In the next work the influence of Hering and Butler is definitely present and recognised.  In 1906 Signor Eugenio Rignano, an engineer keenly interested in all branches of science, and a little later the founder of the international review, Rivistà di Scienza (now simply called Scientia), published in French a volume entitled “Sur la transmissibilité des Caractères acquis—Hypothèse d’un Centro-épigenèse.”  Into the details of the author’s work we will not enter fully.  Suffice it to know that he accepts the Hering-Butler theory, and makes a distinct advance on Hering’s rather crude hypothesis of persistent vibrations by suggesting that the remembering centres store slightly different forms of energy, to give out energy of the same kind as they have received, like electrical accumulators.  The last chapter, “Le Phénomène mnémonique et le Phénomène vital,” is frankly based on Hering.

In “The Lesson of Evolution” (1907, posthumous, and only published for private circulation) Frederick Wollaston Hutton, F.R.S., late Professor of Biology and Geology, first at Dunedin and after at Christchurch, New Zealand, puts forward a strongly vitalistic view, and adopts Hering’s teaching.  After stating this he adds, “The same idea of heredity being due to unconscious memory was advocated by Mr. Samuel Butler in his “Life and Habit.”

Dr. James Mark Baldwin, Stuart Professor of Psychology in Princeton University, U.S.A., called attention early in the 90’s to a reaction characteristic of all living beings, which he terms the “Circular Reaction.”  We take his most recent account of this from his “Development and Evolution” (1902):—[0h]

“The general fact is that the organism reacts by concentration upon the locality stimulated for the continuance of the conditions, movements, stimulations, which are vitally beneficial, and for the cessation of the conditions, movements, stimulations which are vitally depressing.”

This amounts to saying in the terminology of Jenning (see below) that the living organism alters its “physiological states” either for its direct benefit, or for its indirect benefit in the reduction of harmful conditions.

Again:—

“This form of concentration of energy on stimulated localities, with the resulting renewal through movement of conditions that are pleasure-giving and beneficial, and the consequent repetition of the movements is called ‘circular reaction.’”

Of course, the inhibition of such movements as would be painful on repetition is merely the negative case of the circular reaction.  We must not put too much of our own ideas into the author’s mind; he nowhere says explicitly that the animal or plant shows its sense and does this because it likes the one thing and wants it repeated, or dislikes the other and stops its repetition, as Butler would have said.  Baldwin is very strong in insisting that no full explanation can be given of living processes, any more than of history, on purely chemico-physical grounds.

The same view is put differently and independently by H. S. Jennings, [0i] who started his investigations of living Protista, the simplest of living beings, with the idea that only accurate and ample observation was needed to enable us to explain all their activities on a mechanical basis, and devised ingenious models of protoplastic movements.  He was led, like Driesch, to renounce such efforts as illusory, and has come to the conviction that in the behaviour of these lowly beings there is a purposive and a tentative character—a method of “trial and error”—that can only be interpreted by the invocation of psychology.  He points out that after stimulation the “state” of the organism may be altered, so that the response to the same stimulus on repetition is other.  Or, as he puts it, the first stimulus has caused the organism to pass into a new “physiological state.”  As the change of state from what we may call the “primary indifferent state” is advantageous to the organism, we may regard this as equivalent to the doctrine of the “circular reaction,” and also as containing the essence of Semon’s doctrine of “engrams” or imprints which we are about to consider.  We cite one passage which for audacity of thought (underlying, it is true, most guarded expression) may well compare with many of the boldest flights in “Life and Habit”:—

“It may be noted that regulation in the manner we have set forth is what, in the behaviour of higher organisms, at least, is called intelligence [the examples have been taken from Protista, Corals, and the Lowest Worms].  If the same method of regulation is found in other fields, there is no reason for refusing to compare the action to intelligence.  Comparison of the regulatory processes that are shown in internal physiological changes and in regeneration to intelligence seems to be looked upon sometimes as heretical and unscientific.  Yet intelligence is a name applied to processes that actually exist in the regulation of movements, and there is, a priori, no reason why similar processes should not occur in regulation in other fields.  When we analyse regulation objectively there seems indeed reason to think that the processes are of the same character in behaviour as elsewhere.  If the term intelligence be reserved for the subjective accompaniments of such regulation, then of course we have no direct knowledge of its existence in any of the fields of regulation outside of the self, and in the self perhaps only in behaviour.  But in a purely objective consideration there seems no reason to suppose that regulation in behaviour (intelligence) is of a fundamentally different character from regulation elsewhere.”  (“Method of Regulation,” p. 492.)

