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in 2019 with funding from
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https://archive.org/details/shrewsburyeditio04butl
5 Of the Shrewsbury Edition of the Works of
Samuel Butler seven hundred and fifty
numbered sets only have been printed
for sale. Of these, numbers one to three
hundred and seventy-five are reserved
for the British Empire, and numbers
three hundred and seventy-six to seven
hundred and fifty are reserved for the
United States of America.
5 Set number — - -
661
V
THE SHREWSBURY EDITION OF THE WORKS OF
samuel Sutler, edited by henry festing jones
AND A. T. BARTHOLOMEW. IN TWENTY VOLUMES.
VOLUME four: LIFE AND HABIT
APR 19 1938
^^IGAL
ToiOYTOI Ae ONT6C AN0poanOON M6N AfTANTGON KATACppONOYCI.
lucian, Icaromenippm , 30.
“ We are all terribly afraid of them . ” - Paraphrase.
Me MNHCO TOINYN TA?TA T€ ATTAfTeiAAl TO) All KAI TTpOC06INAI A OTI
MH AYNATON 6CTI MOI KATA X<i>P*N M6N6IN, HN MH TOYC (J>YCIK0YC
eKeiNOYC enupiyH. . . .
"Ectai tayta, hn A* e rci>. - lucian, Icaromenippus , 21, 22.
“ Lay it well, therefore, before Jupiter, that if he will
not bring these men of science to their proper bearings, I
can Stay here no longer.” . . .
“It shall be done,” I answered. - Paraphrase.
.
*
SAMUEL BUTLER
From a sketch from his own head, 1878, now at
St. John’s College, Cambridge
LIFE AND HABIT
by
SAMUEL BUTLER
LONDON: JONATHAN CAPE
NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON eS- COMPANY
MCMXXIII
MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT THE CHISWICK
PRESS BY CHARLES WHITTINGHAM & GRIGGS
(printers), LTD. AT TOOKS COURT
LONDON MCMXXIII
*
THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED
TO
CHARLES PAINE PAULI, ESQ.
BARRISTER-AT-LAW
IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF HIS INVALUABLE
CRITICISM OF THE PROOF-SHEETS OF THIS AND
OF MY PREVIOUS BOOKS
AND IN RECOGNITION OF AN OLD AND
WELL-TRIED FRIENDSHIP
•*
Contents
NOTE TO THE SHREWSBURY EDITION xi
PREFACE TO THE NEW (THIRD) EDITION xiH
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION Xvii
I. ON CERTAIN ACQUIRED HABITS I
II. CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS KNOWERS-
THE LAW AND GRACE 1 7
III. APPLICATION OF FOREGOING CHAPTERS TO CER¬
TAIN HABITS ACQUIRED AFTER BIRTH WHICH
ARE COMMONLY CONSIDERED INSTINCTIVE 36
IV. APPLICATION OF THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES TO
ACTIONS AND HABITS ACQUIRED BEFORE
BIRTH 49
V. PERSONAL IDENTITY 64
vi. personal identity ( continued) 75
VII. OUR SUBORDINATE PERSONALITIES 8 5
VIII. APPLICATION OF THE FOREGOING CHAPTERS -
THE ASSIMILATION OF OUTSIDE MATTER 102
IX. ON THE ABEYANCE OF MEMORY 122
X. WHAT WE SHOULD EXPECT TO FIND IF DIFFER¬
ENTIATIONS OF STRUCTURE AND INSTINCT
ARE MAINLY DUE TO MEMORY 135
XI. INSTINCT AS INHERITED MEMORY l6l
XII. INSTINCTS OF NEUTER INSECTS 1 79
XIII. LAMARCK AND MR. DARWIN 206
XIV. MR. MIVART AND MR. DARWIN 223
XV. CONCLUDING REMARKS 240
INDEX 2 5 I
IX
.
NOTE TO THE SHREWSBURY EDITION
CE AND HABIT , THOUGH DATED 1878,
appeared on Butler’s birthday, 4th December 1877.
A second edition (unchanged) was published in 1878.
In 1910 the late R. A. Streatfeild (Butler’s literary
executor) published a new edition, as to which the reader
is referred to Streatfeild’s preface, reprinted potf, pp. xiii-xv.
In the present edition all the corrections 'which Butler
made in his own copy of the work (now in the Butler
Collection at St. John’s College, Cambridge) are embodied,
together with some that he made in the extracts from
Life and Habit given in his Selections from Previous Works
(1884).
The four pieces printed by Streatfeild in an appendix
are now given in their proper places in the text; and the
titles of Darwin’s books have been Standardized. An
Index has been added, for which, and for other assistance,
the editors desire to thank Mr. G. W. Webb, of the
University Library, Cambridge.
