (MentalPhysiology, 4th ed. Pp. 41-43)

This is what protoplasm can do when it has the talisman of faith--offaith which worketh all wonders, either in the heavens above, or inthe earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. Truly if a manhave faith, even as a grain of mustard seed, though he may not beable to remove mountains, he will at any rate be able to do what isno less difficult--make a mustard plant. 

Yet this is but a barren kind of comfort, for we have not, and in thenature of things cannot have, sufficient faith in the unfamiliar, inasmuch as the very essence of faith involves the notion offamiliarity, which can grow but slowly, from experience toconfidence, and can make no sudden leap at any time. Such faithcannot be founded upon reason, --that is to say, upon a recognisedperception on the part of the person holding it that he is holdingit, and of the reasons for his doing so--or it will shift as otherreasons come to disturb it. A house built upon reason is a housebuilt upon the sand. It must be built upon the current cant andpractice of one's peers, for this is the rock which, though notimmovable, is still most hard to move. 

But however this may be, we observe broadly that the intensity of thewill to make this or that, and of the confidence that one can makeit, depends upon the length of time during which the maker'sforefathers have wanted the same thing before it; the older thecustom the more inveterate the habit, and, with the exception, perhaps, that the reproductive system is generally the crowning actof development--an exception which I will hereafter explain--theearlier its manifestation, until, for some reason or another, werelinquish it and take to another, which we must, as a general rule, again adhere to for a vast number of generations, before it willpermanently supplant the older habit. In our own case, the habit ofbreathing like a fish through gills may serve as an example. We havenow left off this habit, yet we did it formerly for so manygenerations that we still do it a little; it still crosses ourembryological existence like a faint memory or dream, for not easilyis an inveterate habit broken. On the other hand--again speakingbroadly--the more recent the habit the later the fashion of itsorgan, as with the teeth, speech, and the higher intellectual powers, which are too new for development before we are actually born. 

But to return for a short time to Dr. Carpenter. Dr. Carpenterevidently feels, what must indeed be felt by every candid mind, thatthere is no sufficient reason for supposing that these little specksof jelly, without brain or eyes, or stomach, or hands, or feet, butthe very lowest known form of animal life, are not imbued with aconsciousness of their needs, and the reasoning faculties which shallenable them to gratify those needs in a manner, all thingsconsidered, equalling the highest flights of the ingenuity of thehighest animal--man. This is no exaggeration. It is true, that inan earlier part of the passage, Dr. Carpenter has said that we canscarcely conceive so simple a creature to "possess any distinctCONSCIOUSNESS of its needs, or that its actions should be directed byany intention of its own;" but, on the other hand, a little lowerdown he says, that if a workman did what comes to the same thing aswhat the amoeba does, he "would receive credit for great intelligenceand skill. " Now if an amoeba can do that, for which a workman wouldreceive credit as for a highly skilful and intelligent performance, the amoeba should receive no less credit than the workman; he shouldalso be no less credited with skill and intelligence, which wordsunquestionably involve a distinct consciousness of needs and anaction directed by an intention of its own. So that Dr. Carpenterseems rather to blow hot and cold with one breath. Neverthelessthere can be no doubt to which side the minds of the great majorityof mankind will incline upon the evidence before them; they will saythat the creature is highly reasonable and intelligent, though theywould readily admit that long practice and familiarity may haveexhausted its powers of attention to all the stages of its ownperformance, just as a practised workman in building a wall certainlydoes not consciously follow all the processes which he goes through. 

As an example, however, of the extreme dislike which philosophers ofa certain school have for making the admissions which seem somewhatgrudgingly conceded by Dr. Carpenter, we may take the paragraph whichimmediately follows the ones which we have just quoted. Dr. Carpenter there writes:-

"The writer has often amused himself and others, when by the seaside, with getting a terebella (a marine worm that cases its body in asandy tube) out of its house, and then, putting it into a saucer ofwater with a supply of sand and comminuted shell, watching itsappropriation of these materials in constructing a new tube. Theextended tentacles soon spread themselves over the bottom of thesaucer and lay hold of whatever comes in their way, 'all being fishthat comes to their net, ' and in half an hour or thereabouts the newhouse is finished, though on a very rude and artificial type. Nowhere the organisation is far higher; the instrumentality obviouslyserves the needs of the animal and suffices for them; and wecharacterise the action, on account of its uniformity and apparentUNintelligence, as instinctive. "

No comment will, one would think, be necessary to make the readerfeel that the difference between the terebella and the amoeba is oneof degree rather than kind, and that if the action of the second isas conscious and reasonable as that, we will say, of a bird makingher nest, the action of the first should be so also. It is only aquestion of being a little less skilful, or more so, but skill andintelligence would seem present in both cases. Moreover, it is moreclever of the terebella to have made itself the limbs with which itcan work, than of the amoeba to be able to work without the limbs;and perhaps it is more sensible also to want a less elaboratedwelling, provided it is sufficient for practical purposes. Butwhether the terebella be less intelligent than the amoeba or not, itdoes quite enough to establish its claim to intelligence of a higherorder; and one does not see ground for the satisfaction which Dr. Carpenter appears to find at having, as it were, taken the taste ofthe amoeba's performance out of our mouth, by setting us about theless elaborate performance of the terebella, which he thinks we cancall unintelligent and instinctive. 

I may be mistaken in the impression I have derived from theparagraphs I have quoted. I commonly say they give me the impressionthat I have tried to convey to the reader, i. E. , that the writer'sassent to anything like intelligence, or consciousness of needs, ananimal low down in the scale of life, is grudging, and that he ismore comfortable when he has got hold of onto to which he can pointand say that mere, at any rate, is an unintelligent and merelyinstinctive creature. I have only called attention to the passage asan example of the intellectual bias of a large number of exceedinglyable and thoughtful persons, among whom, so far as I am able to forman opinion at all, few have greater claims to our respectfulattention than Dr. Carpenter himself. 

For the embryo of a chicken, then, we damn exactly the same kind ofreasoning power and contrivance which we damn for the amoeba, or forour own intelligent performances in later life. We do not claim forit much, if any, perception of its own forethought, for we know verywell that it is among the most prominent features of intellectualactivity that, after a number of repetitions, it ceases to beperceived, and that it does not, in ordinary cases, cease to beperceived till after a very great number of repetitions. The factthat the embryo chicken makes itself always as nearly as may be inthe same way, would lead us to suppose that it would be unconsciousof much of its own action, PROVIDED IT WERE ALWAYS THE SAME CHICKENWHICH MADE ITSELF OVER AND OVER AGAIN. So far we can see, it alwaysIS unconscious of the greater part of its own wonderful performance. Surely then we have a presumption that IT IS THE SAME CHICKEN WHICHMAKES ITSELF OVER AND OVER AGAIN; for such unconsciousness is notwon, so far as our experience goes, by any other means than byfrequent repetition of the same act on the part of one and the sameindividual. How this can be we shall perceive in subsequentchapters. In the meantime, we may say that all knowledge andvolition would seem to be merely parts of the knowledge and volitionof the primordial cell (whatever this may be), which slumbers butnever dies--which has grown, and multiplied, and differentiateditself into the compound life of the womb, and which never becomesconscious of knowing what it has once learnt effectually, till it isfor some reason on the point of, or in danger of, forgetting it. 

The action, therefore, of an embryo making its way up in the worldfrom a simple cell to a baby, developing for itself eyes, ears, hands, and feet while yet unborn, proves to be exactly of one and thesame kind as that of a man of fifty who goes into the City and tellshis broker to buy him so many Great Northern A shares--that is tosay, an effort of the will exercised in due course on a balance ofconsiderations as to the immediate expediency, and guided by pastexperience; while children who do not reach birth are but prenatalspendthrifts, ne'er-do-weels, inconsiderate innovators, theunfortunate in business, either through their own fault or that ofothers, or through inevitable mischances, beings who are culled outbefore birth instead of after; so that even the lowest idiot, themost contemptible in health or beauty, may yet reflect with pridethat they were BORN. Certainly we observe that those who have hadgood fortune (mother and sole cause of virtue, and sole virtue initself), and have profited by their experience, and known theirbusiness best before birth, so that they made themselves both to beand to look well, do commonly on an average prove to know it best inafter-life: they grow their clothes best who have grown their limbsbest. It is rare that those who have not remembered how to finishtheir own bodies fairly well should finish anything well in laterlife. But how small is the addition to their unconscious attainmentswhich even the Titans of human intellect have consciouslyaccomplished, in comparison with the problems solved by the meanestbaby living, nay, even by one whose birth is untimely! In otherwords, how vast is that back knowledge over which we have gone fastasleep, through the prosiness of perpetual repetition; and how littlein comparison, is that whose novelty keeps it still within the scopeof our conscious perception! What is the discovery of the laws ofgravitation as compared with the knowledge which sleeps in everyhen's egg upon a kitchen shelf?

It is all a matter of habit and fashion. Thus we see kings andcouncillors of the earth admired for facing death before what theyare pleased to call dishonour. If, on being required to go withoutanything they have been accustomed to, or to change their habits, ordo what is unusual in the case of other kings under likecircumstances, then, if they but fold their cloak decently aroundthem, and die upon the spot of shame at having had it even requiredof them to do thus or thus, then are they kings indeed, of old race, that know their business from generation to generation. Or if, wewill say, a prince, on having his dinner brought to him ill-cooked, were to feel the indignity so keenly as that he should turn his faceto the wall, and breathe out his wounded soul in one sigh, do we notadmire him as a "REAL prince, " who knows the business of princes sowell that he can conceive of nothing foreign to it in connection withhimself, the bare effort to realise a state of things other than whatprinces have been accustomed to being immediately fatal to him? Yetis there no less than this in the demise of every half-hatched hen'segg, shaken rudely by a schoolboy, or neglected by a truant mother;for surely the prince would not die if he knew how to do otherwise, and the hen's egg only dies of being required to do something towhich it is not accustomed. 

But the further consideration of this and other like reflectionswould too long detain us. Suffice it that we have established theposition that all living creatures which show any signs ofintelligence, must certainly each one have already gone through theembryonic stages an infinite number of times, or they could no morehave achieved the intricate process of self-developmentunconsciously, than they could play the piano unconsciously withoutany previous knowledge of the instrument. It remains, therefore, toshow the when and where of their having done so, and this leads usnaturally to the subject of the following chapter--Personal Identity. 

CHAPTER V--PERSONAL IDENTITY

"Strange difficulties have been raised by some, " says Bishop Butler, "concerning personal identity, or the sameness of living agents asimplied in the notion of our existing now and hereafter, or indeed inany two consecutive moments. " But in truth it is not easy to see thestrangeness of the difficulty, if the words either "personal" or"identity" are used in any strictness. 

Personality is one of those ideas with which we are so familiar thatwe have lost sight of the foundations upon which it rests. We regardour personality as a simple definite whole; as a plain, palpable, individual thing, which can be seen going about the streets orsitting indoors at home, which lasts us our lifetime, and about theconfines of which no doubt can exist in the minds of reasonablepeople. But in truth this "we, " which looks so simple and definite, is a nebulous and indefinable aggregation of many component partswhich war not a little among themselves, our perception of ourexistence at all being perhaps due to this very clash of warfare, asour sense of sound and light is due to the jarring of vibrations. Moreover, as the component parts of our identity change from momentto moment, our personality becomes a thing dependent upon thepresent, which has no logical existence, but lives only upon thesufferance of times past and future, slipping out of our hands intothe domain of one or other of these two claimants the moment we tryto apprehend it. And not only is our personality as fleeting as thepresent moment, but the parts which compose it blend some of them soimperceptibly into, and are so inextricably linked on to, outsidethings which clearly form no part of our personality, that when wetry to bring ourselves to book, and determine wherein we consist, orto draw a line as to where we begin or end, we find ourselvescompletely baffled. There is nothing but fusion and confusion. 

Putting theology on one side, and dealing only with the common dailyexperience of mankind, our body is certainly part of our personality. With the destruction of our bodies, our personality, as far as we canfollow it, comes to a full stop; and with every modification of themit is correspondingly modified. But what are the limits of ourbodies? They are composed of parts, some of them so unessential asto be hardly included in personality at all, and to be separable fromourselves without perceptible effect, as the hair, nails, and dailywaste of tissue. Again, other parts are very important, as ourhands, feet, arms, legs, &c. , but still are no essential parts of our"self" or "soul, " which continues to exist in spite of theiramputation. Other parts, as the brain, heart, and blood, are soessential that they cannot be dispensed with, yet it is impossible tosay that personality consists in any one of them. 

Each one of these component members of our personality is continuallydying and being born again, supported in this process by the food weeat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe; which three thingslink us on, and fetter us down, to the organic and inorganic worldabout us. For our meat and drink, though no part of our personalitybefore we eat and drink, cannot, after we have done so, be separatedentirely from us without the destruction of our personalityaltogether, so far as we can follow it; and who shall say at whatprecise moment our food has or has not become part of ourselves? Afamished man eats food; after a short time his whole personality isso palpably affected that we know the food to have entered into himand taken, as it were, possession of him; but who can say at whatprecise moment it did so? Thus we find that we are rooted intooutside things and melt away into them, nor can any man say heconsists absolutely in this or that, nor define himself so certainlyas to include neither more nor less than himself; many undoubtedparts of his personality being more separable from it, and changingit less when so separated, both to his own senses and those of otherpeople, than other parts which are strictly speaking no parts at all. 

A man's clothes, for example, as they lie on a chair at night are nopart of him, but when he wears them they would appear to be so, asbeing a kind of food which warms him and hatches him, and the loss ofwhich may kill him of cold. If this be denied, and a man's clothesbe considered as no part of his self, nevertheless they, with hismoney, and it may perhaps be added his religious opinions, stamp aman's individuality as strongly as any natural feature could stampit. Change in style of dress, gain or loss of money, make a man feeland appear more changed than having his chin shaved or his nails cut. In fact, as soon as we leave common parlance on one side, and try fora scientific definition of personality, we find that there is nonepossible, any more than there can be a demonstration of the fact thatwe exist at all--a demonstration for which, as for that of a personalGod, many have hunted but none have found. The only solid foundationis, as in the case of the earth's crust, pretty near the surface ofthings; the deeper we try to go, the damper and darker and altogethermore uncongenial we find it. There is no knowing into what quagmireof superstition we may not find ourselves drawn, if we once cutourselves adrift from those superficial aspects of things, in whichalone our nature permits us to be comforted. 

Common parlance, however, settles the difficulty readily enough (asindeed it settles most others if they show signs of awkwardness) bythe simple process of ignoring it: we decline, and very properly, togo into the question of where personality begins and ends, but assumeit to be known by every one, and throw the onus of not knowing itupon the over-curious, who had better think as their neighbours do, right or wrong, or there is no knowing into what villainy they maynot presently fall. 

Assuming, then, that every one knows what is meant by the word"person" (and such superstitious bases as this are the foundationsupon which all action, whether of man, beast, or plant, isconstructed and rendered possible; for even the corn in the fieldsgrows upon a superstitious basis as to its own existence, and onlyturns the earth and moisture into wheat through the conceit of itsown ability to do so, without which faith it were powerless; and thelichen only grows upon the granite rock by first saying to itself, "Ithink I can do it;" so that it would not be able to grow unless itthought it could grow, and would not think it could grow unless itfound itself able to grow, and thus spends its life arguing in a mostvicious circle, basing its action upon a hypothesis, which hypothesisis in turn based upon its action)--assuming that we know what ismeant by the word "person, " we say that we are one and the same fromthe moment of our birth to the moment of our death, so that whateveris done by or happens to any one between birth and death, is said tohappen to or be done by one individual. This in practice is found tobe sufficient for the law courts and the purposes of daily life, which, being full of hurry and the pressure of business, can onlytolerate compromise, or conventional rendering of intricatephenomena. When facts of extreme complexity have to be daily andhourly dealt with by people whose time is money, they must besimplified, and treated much as a painter treats them, drawing themin squarely, seizing the more important features, and neglecting allthat does not assert itself as too essential to be passed over--hencethe slang and cant words of every profession, and indeed alllanguage; for language at best is but a kind of "patter, " the onlyway, it is true, in many cases, of expressing our ideas to oneanother, but still a very bad way, and not for one moment comparableto the unspoken speech which we may sometimes have recourse to. Themetaphors and facons de parler to which even in the plainest speechwe are perpetually recurring (as, for example, in this last twolines, "plain, " "perpetually, " and "recurring, " are all words basedon metaphor, and hence more or less liable to mislead) often deceiveus, as though there were nothing more than what we see and say, andas though words, instead of being, as they are, the creatures of ourconvenience, had some claim to be the actual ideas themselvesconcerning which we are conversing. 

This is so well expressed in a letter I have recently received from afriend, now in New Zealand, and certainly not intended by him forpublication, that I shall venture to quote the passage, but shouldsay that I do so without his knowledge or permission which I shouldnot be able to receive before this book must be completed. 

"Words, words, words, " he writes, "are the stumbling-blocks in theway of truth. Until you think of things as they are, and not of thewords that misrepresent them, you cannot think rightly. Wordsproduce the appearance of hard and fast lines where there are none. Words divide; thus we call this a man, that an ape, that a monkey, while they are all only differentiations of the same thing. To thinkof a thing they must be got rid of: they are the clothes thatthoughts wear--only the clothes. I say this over and over again, forthere is nothing of more importance. Other men's words will stop youat the beginning of an investigation. A man may play with words allhis life, arranging them and rearranging them like dominoes. If Icould THINK to you without words you would understand me better. "

If such remarks as the above hold good at all, they do so with thewords "personal identity. " The least reflection will show thatpersonal identity in any sort of strictness is an impossibility. Theexpression is one of the many ways in which we are obliged to scampour thoughts through pressure of other business which pays us better. For surely all reasonable people will feel that an infant an hourbefore birth, when in the eye of the law he has no existence, andcould not be called a peer for another sixty minutes, though hisfather were a peer, and already dead, --surely such an embryo is morepersonally identical with the baby into which he develops within anhour's time than the born baby is so with itself (if the expressionmay be pardoned), one, twenty, or it may be eighty years after birth. There is more sameness of matter; there are fewer differences of anykind perceptible by a third person; there is more sense of continuityon the part of the person himself; and far more of all that goes tomake up our sense of sameness of personality between an embryo anhour before birth and the child on being born, than there is betweenthe child just born and the man of twenty. Yet there is nohesitation about admitting sameness of personality between these twolast. 

On the other hand, if that hazy contradiction in terms, "personalidentity, " be once allowed to retreat behind the threshold of thewomb, it has eluded us once for all. What is true of one hour beforebirth is true of two, and so on till we get back to the impregnateovum, which may fairly claim to have been personally identical withthe man of eighty into which it ultimately developed, in spite of thefact that there is no particle of same matter nor sense of continuitybetween them, nor recognised community of instinct, nor indeed ofanything which goes to the making up of that which we call identity. 

There is far more of all these things common to the impregnate ovumand the ovum immediately before impregnation, or again between theimpregnate ovum, and both the ovum before impregnation and thespermatozoon which impregnated it. Nor, if we admit personalidentity between the ovum and the octogenarian, is there anysufficient reason why we should not admit it between the impregnateovum and the two factors of which it is composed, which two factorsare but offshoots from two distinct personalities, of which they areas much part as the apple is of the apple-tree; so that an impregnateovum cannot without a violation of first principles be debarred fromclaiming personal identity with both its parents, and hence, by aneasy chain of reasoning, WITH EACH OF THE IMPREGNATE OVA FROM WHICHITS PARENTS WERE DEVELOPED. 

So that each ovum when impregnate should be considered not asdescended from its ancestors, but as being a continuation of thepersonality of every ovum in the chain of its ancestry, which everyovum IT ACTUALLY IS quite as truly as the octogenarian IS the sameidentity with the ovum from which he has been developed. 

This process cannot stop short of the primordial cell, which againwill probably turn out to be but a brief resting-place. We thereforeprove each one of us to BE ACTUALLY the primordial cell which neverdied nor dies, but has differentiated itself into the life of theworld, all living beings whatever, being one with it, and members oneof another. 

To look at the matter for a moment in another light, it will beadmitted that if the primordial cell had been killed before leavingissue, all its possible descendants would have been killed at one andthe same time. It is hard to see how this single fact does notestablish at the point, as it were, of a logical bayonet, anidentity, between any creature and all others that are descended fromit. 

In Bishop Butler's first dissertation on personality, we findexpressed very much the same opinions as would follow from the aboveconsiderations, though they are mentioned by the Bishop only to becondemned, namely, "that personality is not a permanent but atransient thing; that it lives and dies, begins and ends continually;that no man can any more remain one and the same person two momentstogether, than two successive moments can be one and the samemoment;" in which case, he continues, our present self would not be"in reality the same with the self of yesterday, but another likeself or person coming up in its room and mistaken for it, to whichanother self will succeed to-morrow. " This view the Bishop proceedsto reduce to absurdity by saying, "It must be a fallacy uponourselves to charge our present selves with anything we did, or toimagine our present selves interested in anything which befell usyesterday; or that our present self will be interested in what willbefall us to-morrow. This, I say, must follow, for if the self orperson of to-day and that of to-morrow are not the same, but onlylike persons, the person of to-day is really no more interested inwhat will befall the person of to-morrow than in what will befall anyother person. It may be thought, perhaps, that this is not a justrepresentation of the opinion we are speaking of, because those whomaintain it allow that a person is the same as far back as hisremembrance reaches. And indeed they do use the words IDENTITY andSAME PERSON. Nor will language permit these words to be laid aside, since, if they were, there must be I know not what ridiculousperiphrasis substituted in the room of them. But they cannotconsistently with themselves mean that the person is really the same. For it is self-evident that the personality cannot be really thesame, if, as they expressly assert, that in which it consists is notthe same. And as consistently with themselves they cannot, so Ithink it appears they do not mean that the person is really the same, but only that he is so in a fictitious sense; in such a sense only asthey assert--for this they do assert--that any number of personswhatever may be the same person. The bare unfolding of this notion, and laying it thus naked and open, seems the best confutation of it. "

This fencing, for it does not deserve the name of seriousdisputation, is rendered possible by the laxness with which the words"identical" and "identity" are commonly used. Bishop Butler wouldnot seriously deny that personality undergoes great changes betweeninfancy and old age, and hence that it must undergo some change frommoment to moment. So universally is this recognised, that it iscommon to hear it said of such and such a man that he is not at allthe person he was, or of such and such another that he is twice theman he used to be--expressions than which none nearer the truth canwell be found. On the other hand, those whom Bishop Butler isintending to confute would be the first to admit that, though thereare many changes between infancy and old age, yet they come about inany one individual under such circumstances as we are all agreed inconsidering as the factors of personal identity rather than ashindrances thereto--that is to say, there has been no death on thepart of the individual between any two phases of his existence, andany one phase has had a permanent though perhaps imperceptible effectupon all succeeding ones. So that no one ever seriously argued inthe manner supposed by Bishop Butler, unless with modifications andsaving clauses, to which it does not suit his purpose to callattention. 

Identical strictly means "one and the same;" and if it were tied downto its strictest usage, it would indeed follow very logically, as wehave said already, that no such thing as personal identity ispossible, but that the case actually is as Bishop Butler has supposedhis opponents without qualification to maintain it. In common use, however, the word "identical" is taken to mean anything so likeanother that no vital or essential differences can be perceivedbetween them; as in the case of two specimens of the same kind ofplant, when we say they are identical in spite of considerableindividual differences. So with two impressions of a print from thesame plate; so with the plate itself, which is somewhat modified withevery impression taken from it. In like manner "identity" is notheld to its strict meaning--absolute sameness--but is predicatedrightly of a past and present which are now very widely asunder, provided they have been continuously connected by links so small asnot to give too sudden a sense of change at any one point; as, forinstance, in the case of the Thames at Oxford and Windsor or again atGreenwich, we say the same river flows by all three places, by whichwe mean that much of the water at Greenwich has come down from Oxfordand Windsor in a continuous stream. How sudden a change at any onepoint, or how great a difference between the two extremes issufficient to bar identity, is one of the most uncertain thingsimaginable, and seems to be decided on different grounds in differentcases, sometimes very intelligibly, and again at others arbitrarilyand capriciously. 

Personal identity is barred at one end, in the common opinion, bybirth, and at the other by death. Before birth, a child cannotcomplain either by himself or another, in such way as to set the lawin motion; after death he is in like manner powerless to make himselffelt by society, except in so far as he can do so by acts done beforethe breath has left his body. At any point between birth and deathhe is liable, either by himself or another, to affect his fellow-creatures; hence, no two other epochs can be found of equalconvenience for social purposes, and therefore they have been seizedby society as settling the whole question of when personal identitybegins and ends--society being rightly concerned with its ownpractical convenience, rather than with the abstract truth concerningits individual members. No one who is capable of reflection willdeny that the limitation of personality is certainly arbitrary to adegree as regards birth, nor yet that it is very possibly arbitraryas regards death; and as for intermediate points, no doubt it wouldbe more strictly accurate to say, "you are the now phase of theperson I met last night, " or "you are the being which has beenevolved from the being I met last night, " than "you are the person Imet last night. " But life is too short for the pen-phrases whichwould crowd upon us from every quarter, if we did not set our faceagainst all that is under the surface of things, unless, that is tosay, the going beneath the surface is, for some special chance ofprofit, excusable or capable of extenuation. 

CHAPTER VI--PERSONAL IDENTITY--(Continued)

How arbitrary current notions concerning identity really are, mayperhaps be perceived by reflecting upon some of the many differentphases of reproduction. 

Direct reproduction in which a creation reproduces another, thefacsimile, or nearly so, of itself may perhaps occur among the lowestforms of animal life; but it is certainly not the rule among beingsof a higher order. 

A hen lays an egg, which egg becomes a chicken, which chicken, in thecourse of time, becomes a hen. 

A moth lays an egg, which egg becomes a caterpillar, whichcaterpillar, after going through several stages, becomes a chrysalis, which chrysalis becomes a moth. 

A medusa begets a ciliated larva, the larva begets a polyp, the polypbegets a strobila, and the strobila begets a medusa again; the cycleof reproduction being completed in the fourth generation. 

A frog lays an egg, which egg becomes a tadpole; the tadpole, aftermore or fewer intermediate stages, becomes a frog. 

The mammals lay eggs, which they hatch inside their own bodies, instead of outside them; but the difference is one of degree and notof kind. In all these cases how difficult is it to say whereidentity begins or ends, or again where death begins or ends, orwhere reproduction begins or ends. 

How small and unimportant is the difference between the changes whicha caterpillar undergoes before becoming a moth, and those of astrobila before becoming a medusa. Yet in the one case we say thecaterpillar does not die, but is changed (though, if the variouschanges in its existence be produced metagenetically, as is the casewith many insects, it would appear to make a clean sweep of everyorgan of its existence, and start de novo, growing a head where itsfeet were, and so on--at least twice between its lives as caterpillarand butterfly); in this case, however, we say the caterpillar doesnot die, but is changed; being, nevertheless, one personality withthe moth, into which it is developed. But in the case of thestrobila we say that it is not changed, but dies, and is no part ofthe personality of the medusa. 

We say the egg becomes the caterpillar, not by the death of the eggand birth of the caterpillar, but by the ordinary process ofnutrition and waste--waste and repair--waste and repair continually. In like manner we say the caterpillar becomes the chrysalis, and thechrysalis the moth, not through the death of either one or the other, but by the development of the same creature, and the ordinaryprocesses of waste and repair. But the medusa after three or fourcycles becomes the medusa again, not, we say, by these same processesof nutrition and waste, but by a series of generations, each oneinvolving an actual birth and an actual death. Why this difference?Surely only because the changes in the offspring of the medusa aremarked by the leaving a little more husk behind them, and that huskless shrivelled, than is left on the occasion of each change betweenthe caterpillar and the butterfly. A little more residuum, whichresiduum, it may be, can move about; and though shrivelling from hourto hour, may yet leave a little more offspring before it is reducedto powder; or again, perhaps, because in the one case, though theactors are changed, they are changed behind the scenes, and come onin parts and dresses, more nearly resembling those of the originalactors, than in the other. 

When the caterpillar emerges from the egg, almost all that was insidethe egg has become caterpillar; the shell is nearly empty, and cannotmove; therefore we do not count it, and call the caterpillar acontinuation of the egg's existence, and personally identical withthe egg. So with the chrysalis and the moth; but after the moth haslaid her eggs she can still move her wings about, and she looksnearly as large as she did before she laid them; besides, she may yetlay a few more, therefore we do not consider the moth's life ascontinued in the life of her eggs, but rather in their husk, which westill call the moth, and which we say dies in a day or two, and thereis an end of it. Moreover, if we hold the moth's life to becontinued in that of her eggs, we shall be forced to admit her to bepersonally identical with each single egg, and, hence, each egg to beidentical with every other egg, as far as the past, and community ofmemories, are concerned; and it is not easy at first to break thespell which words have cast around us, and to feel that one personmay become many persons, and that many different persons may bepractically one and the same person, as far as their past experienceis concerned; and again, that two or more persons may unite andbecome one person, with the memories and experiences of both, thoughthis has been actually the case with every one of us. 

Our present way of looking at these matters is perfectly right andreasonable, so long as we bear in mind that it is a facon de parler, a sort of hieroglyphic which shall stand for the course of nature, but nothing more. Repair (as is now universally admitted byphysiologists) is only a phase of reproduction, or ratherreproduction and repair are only phases of the same power; and again, death and the ordinary daily waste of tissue, are phases of the samething. As for identity it is determined in any true sense of theword, not by death alone, but by a combination of death and failureof issue, whether of mind or body. 

To repeat. Wherever there is a separate centre of thought andaction, we see that it is connected with its successive stages ofbeing, by a series of infinitely small changes from moment to moment, with, perhaps, at times more startling and rapid changes, but, nevertheless, with no such sudden, complete, and unrepaired break upof the preceding condition, as we shall agree in calling death. Thebranching out from it at different times of new centres of thoughtand action, has commonly as little appreciable effect upon theparent-stock as the fall of an apple full of ripe seeds has upon anapple-tree; and though the life of the parent, from the date of thebranching off of such personalities, is more truly continued in thesethan in the residuum of its own life, we should find ourselvesinvolved in a good deal of trouble if we were commonly to take thisview of the matter. The residuum has generally the upper hand. Hehas more money, and can eat up his new life more easily than his newlife, him. A moral residuum will therefore prefer to see theremainder of his life in his own person, than in that of hisdescendants, and will act accordingly. Hence we, in common with mostother living beings, ignore the offspring as forming part of thepersonality of the parent, except in so far as that we make thefather liable for its support and for its extravagances (than whichno greater proof need be wished that the law is at heart aphilosopher, and perceives the completeness of the personal identitybetween father and son) for twenty-one years from birth. In otherrespects we are accustomed, probably rather from considerations ofpractical convenience than as the result of pure reason, to ignorethe identity between parent and offspring as completely as we ignorepersonality before birth. With these exceptions, however, the commonopinion concerning personal identity is reasonable enough, and isfound to consist neither in consciousness of such identity, nor yetin the power of recollecting its various phases (for it is plain thatidentity survives the distinction or suspension of both these), butin the fact that the various stages appear to the majority of peopleto have been in some way or other linked together. 

For a very little reflection will show that identity, as commonlypredicated of living agents, does not consist in identity of matter, of which there is no same particle in the infant, we will say, andthe octogenarian into whom he has developed. Nor, again, does itdepend upon sameness of form or fashion; for personality is felt tosurvive frequent and radical modification of structure, as in thecase of caterpillars and other insects. Mr. Darwin, quoting fromProfessor Owen, tells us (Plants and Animals under Domestication, vol. Ii. P. 362, ed. 1875), that in the case of what is calledmetagenetic development, "the new parts are not moulded upon theinner surfaces of the old ones. The plastic force has changed itsmode of operation. THE OUTER CASE, AND ALL THAT GAVE FORM ANDCHARACTER TO THE PRECEDENT INDIVIDUAL, PERISH, AND ARE CAST OFF; THEYARE NOT CHANGED into the corresponding parts of the same individual. These are due to a new and distinct developmental process. "Assuredly, there is more birth and death in the world than is dreamtof by the greater part of us; but it is so masked, and on the whole, so little to our purpose, that we fail to see it. Yet radical andsweeping as the changes of organism above described must be, we donot feel them to be more a bar to personal identity than theconsiderable changes which take place in the structure of our ownbodies between youth and old age. 

Perhaps the most striking illustration of this is to be found in thecase of some Echinoderms, concerning which Mr. Darwin tells us, that"the animal in the second stage of development is formed almost likea bud within the animal of the first stage, the latter being thencast off like an old vestment, yet sometimes maintaining for a shortperiod an independent vitality" ("Plants and Animals underDomestication, " vol. Ii. P. 362, ed. 1875). 

Nor yet does personality depend upon any consciousness or sense ofsuch personality on the part of the creature itself--it is not likelythat the moth remembers having been a caterpillar, more than weourselves remember having been children of a day old. It dependssimply upon the fact that the various phases of existence have beenlinked together, by links which we agree in considering sufficient tocause identity, and that they have flowed the one out of the other inwhat we see as a continuous, though it may be at times, a troubledstream. This is the very essence of personality, but it involves theprobable unity of all animal and vegetable life, as being, inreality, nothing but one single creature, of which the componentmembers are but, as it were, blood corpuscles or individual cells;life being a sort of leaven, which, if once introduced into theworld, will leaven it altogether; or of fire, which will consume allit can burn; or of air or water, which will turn most things intothemselves. Indeed, no difficulty would probably be felt aboutadmitting the continued existence of personal identity betweenparents and their offspring through all time (there being no SUDDENbreak at any time between the existence of any maternal parent andthat of its offspring), were it not that after a certain time thechanges in outward appearance between descendants and ancestorsbecome very great, the two seeming to stand so far apart, that itseems absurd in any way to say that they are one and the same being;much in the same way as after a time--though exactly when no one cansay--the Thames becomes the sea. Moreover, the separation of theidentity is practically of far greater importance to it than itscontinuance. We want to be ourselves; we do not want any one else toclaim part and parcel of our identity. This community of identitiesis not found to answer in everyday life. When then our love ofindependence is backed up by the fact that continuity of life betweenparents and offspring is a matter which depends on things which are agood deal hidden, and that thus birth gives us an opportunity ofpretending that there has been a sudden leap into a separate life;when also we have regard to the utter ignorance of embryology, whichprevailed till quite recently, it is not surprising that our ordinarylanguage should be found to have regard to what is important andobvious, rather than to what is not quite obvious, and is quiteunimportant. 

Personality is the creature of time and space, changing, as timechanges, imperceptibly; we are therefore driven to deal with it aswith all continuous and blending things; as with time, for example, itself, which we divide into days, and seasons, and times, and years, into divisions that are often arbitrary, but coincide, on the whole, as nearly as we can make them do so, with the more marked changeswhich we can observe. We lay hold, in fact, of anything we cancatch; the most important feature in any existence as regardsourselves being that which we can best lay hold of rather than thatwhich is most essential to the existence itself. We can lay hold ofthe continued personality of the egg and the moth into which the eggdevelops, but it is less easy to catch sight of the continuedpersonality between the moth and the eggs which she lays; yet the onecontinuation of personality is just as true and free from quibble asthe other. A moth becomes each egg that she lays, and that she doesso, she will in good time show by doing, now that she has got a freshstart, as near as may be what she did when first she was an egg, andthen a moth, before; and this I take it, so far as I can gather fromlooking at life and things generally, she would not be able to do ifshe had not travelled the same road often enough already, to be ableto know it in her sleep and blindfold, that is to say, to remember itwithout any conscious act of memory. 

So also a grain of wheat is linked with an ear, containing, we willsay, a dozen grains, by a series of changes so subtle that we cannotsay at what moment the original grain became the blade, nor when eachear of the head became possessed of an individual centre of action. To say that each grain of the head is personally identical with theoriginal grain would perhaps be an abuse of terms; but it can be noabuse to say that each grain is a continuation of the personality ofthe original grain, and if so, of every grain in the chain of its ownancestry; and that, as being such a continuation, it must be storedwith the memories and experiences of its past existences, to berecollected under the circumstances most favourable to recollection, i. E. , when under similar conditions to those when the impression waslast made and last remembered. Truly, then, in each case the new eggand the new grain IS the egg, and the grain from which its parentsprang, as completely as the full-grown ox is the calf from which ithas grown. 