Jennings makes no mention of questions of the theory of heredity.  He has made some experiments on the transmission of an acquired character in Protozoa; but it was a mutilation-character, which is, as has been often shown, [0j] not to the point.

One of the most obvious criticisms of Hering’s exposition is based upon the extended use he makes of the word “Memory”: this he had foreseen and deprecated.

“We have a perfect right,” he says, “to extend our conception of memory so as to make it embrace involuntary [and also unconscious] reproductions of sensations, ideas, perceptions, and efforts; but we find, on having done so, that we have so far enlarged her boundaries that she proves to be an ultimate and original power, the source and, at the same time, the unifying bond, of our whole conscious life.”  (“Unconscious Memory,” p. 68.)

This sentence, coupled with Hering’s omission to give to the concept of memory so enlarged a new name, clear alike of the limitations and of the stains of habitual use, may well have been the inspiration of the next work on our list.  Richard Semon is a professional zoologist and anthropologist of such high status for his original observations and researches in the mere technical sense, that in these countries he would assuredly have been acclaimed as one of the Fellows of the Royal Society who were Samuel Butler’s special aversion.  The full title of his book is “Die Mneme als erhaltende Prinzip im Wechsel des organischen Geschehens” (Munich, Ed.  1, 1904; Ed. 2, 1908).  We may translate it “Mneme, a Principle of Conservation in the Transformations of Organic Existence.”

From this I quote in free translation the opening passage of Chapter II:—

“We have shown that in very many cases, whether in Protist, Plant, or Animal, when an organism has passed into an indifferent state after the reaction to a stimulus has ceased, its irritable substance has suffered a lasting change: I call this after-action of the stimulus its ‘imprint’ or ‘engraphic’ action, since it penetrates and imprints itself in the organic substance; and I term the change so effected an ‘imprint’ or ‘engram’ of the stimulus; and the sum of all the imprints possessed by the organism may be called its ‘store of imprints,’ wherein we must distinguish between those which it has inherited from its forbears and those which it has acquired itself.  Any phenomenon displayed by an organism as the result either of a single imprint or of a sum of them, I term a ‘mnemic phenomenon’; and the mnemic possibilities of an organism may be termed, collectively, its ‘Mneme.’

“I have selected my own terms for the concepts that I have just defined.  On many grounds I refrain from making any use of the good German terms ‘Gedächtniss, Erinnerungsbild.’  The first and chiefest ground is that for my purpose I should have to employ the German words in a much wider sense than what they usually convey, and thus leave the door open to countless misunderstandings and idle controversies.  It would, indeed, even amount to an error of fact to give to the wider concept the name already current in the narrower sense—nay, actually limited, like ‘Erinnerungsbild,’ to phenomena of consciousness. . . .  In Animals, during the course of history, one set of organs has, so to speak, specialised itself for the reception and transmission of stimuli—the Nervous System.  But from this specialisation we are not justified in ascribing to the nervous system any monopoly of the function, even when it is as highly developed as in Man. . . .  Just as the direct excitability of the nervous system has progressed in the history of the race, so has its capacity for receiving imprints; but neither susceptibility nor retentiveness is its monopoly; and, indeed, retentiveness seems inseparable from susceptibility in living matter.”

Semen here takes the instance of stimulus and imprint actions affecting the nervous system of a dog

“who has up till now never experienced aught but kindness from the Lord of Creation, and then one day that he is out alone is pelted with stones by a boy. . . .  Here he is affected at once by two sets of stimuli: (1) the optic stimulus of seeing the boy stoop for stones and throw them, and (2) the skin stimulus of the pain felt when they hit him.  Here both stimuli leave their imprints; and the organism is permanently changed in relation to the recurrence of the stimuli.  Hitherto the sight of a human figure quickly stooping had produced no constant special reaction.  Now the reaction is constant, and may remain so till death. . . .  The dog tucks in its tail between its legs and takes flight, often with a howl [as of] pain.”

“Here we gain on one side a deeper insight into the imprint action of stimuli.  It reposes on the lasting change in the conditions of the living matter, so that the repetition of the immediate or synchronous reaction to its first stimulus (in this case the stooping of the boy, the flying stones, and the pain on the ribs), no longer demands, as in the original state of indifference, the full stimulus a, but may be called forth by a partial or different stimulus, b (in this case the mere stooping to the ground).  I term the influences by which such changed reaction are rendered possible, ‘outcome-reactions,’ and when such influences assume the form of stimuli, ‘outcome-stimuli.’”