They wish also to record the fad that in 1922 a transla¬
tion of Life and Habit into French by M. Valery Larbaud
appeared (Paris: Editions de la Nouvelle Revue Fran-
gaise).
1923. h.f.j.
A.T.B.
XI
PREFACE TO THE NEW (THIRD) EDITION
INCE SAMUEL BUTLER PUBLISHED LIFE AND
^ HABIT thirty-three 1 years have elapsed- years fruitful
^in change and discovery, during which many of the
^mighty have been put down from their seat and many
of the humble have been exalted. I do not know that
Butler can truthfully be called humble, indeed, I think he
had very few misgivings as to his ultimate triumph, but
he has certainly been exalted with a rapidity that he himself
can scarcely have foreseen. During his lifetime he was a
literary pariah, the vidfim of an organized conspiracy of
silence. He is now, I think it may be said without exag¬
geration, universally accepted as one of the most remark¬
able English writers of the latter part of the nineteenth
century. I will not weary my readers by quoting the
numerous tributes paid by distinguished contemporary
writers to Butler’s originality and force of mind, but I
cannot refrain from illustrating the changed attitude of
the scientific world to Butler and his theories by a reference
to Darwin and Modern Science , the collection of essays pub¬
lished in 1909 by the University of Cambridge, in com¬
memoration of the Darwin centenary. In that work
Professor Bateson, while referring repeatedly to Butler’s
biological works, speaks of him as “ the most brilliant
and by far the most interesting of Darwin’s opponents,
whose works are at length emerging from oblivion.”
With the growth of Butler’s reputation Life and Habit has
had much to do. It was the first and is undoubtedly the
moSt important of his writings on evolution. From its
loins, as it were, sprang his three later books. Evolution ,
Old and Neiv , Unconscious Memory , and Luck or Cunning?
which carried its arguments further afield. It will perhaps
interest Butler’s readers if I here quote a passage from his
Note-Books, lately published in the New Quarterly Review
1 Although the original edition of Life and Habit is dated 1878,
the book was actually published in December 1877.
• • •
Xlll
Life and Habit
(vol. iii, no. 9), in which he summarizes his work in
biology :
“To me it seems that my contributions to the theory
of evolution have been mainly these :
1. The identification of heredity and memory, and
the corollaries relating to sports, the reversion to remote
ancestors, the phenomena of old age, the causes of the
Sterility of hybrids, and the principles underlying longevity
-all of which follow as a matter of course. This was
Life and Habit [1877].
2. The re-introdudion of teleology into organic life,
which to me seems hardly, if at all, less important than
the Life and Habit theory. This was Evolution , Old and New
[1879].
3 . An attempt to suggest an explanation of the physics
of memory. I was alarmed by the suggestion and fathered
it upon Professor Hering, who never, that I can see, meant
to say anything of the kind, but I forced my view upon
him, as it were, by taking hold of a sentence or two in
his ledure, On Memory as a Universal Function of Organised
Matter , and thus connected memory with vibrations.
This was Unconscious Memory [1880].
What I want to do now [1885] is to conned vibra¬
tions not only with memory, but with the physical con¬
stitution of that body in which the memory resides, thus
adopting Newlands’ law (sometimes called Mendelejeff’s
law) that there is only one substance, and that the char-
aderiStics of the vibrations going on within it at any given
time will determine whether it will appear to us as, we will
say, hydrogen, or sodium, or chicken doing this, or
chicken doing the other.” [This is touched upon in the
concluding chapter of Luck or Cunning? 1887.]
The present edition of Life and Habit is pradically a
re-issue of that of 1878. I find that about the year 1890,
although the original edition was far from being exhausted,
xiv
Preface to the New (Third) Edition
Butler began to make corre&ions of the text of Life and
Habit , presumably with the intention of publishing a
revised edition. The copy of the book so corre&ed is now
in my possession. In the first five chapters there are
numerous emendations, very few of which, however,
affeft the meaning to any appreciable extent, being mainly
concerned with the excision of redundancies and the
simplification of Style. I imagine that by the time he had
reached the end of the fifth chapter Butler realized that
the corre&ions he had made were not of sufficient import¬
ance to warrant a new edition, and determined to let the
book Stand as it was. I believe, therefore, that I am carry¬
ing out his wishes in reprinting the present edition from
the original plates. I have found, however, among his
papers three entirely new passages, which he probably
wrote during the period of corre&ion and no doubt
intended to incorporate into the revised edition. Mr.
Henry FeSting Jones has also given me a copy of a passage
which Butler wrote and gummed into Mr. Jones’s copy of
Life and Habit These four passages I have reprinted as
an appendix at the end of the present volume.
