Selections from Previous Works Part 14

I should like to have seen Mr. Darwin say this more explicitly. Indeed I should have liked to have seen Mr. Darwin say anything at all about the meaning of which there could be no mistake, and without contradicting himself elsewhere; but this was not Mr. Darwin's manner.

In pa.s.sing I will give another example of Mr. Darwin's manner when he did not quite dare even to hedge. It is to be found in the preface which he wrote to Professor Weismann's Studies in the Theory of Descent, published in 1882.

"Several distinguished naturalists," says Mr. Darwin, "maintain with much confidence that organic beings tend to vary and to rise in the scale, independently of the conditions to which they and their progenitors have been exposed; whilst others maintain that all variation is due to such exposure, though the manner in which the environment acts is as yet quite unknown. At the present time there is hardly any question in biology of more importance than this of the nature and causes of variability, and the reader will find in the present work an able discussion on the whole subject which will probably lead him to pause before he admits the existence of an innate tendency to perfectibility"--or towards, _being able to be perfected_.

I could find no able discussion upon the whole subject in Professor Weismann's book. There was a little something here and there, but not much.

Mr Herbert Spencer has not in his more recent works said anything which enables me to appeal to his authority.

I imagine that if he had got hold of the idea that heredity was only a mode of memory before 1870, when he published the second edition of his Principles of Psychology, he would have gladly adopted it, for he seems continually groping after it, and aware of it as near him, though he is never able to grasp it. He probably failed to grasp it because Lamarck had failed. He could not adopt it in his edition of 1880, for this is evidently printed from stereos taken from the 1870 edition, and no considerable alteration was therefore possible.

The late Mr. G. H. Lewes did not get hold of the memory theory, probably because neither Mr. Spencer nor any of the well-known German philosophers had done so. Mr. Romanes, as I think I have shown, actually has adopted it, but he does not say where he got it from. I suppose from reading Canon Kingsley in _Nature_ some years before _Nature_ began to exist, or (for has not the mantle of Mr. Darwin fallen upon him?) he has thought it all out independently; but however Mr. Romanes may have reached his conclusion, he must have done so comparatively recently, for when he reviewed my book, Unconscious Memory, {247} he scoffed at the very theory which he is now adopting.

Of the view that "there is thus a race memory, as there is an individual memory, and that the expression of the former const.i.tutes the phenomena of heredity"--for it is thus Mr. Romanes with fair accuracy describes the theory I was supporting--he wrote:

"Now this view, in which Mr. Butler was antic.i.p.ated by Prof. Hering, is interesting if advanced merely as an ill.u.s.tration; but to imagine that it maintains any truth of profound significance, or that it can possibly be fraught with any benefit to science, is simply absurd. The most cursory thought is enough to show," &c. &c.

"We can understand," he continued, "in some measure how an alteration in brain structure when once made should be permanent, . . . but we cannot understand how this alteration is transmitted to progeny through structures so unlike the brain as are the products of the generative glands. And we merely stultify ourselves if we suppose that the problem is brought any nearer to a solution by a.s.serting that a future individual while still in the germ has already partic.i.p.ated, say in the cerebral alterations of its parents," &c. Mr. Romanes could find no measure of abuse strong enough for me,--as any reader may see who feels curious enough to turn to Mr. Romanes' article in _Nature_ already referred to.

As for Evolution, Old and New, he said I had written it "in the hope of gaining some notoriety by deserving and perhaps receiving a contemptuous refutation from" Mr. Darwin. {248a} In my reply to Mr. Romanes I said, "I will not characterise this accusation in the terms which it merits."

{248b} Mr. Romanes, in the following number of _Nature_, withdrew his accusation and immediately added, "I was induced to advance it because it seemed the only rational motive that could have led to the publication of such a book." Again I will not characterise such a withdrawal in the terms it merits, but I may say in pa.s.sing that if Mr. Romanes thinks the motive he a.s.signed to me "a rational one," his view of what is rational and mine differ. It does not commend itself as "rational" to me, that a man should spend a good deal of money and two or three years of work in the hope of deserving a contemptuous refutation from any one--not even from Mr. Darwin. But then Mr. Romanes has written such a lot about reason and intelligence.

The reply to Evolution, Old and New, which I actually did get from Mr.