They are termed “outcome” (“ecphoria”) stimuli, because the author regards them and would have us regard them as the outcome, manifestation, or efference of an imprint of a previous stimulus.  We have noted that the imprint is equivalent to the changed “physiological state” of Jennings.  Again, the capacity for gaining imprints and revealing them by outcomes favourable to the individual is the “circular reaction” of Baldwin, but Semon gives no reference to either author. [0k]

In the preface to his first edition (reprinted in the second) Semon writes, after discussing the work of Hering and Haeckel:—

“The problem received a more detailed treatment in Samuel Butler’s book, ‘Life and Habit,’ published in 1878.  Though he only made acquaintance with Hering’s essay after this publication, Butler gave what was in many respects a more detailed view of the coincidences of these different phenomena of organic reproduction than did Hering.  With much that is untenable, Butler’s writings present many a brilliant idea; yet, on the whole, they are rather a retrogression than an advance upon Hering.  Evidently they failed to exercise any marked influence upon the literature of the day.”

This judgment needs a little examination.  Butler claimed, justly, that his “Life and Habit” was an advance on Hering in its dealing with questions of hybridity, and of longevity puberty and sterility.  Since Semon’s extended treatment of the phenomena of crosses might almost be regarded as the rewriting of the corresponding section of “Life and Habit” in the “Mneme” terminology, we may infer that this view of the question was one of Butler’s “brilliant ideas.”  That Butler shrank from accepting such a formal explanation of memory as Hering did with his hypothesis should certainly be counted as a distinct “advance upon Hering,” for Semon also avoids any attempt at an explanation of “Mneme.”  I think, however, we may gather the real meaning of Semon’s strictures from the following passages:—

“I refrain here from a discussion of the development of this theory of Lamarck’s by those Neo-Lamarckians who would ascribe to the individual elementary organism an equipment of complex psychical powers—so to say, anthropomorphic perception and volitions.  This treatment is no longer directed by the scientific principle of referring complex phenomena to simpler laws, of deducing even human intellect and will from simpler elements.  On the contrary, they follow that most abhorrent method of taking the most complex and unresolved as a datum, and employing it as an explanation.  The adoption of such a method, as formerly by Samuel Butler, and recently by Pauly, I regard as a big and dangerous step backward” (ed. 2, pp. 380–1, note).

Thus Butler’s alleged retrogressions belong to the same order of thinking that we have seen shared by Driesch, Baldwin, and Jennings, and most explicitly avowed, as we shall see, by Francis Darwin.  Semon makes one rather candid admission, “The impossibility of interpreting the phenomena of physiological stimulation by those of direct reaction, and the undeception of those who had put faith in this being possible, have led many on the backward path of vitalism.”  Semon assuredly will never be able to complete his theory of “Mneme” until, guided by the experience of Jennings and Driesch, he forsakes the blind alley of mechanisticism and retraces his steps to reasonable vitalism.

But the most notable publications bearing on our matter are incidental to the Darwin Celebrations of 1908–9.  Dr. Francis Darwin, son, collaborator, and biographer of Charles Darwin, was selected to preside over the Meeting of the British Association held in Dublin in 1908, the jubilee of the first publications on Natural Selection by his father and Alfred Russel Wallace.  In this address we find the theory of Hering, Butler, Rignano, and Semon taking its proper place as a vera causa of that variation which Natural Selection must find before it can act, and recognised as the basis of a rational theory of the development of the individual and of the race.  The organism is essentially purposive: the impossibility of devising any adequate accounts of organic form and function without taking account of the psychical side is most strenuously asserted.  And with our regret that past misunderstandings should be so prominent in Butler’s works, it was very pleasant to hear Francis Darwin’s quotation from Butler’s translation of Hering [0l] followed by a personal tribute to Butler himself.