One more point deserves notice. Butler often refers in
Life and Habit to Darwin’s Variations of Animals and
Plants under DomeHication. When he does so it is always
under the name Plants and Animals . More often Still he
refers to Darwin’s Origin of Species by means of Natural
Selection , terming it at one time Origin of Species and at
another Natural Selection, sometimes, as on p. 278, using
both names within a few lines of each other. Butler was
as a rule scrupulously careful about quotations, and I can
offer no explanation of this curious confusion of titles.
November 1910. R. A. STREATFEILD
XV
b
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
T'he italics in the passages quoted in
this book are generally mine, but I found it almost
impossible to call the reader’s attention to this upon
every occasion. I have done so once or twice, as
thinking it necessary in these cases that there should be
no mistake; on the whole, however, I thought it better to
content myself with calling attention in a preface to the
fad that the author quoted is not, as a general rule,,
responsible for the Italics.
13 th November 1877, S. BUTLER
XVII
Life and Habit
CHAPTER ONE: ON CERTAIN ACQUIRED HABITS
|T WILL BE OUR BUSINESS IN THE FOLLOW-
ing chapters to consider whether the unconsciousness,
! or quasi-unconsciousness, with which we perform cer-
1 tain acquired a&ions, throws any light upon embry¬
ology and inherited inStin&s, and otherwise to follow
the train of thought which the class of a&ions above-
JL mentioned may suggest; more especially I propose to
Consider them in so far as they bear upon the origin of
species and the continuation of life by successive genera¬
tions, whether in the animal or vegetable kingdoms.
In the outset, however, I wish most diStindbly to disclaim
for these pages the smallest pretension to scientific value,
originality, or even to accuracy of more than a very rough
and ready kind -for unless a matter be true enough to*
Stand a good deal of misrepresentation, its truth is not of a
very robust order, and the blame will rather lie with its
own delicacy if it be crushed, than with the carelessness of
the crusher. I have no wish to inStrudf, and not much
to be inStru&ed ; my aim is simply to entertain and interest
the numerous class of people who, like myself, know
nothing of science, but who enjoy speculating and reflect¬
ing (not too deeply) upon the phenomena around them..
I have therefore allowed myself a loose rein, to run on with
whatever came uppermost, without regard to whether it
was new or old; feeling sure that if true, it must be very
old or it never could have occurred to one so little versed
in science as myself; and knowing that it is sometimes
pleasanter to meet the old under slightly changed con¬
ditions, than to go through the formalities and uncertain¬
ties of making new acquaintance. At the same time, I
should say that whatever I have knowingly taken from any
one else, I have always acknowledged.
It is plain, therefore, that my book cannot be intended
for the perusal of scientific people; it is intended for the
I B
Life and Habit
general public only, with whom I believe myself to be in
harmony, as knowing neither much more nor much less
than they do.
Taking then, the art of playing the piano as an example
of the kind of adion we are in search of, we observe that
a pradised player will perform very difficult pieces appar¬
ently without effort, often, indeed, while thinking and
talking of something quite other than his music; yet he
will play accurately and, possibly, with much expression.
If he has been playing a fugue, say in four parts, he will
have kept each part well diStind, in such a manner as to
prove that his mind was not prevented, by its other occu¬
pations, from consciously or unconsciously following four
diStind trains of musical thought at the same time, nor
from making his fingers ad in exadly the required manner
as regards each note of each part.
It commonly happens that in the course of four or five
minutes a player may have Struck four or five thousand
notes. If we take into consideration the reSts, dotted notes,
accidentals, variations of time, etc., we shall find his
attention muSt have been exercised on many more occa¬
sions than when he was adually Striking notes : so that it
may not be too much to say that the attention of a firSt-rate
player has been exercised- to an infinitesimally small
extent- but Still truly exercised- on as many as ten thous¬
and occasions within the space of five minutes ; for no note
can be Struck nor point attended to without a certain
amount of attention, no matter how rapidly or uncon¬
sciously given.
Moreover, each ad of attention has been followed by an
ad of volition, and each ad of volition by a muscular
adion, which is composed of many minor adions; some
so small that we can no more follow them than the player
himself can perceive them; nevertheless, it may have been
perfedly plain that the player was not attending to what
he was doing, but was listening to conversation on some
2
On Certain Acquired Habits
other subjed, not to say joining in it himself. If he has
been playing the violin, he may have done all the above,
and may also have been walking about. Herr Joachim
would unquestionably be able to do all that has here been
described.