Again, in the case of some weeping trees, whose boughs spring up intofresh trees when they have reached the ground, who shall say at whattime they cease to be members of the parent tree? In the case ofcuttings from plants it is easy to elude the difficulty by making aparade of the sharp and sudden act of separation from the parentstock, but this is only a piece of mental sleight of hand; thecutting remains as much part of its parent plant as though it hadnever been severed from it; it goes on profiting by the experiencewhich it had before it was cut off, as much as though it had neverbeen cut off at all. This will be more readily seen in the case ofworms which have been cut in half. Let a worm be cut in half, andthe two halves will become fresh worms; which of them is the originalworm? Surely both. Perhaps no simpler case than this could readilybe found of the manner in which personality eludes us, the moment wetry to investigate its real nature. There are few ideas which onfirst consideration appear so simple, and none which becomes moreutterly incapable of limitation or definition as soon as it isexamined closely. 

Finally, Mr. Darwin ("Plants and Animals under Domestication, " vol. Ii. P. 38, ed. 1875), writes -

"Even with plants multiplied by bulbs, layers, &c. , which may IN ONESENSE be said to form part of the same individual, " &c. , &c. ; andagain, p. 58, "The same rule holds good with plants when propagatedby bulbs, offsets, &c. , which IN ONE SENSE still form parts of thesame individual, " &c. In each of these passages it is plain that thedifficulty of separating the personality of the offspring from thatof the parent plant is present to his mind. Yet, p. 351 of the samevolume as above, he tells us that asexual generation "is effected inmany ways--by the formation of buds of various kinds, and byfissiparous generation, that is, by spontaneous or artificialdivision. " The multiplication of plants by bulbs and layers clearlycomes under this head, nor will any essential difference be feltbetween one kind of asexual generation and another; if, then, theoffspring formed by bulbs and layers is in one sense part of theoriginal plant, so also, it would appear, is all offspring developedby asexual generation in its manifold phrases. 

If we now turn to p. 357, we find the conclusion arrived at, as itwould appear, on the most satisfactory evidence, that "sexual andasexual reproduction are not seen to differ essentially; and . . . . That asexual reproduction, the power of regrowth, and development areall parts of one and the same great law. " Does it not then follow, quite reasonably and necessarily, that all offspring, howevergenerated, is IN ONE SENSE part of the individuality of its parent orparents. The question, therefore, turns upon "in what sense" thismay be said to be the case? To which I would venture to reply, "Inthe same sense as the parent plant (which is but the representativeof the outside matter which it has assimilated during growth, and ofits own powers of development) is the same individual that it waswhen it was itself an offset, or a cow the same individual that itwas when it was a calf--but no otherwise. "

Not much difficulty will be felt about supposing the offset of aplant, to be imbued with the memory of the past history of the plantof which it is an offset. It is part of the plant itself; and willknow whatever the plant knows. Why, then, should there be moredifficulty in supposing the offspring of the highest mammals, toremember in a profound but unselfconscious way, the anterior historyof the creatures of which they too have been part and parcel?

Personal identity, then, is much like species itself. It is now, thanks to Mr. Darwin, generally held that species blend or haveblended into one another; so that any possibility of arrangement andapparent subdivision into definite groups, is due to the suppressionby death both of individuals and whole genera, which, had they beennow existing, would have linked all living beings by a series ofgradations so subtle that little classification could have beenattempted. How it is that the one great personality of life as awhole, should have split itself up into so many centres of thoughtand action, each one of which is wholly, or at any rate nearly, unconscious of its connection with the other members, instead ofhaving grown up into a huge polyp, or as it were coral reef orcompound animal over the whole world, which should be conscious butof its own one single existence; how it is that the daily waste ofthis creature should be carried on by the conscious death of itsindividual members, instead of by the unconscious waste of tissuewhich goes on in the bodies of each individual (if indeed the tissuewhich we waste daily in our own bodies is so unconscious of its birthand death as we suppose); how, again, that the daily repair of thishuge creature life should have become decentralised, and be carriedon by conscious reproduction on the part of its component items, instead of by the unconscious nutrition of the whole from a singlecentre, as the nutrition of our own bodies would appear (thoughperhaps falsely) to be carried on; these are matters upon which Idare not speculate here, but on which some reflections may follow insubsequent chapters. 

CHAPTER VII--OUR SUBORDINATE PERSONALITIES

We have seen that we can apprehend neither the beginning nor the endof our personality, which comes up out of infinity as an island outof the sea, so gently, that none can say when it is first visible onour mental horizon, and fades away in the case of those who leaveoffspring, so imperceptibly that none can say when it is out ofsight. But, like the island, whether we can see it or no, it isalways there. Not only are we infinite as regards time, but we areso also as regards extension, being so linked on to the externalworld that we cannot say where we either begin or end. If those whoso frequently declare that man is a finite creature would point outhis boundaries, it might lead to a better understanding. 

Nevertheless, we are in the habit of considering that ourpersonality, or soul, no matter where it begins or ends, and nomatter what it comprises, is nevertheless a single thing, uncompounded of other souls. Yet there is nothing more certain thanthat this is not at all the case, but that every individual person isa compound creature, being made up of an infinite number of distinctcentres of sensation and will, each one of which is personal, and hasa soul and individual existence, a reproductive system, intelligence, and memory of its own, with probably its hopes and fears, its timesof scarcity and repletion, and a strong conviction that it is itselfthe centre of the universe. 

True, no one is aware of more than one individuality in his ownperson at one time. We are, indeed, often greatly influenced byother people, so much so, that we act on many occasions in accordancewith their will rather than our own, making our actions answer totheir sensations, and register the conclusions of their cerebralaction and not our own; for the time being, we become so completelypart of them, that we are ready to do things most distasteful anddangerous to us, if they think it for their advantage that we shoulddo so. Thus we sometimes see people become mere processes of theirwives or nearest relations. Yet there is a something which blindsus, so that we cannot see how completely we are possessed by thesouls which influence us upon these occasions. We still think we areourselves, and ourselves only, and are as certain as we can be of anyfact, that we are single sentient beings, uncompounded of othersentient beings, and that our action is determined by the soleoperation of a single will. 

But in reality, over and above this possession of our souls by othersof our own species, the will of the lower animals often enters intoour bodies and possesses them, making us do as they will, and not aswe will; as, for example, when people try to drive pigs, or are runaway with by a restive horse, or are attacked by a savage animalwhich masters them. It is absurd to say that a person is a single"ego" when he is in the clutches of a lion. Even when we are alone, and uninfluenced by other people except in so far as we remembertheir wishes, we yet generally conform to the usages which thecurrent feeling of our peers has taught us to respect; their willhaving so mastered our original nature, that, do what we may, we cannever again separate ourselves and dwell in the isolation of our ownsingle personality. And even though we succeeded in this, and made aclean sweep of every mental influence which had ever been brought tobear upon us, and though at the same time we were alone in somedesert where there was neither beast nor bird to attract ourattention or in any way influence our action, yet we could not escapethe parasites which abound within us; whose action, as every medicalman well knows, is often such as to drive men to the commission ofgrave crimes, or to throw them into convulsions, make lunatics ofthem, kill them--when but for the existence and course of conductpursued by these parasites they would have done no wrong to any man. 

These parasites--are they part of us or no? Some are plainly not soin any strict sense of the word, yet their action may, in cases whichit is unnecessary to detail, affect us so powerfully that we areirresistibly impelled to act in such or such a manner; and yet we areas wholly unconscious of any impulse outside of our own "ego" asthough they were part of ourselves; others again are essential to ourvery existence, as the corpuscles of the blood, which the bestauthorities concur in supposing to be composed of an infinite numberof living souls, on whose welfare the healthy condition of our blood, and hence of our whole bodies, depends. We breathe that they maybreathe, not that we may do so; we only care about oxygen in so faras the infinitely small beings which course up and down in our veinscare about it: the whole arrangement and mechanism of our lungs maybe our doing, but is for their convenience, and they only serve usbecause it suits their purpose to do so, as long as we serve them. Who shall draw the line between the parasites which are part of us, and the parasites which are not part of us? Or again, between theinfluence of those parasites which are within us, but are yet not US, and the external influence of other sentient beings and our fellow-men? There is no line possible. Everything melts away intoeverything else; there are no hard edges; it is only from a littledistance that we see the effect as of individual features andexistences. When we go close up, there is nothing but a blur andconfused mass of apparently meaningless touches, as in a picture byTurner. 

The following passage from Mr. Darwin's provisional theory ofPangenesis, will sufficiently show that the above is no strange andparadoxical view put forward wantonly, but that it follows as amatter of course from the conclusions arrived at by those who areacknowledged leaders in the scientific world. Mr. Darwin writesthus:-

"THE FUNCTIONAL INDEPENDENCE OF THE ELEMENTS OR UNITS OF THE BODY. --Physiologists agree that the whole organism consists of a multitudeof elemental parts, which are to a great extent independent of oneanother. Each organ, says Claude Bernard, has its proper life, itsautonomy; it can develop and reproduce itself independently of theadjoining tissues. A great German authority, Virchow, asserts stillmore emphatically that each system consists of 'an enormous mass ofminute centres of action. . . . Every element has its own specialaction, and even though it derive its stimulus to activity from otherparts, yet alone effects the actual performance of duties. . . . Every single epithelial and muscular fibre-cell leads a sort ofparasitical existence in relation to the rest of the body. . . . Every single bone corpuscle really possesses conditions of nutritionpeculiar to itself. ' Each element, as Sir J. Paget remarks, livesits appointed time, and then dies, and is replaced after being castoff and absorbed. I presume that no physiologist doubts that, forinstance, each bone corpuscle of the finger differs from thecorresponding corpuscle of the corresponding joint of the toe, " &c. , &c. ("Plants and Animals under Domestication, " vol ii. Pp. 364, 365, ed. 1875). 

In a work on heredity by M. Ribot, I find him saying, "Some recentauthors attribute a memory" (and if so, surely every attribute ofcomplete individuality) "to every organic element of the body;" amongthem Dr. Maudsley, who is quoted by M. Ribot, as saying, "Thepermanent effects of a particular virus, such as that of the variola, in the constitution, shows that the organic element remembers for theremainder of its life certain modifications it has received. Themanner in which a cicatrix in a child's finger grows with the growthof the body, proves, as has been shown by Paget, that the organicelement of the part does not forget the impression it has received. What has been said about the different nervous centres of the bodydemonstrates the existence of a memory in the nerve cells diffusedthrough the heart and intestines; in those of the spinal cord, in thecells of the motor ganglia, and in the cells of the corticalsubstance of the cerebal hemispheres. "

Now, if words have any meaning at all, it must follow from thepassages quoted above, that each cell in the human body is a personwith an intelligent soul, of a low class, perhaps, but stilldiffering from our own more complex soul in degree, and not in kind;and, like ourselves, being born, living, and dying. So that eachsingle creature, whether man or beast, proves to be as a ray of whitelight, which, though single, is compounded of the red, blue, andyellow rays. It would appear, then, as though "we, " "our souls, " or"selves, " or "personalities, " or by whatever name we may prefer to becalled, are but the CONSENSUS and full flowing stream of countlesssensations and impulses on the part of our tributary souls or"selves, " who probably know no more that we exist, and that theyexist as part of us, than a microscopic water-flea knows the resultsof spectrum analysis, or than an agricultural labourer knows theworking of the British constitution: and of whom we know no more, until some misconduct on our part, or some confusion of ideas ontheirs, has driven them into insurrection, than we do of the habitsand feelings of some class widely separated from our own. 

These component souls are of many and very different natures, livingin territories which are to them vast continents, and rivers, andseas, but which are yet only the bodies of our other component souls;coral reefs and sponge-beds within us; the animal itself being a kindof mean proportional between its house and its soul, and none beingable to say where house ends and animal begins, more than they cansay where animal ends and soul begins. For our bones within us arebut inside walls and buttresses, that is to say, houses constructedof lime and stone, as it were, by coral insects; and our houseswithout us are but outside bones, a kind of exterior skeleton orshell, so that we perish of cold if permanently and suddenly deprivedof the coverings which warm us and cherish us, as the wing of a hencherishes her chickens. If we consider the shells of many livingcreatures, we shall find it hard to say whether they are ratherhouses, or part of the animal itself, being, as they are, inseparablefrom the animal, without the destruction of its personality. 

Is it possible, then, to avoid imagining that if we have within us somany tributary souls, so utterly different from the soul which theyunite to form, that they neither can perceive us, nor we them, thoughit is in us that they live and move and have their being, and thoughwe are what we are, solely as the result of their co-operation--is itpossible to avoid imagining that we may be ourselves atoms, undesignedly combining to form some vaster being, though we areutterly incapable of perceiving that any such being exists, or ofrealising the scheme or scope of our own combination? And this, too, not a spiritual being, which, without matter, or what we think matterof some sort, is as complete nonsense to us as though men bade uslove and lean upon an intelligent vacuum, but a being with what isvirtually flesh and blood and bones; with organs, senses, dimensions, in some way analogous to our own, into some other part of whichbeing, at the time of our great change we must infallibly re-enter, starting clean anew, with bygones bygones, and no more ache for everfrom either age or antecedents. Truly, sufficient for the life isthe evil thereof. Any speculations of ours concerning the nature ofsuch a being, must be as futile and little valuable as those of ablood corpuscle might be expected to be concerning the nature of man;but if I were myself a blood corpuscle, I should be amused at makingthe discovery that I was not only enjoying life in my own sphere, butwas bona fide part of an animal which would not die with myself, andin which I might thus think of myself as continuing to live to alleternity, or to what, as far as my power of thought would carry me, must seem practically eternal. But, after all, the amusement wouldbe of a rather dreary nature. 

On the other hand, if I were the being of whom such an introspectiveblood corpuscle was a component item, I should conceive he served mebetter by attending to my blood and making himself a successfulcorpuscle, than by speculating about my nature. He would serve mebest by serving himself best, without being over curious. I shouldexpect that my blood might suffer if his brain were to become tooactive. If, therefore, I could discover the vein in which he was, Ishould let him out to begin life anew in some other and, qua me, moreprofitable capacity. 

With the units of our bodies it is as with the stars of heaven:there is neither speech nor language, but their voices are heardamong them. Our will is the fiat of their collective wisdom, assanctioned in their parliament, the brain; it is they who make us dowhatever we do--it is they who should be rewarded if they have donewell, or hanged if they have committed murder. When the balance ofpower is well preserved among them, when they respect each other'srights and work harmoniously together, then we thrive and are well;if we are ill, it is because they are quarrelling with themselves, orare gone on strike for this or that addition to their environment, and our doctor must pacify or chastise them as best he may. They arewe and we are they; and when we die it is but a redistribution of thebalance of power among them or a change of dynasty, the result, itmay be, of heroic struggle, with more epics and love romances than wecould read from now to the Millennium, if they were so written downthat we could comprehend them. 

It is plain, then, that the more we examine the question ofpersonality the more it baffles us, the only safeguard against utterconfusion and idleness of thought being to fall back upon thesuperficial and common sense view, and refuse to tolerate discussionswhich seem to hold out little prospect of commercial value, and whichwould compel us, if logically followed, to be at the inconvenience ofaltering our opinions upon matters which we have come to consider assettled. 

And we observe that this is what is practically done by some of ourablest philosophers, who seem unwilling, if one may say so withoutpresumption, to accept the conclusions to which their own experimentsand observations would seem to point. 

Dr. Carpenter, for example, quotes the well-known experiments uponheadless frogs. If we cut off a frog's head and pinch any part ofits skin, the animal at once begins to move away with the sameregularity as though the brain had not been removed. Flourens tookguinea-pigs, deprived them of the cerebral lobes, and then irritatedtheir skin; the animals immediately walked, leaped, and trottedabout, but when the irritation was discontinued they ceased to move. Headless birds, under excitation, can still perform with their wingsthe rhythmic movements of flying. But here are some facts morecurious still, and more difficult of explanation. If we take a frogor a strong and healthy triton, and subject it to variousexperiments; if we touch, pinch, or burn it with acetic acid, and ifthen, after decapitating the animal, we subject it to the sameexperiments, it will be seen that the reactions are exactly the same;it will strive to be free of the pain, and to shake off the aceticacid that is burning it; it will bring its foot up to the part of itsbody that is irritated, and this movement of the member will followthe irritation wherever it may be produced. 

The above is mainly taken from M. Ribot's work on heredity ratherthan Dr. Carpenter's, because M. Ribot tells us that the head of thefrog was actually cut off, a fact which does not appear so plainly inDr. Carpenter's allusion to the same experiments. But Dr. Carpentertells us that AFTER THE BRAIN OF A FROG HAS BEEN REMOVED--which wouldseem to be much the same thing as though its head were cut off--"ifacetic acid be applied over the upper and under part of the thigh, the foot of the same side will wipe it away; BUT IF THAT FOOT BE CUTOFF, AFTER SOME INEFFECTUAL EFFORTS AND A SHORT PERIOD OF INACTION, "during which it is hard not to surmise that the headless body isconsidering what it had better do under the circumstances, "THE SAMEMOVEMENT WILL BE MADE BY THE FOOT OF THE OPPOSITE SIDE, " which, toordinary people, would convey the impression that the headless bodywas capable of feeling the impressions it had received, and ofreasoning upon them by a psychological act; and this of courseinvolves the possession of a soul of some sort. 

Here is a frog whose right thigh you burn with acetic acid. Verynaturally it tries to get at the place with its right foot to removethe acid. You then cut off the frog's head, and put more acetic acidon the some place: the headless frog, or rather the body of the latefrog, does just what the frog did before its head was cut off--ittries to get at the place with its right foot. You now cut off itsright foot: the headless body deliberates, and after a while triesto do with its left foot what it can no longer do with its right. Plain matter-of-fact people will draw their own inference. They willnot be seduced from the superficial view of the matter. They willsay that the headless body can still, to some extent, feel, think, and act, and if so, that it must have a living soul. 

Dr. Carpenter writes as follows:- "Now the performance of these, aswell as of many other movements, that show a most remarkableadaptation to a purpose, might be supposed to indicate thatsensations are called up by the IMPRESSIONS, and that the animal cannot only FEEL, but can voluntarily direct its movements so as to getrid of the irritation which annoys it. But such an inference wouldbe inconsistent with other facts. In the first place, the motionsperformed under such circumstances are never spontaneous, but arealways excited by a stimulus of some kind. "

Here we pause to ask ourselves whether any action of any creatureunder any circumstances is ever excited without "stimulus of somekind, " and unless we can answer this question in the affirmative, itis not easy to see how Dr. Carpenter's objection is valid. 

"Thus, " he continues, "a decapitated frog" (here then we have it thatthe frog's head was actually cut off) "after the first violentconvulsive moments occasioned by the operation have passed away, remains at rest until it is touched; and then the leg, or its wholebody may be thrown into sudden action, which suddenly subsidesagain. " (How does this quiescence when it no longer feels anythingshow that the "leg or whole body" had not perceived something whichmade it feel when it was not quiescent?)--"Again we find that suchmovements may be performed not only when the brain has been removed, the spinal cord remaining entire, but also when the spinal cord hasbeen itself cut across, so as to be divided into two or moreportions, each of them completely isolated from each other, and fromother parts of the nervous centres. Thus, if the head of a frog becut off, and its spinal cord be divided in the middle of the back, sothat its fore legs remain connected with the upper part, and its hindlegs with the lower, each pair of members may be excited to movementsby stimulants applied to itself; but the two pairs will not exhibitany consentaneous motions, as they will do when the spinal cord isundivided. "

This may be put perhaps more plainly thus. If you take a frog andcut it into three pieces--say, the head for one piece, the fore legsand shoulder for another, and the hind legs for a third--and thenirritate any one of these pieces, you will find it move much as itwould have moved under like irritation if the animal had remainedundivided, but you will no longer find any concert between themovements of the three pieces; that is to say, if you irritate thehead, the other two pieces will remain quiet, and if you irritate thehind legs, you will excite no action in the fore legs or head. 

Dr. Carpenter continues: "Or if the spinal cord be cut acrosswithout the removal of the brain, the lower limbs may be EXCITED tomovement by an appropriate stimulant, though the animal has clearlyno power over them, whilst the upper part remains under its controlas completely as before. "

Why are the head and shoulders "the animal" more than the hind legsunder these circumstances? Neither half can exist long without theother; the two parts, therefore, being equally important to eachother, we have surely as good a right to claim the title of "theanimal" for the hind legs, and to maintain that they have no powerover the head and shoulders, as any one else has to claim theanimalship for these last. What we say is, that the animal hasceased to exist as a frog on being cut in half, and that the twohalves are no longer, either of them, the frog, but are simply piecesof still living organism, each of which has a soul of its own, beingcapable of sensation, and of intelligent psychological action as theconsequence of sensations, though the one part has probably a muchhigher and more intelligent soul than the other, and neither part hasa soul for a moment comparable in power and durability to that of theoriginal frog. 

"Now it is scarcely conceivable, " continues Dr Carpenter, "that inthis last case sensations should be felt and volition exercisedthrough the instrumentality of that portion of the spinal cord whichremains connected with the nerves of the posterior extremities, butwhich is cut off from the brain. For if it were so, there must betwo distinct centres of sensation and will in the same animal, theattributes of the brain not being affected; and by dividing thespinal cord into two or more segments we might thus create in thebody of one animal two or more such independent centres in additionto that which holds its proper place in the head. "

In the face of the facts before us, it does not seen far-fetched tosuppose that there ARE two, or indeed an infinite number of centresof sensation and will in an animal, the attributes of whose brain arenot affected but that these centres, while the brain is intact, habitually act in connection with and in subordination to thatcentral authority; as in the ordinary state of the fish trade, fishis caught, we will say, at Yarmouth, sent up to London, and then sentdown to Yarmouth again to be eaten, instead of being eaten atYarmouth when caught. But from the phenomena exhibited by threepieces of an animal, it is impossible to argue that the causes of thephenomena were present in the quondam animal itself; the memory of aninfinite series of generations having so habituated the local centresof sensation and will, to act in concert with the central government, that as long as they can get at that government, they are absolutelyincapable of acting independently. When thrown on their ownresources, they are so demoralised by ages of dependence on thebrain, that they die after a few efforts at self-assertion, fromsheer unfamiliarity with the position, and inability to recognisethemselves when disjointed rudely from their habitual associations. 

In conclusion, Dr. Carpenter says, "To say that two or more distinctcentres of sensation and will are present in such a case, wouldreally be the same as saying that we have the power of constitutingtwo or more distinct egos in one body, WHICH IS MANIFESTLY ABSURD. "One sees the absurdity of maintaining that we can make one frog intotwo frogs by cutting a frog into two pieces, but there is noabsurdity in believing that the two pieces have minor centres ofsensation and intelligence within themselves, which, when the animalis entire, act in much concert with the brain, and with each other, that it is not easy to detect their originally autonomous character, but which, when deprived of their power of acting in concert, arethrown back upon earlier habit, now too long forgotten to be capableof permanent resumption. 

Illustrations are apt to mislead, nevertheless they may perhaps besometimes tolerated. Suppose, for example, that London to theextent, say, of a circle with a six-mile radius from Charing Cross, were utterly annihilated in the space of five minutes during theSession of Parliament. Suppose, also, that two entirely impassablebarriers, say of five miles in width, half a mile high, and red hot, were thrown across England; one from Gloucester to Harwich, andanother from Liverpool to Hull, and at the same time the sea were tobecome a mass of molten lava, so no water communication should bepossible; the political, mercantile, social, and intellectual life ofthe country would be convulsed in a manner which it is hardlypossible to realise. Hundreds of thousands would die through thedislocation of existing arrangements. Nevertheless, each of thethree parts into which England was divided would show signs ofprovincial life for which it would find certain imperfect organismsready to hand. Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester, accustomed though they are to act in subordination to London, wouldprobably take up the reins of government in their several sections;they would make their town councils into local governments, appointjudges from the ablest of their magistrates, organise reliefcommittees, and endeavour as well as they could to remove any aceticacid that might be now poured on Wiltshire, Warwickshire, orNorthumberland, but no concert between the three divisions of thecountry would be any longer possible. Should we be justified, underthese circumstances, in calling any of the three parts of England, England? Or, again, when we observed the provincial action to be asnearly like that of the original undivided nation as circumstanceswould allow, should we be justified in saying that the action, suchas it was, was not political? And, lastly, should we for a momentthink that an admission that the provincial action was of a bona fidepolitical character would involve the supposition that England, undivided, had more than one "ego" as England, no matter how manysubordinate "egos" might go to the making of it, each one of whichproved, on emergency, to be capable of a feeble autonomy?

M. Ribot would seem to take a juster view of the phenomenon when hesays (p. 222 of the English translation) -

"We can hardly say that here the movements are co-ordinated likethose of a machine; the acts of the animal are adapted to a specialend; we find in them the characters of intelligence and will, aknowledge and choice of means, since they are as variable as thecause which provokes them. 

"If these, then, and similar acts, were such that both theimpressions which produced them and the acts themselves wereperceived by the animal, would they not be called psychological? Isthere not in them all that constitutes an intelligent act--adaptationof means to ends; not a general and vague adaptation, but adeterminate adaptation to a determinate end? In the reflex action wefind all that constitutes in some sort the very groundwork of anintelligent act--that is to say, the same series of stages, in thesame order, with the same relations between them. We have thus, inthe reflex act, all that constitutes the psychological act exceptconsciousness. The reflex act, which is physiological, differs innothing from the psychological act, save only in this--that it iswithout consciousness. "

The only remark which suggests itself upon this, is that we have noright to say that the part of the animal which moves does not alsoperceive its own act of motion, as much as it has perceived theimpression which has caused it to move. It is plain "the animal"cannot do so, for the animal cannot be said to be any longer inexistence. Half a frog is not a frog; nevertheless, if the hind legsare capable, as M. Ribot appears to admit, of "perceiving theimpression" which produces their action, and if in that action thereis (and there would certainly appear to be so) "all that constitutesan intelligent act, . . . A determinate adaptation to a determinateend, " one fails to see on what ground they should be supposed to beincapable of perceiving their own action, in which case the action ofthe hind legs becomes distinctly psychological. 

Secondly, M. Ribot appears to forget that it is the tendency of allpsychological action to become unconscious on being frequentlyrepeated, and that no line can be drawn between psychological actsand those reflex acts which he calls physiological. All we can sayis, that there are acts which we do without knowing that we do them;but the analogy of many habits which we have been able to watch intheir passage from laborious consciousness to perfectunconsciousness, would suggest that all action is reallypsychological, only that the soul's action becomes invisible toourselves after it has been repeated sufficiently often--that thereis, in fact, a law as simple as in the case of optics or gravitation, whereby conscious perception of any action shall vary inversely asthe square, say, of its being repeated. 

It is easy to understand the advantage to the individual of thispower of doing things rightly without thinking about them; for werethere no such power, the attention would be incapable of followingthe multitude of matters which would be continually arresting it;those animals which had developed a power of working automatically, and without a recurrence to first principles when they had oncemastered any particular process, would, in the common course ofevents, stand a better chance of continuing their species, and thusof transmitting their new power to their descendants. 

M. Ribot declines to pursue the subject further, and has onlycursorily alluded to it. He writes, however, that, on the "obscureproblem" of the difference between reflex and psychological actions, some say, "when there can be no consciousness, because the brain iswanting, there is, in spite of appearances, only mechanism, " whilstothers maintain, that "when there is selection, reflection, psychicalaction, there must also be consciousness in spite of appearances. " Alittle later (p. 223), he says, "It is quite possible that if aheadless animal could live a sufficient length of time" (that is tosay, if THE HIND LEGS OF AN ANIMAL could live a sufficient length oftime without the brain), "there would be found in it" (THEM) "aconsciousness like that of the lower species, which would consistmerely in the faculty of apprehending the external world. " (Whymerely? It is more than apprehending the outside world to be able totry to do a thing with one's left foot, when one finds that onecannot do it with one's right. ) "It would not be correct to say thatthe amphioxus, the only one among fishes and vertebrata which has aspinal cord without a brain, has no consciousness because it has nobrain; and if it be admitted that the little ganglia of theinvertebrata can form a consciousness, the same may hold good for thespinal cord. "

We conclude, therefore, that it is within the common scope andmeaning of the words "personal identity, " not only that one creaturecan become many as the moth becomes manifold in her eggs, but thateach individual may be manifold in the sense of being compounded of avast number of subordinate individualities which have their separatelives within him, with their hopes, and fears, and intrigues, beingborn and dying within us, many generations, of them during our singlelifetime. 

"An organic being, " writes Mr. Darwin, "is a microcosm, a littleuniverse, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute, and numerous as the stars in heaven. "

As these myriads of smaller organisms are parts and processes of us, so are we but parts and processes of life at large. 

CHAPTER VIII--APPLICATION OF THE FOREGOING CHAPTERS--THE ASSIMILATIONOF OUTSIDE MATTER

Let us now return to the position which we left at the end of thefourth chapter. We had then concluded that the self-development ofeach new life in succeeding generations--the various stages throughwhich it passes (as it would appear, at first sight, without rhyme orreason)--the manner in which it prepares structures of the mostsurpassing intricacy and delicacy, for which it has no use at thetime when it prepares them--and the many elaborate instincts which itexhibits immediately on, and indeed before, birth--all point in thedirection of habit and memory, as the only causes which could producethem. 

Why should the embryo of any animal go through so many stages--embryological allusions to forefathers of a widely different type?And why, again, should the germs of the same kind of creature alwaysgo through the same stages? If the germ of any animal now living is, in its simplest state, but part of the personal identity of one ofthe original germs of all life whatsoever, and hence, if any nowliving organism must be considered without quibble as being itselfmillions of years old, and as imbued with an intense thoughunconscious memory of all that it has done sufficiently often to havemade a permanent impression; if this be so, we can answer the abovequestions perfectly well. The creature goes through so manyintermediate stages between its earliest state as life at all, andits latest development, for the simplest of all reasons, namely, because this is the road by which it has always hitherto travelled toits present differentiation; this is the road it knows, and intoevery turn and up or down of which, it has been guided by the forceof circumstances and the balance of considerations. These, acting insuch a manner for such and such a time, caused it to travel in suchand such fashion, which fashion having been once sufficientlyestablished, becomes a matter of trick or routine to which thecreature is still a slave, and in which it confirms itself byrepetition in each succeeding generation. 

Thus I suppose, as almost every one else, so far as I can gather, supposes, that we are descended from ancestors of widely differentcharacters to our own. If we could see some of our forefathers amillion years back, we should find them unlike anything we could callman; if we were to go back fifty million years, we should find them, it may be, fishes pure and simple, breathing through gills, andunable to exist for many minutes in air. 

It is admitted on all hands that there is more or less analogybetween the embryological development of the individual, and thevarious phases or conditions of life through which his forefathershave passed. I suppose, then, that the fish of fifty million yearsback and the man of to-day are one single living being, in the samesense, or very nearly so, as the octogenarian is one single livingbeing with the infant from which he has grown; and that the fish haslived himself into manhood, not as we live out our little life, living, and living, and living till we die, but living by pulsations, so to speak; living so far, and after a certain time going into a newbody, and throwing off the old; making his body much as we makeanything that we want, and have often made already, that is to say, as nearly as may be in the same way as he made it last time; alsothat he is as unable as we ourselves are, to make what he wantswithout going through the usual processes with which he is familiar, even though there may be other better ways of doing the same thing, which might not be far to seek, if the creature thought them better, and had not got so accustomed to such and such a method, that hewould only be baffled and put out by any attempt to teach himotherwise. 

And this oneness of personality between ourselves and our supposedfishlike ancestors of many millions of years ago, must hold alsobetween each individual one of us and the single pair of fishes fromwhich we are each (on the present momentary hypothesis) descended;and it must also hold between such pair of fishes and all theirdescendants besides man, it may be some of them birds, and othersfishes; all these descendants, whether human or otherwise, being butthe way in which the creature (which was a pair of fishes when wefirst took it in hand though it was a hundred thousand other thingsas well, and had been all manner of other things before any part ofit became fishlike) continues to exist--its manner, in fact, ofgrowing. As the manner in which the human body grows is by thecontinued birth and death, in our single lifetime, of manygenerations of cells which we know nothing about, but say that wehave had only one hand or foot all our lives, when we have really hadmany, one after another; so this huge compound creature, LIFE, probably thinks itself but one single animal whose component cells, as it may imagine, grow, and it may be waste and repair, but do notdie. 

It may be that the cells of which we are built up, and which we havealready seen must be considered as separate persons, each one of themwith a life and memory of its own--it may be that these cells reckontime in a manner inconceivable by us, so that no word can convey anyidea of it whatever. What may to them appear a long and painfulprocess may to us be so instantaneous as to escape us altogether, wewanting some microscope to show us the details of time. If, in likemanner, we were to allow our imagination to conceive the existence ofa being as much in need of a microscope for our time and affairs aswe for those of our own component cells, the years would be to such abeing but as the winkings or the twinklings of an eye. Would hethink, then, that all the ants and flies of one wink were differentfrom those of the next? or would he not rather believe that they werealways the same flies, and, again, always the same men and women, ifhe could see them at all, and if the whole human race did not appearto him as a sort of spreading and lichen-like growth over the earth, not differentiated at all into individuals? With the help of amicroscope and the intelligent exercise of his reason, he would intime conceive the truth. He would put Covent Garden Market on thefield of his microscope, and would perhaps write a great deal ofnonsense about the unerring "instinct" which taught each costermongerto recognise his own basket or his own donkey-cart; and this, mutatismutandis, is what we are getting to do as regards our own bodies. What I wish is, to make the same sort of step in an upward directionwhich has already been taken in a downward one, and to show reasonfor thinking that we are only component atoms of a single compoundcreature, LIFE, which has probably a distinct conception of its ownpersonality though none whatever of ours, more than we of our ownunits. I wish also to show reason for thinking that this creature, LIFE, has only come to be what it is, by the same sort of process asthat by which any human art or manufacture is developed, i. E. , through constantly doing the same thing over and over again, beginning from something which is barely recognisable as faith, or asthe desire to know, or do, or live at all, and as to the origin ofwhich we are in utter darkness, --and growing till it is firstconscious of effort, then conscious of power, then powerful with butlittle consciousness, and finally, so powerful and so charged withmemory as to be absolutely without all self-consciousness whatever, except as regards its latest phases in each of its manydifferentiations, or when placed in such new circumstances as compelit to choose between death and a reconsideration of its position. 

No conjecture can be hazarded as to how the smallest particle ofmatter became so imbued with faith that it must be considered as thebeginning of LIFE, or as to what such faith is, except that it is thevery essence of all things, and that it has no foundation. 

In this way, then, I conceive we can fairly transfer the experienceof the race to the individual, without any other meaning to our wordsthan what they would naturally suggest; that is to say, that there isin every impregnate ovum a bona fide memory, which carries it backnot only to the time when it was last an impregnate ovum, but to thatearlier date when it was the very beginning of life at all, whichsame creature it still is, whether as man or ovum, and hence imbued, so far as time and circumstance allow, with all its memories. Surelythis is no strained hypothesis; for the mere fact that the germ, fromthe earliest moment that we are able to detect it, appears to be soperfectly familiar with its business, acts with so little hesitationand so little introspection or reference to principles, this aloneshould incline us to suspect that it must be armed with that which, so far as we observe in daily life, can alone ensure such a result--to wit, long practice, and the memory of many similar performances. 