In commemoration of the centenary of the birth of Charles Darwin and of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the “Origin of Species,” at the suggestion of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, the University Press published during the current year a volume entitled “Darwin and Modern Science,” edited by Mr. A. C. Seward, Professor of Botany in the University.  Of the twenty-nine essays by men of science of the highest distinction, one is of peculiar interest to the readers of Samuel Butler: “Heredity and Variation in Modern Lights,” by Professor W. Bateson, F.R.S., to whose work on “Discontinuous Variations” we have already referred.  Here once more Butler receives from an official biologist of the first rank full recognition for his wonderful insight and keen critical power.  This is the more noteworthy because Bateson has apparently no faith in the transmission of acquired characters; but such a passage as this would have commended itself to Butler’s admiration:—

“All this indicates a definiteness and specific order in heredity, and therefore in variation.  This order cannot by the nature of the case be dependent on Natural Selection for its existence, but must be a consequence of the fundamental chemical and physical nature of living things.  The study of Variation had from the first shown that an orderliness of this kind was present.  The bodies and properties of living things are cosmic, not chaotic.  No matter how low in the scale we go, never do we find the slightest hint of a diminution in that all-pervading orderliness, nor can we conceive an organism existing for one moment in any other state.”

We have now before us the materials to determine the problem of Butler’s relation to biology and to biologists.  He was, we have seen, anticipated by Hering; but his attitude was his own, fresh and original.  He did not hamper his exposition, like Hering, by a subsidiary hypothesis of vibrations which may or may not be true, which burdens the theory without giving it greater carrying power or persuasiveness, which is based on no objective facts, and which, as Semon has practically demonstrated, is needless for the detailed working out of the theory.  Butler failed to impress the biologists of his day, even those on whom, like Romanes, he might have reasonably counted for understanding and for support.  But he kept alive Hering’s work when it bade fair to sink into the limbo of obsolete hypotheses.  To use Oliver Wendell Holmes’s phrase, he “depolarised” evolutionary thought.  We quote the words of a young biologist, who, when an ardent and dogmatic Weismannist of the most pronounced type, was induced to read “Life and Habit”: “The book was to me a transformation and an inspiration.”  Such learned writings as Semon’s or Hering’s could never produce such an effect: they do not penetrate to the heart of man; they cannot carry conviction to the intellect already filled full with rival theories, and with the unreasoned faith that to-morrow or next day a new discovery will obliterate all distinction between Man and his makings.  The mind must needs be open for the reception of truth, for the rejection of prejudice; and the violence of a Samuel Butler may in the future as in the past be needed to shatter the coat of mail forged by too exclusively professional a training.

MARCUS HARTOG

Cork, April, 1910

Author’s Preface

Not finding the “well-known German scientific journal Kosmos” [0m] entered in the British Museum Catalogue, I have presented the Museum with a copy of the number for February 1879, which contains the article by Dr. Krause of which Mr. Charles Darwin has given a translation, the accuracy of which is guaranteed—so he informs us—by the translator’s “scientific reputation together with his knowledge of German.” [0n]

I have marked the copy, so that the reader can see at a glance what passages has been suppressed and where matter has been interpolated.

I have also present a copy of “Erasmus Darwin.”  I have marked this too, so that the genuine and spurious passages can be easily distinguished.

I understand that both the “Erasmus Darwin” and the number of Kosmos have been sent to the Keeper of Printed Books, with instructions that they shall be at once catalogued and made accessible to readers, and do not doubt that this will have been done before the present volume is published.  The reader, therefore, who may be sufficiently interested in the matter to care to see exactly what has been done will now have an opportunity of doing so.

October 25, 1880.

Chapter I

To quote an example from the last few weeks only, [2] I have observed that Professor Huxley has celebrated the twenty-first year since the “Origin of Species” was published by a lecture at the Royal Institution, and am told that he described Mr. Darwin’s candour as something actually “terrible” (I give Professor Huxley’s own word, as reported by one who heard it); and on opening a small book entitled “Degeneration,” by Professor Ray Lankester, published a few days before these lines were written, I find the following passage amid more that is to the same purport:—

“Suddenly one of those great guesses which occasionally appear in the history of science was given to the science of biology by the imaginative insight of that greatest of living naturalists—I would say that greatest of living men—Charles Darwin.”—Degeneration, p. 10.

This is very strong language, but it is hardly stronger than that habitually employed by the leading men of science when they speak of Mr. Darwin.  To go farther afield, in February 1879 the Germans devoted an entire number of one of their scientific periodicals [3] to the celebration of Mr. Darwin’s seventieth birthday.  There is no other Englishman now living who has been able to win such a compliment as this from foreigners, who should be disinterested judges.