So complete does the player’s unconsciousness of the
attention he is giving, and the brain power he is exerting
appear to be, that we find it difficult to awaken his attention
to any particular part of his performance without putting
him out. Indeed we cannot do so. We observe that he
finds it hardly less difficult to compass a voluntary con¬
sciousness of what he has once learnt so thoroughly that
it has passed, so to speak, into the domain of unconscious¬
ness, than he found it to learn the note or passage in the
first instance. The effort after a second consciousness of
detail baffles him- compels him to turn to his music or play
slowly. In fad it seems as though he knows the piece too
well to be able to know that he knows it, and is only
conscious of knowing those passages which he does not
know so thoroughly.
At the end of his performance, his power of recolleding
turns out to have been no less annihilated than was his
consciousness of attention and volition. For of the
thousands of ads requiring the exercise of both the one
and the other, which he has done during the five minutes,
we will say, of his performance, he can recoiled hardly one
when it is over. If he calls to mind anything beyond the
main fad that he has played such and such a piece, it will
probably be some passage which he has found more
difficult than the others, and with the like of which he has
not been so long familiar. All the reft he will forget as
completely as the breath which he has drawn while playing.
He finds it difficult to remember even the difficulties he
experienced in learning to play. A few may have so
impressed him that they remain with him, but the greater
part will have escaped him as completely as the remem-
3
Life and Habit
brance of what he ate, or how he put on his clothes, this
day ten years ago; nevertheless, it is plain he remembers
more than he recolle&s remembering, for he avoids mis¬
takes which he made at one time, and his performance
proves that all the notes are in his memory, though if
called upon to play such and such a bar at random from
the middle of the piece, and neither more nor less, he will
probably say that he cannot remember it unless he begins
from the beginning of the phrase which leads to it. Very
commonly he will be obliged to begin from the beginning
of the movement itself, and be unable to Start at any other
point unless he have the music before him; and if dis¬
turbed he will have to Start de novo from an accustomed
Starting-point.
In spite, however, of the performer’s present pro¬
ficiency, our experience of the manner in which proficiency
is usually acquired warrants us in assuming that there must
have been a time when what is now so easy as to be done
without conscious effort of the brain was only done by
means of brain work which was so keenly perceived as to
cause fatigue and positive distress. Even now, if the
player is playing something unlike anything he has met
before, we observe he pauses and becomes immediately
conscious of attention.
We draw the inference, therefore, as regards pianoforte
or violin playing, that the greater the familiarity or know¬
ledge of the art, the less is there consciousness of such
knowledge; even so far as that there should be almost as
much difficulty in awakening consciousness which has
become latent,— a consciousness of that which is known
too well to admit of recognized self-analysis while the
knowledge is being exercised- as in creating a conscious¬
ness of that which is not yet known well enough to be
properly designated as known at all. On the other hand,
we observe that the less the familiarity or knowledge, the
greater the consciousness of whatever knowledge there is.
4
On Qertain Acquired Habits
Looking out for other instances of the habitual exercise
of intelligence and volition, which, from long familiarity
with the method of procedure, escape the notice of the per¬
son exercising them, we naturally think of writing. The
formation of each letter requires attention and volition,
yet in a few minutes a pradised writer will form several
hundred letters, and be able to think and talk of something
else all the time he is doing so. He will not probably be
able to recoiled the formation of a single charader in any
page that he has written; nor can he give more than the
substance of his writing if asked to do so. He knows how
to form each letter so well, and he knows so well each
word that he is about to write, that he has ceased to be
conscious of his knowledge or to notice his ads of volition,
each one of which is, nevertheless, followed by a corre¬
sponding muscular adion. Yet the uniformity of our
handwriting, and the manner in which we almost invari¬
ably adhere to one method of forming the same charader,
suggests that during the momentary formation of each
letter our memories muSt revert (with an intensity too
rapid for our perception) to many if not to all the occasions
on which we have ever written the same letter previously -
the memory of these occasions dwelling in our minds as
what has been called a residuum- an unconsciously Struck
balance or average of them all- a fused mass of individual
reminiscences of which no trace can be found in our con¬
sciousness, and of which the only effed lies in the gradual
changes of handwriting which are perceptible in most
people till they have reached middle-age, and sometimes
even later. So far are we from consciously recolleding
any one of the occasions on which we have written such
and such a letter, that we are not even conscious of exer¬
cising our memory at all, any more than we are in health
conscious of the adion of our heart. But, if we are writing
in some unfamiliar way, as when printing our letters
instead of writing them in our usual running hand, our
5
Life and Habit
memory is so far awakened that we become conscious of
every character we form ; sometimes it is even perceptible
as memory to ourselves, as when we try to recoiled!: how
to print some letter, for example a g, and cannot call to
mind on which side of the upper half of the letter we ought
to put the link which connects it with the lower, and are
successful in recollecting ; but if we become very conscious
of recollecting, it shows that we are on the brink of only
trying to do so, -that is to say, of not recollecting at all.