Darwin, was one which I do not see advertised among Mr. Darwin's other works now, and which I venture to say never will be advertised among them again--not at least until it has been altered. I have seen no reason to leave off advertising Evolution, Old and New, and Unconscious Memory.

I have never that I know of seen Mr. Romanes, but am told that he is still young. I can find no publication of his indexed in the British Museum Catalogue earlier than 1874, and then it was only about Christian Prayer. Mr. Romanes was good enough to advise me to turn painter or h.o.m.oeopathist; {249} as he has introduced the subject, and considering how many years I am his senior, I might be justified (if it could be any pleasure to me to do so) in suggesting to him too what I should imagine most likely to tend to his advancement in life; but there are examples so bad that even those who have no wish to be any better than their neighbours may yet decline to follow them, and I think Mr. Romanes' is one of these. I will not therefore find him a profession.

But leaving this matter on one side, the point I wish to insist on is that Mr. Romanes is saying almost in my own words what less than three years ago he was very angry with me for saying. I do not think that under these circ.u.mstances much explanation is necessary as to the reasons which have led Mr. Romanes to fight so shy of any reference to Life and Habit, Evolution, Old and New, and Unconscious Memory--works in which, if I may venture to say so, the theory connecting the phenomena of heredity with memory has been not only "suggested," but so far established that even Mr. Romanes has been led to think the matter over independently and to arrive at the same general conclusion as myself.

Curiously enough, Mr. Grant Allen too has come to much the same conclusions as myself, after having attacked me, though not so fiercely, as Mr. Romanes has done. In 1879 he said in the _Examiner_ (May 17) that the teleological view put forward in Evolution, Old and New, was "just the sort of mystical nonsense from which" he "had hoped Mr. Darwin had for ever saved us." And so in the _Academy_ on the same day he said that no "one-sided argument" (referring to Evolution, Old and New) could ever deprive Mr. Darwin of the "place which he had eternally won in the history of human thought by his magnificent achievement."

A few years, and Mr. Allen entertains a very different opinion of Mr.

Darwin's magnificent achievement.

"There are only two conceivable ways," he writes, "in which any increment of brain power can ever have arisen in any individual. The one is the Darwinian way, by 'spontaneous variation,' that is to say by variation due to minute physical circ.u.mstances affecting the individual in the germ. The other is the Spencerian way, by functional increment, that is to say by the effect of increased use and constant exposure to varying circ.u.mstances during conscious life." {250}

Mr. Allen must know very well, or if he does not he has no excuse at any rate for not knowing, that the theory according to which increase of brain power or any other bodily or mental power is due to use, is no more Mr. Spencer's than the theory of gravitation is, except in so far as that Mr. Spencer has adopted it. It is the theory which every one except Mr.

Allen a.s.sociates with Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, but more especially (and on the whole I suppose justly) with Lamarck.

"I venture to think," continues Mr. Allen, "that the first way [Mr.

Darwin's], if we look it clearly in the face, will be seen to be _practically unthinkable_; and that we have therefore no alternative but to accept the second."

These writers go round so quickly and so completely that there is no keeping pace with them. "As to Materialism," he writes presently, "surely it is more profoundly materialistic to suppose that mere physical causes operating on the germ can determine minute physical and material changes in the brain, which will in turn make the individuality what it is to be, than to suppose _that all brains are what they are in virtue of antecedent function_. The one creed makes the man depend mainly upon the accidents of molecular physics in a colliding germ cell and sperm cell; _the other makes him depend mainly upon the doings and gains of his ancestors as modified and altered by himself_."

Here is a sentence taken almost at random from the body of the article:--

"We are always seeing something which adds to our total stock of memories; we are always learning and doing something new. The vast majority of these experiences are similar in kind to those already pa.s.sed through by our ancestors: they add nothing to the inheritance of the race. . . . Though they leave physical traces on the individual, they do not so far affect the underlying organisation of the brain as to make the development of after-brains somewhat different from previous ones. But there are certain functional activities which do tend so to alter the development of after-brains; certain novel or sustained activities which apparently result in the production of new correlated brain elements or brain connections hereditarily transmissible as increased potentialities of similar activity in the offspring."

Of Natural Selection Mr. Allen writes much, as Professor Mivart and others have been writing for many years past.