Under these circumstances, it must seem the height of presumption to differ from so great an authority, and to join the small band of malcontents who hold that Mr. Darwin’s reputation as a philosopher, though it has grown up with the rapidity of Jonah’s gourd, will yet not be permanent.  I believe, however, that though we must always gladly and gratefully owe it to Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace that the public mind has been brought to accept evolution, the admiration now generally felt for the “Origin of Species” will appear as unaccountable to our descendants some fifty or eighty years hence as the enthusiasm of our grandfathers for the poetry of Dr. Erasmus Darwin does to ourselves; and as one who has yielded to none in respect of the fascination Mr. Darwin has exercised over him, I would fain say a few words of explanation which may make the matter clearer to our future historians.  I do this the more readily because I can at the same time explain thus better than in any other way the steps which led me to the theory which I afterwards advanced in “Life and Habit.”

This last, indeed, is perhaps the main purpose of the earlier chapters of this book.  I shall presently give a translation of a lecture by Professor Ewald Hering of Prague, which appeared ten years ago, and which contains so exactly the theory I subsequently advocated myself, that I am half uneasy lest it should be supposed that I knew of Professor Hering’s work and made no reference to it.  A friend to whom I submitted my translation in MS., asking him how closely he thought it resembled “Life and Habit,” wrote back that it gave my own ideas almost in my own words.  As far as the ideas are concerned this is certainly the case, and considering that Professor Hering wrote between seven and eight years before I did, I think it due to him, and to my readers as well as to myself, to explain the steps which led me to my conclusions, and, while putting Professor Hering’s lecture before them, to show cause for thinking that I arrived at an almost identical conclusion, as it would appear, by an almost identical road, yet, nevertheless, quite independently, I must ask the reader, therefore, to regard these earlier chapters as in some measure a personal explanation, as well as a contribution to the history of an important feature in the developments of the last twenty years.  I hope also, by showing the steps by which I was led to my conclusions, to make the conclusions themselves more acceptable and easy of comprehension.

Being on my way to New Zealand when the “Origin of Species” appeared, I did not get it till 1860 or 1861.  When I read it, I found “the theory of natural selection” repeatedly spoken of as though it were a synonym for “the theory of descent with modification”; this is especially the case in the recapitulation chapter of the work.  I failed to see how important it was that these two theories—if indeed “natural selection” can be called a theory—should not be confounded together, and that a “theory of descent with modification” might be true, while a “theory of descent with modification through natural selection” [4] might not stand being looked into.

If any one had asked me to state in brief what Mr. Darwin’s theory was, I am afraid I might have answered “natural selection,” or “descent with modification,” whichever came first, as though the one meant much the same as the other.  I observe that most of the leading writers on the subject are still unable to catch sight of the distinction here alluded to, and console myself for my want of acumen by reflecting that, if I was misled, I was misled in good company.

I—and I may add, the public generally—failed also to see what the unaided reader who was new to the subject would be almost certain to overlook.  I mean, that, according to Mr. Darwin, the variations whose accumulation resulted in diversity of species and genus were indefinite, fortuitous, attributable but in small degree to any known causes, and without a general principle underlying them which would cause them to appear steadily in a given direction for many successive generations and in a considerable number of individuals at the same time.  We did not know that the theory of evolution was one that had been quietly but steadily gaining ground during the last hundred years.  Buffon we knew by name, but he sounded too like “buffoon” for any good to come from him.  We had heard also of Lamarck, and held him to be a kind of French Lord Monboddo; but we knew nothing of his doctrine save through the caricatures promulgated by his opponents, or the misrepresentations of those who had another kind of interest in disparaging him.  Dr. Erasmus Darwin we believed to be a forgotten minor poet, but ninety-nine out of every hundred of us had never so much as heard of the “Zoonomia.”  We were little likely, therefore, to know that Lamarck drew very largely from Buffon, and probably also from Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and that this last-named writer, though essentially original, was founded upon Buffon, who was greatly more in advance of any predecessor than any successor has been in advance of him.

We did not know, then, that according to the earlier writers the variations whose accumulation results in species were not fortuitous and definite, but were due to a known principle of universal application—namely, “sense of need”—or apprehend the difference between a theory of evolution which has a backbone, as it were, in the tolerably constant or slowly varying needs of large numbers of individuals for long periods together, and one which has no such backbone, but according to which the progress of one generation is always liable to be cancelled and obliterated by that of the next.  We did not know that the new theory in a quiet way professed to tell us less than the old had done, and declared that it could throw little if any light upon the matter which the earlier writers had endeavoured to illuminate as the central point in their system.  We took it for granted that more light must be being thrown instead of less; and reading in perfect good faith, we rose from our perusal with the impression that Mr. Darwin was advocating the descent of all existing forms of life from a single, or from, at any rate, a very few primordial types; that no one else had done this hitherto, or that, if they had, they had got the whole subject into a mess, which mess, whatever it was—for we were never told this—was now being removed once for all by Mr. Darwin.