As a general rule, we remember for a time the substance
of what we have written, for the subjeCt is generally new
to us; but if we are writing what we have often written
before, we lose consciousness of this too, as fully as we do
of the characters necessary to convey the substance to
another person, and we find ourselves writing on as we
say mechanically while thinking and talking of something
else. So a paid copyist, to whom the subjeCt of what he is
writing is of no importance, does not even notice it. He
deals only with familiar words and familiar characters
without caring to go behind them, and thereupon writes
on in a quasi-unconscious manner; but if he comes to a
word or to characters with which he is little acquainted,
he becomes immediately awakened to the consciousness of
either recollecting or trying to recolleCt. His conscious¬
ness of his own knowledge or memory belongs to a period
of twilight between the thick darkness of ignorance and
the brilliancy of perfect knowledge; as colour which
vanishes with extremes of light or of shade. PerfeCt
ignorance and perfeCt knowledge are alike unselfconscious.
The above holds good even more noticeably in respeCt
of reading. How many thousands of individual letters do
our eyes run over every morning in The Times newspaper,
how few of them do we notice, or remember having
noticed ? Yet there was a time when we had such difficulty
in reading even the simplest wrords, that we had to take
great pains to impress them upon our memory so as to
6
On Certain Acquired Habits
know them when we came to them again. Now, not a
single word of all that we have seen will remain with us,
unless it is a new one, or an old one used in an unfamiliar
sense, in which case we notice, and may very likely remem¬
ber it. Our memory retains the substance only, the sub¬
stance only being unfamiliar. Nevertheless, although we
do not perceive more than the general result of our per¬
ception, there can be no doubt of our having perceived
every letter in every word that we have read at all, for
if we come upon a word misspelt our attention is at once
aroused; unless, indeed, we have a&ually corre&ed the
misspelling, as well as noticed it, unconsciously, through
exceeding familiarity with the way in which it ought to be
spelt. Not only do we perceive the letters we have seen
without noticing that we have perceived them, but we
find it almost impossible to notice that we notice them
when we have once learnt to read fluently. To try to do
so puts us out, and prevents our being able to read. We
may even say that if a man can attend to the individual
chara&ers, it is a sign that he cannot yet read fluendy.
If we know how to read well, we are as unconscious of the
means and processes whereby we attain the desired result
as we are about the growth of our hair or the circulation
of our blood. So that here again it appears that we only
know what we know Still to some extent imperfefdy, and
that what we know thoroughly escapes our conscious per¬
ception though none the less actually perceived. Our
perception in faff passes into a latent Stage, as also our
memory and volition.
Walking is another example of the rapid exercise of
volition with but litde perception of each individual aft of
exercise. We notice any obstacle in our path, but it is
plain we do not notice that we perceive much that we have
nevertheless been perceiving; for if a man goes down a
lane by night he will Stumble over many things which he
would have avoided by day, although he would not have
7
Life and Habit
noticed them. Yet time was when walking was to each
one of us a new and arduous task- as arduous as we should
now find it to wheel a wheelbarrow on a tight-rope;
whereas, at present, though we can think of our Steps to a
certain extent without checking our power to walk, we
certainly cannot consider our muscular a&ion in detail
without having to come to a dead Stop.
Talking- especially in one’s mother tongue -may serve
as a last example. We find it impossible to follow the
muscular a&ion of the mouth and tongue in framing every
letter or syllable wx utter. We had probably spoken for
years and years before we became aware that the letter b
is a labial sound, and until we have to utter a word which
is difficult from its unfamiliarity we speak “ trippingly on
the tongue ” with no attention except to the substance of
what we wish to say. Yet talking was not always the easy
matter to us which it is at present- as we perceive more
readily when we are learning a new language which it may
take us months to master. Nevertheless, when we have
once mastered it we speak it without further consciousness
of knowledge or memory, as regards the more common
words, and without even noticing our unconsciousness.
Here, as in the other instances already given, as long as we
did not know perfectly, we were conscious of our a&s of
perception, volition, and reflexion, but when our know¬
ledge has become perfedf we no longer notice our con¬
sciousness, nor our volition; nor can we awaken a second
artificial consciousness without some effort, and disturb¬
ance of the process of which we are endeavouring to
become conscious. We are no longer, so to speak, under
the law, but under grace.
An ascending scale may be perceived in the above
instances.
In playing, we have an a&ion acquired long after birth,
difficult of acquisition, and never thoroughly familiarized
to the point of absolutely unconscious performance,
8
On Certain Acquired Habits
except in the case of those who have either an exceptional
genius for music, or who have devoted the greater part of
their time to pra&ising. Except in the case of these per¬
sons it is generally found easy to become more or less
conscious of any passage without disturbing the perform¬
ance, and the player’s a&ion remains so completely within
control that he can Stop playing at any moment he pleases.