The difficulty is, that we are conscious of no such memory in our ownpersons, and beyond the one great proof of memory given by the actualrepetition of the performance--and of some of the latest deviationsfrom the ordinary performance (and this proof ought in itself, onewould have thought, to outweigh any save the directest evidence tothe contrary) we can detect no symptom of any such mental operationas recollection on the part of the embryo. On the other hand, wehave seen that we know most intensely those things that we are leastconscious of knowing; we will most intensely what we are leastconscious of willing; we feel continually without knowing that wefeel, and our attention is hourly arrested without our attentionbeing arrested by the arresting of our attention. Memory is no lesscapable of unconscious exercise, and on becoming intense throughfrequent repetition, vanishes no less completely as a consciousaction of the mind than knowledge and volition. We must all be awareof instances in which it is plain we must have remembered, withoutbeing in the smallest degree conscious of remembering. Is it thenabsurd to suppose that our past existences have been repeated on sucha vast number of occasions that the germ, linked on to all precedinggerms, and, by once having become part of their identity, imbued withall their memories, remembers too intensely to be conscious ofremembering, and works on with the same kind of unconsciousness withwhich we play, or walk, or read, until something unfamiliar happensto us? and is it not singularly in accordance with this view thatconsciousness should begin with that part of the creature'sperformance with which it is least familiar, as having repeated itleast often--that is to say, in our own case, with the commencementof our human life--at birth, or thereabouts?

It is certainly noteworthy that the embryo is never at a loss, unlesssomething happens to it which has not usually happened to itsforefathers, and which in the nature of things it cannot remember. 

When events are happening to it which have ordinarily happened to itsforefathers, and which it would therefore remember, if it waspossessed of the kind of memory which we are here attributing to it, IT ACTS PRECISELY AS IT WOULD ACT IF IT WERE POSSESSED OF SUCHMEMORY. 

When, on the other hand, events are happening to it which, if it hasthe kind of memory we are attributing to it, would baffle thatmemory, or which have rarely or never been included in the categoryof its recollections, IT ACTS PRECISELY AS A CREATURE ACTS WHEN ITSRECOLLECTION IS DISTURBED, OR WHEN IT IS REQUIRED TO DO SOMETHINGWHICH IT HAS NEVER DONE BEFORE. 

We cannot remember having been in the embryonic stage, but we do noton that account deny that we ever were in such a stage at all. On alittle reflection it will appear no more reasonable to maintain that, when we were in the embryonic stage, we did not remember our pastexistences, than to say that we never were embryos at all. We cannotremember what we did or did not recollect in that state; we cannotnow remember having grown the eyes which we undoubtedly did grow, much less can we remember whether or not we then remembered havinggrown them before; but it is probable that our memory was then, inrespect of our previous existences as embryos, as much more intensethan it is now in respect of our childhood, as our power of acquiringa new language was greater when we were one or two years old, thanwhen we were twenty. And why should this power of acquiringlanguages be greater at two years than at twenty, but that for manygenerations we have learnt to speak at about this age, and hence lookto learn to do so again on reaching it, just as we looked to makingeyes, when the time came at which we were accustomed to make them. 

If we once had the memory of having been infants (which we had fromday to day during infancy), and have lost it, we may well have hadother and more intense memories which we have lost no lesscompletely. Indeed, there is nothing more extraordinary in thesupposition that the impregnate ovum has an intense sense of itscontinuity with, and therefore of its identity with, the twoimpregnate ova from which it has sprung, than in the fact that wehave no sense of our continuity with ourselves as infants. If then, there is no a priori objection to this view, and if the impregnateovum acts in such a manner as to carry the strongest conviction thatit must have already on many occasions done what it is doing now, andthat it has a vivid though unconscious recollection of what all, andmore especially its nearer, ancestral ova did under similarcircumstances, there would seem to be little doubt what conclusion weought to come to. 

A hen's egg, for example, as soon as the hen begins to sit, sets towork immediately to do as nearly as may be what the two eggs fromwhich its father and mother were hatched did when hens began to situpon them. The inference would seem almost irresistible, --that thesecond egg remembers the course pursued by the eggs from which it hassprung, and of whose present identity it is unquestionably a part-phase; it also seems irresistibly forced upon us to believe that theintensity of this memory is the secret of its easy action. 

It has, I believe, been often remarked, that a hen is only an egg'sway of making another egg. Every creature must be allowed to "run"its own development in its own way; the egg's way may seem a veryroundabout manner of doing things; but it IS its way, and it is oneof which man, upon the whole, has no great reason to complain. Whythe fowl should be considered more alive than the egg, and why itshould be said that the hen lays the egg, and not that the egg laysthe hen, these are questions which lie beyond the power ofphilosophic explanation, but are perhaps most answerable byconsidering the conceit of man, and his habit, persisted in duringmany ages, of ignoring all that does not remind him of himself, orhurt him, or profit him; also by considering the use of language, which, if it is to serve at all, can only do so by ignoring a vastnumber of facts which gradually drop out of mind from being out ofsight. But, perhaps, after all, the real reason is, that the eggdoes not cackle when it has laid the hen, and that it works towardsthe hen with gradual and noiseless steps, which we can watch if we beso minded; whereas, we can less easily watch the steps which leadfrom the hen to the egg, but hear a noise, and see an egg where therewas no egg. Therefore, we say, the development of the fowl from theegg bears no sort of resemblance to that of the egg from the fowl, whereas, in truth, a hen, or any other living creature, is only theprimordial cell's way of going back upon itself. 

But to return. We see an egg, A, which evidently knows its ownmeaning perfectly well, and we know that a twelvemonth ago there weretwo other such eggs, B and C, which have now disappeared, but fromwhich we know A to have been so continuously developed as to be partof the present form of their identity. A's meaning is seen to beprecisely the same as B and C's meaning; A's personal appearance is, to all intents and purposes, B and C's personal appearance; it wouldseem, then, unreasonable to deny that A is only B and C come back, with such modification as they may have incurred since theirdisappearance; and that, in spite of any such modification, theyremember in A perfectly well what they did as B and C. 

We have considered the question of personal identity so as to seewhether, without abuse of terms, we can claim it as existing betweenany two generations of living agents (and if between two, thenbetween any number up to infinity), and we found that we were notonly at liberty to claim this, but that we are compelled irresistiblyto do so, unless, that is to say, we would think very differentlyconcerning personal identity than we do at present. We found itimpossible to hold the ordinary common sense opinions concerningpersonal identity, without admitting that we are personally identicalwith all our forefathers, who have successfully assimilated outsidematter to themselves, and by assimilation imbued it with all theirown memories; we being nothing else than this outside matter soassimilated and imbued with such memories. This, at least, will, Ibelieve, balance the account correctly. 

A few remarks upon the assimilation of outside matter by livingorganisms may perhaps be hazarded here. 

As long as any living organism can maintain itself in a position towhich it has been accustomed, more or less nearly, both in its ownlife and in those of its forefathers, nothing can harm it. As longas the organism is familiar with the position, and remembers itsantecedents, nothing can assimilate it. It must be first dislodgedfrom the position with which it is familiar, as being able toremember it, before mischief can happen to it. Nothing canassimilate living organism. 

On the other hand, the moment living organism loses sight of its ownposition and antecedents, it is liable to immediate assimilation, andto be thus familiarised with the position and antecedents of someother creature. If any living organism be kept for but a very shorttime in a position wholly different from what it has been accustomedto in its own life, and in the lives of its forefathers, it commonlyloses its memories completely, once and for ever; but it mustimmediately acquire new ones, for nothing can know nothing;everything must remember either its own antecedents, or some oneelse's. And as nothing can know nothing, so nothing can believe innothing. 

A grain of corn, for example, has never been accustomed to finditself in a hen's stomach--neither it nor its forefathers. For agrain so placed leaves no offspring, and hence cannot transmit itsexperience. The first minute or so after being eaten, it may thinkit has just been sown, and begin to prepare for sprouting, but in afew seconds, it discovers the environment to be unfamiliar; ittherefore gets frightened, loses its head, is carried into thegizzard, and comminuted among the gizzard stones. The hen succeededin putting it into a position with which it was unfamiliar; from thisit was an easy stage to assimilating it entirely. Once assimilated, the grain ceases to remember any more as a grain, but becomesinitiated into all that happens to, and has happened to, fowls forcountless ages. Then it will attack all other grains whenever itsees them; there is no such persecutor of grain, as another grainwhen it has once fairly identified itself with a hen. 

We may remark in passing, that if anything be once familiarised withanything, it is content. The only things we really care for in lifeare familiar things; let us have the means of doing what we have beenaccustomed to do, of dressing as we have been accustomed to dress, ofeating as we have been accustomed to eat, and let us have no lessliberty than we are accustomed to have, and last, but not least, letus not be disturbed in thinking as we have been accustomed to think, and the vast majority of mankind will be very fairly contented--allplants and animals will certainly be so. This would seem to suggesta possible doctrine of a future state; concerning which we mayreflect that though, after we die, we cease to be familiar withourselves, we shall nevertheless become immediately familiar withmany other histories compared with which our present life must thenseem intolerably uninteresting. 

This is the reason why a very heavy and sudden shock to the nervoussystem does not pain, but kills outright at once; while one withwhich the system can, at any rate, try to familiarise itself isexceedingly painful. We cannot bear unfamiliarity. The part that istreated in a manner with which it is not familiar cries immediatelyto the brain--its central government--for help, and makes itselfgenerally as troublesome as it can, till it is in some way comforted. Indeed, the law against cruelty to animals is but an example of thehatred we feel on seeing even dumb creatures put into positions withwhich they are not familiar. We hate this so much for ourselves, that we will not tolerate it for other creatures if we can possiblyavoid it. So again, it is said, that when Andromeda and Perseus hadtravelled but a little way from the rock where Andromeda had so longbeen chained, she began upbraiding him with the loss of her dragon, who, on the whole, she said, had been very good to her. The onlythings we really hate are unfamiliar things, and though nature wouldnot be nature if she did not cross our love of the familiar with alove also of the unfamiliar, yet there can be no doubt which of thetwo principles is master. 

Let us return, however, to the grain of corn. If the grain had hadpresence of mind to avoid being carried into the gizzard stones, asmany seeds do which are carried for hundreds of miles in birds'stomachs, and if it had persuaded itself that the novelty of theposition was not greater than it could very well manage to put upwith--if, in fact, it had not known when it was beaten--it might havestuck in the hen's stomach and begun to grow; in this case it wouldhave assimilated a good part of the hen before many days were over;for hens are not familiar with grains that grow in their stomachs, and unless the one in question was as strongminded for a hen, as thegrain that could avoid being assimilated would be for a grain, thehen would soon cease to take an interest in her antecedents. It isto be doubted, however, whether a grain has ever been grown which hashad strength of mind enough to avoid being set off its balance onfinding itself inside a hen's gizzard. For living organism is thecreature of habit and routine, and the inside of a gizzard is not inthe grain's programme. 

Suppose, then, that the grain, instead of being carried into thegizzard, had stuck in the hen's throat and choked her. It would nowfind itself in a position very like what it had often been in before. That is to say, it would be in a damp, dark, quiet place, not too farfrom light, and with decaying matter around it. It would thereforeknow perfectly well what to do, and would begin to grow untildisturbed, and again put into a position with which it might, verypossibly, be unfamiliar. 

The great question between vast masses of living organism is simplythis: "Am I to put you into a position with which your forefathershave been unfamiliar, or are you to put me into one about which myown have been in like manner ignorant?" Man is only the dominantanimal on the earth, because he can, as a general rule, settle thisquestion in his own favour. 

The only manner in which an organism, which has once forgotten itsantecedents, can ever recover its memory, is by being assimilated bya creature of its own kind; one, moreover, which knows its business, or is not in such a false position as to be compelled to be aware ofbeing so. It was, doubtless, owing to the recognition of this fact, that some Eastern nations, as we are told by Herodotus, were in thehabit of eating their deceased parents--for matter which has oncebeen assimilated by any identity or personality, becomes for allpractical purposes part of the assimilating personality. 

The bearing of the above will become obvious when we return, as wewill now do, to the question of personal identity. The onlydifficulty would seem to lie in our unfamiliarity with the realmeanings which we attach to words in daily use. Hence, whilerecognising continuity without sudden break as the underlyingprinciple of identity, we forget that this involves personal identitybetween all the beings who are in one chain of descent, the numbersof such beings, whether in succession, or contemporaneous, going fornothing at all. Thus we take two eggs, one male and one female, andhatch them; after some months the pair of fowls so hatched, havingsucceeded in putting a vast quantity of grain and worms into falsepositions, become full-grown, breed, and produce a dozen new eggs. 

Two live fowls and a dozen eggs are the present phase of thepersonality of the two original eggs. They are also part of thepresent phase of the personality of all the worms and grain which thefowls have assimilated from their leaving the eggshell; but thepersonalities of these last do not count; they have lost their grainand worm memories, and are instinct with the memorises of the wholeancestry of the creature which has assimilated them. 

We cannot, perhaps, strictly say that the two fowls and the dozen neweggs actually ARE the two original eggs; these two eggs are no longerin existence, and we see the two birds themselves which were hatchedfrom them. A bird cannot be called an egg without an abuse of terms. Nevertheless, it is doubtful how far we should not say this, for itis only with a mental reserve--and with no greater mental reserve--that we predicate absolute identity concerning any living being fortwo consecutive moments; and it is certainly as free from quibble tosay to two fowls and a dozen eggs, "you are the two eggs I had on mykitchen shelf twelve months ago, " as to say to a man, "you are thechild whom I remember thirty years ago in your mother's arms. " Ineither case we mean, "you have been continually putting otherorganisms into a false position, and then assimilating them, eversince I last saw you, while nothing has yet occurred to put YOU intosuch a false position as to have made you lose the memory of yourantecedents. "

It would seem perfectly fair, therefore, to say to any egg of thetwelve, or to the two fowls and the whole twelve eggs together, "youwere a couple of eggs twelve months ago; twelve months before thatyou were four eggs;" and so on, ad infinitum, the number neither ofthe ancestors nor of the descendants counting for anything, andcontinuity being the sole thing looked to. From daily observation weare familiar with the fact that identity does both unite with otheridentities, so that a single new identity is the result, and doesalso split itself up into several identities, so that the one becomesmany. This is plain from the manner in which the male and femalesexual elements unite to form a single ovum, which we observe to beinstinct with the memories of both the individuals from which it hasbeen derived; and there is the additional consideration, that each ofthe elements whose fusion goes to make up the impregnate ovum, isheld by some to be itself composed of a fused mass of germs, whichstand very much in the same relation to the spermatozoon and ovum, asthe living cellular units of which we are composed do to ourselves--that is to say, are living independent organisms, which probably haveno conception of the existence of the spermatozoon nor of the ovum, more than the spermatozoon or ovum have of theirs. 

This, at least, is what I gather from Mr. Darwin's provisional theoryof Pangenesis; and, again, from one of the concluding sentences inhis "Effects of Cross and Self Fertilisation, " where, asking thequestion why two sexes have been developed, he replies that theanswer seems to lie "in the great good which is derived from thefusion of two somewhat differentiated individuals. With theexception, " he continues, "or the lowest organisms this is possibleonly by means of the sexual elements--THESE CONSISTING OF CELLSSEPARATED FROM THE BODY" (i. E. , separated from the bodies of eachparent) "CONTAINING THE GERMS OF EVERY PART" (i. E. , consisting of theseeds or germs from which each individual cell of the coming organismwill be developed--these seeds or germs having been shed by eachindividual cell of the parent forms), "AND CAPABLE OF BEING FUSEDCOMPLETELY TOGETHER" (i. E. , so at least I gather, capable of beingfused completely, in the same way as the cells of our own bodies arefused, and thus, of forming a single living personality in the caseof both the male and female element; which elements are themselvescapable of a second fusion so as to form the impregnate ovum). Thissingle impregnate ovum, then, is a single identity that has taken theplace of and come up in the room of two distinct personalities, eachof whose characteristics it, to a certain extent, partakes, and whichconsist, each one of them, of the fused germs of a vast mass of otherpersonalities. 

As regards the dispersion of one identity into many, this also is amatter of daily observation in the case of all female creatures thatare with egg or young; the identity of the young with the femaleparent is in many respects so complete, as to need no enforcing, inspite of the entrance into the offspring of all the elements derivedfrom the male parent, and of the gradual separation of the twoidentities, which becomes more and more complete, till in time it ishard to conceive that they can ever have been united. 

Numbers, therefore, go for nothing; and, as far as identity orcontinued personality goes, it is as fair to say to the two fowls, above referred to, "you were four fowls twelve months ago, " as it isto say to a dozen eggs, "you were two eggs twelve months ago. " Buthere a difficulty meets us; for if we say, "you were two eggs twelvemonths ago, " it follows that we mean, "you are now those two eggs;"just as when we say to a person, "you were such and such a boy twentyyears ago, " we mean, "you are now that boy, or all that representshim;" it would seem, then, that in like manner we should say to thetwo fowls, "you ARE the four fowls who between them laid the two eggsfrom which you sprung. " But it may be that all these four fowls arestill to be seen running about; we should be therefore saying, "youtwo fowls are really not yourselves only, but you are also the otherfour fowls into the bargain;" and this might be philosophically true, and might, perhaps, be considered so, but for the convenience of thelaw courts. 

The difficulty would seem to arise from the fact that the eggs mustdisappear before fowls can be hatched from them, whereas, the hens sohatched may outlive the development of other hens, from the eggswhich they in due course have laid. The original eggs being out ofsight are out of mind, and it is without an effort that we acquiescein the assertion, --that the dozen new eggs actually are the twooriginal ones. But the original four fowls being still in sight, cannot be ignored, we only, therefore, see the new ones as growthsfrom the original ones. 

The strict rendering of the facts should be, "you are part of thepresent phase of the identity of such and such a past identity, "i. E. , either of the two eggs or the four fowls, as the case may be;this will put the eggs and the fowls, as it were, into the same box, and will meet both the philosophical and legal requirement of thecase, only it is a little long. 

So far then, as regards actual identity of personality; which, wefind, will allow us to say, that eggs are part of the present phaseof a certain past identity, whether of other eggs, or of fowls, orchickens, and in like, manner that chickens are part of the presentphase of certain other chickens, or eggs, or fowls; in fact, thatanything is part of the present phase of any past identity in theline of its ancestry. But as regards the actual memory of suchidentity (unconscious memory, but still clearly memory), we observethat the egg, as long as it is an egg, appears to have a verydistinct recollection of having been an egg before, and the fowl ofhaving been a fowl before, but that neither egg nor fowl appear tohave any recollection of any other stage of their past existences, than the one corresponding to that in which they are themselves atthe moment existing. 

So we, at six or seven years old, have no recollection of ever havingbeen infants, much less of having been embryos; but the manner inwhich we shed our teeth and make new ones, and the way in which wegrow generally, making ourselves for the most part exceedingly likewhat we made ourselves, in the person of some one of our nearerancestors, and not unfrequently repeating the very blunders which wemade upon that occasion when we come to a corresponding age, provesmost incontestably that we remember our past existences, though tooutterly to be capable of introspection in the matter. So, when wegrow wisdom teeth, at the age it may be of one or two and twenty, itis plain we remember our past existences at that age, howevercompletely we may have forgotten the earlier stages of our presentexistence. It may be said that it is the jaw which remembers, andnot we, but it seems hard to deny the jaw a right of citizenship inour personality; and in the case of a growing boy, every part of himseems to remember equally well, and if every part of him combineddoes not make HIM, there would seem but little use in continuing theargument further. 

In like manner, a caterpillar appears not to remember having been anegg, either in its present or any past existence. It has no concernwith eggs as soon as it is hatched, but it clearly remembers not onlyhaving been a caterpillar before, but also having turned itself intoa chrysalis before; for when the time comes for it to do this, it isat no loss, as it would certainly be if the position was unfamiliar, but it immediately begins doing what it did when last it was in alike case, repeating the process as nearly as the environment willallow, taking every step in the same order as last time, and doingits work with that ease and perfection which we observe to belong tothe force of habit, and to be utterly incompatible with any othersupposition than that of long long practice. 

Once having become a chrysalis, its memory of its caterpillarhoodappears to leave it for good and all, not to return until it againassumes the shape of a caterpillar by process of descent. Its memorynow overleaps all past modifications, and reverts to the time when itwas last what it is now, and though it is probable that bothcaterpillar and chrysalis, on any given day of their existence ineither of these forms, have some sort of dim power of recollectingwhat happened to them yesterday, or the day before; yet it is plaintheir main memory goes back to the corresponding day of their lastexistence in their present form, the chrysalis remembering whathappened to it on such a day far more practically, though lessconsciously, than what happened to it yesterday; and naturally, foryesterday is but once, and its past existences have been legion. Hence, it prepares its wings in due time, doing each day what it didon the corresponding day of its last chrysalishood and at lengthbecoming a moth; whereon its circumstances are so changed that itloses all sense of its identity as a chrysalis (as completely as we, for precisely the same reason, lose all sense of our identity withourselves as infants), and remembers nothing but its past existencesas a moth. 

We observe this to hold throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms. In any one phase of the existence of the lower animals, we observethat they remember the corresponding stage, and a little on eitherside of it, of all their past existences for a very great length oftime. In their present existence they remember a little behind thepresent moment (remembering more and more the higher they advance inthe scale of life), and being able to foresee about as much as theycould foresee in their past existences, sometimes more and sometimesless. As with memory, so with prescience. The higher they advancein the scale of life the more prescient they are. It must, ofcourse, be remembered, and will later on be more fully dwelt upon, that no offspring can remember anything which happens to its parentsafter it and its parents have parted company; and this is why thereis, perhaps, more irregularity as regards our wisdom-teeth than aboutanything else that we grow; inasmuch as it must not uncommonly havehappened in a long series of generations, that the offspring has beenborn before the parents have grown their wisdom-teeth, and thus therewill be faults in the memory. 

Is there, then, anything in memory, as we observe it in ourselves andothers, under circumstances in which we shall agree in calling itmemory pure and simple without ambiguity of terms--is there anythingin memory which bars us from supposing it capable of overleaping along time of abeyance, and thus of enabling each impregnate ovum, oreach grain, to remember what it did when last in a like condition, and to go on remembering the corresponding period of its priordevelopments throughout the whole period of its present growth, though such memory has entirely failed as regards the interim betweenany two corresponding periods, and is not consciously recognised bythe individual as being exercised at all?

CHAPTER IX--ON THE ABEYANCE OF MEMORY

Let us assume, for the moment, that the action of each impregnategerm is due to memory, which, as it were, pulsates anew in eachsucceeding generation, so that immediately on impregnation, thegerm's memory reverts to the last occasion on which it was in a likecondition, and recognising the position, is at no loss what to do. It is plain that in all cases where there are two parents, that is tosay, in the greater number of cases, whether in the vegetable oranimal kingdoms, there must be two such last occasions, each of whichwill have an equal claim upon the attention of the new germ. Itsmemory would therefore revert to both, and though it would probablyadhere more closely to the course which it took either as its fatheror its mother, and thus come out eventually male or female, yet itwould be not a little influenced by the less potent memory. 

And not only this, but each of the germs to which the memory of thenew germ reverts, is itself imbued with the memories of its ownparent germs, and these again with the memories of precedinggenerations, and so on ad infinitum; so that, ex hypothesi, the germmust become instinct with all these memories, epitomised as afterlong time, and unperceived though they may well be, not to sayobliterated in part or entirely so far as many features areconcerned, by more recent impressions. In this case, we mustconceive of the impregnate germ as of a creature which has to repeata performance already repeated before on countless differentoccasions, but with no more variation on the more recent ones than isinevitable in the repetition of any performance by an intelligentbeing. 

Now if we take the most parallel case to this which we can find, andconsider what we should ourselves do under such circumstances, thatis to say, if we consider what course is actually taken by beings whoare influenced by what we all call memory, when they repeat analready often-repeated performance, and if we find a very stronganalogy between the course so taken by ourselves, and that which fromwhatever cause we observe to be taken by a living germ, we shallsurely be much inclined to think that there must be a similarity inthe causes of action in each case; and hence, to conclude, that theaction of the germ is due to memory. 

It will, therefore, be necessary to consider the general tendency ofour minds in regard to impressions made upon us, and the memory ofsuch impressions. 

Deep impressions upon the memory are made in two ways, differingrather in degree than kind, but with two somewhat widely differentresults. They are made:-

I. By unfamiliar objects, or combinations, which come atcomparatively long intervals, and produce their effect, as it were, by one hard blow. The effect of these will vary with theunfamiliarity of the impressions themselves, and the manner in whichthey seem likely to lead to a further development of the unfamiliar, i. E. , with the question, whether they seem likely to compel us tochange our habits, either for better or worse. 

Thus, if an object or incident be very unfamiliar, as, we will say, awhale or an iceberg to one travelling to America for the first time, it will make a deep impression, though but little affecting ourinterests; but if we struck against the iceberg and were shipwrecked, or nearly so, it would produce a much deeper impression, we shouldthink much more about icebergs, and remember much more about them, than if we had merely seen one. So, also, if we were able to catchthe whale and sell its oil, we should have a deep impression madeupon us. In either case we see that the amount of unfamiliarity, either present or prospective, is the main determinant of the depthof the impression. 

As with consciousness and volition, so with sudden unfamiliarity. Itimpresses us more and more deeply the more unfamiliar it is, until itreaches such a point of impressiveness as to make no furtherimpression at all; on which we then and there die. For death onlykills through unfamiliarity--that is to say, because the newposition, whatever it is, is so wide a cross as compared with the oldone, that we cannot fuse the two so as to understand the combination;hence we lose all recognition of, and faith in, ourselves and oursurroundings. 

But however much we imagine we remember concerning the details of anyremarkable impression which has been made us by a single blow, we donot remember as much or nearly as much as we think we do. Thesubordinate details soon drop out of mind. Those who think theyremember even such a momentous matter as the battle of Waterloorecall now probably but half-a-dozen episodes, a gleam here, and agleam there, so that what they call remembering the battle ofWaterloo, is, in fact, little more than a kind of dreaming--so soonvanishes the memory of any unrepeated occurrence. 

As for smaller impressions, there is very little of what happens tous in each week that will be in our memories a week hence; a man ofeighty remembers few of the unrepeated incidents of his life beyondthose of the last fortnight, a little here, and a little there, forming a matter of perhaps six weeks or two months in all, ifeverything that he can call to mind were acted over again with nogreater fulness than he can remember it. As for incidents that havebeen often repeated, his mind strikes a balance of its pastreminiscences, remembering the two or three last performances, and ageneral method of procedure, but nothing more. 

If, then, the recollection of all that is not very novel, or veryoften repeated, so soon fades from our own minds, during what weconsider as our single lifetime, what wonder that the details of ourdaily experience should find no place in that brief epitome of themwhich is all we can give in so small a volume as offspring?

If we cannot ourselves remember the hundred-thousandth part of whathappened to us during our own childhood, how can we expect ouroffspring to remember more than what, through frequent repetition, they can now remember as a residuum, or general impression. On theother hand, whatever we remember in consequence of but a singleimpression, we remember consciously. We can at will recall details, and are perfectly well aware, when we do so, that we arerecollecting. A man who has never seen death looks for the firsttime upon the dead face of some near relative or friend. He gazesfor a few short minutes, but the impression thus made does not soonpass out of his mind. He remembers the room, the hour of the day ornight, and if by day, what sort of a day. He remembers in what partof the room, and how disposed the body of the deceased was lying. Twenty years afterwards he can, at will, recall all these matters tohis mind, and picture to himself the scene as he originally witnessedit. 

The reason is plain; the impression was very unfamiliar, and affectedthe beholder, both as regards the loss of one who was dear to him, and as reminding him with more than common force that he will one daydie himself. Moreover the impression was a simple one, not involvingmuch subordinate detail; we have in this case, therefore, an exampleof the most lasting kind of impression that can be made by a singleunrepeated event. But if we examine ourselves closely, we shall findthat after a lapse of years we do not remember as much as we think wedo, even in such a case as this; and that beyond the incidents abovementioned, and the expression upon the face of the dead person, weremember little of what we can so consciously and vividly recall. 

II. Deep impressions are also made by the repetition, more or lessoften, of a feeble impression which, if unrepeated, would have soonpassed out of our minds. We observe, therefore, that we rememberbest what we have done least often--any unfamiliar deviation, that isto say, from our ordinary method of procedure--and what we have donemost often, with which, therefore, we are most familiar; our memorybeing mainly affected by the force of novelty and the force ofroutine--the most unfamiliar, and the most familiar, incidents orobjects. 

But we remember impressions which have been made upon us by force ofroutine, in a very different way to that in which we remember asingle deep impression. As regards this second class, whichcomprises far the most numerous and important of the impressions withwhich our memory is stored, it is often only by the fact of ourperformance itself that we are able to recognise or show to othersthat we remember at all. We often do not remember how, or when, orwhere we acquired our knowledge. All we remember is, that we didlearn, and that at one time and another we have done this or thatvery often. 

As regards this second class of impressions we may observe:-

1. That as a general rule we remember only the individual featuresof the last few repetitions of the act--if, indeed, we remember thismuch. The influence of preceding ones is to be found only in thegeneral average of the procedure, which is modified by them, butunconsciously to ourselves. Take, for example, some celebratedsinger, or pianoforte player, who has sung the same air, or performedthe same sonata several hundreds or, it may be, thousands of times:of the details of individual performances, he can probably call tomind none but those of the last few days, yet there can be noquestion that his present performance is affected by, and modifiedby, all his previous ones; the care he has bestowed on these beingthe secret of his present proficiency. 

In each performance (the performer being supposed in the same stateof mental and bodily health), the tendency will be to repeat theimmediately preceding performances more nearly than remoter ones. Itis the common tendency of living beings to go on doing what they havebeen doing most recently. The last habit is the strongest. Hence, if he took great pains last time, he will play better now, and willtake a like degree of pains, and play better still next time, and sogo on improving while life and vigour last. If, on the other hand, he took less pains last time, he will play worse now, and be inclinedto take little pains next time, and so gradually deteriorate. This, at least, is the common everyday experience of mankind. 

So with painters, actors, and professional men of every description;after a little while the memory of many past performances strikes asort of fused balance in the mind, which results in a general methodof procedure with but little conscious memory of even the latestperformances, and with none whatever of by far the greater number ofthe remoter ones. 

Still, it is noteworthy, that the memory of some even of these willoccasionally assert itself, so far as we can see, arbitrarily, thereason why this or that occasion should still haunt us, when otherslike them are forgotten, depending on some cause too subtle for ourpowers of observation. 

Even with such a simple matter as our daily dressing and undressing, we may remember some few details of our yesterday's toilet, but weretain nothing but a general and fused recollection of the manythousand earlier occasions on which we have dressed, or gone to bed. Men invariably put the same leg first into their trousers--this isthe survival of memory in a residuum; but they cannot, till theyactually put on a pair of trousers, remember which leg they DO put infirst; this is the rapid fading away of any small individualimpression. 

The seasons may serve as another illustration; we have a generalrecollection of the kind of weather which is seasonable for any monthin a year; what flowers are due about what time, and whether thespring is on the whole backward or early; but we cannot remember theweather on any particular day a year ago, unless some unusualincident has impressed it upon our memory. We can remember, as ageneral rule, what kind of season it was, upon the whole, a year ago, or perhaps, even two years; but more than this, we rarely remember, except in such cases as the winter of 1854-1855, or the summer of1868; the rest is all merged. 

We observe, then, that as regards small and often repeatedimpressions, our tendency is to remember best, and in most detail, what we have been doing most recently, and what in general hasoccurred most recently, but that the earlier impressions thoughforgotten individually, are nevertheless, not wholly lost. 

2. When we have done anything very often, and have got into thehabit of doing it, we generally take the various steps in the sameorder; in many cases this seems to be a sine qua non for ourrepetition of the action at all. Thus, there is probably no livingman who could repeat the words of "God save the Queen" backwards, without much hesitation and many mistakes; so the musician and thesinger must perform their pieces in the order of the notes aswritten, or at any rate as they ordinarily perform them; they cannottranspose bars or read them backwards, without being put out, norwould the audience recognise the impressions they have beenaccustomed to, unless these impressions are made in the accustomedorder. 

3. If, when we have once got well into the habit of doing anythingin a certain way, some one shows us some other way of doing it, orsome way which would in part modify our procedure, or if in ourendeavours to improve, we have hit upon some new idea which seemslikely to help us, and thus we vary our course, on the next occasionwe remember this idea by reason of its novelty, but if we try torepeat it, we often find the residuum of our old memories pulling usso strongly into our old groove, that we have the greatest difficultyin repeating our performance in the new manner; there is a clashingof memories, a conflict, which if the idea is very new, and involves, so to speak, too sudden a cross--too wide a departure from ourordinary course--will sometimes render the performance monstrous, orbaffle us altogether, the new memory failing to fuse harmoniouslywith the old. If the idea is not too widely different from our olderones, we can cross them with it, but with more or less difficulty, asa general rule in proportion to the amount of variation. The wholeprocess of understanding a thing consists in this, and, so far as Ican see at present, in this only. 

Sometimes we repeat the new performance for a few times, in a waywhich shows that the fusion of memories is still in force; and theninsensibly revert to the old, in which case the memory of the newsoon fades away, leaving a residuum too feeble to contend againstthat of our many earlier memories of the same kind. If, however, thenew way is obviously to our advantage, we make an effort to retainit, and gradually getting into the habit of using it, come toremember it by force of routine, as we originally remembered it byforce of novelty. Even as regards our own discoveries, we do notalways succeed in remembering our most improved and most strikingperformances, so as to be able to repeat them at will immediately:in any such performance we may have gone some way beyond our ordinarypowers, owing to some unconscious action of the mind. The supremeeffort has exhausted us, and we must rest on our oars a little, before we make further progress; or we may even fall back a little, before we make another leap in advance. 

In this respect, almost every conceivable degree of variation isobservable, according to differences of character and circumstances. Sometimes the new impression has to be made upon us many times fromwithout, before the earlier strain of action is eliminated; in thiscase, there will long remain a tendency to revert to the earlierhabit. Sometimes, after the impression has been once made, we repeatour old way two or three times, and then revert to the new, whichgradually ousts the old; sometimes, on the other hand, a singleimpression, though involving considerable departure from our routine, makes its mark so deeply that we adopt the new at once, though notwithout difficulty, and repeat it in our next performance, andhenceforward in all others; but those who vary their performance thusreadily will show a tendency to vary subsequent performancesaccording as they receive fresh ideas from others, or reason them outindependently. They are men of genius. 

This holds good concerning all actions which we do habitually, whether they involve laborious acquirement or not. Thus, if we havevaried our usual dinner in some way that leaves a favourableimpression upon our minds, so that our dinner may, in the language ofthe horticulturist, be said to have "sported, " our tendency will beto revert to this particular dinner either next day, or as soon ascircumstances will allow, but it is possible that several hundreddinners may elapse before we can do so successfully, or before ourmemory reverts to this particular dinner. 

4. As regards our habitual actions, however unconsciously weremember them, we, nevertheless, remember them with far greaterintensity than many individual impressions or actions, it may be ofmuch greater moment, that have happened to us more recently. Thus, many a man who has familiarised himself, for example, with the odesof Horace, so as to have had them at his fingers' ends as the resultof many repetitions, will be able years hence to repeat a given ode, though unable to remember any circumstance in connection with hishaving learnt it, and no less unable to remember when he repeated itlast. A host of individual circumstances, many of them notunimportant, will have dropped out of his mind, along with a mass ofliterature read but once or twice, and not impressed upon the memoryby several repetitions; but he returns to the well-known ode with solittle effort, that he would not know that he was remembering unlesshis reason told him so. The ode seems more like something born withhim. 

We observe, also, that people who have become imbecile, or whosememory is much impaired, yet frequently retain their power ofrecalling impression which have been long ago repeatedly made uponthem. 

In such cases, people are sometimes seen to forget what happened lastweek, yesterday, or an hour ago, without even the smallest power ofrecovering their recollection; but the oft repeated earlierimpression remains, though there may be no memory whatever of how itcame to be impressed so deeply. The phenomena of memory, therefore, are exactly like those of consciousness and volition, in so far asthat the consciousness of recollection vanishes, when the power ofrecollection has become intense. When we are aware that we arerecollecting, and are trying, perhaps hard, to recollect, it is asign that we do not recollect utterly. When we remember utterly andintensely, there is no conscious effort of recollection; ourrecollection can only be recognised by ourselves and others, throughour performance itself, which testifies to the existence of a memory, that we could not otherwise follow or detect. 

