Life and Habit Part 9

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

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

VI. When, however, an impression has once reached transmission point--whether it be of the nature of a sudden striking thought, which makes its mark deeply then and there, or whether it be the result of smaller impressions repeated until the nail, so to speak, has been driven home--we should expect that it should be remembered by the offspring as something which he has done all his life, and which he has therefore no longer any occasion to learn; he will act, therefore, as people say, INSTINCTIVELY. No matter how complex and difficult the process, if the parents have done it sufficiently often (that is to say, for a sufficient number of generations), the offspring will remember the fact when a.s.sociation wakens the memory; it will need no instruction, and--unless when it has been taught to look for it during many generations--will expect none. This may be seen in the case of the humming-bird sphinx moth, which, as Mr.

Darwin writes, "shortly after its emergence from the coc.o.o.n, as shown by the bloom on its unruffled scales, may be seen poised stationary in the air with its long hair-like proboscis uncurled, and inserted into the minute orifices of flowers; AND NO ONE I BELIEVE HAS EVER SEEN this moth learning to perform its difficult task, which requires such unerring aim" ("Expression of the Emotions," p. 30).

And, indeed, when we consider that after a time the most complex and difficult actions come to be performed by man without the least effort or consciousness--that offspring cannot be considered as anything but a continuation of the parent life, whose past habits and experiences it epitomises when they have been sufficiently often repeated to produce a lasting impression--that consciousness of memory vanishes on the memory's becoming intense, as completely as the consciousness of complex and difficult movements vanishes as soon as they have been sufficiently practised--and finally, that the real presence of memory is testified rather by performance of the repeated action on recurrence of like surroundings, than by consciousness of recollecting on the part of the individual--so that not only should there be no reasonable bar to our attributing the whole range of the more complex instinctive actions, from first to last, to memory pure and simple, no matter how marvellous they may be, but rather that there is so much to compel us to do so, that we find it difficult to conceive how any other view can have been ever taken--when, I say, we consider all these facts, we should rather feel surprise that the hawk and sparrow still teach their offspring to fly, than that the humming-bird sphinx moth should need no teacher.

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

VII. We should also expect that the memory of animals, as regards their earlier existences, was solely stimulated by a.s.sociation. For we find, from Prof. Bain, that "actions, sensations, and states of feeling occurring together, or in close succession, tend to grow together or cohere in such a way that when any one of them is afterwards presented to the mind, the others are apt to be brought up in idea" ("The Senses and the Intellect," 2d ed. 1864, p. 332). And Prof. Huxley says ("Elementary Lessons in Physiology," 5th ed. 1872, p. 306), "It may be laid down as a rule that if any two mental states be called up together, or in succession, with due frequency and vividness, the subsequent production of the one of them will suffice to call up the other, AND THAT WHETHER WE DESIRE IT OR NOT." I would go one step further, and would say not only whether we desire it or not, but WHETHER WE ARE AWARE THAT THE IDEA HAS EVER BEFORE BEEN CALLED UP IN OUR MINDS OR NOT. I should say that I have quoted both the above pa.s.sages from Mr. Darwin's "Expression of the Emotions" (p.

30, ed. 1872).

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

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

That both plants and animals do as we should expect of them in this respect is plain, not only from the performance of the most intricate and difficult actions--difficult both physically and intellectually-- at an age, and under circ.u.mstances which preclude all possibility of what we call instruction, but from the fact that deviations from the parental instinct, or rather the recurrence of a memory, unless in connection with the accustomed train of a.s.sociations, is of comparatively rare occurrence; the result, commonly, of some one of the many memories about which we know no more than we do of the memory which enables a cat to find her way home after a hundred-mile journey by train, and shut up in a hamper, or, perhaps even more commonly, of abnormal treatment.

VIII. If, then, memory depends on a.s.sociation, we should expect two corresponding phenomena in the case of plants and animals--namely, that they should show a tendency to resume feral habits on being turned wild after several generations of domestication, and also that peculiarities should tend to show themselves at a corresponding age in the offspring and in the parents. As regards the tendency to resume feral habits, Mr. Darwin, though apparently of opinion that the tendency to do this has been much exaggerated, yet does not doubt that such a tendency exists, as shown by well authenticated instances. He writes: "It has been repeatedly a.s.serted in the most positive manner by various authors that feral animals and plants invariably return to their primitive specific type."