In writing, we have an adion generally acquired earlier,
done for the moStpart with great unconsciousness of detail,
fairly well within our control to Stop at any moment;
though not so completely as would be imagined by those
who have not made the experiment of trying to Stop in the
middle of a given chara&er when writing at full speed.
Also, we can notice our formation of any individual
chara&er without our writing being materially hindered.
Reading is usually acquired earlier Still. We read with
more unconsciousness of attention than we write. We
find it more difficult to become conscious of any chara&er
without discomfiture, and we cannot arreSt ourselves
in the middle of a word and hardly before the end of a
sentence; nevertheless it is on the whole well within our
control.
Walking is so early an acquisition that we cannot
remember having acquired it. In running fast over
average ground we find it very difficult to become con¬
scious of each individual Step, and should possibly find it
more difficult Still, if the inequalities and roughness of
uncultured land had not perhaps caused the development
of a power to create a second consciousness of our Steps
without hindrance to our running or walking. Pursuit
and flight, whether in the chase or in war, must for many
generations have played a much more prominent part in
the lives of our ancestors than they do in our own. If the
ground over which they had to travel had been generally
as free from obStruftion as our modern cultivated lands,
it is possible that we might not find it as easy to notice our
9
Life and Habit
several Steps as we do at present. Even as it is, if while
we are running we would consider the a&ion of our
muscles, we come to a dead Stop, and should probably fall
if we tried to observe too suddenly; for we must Stop to
do this, and running, when we have once committed
ourselves to it beyond a certain point, is not controllable
to a Step or two without loss of equilibrium.
We learn to talk, much about the same time that we
learn to walk, but talking requires less muscular effort
than walking, and makes generally less demand upon our
powers. A man may talk a long while before he has done
the equivalent of a five-mile walk ; it is natural, therefore,
that we should have had more pra&ice in talking than in
walking, and hence that we should find it harder to pay
attention to our words than to our Steps. Certainly it is
very hard to become conscious of every syllable or indeed
of every word we say; the attempt to do so will often
bring us to a check at once; nevertheless we can generally
Stop talking if we wish to do so, unless the crying of
infants be considered as a kind of quasi-speech : this comes
earlier, and is often quite uncontrollable, or more truly
perhaps is done with such complete control over the
muscles by the will, and with such absolute certainty of
his own purpose on the part of the wilier, that there is
no longer any more doubt, uncertainty, or suspense, and
hence no power of perceiving any of the processes whereby
the result is attained- as a wheel which may look faSt fixed
because it is so faSt revolving.
But I may say in passing that though articulate speech
and the power to maintain the upright position come much
about the same time, yet the power of making gestures
of more or less significance is prior to that of walking
uprightly, and therefore to that of speech. Not only is
gesticulation the earlier faculty in the individual, but it
was so also in the history of our race. Our semi-simious
ancestors could gesticulate long before they could talk
io
On Certain Acquired Habits
articulately. It is significant of this that gesture is Still
found easier than speech even by adults, as may be ob¬
served on our river-Steamers, where the captain moves his
hand but does not speak, a boy interpreting his gesture
into language. To develop this here would complicate
the argument; let us be content to note it and pass on.
We may observe therefore in this ascending scale,
imperfed as it is, that the older the habit the longer the
pra&ice, the longer the pra&ice the more knowledge -or,
the less uncertainty; the less uncertainty the less power
of conscious self-analysis and control.
It will occur to the reader that in all the instances given
above, different individuals attain the unconscious Stage
of perfect knowledge with very different degrees of facility.
Some have to attain it with a great sum; others are free
born. Some learn to play, to read, write, and talk, with
hardly an effort- some show such an inStin&ive aptitude
for arithmetic that, like Zerah Colburn, at eight years old,
they achieve results without inStru&ion, which in the case
of moSt people would require a long education. The
account of Zerah Colburn, as quoted from Mr. Baily in Dr.
Carpenter’s Mental Physiology, may perhaps be given here.
“ He raised any number consisting of one figure pro¬
gressively to the tenth power, giving the results (by adual
multiplication and not by memory) faster than they could be
set down in figures by the person appointed to record them.
He raised the number 8 progressively to the sixteenth
power, and in naming the laSt result, which consisted of
15 figures, he was right in every one. Some numbers
consisting of two figures he raised as high as the eighth
power, though he found a difficulty in proceeding when
the products became very large.
“ On being asked the square root of 106,929, he answered
327 before the original number could be written down.
He was then required to find the cube root of 268,3 3 6,1 25 r
and with equal facility and promptness he replied 645.