5. When circumstances have led us to change our habits of life--aswhen the university has succeeded school, or professional life theuniversity--we get into many fresh ways, and leave many old ones. But on revisiting the old scene, unless the lapse of time has beeninordinately great, we experience a desire to revert to old habits. We say that old associations crowd upon us. Let a Trinity man, afterthirty years absence from Cambridge, pace for five minutes in thecloister of Neville's Court, and listen to the echo of his footfall, as it licks up against the end of the cloister, or let an old Johnianstand wherever he likes in the third Court of St. John's, in eithercase he will find the thirty years drop out of his life, as if theywere half-an-hour; his life will have rolled back upon itself, to thedate when he was an undergraduate, and his instinct will be to doalmost mechanically, whatever it would have come most natural to himto do, when he was last there at the same season of the year, and thesame hour of the day; and it is plain this is due to similarity ofenvironment, for if the place he revisits be much changed, there willbe little or no association. 

So those who are accustomed at intervals to cross the Atlantic, getinto certain habits on board ship, different to their usual ones. Itmay be that at home they never play whist; on board ship they donothing else all the evening. At home they never touch spirits; onthe voyage they regularly take a glass of something before they go tobed. They do not smoke at home; here they are smoking all day. Oncethe voyage is at an end, they return without an effort to their usualhabits, and do not feel any wish for cards, spirits, or tobacco. They do not remember yesterday, when they did want all these things;at least, not with such force as to be influenced by it in theirdesires and actions; their true memory--the memory which makes themwant, and do, reverts to the last occasion on which they were incircumstances like their present; they therefore want now what theywanted then, and nothing more; but when the time comes for them to goon shipboard again, no sooner do they smell the smell of the ship, than their real memory reverts to the times when they were last atsea, and striking a balance of their recollections, they smoke, playcards, and drink whisky and water. 

We observe it then as a matter of the commonest daily occurrencewithin our own experience, that memory does fade completely away, andrecur with the recurrence of surroundings like those which made anyparticular impression in the first instance. We observe that thereis hardly any limit to the completeness and the length of time duringwhich our memory may remain in abeyance. A smell may remind an oldman of eighty of some incident of his childhood, forgotten for nearlyas many years as he has lived. In other words, we observe that whenan impression has been repeatedly made in a certain sequence on anyliving organism--that impression not having been prejudicial to thecreature itself--the organism will have a tendency, on reassuming theshape and conditions in which it was when the impression was lastmade, to remember the impression, and therefore to do again now whatit did then; all intermediate memories dropping clean out of mind, sofar as they have any effect upon action. 

6. Finally, we should note the suddenness and apparent caprice withwhich memory will assert itself at odd times; we have been saying ordoing this or that, when suddenly a memory of something whichhappened to us, perhaps in infancy, comes into our head; nor can wein the least connect this recollection with the subject of which wehave just been thinking, though doubtless there has been aconnection, too rapid and subtle for our apprehension. 

The foregoing phenomena of memory, so far as we can judge, wouldappear to be present themselves throughout the animal and vegetablekingdoms. This will be readily admitted as regards animals; asregards plants it may be inferred from the fact that they generallygo on doing what they have been doing most lately, though accustomedto make certain changes at certain points in their existence. Whenthe time comes for these changes, they appear to know it, and eitherbud forth into leaf or shed their leaves, as the case may be. If wekeep a bulb in a paper bag it seems to remember having been a bulbbefore, until the time comes for it to put forth roots and grow. Then, if we supply it with earth and moisture, it seems to know whereit is, and to go on doing now whatever it did when it was lastplanted; but if we keep it in the bag too long, it knows that itought, according to its last experience, to be treated differently, and shows plain symptoms of uneasiness; it is distracted by the bag, which makes it remember its bulbhood, and also by the want of earthand water, without which associations its memory of its previousgrowth cannot be duly kindled. Its roots, therefore, which are mostaccustomed to earth and water, do not grow; but its leaves, which donot require contact with these things to jog their memory, make amore decided effort at development--a fact which would seem to gostrongly in favour of the functional independence of the parts of allbut the very simplest living organisms, if, indeed, more evidencewere wanted in support of this. 

CHAPTER X--WHAT WE SHOULD EXPECT TO FIND IF DIFFERENTIATIONS OFSTRUCTURE AND INSTINCT ARE MAINLY DUE TO MEMORY

To repeat briefly;--we remember best our last few performances of anygiven kind, and our present performance is most likely to resembleone or other of these; we only remember our earlier performances byway of residuum; nevertheless, at times, some older feature is liableto reappear. 

We take our steps in the same order on each successive occasion, andare for the most part incapable of changing that order. 

The introduction of slightly new elements into our manner is attendedwith benefit; the new can be fused with the old, and the monotony ofour action is relieved. But if the new element is too foreign, wecannot fuse the old and new--nature seeming equally to hate too widea deviation from our ordinary practice, and no deviation at all. Or, in plain English--if any one gives us a new idea which is not too farahead of us, such an idea is often of great service to us, and maygive new life to our work--in fact, we soon go back, unless we moreor less frequently come into contact with new ideas, and are capableof understanding and making use of them; if; on the other hand, theyare too new, and too little led up to, so that we find them toostrange and hard to be able to understand them and adopt them, thenthey put us out, with every degree of completeness--from simplycausing us to fail in this or that particular part, to rendering usincapable of even trying to do our work at all, from pure despair ofsucceeding. 

It requires many repetitions to fix an impression firmly; but when itis fixed, we cease to have much recollection of the manner in whichit came to be so, or of any single and particular recurrence. 

Our memory is mainly called into action by force of association andsimilarity in the surroundings. We want to go on doing what we didwhen we were last as we are now, and we forget what we did in themeantime. 

These rules, however, are liable to many exceptions; as for example, that a single and apparently not very extraordinary occurrence maysometimes produce a lasting impression, and be liable to return withsudden force at some distant time, and then to go on returning to usat intervals. Some incidents, in fact, we know not how nor why, dwell with us much longer than others which were apparently quite asnoteworthy or perhaps more so. 

Now I submit that if the above observations are just, and if, also, the offspring, after having become a new and separate personality, yet retains so much of the old identity of which it was onceindisputably part, that it remembers what it did when it was part ofthat identity as soon as it finds itself in circumstances which arecalculated to refresh its memory owing to their similarity to certainantecedent ones, then we should expect to find:-

I. That offspring should, as a general rule, resemble its own mostimmediate progenitors; that is to say, that it should remember bestwhat it has been doing most recently. The memory being a fusion ofits recollections of what it did, both when it was its father andalso when it was its mother, the offspring should have a very commontendency to resemble both parents, the one in some respects, and theother in others; but it might also hardly less commonly show a moremarked recollection of the one history than of the other, thus moredistinctly resembling one parent than the other. And this is what weobserve to be the case. Not only so far as that the offspring isalmost invariably either male or female, and generally resemblesrather the one parent than the other, but also that in spite of suchpreponderance of one set of recollections, the sexual characters andinstincts of the OPPOSITE sex appear, whether in male or female, though undeveloped and incapable of development except by abnormaltreatment, such as has occasionally caused milk to be developed inthe mammary glands of males; or by mutilation, or failure of sexualinstinct through age, upon which, male characteristics frequentlyappear in the females of any species. 

Brothers and sisters, each giving their own version of the samestory, though in different words, should resemble each other moreclosely than more distant relations. This too we see. 

But it should frequently happen that offspring should resemble itspenultimate rather than its latest phase, and should thus be morelike a grand-parent than a parent; for we observe that we very oftenrepeat a performance in a manner resembling that of some earlier, butstill recent, repetition; rather than on the precise lines of ourvery last performance. First-cousins may in this case resemble eachother more closely than brothers and sisters. 

More especially, we should not expect very successful men to befathers of particularly gifted children; for the best men are, as itwere, the happy thoughts and successes of the race--nature's"flukes, " so to speak, in her onward progress. No creature canrepeat at will, and immediately, its highest flight. It needsrepose. The generations are the essays of any given race towards thehighest ideal which it is as yet able to see ahead of itself, andthis, in the nature of things, cannot be very far; so that we shouldexpect to see success followed by more or less failure, and failureby success--a very successful creature being a GREAT "fluke. " Andthis is what we find. 

In its earlier stages the embryo should be simply conscious of ageneral method of procedure on the part of its forefathers, andshould, by reason of long practice, compress tedious and complicatedhistories into a very narrow compass, remembering no singleperformance in particular. For we observe this in nature, both asregards the sleight-of-hand which practice gives to those who arethoroughly familiar with their business, and also as regards thefusion of remoter memories into a general residuum. 

II. We should expect to find that the offspring, whether in itsembryonic condition, or in any stage of development till it hasreached maturity, should adopt nearly the same order in going throughall its various stages. There should be such slight variations asare inseparable from the repetition of any performance by a livingbeing (as contrasted with a machine), but no more. And this is whatactually happens. A man may cut his wisdom-teeth a little later thanhe gets his beard and whiskers, or a little earlier; but on thewhole, he adheres to his usual order, and is completely set off hisbalance, and upset in his performance, if that order be interferedwith suddenly. It is, however, likely that gradual modifications oforder have been made and then adhered to. 

After any animal has reached the period at which it ordinarily beginsto continue its race, we should expect that it should show littlefurther power of development, or, at any rate, that few great changesof structure or fresh features should appear; for we cannot supposeoffspring to remember anything that happens to the parentsubsequently to the parent's ceasing to contain the offspring withinitself; from the average age, therefore, of reproduction, offspringwould cease to have any further experience on which to fall back, andwould thus continue to make the best use of what it already knew, till memory failing either in one part or another, the organism wouldbegin to decay. 

To this cause must be referred the phenomena of old age, whichinteresting subject I am unable to pursue within the limits of thisvolume. 

Those creatures who are longest in reaching maturity might beexpected also to be the longest lived; I am not certain, however, howfar what is called alternate generation militates against this view, but I do not think it does so seriously. 

Lateness of marriage, provided the constitution of the individualsmarrying is in no respect impaired, should also tend to longevity. 

I believe that all the above will be found sufficiently wellsupported by facts. If so, when we feel that we are getting old weshould try and give our cells such treatment as they will find itmost easy to understand, through their experience of their ownindividual life, which, however, can only guide them inferentially, and to a very small extent; and throughout life we should rememberthe important bearing which memory has upon health, and bothoccasionally cross the memories of our component cells with slightlynew experiences, and be careful not to put them either suddenly orfor long together into conditions which they will not be able tounderstand. Nothing is so likely to make our cells forgetthemselves, as neglect of one or other of these considerations. Theywill either fail to recognise themselves completely, in which case weshall die; or they will go on strike, more or less seriously as thecase may be, or perhaps, rather, they will try and remember theirusual course, and fail; they will therefore try some other, and willprobably make a mess of it, as people generally do when they try todo things which they do not understand, unless indeed they have veryexceptional capacity. 

It also follows that when we are ill, our cells being in such or sucha state of mind, and inclined to hold a corresponding opinion withmore or less unreasoning violence, should not be puzzled more thanthey are puzzled already, by being contradicted too suddenly; forthey will not be in a frame of mind which can understand the positionof an open opponent: they should therefore either be let alone, ifpossible, without notice other than dignified silence, till theirspleen is over, and till they have remembered themselves; or theyshould be reasoned with as by one who agrees with them, and who isanxious to see things as far as possible from their own point ofview. And this is how experience teaches that we must deal withmonomaniacs, whom we simply infuriate by contradiction, but whosedelusion we can sometimes persuade to hang itself if we but give itsufficient rope. All which has its bearing upon politics, too, atmuch sacrifice, it may be, of political principles, but a politicianwho cannot see principles where principle-mongers fail to see them, is a dangerous person. 

I may say, in passing, that the reason why a small wound heals, andleaves no scar, while a larger one leaves a mark which is more orless permanent, may be looked for in the fact that when the wound isonly small, the damaged cells are snubbed, so to speak, by the vastmajority of the unhurt cells in their own neighbourhood. When thewound is more serious they can stick to it, and bear each other outthat they were hurt. 

III. We should expect to find a predominance of sexual over asexualgeneration, in the arrangements of nature for continuing her variousspecies, inasmuch as two heads are better than one, and a locuspoenitentiae is thus given to the embryo--an opportunity ofcorrecting the experience of one parent by that of the other. Andthis is what the more intelligent embryos may be supposed to do; forthere would seem little reason to doubt that there are clever embryosand stupid embryos, with better or worse memories, as the case maybe, of how they dealt with their protoplasm before, and better orworse able to see how they can do better now; and that embryos differas widely in intellectual and moral capacity, and in a general senseof the fitness of things, and of what will look well into thebargain, as those larger embryos--to wit, children--do. Indeed itwould seem probable that all our mental powers must go through aquasi-embryological condition, much as the power of keeping, andwisely spending, money must do so, and that all the qualities ofhuman thought and character are to be found in the embryo. 

Those who have observed at what an early age differences of intellectand temper show themselves in the young, for example, of cats anddogs, will find it difficult to doubt that from the very moment ofimpregnation, and onward, there has been a corresponding differencein the embryo--and that of six unborn puppies, one, we will say, hasbeen throughout the whole process of development more sensible andbetter looking--a nicer embryo, in fact--than the others. 

IV. We should expect to find that all species, whether of plants oranimals, are occasionally benefited by a cross; but we should alsoexpect that a cross should have a tendency to introduce a disturbingelement, if it be too wide, inasmuch as the offspring would be pulledhither and thither by two conflicting memories or advices, much asthough a number of people speaking at once were without previouswarning to advise an unhappy performer to vary his ordinaryperformance--one set of people telling him he has always hithertodone thus, and the other saying no less loudly that he did it thus;--and he were suddenly to become convinced that they each spoke thetruth. In such a case he will either completely break down, if theadvice be too conflicting, or if it be less conflicting, he may yetbe so exhausted by the one supreme effort of fusing these experiencesthat he will never be able to perform again; or if the conflict ofexperience be not great enough to produce such a permanent effect asthis, it will yet, if it be at all serious, probably damage hisperformances on their next several occasions, through his inabilityto fuse the experiences into a harmonious whole, or, in other words, to understand the ideas which are prescribed to him; for to fuse isonly to understand. 

And this is absolutely what we find in fact. Mr. Darwin writesconcerning hybrids and first crosses:- "The male element may reachthe female element, but be incapable of causing an embryo to bedeveloped, as seems to have been the case with some of Thuret'sexperiments on Fuci. No explanation can be given of these facts anymore than why certain trees cannot be grafted on others. "

I submit that what I have written above supplies a very fair primafacie explanation. 

Mr. Darwin continues:-

"Lastly, an embryo may be developed, and then perish at an earlyperiod. This latter alternative has not been sufficiently attendedto; but I believe, from observations communicated to me by Mr. Hewitt, who has had great experience in hybridising pheasants andfowls, that the early death of the embryo is a very frequent cause ofsterility in first crosses. Mr. Salter has recently given theresults of an examination of about five hundred eggs produced fromvarious crosses between three species of Gallus and their hybrids;the majority of these eggs had been fertilised; and in the majorityof the fertilised eggs, the embryos had either been partiallydeveloped, and had then perished, or had become nearly mature, butthe young chickens had been unable to break through the shell. Ofthe chickens which were born more than four-fifths died within thefirst few days, or at latest weeks, 'without any obvious cause, apparently from mere inability to live, ' so that from the fivehundred eggs only twelve chickens were reared" ("Origin of Species, "249, ed. 1876). 

No wonder the poor creatures died, distracted as they were by theinternal tumult of conflicting memories. But they must have sufferedgreatly; and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals mayperhaps think it worth while to keep an eye even on the embryos ofhybrids and first crosses. Five hundred creatures puzzled to deathis not a pleasant subject for contemplation. Ten or a dozen should, I think, be sufficient for the future. 

As regards plants, we read:-

"Hybridised embryos probably often perish in like manner . . . Ofwhich fact Max Wichura has given some striking cases with hybridwillows . . . It may be here worth noticing, that in some cases ofparthenogenesis, the embryos within the eggs of silk moths, whichhave not been fertilised, pass through their early stages ofdevelopment, and then perish like the embryos produced by a crossbetween distinct species" (Ibid). 

This last fact would at first sight seem to make against me, but wemust consider that the presence of a double memory, provided it benot too conflicting, would be a part of the experience of the silkmoth's egg, which might be then as fatally puzzled by the monotony ofa single memory as it would be by two memories which were notsufficiently like each other. So that failure here must be referredto the utter absence of that little internal stimulant of slightlyconflicting memory which the creature has always hithertoexperienced, and without which it fails to recognise itself. Ineither case, then, whether with hybrids or in cases ofparthenogenesis, the early death of the embryo is due to inability torecollect, owing to a fault in the chain of associated ideas. Allthe facts here given are an excellent illustration of the principle, elsewhere insisted upon by Mr. Darwin, that ANY great and suddenchange of surroundings has a tendency to induce sterility; on whichhead he writes ("Plants and Animals under Domestication, " vol. Ii. P. 143, ed. 1875):-

"It would appear that any change in the habits of life, whatevertheir habits may be, if great enough, tends to affect in aninexplicable manner the powers of reproduction. "

And again on the next page:-

"Finally, we must conclude, limited though the conclusion is, thatchanged conditions of life have an especial power of actinginjuriously on the reproductive system. The whole case is quitepeculiar, for these organs, though not diseased, are thus renderedincapable of performing their proper functions, or perform themimperfectly. "

One is inclined to doubt whether the blame may not rest with theinability on the part of the creature reproduced to recognise the newsurroundings, and hence with its failing to know itself. And thisseems to be in some measure supported--but not in such a manner as Ican hold to be quite satisfactory--by the continuation of the passagein the "Origin of Species, " from which I have just been quoting--forMr. Darwin goes on to say:-

"Hybrids, however, are differently circumstanced before and afterbirth. When born, and living in a country where their parents live, they are generally placed under suitable conditions of life. But ahybrid partakes of only half of the nature and condition of itsmother; it may therefore before birth, as long as it is nourishedwithin its mother's womb, or within the egg or seed produced by itsmother, be exposed to conditions in some degree unsuitable, andconsequently be liable to perish at an early period . . . " Afterwhich, however, the conclusion arrived at is, that, "after all, thecause more probably lies in some imperfection in the original act ofimpregnation, causing the embryo to be imperfectly developed ratherthan in the conditions to which it is subsequently exposed. " Aconclusion which I am not prepared to accept. 

Returning to my second alternative, that is to say, to the case ofhybrids which are born well developed and healthy, but neverthelessperfectly sterile, it is less obvious why, having succeeded inunderstanding the conflicting memories of their parents, they shouldfail to produce offspring; but I do not think the reader will feelsurprised that this should be the case. The following anecdote, trueor false, may not be out of place here:-

"Plutarch tells us of a magpie, belonging to a barber at Rome, whichcould imitate to a nicety almost every word it heard. Some trumpetshappened one day to be sounded before the shop, and for a day or twoafterwards the magpie was quite mute, and seemed pensive andmelancholy. All who knew it were greatly surprised at its silence;and it was supposed that the sound of the trumpets had so stunned itas to deprive it at once of both voice and hearing. It soonappeared, however, that this was far from being the case; for, saysPlutarch, the bird had been all the time occupied in profoundmeditation, studying how to imitate the sound of the trumpets; andwhen at last master of it, the magpie, to the astonishment of all itsfriends, suddenly broke its long silence by a perfect imitation ofthe flourish of trumpets it had heard, observing with the greatestexactness all the repetitions, stops, and changes. THE ACQUISITIONOF THIS LESSON HAD, HOWEVER, EXHAUSTED THE WHOLE OF THE MAGPIE'SSTOCK OF INTELLECT, FOR IT MADE IT FORGET EVERYTHING IT HAD LEARNEDBEFORE" ("Percy Anecdotes, " Instinct, p. 166). 

Or, perhaps, more seriously, the memory of every impregnate ovum fromwhich every ancestor of a mule, for example, has sprung, has revertedto a very long period of time during which its forefathers have beencreatures like that which it is itself now going to become: thus, the impregnate ovum from which the mule's father was developedremembered nothing but horse memories; but it felt its faith in thesesupported by the recollection of a VAST NUMBER of previousgenerations, in which it was, to all intents and purposes, what itnow is. In like manner, the impregnate ovum from which the mule'smother was developed would be backed by the assurance that it haddone what it is going to do now a hundred thousand times already. All would thus be plain sailing. A horse and a donkey would result. These two are brought together; an impregnate ovum is produced whichfinds an unusual conflict of memory between the two lines of itsancestors, nevertheless, being accustomed to SOME conflict, itmanages to get over the difficulty, AS ON EITHER SIDE IT FINDS ITSELFBACKED BY A VERY LONG SERIES OF SUFFICIENTLY STEADY MEMORY. A muleresults--a creature so distinctly different from either horse ordonkey, that reproduction is baffled, owing to the creature's havingnothing but its own knowledge of itself to fall back upon, behindwhich there comes an immediate dislocation, or fault of memory, whichis sufficient to bar identity, and hence reproduction, by renderingtoo severe an appeal to reason necessary--for no creature canreproduce itself on the shallow foundation which reason can alonegive. Ordinarily, therefore, the hybrid, or the spermatozoon orovum, which it may throw off (as the case may be), finds one singleexperience too small to give it the necessary faith, on the strengthof which even to try to reproduce itself. In other cases the hybriditself has failed to be developed; in others the hybrid, or firstcross, is almost fertile; in others it is fertile, but producesdepraved issue. The result will vary with the capacities of thecreatures crossed, and the amount of conflict between their severalexperiences. 

The above view would remove all difficulties out of the way ofevolution, in so far as the sterility of hybrids is concerned. Forit would thus appear that this sterility has nothing to do with anysupposed immutable or fixed limits of species, but results simplyfrom the same principle which prevents old friends, no matter howintimate in youth, from returning to their old intimacy after a lapseof years, during which they have been subjected to widely differentinfluences, inasmuch as they will each have contracted new habits, and have got into new ways, which they do not like now to alter. 

We should expect that our domesticated plants and animals should varymost, inasmuch as these have been subjected to changed conditionswhich would disturb the memory, and, breaking the chain ofrecollection, through failure of some one or other of the associatedideas, would thus directly and most markedly affect the reproductivesystem. Every reader of Mr. Darwin will know that this is whatactually happens, and also that when once a plant or animal begins tovary, it will probably vary a good deal further; which, again, iswhat we should expect--the disturbance of the memory introducing afresh factor of disturbance, which has to be dealt with by theoffspring as it best may. Mr. Darwin writes: "All our domesticatedproductions, with the rarest exceptions, vary far more than naturalspecies" ("Plants and Animals, " &c. , vol ii. P. 241, ed. 1875). 

On my third supposition, i. E. , when the difference between parentshas not been great enough to baffle reproduction on the part of thefirst cross, but when the histories of the father and mother havebeen, nevertheless, widely different--as in the case of Europeans andIndians--we should expect to have a race of offspring who should seemto be quite clear only about those points, on which their progenitorson both sides were in accord before the manifold divergencies intheir experiences commenced; that is to say, the offspring shouldshow a tendency to revert to an early savage condition. 

That this indeed occurs may be seen from Mr. Darwin's "Plants andAnimals under Domestication" (vol ii. P. 21, ed. 1875), where we findthat travellers in all parts of the world have frequently remarked"ON THE DEGRADED STATE AND SAVAGE CONDITION OF CROSSED RACES OF MAN. "A few lines lower down Mr. Darwin tells us that he was himself"struck with the fact that, in South America, men of complicateddescent between Negroes, Indians, and Spaniards seldom had, whateverthe cause might be, a good expression. " "Livingstone" (continues Mr. Darwin) "remarks, 'It is unaccountable why half-castes are so muchmore cruel than the Portuguese, but such is undoubtedly the case. 'An inhabitant remarked to Livingstone, 'God made white men, and Godmade black men, but the devil made half-castes. '" A little furtheron Mr. Darwin says that we may "perhaps infer that the degraded stateof so many half-castes IS IN PART DUE TO REVERSION TO A PRIMITIVE ANDSAVAGE CONDITION, INDUCED BY THE ACT OF CROSSING, even if mainly dueto the unfavourable moral conditions under which they are generallyreared. " Why the crossing should produce this particular tendencywould seem to be intelligible enough, if the fashion and instincts ofoffspring are, in any case, nothing but the memories of its pastexistences; but it would hardly seem to be so upon any of thetheories now generally accepted; as, indeed, is very readily admittedby Mr. Darwin himself, who even, as regards purely-bred animals andplants, remarks that "we are quite unable to assign any proximatecause" for their tendency to at times reassume long lost characters. 

If the reader will follow for himself the remaining phenomena ofreversion, he will, I believe, find them all explicable on the theorythat they are due to memory of past experiences fused, and modified--at times specifically and definitely--by changed conditions. Thereis, however, one apparently very important phenomenon which I do notat this moment see how to connect with memory, namely, the tendencyon the part of offspring to revert to an earlier impregnation. Mr. Darwin's "Provisional Theory of Pangenesis" seemed to afford asatisfactory explanation of this; but the connection with memory wasnot immediately apparent. I think it likely, however, that thisdifficulty will vanish on further consideration, so I will not domore than call attention to it here. 

The instincts of certain neuter insects hardly bear upon reversion, but will be dealt with at some length in Chapter XII. 

V. We should expect to find, as was insisted on in the precedingsection in reference to the sterility of hybrids, that it requiredmany, or at any rate several, generations of changed habits before asufficiently deep impression could be made upon the living being (whomust be regarded always as one person in his whole line of ascent ordescent) for it to be unconsciously remembered by him, when makinghimself anew in any succeeding generation, and thus to make himmodify his method of procedure during his next embryologicaldevelopment. Nevertheless, we should expect to find that sometimes avery deep single impression made upon a living organism, should beremembered by it, even when it is next in an embryonic condition. 

That this is so, we find from Mr. Darwin, who writes ("Plants andAnimals under Domestication, " vol. Ii. P. 57, ed. 1875)--"There isample evidence that the effect of mutilations and of accidents, especially, or perhaps exclusively, when followed by disease" (whichwould certainly intensify the impression made), "are occasionallyinherited. There can be no doubt that the evil effects of the longcontinued exposure of the parent to injurious conditions aresometimes transmitted to the offspring. " As regards impressions of aless striking character, it is so universally admitted that they arenot observed to be repeated in what is called the offspring, untilthey have been confirmed in what is called the parent, for severalgenerations, but that after several generations, more or fewer as thecase may be, they often are transmitted--that it seems unnecessary tosay more upon the matter. Perhaps, however, the following passagefrom Mr. Darwin may be admitted as conclusive:-

"That they" (acquired actions) "are inherited, we see with horses incertain transmitted paces, such as cantering and ambling, which arenot natural to them--in the pointing of young pointers, and thesetting of young setters--in the peculiar manner of flight of certainbreeds of the pigeon, &c. We have analogous cases with mankind inthe inheritance of tricks or unusual gestures. " . . . ("Expression ofthe Emotions, " p. 29). 

In another place Mr. Darwin writes:-

"How again can we explain THE INHERITED EFFECTS of the use or disuseof particular organs? The domesticated duck flies less and walksmore than the wild duck, and its limb bones have become diminishedand increased in a corresponding manner in comparison with those ofthe wild duck. A horse is trained to certain paces, and the coltinherits similar consensual movements. The domesticated rabbitbecomes tame from close confinement; the dog intelligent fromassociating with man; the retriever is taught to fetch and carry; andthese mental endowments and bodily powers are all inherited" ("Plantsand Animals, " &c. , vol. Ii. P. 367, ed. 1875). 

"Nothing, " he continues, "in the whole circuit of physiology is morewonderful. How can the use or disuse of a particular limb, or of thebrain, affect a small aggregate of reproductive cells, seated in adistant part of the body in such a manner that the being developedfrom these cells inherits the character of one or both parents? Evenan imperfect answer to this question would be satisfactory" ("Plantsand Animals, " &c. Vol. Ii. P. 367, ed. 1875). 

With such an imperfect answer will I attempt to satisfy the reader, as to say that there appears to be that kind of continuity ofexistence and sameness of personality, between parents and offspring, which would lead us to expect that the impressions made upon theparent should be epitomised in the offspring, when they have been orhave become important enough, through repetition in the history ofseveral so-called existences to have earned a place in that smalleredition, which is issued from generation to generation; or, in otherwords, when they have been made so deeply, either at one blow orthrough many, that the offspring can remember them. In practice weobserve this to be the case--so that the answer lies in the assertionthat offspring and parent, being in one sense but the sameindividual, there is no great wonder that, in one sense, the firstshould remember what had happened to the latter; and that too, muchin the same way as the individual remembers the events in the earlierhistory of what he calls his own lifetime, but condensed, and prunedof detail, and remembered as by one who has had a host of othermatters to attend to in the interim. 

It is thus easy to understand why such a rite as circumcision, thoughpractised during many ages, should have produced little, if any, modification tending to make circumcision unnecessary. On the viewhere supported such modification would be more surprising than not, for unless the impression made upon the parent was of a gravecharacter--and probably unless also aggravated by subsequentconfusion of memories in the cells surrounding the part originallyimpressed--the parent himself would not be sufficiently impressed toprevent him from reproducing himself, as he had already done upon aninfinite number of past occasions. The child, therefore, in the wombwould do what the father in the womb had done before him, nor shouldany trace of memory concerning circumcision be expected till theeighth day after birth, when, but for the fact that the impression inthis case is forgotten almost as soon as made, some slightpresentiment of coming discomfort might, after a large number ofgenerations, perhaps be looked for as a general rule. It would not, however, be surprising, that the effect of circumcision should beoccasionally inherited, and it would appear as though this wassometimes actually the case. 

The question should turn upon whether the disuse of an organ hasarisen:-

1. From an internal desire on the part of the creature disusing it, to be quit of an organ which it finds troublesome. 

2. From changed conditions and habits which render the organ nolonger necessary, or which lead the creature to lay greater stress oncertain other organs or modifications. 

3. From the wish of others outside itself; the effect produced inthis case being perhaps neither very good nor very bad for theindividual, and resulting in no grave impression upon the organism asa whole. 

4. From a single deep impression on a parent, affecting both himselfas a whole, and gravely confusing the memories of the cells to bereproduced, or his memories in respect of those cells--according asone adopts Pangenesis and supposes a memory to "run" each gemmule, oras one supposes one memory to "run" the whole impregnate ovum--acompromise between these two views being nevertheless perhapspossible, inasmuch as the combined memories of all the cells maypossibly BE the memory which "runs" the impregnate ovum, just as weARE ourselves the combination of all our cells, each one of which isboth autonomous, and also takes its share in the central government. But within the limits of this volume it is absolutely impossible forme to go into this question. 

In the first case--under which some instances which belong morestrictly to the fourth would sometimes, but rarely, come--the organshould soon go, and sooner or later leave no rudiment, though stillperhaps to be found crossing the life of the embryo, and thendisappearing. 

In the second it should go more slowly, and leave, it may be, arudimentary structure. 

In the third it should show little or no sign of natural decrease fora very long time. 

In the fourth there may be absolute and total sterility, or sterilityin regard to the particular organ, or a scar which shall show thatthe memory of the wound and of each step in the process of healinghas been remembered; or there may be simply such disturbance in thereproduced organ as shall show a confused recollection of injury. There may be infinite gradations between the first and last of thesepossibilities. 

I think that the facts, as given by Mr. Darwin ("Plants and Animals, "&c. , vol i. Pp. 466-472, ed. 1875), will bear out the above to thesatisfaction of the reader. I can, however, only quote the followingpassage:-

" . . . Brown Sequard has bred during thirty years many thousandguinea-pigs, . . . Nor has he ever seen a guinea-pig born withouttoes which was not the offspring of parents WHICH HAD GNAWED OFFTHEIR OWN TOES, owing to the sciatic nerve having been divided. Ofthis fact thirteen instances were carefully recorded, and a greaternumber were seen; yet Brown Sequard speaks of such cases as among therarer forms of inheritance. It is a still more interesting fact--'that the sciatic nerve in the congenitally toeless animal hasinherited the power of passing through ALL THE DIFFERENT MORBIDSTATES which have occurred in one of its parents FROM THE TIME OFDIVISION till after its reunion with the peripheric end. It is nottherefore the power of simply performing an action which isinherited, but the power of performing a whole series of actions in acertain order. '"

I feel inclined to say it is not merely the original wound that isremembered, but the whole process of cure which is now accordinglyrepeated. Brown Sequard concludes, as Mr. Darwin tells us, "thatwhat is transmitted is the morbid state of the nervous system, " dueto the operation performed on the parents. 

A little lower down Mr. Darwin writes that Professor Rolleston hasgiven him two cases--"namely, of two men, one of whom had his knee, and the other his cheek, severely cut, and both had children bornwith exactly the same spot marked or scarred. "

VI. When, however, an impression has once reached transmissionpoint--whether it be of the nature of a sudden striking thought, which makes its mark deeply then and there, or whether it be theresult of smaller impressions repeated until the nail, so to speak, has been driven home--we should expect that it should be rememberedby the offspring as something which he has done all his life, andwhich he has therefore no longer any occasion to learn; he will act, therefore, as people say, INSTINCTIVELY. No matter how complex anddifficult the process, if the parents have done it sufficiently often(that is to say, for a sufficient number of generations), theoffspring will remember the fact when association wakens the memory;it will need no instruction, and--unless when it has been taught tolook for it during many generations--will expect none. This may beseen in the case of the humming-bird sphinx moth, which, as Mr. Darwin writes, "shortly after its emergence from the cocoon, as shownby the bloom on its unruffled scales, may be seen poised stationaryin the air with its long hair-like proboscis uncurled, and insertedinto the minute orifices of flowers; AND NO ONE I BELIEVE HAS EVERSEEN this moth learning to perform its difficult task, which requiressuch unerring aim" ("Expression of the Emotions, " p. 30). 

And, indeed, when we consider that after a time the most complex anddifficult actions come to be performed by man without the leasteffort or consciousness--that offspring cannot be considered asanything but a continuation of the parent life, whose past habits andexperiences it epitomises when they have been sufficiently oftenrepeated to produce a lasting impression--that consciousness ofmemory vanishes on the memory's becoming intense, as completely asthe consciousness of complex and difficult movements vanishes as soonas they have been sufficiently practised--and finally, that the realpresence of memory is testified rather by performance of the repeatedaction on recurrence of like surroundings, than by consciousness ofrecollecting on the part of the individual--so that not only shouldthere be no reasonable bar to our attributing the whole range of themore complex instinctive actions, from first to last, to memory pureand simple, no matter how marvellous they may be, but rather thatthere is so much to compel us to do so, that we find it difficult toconceive how any other view can have been ever taken--when, I say, weconsider all these facts, we should rather feel surprise that thehawk and sparrow still teach their offspring to fly, than that thehumming-bird sphinx moth should need no teacher. 

The phenomena, then, which we observe are exactly those which weshould expect to find. 

VII. We should also expect that the memory of animals, as regardstheir earlier existences, was solely stimulated by association. Forwe find, from Prof. Bain, that "actions, sensations, and states offeeling occurring together, or in close succession, tend to growtogether or cohere in such a way that when any one of them isafterwards presented to the mind, the others are apt to be brought upin idea" ("The Senses and the Intellect, " 2d ed. 1864, p. 332). AndProf. Huxley says ("Elementary Lessons in Physiology, " 5th ed. 1872, p. 306), "It may be laid down as a rule that if any two mental statesbe called up together, or in succession, with due frequency andvividness, the subsequent production of the one of them will sufficeto call up the other, AND THAT WHETHER WE DESIRE IT OR NOT. " I wouldgo one step further, and would say not only whether we desire it ornot, but WHETHER WE ARE AWARE THAT THE IDEA HAS EVER BEFORE BEENCALLED UP IN OUR MINDS OR NOT. I should say that I have quoted boththe above passages from Mr. Darwin's "Expression of the Emotions" (p. 30, ed. 1872). 