"It seems to me," he says, "easy to understand how survival of the fittest may result in progress starting from such functionally produced gains, but impossible to understand how it could result in progress if it had to start in mere accidental structural increments due to spontaneous variation alone." {252a}

Mr. Allen may say this now, but until lately he has been among the first to scold any one else who said so.

And this is how the article concludes:--

"The first hypothesis (Mr Darwin's) is one that throws no light upon any of the facts. The second hypothesis (which Mr. Allen is pleased to call Mr. Herbert Spencer's) is one that explains them all with transparent lucidity." {252b}

So that Mr. Darwin, according to Mr. Allen, is clean out of it. Truly when Mr. Allen makes stepping-stones of his dead selves, he jumps upon them to some tune. But then Mr. Darwin is dead now. I have not heard of his having given Mr. Allen any ma.n.u.scripts as he gave Mr. Romanes. I hope Mr. Herbert Spencer will not give him any. If I was Mr. Spencer and found my admirers crowning me with Lamarck's laurels, I think I should have something to say to them.

What are we to think of a writer who declares that the theory that specific and generic changes are due to use and disuse "explains _all the facts_ with transparent lucidity"?

Lamarck's hypothesis is no doubt a great help and a great step toward Professor Hering's; it makes a known cause underlie variations, and thus is free from those fatal objections which Professor Mivart and others have brought against the theory of Messrs. Darwin and Wallace; but how does the theory that use develops an organism explain why offspring repeat the organism at all? How does the Lamarckian hypothesis explain the sterility of hybrids, for example? The sterility of hybrids has been always considered one of the great _cruces_ in connection with any theory of Evolution. How again does it explain reversion to long-lost characters and the resumption of feral characteristics? the phenomena of old age? the principle that underlies longevity? the reason why the reproductive system is generally the last to arrive at maturity, and why few further developments take place in any organism after this has been fully developed? the sterility of many animals under captivity? the development in both males and females, under certain circ.u.mstances, of the characteristics of the opposite s.e.x? the latency of memory? the unconsciousness with which we develop, and with which instinctive actions are performed? How does any theory advanced either by Lamarck, Mr.

Herbert Spencer, or Mr. Darwin explain, or indeed throw light upon these facts until supplemented with the explanation given of them in Life and Habit--for which I must refer the reader to that work itself?

People may say what they like about "the experience of the race," {254a} "the registration of experiences continued for numberless generations,"

{254b} "infinity of experiences," {254c} "lapsed intelligence," &c., but until they make Memory, in the most uncompromising sense of the word, the key to all the phenomena of Heredity, they will get little help to the better understanding of the difficulties above adverted to. Add this to the theory of Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck, and the points which I have above alluded to receive a good deal of "lucidity."

But to return to Mr. Romanes: however much he and Mr. Allen may differ about the merits of Mr. Darwin, they were at any rate not long since cordially agreed in vilipending my unhappy self, and are now saying very much what I have been saying for some years past. I do not deny that they are capable witnesses. They will generally see a thing when a certain number of other people have come to do so. I submit that, no matter how grudgingly they give their evidence, the tendency of that evidence is sufficiently clear to show that the opinions put forward in Life and Habit, Evolution, Old and New, and Unconscious Memory, deserve the attention of the reader.

I may perhaps deal with Mr. Romanes' recent work more fully in the sequel to Life and Habit on which I am now engaged. For the present it is enough to say that if he does not mean what Professor Hering and, _longo intervallo_, myself do, he should not talk about habit or experience as between successive generations, and that if he does mean what we do--which I suppose he does--he should have said so much more clearly and consistently than he has.

POSTSCRIPT.

This afternoon (March 7, 1884), the copies of this book being ready for issue, I see Mr. Romanes' letter to the _Athenaeum_ of this day, and get this postscript pasted into the book after binding.