11
j
Life and Habit
“ He was asked how many minutes there are in 48
years, and before the question could be taken down he
replied 25,228,800, and immediately afterwards he gave
the correct number of seconds.
4 4 On being requested to give the fa&ors which would
produce the number 247,483, he immediately named 941
and 263, which are the only two numbers from the multi¬
plication of which it would result. On 171,395 being
proposed, he named 5x34,279, 7x24,485, 59x2905,
83 x 2065, 35 x 4897, 295 x 581, and 413 x 415.
“ He was then asked to give the fa&ors of 36,083, but
he immediately replied that it had none, which was really
the case, this being a prime number. Other numbers
being proposed to him indiscriminately, he always suc¬
ceeded in giving the corred fa&ors except in the case of
prime numbers, which he generally discovered almost as
soon as they were proposed to him. The number
4,294,967,297, which is 232 + i, having been given him,
he discovered, as Euler had previously done, that it was
not the prime number which Fermat had supposed it to be,
but that it is the produft of the fa&ors 6,700,417 x 641.
The solution of this problem was only given after the
lapse of some weeks, but the method he took to obtain it
clearly showed that he had not derived his information
from any extraneous source.
“ When he was asked to multiply together numbers
both consisting of more than three figures, he seemed to
decompose one or both of them into its faffors, and to
work with them separately. Thus, on being asked to give
the square of 4395, he multiplied 293 by itself, and then
twice multiplied the product by 1 5 . And on being asked
to tell the square of 999,999 he obtained the corre£f result,
.999,998,000,001, by twice multiplying the square of
37,037 by 27. He then of his own accord multiplied
that produft by 49, and said that the result (viz.,
48,999,902,000,049) was equal to the square of 6,999,993.
12
On Certain e Acquired Habits
He afterwards multiplied this produft by 49, and observed
that the result (viz., 2,400,995,198,002,401) was equal to
the square of 48,999,95 1. He was again asked to multiply
the produft by 25, and in naming the result (viz.r
60,024,879,950,060,025), he said it was equal to the square
of 244,999,755.
“ On being interrogated as to the manner in which he
obtained these results, the boy constantly said he did not
know how the answers came into his mind. In the ad of
multiplying two numbers together, and in the raising of
powers, it was evident (alike from the fads juSt Stated and
from the motion of his lips) that some operation was
going forward in his mind ; yet that operation could not
(from the readiness with which his answers were furnished)
have been at all allied to the usual modes of procedure,
of which, indeed, he was entirely ignorant, not being able
to perform on paper a simple sum in multiplication or
division. But in the extradion of roots, and in the dis¬
covery of the fadors of large numbers, it did not appear
that any operation could take place, since he gave answers
immediately , or in a very few seconds, which, according to
the ordinary methods, would have required very difficult
and laborious calculations, and prime numbers cannot be
recognized as such by any known rule.”
I should hope that many of the above figures are wrong.
I have verified them carefully with Dr. Carpenter’s quota¬
tion, but further than this I cannot and will not go. Also
I am happy to find that in the end the boy overcame the
mathematics, and turned out a useful but by no means
particularly calculating member of society.
This case is typical of others in which persons have been
found able to do without apparent effort what in the great
majority of cases requires a long apprenticeship. It is
needless to multiply instances ; the point that concerns us
is, that knowledge under such circumstances being very
intense, and the ease with which the result is produced
Life and Habit
extreme, it eludes the conscious apprehension of the per¬
former himself, who only becomes conscious when a
difficulty arises which taxes even his abnormal power.
Such a case, therefore, confirms rather than militates
against our opinion that consciousness of knowledge
vanishes on the knowledge becoming perfect- the only
difference between those possessed of any such remarkable
special power and the general run of people being, that
the first are born with such an unusual aptitude for their
particular specialty that they are able to dispense with all
or nearly all the preliminary exercise of their faculty,
while the latter muSt exercise it for a considerable time
before they can get it to work smoothly and easily; but
in either case when once the knowledge is intense it is
unconscious.
Nor again does such an instance as that of Zerah Col¬
burn warrant us in believing that this white heat, as it
were, of unconscious knowledge can be attained by any
one without his ever having been originally cold. Young
Colburn, for example, could not extrad roots when he was
an embryo of three weeks’ Standing. It is true we can
seldom follow the process, but we know there muSt have
been a time in every case when even the desire for inform¬
ation or adion had not been kindled; the forgetfulness of
effort on the part of those with exceptional genius for
a special subjed is due to the smallness of the effort neces¬
sary, so that it makes no impression upon the individual
himself, rather than to the absence of any effort at all.