We should, therefore, expect that when the offspring found itself inthe presence of objects which had called up such and such ideas for asufficient number of generations, that is to say, "with due frequencyand vividness"--it being of the same age as its parents were, andgenerally in like case as when the ideas were called up in the mindsof the parents--the same ideas should also be called up in the mindsof the offspring "WHETHER THEY DESIRE IT OR NOT;" and, I would sayalso, "whether they recognise the ideas as having ever before beenpresent to them or not. "

I think we might also expect that no other force, save that ofassociation, should have power to kindle, so to speak, into the flameof action the atomic spark of memory, which we can alone suppose tobe transmitted from one generation to another. 

That both plants and animals do as we should expect of them in thisrespect is plain, not only from the performance of the most intricateand difficult actions--difficult both physically and intellectually--at an age, and under circumstances which preclude all possibility ofwhat we call instruction, but from the fact that deviations from theparental instinct, or rather the recurrence of a memory, unless inconnection with the accustomed train of associations, is ofcomparatively rare occurrence; the result, commonly, of some one ofthe many memories about which we know no more than we do of thememory which enables a cat to find her way home after a hundred-milejourney by train, and shut up in a hamper, or, perhaps even morecommonly, of abnormal treatment. 

VIII. If, then, memory depends on association, we should expect twocorresponding phenomena in the case of plants and animals--namely, that they should show a tendency to resume feral habits on beingturned wild after several generations of domestication, and also thatpeculiarities should tend to show themselves at a corresponding agein the offspring and in the parents. As regards the tendency toresume feral habits, Mr. Darwin, though apparently of opinion thatthe tendency to do this has been much exaggerated, yet does not doubtthat such a tendency exists, as shown by well authenticatedinstances. He writes: "It has been repeatedly asserted in the mostpositive manner by various authors that feral animals and plantsinvariably return to their primitive specific type. "

This shows, at any rate, that there is a considerable opinion to thiseffect among observers generally. 

He continues: "It is curious on what little evidence this beliefrests. Many of our domesticated animals could not subsist in a wildstate, "--so that there is no knowing whether they would or would notrevert. "In several cases we do not know the aboriginal parentspecies, and cannot tell whether or not there has been any closedegree of reversion. " So that here, too, there is at any rate noevidence AGAINST the tendency; the conclusion, however, is that, notwithstanding the deficiency of positive evidence to warrant thegeneral belief as to the force of the tendency, yet "the simple factof animals and plants becoming feral does cause some tendency torevert to the primitive state, " and he tells us that "when variously-coloured tame rabbits are turned out in Europe, they generally re-acquire the colouring of the wild animal;" there can be no doubt, " hesays, "that this really does occur, " though he seems inclined toaccount for it by the fact that oddly-coloured and conspicuousanimals would suffer much from beasts of prey and from being easilyshot. "The best known case of reversion:" he continues, "and that onwhich the widely-spread belief in its universality apparently rests, is that of pigs. These animals have run wild in the West Indies, South America, and the Falkland Islands, and have everywhere re-acquired the dark colour, the thick bristles, and great tusks of thewild boar; and the young have re-acquired longitudinal stripes. " Andon page 22 of "Plants and Animals under Domestication" (vol. Ii. Ed. 1875) we find that "the re-appearance of coloured, longitudinalstripes on young feral pigs cannot be attributed to the direct actionof external conditions. In this case, and in many others, we canonly say that any change in the habits of life apparently favours atendency, inherent or latent, in the species to return to theprimitive state. " On which one cannot but remark that though anychange may favour such tendency, yet the return to original habitsand surroundings appears to do so in a way so marked as not to bereadily referable to any other cause than that of association andmemory--the creature, in fact, having got into its old groove, remembers it, and takes to all its old ways. 

As regards the tendency to inherit changes (whether embryonic, orduring post-natal development as ordinarily observed in any species), or peculiarities of habit or form which do not partake of the natureof disease, it must be sufficient to refer the reader to Mr. Darwin'sremarks upon this subject ("Plants and Animals Under Domestication, "vol. Ii. Pp. 51-57, ed. 1875). The existence of the tendency is notlikely to be denied. The instances given by Mr. Darwin are strictlyto the point as regards all ordinary developmental and metamorphicchanges, and even as regards transmitted acquired actions, and tricksacquired before the time when the offspring has issued from the bodyof the parent, or on an average of many generations does so; but itcannot for a moment be supposed that the offspring knows byinheritance anything about what happens to the parent subsequently tothe offspring's being born. Hence the appearance of diseases in theoffspring, at comparatively late periods in life, but at the same ageas, or earlier, than in the parents, must be regarded as due to thefact that in each case the machine having been made after the samepattern (which IS due to memory), is liable to have the same weakpoints, and to break down after a similar amount of wear and tear;but after less wear and tear in the case of the offspring than inthat of the parent, because a diseased organism is commonly adeteriorating organism, and if repeated at all closely, and withoutrepentance and amendment of life, will be repeated for the worse. Ifwe do not improve, we grow worse. This, at least, is what we observedaily. 

Nor again can we believe, as some have fancifully imagined, that theremembrance of any occurrence of which the effect has been entirely, or almost entirely mental, should be remembered by offspring with anydefiniteness. The intellect of the offspring might be affected, forbetter or worse, by the general nature of the intellectual employmentof the parent; or a great shock to a parent might destroy or weakenthe intellect of the offspring; but unless a deep impression weremade upon the cells of the body, and deepened by subsequent disease, we could not expect it to be remembered with any definiteness, orprecision. We may talk as we will about mental pain, and mentalscars, but after all, the impressions they leave are incomparablyless durable than those made by an organic lesion. It is probable, therefore, that the feeling which so many have described, as thoughthey remembered this or that in some past existence, is purelyimaginary, and due rather to unconscious recognition of the fact thatwe certainly have lived before, than to any actual occurrencecorresponding to the supposed recollection. 

And lastly, we should look to find in the action of memory, asbetween one generation and another, a reflection of the manyanomalies and exceptions to ordinary rules which we observe inmemory, so far as we can watch its action in what we call our ownsingle lives, and the single lives of others. We should expect thatreversion should be frequently capricious--that is to say, give usmore trouble to account for than we are either able or willing totake. And assuredly we find it so in fact. Mr. Darwin--from whom itis impossible to quote too much or too fully, inasmuch as no one elsecan furnish such a store of facts, so well arranged, and so above allsuspicion of either carelessness or want of candour--so that, howeverwe may differ from him, it is he himself who shows us how to do so, and whose pupils we all are--Mr. Darwin writes: "In every livingbeing we may rest assured that a host of long-lost characters lieready to be evolved under proper conditions" (does not one almostlong to substitute the word "memories" for the word "characters?")"How can we make intelligible, and connect with other facts, thiswonderful and common capacity of reversion--this power of callingback to life long-lost characters?" ("Plants and Animals, " &c. , vol. Ii. P. 369, ed. 1875). Surely the answer may be hazarded, that weshall be able to do so when we can make intelligible the power ofcalling back to life long-lost memories. But I grant that thisanswer holds out no immediate prospect of a clear understanding. 

One word more. Abundant facts are to be found which pointinevitably, as will appear more plainly in the following chapter, inthe direction of thinking that offspring inherits the memories of itsparents; but I know of no single fact which suggests that parents arein the smallest degree affected (other than sympathetically) by thememories of their offspring AFTER THAT OFFSPRING HAS BEEN BORN. Whether the unborn offspring affects the memory of the mother in someparticulars, and whether we have here the explanation of occasionalreversion to a previous impregnation, is a matter on which I shouldhardly like to express an opinion now. Nor, again, can I find asingle fact which seems to indicate any memory of the parental lifeon the part of offspring later than the average date of theoffspring's quitting the body of the parent. 

CHAPTER XI--INSTINCT AS INHERITED MEMORY

I have already alluded to M. Ribot's work on "Heredity, " from which Iwill now take the following passages. 

M. Ribot writes:-

"Instinct is innate, i. E. , ANTERIOR TO ALL INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE. "This I deny on grounds already abundantly apparent; but let it pass. "Whereas intelligence is developed slowly by accumulated experience, instinct is perfect from the first" ("Heredity, " p. 14). 

Obviously the memory of a habit or experience will not commonly betransmitted to offspring in that perfection which is called"instinct, " till the habit or experience has been repeated in severalgenerations with more or less uniformity; for otherwise theimpression made will not be strong enough to endure through the busyand difficult task of reproduction. This of course involves that thehabit shall have attained, as it were equilibrium with the creature'ssense of its own needs, so that it shall have long seemed the bestcourse possible, leaving upon the whole and under ordinarycircumstances little further to be desired, and hence that it shouldhave been little varied during many generations. We should expectthat it would be transmitted in a more or less partial, varying, imperfect, and intelligent condition before equilibrium had beenattained; it would, however, continually tend towards equilibrium, for reasons which will appear more fully later on. 

When this stage has been reached, as regards any habit, the creaturewill cease trying to improve; on which the repetition of the habitwill become stable, and hence become capable of more unerringtransmission--but at the same time improvement will cease; the habitwill become fixed, and be perhaps transmitted at an earlier andearlier age, till it has reached that date of manifestation whichshall be found most agreeable to the other habits of the creature. It will also be manifested, as a matter of course, without furtherconsciousness or reflection, for people cannot be always opening upsettled questions; if they thought a matter over yesterday theycannot think it all over again to-day, but will adopt for better orworse the conclusion then reached; and this, too, even in spitesometimes of considerable misgiving, that if they were to think stillfurther they could find a still better course. It is not, therefore, to be expected that "instinct" should show signs of that hesitatingand tentative action which results from knowledge that is still soimperfect as to be actively self-conscious; nor yet that it shouldgrow or vary, unless under such changed conditions as shall bafflememory, and present the alternative of either invention--that is tosay, variation--or death. But every instinct must have poisedthrough the laboriously intelligent stages through which humancivilisations AND MECHANICAL INVENTIONS are now passing; and he whowould study the origin of an instinct with its development, partialtransmission, further growth, further transmission, approach to moreunreflecting stability, and finally, its perfection as an unerringand unerringly transmitted instinct, must look to laws, customs, ANDMACHINERY as his best instructors. Customs and machines areinstincts AND ORGANS now in process of development; they willassuredly one day reach the unconscious state of equilibrium which weobserve in the structures and instincts of bees and ants, and anapproach to which may be found among some savage nations. We mayreflect, however, not without pleasure, that this condition--the truemillennium--is still distant. Nevertheless the ants and bees seemhappy; perhaps more happy than when so many social questions were inas hot discussion among them, as other, and not dissimilar ones, willone day be amongst ourselves. 

And this, as will be apparent, opens up the whole question of thestability of species, which we cannot follow further here, than tosay, that according to the balance of testimony, many plants andanimals do appear to have reached a phase of being from which theyare hard to move--that is to say, they will die sooner than be at thepains of altering their habits--true martyrs to their convictions. Such races refuse to see changes in their surroundings as long asthey can, but when compelled to recognise them, they throw up thegame because they cannot and will not, or will not and cannot, invent. And this is perfectly intelligible, for a race is nothingbut a long-lived individual, and like any individual, or tribe of menwhom we have yet observed, will have its special capacities and itsspecial limitations, though, as in the case of the individual, soalso with the race, it is exceedingly hard to say what thoselimitations are, and why, having been able to go so far, it should gono further. Every man and every race is capable of education up to acertain point, but not to the extent of being made from a sow's earinto a silk purse. The proximate cause of the limitation seems tolie in the absence of the wish to go further; the presence or absenceof the wish will depend upon the nature and surroundings of theindividual, which is simply a way of saying that one can get nofurther, but that as the song (with a slight alteration) says:-

"Some breeds do, and some breeds don't, Some breeds will, but this breed won't, I tried very often to see if it would, But it said it really couldn't, and I don't think it could. "

It may perhaps be maintained, that with time and patience, one mighttrain a rather stupid plough-boy to understand the differentialcalculus. This might be done with the help of an inward desire onthe part of the boy to learn, but never otherwise. If the boy wantsto learn or to improve generally, he will do so in spite of everyhindrance, till in time he becomes a very different being from whathe was originally. If he does not want to learn, he will not do sofor any wish of another person. If he feels that he has the power hewill wish; or if he wishes, he will begin to think he has the power, and try to fulfil his wishes; one cannot say which comes first, forthe power and the desire go always hand in hand, or nearly so, andthe whole business is nothing but a most vicious circle from first tolast. But it is plain that there is more to be said on behalf ofsuch circles than we have been in the habit of thinking. Do what wewill, we must each one of us argue in a circle of our own, fromwhich, so long as we live at all, we can by no possibility escape. Iam not sure whether the frank acceptation and recognition of thisfact is not the best corrective for dogmatism that we are likely tofind. 

We can understand that a pigeon might in the course of ages grow tobe a peacock if there was a persistent desire on the part of thepigeon through all these ages to do so. We know very well that thishas not probably occurred in nature, inasmuch as no pigeon is at alllikely to wish to be very different from what it is now. The idea ofbeing anything very different from what it now is, would be too widea cross with the pigeon's other ideas for it to entertain itseriously. If the pigeon had never seen a peacock, it would not beable to conceive the idea, so as to be able to make towards it; if, on the other hand, it had seen one, it would not probably either wantto become one, or think that it would be any use wanting seriously, even though it were to feel a passing fancy to be so gorgeouslyarrayed; it would therefore lack that faith without which no action, and with which, every action, is possible. 

That creatures have conceived the idea of making themselves likeother creatures or objects which it was to their advantage orpleasure to resemble, will be believed by any one who turns to Mr. Mivart's "Genesis of Species, " where he will find (chapter ii. ) anaccount of some very showy South American butterflies, which give outsuch a strong odour that nothing will eat them, and which are hencemimicked both in appearance and flight by a very different kind ofbutterfly; and, again, we see that certain birds, without anyparticular desire of gain, no sooner hear any sound than they beginto mimick it, merely for the pleasure of mimicking; so we all enjoyto mimick, or to hear good mimicry, so also monkeys imitate theactions which they observe, from pure force of sympathy. To mimick, or to wish to mimick, is doubtless often one of the first stepstowards varying in any given direction. Not less, in allprobability, than a full twenty per cent. Of all the courage and goodnature now existing in the world, derives its origin, at no verydistant date, from a desire to appear courageous and good-natured. And this suggests a work whose title should be "On the Fine Arts asbearing on the Reproductive System, " of which the title must sufficehere. 

Against faith, then, and desire, all the "natural selection" in theworld will not stop an amoeba from becoming an elephant, if areasonable time be granted; without the faith and the desire, neither"natural selection" nor artificial breeding will be able to do muchin the way of modifying any structure. When we have once thoroughlygrasped the conception that we are all one creature, and that eachone of us is many millions of years old, so that all the pigeons inthe one line of an infinite number of generations are still onepigeon only--then we can understand that a bird, as different from apeacock as a pigeon is now, could yet have wandered on and on, firstthis way and then that, doing what it liked, and thought that itcould do, till it found itself at length a peacock; but we cannotbelieve either that a bird like a pigeon should be able to apprehendany ideal so different from itself as a peacock, and make towards it, or that man, having wished to breed a bird anything like a peacockfrom a bird anything like a pigeon, would be able to succeed inaccumulating accidental peacock-like variations till he had made thebird he was in search of, no matter in what number of generations;much less can we believe that the accumulation of small fortuitousvariations by "natural selection" could succeed better. We can nomore believe the above, than we can believe that a wish outside aplough-boy could turn him into a senior wrangler. The boy wouldprove to be too many for his teacher, and so would the pigeon for itsbreeder. 

I do not forget that artificial breeding has modified the originaltype of the horse and the dog, till it has at length produced thedray-horse and the greyhound; but in each case man has had to get useand disuse--that is to say, the desires of the animal itself--to helphim. 

We are led, then, to the conclusion that all races have what forpractical purposes may be considered as their limits, though there isno saying what those limits are, nor indeed why, in theory, thereshould be any limits at all, but only that there are limits inpractice. Races which vary considerably must be considered asclever, but it may be speculative, people who commonly have a geniusin some special direction, as perhaps for mimicry, perhaps forbeauty, perhaps for music, perhaps for the higher mathematics, butseldom in more than one or two directions; while "inflexibleorganisations, " like that of the goose, may be considered asbelonging to people with one idea, and the greater tendency of plantsand animals to vary under domestication may be reasonably comparedwith the effects of culture and education: that is to say, may bereferred to increased range and variety of experience or perceptions, which will either cause sterility, if they be too unfamiliar, so asto be incapable of fusion with preceding ideas, and hence to bringmemory to a sudden fault, or will open the door for all manner offurther variation--the new ideas having suggested new trains ofthought, which a clever example of a clever race will be only tooeager to pursue. 

Let us now return to M. Ribot. He writes (p. 14):- "The ducklinghatched by the hen makes straight for water. " In what conceivableway can we account for this, except on the supposition that theduckling knows perfectly well what it can, and what it cannot do withwater, owing to its recollection of what it did when it was still oneindividuality with its parents, and hence, when it was a ducklingbefore?

"The squirrel, before it knows anything of winter, lays up a store ofnuts. A bird when hatched in a cage will, when given its freedom, build for itself a nest like that of its parents, out of the samematerials, and of the same shape. "

If this is not due to memory, even an imperfect explanation of whatelse it can be due to, "would be satisfactory. "

"Intelligence gropes about, tries this way and that, misses itsobject, commits mistakes, and corrects them. "

Yes. Because intelligence is of consciousness, and consciousness isof attention, and attention is of uncertainty, and uncertainty is ofignorance or want of consciousness. Intelligence is not yetthoroughly up to its business. 

"Instinct advances with a mechanical certainty. "

Why mechanical? Should not "with apparent certainty" suffice?

"Hence comes its unconscious character. "

But for the word "mechanical" this is true, and is what we have beenall along insisting on. 

"It knows nothing either of ends, or of the means of attaining them;it implies no comparison, judgment, or choice. "

This is assumption. What is certain is that instinct does not betraysigns of self-consciousness as to its own knowledge. It hasdismissed reference to first principles, and is no longer under thelaw, but under the grace of a settled conviction. 

"All seems directed by thought. "

Yes; because all HAS BEEN in earlier existences directed by thought. 

"Without ever arriving at thought. "

Because it has GOT PAST THOUGHT, and though "directed by thought"originally, is now travelling in exactly the opposite direction. Itis not likely to reach thought again, till people get to know worseand worse how to do things, the oftener they practise them. 

"And if this phenomenon appear strange, it must be observed thatanalogous states occur in ourselves. ALL THAT WE DO FROM HABIT--WALKING, WRITING, OR PRACTISING A MECHANICAL ACT, FOR INSTANCE--ALLTHESE AND MANY OTHER VERY COMPLEX ACTS ARE PERFORMED WITHOUTCONSCIOUSNESS. 

"Instinct appears stationary. It does not, like intelligence, seemto grow and decay, to gain and to lose. It does not improve. "

Naturally. For improvement can only as a general rule be looked foralong the line of latest development, that is to say, in mattersconcerning which the creature is being still consciously exercised. Older questions are settled, and the solution must be accepted asfinal, for the question of living at all would be reduced to anabsurdity, if everything decided upon one day was to be undecidedagain the next; as with painting or music, so with life and politics, let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind, for decision withwrong will be commonly a better policy than indecision--I had almostadded with right; and a firm purpose with risk will be better than aninfirm one with temporary exemption from disaster. Every race hasmade its great blunders, to which it has nevertheless adhered, inasmuch as the corresponding modification of other structures andinstincts was found preferable to the revolution which would becaused by a radical change of structure, with consequent havoc amonga legion of vested interests. Rudimentary organs are, as has beenoften said, the survivals of these interests--the signs of theirpeaceful and gradual extinction as living faiths; they are alsoinstances of the difficulty of breaking through any cant or trickwhich we have long practised, and which is not sufficientlytroublesome to make it a serious object with us to cure ourselves ofthe habit. 

"If it does not remain perfectly invariable, at least it only varieswithin very narrow limits; and though this question has been warmlydebated in our day, and is yet unsettled, we may yet say that ininstinct immutability is the law, variation the exception. "

This is quite as it should be. Genius will occasionally rise alittle above convention, but with an old convention immutability willbe the rule. 

"Such, " continues M. Ribot, "are the admitted characters ofinstinct. "

Yes; but are they not also the admitted characters of actions thatare due to memory?

At the bottom of p. 15, M. Ribot quotes the following from Mr. Darwin:-

"We have reason to believe that aboriginal habits are long retainedunder domestication. Thus with the common ass, we see signs of itsoriginal desert-life in its strong dislike to cross the smalleststream of water, and in its pleasure in rolling in the dust. Thesame strong dislike to cross a stream is common to the camel whichhas been domesticated from a very early period. Young pigs, thoughso tame, sometimes squat when frightened, and then try to concealthemselves, even in an open and bare place. Young turkeys, andoccasionally even young fowls, when the hen gives the danger-cry, runaway and try to hide themselves, like young partridges or pheasants, in order that their mother may take flight, of which she has lost thepower. The musk duck in its native country often perches and roostson trees, and our domesticated musk ducks, though sluggish birds, arefond of perching on the tops of barns, walls, &c. . . . We know thatthe dog, however well and regularly fed, often buries like the foxany superfluous food; we see him turning round and round on a carpetas if to trample down grass to form a bed. . . . In the delight withwhich lambs and kids crowd together and frisk upon the smallesthillock we see a vestige of their former alpine habits. "

What does this delightful passage go to show, if not that the youngin all these cases must still have a latent memory of their pastexistences, which is called into an active condition as soon as theassociated ideas present themselves?

Returning to M. Ribot's own observations, we find he tells us that itusually requires three or four generations to fix the results oftraining, and to prevent a return to the instincts of the wild state. I think, however, it would not be presumptuous to suppose that if ananimal after only three or four generations of training be restoredto its original conditions of life, it will forget its intermediatetraining and return to its old ways, almost as readily as a Londonstreet Arab would forget the beneficial effects of a weeks trainingin a reformatory school, if he were then turned loose again on thestreets. So if we hatch wild ducks' eggs under a tame duck, theducklings "will have scarce left the egg-shell when they obey theinstincts of their race and take their flight. " So the colts fromwild horses, and mongrel young between wild and domesticated horses, betray traces of their earlier memories. 

On this M. Ribot says: "Originally man had considerable trouble intaming the animals which are now domesticated; and his work wouldhave been in vain had not heredity" (memory) "come to his aid. Itmay be said that after man has modified a wild animal to his will, there goes on in its progeny a silent conflict between twoheredities" (memories), "the one tending to fix the acquiredmodifications and the other to preserve the primitive instincts. Thelatter often get the mastery, and only after several generations istraining sure of victory. But we may see that in either caseheredity" (memory) "always asserts its rights. "

How marvellously is the above passage elucidated and made to fit inwith the results of our recognised experience, by the simplesubstitution of the word "memory" for "heredity. "

"Among the higher animals"--to continue quoting--"which are possessednot only of instinct, but also of intelligence, nothing is morecommon than to see mental dispositions, which have evidently beenacquired, so fixed by heredity, that they are confounded withinstinct, so spontaneous and automatic do they become. Youngpointers have been known to point the first time they were taken out, sometimes even better than dogs that had been for a long time intraining. The habit of saving life is hereditary in breeds that havebeen brought up to it, as is also the shepherd dog's habit of movingaround the flock and guarding it. "

As soon as we have grasped the notion, that instinct is only theepitome of past experience, revised, corrected, made perfect, andlearnt by rote, we no longer find any desire to separate "instinct"from "mental dispositions, which have evidently been acquired andfixed by heredity, " for the simple reason that they are one and thesame thing. 

A few more examples are all that my limits will allow--they abound onevery side, and the difficulty lies only in selecting--M. Ribot beingto hand, I will venture to lay him under still further contributions. 

On page 19 we find:- "Knight has shown experimentally the truth ofthe proverb, 'a good hound is bred so, ' he took every care that whenthe pups were first taken into the field, they should receive noguidance from older dogs; yet the very first day, one of the pupsstood trembling with anxiety, having his eyes fixed and all hismuscles strained AT THE PARTRIDGES WHICH THEIR PARENTS HAD BEENTRAINED TO POINT. A spaniel belonging to a breed which had beentrained to woodcock-shooting, knew perfectly well from the first howto act like an old dog, avoiding places where the ground was frozen, and where it was, therefore, useless to seek the game, as there wasno scent. Finally, a young polecat terrier was thrown into a stateof great excitement the first time he ever saw one of these animals, while a spaniel remained perfectly calm. 

"In South America, according to Roulin, dogs belonging to a breedthat has long been trained to the dangerous chase of the peccary, when taken for the first time into the woods, know the tactics toadopt quite as well as the old dogs, and that without anyinstruction. Dogs of other races, and unacquainted with the tactics, are killed at once, no matter how strong they may be. The Americangreyhound, instead of leaping at the stag, attacks him by the belly, and throws him over, as his ancestors had been trained to do inhunting the Indians. 

"Thus, then, heredity transmits modification no less than naturalinstincts. "

Should not this rather be--"thus, then, we see that not only olderand remoter habits, but habits which have been practised for acomparatively small number of generations, may be so deeply impressedon the individual that they may dwell in his memory, surviving theso-called change of personality which he undergoes in each successivegeneration"?

"There is, however, an important difference to be noted: theheredity of instincts admits of no exceptions, while in that ofmodifications there are many. "

It may be well doubted how far the heredity of instincts admits of noexceptions; on the contrary, it would seem probable that in manyraces geniuses have from time to time arisen who remembered not onlytheir past experiences, as far as action and habit went, but havebeen able to rise in some degree above habit where they felt thatimprovement was possible, and who carried such improvement intofurther practice, by slightly modifying their structure in thedesired direction on the next occasion that they had a chance ofdealing with protoplasm at all. It is by these rare instances ofintellectual genius (and I would add of moral genius, if many of theinstincts and structures of plants and animals did not show that theyhad got into a region as far above morals--other than enlightenedself-interest--as they are above articulate consciousness of theirown aims in many other respects)--it is by these instances of eitherrare good luck or rare genius that many species have been, in allprobability, originated or modified. Nevertheless inappreciablemodification of instinct is, and ought to be, the rule. 

As to M. Ribot's assertion, that to the heredity of modificationsthere are many exceptions, I readily agree with it, and can only saythat it is exactly what I should expect; the lesson long since learntby rote, and repeated in an infinite number of generations, would berepeated unintelligently, and with little or no difference, save froma rare accidental slip, the effect of which would be the culling outof the bungler who was guilty of it, or from the still rarerappearance of an individual of real genius; while the newer lessonwould be repeated both with more hesitation and uncertainty, and withmore intelligence; and this is well conveyed in M. Ribot's nextsentence, for he says--"It is only when variations have been firmlyrooted; when having become organic, they constitute a second nature, which supplants the first; when, like instinct, they have assumed amechanical character, that they can be transmitted. "

How nearly M. Ribot comes to the opinion which I myself venture topropound will appear from the following further quotation. Afterdealing with somnambulism, and saying, that if somnambulism werepermanent and innate, it would be impossible to distinguish it frominstinct, he continues:-

"Hence it is less difficult than is generally supposed, to conceivehow intelligence may become instinct; we might even say that, leavingout of consideration the character of innateness, to which we willreturn, we have seen the metamorphosis take place. THERE CAN THEN BENO GROUND FOR MAKING INSTINCT A FACULTY APART, sui generis, aphenomenon so mysterious, so strange, that usually no otherexplanation of it is offered but that of attributing it to the directact of the Deity. This whole mistake is the result of a defectivepsychology which makes no account of the unconscious activity of thesoul. "

We are tempted to add--"and which also makes no account of the bonafide character of the continued personality of successivegenerations. "

"But we are so accustomed, " he continues, "to contrast the charactersof instinct with those of intelligence--to say that instinct isinnate, invariable, automatic, while intelligence is somethingacquired, variable, spontaneous--that it looks at first paradoxicalto assert that instinct and intelligence are identical. 

"It is said that instinct is innate. But if, on the one hand, webear in mind that many instincts are acquired, and that, according toa theory hereafter to be explained" (which theory, I frankly confess, I never was able to get hold of), "ALL INSTINCTS ARE ONLY HEREDITARYHABITS" (italics mine); "if, on the other hand, we observe thatintelligence is in some sense held to be innate by all modern schoolsof philosophy, which agree to reject the theory of the tabula rasa"(if there is no tabula rasa, there is continued psychologicalpersonality, or words have lost their meaning), "and to accept eitherlatent ideas, or a priori forms of thought" (surely only aperiphrasis for continued personality and memory) "or pre-ordinationof the nervous system and of the organism; IT WILL BE SEEN THAT THISCHARACTER OF INNATENESS DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN ABSOLUTE DISTINCTIONBETWEEN INSTINCT AND INTELLIGENCE. 

"It is true that intelligence is variable, but so also is instinct, as we have seen. In winter, the Rhine beaver plasters his wall towindward; once he was a builder, now a burrower; once he lived insociety, now he is solitary. Intelligence itself can scarcely bemore variable . . . Instinct may be modified, lost, reawakened. 

"Although intelligence is, as a rule, conscious, it may also becomeunconscious and automatic, without losing its identity. Neither isinstinct always so blind, so mechanical, as is supposed, for at timesit is at fault. The wasp that has faultily trimmed a leaf of itspaper begins again. The bee only gives the hexagonal form to itscell after many attempts and alterations. It is difficult to believethat the loftier instincts" (and surely, then, the more recentinstincts) "of the higher animals are not accompanied BY AT LEAST ACONFUSED CONSCIOUSNESS. There is, therefore, no absolute distinctionbetween instinct and intelligence; there is not a singlecharacteristic which, seriously considered, remains the exclusiveproperty of either. The contrast established between instinctiveacts and intellectual acts is, nevertheless, perfectly true, but onlywhen we compare the extremes. AS INSTINCT RISES IT APPROACHESINTELLIGENCE--AS INTELLIGENCE DESCENDS IT APPROACHES INSTINCT. "

M. Ribot and myself (if I may venture to say so) are continually onthe verge of coming to an understanding, when, at the very momentthat we seem most likely to do so, we fly, as it were, to oppositepoles. Surely the passage last quoted should be, "As instinctfalls, " i. E. , becomes less and less certain of its ground, "itapproaches intelligence; as intelligence rises, " i. E. , becomes moreand more convinced of the truth and expediency of its convictions--"it approaches instinct. "

Enough has been said to show that the opinions which I am advancingare not new, but I have looked in vain for the conclusions which, itappears to me, M. Ribot should draw from his facts; throughout hisinteresting book I find the facts which it would seem should haveguided him to the conclusions, and sometimes almost the conclusionsthemselves, but he never seems quite to have reached them, nor has hearranged his facts so that others are likely to deduce them, unlessthey had already arrived at them by another road. I cannot, however, sufficiently express my obligations to M. Ribot. 

I cannot refrain from bringing forward a few more instances of what Ithink must be considered by every reader as hereditary memory. Sydney Smith writes:-

"Sir James Hall hatched some chickens in an oven. Within a fewminutes after the shell was broken, a spider was turned loose beforethis very youthful brood; the destroyer of flies had hardly proceededmore than a few inches, before he was descried by one of these oven-born chickens, and, at one peck of his bill, immediately devoured. This certainly was not imitation. A female goat very near deliverydied; Galen cut out the young kid, and placed before it a bundle ofhay, a bunch of fruit, and a pan of milk; the young kid smelt to themall very attentively, and then began to lap the milk. This was notimitation. And what is commonly and rightly called instinct, cannotbe explained away, under the notion of its being imitation" (Lecturexvii. On Moral Philosophy). 

It cannot, indeed, be explained away under the notion of its beingimitation, but I think it may well be so under that of its beingmemory. 

Again, a little further on in the same lecture, as that above quotedfrom, we find:-

"Ants and beavers lay up magazines. Where do they get theirknowledge that it will not be so easy to collect food in rainyweather, as it is in summer? Men and women know these things, because their grandpapas and grandmammas have told them so. Antshatched from the egg artificially, or birds hatched in this manner, have all this knowledge by intuition, without the smallestcommunication with any of their relations. Now observe what thesolitary wasp does; she digs several holes in the sand, in each ofwhich she deposits an egg, though she certainly knows not (?) that ananimal is deposited in that egg, and still less that this animal mustbe nourished with other animals. She collects a few green flies, rolls them up neatly in several parcels (like Bologna sausages), andstuffs one parcel into each hole where an egg is deposited. When thewasp worm is hatched, it finds a store of provision ready made; andwhat is most curious, the quantity allotted to each is exactlysufficient to support it, till it attains the period of wasphood, andcan provide for itself. This instinct of the parent wasp is the moreremarkable as it does not feed upon flesh itself. Here the littlecreature has never seen its parent; for by the time it is born, theparent is always eaten by sparrows; and yet, without the slightesteducation, or previous experience, it does everything that the parentdid before it. Now the objectors to the doctrine of instinct may saywhat they please, but young tailors have no intuitive method ofmaking pantaloons; a new-born mercer cannot measure diaper; natureteaches a cook's daughter nothing about sippets. All these thingsrequire with us seven years' apprenticeship; but insects are likeMoliere's persons of quality--they know everything (as Moliere says), without having learnt anything. 'Les gens de qualite savent tout, sans avoir rien appris. '"

How completely all difficulty vanishes from the facts so pleasantlytold in this passage when we bear in mind the true nature of personalidentity, the ordinary working of memory, and the vanishing tendencyof consciousness concerning what we know exceedingly well. 

My last instance I take from M. Ribot, who writes:- "Gratiolet, inhis Anatomie Comparee du Systeme Nerveux, states that an old piece ofwolf's skin, with the hair all worn away, when set before a littledog, threw the animal into convulsions of fear by the slight scentattaching to it. The dog had never seen a wolf, and we can onlyexplain this alarm by the hereditary transmission of certainsentiments, coupled with a certain perception of the sense of smell"("Heredity, " p. 43). 

I should prefer to say "we can only explain the alarm by supposingthat the smell of the wolf's skin"--the sense of smell being, as weall know, more powerful to recall the ideas that have been associatedwith it than any other sense--"brought up the ideas with which it hadbeen associated in the dog's mind during many previous existences"--he on smelling the wolf's skin remembering all about wolves perfectlywell. 

CHAPTER XII--INSTINCTS OF NEUTER INSECTS

In this chapter I will consider, as briefly as possible, thestrongest argument that I have been able to discover against thesupposition that instinct is chiefly due to habit. I have said "thestrongest argument;" I should have said, the only argument thatstruck me as offering on the face of it serious difficulties. 

Turning, then, to Mr. Darwin's chapter on instinct ("NaturalSelection, " ed. 1876, p. 205), we find substantially much the sameviews as those taken at a later date by M. Ribot, and referred to inthe preceding chapter. Mr. Darwin writes:-

"An action, which we ourselves require experience to enable us toperform, when performed by an animal, more especially a very youngone, without experience, and when performed by many animals in thesame way without their knowing for what purpose it is performed, isusually said to be instinctive. "

The above should strictly be, "without their being conscious of theirown knowledge concerning the purpose for which they act as they do;"and though some may say that the two phrases come to the same thing, I think there is an important difference, as what I proposedistinguishes ignorance from over-familiarity, both which states arealike unself-conscious, though with widely different results. 

"But I could show, " continues Mr. Darwin, "that none of thesecharacters are universal. A little dose of judgement or reason, asPierre Huber expresses it, often comes into play even with animalslow in the scale of nature. 

"Frederick Cuvier and several of the older metaphysicians havecompared instinct with habit. "

I would go further and would say, that instinct, in the greatmajority of cases, is habit pure and simple, contracted originally bysome one or more individuals; practised, probably, in a consciouslyintelligent manner during many successive lives, until the habit hasacquired the highest perfection which the circumstances admitted;and, finally, so deeply impressed upon the memory as to survive thateffacement of minor impressions which generally takes place in everyfresh life-wave or generation. 