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

He continues: "It is curious on what little evidence this belief rests. Many of our domesticated animals could not subsist in a wild state,"--so that there is no knowing whether they would or would not revert. "In several cases we do not know the aboriginal parent species, and cannot tell whether or not there has been any close degree of reversion." So that here, too, there is at any rate no evidence AGAINST the tendency; the conclusion, however, is that, notwithstanding the deficiency of positive evidence to warrant the general belief as to the force of the tendency, yet "the simple fact of animals and plants becoming feral does cause some tendency to revert 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," he says, "that this really does occur," though he seems inclined to account for it by the fact that oddly-coloured and conspicuous animals would suffer much from beasts of prey and from being easily shot. "The best known case of reversion:" he continues, "and that on which 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 the wild boar; and the young have re-acquired longitudinal stripes." And on page 22 of "Plants and Animals under Domestication" (vol. ii. ed.

1875) we find that "the re-appearance of coloured, longitudinal stripes on young feral pigs cannot be attributed to the direct action of external conditions. In this case, and in many others, we can only say that any change in the habits of life apparently favours a tendency, inherent or latent, in the species to return to the primitive state." On which one cannot but remark that though any change may favour such tendency, yet the return to original habits and surroundings appears to do so in a way so marked as not to be readily referable to any other cause than that of a.s.sociation and memory--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, or during post-natal development as ordinarily observed in any species), or peculiarities of habit or form which do not partake of the nature of disease, it must be sufficient to refer the reader to Mr. Darwin's remarks upon this subject ("Plants and Animals Under Domestication,"

vol. ii. pp. 51-57, ed. 1875). The existence of the tendency is not likely to be denied. The instances given by Mr. Darwin are strictly to the point as regards all ordinary developmental and metamorphic changes, and even as regards transmitted acquired actions, and tricks acquired before the time when the offspring has issued from the body of the parent, or on an average of many generations does so; but it cannot for a moment be supposed that the offspring knows by inheritance anything about what happens to the parent subsequently to the offspring's being born. Hence the appearance of diseases in the offspring, at comparatively late periods in life, but at the same age as, or earlier, than in the parents, must be regarded as due to the fact that in each case the machine having been made after the same pattern (which IS due to memory), is liable to have the same weak points, 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 in that of the parent, because a diseased organism is commonly a deteriorating organism, and if repeated at all closely, and without repentance and amendment of life, will be repeated for the worse. If we do not improve, we grow worse. This, at least, is what we observe daily.

Nor again can we believe, as some have fancifully imagined, that the remembrance of any occurrence of which the effect has been entirely, or almost entirely mental, should be remembered by offspring with any definiteness. The intellect of the offspring might be affected, for better or worse, by the general nature of the intellectual employment of the parent; or a great shock to a parent might destroy or weaken the intellect of the offspring; but unless a deep impression were made upon the cells of the body, and deepened by subsequent disease, we could not expect it to be remembered with any definiteness, or precision. We may talk as we will about mental pain, and mental scars, but after all, the impressions they leave are incomparably less durable than those made by an organic lesion. It is probable, therefore, that the feeling which so many have described, as though they remembered this or that in some past existence, is purely imaginary, and due rather to unconscious recognition of the fact that we certainly have lived before, than to any actual occurrence corresponding to the supposed recollection.

And lastly, we should look to find in the action of memory, as between one generation and another, a reflection of the many anomalies and exceptions to ordinary rules which we observe in memory, so far as we can watch its action in what we call our own single lives, and the single lives of others. We should expect that reversion should be frequently capricious--that is to say, give us more trouble to account for than we are either able or willing to take. And a.s.suredly we find it so in fact. Mr. Darwin--from whom it is impossible to quote too much or too fully, inasmuch as no one else can furnish such a store of facts, so well arranged, and so above all suspicion of either carelessness or want of candour--so that, however we 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 living being we may rest a.s.sured that a host of long-lost characters lie ready to be evolved under proper conditions" (does not one almost long to subst.i.tute the word "memories" for the word "characters?") "How can we make intelligible, and connect with other facts, this wonderful and common capacity of reversion--this power of calling back to life long-lost characters?" ("Plants and Animals," &c., vol.

ii. p. 369, ed. 1875). Surely the answer may be hazarded, that we shall be able to do so when we can make intelligible the power of calling back to life long-lost memories. But I grant that this answer holds out no immediate prospect of a clear understanding.

One word more. Abundant facts are to be found which point inevitably, as will appear more plainly in the following chapter, in the direction of thinking that offspring inherits the memories of its parents; but I know of no single fact which suggests that parents are in the smallest degree affected (other than sympathetically) by the memories of their offspring AFTER THAT OFFSPRING HAS BEEN BORN.