The evolution part of the story, that is to say, the fact of evolution, remained in our minds as by far the most prominent feature in Mr. Darwin’s book; and being grateful for it, we were very ready to take Mr. Darwin’s work at the estimate tacitly claimed for it by himself, and vehemently insisted upon by reviewers in influential journals, who took much the same line towards the earlier writers on evolution as Mr. Darwin himself had taken.  But perhaps nothing more prepossessed us in Mr. Darwin’s favour than the air of candour that was omnipresent throughout his work.  The prominence given to the arguments of opponents completely carried us away; it was this which threw us off our guard.  It never occurred to us that there might be other and more dangerous opponents who were not brought forward.  Mr. Darwin did not tell us what his grandfather and Lamarck would have had to say to this or that.  Moreover, there was an unobtrusive parade of hidden learning and of difficulties at last overcome which was particularly grateful to us.  Whatever opinion might be ultimately come to concerning the value of his theory, there could be but one about the value of the example he had set to men of science generally by the perfect frankness and unselfishness of his work.  Friends and foes alike combined to do homage to Mr. Darwin in this respect.

For, brilliant as the reception of the “Origin of Species” was, it met in the first instance with hardly less hostile than friendly criticism.  But the attacks were ill-directed; they came from a suspected quarter, and those who led them did not detect more than the general public had done what were the really weak places in Mr. Darwin’s armour.  They attacked him where he was strongest; and above all, they were, as a general rule, stamped with a disingenuousness which at that time we believed to be peculiar to theological writers and alien to the spirit of science.  Seeing, therefore, that the men of science ranged themselves more and more decidedly on Mr. Darwin’s side, while his opponents had manifestly—so far as I can remember, all the more prominent among them—a bias to which their hostility was attributable, we left off looking at the arguments against “Darwinism,” as we now began to call it, and pigeon-holed the matter to the effect that there was one evolution, and that Mr. Darwin was its prophet.

The blame of our errors and oversights rests primarily with Mr. Darwin himself.  The first, and far the most important, edition of the “Origin of Species” came out as a kind of literary Melchisedec, without father and without mother in the works of other people.  Here is its opening paragraph:—

“When on board H.M.S. ‘Beagle’ as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent.  These facts seemed to me to throw some light on the origin of species—that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers.  On my return home, it occurred to me, in 1837, that something might be made out on this question by patiently accumulating and reflecting upon all sorts of facts which could possibly have any bearing on it.  After five years’ work I allowed myself to speculate on the subject, and drew up some short notes; these I enlarged in 1844 into a sketch of the conclusions which then seemed to me probable: from that period to the present day I have steadily pursued the same object.  I hope that I may be excused for entering on these personal details, as I give them to show that I have not been hasty in coming to a decision.” [8a]

In the latest edition this passage remains unaltered, except in one unimportant respect.  What could more completely throw us off the scent of the earlier writers?  If they had written anything worthy of our attention, or indeed if there had been any earlier writers at all, Mr. Darwin would have been the first to tell us about them, and to award them their due meed of recognition.  But, no; the whole thing was an original growth in Mr. Darwin’s mind, and he had never so much as heard of his grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin.

Dr. Krause, indeed, thought otherwise.  In the number of Kosmos for February 1879 he represented Mr. Darwin as in his youth approaching the works of his grandfather with all the devotion which people usually feel for the writings of a renowned poet. [8b]  This should perhaps be a delicately ironical way of hinting that Mr. Darwin did not read his grandfather’s books closely; but I hardly think that Dr. Krause looked at the matter in this light, for he goes on to say that “almost every single work of the younger Darwin may be paralleled by at least a chapter in the works of his ancestor: the mystery of heredity, adaptation, the protective arrangements of animals and plants, sexual selection, insectivorous plants, and the analysis of the emotions and sociological impulses; nay, even the studies on infants are to be found already discussed in the pages of the elder Darwin.” [8c]

Nevertheless, innocent as Mr. Darwin’s opening sentence appeared, it contained enough to have put us upon our guard.  When he informed us that, on his return from a long voyage, “it occurred to” him that the way to make anything out about his subject was to collect and reflect upon the facts that bore upon it, it should have occurred to us in our turn, that when people betray a return of consciousness upon such matters as this, they are on the confines of that state in which other and not less elementary matters will not “occur to” them.  The introduction of the word “patiently” should have been conclusive.  I will not analyse more of the sentence, but will repeat the next two lines:—“After five years of work, I allowed myself to speculate upon the subject, and drew up some short notes.”  We read this, thousands of us, and were blind.