I would say, that unless the identity of offspring with their parentsbe so far admitted that the children be allowed to remember thedeeper impressions engraved on the minds of those who begot them, itis little less than trilling to talk, as so many writers do, aboutinherited habit, or the experience of the race, or, indeed, accumulated variations of instincts. 

When an instinct is not habit, as resulting from memory pure andsimple, it is habit modified by some treatment, generally in theyouth or embryonic stages of the individual, which disturbs hismemory, and drives him on to some unusual course, inasmuch as hecannot recognise and remember his usual one by reason of the changenow made in it. Habits and instincts, again, may be modified by anyimportant change in the condition of the parents, which will thenboth affect the parent's sense of his own identity, and also createmore or less fault, or dislocation of memory, in the offspringimmediately behind the memory of his last life. Change of food mayat times be sufficient to create a specific modification--that is tosay, to affect all the individuals whose food is so changed, in oneand the same way--whether as regards structure or habit. Thus we seethat certain changes in food (and domicile), from those with whichits ancestors have been familiar, will disturb the memory of a queenbee's egg, and set it at such disadvantage as to make it make itselfinto a neuter bee; but yet we find that the larva thus partly abortedmay have its memories restored to it, if not already too muchdisturbed, and may thus return to its condition as a queen bee, if itonly again be restored to the food and domicile, which its pastmemories can alone remember. 

So we see that opium, tobacco, alcohol, hasheesh, and tea producecertain effects upon our own structure and instincts. But thoughcapable of modification, and of specific modification, which may intime become inherited, and hence resolve itself into a true instinctor settled question, yet I maintain that the main bulk of theinstinct (whether as affecting structure or habits of life) will bederived from memory pure and simple; the individual growing up in theshape he does, and liking to do this or that when he is grown up, simply from recollection of what he did last time, and of what on thewhole suited him. 

For it must be remembered that a drug which should destroy some onepart at an early embryonic stage, and thus prevent it fromdevelopment, would prevent the creature from recognising thesurroundings which affected that part when he was last alive andunmutilated, as being the same as his present surroundings. He wouldbe puzzled, for he would be viewing the position from a differentstandpoint. If any important item in a number of associated ideasdisappears, the plot fails; and a great internal change is anexceedingly important item. Life and things to a creature so treatedat an early embryonic stage would not be life and things as he lastremembered them; hence he would not be able to do the same now as hedid then; that is to say, he would vary both in structure andinstinct; but if the creature were tolerably uniform to start with, and were treated in a tolerably uniform way, we might expect theeffect produced to be much the same in all ordinary cases. 

We see, also, that any important change in treatment andsurroundings, if not sufficient to kill, would and does tend toproduce not only variability but sterility, as part of the same storyand for the same reason--namely, default of memory; this default willbe of every degree of intensity, from total failure, to a slightdisturbance of memory as affecting some one particular organ only;that is to say, from total sterility, to a slight variation in anunimportant part. So that even THE SLIGHTEST CONCEIVABLE VARIATIONSSHOULD BE REFERRED TO CHANGED CONDITIONS, EXTERNAL OR INTERNAL, ANDTO THEIR DISTURBING EFFECTS UPON THE MEMORY; and sterility, withoutany apparent disease of the reproductive system, may be referred notso much to special delicacy or susceptibility of the organs ofreproduction as to inability on the part of the creature to knowwhere it is, and to recognise itself as the same creature which ithas been accustomed to reproduce. 

Mr. Darwin thinks that the comparison of habit with instinct gives"an accurate notion of the frame of mind under which an instinctiveaction is performed, but not, " he thinks, "of its origin. "

"How unconsciously, " Mr. Darwin continues, "many habitual actions areperformed, indeed not rarely in direct opposition to our consciouswill! Yet they may be modified by the will or by reason. Habitseasily become associated with other habits, with certain periods oftime and states of body. When once acquired, they often remainconstant throughout life. Several other points of resemblancebetween instincts and habits could be pointed out. As in repeating awell-known song, so in instincts, one action follows another by asort of rhythm. If a person be interrupted in a song or in repeatinganything by rote, he is generally forced to go back to recover thehabitual train of thought; so P. Huber found it was with acaterpillar, which makes a very complicated hammock. For if he tooka caterpillar which had completed its hammock up to, say, the sixthstage of construction, and put it into a hammock completed up only tothe third stage, the caterpillar simply re-performed the fourth, fifth, and sixth stages of construction. If, however, a caterpillarwere taken out of a hammock made up, for instance, to the thirdstage, and were put into one finished up to the sixth stage, so thatmuch of its work was already done for it, far from deriving anybenefit from this, it was much embarrassed, and in order to completeits hammock, seemed forced to start from the third stage, where ithad left off, and thus tried to complete the already finished work. "

I see I must have unconsciously taken my first chapter from thispassage, but it is immaterial. I owe Mr. Darwin much more than this. I owe it to him that I believe in evolution at all. I owe him foralmost all the facts which have led me to differ from him, and whichI feel absolutely safe in taking for granted, if he has advancedthem. Nevertheless, I believe that the conclusion arrived at in thepassage which I will next quote is a mistaken one, and that not alittle only, but fundamentally. I shall therefore venture to disputeit. 

The passage runs:-

"If we suppose any habitual action to become inherited--and it can beshown that this does sometimes happen--then the resemblance betweenwhat originally was a habit and an instinct becomes so close as notto be distinguished. . . . BUT IT WOULD BE A SERIOUS ERROR TO SUPPOSETHAT THE GREATER NUMBER OF INSTINCTS HAVE BEEN ACQUIRED BY HABIT INONE GENERATION, AND THEN TRANSMITTED BY INHERITANCE TO SUCCEEDINGGENERATIONS. IT CAN BE CLEARLY SHOWN THAT THE MOST WONDERFULINSTINCTS WITH WHICH WE ARE ACQUAINTED--NAMELY, THOSE OF THE HIVE-BEEAND OF MANY ANTS, COULD NOT POSSIBLY HAVE BEEN ACQUIRED BY HABIT. "("Origin of Species, " p. 206, ed. 1876. ) The italics in this passageare mine. 

No difficulty is opposed to my view (as I call it, for the sake ofbrevity) by such an instinct as that of ants to milk aphids. Suchinstincts may be supposed to have been acquired in much the same wayas the instinct of a farmer to keep a cow. Accidental discovery ofthe fact that the excretion was good, with "a little dose ofjudgement or reason" from time to time appearing in an exceptionallyclever ant, and by him communicated to his fellows, till the habitwas so confirmed as to be capable of transmission in full unself-consciousness (if indeed the instinct be unself-conscious in thiscase), would, I think, explain this as readily as the slow andgradual accumulations of instincts which had never passed through theintelligent and self-conscious stage, but had always prompted actionwithout any idea of a why or a wherefore on the part of the creatureitself. 

For it must be remembered, as I am afraid I have already perhaps toooften said, that even when we have got a slight variation ofinstinct, due to some cause which we know nothing about, but which Iwill not even for a moment call "spontaneous"--a word that should becut out of every dictionary, or in some way branded as perhaps themost misleading in the language--we cannot see how it comes to berepeated in successive generations, so as to be capable of beingacted upon by "natural selection" and accumulated, unless it be alsocapable of being remembered by the offspring of the varying creature. It may be answered that we cannot know anything about this, but that"like father like son" is an ultimate fact in nature. I can onlyanswer that I never observe any "like father like son" without theson's both having had every opportunity of remembering, and showingevery symptom of having remembered, in which case I decline to gofurther than memory (whatever memory may be) as the cause of thephenomenon. 

But besides inheritance, teaching must be admitted as a means of atany rate modifying an instinct. We observe this in our own case; andwe know that animals have great powers of communicating their ideasto one another, though their manner of doing this is asincomprehensible by us as a plant's knowledge of chemistry, or themanner in which an amoeba makes its test, or a spider its web, without having gone through a long course of mathematics. I thinkmost readers will allow that our early training and the theologicalsystems of the last eighteen hundred years are likely to have made usinvoluntarily under-estimate the powers of animals low in the scaleof life, both as regards intelligence and the power of communicatingtheir ideas to one another; but even now we admit that ants havegreat powers in this respect. 

A habit, however, which is taught to the young or each successivegeneration, by older members of the community who have themselvesreceived it by instruction, should surely rank as an inherited habit, and be considered as due to memory, though personal teaching benecessary to complete the inheritance. 

An objection suggests itself that if such a habit as the flight ofbirds, which seems to require a little personal supervision andinstruction before it is acquired perfectly, were really due tomemory, the need of instruction would after a time cease, inasmuch asthe creature would remember its past method of procedure, and wouldthus come to need no more teaching. The answer lies in the fact, that if a creature gets to depend upon teaching and personal help forany matter, its memory will make it look for such help on eachrepetition of the action; so we see that no man's memory will exertitself much until he is thrown upon memory as his only resource. Wemay read a page of a book a hundred times, but we do not remember itby heart unless we have either cultivated our powers of learning torepeat, or have taken pains to learn this particular page. 

And whether we read from a book, or whether we repeat by heart, therepetition is still due to memory; only in the one case the memory isexerted to recall something which one saw only half a second ago, andin the other, to recall something not seen for a much longer period. So I imagine an instinct or habit may be called an inherited habit, and assigned to memory, even though the memory dates, not from theperformance of the action by the learner when he was actually part ofthe personality of the teacher, but rather from a performancewitnessed by, or explained by the teacher to, the pupil at a periodsubsequent to birth. In either case the habit is inherited in thesense of being acquired in one generation, and transmitted with suchmodifications as genius and experience may have suggested. 

Mr. Darwin would probably admit this without hesitation; when, therefore, he says that certain instincts could not possibly havebeen acquired by habit, he must mean that they could not, under thecircumstances, have been remembered by the pupil in the person of theteacher, and that it would be a serious error to suppose that thegreater number of instincts can be thus remembered. To which Iassent readily so far as that it is difficult (though not impossible)to see how some of the most wonderful instincts of neuter ants andbees can be due to the fact that the neuter ant or bee was ever inpart, or in some respects, another neuter ant or bee in a previousgeneration. At the same time I maintain that this does not militateagainst the supposition that both instinct and structure are in themain due to memory. For the power of receiving any communication, and acting on it, is due to memory; and the neuter ant or bee mayhave received its lesson from another neuter ant or bee, who had itfrom another and modified it; and so back and back, till thefoundation of the habit is reached, and is found to present littlemore than the faintest family likeness to its more complexdescendant. Surely Mr. Darwin cannot mean that it can be shewn thatthe wonderful instincts of neuter ants and bees cannot have beenacquired either, as above, by instruction, or by some not immediatelyobvious form of inherited transmission, but that they must be due tothe fact that the ant or bee is, as it were, such and such a machine, of which if you touch such and such a spring, you will get acorresponding action. If he does, he will find, so far as I can see, no escape from a position very similar to the one which I put intothe mouth of the first of the two professors, who dealt with thequestion of machinery in my earlier work, "Erewhon, " and which I havesince found that my great namesake made fun of in the followinglines:-

. . . "They now begunTo spur their living engines on. For as whipped tops and bandy'd balls, The learned hold are animals:So horses they affirm to beMere engines made by geometry, And were invented first from enginesAs Indian Britons were from Penguins. "--Hudibras, Canto ii. Line 53, &c. 

I can see, then, no difficulty in the development of the ordinary so-called instincts, whether of ants or bees, or the cuckoo, or anyother animal, on the supposition that they were, for the most part, intelligently acquired with more or less labour, as the case may be, in much the same way as we see any art or science now in process ofacquisition among ourselves, but were ultimately remembered byoffspring, or communicated to it. When the limits of the race'scapacity had been attained (and most races seem to have their limits, unsatisfactory though the expression may very fairly be considered), or when the creature had got into a condition, so to speak, ofequilibrium with its surroundings, there would be no new developmentof instincts, and the old ones would cease to be improved, inasmuchas there would be no more reasoning or difference of opinionconcerning them. The race, therefore, or species would remain instatu quo till either domesticated, and so brought into contact withnew ideas and placed in changed conditions, or put under suchpressure, in a wild state, as should force it to further invention, or extinguish it if incapable of rising to the occasion. Thatinstinct and structure may be acquired by practice in one or moregenerations, and remembered in succeeding ones, is admitted by Mr. Darwin, for he allows ("Origin of Species, " p. 206) that habitualaction does sometimes become inherited, and, though he does not seemto conceive of such action as due to memory, yet it is inconceivablehow it is inherited, if not as the result of memory. 

It must be admitted, however, that when we come to consider thestructures as well as the instincts of some of the neuter insects, our difficulties seem greatly increased. The neuter hive-bees have acavity in their thighs in which to keep the wax, which it is theirbusiness to collect; but the drones and queen, which alone bearoffspring, collect no wax, and therefore neither want, nor have, anysuch cavity. The neuter bees are also, if I understand rightly, furnished with a proboscis or trunk for extracting honey fromflowers, whereas the fertile bees, who gather no honey, have no suchproboscis. Imagine, if the reader will, that the neuter bees differstill more widely from the fertile ones; how, then, can they in anysense be said to derive organs from their parents, which not one oftheir parents for millions of generations has ever had? How, again, can it be supposed that they transmit these organs to the futureneuter members of the community when they are perfectly sterile?

One can understand that the young neuter bee might be taught to makea hexagonal cell (though I have not found that any one has seen thelesson being given) inasmuch as it does not make the cell till afterbirth, and till after it has seen other neuter bees who might tell itmuch in, qua us, a very little time; but we can hardly understand itsgrowing a proboscis before it could possibly want it, or preparing acavity in its thigh, to have it ready to put wax into, when none ofits predecessors had ever done so, by supposing oral communication, during the larvahood. Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten thatbees seem to know secrets about reproduction, which utterly baffleourselves; for example, the queen bee appears to know how to depositmale or female, eggs at will; and this is a matter of almostinconceivable sociological importance, denoting a correspondingamount of sociological and physiological knowledge generally. Itshould not, then, surprise us if the race should possess othersecrets, whose working we are unable to follow, or even detect atall. 

Sydney Smith, indeed, writes:-

"The warmest admirers of honey, and the greatest friends to bees, will never, I presume, contend that the young swarm, who begin makinghoney three or four months after they are born, and immediatelyconstruct these mathematical cells, should have gained theirgeometrical knowledge as we gain ours, and in three months' timeoutstrip Mr. Maclaurin in mathematics as much as they did in makinghoney. It would take a senior wrangler at Cambridge ten hours a dayfor three years together to know enough mathematics for thecalculation of these problems, with which not only every queen bee, but every undergraduate grub, is acquainted the moment it is born. "This last statement may be a little too strong, but it will at onceoccur to the reader, that as we know the bees DO surpass Mr. Maclaurin in the power of making honey, they may also surpass him incapacity for those branches of mathematics with which it has beentheir business to be conversant during many millions of years, andalso in knowledge of physiology and psychology in so far as theknowledge bears upon the interests of their own community. 

We know that the larva which develops into a neuter bee, and thatagain which in time becomes a queen bee, are the same kind of larvato start with; and that if you give one of these larvae the food andtreatment which all its foremothers have been accustomed to, it willturn out with all the structure and instincts of its foremothers--andthat it only fails to do this because it has been fed, and otherwisetreated, in such a manner as not one of its foremothers was ever yetfed or treated. So far, this is exactly what we should expect, onthe view that structure and instinct are alike mainly due to memory, or to medicined memory. Give the larva a fair chance of knowingwhere it is, and it shows that it remembers by doing exactly what itdid before. Give it a different kind of food and house, and itcannot be expected to be anything else than puzzled. It remembers agreat deal. It comes out a bee, and nothing but a bee; but it is anaborted bee; it is, in fact, mutilated before birth instead of after--with instinct, as well as growth, correlated to its abortion, as wesee happens frequently in the case of animals a good deal higher thanbees that have been mutilated at a stage much later than that atwhich the abortion of neuter bees commences. 

The larvae being similar to start with, and being similarlymutilated--i. E. , by change of food and dwelling, will naturallyexhibit much similarity of instinct and structure on arriving atmaturity. When driven from their usual course, they must take SOMEnew course or die. There is nothing strange in the fact that similarbeings puzzled similarly should take a similar line of action. Igrant, however, that it is hard to see how change of food andtreatment can puzzle an insect into such "complex growth" as that itshould make a cavity in its thigh, grow an invaluable proboscis, andbetray a practical knowledge of difficult mathematical problems. 

But it must be remembered that the memory of having been queen beesand drones--which is all that according to my supposition the larvaecan remember, (on a first view of the case), in their own properpersons--would nevertheless carry with it a potential recollection ofall the social arrangements of the hive. They would thus potentiallyremember that the mass of the bees were always neuter bees; theywould remember potentially the habits of these bees, so far as dronesand queens know anything about them; and this may be supposed to be avery thorough acquaintance; in like manner, and with the samelimitation, they would know from the very moment that they left thequeen's body that neuter bees had a proboscis to gather honey with, and cavities in their thighs to put wax into, and that cells were tobe made with certain angles--for surely it is not crediting the queenwith more knowledge than she is likely to possess, if we suppose herto have a fair acquaintance with the phenomena of wax and cellsgenerally, even though she does not make any; they would know (whilestill larvae--and earlier) the kind of cells into which neuter beeswere commonly put, and the kind of treatment they commonly received--they might therefore, as eggs--immediately on finding theirrecollection driven from its usual course, so that they must eitherfind some other course, or die--know that they were being treated asneuter bees are treated, and that they were expected to develop intoneuter bees accordingly; they might know all this, and a great dealmore into the bargain, inasmuch as even before being actuallydeposited as eggs they would know and remember potentially, butunconsciously, all that their parents knew and remembered intensely. Is it, then, astonishing that they should adapt themselves so readilyto the position which they know it is for the social welfare of thecommunity, and hence of themselves, that they should occupy, and thatthey should know that they will want a cavity in their thighs and aproboscis, and hence make such implements out of their protoplasm asreadily as they make their wings?

I admit that, under normal treatment, none of the above-mentionedpotential memories would be kindled into such a state of activitythat action would follow upon them, until the creature had attained amore or less similar condition to that in which its parent was whenthese memories were active within its mind: but the essence of thematter is, that these larvae have been treated ABNORMALLY, so that ifthey do not die, there is nothing for it but that they must vary. One cannot argue from the normal to the abnormal. It would not, then, be strange if the potential memories should (owing to themargin for premature or tardy development which association admits)serve to give the puzzled larvae a hint as to the course which theyhad better take, or that, at any rate, it should greatly supplementthe instruction of the "nurse" bees themselves by rendering thelarvae so, as it were, inflammable on this point, that a spark shouldset them in a blaze. Abortion is generally premature. Thus thescars referred to in the last chapter as having appeared on thechildren of men who had been correspondingly wounded, should not, under normal circumstances, have appeared in the offspring till thechildren had got fairly near the same condition generally as that inwhich their fathers were when they were wounded, and even then, normally, there should have been an instrument to wound them, much astheir fathers had been wounded. Association, however, does notalways stick to the letter of its bond. 

The line, again, might certainly be taken that the difference instructure and instincts between neuter and fertile bees is due to thespecific effects of certain food and treatment; yet, though one wouldbe sorry to set limits to the convertibility of food and genius, itseems hard to believe that there can be any untutored food whichshould teach a bee to make a hexagonal cell as soon as it was born, or which, before it was born, should teach it to prepare suchstructures as it would require in after life. If, then, food beconsidered as a direct agent in causing the structures and instinct, and not an indirect agent, merely indicating to the larva itself thatit is to make itself after the fashion of neuter bees, then we shouldbear in mind that, at any rate, it has been leavened and prepared inthe stomachs of those neuter bees into which the larva is nowexpected to develop itself, and may thus have in it more truegerminative matter--gemmules, in fact--than is commonly supposed. Food, when sufficiently assimilated (the whole question turning uponwhat IS "sufficiently"), becomes stored with all the experience andmemories of the assimilating creature; corn becomes hen, and knowsnothing but hen, when hen has eaten it. We know also that the neuterworking-bees inject matter into the cell after the larva has beenproduced; nor would it seem harsh to suppose that though devoid of areproductive system like that of their parents, they may yet bepractically not so neuter as is commonly believed. One cannot saywhat gemmules of thigh and proboscis may not have got into theneutral bees' stomachs, if they assimilate their food sufficiently, and thus into the larva. 

Mr. Darwin will be the first to admit that though a creature have noreproductive system, in any ordinary sense of the word, yet everyunit or cell of its body may throw off gemmules which may be free tomove over every part of the whole organism, and which "naturalselection" might in time cause to stray into food which had beensufficiently prepared in the stomachs of the neuter bees. 

I cannot say, then, precisely in what way, but I can see no reasonfor doubting that in some of the ways suggested above, or in somecombination of them, the phenomena of the instincts of neuter antsand bees can be brought into the same category as the instincts andstructure of fertile animals. At any rate, I see the great fact thatwhen treated as they have been accustomed to be treated, theseneuters act as though they remembered, and accordingly become queenbees; and that they only depart from their ancestral course on beingtreated in such fashion as their ancestors can never have remembered;also, that when they have been thrown off their accustomed line ofthought and action, they only take that of their nurses, who havebeen about them from the moment of their being deposited as eggs bythe queen bee, who have fed them from their own bodies, and betweenwhom and them there may have been all manner of physical and mentalcommunication, of which we know no more than we do of the power whichenables a bee to find its way home after infinite shifting andturning among flowers, which no human powers could systematise so asto avoid confusion. 

Or take it thus: We know that mutilation at an early age produces aneffect upon the structure and instincts of cattle, sheep, and horses;and it might be presumed that if feasible at an earlier age, it wouldproduce a still more marked effect. We observe that the effectproduced is uniform, or nearly so. Suppose mutilation to produce alittle more effect than it does, as we might easily do, if cattle, sheep, and horses had been for ages accustomed to a mutilated classliving among them, which class had been always a caste apart, and hadfed the young neuters from their own bodies, from an early embryonicstage onwards; would any one in this case dream of advancing thestructure and instincts of this mutilated class against the doctrinethat instinct is inherited habit? Or, if inclined to do this, wouldhe not at once refrain, on remembering that the process of mutilationmight be arrested, and the embryo be developed into an entire animalby simply treating it in the way to which all its ancestors had beenaccustomed? Surely he would not allow the difficulty (which I mustadmit in some measure to remain) to outweigh the evidence derivablefrom these very neuter insects themselves, as well as from such avast number of other sources--all pointing in the direction ofinstinct as inherited habit. {5}

Lastly, it must be remembered that the instinct to make cells andhoney is one which has no very great hold upon its possessors. BeesCAN make cells and honey, nor do they seem to have any very violentobjection to doing so; but it is quite clear that there is nothing intheir structure and instincts which urges them on to do these thingsfor the mere love of doing them, as a hen is urged to sit upon achalk stone, concerning which she probably is at heart utterlysceptical, rather than not sit at all. There is no honey and cell-making instinct so strong as the instinct to eat, if they are hungry, or to grow wings, and make themselves into bees at all. Likeourselves, so long as they can get plenty to eat and drink, they willdo no work. Under these circumstances, not one drop of honey nor oneparticle of wax will they collect, except, I presume, to make cellsfor the rearing of their young. 

Sydney Smith writes:-

"The most curious instance of a change of instinct is recorded byDarwin. The bees carried over to Barbadoes and the Western Islesceased to lay up any honey after the first year, as they found it notuseful to them. They found the weather so fine, and materials formaking honey so plentiful, that they quitted their grave, prudent, and mercantile character, became exceedingly profligate anddebauched, ate up their capital, resolved to work no more, and amusedthemselves by flying about the sugar-houses and stinging the blacks"(Lecture XVII. On Moral Philosophy). The ease, then, with which thehoney-gathering and cell-making habits are relinquished, would seemto point strongly in the direction of their acquisition at acomparatively late period of development. 

I have dealt with bees only, and not with ants, which would perhapsseem to present greater difficulty, inasmuch as in some families ofthese there are two, or even three, castes of neuters with well-marked and wide differences of structure and instinct; but I thinkthe reader will agree with me that the ants are sufficiently coveredby the bees, and that enough, therefore, has been said already. Mr. Darwin supposes that these modifications of structure and instincthave been effected by the accumulation of numerous slight, profitable, spontaneous variations on the part of the fertileparents, which has caused them (so, at least, I understand him) tolay this or that particular kind of egg, which should develop into akind of bee or ant, with this or that particular instinct, whichinstinct is merely a co-ordination with structure, and in no wayattributable to use or habit in preceding generations. 

Even so, one cannot see that the habit of laying this particular kindof egg might not be due to use and memory in previous generations onthe part of the fertile parents, "for the numerous slight spontaneousvariations, " on which "natural selection" is to work, must have hadsome cause than which none more reasonable than sense of need andexperience presents itself; and there seems hardly any limit to whatlong-continued faith and desire, aided by intelligence, may be ableto effect. But if sense of need and experience are denied, I see noescape from the view that machines are new species of life. 

Mr. Darwin concludes: "I am surprised that no one has hithertoadvanced this demonstrative case of neuter insects against the well-known doctrine of inherited habit as advanced by Lamarck" ("NaturalSelection, " p. 233, ed. 1876). 

After reading this, one feels as though there was no more to be said. The well-known doctrine of inherited habit, as advanced by Lamarck, has indeed been long since so thoroughly exploded, that it is notworth while to go into an explanation of what it was, or to refute itin detail. Here, however, is an argument against it, which is somuch better than anything advanced yet, that one is surprised it hasnever been made use of; so we will just advance it, as it were, toslay the slain, and pass on. Such, at least, is the effect which theparagraph above quoted produced upon myself, and would, I think, produce on the great majority of readers. When driven by theexigencies of my own position to examine the value of thedemonstration more closely, I conclude, either that I have utterlyfailed to grasp Mr. Darwin's meaning, or that I have no lesscompletely mistaken the value and bearing of the facts I have myselfadvanced in these few last pages. Failing this, my surprise is, notthat "no one has hitherto advanced" the instincts of neuter insectsas a demonstrative case against the doctrine of inherited habit, butrather that Mr. Darwin should have thought the case demonstrative; oragain, when I remember that the neuter working bee is only an abortedqueen, and may be turned back again into a queen, by giving it suchtreatment as it can alone be expected to remember--then I amsurprised that the structure and instincts of neuter bees has never(if never) been brought forward in support of the doctrine ofinherited habit as advanced by Lamarck, and against any theory whichwould rob such instincts of their foundation in intelligence, and oftheir connection with experience and memory. 

As for the instinct to mutilate, that is as easily accounted for asany other inherited habit, whether of man to mutilate cattle, or ofants to make slaves, or of birds to make their nests. I can see noway of accounting for the existence of any one of these instincts, except on the supposition that they have arisen gradually, throughperceptions of power and need on the part of the animal whichexhibits them--these two perceptions advancing hand in hand fromgeneration to generation, and being accumulated in time and in thecommon course of nature. 

I have already sufficiently guarded against being supposed tomaintain that very long before an instinct or structure wasdeveloped, the creature descried it in the far future, and madetowards it. We do not observe this to be the manner of humanprogress. Our mechanical inventions, which, as I ventured to say in"Erewhon, " through the mouth of the second professor, are reallynothing but extra-corporaneous limbs--a wooden leg being nothing buta bad kind of flesh leg, and a flesh leg being only a much betterkind of wooden leg than any creature could be expected to manufactureintrospectively and consciously--our mechanical inventions havealmost invariably grown up from small beginnings, and without anyvery distant foresight on the part of the inventors. When Wattperfected the steam engine, he did not, it seems, foresee thelocomotive, much less would any one expect a savage to invent a steamengine. A child breathes automatically, because it has learnt tobreathe little by little, and has now breathed for an incalculablelength of time; but it cannot open oysters at all, nor even conceivethe idea of opening oysters for two or three years after it is born, for the simple reason that this lesson is one which it is onlybeginning to learn. All I maintain is, that, give a child as manygenerations of practice in opening oysters as it has had in breathingor sucking, and it would on being born, turn to the oyster-knife noless naturally than to the breast. We observe that among certainfamilies of men there has been a tendency to vary in the direction ofthe use and development of machinery; and that in a certain stillsmaller number of families, there seems to be an almost infinitelygreat capacity for varying and inventing still further, whethersocially or mechanically; while other families, and perhaps thegreater number, reach a certain point and stop; but we also observethat not even the most inventive races ever see very far ahead. Isuppose the progress of plants and animals to be exactly analogous tothis. 

Mr. Darwin has always maintained that the effects of use and disuseare highly important in the development of structure, and if, as hehas said, habits are sometimes inherited--then they should sometimesbe important also in the development of instinct, or habit. But whatdoes the development of an instinct or structure, or, indeed, anyeffect upon the organism produced by "use and disuse, " imply? Itimplies an effect produced by a desire to do something for which theorganism was not originally well adapted or sufficient, but for whichit has come to be sufficient in consequence of the desire. The wishhas been father to the power; but this again opens up the wholetheory of Lamarck, that the development of organs has been due to thewants or desires of the animal in which the organ appears. So far asI can see, I am insisting on little more than this. 

Once grant that a blacksmith's arm grows thicker through hammeringiron, and you have an organ modified in accordance with a need orwish. Let the desire and the practice be remembered, and go on forlong enough, and the slight alterations of the organ will beaccumulated, until they are checked either by the creature's havinggot all that he cares about making serious further effort to obtain, or until his wants prove inconvenient to other creatures that arestronger than he, and he is hence brought to a standstill. Use anddisuse, then, with me, and, as I gather also, with Lamarck, are thekeys to the position, coupled, of course, with continued personalityand memory. No sudden and striking changes would be effected, exceptthat occasionally a blunder might prove a happy accident, as happensnot unfrequently with painters, musicians, chemists, and inventors atthe present day; or sometimes a creature, with exceptional powers ofmemory or reflection, would make his appearance in this race or inthat. We all profit by our accidents as well as by our more cunningcontrivances, so that analogy would point in the direction ofthinking that many of the most happy thoughts in the animal andvegetable kingdom were originated much as certain discoveries thathave been made by accident among ourselves. These would beoriginally blind variations, though even so, probably less blind thanwe think, if we could know the whole truth. When originated, theywould be eagerly taken advantage of and improved upon by the animalin whom they appeared; but it cannot be supposed that they would bevery far in advance of the last step gained, more than are those"flukes" which sometimes enable us to go so far beyond our ownordinary powers. For if they were, the animal would despair ofrepeating them. No creature hopes, or even wishes, for very muchmore than he has been accustomed to all his life, he and his family, and the others whom he can understand, around him. It has been wellsaid that "enough" is always "a little more than one has. " We do nottry for things which we believe to be beyond our reach, hence onewould expect that the fortunes, as it were, of animals should havebeen built up gradually. Our own riches grow with our desires andthe pains we take in pursuit of them, and our desires vary andincrease with our means of gratifying them; but unless with men ofexceptional business aptitude, wealth grows gradually by the addingfield to field and farm to farm; so with the limbs and instincts ofanimals; these are but the things they have made or bought with theirmoney, or with money that has been left them by their forefathers, which, though it is neither silver nor gold, but faith and protoplasmonly, is good money and capital notwithstanding. 

I have already admitted that instinct may be modified by food ordrugs, which may affect a structure or habit as powerfully as we seecertain poisons affect the structure of plants by producing, as Mr. Darwin tells us, very complex galls upon their leaves. I do not, therefore, for a moment insist on habit as the sole cause ofinstinct. Every habit must have had its originating cause, and thecauses which have started one habit will from time to time start ormodify others; nor can I explain why some individuals of a raceshould be cleverer than others, any more than I can explain why theyshould exist at all; nevertheless, I observe it to be a fact thatdifferences in intelligence and power of growth are universal in theindividuals of all those races which we can best watch. I also mostreadily admit that the common course of nature would both cause manyvariations to arise independently of any desire on the part of theanimal (much as we have lately seen that the moons of Mars were onthe point of being discovered three hundred years ago, merely throughGalileo sending to Kepler a Latin anagram which Kepler could notunderstand, and arranged into the line--"Salve umbistineum geminatumMartia prolem, " and interpreted to mean that Mars had two moons, whereas Galileo had meant to say "Altissimum planetam tergeminumobservavi, " meaning that he had seen Saturn's ring), and would alsopreserve and accumulate such variations when they had arisen; but Ican no more believe that the wonderful adaptation of structures toneeds, which we see around us in such an infinite number of plantsand animals, can have arisen without a perception of those needs onthe part of the creature in whom the structure appears, than I canbelieve that the form of the dray-horse or greyhound--so well adaptedboth to the needs of the animal in his daily service to man, and tothe desires of man, that the creature should do him this dailyservice--can have arisen without any desire on man's part to producethis particular structure, or without the inherited habit ofperforming the corresponding actions for man, on the part of thegreyhound and dray-horse. 

And I believe that this will be felt as reasonable by the greatmajority of my readers. I believe that nine fairly intelligent andobservant men out of ten, if they were asked which they thought mostlikely to have been the main cause of the development of the variousphases either of structure or instinct which we see around us, namely--sense of need, or even whim, and hence occasional discovery, helped by an occasional piece of good luck, communicated, it may be, and generally adopted, long practised, remembered by offspring, modified by changed surroundings, and accumulated in the course oftime--or, the accumulation of small divergent, indefinite, andperfectly unintelligent variations, preserved through the survival oftheir possessor in the struggle for existence, and hence in timeleading to wide differences from the original type--would answer infavour of the former alternative; and if for no other cause yet forthis--that in the human race, which we are best able to watch, andbetween which and the lower animals no difference in kind will, Ithink, be supposed, but only in degree, we observe that progress musthave an internal current setting in a definite direction, but whitherwe know not for very long beforehand; and that without such internalcurrent there is stagnation. Our own progress--or variation--is duenot to small, fortuitous inventions or modifications which haveenabled their fortunate possessors to survive in times of difficulty, not, in fact, to strokes of luck (though these, of course, have hadsome effect--but not more, probably, than strokes of ill luck havecounteracted) but to strokes of cunning--to a sense of need, and tostudy of the past and present which have given shrewd people a keywith which to unlock the chambers of the future. 

Further, Mr. Darwin himself says ("Plants and Animals underDomestication, " ii. P. 237, ed. 1875):-

"But I think we must take a broader view and conclude that organicbeings when subjected during several generations to any changewhatever in their conditions tend to vary: THE KIND OF VARIATIONWHICH ENSUES DEPENDING IN MOST CASES IN A FAR HIGHER DEGREE ON THENATURE OR CONSTITUTION OF THE BEING, THAN ON THE NATURE OF THECHANGED CONDITIONS. " And this we observe in man. The history of aman prior to his birth is more important as far as his success orfailure goes than his surroundings after birth, important thoughthese may indeed be. The able man rises in spite of a thousandhindrances, the fool fails in spite of every advantage. "Naturalselection, " however, does not make either the able man or the fool. It only deals with him after other causes have made him, and wouldseem in the end to amount to little more than to a statement of thefact that when variations have arisen they will accumulate. Onecannot look, as has already been said, for the origin of species inthat part of the course of nature which settles the preservation orextinction of variations which have already arisen from some unknowncause, but one must look for it in the causes that have led tovariation at all. These causes must get, as it were, behind the backof "natural selection, " which is rather a shield and hindrance to ourperception of our own ignorance than an explanation of what thesecauses are. 

The remarks made above will apply equally to plants such as themisletoe and red clover. For the sake of brevity I will deal onlywith the misletoe, which seems to be the more striking case. Mr. Darwin writes:-

"Naturalists continually refer to external conditions, such asclimate, food, &c. , as the only possible cause of variation. In onelimited sense, as we shall hereafter see, this may be true; but it ispreposterous to attribute to mere external conditions, the structure, for instance, of the woodpecker, with its feet, tail, beak, andtongue, so admirably adapted to catch insects under the bark oftrees. In the case of the misletoe, which draws its nourishment fromcertain trees, which has seeds that must be transported by certainbirds, and which has flowers with separate sexes absolutely requiringthe agency of certain insects to bring pollen from one flower toanother, it is equally preposterous to account for the structure ofthis parasite with its relations to several distinct organic beings, by the effect of external conditions, or of habit, or of the volitionof the plant itself" ("Natural Selection, " p. 3, ed. 1876). 