Mr. Romanes corrects his reference to the pa.s.sage in which he says that Canon Kingsley first advanced the theory that instinct is inherited memory ("M. E. in Animals," p. 296). Canon Kingsley's words are to be found in _Fraser_, June, 1867, and are as follows:--

"Yon wood-wren has had enough to make him sad, if only he recollects it, and if he can recollect his road from Morocco hither he maybe recollects likewise what happened on the road: the long weary journey up the Portuguese coast, and through the gap between the Pyrenees and the Jaysquivel, and up the Landes of Bordeaux, and through Brittany, flitting by night and hiding and feeding as he could by day; and how his mates flew against the lighthouses and were killed by hundreds, and how he essayed the British Channel and was blown back, shrivelled up by bitter blasts; and how he felt, nevertheless, that 'that was water he must cross,' he knew not why; but something told him that his mother had done it before him, and he was flesh of her flesh, life of her life, and had inherited her instinct (as we call hereditary memory in order to avoid the trouble of finding out what it is and how it comes). A duty was laid on him to go back to the place where he was bred, and now it is done, and he is weary and sad and lonely, &c. &c.

This is a very interesting pa.s.sage, and I am glad to quote it; but it hardly amounts to advancing the theory that instinct is inherited memory.

Observing Mr. Romanes' words closely, I see he only says that Canon Kingsley was the first to advance the theory "that many hundred miles of landscape scenery" can "const.i.tute an object of inherited memory;" but as he proceeds to say that "_this_" has since "been independently suggested by several writers," it is plain he intends to convey the idea that Canon Kingsley advanced the theory that instinct generally is inherited memory, which indeed his words do; but it is hardly credible that he should have left them where he did if he had realized their importance.

Mr. Romanes proceeds to inform me personally that the reference to "Nature" in his proof "originally indicated another writer who had independently advanced the same theory as that of Canon Kingsley." After this I have a right to ask him to tell me who the writer is, and where I shall find what he said. I ask this, and at my earliest opportunity will do my best to give this writer, too, the credit he doubtless deserves.

I have never professed to be the originator of the theory connecting heredity with memory. I knew I knew so little that I was in great trepidation when I wrote all the earlier chapters of "Life and Habit." I put them paradoxically, because I did not dare to put them otherwise. As the book went on, I saw I was on firm ground, and the paradox was dropped. When I found what Professor Hering had done, I put him forward as best I could at once. I then learned German, and translated him, giving his words in full in "Unconscious Memory;" since then I have always spoken of the theory as Professor Hering's.

Mr. Romanes says that "the theory in question forms the backbone of all the previous literature on instinct by the above-named writers (not to mention their numerous followers) and is by all of them elaborately stated as clearly as any theory can be stated in words." Few except Mr.

Romanes will say this. I grant it ought to have formed the backbone "of all previous literature on instinct by the above-named writers," but when I wrote "Life and Habit" it was not understood to form it. If it had been, I should not have found it necessary to come before the public this fourth time during the last seven years to insist upon it. Of course the theory is not new--it was in the air and bound to come; but when it came, it came through Professor Hering of Prague, and not through those who, great as are the services they have rendered, still did not render this particular one of making memory the keystone of their system. Mr.

Romanes now says: "Why, of course, that's what they were meaning all the time." Perhaps they were, but they did not say so, and others--conspicuously Mr. Romanes himself--did not understand them to be meaning what he now discovers that they meant. When Mr. Romanes attacked me in _Nature_, January 27, 1881, he said I had "been antic.i.p.ated by Professor Hering," but he evidently did not understand that any one else had antic.i.p.ated me; and far from holding, as he now does, that "the theory in question forms the backbone of all the previous" writers on instinct, and "is by all of them elaborately stated as clearly as any theory can be stated in words," he said (in a pa.s.sage already quoted) that it was "interesting, if advanced merely as an ill.u.s.tration, but to imagine that it maintains any truth of profound significance, or that it can possibly be fraught with any benefit to science, is absurd."

Considering how recently Mr. Romanes wrote the words just quoted, he has soon forgotten them.

I do not, as I have said already, and never did, claim to have originated the theory I put forward in "Life and Habit." I thought it out independently, but I knew it must have occurred to many, and had probably been worked out by many, before myself. My claim is to have brought it perhaps into fuller light, and to have dwelt on its importance, bearings, and developments with some persistence, and to have done so without much recognition or encouragement, till lately. Of men of science, Mr. A. R.

Wallace and Professor Mivart gave me encouragement, but no one else has done so. I sometimes saw, as in the Duke of Argyll's case, and in Mr.

Romanes' own, that men were writing at me, or borrowing from me, but with the two exceptions already made, and that also of the Bishop of Carlisle, not one of the literary and scientific notables of the day so much as mentioned my name while making use of my work.