If Dr. Erasmus Darwin’s name was not mentioned in the first edition of the “Origin of Species,” we should not be surprised at there being no notice taken of Buffon, or at Lamarck’s being referred to only twice—on the first occasion to be serenely waved aside, he and all his works; [9a] on the second, [9b] to be commended on a point of detail.  The author of the “Vestiges of Creation” was more widely known to English readers, having written more recently and nearer home.  He was dealt with summarily, on an early and prominent page, by a misrepresentation, which was silently expunged in later editions of the “Origin of Species.”  In his later editions (I believe first in his third, when 6000 copies had been already sold), Mr. Darwin did indeed introduce a few pages in which he gave what he designated as a “brief but imperfect sketch” of the progress of opinion on the origin of species prior to the appearance of his own work; but the general impression which a book conveys to, and leaves upon, the public is conveyed by the first edition—the one which is alone, with rare exceptions, reviewed; and in the first edition of the “Origin of Species” Mr. Darwin’s great precursors were all either ignored or misrepresented.  Moreover, the “brief but imperfect sketch,” when it did come, was so very brief, but, in spite of this (for this is what I suppose Mr. Darwin must mean), so very imperfect, that it might as well have been left unwritten for all the help it gave the reader to see the true question at issue between the original propounders of the theory of evolution and Mr. Charles Darwin himself.

That question is this: Whether variation is in the main attributable to a known general principle, or whether it is not?—whether the minute variations whose accumulation results in specific and generic differences are referable to something which will ensure their appearing in a certain definite direction, or in certain definite directions, for long periods together, and in many individuals, or whether they are not?—whether, in a word, these variations are in the main definite or indefinite?

It is observable that the leading men of science seem rarely to understand this even now.  I am told that Professor Huxley, in his recent lecture on the coming of age of the “Origin of Species,” never so much as alluded to the existence of any such division of opinion as this.  He did not even, I am assured, mention “natural selection,” but appeared to believe, with Professor Tyndall, [10a] that “evolution” is “Mr. Darwin’s theory.”  In his article on evolution in the latest edition of the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” I find only a veiled perception of the point wherein Mr. Darwin is at variance with his precursors.  Professor Huxley evidently knows little of these writers beyond their names; if he had known more, it is impossible he should have written that “Buffon contributed nothing to the general doctrine of evolution,” [10b] and that Erasmus Darwin, “though a zealous evolutionist, can hardly be said to have made any real advance on his predecessors.” [11]  The article is in a high degree unsatisfactory, and betrays at once an amount of ignorance and of perception which leaves an uncomfortable impression.

If this is the state of things that prevails even now, it is not surprising that in 1860 the general public should, with few exceptions, have known of only one evolution, namely, that propounded by Mr. Darwin.  As a member of the general public, at that time residing eighteen miles from the nearest human habitation, and three days’ journey on horseback from a bookseller’s shop, I became one of Mr. Darwin’s many enthusiastic admirers, and wrote a philosophical dialogue (the most offensive form, except poetry and books of travel into supposed unknown countries, that even literature can assume) upon the “Origin of Species.”  This production appeared in the Press, Canterbury, New Zealand, in 1861 or 1862, but I have long lost the only copy I had.

Chapter II

I am aware that Professor Huxley maintains otherwise.  He writes: “It is not true, for example, . . . that a reptile was ever a fish, but it is true that the reptile embryo” (and what is said here of the reptile holds good also for the human embryo), “at one stage of its development, is an organism, which, if it had an independent existence, must be classified among fishes.” [17]

This is like saying, “It is not true that such and such a picture was rejected for the Academy, but it is true that it was submitted to the President and Council of the Royal Academy, with a view to acceptance at their next forthcoming annual exhibition, and that the President and Council regretted they were unable through want of space, &c., &c.”—and as much more as the reader chooses.  I shall venture, therefore, to stick to it that the octogenarian was once a fish, or if Professor Huxley prefers it, “an organism which must be classified among fishes.”