I cannot see this. To me it seems still more preposterous to accountfor it by the action of "natural selection" operating upon indefinitevariations. It would be preposterous to suppose that a bird verydifferent from a woodpecker should have had a conception of awoodpecker, and so by volition gradually grown towards it. So inlike manner with the misletoe. Neither plant nor bird knew how farthey were going, or saw more than a very little ahead as to the meansof remedying this or that with which they were dissatisfied, or ofgetting this or that which they desired; but given perceptions atall, and thus a sense of needs and of the gratification of thoseneeds, and thus hope and fear, and a sense of content and discontent--given also the lowest power of gratifying those needs--given alsothat some individuals have these powers in a higher degree thanothers--given also continued personality and memory over a vastextent of time--and the whole phenomena of species and genera resolvethemselves into an illustration of the old proverb, that what is oneman's meat is another man's poison. Life in its lowest form underthe above conditions--and we cannot conceive of life at all withoutthem--would be bound to vary, and to result after not so very manymillions of years in the infinite forms and instincts which we seearound us. 

CHAPTER XIII--LAMARCK AND MR. DARWIN

It will have been seen that in the preceding pages the theory ofevolution, as originally propounded by Lamarck, has been more thanonce supported, as against the later theory concerning it put forwardby Mr. Darwin, and now generally accepted. 

It is not possible for me, within the limits at my command, to doanything like justice to the arguments that may be brought forward infavour of either of these two theories. Mr. Darwin's books are atthe command of every one; and so much has been discovered sinceLamarck's day, that if he were living now, he would probably statehis case very differently; I shall therefore content myself with afew brief remarks, which will hardly, however, aspire to the dignityof argument. 

According to Mr. Darwin, differentiations of structure and instincthave mainly come about through the accumulation of small, fortuitousvariations without intelligence or desire upon the part of thecreature varying; modification, however, through desire and sense ofneed, is not denied entirely, inasmuch as considerable effect isascribed by Mr. Darwin to use and disuse, which involves, as has beenalready said, the modification of a structure in accordance with thewishes of its possessor. 

According to Lamarck, genera and species have been evolved, in themain, by exactly the same process as that by which human inventionsand civilisations are now progressing; and this involves thatintelligence, ingenuity, heroism, and all the elements of romance, should have had the main share in the development of every herb andliving creature around us. 

I take the following brief outline of the most important part ofLamarck's theory from vol. Xxxvi. Of the Naturalist's Library(Edinburgh, 1843):-

"The more simple bodies, " says the editor, giving Lamarck's opinionwithout endorsing it, "are easily formed, and this being the case, itis easy to conceive how in the lapse of time animals of a morecomplex structure should be produced, FOR IT MUST BE ADMITTED AS AFUNDAMENTAL LAW, THAT THE PRODUCTION OF A NEW ORGAN IN AN ANIMAL BODYRESULTS FROM ANY NEW WANT OR DESIRE IT MAY EXPERIENCE. The firsteffort of a being just beginning to develop itself must be to procuresubsistence, and hence in time there comes to be produced a stomachor alimentary cavity. " (Thus we saw that the amoeba is in the habitof "extemporising" a stomach when it wants one. ) "Other wantsoccasioned by circumstances will lead to other efforts, which intheir turn will generate new organs. "

Lamarck's wonderful conception was hampered by an unnecessaryadjunct, namely, a belief in an inherent tendency towards progressivedevelopment in every low organism. He was thus driven to account forthe presence of many very low and very ancient organisms at thepresent day, and fell back upon the theory, which is not yetsupported by evidence, that such low forms are still continuallycoming into existence from inorganic matter. But there seems nonecessity to suppose that all low forms should possess an inherenttendency towards progression. It would be enough that there shouldoccasionally arise somewhat more gifted specimens of one or moreoriginal forms. These would vary, and the ball would be thus setrolling, while the less gifted would remain in statu quo, providedthey were sufficiently gifted to escape extinction. 

Nor do I gather that Lamarck insisted on continued personality andmemory so as to account for heredity at all, and so as to see life asa single, or as at any rate, only a few, vast compound animals, butwithout the connecting organism between each component item in thewhole creature, which is found in animals that are strictly calledcompound. Until continued personality and memory are connected withthe idea of heredity, heredity of any kind is little more than a termfor something which one does not understand. But there seems littlea priori difficulty as regards Lamarck's main idea, now that Mr. Darwin has familiarised us with evolution, and made us feel what avast array of facts can be brought forward in support of it. 

Mr. Darwin tells us, in the preface to his last edition of the"Origin of Species, " that Lamarck was partly led to his conclusionsby the analogy of domestic productions. It is rather hard to saywhat these words imply; they may mean anything from a baby to anapple dumpling, but if they imply that Lamarck drew inspirations fromthe gradual development of the mechanical inventions of man, and fromthe progress of man's ideas, I would say that of all sources thiswould seem to be the safest and most fertile from which to draw. 

Plants and animals under domestication are indeed a suggestive fieldfor study, but machines are the manner in which man is varying atthis moment. We know how our own minds work, and how our mechanicalorganisations--for, in all sober seriousness, this is what it comesto--have progressed hand in hand with our desires; sometimes thepower a little ahead, and sometimes the desire; sometimes bothcombining to form an organ with almost infinite capacity forvariation, and sometimes comparatively early reaching the limit ofutmost development in respect of any new conception, and accordinglycoming to a full stop; sometimes making leaps and bounds, andsometimes advancing sluggishly. Here we are behind the scenes, andcan see how the whole thing works. We have man, the very animalwhich we can best understand, caught in the very act of variation, through his own needs, and not through the needs of others; the wholeprocess is a natural one; the varying of a creature as much in a wildstate as the ants and butterflies are wild. There is less occasionhere for the continual "might be" and "may be, " which we arecompelled to put up with when dealing with plants and animals, of theworkings of whose minds we can only obscurely judge. Also, there ismore prospect of pecuniary profit attaching to the careful study ofmachinery than can be generally hoped for from the study of the loweranimals; and though I admit that this consideration should not becarried too far, a great deal of very unnecessary suffering will bespared to the lower animals; for much that passes for natural historyis little better than prying into other people's business, from noother motive than curiosity. I would, therefore, strongly advise thereader to use man, and the present races of man, and the growinginventions and conceptions of man, as his guide, if he would seek toform an independent judgement on the development of organic life. For all growth is only somebody making something. 

Lamarck's theories fell into disrepute, partly because they were toostartling to be capable of ready fusion with existing ideas; theywere, in fact, too wide a cross for fertility; partly because theyfell upon evil times, during the reaction that followed the FrenchRevolution; partly because, unless I am mistaken, he did notsufficiently link on the experience of the race to that of theindividual, nor perceive the importance of the principle thatconsciousness, memory, volition, intelligence, &c. , vanish, or becomelatent, on becoming intense. He also appears to have mixed up matterwith his system, which was either plainly wrong, or so incapable ofproof as to enable people to laugh at him, and pooh-pooh him; but Ibelieve it will come to be perceived, that he has received somewhatscant justice at the hands of his successors, and that his "crudetheories, " as they have been somewhat cheaply called, are far fromhaving had their last say. 

Returning to Mr. Darwin, we find, as we have already seen, that it ishard to say exactly how much Mr. Darwin differs from Lamarck, and howmuch he agrees with him. Mr. Darwin has always maintained that useand disuse are highly important, and this implies that the effectproduced on the parent should be remembered by the offspring, in thesame way as the memory of a wound is transmitted by one set of cellsto succeeding ones, who long repeat the scar, though it may fadefinally away. Also, after dealing with the manner in which one eyeof a young flat-fish travels round the head till both eyes are on thesame side of the fish, he gives ("Natural Selection, " p. 188, ed. 1875) an instance of a structure "which apparently owes its originexclusively to use or habit. " He refers to the tail of some Americanmonkeys "which has been converted into a wonderfully perfectprehensile organ, and serves as a fifth hand. A reviewer, " hecontinues, . . . "remarks on this structure--'It is impossible tobelieve that in any number of ages the first slight incipienttendency to grasp, could preserve the lives of the individualspossessing it, or favour their chance of having and of rearingoffspring. ' But there is no necessity for any such belief. Habit, and this almost implies that some benefit, great or small, is thusderived, would in all probability suffice for the work. " If, then, habit can do this--and it is no small thing to develop a wonderfullyperfect prehensile organ which can serve as a fifth hand--how muchmore may not habit do, even though unaided, as Mr. Darwin supposes tohave been the case in this instance, by "natural selection"? Afterattributing many of the structural and instinctive differences ofplants and animals to the effects of use--as we may plainly do withMr. Darwin's own consent--after attributing a good deal more tounknown causes, and a good deal to changed conditions, which arebound, if at all important, to result either in sterility orvariation--how much of the work of originating species is left fornatural selection?--which, as Mr. Darwin admits ("Natural Selection, "p. 63, ed. 1876), does not INDUCE VARIABILITY, but "implies only thepreservation of SUCH VARIATIONS AS ARISE, and are beneficial to thebeing under its conditions of life?" An important part assuredly, and one which we can never sufficiently thank Mr. Darwin for havingput so forcibly before us, but an indirect part only, like the partplayed by time and space, and not, I think, the one which Mr. Darwinwould assign to it. 

Mr. Darwin himself has admitted that in the earlier editions of his"Origin of Species" he "underrated, as it now seems probable, thefrequency and importance of modifications due to spontaneousvariability. " And this involves the having over-rated the action of"natural selection" as an agent in the evolution of species. But onegathers that he still believes the accumulation of small andfortuitous variations through the agency of "natural selection" to bethe main cause of the present divergencies of structure and instinct. I do not, however, think that Mr. Darwin is clear about his ownmeaning. I think the prominence given to "natural selection" inconnection with the "origin of species" has led him, in spite ofhimself, and in spite of his being on his guard (as is clearly shownby the paragraph on page 63 "Natural Selection, " above referred to), to regard "natural selection" as in some way accounting forvariation, just as the use of the dangerous word "spontaneous, "--though he is so often on his guard against it, and so frequentlyprefaces it with the words "so-called, "--would seem to have led himinto very serious confusion of thought in the passage quoted at thebeginning of this paragraph. 

For after saying that he had underrated "the frequency and importanceof modifications due to spontaneous variability, " he continues, "butit is impossible to attribute to this cause the innumerablestructures which are so well adapted to the habits of life of eachspecies. " That is to say, it is impossible to attribute theseinnumerable structures to spontaneous variability. 

What IS spontaneous variability?

Clearly, from his preceding paragraph, Mr. Darwin means only "so-called spontaneous variations, " such as "the appearance of a moss-rose on a common rose, or of a nectarine on a peach-tree, " which hegives as good examples of so-called spontaneous variation. 

And these variations are, after all, due to causes, but to unknowncauses; spontaneous variation being, in fact, but another name forvariation due to causes which we know nothing about, but in nopossible sense a CAUSE OF VARIATION. So that when we come to putclearly before our minds exactly what the sentence we are consideringamounts to, it comes to this: that it is impossible to attribute theinnumerable structures which are so well adapted to the habits oflife of each species to UNKNOWN CAUSES. 

"I can no more believe in THIS, " continues Mr. Darwin, "than that thewell-adapted form of a race-horse or greyhound, which, before theprinciple of selection by man was well understood, excited so muchsurprise in the minds of the older naturalists, can THUS beexplained" ("Natural Selection, " p. 171, ed. 1876). 

Or, in other words, "I can no more believe that the well-adaptedstructures of species are due to unknown causes, than I can believethat the well-adapted form of a race-horse can be explained by beingattributed to unknown causes. 

I have puzzled over this paragraph for several hours with thesincerest desire to get at the precise idea which underlies it, butthe more I have studied it the more convinced I am that it does notcontain, or at any rate convey, any clear or definite idea at all. If I thought it was a mere slip, I should not call attention to it;this book will probably have slips enough of its own withoutintroducing those of a great man unnecessarily; but I submit that itis necessary to call attention to it here, inasmuch as it isimpossible to believe that after years of reflection upon hissubject, Mr. Darwin should have written as above, especially in sucha place, if his mind was really clear about his own position. Immediately after the admission of a certain amount ofmiscalculation, there comes a more or less exculpatory sentence whichsounds so right that ninety-nine people out of a hundred would walkthrough it, unless led by some exigency of their own position toexamine it closely but which yet upon examination proves to be asnearly meaningless as a sentence can be. 

The weak point in Mr. Darwin's theory would seem to be a deficiency, so to speak, of motive power to originate and direct the variationswhich time is to accumulate. It deals admirably with theaccumulation of variations in creatures already varying, but it doesnot provide a sufficient number of sufficiently important variationsto be accumulated. Given the motive power which Lamarck suggested, and Mr. Darwin's mechanism would appear (with the help of memory, asbearing upon reproduction, of continued personality, and hence ofinherited habit, and of the vanishing tendency of consciousness) towork with perfect ease. Mr. Darwin has made us all feel that in someway or other variations ARE ACCUMULATED, and that evolution is thetrue solution of the present widely different structures around us, whereas, before he wrote, hardly any one believed this. However wemay differ from him in detail, the present general acceptance ofevolution must remain as his work, and a more valuable work canhardly be imagined. Nevertheless, I cannot think that "naturalselection, " working upon small, fortuitous, indefinite, unintelligentvariations, would produce the results we see around us. One wantssomething that will give a more definite aim to variations, andhence, at times, cause bolder leaps in advance. One cannot but doubtwhether so many plants and animals would be being so continuallysaved "by the skin of their teeth, " as must be so saved if thevariations from which genera ultimately arise are as small in theircommencement and at each successive stage as Mr. Darwin seems tobelieve. God--to use the language of the Bible--is not extreme tomark what is done amiss, whether with plant or beast or man; on theother hand, when towers of Siloam fall, they fall on the just as wellas the unjust. 

One feels, on considering Mr. Darwin's position, that if it beadmitted that there is in the lowest creature a power to vary, nomatter how small, one has got in this power as near the "origin ofspecies" as one can ever hope to get. For no one professes toaccount for the origin of life; but if a creature with a power tovary reproduces itself at all, it must reproduce another creatureWHICH SHALL ALSO HAVE THE POWER TO VARY; so that, given time andspace enough, there is no knowing where such a creature could orwould stop. 

If the primordial cell had been only capable of reproducing itselfonce, there would have followed a single line of descendants, thechain of which might at any moment have been broken by casualty. Doubtless the millionth repetition would have differed verymaterially from the original--as widely, perhaps, as we differ fromthe primordial cell; but it would only have differed by addition, andcould no more in any generation resume its latest development withouthaving passed through the initial stage of being what its firstforefather was, and doing what its first forefather did, and withoutgoing through all or a sufficient number of the steps whereby it hadreached its latest differentiation, than water can rise above its ownlevel. 

The very idea, then, of reproduction involves, unless I am mistaken, that, no matter how much the creature reproducing itself may gain inpower and versatility, it must still always begin WITH ITSELF AGAINin each generation. The primordial cell being capable of reproducingitself not only once, but many times over, each of the creatureswhich it produces must be similarly gifted; hence the geometricalratio of increase and the existing divergence of type. In eachgeneration it will pass rapidly and unconsciously through all theearlier stages of which there has been infinite experience, and forwhich the conditions are reproduced with sufficient similarity tocause no failure of memory or hesitation; but in each generation, when it comes to the part in which the course is not so clear, itwill become conscious; still, however, where the course is plain, asin breathing, digesting, &c. , retaining unconsciousness. Thus organswhich present all the appearance of being designed--as, for example, the tip for its beak prepared by the embryo chicken--would beprepared in the end, as it were, by rote, and without sense ofdesign, though none the less owing their origin to design. 

The question is not concerning evolution, but as to the main causewhich has led to evolution in such and such shapes. To me it seemsthat the "Origin of Variation, " whatever it is, is the only true"Origin of Species, " and that this must, as Lamarck insisted, belooked for in the needs and experiences of the creatures varying. Unless we can explain the origin of variations, we are met by theunexplained AT EVERY STEP in the progress of a creature from itsoriginal homogeneous condition to its differentiation, we will say, as an elephant; so that to say that an elephant has become anelephant through the accumulation of a vast number of small, fortuitous, but unexplained, variations in some lower creatures, isreally to say that it has become an elephant owing to a series ofcauses about which we know nothing whatever, or, in other words, thatone does not know how it came to be an elephant. But to say that anelephant has become an elephant owing to a series of variations, nine-tenths of which were caused by the wishes of the creature orcreatures from which the elephant is descended--this is to offer areason, and definitely put the insoluble one step further back. Thequestion will then turn upon the sufficiency of the reason--that isto say, whether the hypothesis is borne out by facts. 

The effects of competition would, of course, have an extremelyimportant effect upon any creature, in the same way as any othercondition of nature under which it lived, must affect its sense ofneed and its opinions generally. The results of competition wouldbe, as it were, the decisions of an arbiter settling the questionwhether such and such variation was really to the animal's advantageor not--a matter on which the animal will, on the whole, have formeda pretty fair judgement for itself. UNDOUBTEDLY THE PAST DECISIONSOF SUCH AN ARBITER WOULD AFFECT THE CONDUCT OF THE CREATURE, whichwould have doubtless had its shortcomings and blunders, and wouldamend them. The creature would shape its course according to itsexperience of the common course of events, but it would becontinually trying and often successfully, to evade the law by allmanner of sharp practice. New precedents would thus arise, so thatthe law would shift with time and circumstances; but the law wouldnot otherwise direct the channels into which life would flow, than aslaws, whether natural or artificial, have affected the development ofthe widely differing trades and professions among mankind. Thesehave had their origin rather in the needs and experiences of mankindthan in any laws. 

To put much the same as the above in different words. Assume thatsmall favourable variations are preserved more commonly, inproportion to their numbers, than is perhaps the case, and assumethat considerable variations occur more rarely than they probably dooccur, how account for any variation at all? "Natural selection"cannot CREATE the smallest variation unless it acts throughperception of its mode of operation, recognised inarticulately, butnone the less clearly, by the creature varying. "Natural selection"operates on what it finds, and not on what it has made. Animals thathave been wise and lucky live longer and breed more than others lesswise and lucky. Assuredly. The wise and lucky animals transmittheir wisdom and luck. Assuredly. They add to their powers, anddiverge into widely different directions. Assuredly. What is thecause of this? Surely the fact that they were capable of feelingneeds, and that they differed in their needs and manner of gratifyingthem, and that they continued to live in successive generations, rather than the fact that when lucky and wise they thrived and bredmore descendants. This last is an accessory hardly less importantfor the DEVELOPMENT of species than the fact of the continuation oflife at all; but it is an accessory of much the same kind as this, for if animals continue to live at all, they must live IN SOME WAY, and will find that there are good ways and bad ways of living. Ananimal which discovers the good way will gradually develop furtherpowers, and so species will get further and further apart; but theorigin of this is to be looked for, not in the power which decideswhether this or that way was good, but in the cause which determinesthe creature, consciously or unconsciously, to try this or that way. 

But Mr. Darwin might say that this is not a fair way of stating theissue. He might say, "You beg the question; you assume that there isan inherent tendency in animals towards progressive development, whereas I say that there is no good evidence of any such tendency. Imaintain that the differences that have from time to time arisen havecome about mainly from causes so far beyond our ken, that we can onlycall them spontaneous; and if so, natural selection which you mustallow to have at any rate played an important part in theACCUMULATION of variations, must also be allowed to be the nearestthing to the cause of Specific differences, which we are able toarrive at. "

Thus he writes ("Natural Selection, " p. 176, ed. 1876): "Although wehave no good evidence of the existence in organic beings of atendency towards progressive development, yet this necessarilyfollows, as I have attempted to show in the fourth chapter, throughthe continued action of natural selection. " Mr. Darwin does not saythat organic beings have no tendency to vary at all, but only thatthere is no good evidence that they have a tendency to progressivedevelopment, which, I take it, means, to see an ideal a long way off, and very different to their present selves, which ideal they thinkwill suit them, and towards which they accordingly make. I wouldadmit this as contrary to all experience. I doubt whether plants andanimals have any INNATE TENDENCY TO VARY at all, being led toquestion this by gathering from "Plants and Animals underDomestication" that this is Mr. Darwin's own opinion. I am inclinedrather to think that they have only an innate POWER TO VARY slightly, in accordance with changed conditions, and an innate capability ofbeing affected both in structure and instinct, by causes similar tothose which we observe to affect ourselves. But however this may be, they do vary somewhat, and unless they did, they would not in timehave come to be so widely different from each other as they now are. The question is as to the origin and character of these variations. 

We say they mainly originate in a creature through a sense of itsneeds, and vary through the varying surroundings which will causethose needs to vary, and through the opening up of new desires inmany creatures, as the consequence of the gratification of old ones;they depend greatly on differences of individual capacity andtemperament; they are communicated, and in the course of timetransmitted, as what we call hereditary habits or structures, thoughthese are only, in truth, intense and epitomised memories of howcertain creatures liked to deal with protoplasm. The questionwhether this or that is really good or ill, is settled, as the proofof the pudding by the eating thereof, i. E. , by the rigorouscompetitive examinations through which most living organisms mustpass. Mr. Darwin says that there is no good evidence in support ofany great principle, or tendency on the part of the creature itself, which would steer variation, as it were, and keep its head straight, but that the most marvellous adaptations of structures to needs aresimply the result of small and blind variations, accumulated by theoperation of "natural selection, " which is thus the main cause of theorigin of species. 

Enough has perhaps already been said to make the reader feel that thequestion wants reopening; I shall, therefore, here only remark thatwe may assume no fundamental difference as regards intelligence, memory, and sense of needs to exist between man and the lowestanimals, and that in man we do distinctly see a tendency towardsprogressive development, operating through his power of profiting byand transmitting his experience, but operating in directions whichman cannot foresee for any long distance. We also see this in manyof the higher animals under domestication, as with horses which havelearnt to canter and dogs which point; more especially we observe italong the line of latest development, where equilibrium of settledconvictions has not yet been fully attained. One neither finds norexpects much a priori knowledge, whether in man or beast; but onedoes find some little in the beginnings of, and throughout thedevelopment of, every habit, at the commencement of which, and onevery successive improvement in which, deductive and inductivemethods are, as it were, fused. Thus the effect, where we can bestwatch its causes, seems mainly produced by a desire for a definiteobject--in some cases a serious and sensible desire, in others anidle one, in others, again, a mistaken one; and sometimes by ablunder which, in the hands of an otherwise able creature, has turnedup trumps. In wild animals and plants the divergences have beenaccumulated, if they answered to the prolonged desires of thecreature itself, and if these desires were to its true ultimate good;with plants or animals under domestication they have been accumulatedif they answered a little to the original wishes of the creature, andmuch, to the wishes of man. As long as man continued to like them, they would be advantageous to the creature; when he tired of them, they would be disadvantageous to it, and would accumulate no longer. Surely the results produced in the adaptation of structure to needamong many plants and insects are better accounted for on this, whichI suppose to be Lamarck's view, namely, by supposing that what goeson amongst ourselves has gone on amongst all creatures, than bysupposing that these adaptations are the results of perfectly blindand unintelligent variations. 

Let me give two examples of such adaptations, taken from Mr. St. George Mivart's "Genesis of Species, " to which work I would wishparticularly to call the reader's attention. He should also read Mr. Darwin's answers to Mr. Mivart (p. 176, "Natural Selection, " ed. 1876, and onwards). 

Mr. Mivart writes:-

"Some insects which imitate leaves extend the imitation even to thevery injuries on those leaves made by the attacks of insects orfungi. Thus speaking of the walking-stick insects, Mr. Wallace says, 'One of these creatures obtained by myself in Borneo (ceroxyluslaceratus) was covered over with foliaceous excrescences of a clearolive green colour, so as exactly to resemble a stick grown over by acreeping moss or jungermannia. The Dyak who brought it me assured meit was grown over with moss, though alive, and it was only after amost minute examination that I could convince myself it was not so. 'Again, as to the leaf butterfly, he says, 'We come to a still moreextraordinary part of the imitation, for we find representations ofleaves in every stage of decay, variously blotched, and mildewed, andpierced with holes, and in many cases irregularly covered withpowdery black dots, gathered into patches and spots so closelyresembling the various kinds of minute fungi that grow on deadleaves, that it is impossible to avoid thinking at first sight thatthe butterflies themselves have been attacked by real fungi. '"

I can no more believe that these artificial fungi in which the motharrays itself are due to the accumulation of minute, perfectly blind, and unintelligent variations, than I can believe that the artificialflowers which a woman wears in her hat can have got there withoutdesign; or that a detective puts on plain clothes without theslightest intention of making his victim think that he is not apoliceman. 

Again Mr. Mivart writes:-

"In the work just referred to ('The Fertilisation of Orchids'), Mr. Darwin gives a series of the most wonderful and minute contrivances, by which the visits of insects are utilised for the fertilisation oforchids--structures so wonderful that nothing could well be more so, except the attribution of their origin to minute, fortuitous, andindefinite variations. 

"The instances are too numerous and too long to quote, but in his'Origin of Species' he describes two which must not be passed over. In one (coryanthes) the orchid has its lower lip enlarged into abucket, above which stand two water-secreting horns. These latterreplenish the bucket, from which, when half-filled, the wateroverflows by a spout on one side. Bees visiting the flower fall intothe bucket and crawl out at the spout. By the peculiar arrangementof the parts of the flower, the first bee which does so, carries awaythe pollen mass glued to his back, and then when he has his nextinvoluntary bath in another flower, as he crawls out, the pollenattached to him comes in contact with the stigma of that secondflower and fertilises it. In the other example (catasetum), when abee gnaws a certain part of the flower, he inevitably touches a longdelicate projection which Mr. Darwin calls the 'antenna. ' 'Thisantenna transmits a vibration to a membrane which is instantlyruptured; this sets free a spring by which the pollen mass is shotforth like an arrow in the right direction, and adheres by its viscidextremity to the back of the bee'" ("Genesis of Species, " p. 63). 

No one can tell a story so charmingly as Mr. Darwin, but I can nomore believe that all this has come about without design on the partof the orchid, and a gradual perception of the advantages it is ableto take over the bee, and a righteous determination to enjoy them, than I can believe that a mousetrap or a steam-engine is the resultof the accumulation of blind minute fortuitous variations in acreature called man, which creature has never wanted eithermousetraps or steam-engines, but has had a sort of promiscuoustendency to make them, and was benefited by making them, so thatthose of the race who had a tendency to make them survived and leftissue, which issue would thus naturally tend to make more mousetrapsand more steam-engines. 

Pursuing this idea still further, can we for a moment believe thatthese additions to our limbs--for this is what they are--have mainlycome about through the occasional birth of individuals, who, withoutdesign on their own parts, nevertheless made them better or worse, and who, accordingly, either survived and transmitted theirimprovement, or perished, they and their incapacity together?

When I can believe in this, then--and not till then--can I believe inan origin of species which does not resolve itself mainly into senseof need, faith, intelligence, and memory. Then, and not till then, can I believe that such organs as the eye and ear can have arisen inany other way than as the result of that kind of mental ingenuity, and of moral as well as physical capacity, without which, till then, I should have considered such an invention as the steam-engine to beimpossible. 

CHAPTER XIV--MR. MIVART AND MR. DARWIN

"A distinguished zoologist, Mr. St. George Mivart, " writes Mr. Darwin, "has recently collected all the objections which have everbeen advanced by myself and others against the theory of naturalselection, as propounded by Mr. Wallace and myself, and hasillustrated them with admirable art and force ("Natural Selection, "p. 176, ed. 1876). I have already referred the reader to Mr. Mivart's work, but quote the above passage as showing that Mr. Mivartwill not, probably, be found to have left much unsaid that wouldappear to make against Mr. Darwin's theory. It is incumbent upon meboth to see how far Mr. Mivart's objections are weighty as againstMr. Darwin, and also whether or not they tell with equal forceagainst the view which I am myself advocating. I will thereforetouch briefly upon the most important of them, with the purpose ofshowing that they are serious as against the doctrine that smallfortuitous variations are the origin of species, but that they haveno force against evolution as guided by intelligence and memory. 

But before doing this, I would demur to the words used by Mr. Darwin, and just quoted above, namely, "the theory of natural selection. " Iimagine that I see in them the fallacy which I believe to run throughalmost all Mr. Darwin's work, namely, that "natural selection" is atheory (if, indeed, it can be a theory at all), in some wayaccounting for the origin of variation, and so of species--"naturalselection, " as we have already seen, being unable to "inducevariability, " and being only able to accumulate what--on the occasionof each successive variation, and so during the whole process--musthave been originated by something else. 

Again, Mr. Darwin writes--"In considering the origin of species it isquite conceivable that a naturalist, reflecting on the mutualaffinities of organic beings, or their embryological relations, theirgeographical distribution, geological succession, and other suchfacts, might come to the conclusion that species had not beenindependently created, but had descended, like varieties from otherspecies. Nevertheless, such a conclusion, even if well founded, would be unsatisfactory, until it could be shown how the innumerablespecies inhabiting this world had been modified, so as to acquirethat perfection of structure and co-adaptation which justly excitesour admiration" ("Origin of Species, " p. 2, ed. 1876). 

After reading the above we feel that nothing more satisfactory couldbe desired. We are sure that we are in the hands of one who canindeed tell us "how the innumerable species inhabiting this worldhave been modified, " and we are no less sure that though others mayhave written upon the subject before, there has been, as yet, nosatisfactory explanation put forward of the grand principle uponwhich modification has proceeded. Then follows a delightful volume, with facts upon facts concerning animals, all showing that species isdue to successive small modifications accumulated in the course ofnature. But one cannot suppose that Lamarck ever doubted this; forhe can never have meant to say, that a low form of life made itselfinto an elephant at one or two great bounds; and if he did not meanthis, he must have meant that it made itself into an elephant throughthe accumulation of small successive modifications; these, he musthave seen, were capable of accumulation in the scheme of nature, though he may not have dwelt on the manner in which this isaccomplished, inasmuch as it is obviously a matter of secondaryimportance in comparison with the origin of the variationsthemselves. We believe, however, throughout Mr. Darwin's book, thatwe are being told what we expected to be told; and so convinced arewe, by the facts adduced, that in some way or other evolution must betrue, and so grateful are we for being allowed to think this, that weput down the volume without perceiving that, whereas Lamarck DIDadduce a great and general cause of variation, the insufficiency ofwhich, in spite of errors of detail, has yet to be shown, Mr. Darwin's main cause of variation resolves itself into a confession ofignorance. 

This, however, should detract but little from our admiration for Mr. Darwin's achievement. Any one can make people see a thing if he putsit in the right way, but Mr. Darwin made us see evolution, in spiteof his having put it, in what seems to not a few, an exceedinglymistaken way. Yet his triumph is complete, for no matter how muchany one now moves the foundation, he cannot shake the superstructure, which has become so currently accepted as to be above the need of anysupport from reason, and to be as difficult to destroy as it wasoriginally difficult of construction. Less than twenty years ago, wenever met with, or heard of, any one who accepted evolution; we didnot even know that such a doctrine had been ever broached; unless itwas that some one now and again said that there was a very dreadfulbook going about like a rampant lion, called "Vestiges of Creation, "whereon we said that we would on no account read it, lest it shouldshake our faith; then we would shake our heads and talk of thepreposterous folly and wickedness of such shallow speculations. Hadnot the book of Genesis been written for our learning? Yet, now, whoseriously disputes the main principles of evolution? I cannotbelieve that there is a bishop on the bench at this moment who doesnot accept them; even the "holy priests" themselves bless evolutionas their predecessors blessed Cleopatra--when they ought not. It isnot he who first conceives an idea, nor he who sets it on its legsand makes it go on all fours, but he who makes other people acceptthe main conclusion, whether on right grounds or on wrong ones, whohas done the greatest work as regards the promulgation of an opinion. And this is what Mr. Darwin has done for evolution. He has made usthink that we know the origin of species, and so of genera, in spiteof his utmost efforts to assure us that we know nothing of the causesfrom which the vast majority of modifications have arisen--that is tosay, he has made us think we know the whole road, though he hasalmost ostentatiously blindfolded us at every step of the journey. But to the end of time, if the question be asked, "Who taught peopleto believe in evolution?" there can only be one answer--that it wasMr. Darwin. 

Mr. Mivart urges with much force the difficulty of STARTING anymodification on which "natural selection" is to work, and of gettinga creature to vary in any definite direction. Thus, after quotingfrom Mr. Wallace some of the wonderful cases of "mimicry" which areto be found among insects, he writes:-

"Now, let us suppose that the ancestors of these various animals wereall destitute of the very special protection they at present possess, as on the Darwinian hypothesis we must do. Let it be also concededthat small deviations from the antecedent colouring or form wouldtend to make some of their ancestors escape destruction, by causingthem more or less frequently to be passed over or mistaken by theirpersecutors. Yet the deviation must, as the event has shown, in eachcase, be in some definite direction, whether it be towards some otheranimal or plant, or towards some dead or inorganic matter. But as, according to Mr. Darwin's theory, there is a constant tendency toindefinite variation, and as the minute incipient variations will beIN ALL DIRECTIONS, they must tend to neutralise each other, and atfirst to form such unstable modifications, that it is difficult, ifnot impossible, to see how such indefinite modifications ofinsignificant beginnings can ever build up a sufficiently appreciableresemblance to a leaf, bamboo, or other object for "naturalselection, " to seize upon and perpetuate. This difficulty isaugmented when we consider--a point to be dwelt upon hereafter--hownecessary it is that many individuals should be similarly modifiedsimultaneously. This has been insisted on in an able article in the'North British Review' for June 1867, p. 286, and the considerationof the article has occasioned Mr. Darwin" ("Origin of Species, " 5thed. , p. 104) "to make an important modification in his views("Genesis of Species, " p. 38). 

To this Mr. Darwin rejoins:-

"But in all the foregoing cases the insects in their original state, no doubt, presented some rude and accidental resemblance to an objectcommonly found in the stations frequented by them. Nor is thisimprobable, considering the almost infinite number of surroundingobjects, and the diversity of form and colour of the host of insectsthat exist" ("Natural Selection, " p. 182, ed. 1876). 

Mr. Mivart has just said: "It is difficult to see how suchindefinite modifications of insignificant beginnings CAN EVER BUILDUP A SUFFICIENTLY APPRECIABLE RESEMBLANCE TO A LEAF, BAMBOO, OR OTHEROBJECT, FOR 'NATURAL SELECTION' TO WORK UPON. "

The answer is, that "natural selection" did not begin to work UNTIL, FROM UNKNOWN CAUSES, AN APPRECIABLE RESEMBLANCE HAD NEVERTHELESS BEENPRESENTED. I think the reader will agree with me that thedevelopment of the lowest life into a creature which bears even "arude resemblance" to the objects commonly found in the station inwhich it is moving in its present differentiation, requires moreexplanation than is given by the word "accidental. "

Mr. Darwin continues: "As some rude resemblance is necessary for thefirst start, " &c. ; and a little lower he writes: "Assuming that aninsect originally happened to resemble in some degree a dead twig ora decayed leaf, and that it varied slightly in many ways, then allthe variations which rendered the insect at all more like any suchobject, and thus favoured its escape, would be preserved, while othervariations would be neglected, and ultimately lost, or if theyrendered the insect at all less like the imitated object, they wouldbe eliminated. "

But here, again, we are required to begin with Natural Selection whenthe work is already in great part done, owing to causes about whichwe are left completely in the dark; we may, I think, fairly demur tothe insects ORIGINALLY happening to resemble in some degree a deadtwig or a decayed leaf. And when we bear in mind that thevariations, being supposed by Mr. Darwin to be indefinite, or devoidof aim, will appear in every direction, we cannot forget what Mr. Mivart insists upon, namely, that the chances of many favourablevariations being counteracted by other unfavourable ones in the samecreature are not inconsiderable. Nor, again, is it likely that thefavourable variation would make its mark upon the race, and escapebeing absorbed in the course of a few generations, unless--as Mr. Mivart elsewhere points out, in a passage to which I shall call thereader's attention presently--a larger number of similarly varyingcreatures made their appearance at the same time than there seemssufficient reason to anticipate, if the variations can be calledfortuitous. 