Whether the unborn offspring affects the memory of the mother in some particulars, and whether we have here the explanation of occasional reversion to a previous impregnation, is a matter on which I should hardly like to express an opinion now. Nor, again, can I find a single fact which seems to indicate any memory of the parental life on the part of offspring later than the average date of the offspring'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 I will now take the following pa.s.sages.

M. Ribot writes:-

"Instinct is innate, i.e., ANTERIOR TO ALL INDIVIDUAL EXPERIENCE."

This I deny on grounds already abundantly apparent; but let it pa.s.s.

"Whereas intelligence is developed slowly by acc.u.mulated experience, instinct is perfect from the first" ("Heredity," p. 14).

Obviously the memory of a habit or experience will not commonly be transmitted to offspring in that perfection which is called "instinct," till the habit or experience has been repeated in several generations with more or less uniformity; for otherwise the impression made will not be strong enough to endure through the busy and difficult task of reproduction. This of course involves that the habit shall have attained, as it were equilibrium with the creature's sense of its own needs, so that it shall have long seemed the best course possible, leaving upon the whole and under ordinary circ.u.mstances little further to be desired, and hence that it should have been little varied during many generations. We should expect that it would be transmitted in a more or less partial, varying, imperfect, and intelligent condition before equilibrium had been attained; 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 creature will cease trying to improve; on which the repet.i.tion of the habit will become stable, and hence become capable of more unerring transmission--but at the same time improvement will cease; the habit will become fixed, and be perhaps transmitted at an earlier and earlier age, till it has reached that date of manifestation which shall be found most agreeable to the other habits of the creature.

It will also be manifested, as a matter of course, without further consciousness or reflection, for people cannot be always opening up settled questions; if they thought a matter over yesterday they cannot think it all over again to-day, but will adopt for better or worse the conclusion then reached; and this, too, even in spite sometimes of considerable misgiving, that if they were to think still further they could find a still better course. It is not, therefore, to be expected that "instinct" should show signs of that hesitating and tentative action which results from knowledge that is still so imperfect as to be actively self-conscious; nor yet that it should grow or vary, unless under such changed conditions as shall baffle memory, and present the alternative of either invention--that is to say, variation--or death. But every instinct must have poised through the laboriously intelligent stages through which human civilisations AND MECHANICAL INVENTIONS are now pa.s.sing; and he who would study the origin of an instinct with its development, partial transmission, further growth, further transmission, approach to more unreflecting stability, and finally, its perfection as an unerring and unerringly transmitted instinct, must look to laws, customs, AND MACHINERY as his best instructors. Customs and machines are instincts AND ORGANS now in process of development; they will a.s.suredly one day reach the unconscious state of equilibrium which we observe in the structures and instincts of bees and ants, and an approach to which may be found among some savage nations. We may reflect, however, not without pleasure, that this condition--the true millennium--is still distant. Nevertheless the ants and bees seem happy; perhaps more happy than when so many social questions were in as hot discussion among them, as other, and not dissimilar ones, will one day be amongst ourselves.

And this, as will be apparent, opens up the whole question of the stability of species, which we cannot follow further here, than to say, that according to the balance of testimony, many plants and animals do appear to have reached a phase of being from which they are hard to move--that is to say, they will die sooner than be at the pains of altering their habits--true martyrs to their convictions.

Such races refuse to see changes in their surroundings as long as they can, but when compelled to recognise them, they throw up the game because they cannot and will not, or will not and cannot, invent. And this is perfectly intelligible, for a race is nothing but a long-lived individual, and like any individual, or tribe of men whom we have yet observed, will have its special capacities and its special limitations, though, as in the case of the individual, so also with the race, it is exceedingly hard to say what those limitations are, and why, having been able to go so far, it should go no further. Every man and every race is capable of education up to a certain point, but not to the extent of being made from a sow's ear into a silk purse. The proximate cause of the limitation seems to lie in the absence of the wish to go further; the presence or absence of the wish will depend upon the nature and surroundings of the individual, which is simply a way of saying that one can get no further, 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 might train a rather stupid plough-boy to understand the differential calculus. This might be done with the help of an inward desire on the part of the boy to learn, but never otherwise. If the boy wants to learn or to improve generally, he will do so in spite of every hindrance, till in time he becomes a very different being from what he was originally. If he does not want to learn, he will not do so for any wish of another person. If he feels that he has the power he will 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, for the power and the desire go always hand in hand, or nearly so, and the whole business is nothing but a most vicious circle from first to last. But it is plain that there is more to be said on behalf of such circles than we have been in the habit of thinking. Do what we will, we must each one of us argue in a circle of our own, from which, so long as we live at all, we can by no possibility escape. I am not sure whether the frank acceptation and recognition of this fact is not the best corrective for dogmatism that we are likely to find.