But if a man was a fish once, he may have been a fish a million times over, for aught he knows; for he must admit that his conscious recollection is at fault, and has nothing whatever to do with the matter, which must be decided, not, as it were, upon his own evidence as to what deeds he may or may not recollect having executed, but by the production of his signatures in court, with satisfactory proof that he has delivered each document as his act and deed.

This made things very much simpler.  The processes of embryonic development, and instinctive actions, might be now seen as repetitions of the same kind of action by the same individual in successive generations.  It was natural, therefore, that they should come in the course of time to be done unconsciously, and a consideration of the most obvious facts of memory removed all further doubt that habit—which is based on memory—was at the bottom of all the phenomena of heredity.

I had got to this point about the spring of 1874, and had begun to write, when I was compelled to go to Canada, and for the next year and a half did hardly any writing.  The first passage in “Life and Habit” which I can date with certainty is the one on page 52, which runs as follows:—

“It is one against legion when a man tries to differ from his own past selves.  He must yield or die if he wants to differ widely, so as to lack natural instincts, such as hunger or thirst, and not to gratify them.  It is more righteous in a man that he should ‘eat strange food,’ and that his cheek should ‘so much as lank not,’ than that he should starve if the strange food be at his command.  His past selves are living in him at this moment with the accumulated life of centuries.  ‘Do this, this, this, which we too have done, and found out profit in it,’ cry the souls of his forefathers within him.  Faint are the far ones, coming and going as the sound of bells wafted on to a high mountain; loud and clear are the near ones, urgent as an alarm of fire.”

This was written a few days after my arrival in Canada, June 1874.  I was on Montreal mountain for the first time, and was struck with its extreme beauty.  It was a magnificent Summer’s evening; the noble St. Lawrence flowed almost immediately beneath, and the vast expanse of country beyond it was suffused with a colour which even Italy cannot surpass.  Sitting down for a while, I began making notes for “Life and Habit,” of which I was then continually thinking, and had written the first few lines of the above, when the bells of Notre Dame in Montreal began to ring, and their sound was carried to and fro in a remarkably beautiful manner.  I took advantage of the incident to insert then and there the last lines of the piece just quoted.  I kept the whole passage with hardly any alteration, and am thus able to date it accurately.

Though so occupied in Canada that writing a book was impossible, I nevertheless got many notes together for future use.  I left Canada at the end of 1875, and early in 1876 began putting these notes into more coherent form.  I did this in thirty pages of closely written matter, of which a pressed copy remains in my commonplace-book.  I find two dates among them—the first, “Sunday, Feb. 6, 1876”; and the second, at the end of the notes, “Feb. 12, 1876.”

From these notes I find that by this time I had the theory contained in “Life and Habit” completely before me, with the four main principles which it involves, namely, the oneness of personality between parents and offspring; memory on the part of offspring of certain actions which it did when in the persons of its forefathers; the latency of that memory until it is rekindled by a recurrence of the associated ideas; and the unconsciousness with which habitual actions come to be performed.

The first half-page of these notes may serve as a sample, and runs thus:—

“Those habits and functions which we have in common with the lower animals come mainly within the womb, or are done involuntarily, as our [growth of] limbs, eyes, &c., and our power of digesting food, &c. . . .

“We say of the chicken that it knows how to run about as soon as it is hatched, . . . but had it no knowledge before it was hatched?

“It knew how to make a great many things before it was hatched.

“It grew eyes and feathers and bones.

“Yet we say it knew nothing about all this.

“After it is born it grows more feathers, and makes its bones larger, and develops a reproductive system.

“Again we say it knows nothing about all this.

“What then does it know?

“Whatever it does not know so well as to be unconscious of knowing it.

“Knowledge dwells upon the confines of uncertainty.

“When we are very certain, we do not know that we know.  When we will very strongly, we do not know that we will.”

I then began my book, but considering myself still a painter by profession, I gave comparatively little time to writing, and got on but slowly.  I left England for North Italy in the middle of May 1876 and returned early in August.  It was perhaps thus that I failed to hear of the account of Professor Hering’s lecture given by Professor Ray Lankester in Nature, July 13 1876; though, never at that time seeing Nature, I should probably have missed it under any circumstances.  On my return I continued slowly writing.  By August 1877 I considered that I had to all intents and purposes completed my book.  My first proof bears date October 13, 1877.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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