"There would, " continues Mr. Darwin, "indeed be force in Mr. Mivart'sobjection if we were to attempt to account for the aboveresemblances, independently of 'natural selection, ' through merefluctuating variability; but as the case stands, there is none. "

This comes to saying that, if there was no power in nature whichoperates so that of all the many fluctuating variations, those onlyare preserved which tend to the resemblance which is beneficial tothe creature, then indeed there would be difficulty in understandinghow the resemblance could have come about; but that as there is abeneficial resemblance to start with, and as there is a power innature which would preserve and accumulate further beneficialresemblance, should it arise from this cause or that, the difficultyis removed. But Mr. Mivart does not, I take it, deny the existenceof such a power in nature, as Mr. Darwin supposes, though, if Iunderstand him rightly, he does not see that its operation UPON SMALLFORTUITOUS VARIATIONS is at all the simple and obvious process, whichon a superficial view of the case it would appear to be. He thinks--and I believe the reader will agree with him--that this process istoo slow and too risky. What he wants to know is, how the insectcame even rudely to resemble the object, and how, if its variationsare indefinite, we are ever to get into such a condition as to beable to report progress, owing to the constant liability of thecreature which has varied favourably, to play the part of Penelopeand undo its work, by varying in some one of the infinite number ofother directions which are open to it--all of which, except this one, tend to destroy the resemblance, and yet may be in some other respecteven more advantageous to the creature, and so tend to itspreservation. Moreover, here, too, I think (though I cannot besure), we have a recurrence of the original fallacy in the words--"Ifwe were to account for the above resemblances, independently of'natural selection, ' through mere fluctuating variability. " SurelyMr. Darwin does, after all, "account for the resemblances throughmere fluctuating variability, " for "natural selection" does notaccount for one single variation in the whole list of them from firstto last, other than indirectly, as shewn in the preceding chapter. 

It is impossible for me to continue this subject further; but I wouldbeg the reader to refer to other paragraphs in the neighbourhood ofthe one just quoted, in which he may--though I do not think he will--see reason to think that I should have given Mr. Darwin's answer morefully. I do not quote Mr. Darwin's next paragraph, inasmuch as I seeno great difficulty about "the last touches of perfection inmimicry, " provided Mr. Darwin's theory will account for any mimicryat all. If it could do this, it might as well do more; but a strongimpression is left on my mind, that without the help of somethingover and above the power to vary, which should give a definite aim tovariations, all the "natural selection" in the world would not haveprevented stagnation and self-stultification, owing to the indefinitetendency of the variations, which thus could not have developedeither a preyer or a preyee, but would have gone round and round andround the primordial cell till they were weary of it. 

As against Mr. Darwin, therefore, I think that the objection justgiven from Mr. Mivart is fatal. I believe, also, that the readerwill feel the force of it much more strongly if he will turn to Mr. Mivart's own pages. Against the view which I am myself supporting, the objection breaks down entirely, for grant "a little dose ofjudgement and reason" on the part of the creature itself--grant alsocontinued personality and memory--and a definite tendency is at oncegiven to the variations. The process is thus started, and is keptstraight, and helped forward through every stage by "the little doseof reason, " &c. , which enabled it to take its first step. We are, infact, no longer without a helm, but can steer each creature that isso discontented with its condition, as to make a serious effort tobetter itself, into SOME--and into a very distant--harbour. 

It has been objected against Mr. Darwin's theory that if all speciesand genera have come to differ through the accumulation of minutebut--as a general rule--fortuitous variations, there has not beentime enough, so far as we are able to gather, for the evolution ofall existing forms by so slow a process. On this subject I wouldagain refer the reader to Mr. Mivart's book, from which I take thefollowing:-

"Sir William Thompson has lately advanced arguments from threedistinct lines of inquiry agreeing in one approximate result. Thethree lines of inquiry are--(1) the action of the tides upon theearth's rotation; (2) the probable length of time during which thesun has illuminated this planet; and (3) the temperature of theinterior of the earth. The result arrived at by these investigationsis a conclusion that the existing state of things on the earth, lifeon the earth, all geological history showing continuity of life, mustbe limited within some such period of past time as one hundredmillion years. The first question which suggests itself, supposingSir W. Thompson's views to be correct, is: Has this period beenanything like enough for the evolution of all organic forms by'natural selection'? The second is: Has the period been anythinglike enough for the deposition of the strata which must have beendeposited if all organic forms have been evolved by minute steps, according to the Darwinian theory?" ("Genesis of Species, " p. 154). 

Mr. Mivart then quotes from Mr. Murphy--whose work I have not seen--the following passage:-

"Darwin justly mentions the greyhound as being equal to any naturalspecies in the perfect co-ordination of its parts, 'all adapted forextreme fleetness and for running down weak prey. ' Yet it is anartificial species (and not physiologically a species at all) formedby a long-continued selection under domestication; and there is noreason to suppose that any of the variations which have been selectedto form it have been other than gradual and almost imperceptible. Suppose that it has taken five hundred years to form the greyhoundout of his wolf-like ancestor. This is a mere guess, but it givesthe order of magnitude. Now, if so, how long would it take to obtainan elephant from a protozoon or even from a tadpole-like fish? Oughtit not to take much more than a million times as long?" ("Genesis ofSpecies, " p. 155). 

I should be very sorry to pronounce any opinion upon the foregoingdata; but a general impression is left upon my mind, that if thedifferences between an elephant and a tadpole-like fish have arisenfrom the accumulation of small variations that have had no directiongiven them by intelligence and sense of needs, then no timeconceivable by man would suffice for their development. But grant "alittle dose of reason and judgement, " even to animals low down in thescale of nature, and grant this, not only during their later life, but during their embryological existence, and see with whatinfinitely greater precision of aim and with what increased speed thevariations would arise. Evolution entirely unaided by inherentintelligence must be a very slow, if not quite inconceivable, process. Evolution helped by intelligence would still be slow, butnot so desperately slow. One can conceive that there has beensufficient time for the second, but one cannot conceive it for thefirst. 

I find from Mr. Mivart that objection has been taken to Mr. Darwin'sviews, on account of the great odds that exist against the appearanceof any given variation at one and the same time, in a sufficientnumber of individuals, to prevent its being obliterated almost assoon as produced by the admixture of unvaried blood which would sogreatly preponderate around it; and indeed the necessity for a nearlysimultaneous and similar variation, or readiness so to vary on thepart of many individuals, seems almost a postulate for evolution atall. On this subject Mr. Mivart writes:-

"The 'North British Review' (speaking of the supposition that speciesis changed by the survival of a few individuals in a century througha similar and favourable variation) says -

"'It is very difficult to see how this can be accomplished, even whenthe variation is eminently favourable indeed; and still more, whenthe advantage gained is very slight, as must generally be the case. The advantage, whatever it may be, is utterly outbalanced bynumerical inferiority. A million creatures are born; ten thousandsurvive to produce offspring. One of the million has twice as good achance as any other of surviving, but the chances are fifty to oneagainst the gifted individuals being one of the hundred survivors. No doubt the chances are twice as great against any other individual, but this does not prevent their being enormously in favour of SOMEaverage individual. However slight the advantage may be, if it isshared by half the individuals produced, it will probably be presentin at least fifty-one of the survivors, and in a larger proportion oftheir offspring; but the chances are against the preservation of anyone "sport" (i. E. , sudden marked variation) in a numerous tribe. Thevague use of an imperfectly-understood doctrine of chance, has ledDarwinian supporters, first, to confuse the two cases abovedistinguished, and secondly, to imagine that a very slight balance infavour of some individual sport must lead to its perpetuation. Allthat can be said is that in the above example the favoured sportwould be preserved once in fifty times. Let us consider what will beits influence on the main stock when preserved. It will breed andhave a progeny of say 100; now this progeny will, on the whole, beintermediate between the average individual and the sport. The oddsin favour of one of this generation of the new breed will be, say oneand a half to one, as compared with the average individual; the oddsin their favour will, therefore, be less than that of their parents;but owing to their greater number the chances are that about one anda half of them would survive. Unless these breed together--a mostimprobable event--their progeny would again approach the averageindividual; there would be 150 of them, and their superiority wouldbe, say in the ratio of one and a quarter to one; the probabilitywould now be that nearly two of them would survive, and have 200children with an eighth superiority. Rather more than two of thesewould survive; but the superiority would again dwindle; until after afew generations it would no longer be observed, and would count forno more in the struggle for life than any of the hundred triflingadvantages which occur in the ordinary organs. 

"'An illustration will bring this conception home. Suppose a whiteman to have been wrecked on an island inhabited by negroes, and tohave established himself in friendly relations with a powerful tribe, whose customs he has learnt. Suppose him to possess the physicalstrength, energy, and ability of a dominant white race, and let thefood of the island suit his constitution; grant him every advantagewhich we can conceive a white to possess over the native; concedethat in the struggle for existence, his chance of a long life will bemuch superior to that of the native chiefs; yet from all theseadmissions there does not follow the conclusion, that after a limitedor unlimited number of generations, the inhabitants of the islandwill be white. Our shipwrecked hero would probably become king; hewould kill a great many blacks in the struggle for existence; hewould have a great many wives and children . . . In the firstgeneration there will be some dozens of intelligent young mulattoes, much superior in average intelligence to the negroes. We mightexpect the throne for some generations to be occupied by a more orless yellow king; but can any one believe that the whole island willgradually acquire a white, or even a yellow population? . . . Darwinsays, that in the struggle for life a grain may turn the balance infavour of a given structure, which will then be preserved. But oneof the weights in the scale of nature is due to the number of a giventribe. Let there be 7000 A's and 7000 B's representing two varietiesof a given animal, and let all the B's, in virtue of a slightdifference of structure, have the better chance by one-thousandthpart. We must allow that there is a slight probability that thedescendants of B will supplant the descendants of A; but let there be7001 A's against 7000 B's at first, and the chances are once moreequal, while if there be 7002 A's to start, the odds would be laid onthe A's. Thus they stand a greater chance of being killed; but, then, they can better afford to be killed. The grain will only turnthe scales when these are very nicely balanced, and an advantage innumbers counts for weight, even as an advantage in structure. As thenumbers of the favoured variety diminish, so must its relativeadvantages increase, if the chance of its existence is to surpass thechance of its extinction, until hardly any conceivable advantagewould enable the descendants of a single pair to exterminate thedescendants of many thousands, if they and their descendants aresupposed to breed freely with the inferior variety, and so graduallylose their ascendancy, '" ("North British Review, " June 1867, p. 286"Genesis of Species, " p. 64, and onwards). 

Against this it should be remembered that there is always anantecedent probability that several specimens of a given variationwould appear at one time and place. This would probably be the caseeven on Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, that the variations are fortuitous;if they are mainly guided by sense of need and intelligence, it wouldalmost certainly be so, for all would have much the same idea as totheir well-being, and the same cause which would lead one to vary inthis direction would lead not a few others to do so at the same time, or to follow suit. Thus we see that many human ideas and inventionshave been conceived independently but simultaneously. The chances, moreover, of specimens that have varied successfully, intermarrying, are, I think, greater than the reviewer above quoted from wouldadmit. I believe that on the hypothesis that the variations arefortuitous, and certainly on the supposition that they areintelligent, they might be looked for in members of the same family, who would hence have a better chance of finding each other out. Serious as is the difficulty advanced by the reviewer as against Mr. Darwin's theory, it may be in great measure parried without departingfrom Mr. Darwin's own position, but the "little dose of judgement andreason" removes it, absolutely and entirely. As for the reviewer'sshipwrecked hero, surely the reviewer must know that Mr. Darwin wouldno more expect an island of black men to be turned white, or evenperceptibly whitened after a few generations, than the reviewerhimself would do so. But if we turn from what "might" or what"would" happen to what "does" happen, we find that a few whitefamilies have nearly driven the Indian from the United States, theAustralian natives from Australia, and the Maories from New Zealand. True, these few families have been helped by immigration; but it willbe admitted that this has only accelerated a result which wouldotherwise, none the less surely, have been effected. 

There is all the difference between a sudden sport, or even a varietyintroduced from a foreign source, and the gradual, intelligent, and, in the main, steady, growth of a race towards ends always a little, but not much, in advance of what it can at present compass, until ithas reached equilibrium with its surroundings. So far as Mr. Darwin's variations are of the nature of "sport, " i. E. , rare, andowing to nothing that we can in the least assign to any known cause, the reviewer's objections carry much weight. Against the view hereadvocated, they are powerless. 

I cannot here go into the difficulties of the geologic record, butthey too will, I believe, be felt to be almost infinitely simplifiedby supposing the development of structure and instinct to be guidedby intelligence and memory, which, even under unstable conditions, would be able to meet in some measure the demands made upon them. 

When Mr. Mivart deals with evolution and ethics, I am afraid that Idiffer from him even more widely than I have done from Mr. Darwin. He writes ("Genesis of Species, " p. 234): "That 'natural selection'could not have produced from the sensations of pleasure and painexperienced by brutes a higher degree of morality than was useful;therefore it could have produced any amount of 'beneficial habits, 'but not abhorrence of certain acts as impure and sinful. "

Possibly "natural selection" may not be able to do much in the way ofaccumulating variations that do not arise; but that, according to theviews supported in this volume, all that is highest and mostbeautiful in the soul, as well as in the body, could be, and hasbeen, developed from beings lower than man, I do not greatly doubt. Mr. Mivart and myself should probably differ as to what is and whatis not beautiful. Thus he writes of "the noble virtue of a MarcusAurelius" (p. 235), than whom, for my own part, I know fewrespectable figures in history to whom I am less attracted. I cannotbut think that Mr. Mivart has taken his estimate of this emperor atsecond-hand, and without reference to the writings which happilyenable us to form a fair estimate of his real character. 

Take the opening paragraphs of the "Thoughts" of Marcus Aurelius, astranslated by Mr. Long:-

"From the reputation and remembrance of my father [I learned] modestyand a manly character; from my mother, piety and beneficence, abstinence not only from evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts. . . . From my great-grandfather, not to have frequented public schools, and to have had good teachers at home, and to know that on suchthings a man should spend liberally . . . From Diognetus . . . [Ilearned] to have become intimate with philosophy, . . . And to havewritten dialogues in my youth, and to have desired a plank bed andskin, and whatever else of the kind belongs to the Greek discipline. . . . From Rusticus I received the impression that my characterrequired improvement and discipline;" and so on to the end of thechapter, near which, however, it is right to say that there appears aredeeming touch, in so far as that he thanks the gods that he couldnot write poetry, and that he had never occupied himself about theappearance of things in the heavens. 

Or, again, opening Mr. Long's translation at random I find (p. 37):-

"As physicians have always their instruments and knives ready forcases which suddenly require their skill, so do thou have principlesready for the understanding of things divine and human, and for doingeverything, even the smallest, with a recollection of the bond thatunites the divine and human to one another. For neither wilt thou doanything well which pertains to man without at the same time having areference to things divine; nor the contrary. "

Unhappy one! No wonder the Roman empire went to pieces soon afterhim. If I remember rightly, he established and subsidisedprofessorships in all parts of his dominions. Whereon the samebefell the arts and literature of Rome as befell Italian paintingafter the Academic system had taken root at Bologna under theCaracci. Mr. Martin Tupper, again, is an amiable and well-meaningman, but we should hardly like to see him in Lord Beaconsfield'splace. The Athenians poisoned Socrates; and Aristophanes--than whomfew more profoundly religious men have ever been born--did not, sofar as we can gather, think the worse of his countrymen on thataccount. It is not improbable that if they had poisoned Plato too, Aristophanes would have been well enough pleased; but I think hewould have preferred either of these two men to Marcus Aurelius. 

I know nothing about the loving but manly devotion of a St. Lewis, but I strongly suspect that Mr. Mivart has taken him, too, uponhearsay. 

On the other hand, among dogs we find examples of every heroicquality, and of all that is most perfectly charming to us in man. 

As for the possible development of the more brutal human natures fromthe more brutal instincts of the lower animals, those who read ahorrible story told in a note, pp. 233, 234 of Mr. Mivart's "Genesisof Species, " will feel no difficulty on that score. I must admit, however, that the telling of that story seems to me to be a mistakein a philosophical work, which should not, I think, unless undercompulsion, deal either with the horrors of the French Revolution--orof the Spanish or Italian Inquisition. 

For the rest of Mr. Mivart's objections, I must refer the reader tohis own work. I have been unable to find a single one, which I donot believe to be easily met by the Lamarckian view, with theadditions (if indeed they are additions, for I must own to no veryprofound knowledge of what Lamarck did or did not say), which I havein this volume proposed to make to it. At the same time I admit, that as against the Darwinian view, many of them seem quiteunanswerable. 

CHAPTER XV--CONCLUDING REMARKS

Here, then, I leave my case, though well aware that I have crossedthe threshold only of my subject. My work is of a tentativecharacter, put before the public as a sketch or design for a, possibly, further endeavour, in which I hope to derive assistancefrom the criticisms which this present volume may elicit. Such as itis, however, for the present I must leave it. 

We have seen that we cannot do anything thoroughly till we can do itunconsciously, and that we cannot do anything unconsciously till wecan do it thoroughly; this at first seems illogical; but logic andconsistency are luxuries for the gods, and the lower animals, only. Thus a boy cannot really know how to swim till he can swim, but hecannot swim till he knows how to swim. Conscious effort is but theprocess of rubbing off the rough corners from these two contradictorystatements, till they eventually fit into one another so closely thatit is impossible to disjoin them. 

Whenever, therefore, we see any creature able to go through anycomplicated and difficult process with little or no effort--whetherit be a bird building her nest, or a hen's egg making itself into achicken, or an ovum turning itself into a baby--we may conclude thatthe creature has done the same thing on a very great number of pastoccasions. 

We found the phenomena exhibited by heredity to be so like those ofmemory, and to be so utterly inexplicable on any other supposition, that it was easier to suppose them due to memory in spite of the factthat we cannot remember having recollected, than to believe thatbecause we cannot so remember, therefore the phenomena cannot be dueto memory. 

We were thus led to consider "personal identity, " in order to seewhether there was sufficient reason for denying that the experience, which we must have clearly gained somewhere, was gained by us when wewere in the persons of our forefathers; we found, not withoutsurprise, that unless we admitted that it might be so gained, in sofar as that we once ACTUALLY WERE our remotest ancestor, we mustchange our ideas concerning personality altogether. 

We therefore assumed that the phenomena of heredity, whether asregards instinct or structure were mainly due to memory of pastexperiences, accumulated and fused till they had become automatic, orquasi automatic, much in the same way as after a long life -

. . "Old experience do attainTo something like prophetic strain. "

After dealing with certain phenomena of memory, but more especiallywith its abeyance and revival, we inquired what the principalcorresponding phenomena of life and species should be, on thehypothesis that they were mainly due to memory. 

I think I may say that we found the hypothesis fit in with actualfacts in a sufficiently satisfactory manner. We found not a fewmatters, as, for example, the sterility of hybrids, the phenomena ofold age, and puberty as generally near the end of development, explain themselves with more completeness than I have yet heard oftheir being explained on any other hypothesis. 

We considered the most important difficulty in the way of instinct ashereditary habit, namely, the structure and instincts of neuterinsects; these are very unlike those of their parents, and cannotapparently be transmitted to offspring by individuals of the previousgeneration, in whom such structure and instincts appeared, inasmuchas these creatures are sterile. I do not say that the difficulty iswholly removed, inasmuch as some obscurity must be admitted to remainas to the manner in which the structure of the larva is aborted; thisobscurity is likely to remain till we know more of the early historyof civilisation among bees than I can find that we know at present;but I believe the difficulty was reduced to such proportions as tomake it little likely to be felt in comparison with that ofattributing instinct to any other cause than inherited habit, orinherited habit modified by changed conditions. 

We then inquired what was the great principle underlying variation, and answered, with Lamarck, that it must be "sense of need;" andthough not without being haunted by suspicion of a vicious circle, and also well aware that we were not much nearer the origin of lifethan when we started, we still concluded that here was the truestorigin of species, and hence of genera; and that the accumulation ofvariations, which in time amounted to specific and genericdifferences, was due to intelligence and memory on the part of thecreature varying, rather than to the operation of what Mr. Darwin hascalled "natural selection. " At the same time we admitted that thecourse of nature is very much as Mr. Darwin has represented it, inthis respect, in so far as that there is a struggle for existence, and that the weaker must go to the wall. But we denied that thispart of the course of nature would lead to much, if any, accumulationof variation, unless the variation was directed mainly by intelligentsense of need, with continued personality and memory. 

We conclude, therefore, that the small, structureless, impregnateovum from which we have each one of us sprung, has a potentialrecollection of all that has happened to each one of its ancestorsprior to the period at which any such ancestor has issued from thebodies of its progenitors--provided, that is to say, a sufficientlydeep, or sufficiently often-repeated, impression has been made toadmit of its being remembered at all. 

Each step of normal development will lead the impregnate ovum up to, and remind it of, its next ordinary course of action, in the same wayas we, when we recite a well-known passage, are led up to eachsuccessive sentence by the sentence which has immediately precededit. 

And for this reason, namely, that as it takes two people "to tell" athing--a speaker and a comprehending listener, without which last, though much may have been said, there has been nothing told--so alsoit takes two people, as it were, to "remember" a thing--the creatureremembering, and the surroundings of the creature at the time it lastremembered. Hence, though the ovum immediately after impregnation isinstinct with all the memories of both parents, not one of thesememories can normally become active till both the ovum itself, andits surroundings, are sufficiently like what they respectively were, when the occurrence now to be remembered last took place. The memorywill then immediately return, and the creature will do as it did onthe last occasion that it was in like case as now. This ensures thatsimilarity of order shall be preserved in all the stages ofdevelopment, in successive generations. 

Life, then, is faith founded upon experience, which experience is inits turn founded upon faith--or more simply, it is memory. Plantsand animals only differ from one another because they rememberdifferent things; plants and animals only grow up in the shapes theyassume because this shape is their memory, their idea concerningtheir own past history. 

Hence the term "Natural History, " as applied to the different plantsand animals around us. For surely the study of natural history meansonly the study of plants and animals themselves, which, at the momentof using the words "Natural History, " we assume to be the mostimportant part of nature. 

A living creature well supported by a mass of healthy ancestralmemory is a young and growing creature, free from ache or pain, andthoroughly acquainted with its business so far, but with much yet tobe reminded of. A creature which finds itself and its surroundingsnot so unlike those of its parents about the time of their begettingit, as to be compelled to recognise that it never yet was in any suchposition, is a creature in the heyday of life. A creature whichbegins to be aware of itself is one which is beginning to recognisethat the situation is a new one. 

It is the young and fair, then, who are the truly old and the trulyexperienced; it is they who alone have a trustworthy memory to guidethem; they alone know things as they are, and it is from them that, as we grow older, we must study if we would still cling to truth. The whole charm of youth lies in its advantage over age in respect ofexperience, and where this has for some reason failed, or beenmisapplied, the charm is broken. When we say that we are gettingold, we should say rather that we are getting new or young, and aresuffering from inexperience, which drives us into doing things whichwe do not understand, and lands us, eventually, in the utterimpotence of death. The kingdom of heaven is the kingdom of littlechildren. 

A living creature bereft of all memory dies. If bereft of a greatpart of memory, it swoons or sleeps; and when its memory returns, wesay it has returned to life. 

Life and death, then, should be memory and forgetfulness, for we aredead to all that we have forgotten. 

Life is that property of matter whereby it can remember. Matterwhich can remember is living; matter which cannot remember is dead. 

LIFE, THEN, IS MEMORY. The life of a creature is the memory of acreature. We are all the same stuff to start with, but we rememberdifferent things, and if we did not remember different things weshould be absolutely like each other. As for the stuff itself ofwhich we are made, we know nothingsave only that it is "such as dreams are made of. "

I am aware that there are many expressions throughout this book, which are not scientifically accurate. Thus I imply that we tendtowards the centre of the earth, when, I believe, I should say wetend towards to the centre of gravity of the earth. I speak of "theprimordial cell, " when I mean only the earliest form of life, and Ithus not only assume a single origin of life when there is nonecessity for doing so, and perhaps no evidence to this effect, but Ido so in spite of the fact that the amoeba, which seems to be "thesimplest form of life, " does not appear to be a cell at all. I haveused the word "beget, " of what, I am told, is asexual generation, whereas the word should be confined to sexual generation only. Manymore such errors have been pointed out to me, and I doubt not that alarger number remain of which I know nothing now, but of which I mayperhaps be told presently. 

I did not, however, think that in a work of this description theadditional words which would have been required for scientificaccuracy were worth the paper and ink and loss of breadth which theirintroduction would entail. Besides, I know nothing about science, and it is as well that there should be no mistake on this head; Ineither know, nor want to know, more detail than is necessary toenable me to give a fairly broad and comprehensive view of mysubject. When for the purpose of giving this, a matter importunatelyinsisted on being made out, I endeavoured to make it out as well as Icould; otherwise--that is to say, if it did not insist on beinglooked into, in spite of a good deal of snubbing, I held that, as itwas blurred and indistinct in nature, I had better so render it in mywork. 

Nevertheless, if one has gone for some time through a wood full ofburrs, some of them are bound to stick. I am afraid that I have leftmore such burrs in one part and another of my book, than the kind ofreader whom I alone wish to please will perhaps put up with. Fortunately, this kind of reader is the best-natured critic in theworld, and is long suffering of a good deal that the more consciouslyscientific will not tolerate; I wish, however, that I had not usedsuch expressions as "centres of thought and action" quite so often. 

As for the kind of inaccuracy already alluded to, my reader will not, I take it, as a general rule, know, or wish to know, much more aboutscience than I do, sometimes perhaps even less; so that he and Ishall commonly be wrong in the same places, and our two wrongs willmake a sufficiently satisfactory right for practical purposes. 

Of course, if I were a specialist writing a treatise or primer onsuch and such a point of detail, I admit that scientific accuracywould be de rigueur; but I have been trying to paint a picture ratherthan to make a diagram, and I claim the painter's license "quidlibetaudendi. " I have done my utmost to give the spirit of my subject, but if the letter interfered with the spirit, I have sacrificed itwithout remorse. 

May not what is commonly called a scientific subject have artisticvalue which it is a pity to neglect? But if a subject is to betreated artistically--that is to say, with a desire to consider notonly the facts, but the way in which the reader will feel concerningthose facts, and the way in which he will wish to see them rendered, thus making his mind a factor of the intention, over and above thesubject itself--then the writer must not be denied a painter'slicense. If one is painting a hillside at a sufficient distance, andcannot see whether it is covered with chestnut-trees or walnuts, oneis not bound to go across the valley to see. If one is painting acity, it is not necessary that one should know the names of thestreets. If a house or tree stands inconveniently for one's purpose, it must go without more ado; if two important features, neither ofwhich can be left out, want a little bringing together or separatingbefore the spirit of the place can be well given, they must bebrought together, or separated. Which is a more truthful view, ofShrewsbury, for example, from a spot where St. Alkmund's spire is inparallax with St. Mary's--a view which should give only the one spirewhich can be seen, or one which should give them both, although theone is hidden? There would be, I take it, more representation in themisrepresentation than in the representation--"the half would begreater than the whole, " unless, that is to say, one expressly toldthe spectator that St. Alkmund's spire was hidden behind St. Mary's--a sort of explanation which seldom adds to the poetical value of anywork of art. Do what one may, and no matter how scientific one maybe, one cannot attain absolute truth. The question is rather, how dopeople like to have their error? than, will they go without any errorat all? All truth and no error cannot be given by the scientist morethan by the artist; each has to sacrifice truth in one way oranother; and even if perfect truth could be given, it is doubtfulwhether it would not resolve itself into unconsciousness pure andsimple, consciousness being, as it were, the clash of smallconflicting perceptions, without which there is neither intelligencenor recollection possible. It is not, then, what a man has said, norwhat he has put down with actual paint upon his canvass, which speaksto us with living language--IT IS WHAT HE HAS THOUGHT TO US (as is sowell put in the letter quoted on page 83), by which our opinionshould be guided;--what has he made us feel that he had it in him, and wished to do? If he has said or painted enough to make us feelthat he meant and felt as we should wish him to have done, he hasdone the utmost that man can hope to do. 

I feel sure that no additional amount of technical accuracy wouldmake me more likely to succeed, in this respect, if I have otherwisefailed; and as this is the only success about which I greatly care, Ihave left my scientific inaccuracies uncorrected, even when aware ofthem. At the same time, I should say that I have taken all possiblepains as regards anything which I thought could materially affect theargument one way or another. 

It may be said that I have fallen between two stools, and that thesubject is one which, in my hands, has shown neither artistic norscientific value. This would be serious. To fall between twostools, and to be hanged for a lamb, are the two crimes which -

"Nor gods, nor men, nor any schools allow. "

Of the latter, I go in but little danger; about the former, I shallknow better when the public have enlightened me. 

The practical value of the views here advanced (if they be admittedas true at all) would appear to be not inconsiderable, alike asregards politics or the well-being of the community, and medicinewhich deals with that of the individual. In the first case we seethe rationale of compromise, and the equal folly of makingexperiments upon too large a scale, and of not making them at all. We see that new ideas cannot be fused with old, save gradually and bypatiently leading up to them in such a way as to admit of a sense ofcontinued identity between the old and the new. This should teach usmoderation. For even though nature wishes to travel in a certaindirection, she insists on being allowed to take her own time; shewill not be hurried, and will cull a creature out even more surelyfor forestalling her wishes too readily, than for lagging a littlebehind them. So the greatest musicians, painters, and poets owetheir greatness rather to their fusion and assimilation of all thegood that has been done up to, and especially near about, their owntime, than to any very startling steps they have taken in advance. Such men will be sure to take some, and important, steps forward; forunless they have this power, they will not be able to assimilate wellwhat has been done already, and if they have it, their study of olderwork will almost indefinitely assist it; but, on the whole, they owetheir greatness to their completer fusion and assimilation of olderideas; for nature is distinctly a fairly liberal conservative ratherthan a conservative liberal. All which is well said in the oldcouplet -

"Be not the first by whom the new is tried, Nor yet the last to throw the old aside. "

Mutatis mutandis, the above would seem to hold as truly aboutmedicine as about politics. We cannot reason with our cells, forthey know so much more than we do that they cannot understand us;--but though we cannot reason with them, we can find out what they havebeen most accustomed to, and what, therefore, they are most likely toexpect; we can see that they get this, as far as it is in our powerto give it them, and may then generally leave the rest to them, onlybearing in mind that they will rebel equally against too sudden achange of treatment, and no change at all. 

Friends have complained to me that they can never tell whether I amin jest or earnest. I think, however, it should be sufficientlyapparent that I am in very serious earnest, perhaps too much so, fromthe first page of my book to the last. I am not aware of a singleargument put forward which is not a bona fide argument, although, perhaps, sometimes admitting of a humorous side. If a grain of cornlooks like a piece of chaff, I confess I prefer it occasionally tosomething which looks like a grain, but which turns out to be a pieceof chaff only. There is no lack of matter of this description goingabout in some very decorous volumes; I have, therefore, endeavoured, for a third time, to furnish the public with a book whose faultshould lie rather in the direction of seeming less serious than itis, than of being less so than it seems. 

At the same time, I admit that when I began to write upon my subjectI did not seriously believe in it. I saw, as it were, a pebble uponthe ground, with a sheen that pleased me; taking it up, I turned itover and over for my amusement, and found it always grow brighter andbrighter the more I examined it. At length I became fascinated, andgave loose rein to self-illusion. The aspect of the world seemedchanged; the trifle which I had picked up idly had proved to be atalisman of inestimable value, and had opened a door through which Icaught glimpses of a strange and interesting transformation. Thencame one who told me that the stone was not mine, but that it hadbeen dropped by Lamarck, to whom it belonged rightfully, but who hadlost it; whereon I said I cared not who was the owner, if only Imight use it and enjoy it. Now, therefore, having polished it withwhat art and care one who is no jeweller could bestow upon it, Ireturn it, as best I may, to its possessor. 

What am I to think or say? That I tried to deceive others till Ihave fallen a victim to my own falsehood? Surely this is the mostreasonable conclusion to arrive at. Or that I have really foundLamarck's talisman, which had been for some time lost sight of?

Will the reader bid me wake with him to a world of chance andblindness? Or can I persuade him to dream with me of a more livingfaith than either he or I had as yet conceived as possible? As Ihave said, reason points remorselessly to an awakening, but faith andhope still beckon to the dream. 

APPENDIX--AUTHOR'S ADDENDA

{2} But I may say in passing that though articulate speech and thepower to maintain the upright position come much about the same time, yet the power of making gestures of more or less significance isprior to that of walking uprightly, and therefore to that of speech. Not only is gesticulation the earlier faculty in the individual, butit was so also in the history of our race. Our semi-simiousancestors could gesticulate long before they could talk articulately. It is significant of this that gesture is still found easier thanspeech even by adults, as may be observed on our river steamers, where the captain moves his hand but does not speak, a boyinterpreting his gesture into language. To develop this here wouldcomplicate the argument; let us be content to note it and pass on. 

{3} Nevertheless, the smallness of the effort touches upon thedeepest mystery of organic life--the power to originate, to err, tosport, the power which differentiates the living organism from themachine, however complicated. The action and working of this poweris found to be like the action of any other mental and, therefore, physical power (for all physical action of living beings is but theexpression of a mental action), but I can throw no light upon itsorigin any more than upon the origin of life. This, too, must benoted and passed over. 

{4} How different from the above uncertain sound is the full clearnote of one who truly believes:-

"The Church of England is commonly called a Lutheran church, butwhoever compares it with the Lutheran churches on the Continent willhave reason to congratulate himself on its superiority. It is infact a church sui generis, yielding in point of dignity, purity anddecency of its doctrines, establishment and ceremonies, to nocongregation of christians in the world; modelled to a certain andconsiderable extent, but not entirely, by our great and wise piousreformers on the doctrines of Luther, so far as they are inconformity with the sure and solid foundation on which it rests, andwe trust for ever will rest--the authority of the Holy Scriptures, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone. " ("Sketch ofModern and Ancient Geography, " by Dr. Samuel Butler, of Shrewsbury. Ed. 1813. )

This is the language of faith, compelled by the exigencies of theoccasion to be for a short time conscious of its own existence, butsurely very little likely to become so to the extent of feeling theneed of any assistance from reason. It is the language of one whoseconvictions are securely founded upon the current opinion of thoseamong whom he has been born and bred; and of all merely post-natalfaiths a faith so founded is the strongest. It is pleasing to seethat the only alterations in the edition of 1838 consist in spellingChristians with a capital C and the omission of the epithet "wise" asapplied to the reformers, an omission more probably suggested by adesire for euphony than by any nascent doubts concerning theapplicability of the epithet itself. 

{5} Or take, again, the constitution of the Church of England. Thebishops are the spiritual queens, the clergy are the neuter workers. They differ widely in structure (for dress must be considered as apart of structure), in the delicacy of the food they eat and the kindof house they inhabit, and also in many of their instincts, from thebishops, who are their spiritual parents. Not only this, but thereare two distinct kinds of neuter workers--priests and deacons; and ofthe former there are deans, archdeacons, prebends, canons, ruraldeans, vicars, rectors, curates, yet all spiritually sterile. Inspite of this sterility, however, is there anyone who will maintainthat the widely differing structures and instincts of these castesare not due to inherited spiritual habit? Still less will he beinclined to do so when he reflects that by such slight modificationof treatment as consecration and endowment any one of them can berendered spiritually fertile. 

Footnotes:

{1} Although the original edition of "Life and Habit" is dated 1878, the book was actually published in December, 1877.