We can understand that a pigeon might in the course of ages grow to be a peac.o.c.k if there was a persistent desire on the part of the pigeon through all these ages to do so. We know very well that this has not probably occurred in nature, inasmuch as no pigeon is at all likely to wish to be very different from what it is now. The idea of being anything very different from what it now is, would be too wide a cross with the pigeon's other ideas for it to entertain it seriously. If the pigeon had never seen a peac.o.c.k, it would not be able 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 want to become one, or think that it would be any use wanting seriously, even though it were to feel a pa.s.sing fancy to be so gorgeously arrayed; 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 like other creatures or objects which it was to their advantage or pleasure to resemble, will be believed by any one who turns to Mr.

Mivart's "Genesis of Species," where he will find (chapter ii.) an account of some very showy South American b.u.t.terflies, which give out such a strong odour that nothing will eat them, and which are hence mimicked both in appearance and flight by a very different kind of b.u.t.terfly; and, again, we see that certain birds, without any particular desire of gain, no sooner hear any sound than they begin to mimick it, merely for the pleasure of mimicking; so we all enjoy to mimick, or to hear good mimicry, so also monkeys imitate the actions which they observe, from pure force of sympathy. To mimick, or to wish to mimick, is doubtless often one of the first steps towards varying in any given direction. Not less, in all probability, than a full twenty per cent. of all the courage and good nature now existing in the world, derives its origin, at no very distant date, from a desire to appear courageous and good-natured.

And this suggests a work whose t.i.tle should be "On the Fine Arts as bearing on the Reproductive System," of which the t.i.tle must suffice here.

Against faith, then, and desire, all the "natural selection" in the world will not stop an amoeba from becoming an elephant, if a reasonable time be granted; without the faith and the desire, neither "natural selection" nor artificial breeding will be able to do much in the way of modifying any structure. When we have once thoroughly grasped the conception that we are all one creature, and that each one of us is many millions of years old, so that all the pigeons in the one line of an infinite number of generations are still one pigeon only--then we can understand that a bird, as different from a peac.o.c.k as a pigeon is now, could yet have wandered on and on, first this way and then that, doing what it liked, and thought that it could do, till it found itself at length a peac.o.c.k; but we cannot believe either that a bird like a pigeon should be able to apprehend any ideal so different from itself as a peac.o.c.k, and make towards it, or that man, having wished to breed a bird anything like a peac.o.c.k from a bird anything like a pigeon, would be able to succeed in acc.u.mulating accidental peac.o.c.k-like variations till he had made the bird he was in search of, no matter in what number of generations; much less can we believe that the acc.u.mulation of small fortuitous variations by "natural selection" could succeed better. We can no more believe the above, than we can believe that a wish outside a plough-boy could turn him into a senior wrangler. The boy would prove to be too many for his teacher, and so would the pigeon for its breeder.

I do not forget that artificial breeding has modified the original type of the horse and the dog, till it has at length produced the dray-horse and the greyhound; but in each case man has had to get use and disuse--that is to say, the desires of the animal itself--to help him.

We are led, then, to the conclusion that all races have what for practical purposes may be considered as their limits, though there is no saying what those limits are, nor indeed why, in theory, there should be any limits at all, but only that there are limits in practice. Races which vary considerably must be considered as clever, but it may be speculative, people who commonly have a genius in some special direction, as perhaps for mimicry, perhaps for beauty, perhaps for music, perhaps for the higher mathematics, but seldom in more than one or two directions; while "inflexible organisations," like that of the goose, may be considered as belonging to people with one idea, and the greater tendency of plants and animals to vary under domestication may be reasonably compared with the effects of culture and education: that is to say, may be referred to increased range and variety of experience or perceptions, which will either cause sterility, if they be too unfamiliar, so as to be incapable of fusion with preceding ideas, and hence to bring memory to a sudden fault, or will open the door for all manner of further variation--the new ideas having suggested new trains of thought, which a clever example of a clever race will be only too eager to pursue.

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

"The squirrel, before it knows anything of winter, lays up a store of nuts. 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 same materials, and of the same shape."

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

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

Yes. Because intelligence is of consciousness, and consciousness is of attention, and attention is of uncertainty, and uncertainty is of ignorance or want of consciousness. Intelligence is not yet thoroughly 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 been all 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 a.s.sumption. What is certain is that instinct does not betray signs of self-consciousness as to its own knowledge. It has dismissed reference to first principles, and is no longer under the law, but under the grace of a settled conviction.