Nevertheless, the smallness of the effort touches upon
the deepest myStery of organic life- the power to origin¬
ate, to err, to sport, the power which differentiates the
living organism from the machine, however complicated.
The adion and working of this power is found to be like
the adion of any other mental and, therefore, physical
power (for all physical adion of living beings is but the
expression of a mental adion), but I can throw no fight
14
On Certain Acquired Habits
upon its origin any more than upon the origin of life.
This, too, mu^t be noted and passed over.
It appears, therefore, as though perfed knowledge and
perfed ignorance were extremes which meet and become
indistinguishable from one another; so also perfed voli¬
tion and perfed absence of volition, perfed memory and
perfed forgetfulness ; for we are unconscious of knowing,
willing, or remembering, either from not yet having
known or willed, or from knowing and willing so well and
so intensely as to be no longer conscious of either.
Conscious knowledge and volition are of attention;
attention is of suspense ; suspense is of doubt ; doubt is of
uncertainty; uncertainty is of ignorance; so that the mere
fad of conscious knowing or willing implies the presence
of more or less novelty and doubt.
It also appears to be a general principle on a superficial
view of the foregoing instances (and the reader will readily
supply himself with others which may perhaps be more to
the purpose), that unconscious knowledge and uncon¬
scious volition are never acquired otherwise than as the
result of experience, familiarity, or habit; so that when¬
ever we observe a person able to do any complicated adion
unconsciously, we may assume both that he muSt have
done it very often before he could acquire so great pro¬
ficiency, and also that there muSt have been a time when
he did not know how to do it at all.
We may assume that if we follow his proficiency back
w”e shall presently reach a time when he is so near neither
knowing nor willing perfedly, that he is quite alive to
whatever knowledge or volition he can exert; going
further back, we shall find him Still more keenly alive to a
less perfed knowledge; earlier Still, we find him well
aware that he does not know nor will corredly, but trying
hard to do both the one and the other; and so on, back
and back, till both difficulty and consciousness become
little more than a sound of “ going,” as it were, in the
*5
Life and Habit
brain, a flitting to and fro of something barely recognizable
as the desire to will or know at all- much less as the desire
to know or will definitely this or that. Finally, they
retreat beyond our ken into the repose -the inorganic
kingdom- of as yet unawakened interest.
In either case -the repose of perfed ignorance or of
perfed knowledge -disturbance is troublesome. When
first Starting on an Atlantic Steamer, our rest is hindered by
the screw; after a short time, it is hindered if the screw
Stops. A uniform impression is pradically no impression.
We cannot either learn or unlearn without pains or pain.
1 6
CHAPTER TWO: CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS KNOWERS-
THE LAW AND GRACE
IN THIS CHAPTER WE SHALL SHOW THAT THE
law, which we have observed as to the vanishing
tendency of knowledge upon its becoming perfect,
holds good not only concerning acquired aftions or
habits of body, but concerning opinions, modes of
thought, and mental habits generally, which are no more
recognized as soon as firmly fixed, than are the Steps with
which we go about our daily avocations. I am aware that
I may appear in the latter part of this chapter to have
wandered somewhat beyond the limits of my subjefl, but,
on the whole, decide upon leaving what I have written,
inasmuch as it serves to show how far-reaching is the
principle on which I am insisting. Having said so much,
I shall, during the remainder of the book, keep more
closely to the point.
Certain it is that we know best what we are least con¬
scious of knowing, or at any rate least able to prove, as,
for example, our own existence, or that there is a country
England. If any one asks us for proof on matters of this
sort, we have none ready, and are justly annoyed at being
called to consider what we regard as settled questions.
Again, there is hardly anything which so much affe&s
our a&ions as the centre of the earth (unless, perhaps, it be
that Still hotter and more unprofitable spot the centre of
the universe), for we are incessantly trying to get as near
it as circumstances will allow, or to avoid getting nearer
than is for the time being convenient. Walking, running.
Standing, sitting, lying, waking, or sleeping, from birth
till death, it is a paramount objeft with us; even after
death- if it be not fanciful to say so -it is one of the few
things of which what is left of us can Still feel the influence;
yet what can engross less of our attention than this dark
and distant spot so many thousands of miles away?
The air we breathe, so long as it is neither too hot nor
cold, nor rough, nor full of smoke- that is to say, so long
17 C
Life and Habit
as it is in that State with which we are beSt acquainted -
seldom enters into our thoughts; yet there is hardly
anything with which we, are more incessantly occupied
night and day.
Indeed, it is not too much to say that we have no really
profound knowledge upon any subjeft-no knowledge on
the Strength of which we are ready to aft at all moments
unhesitatingly without either preparation or after-thought
-till we have left off feeling conscious of the possession
of such knowledge, and of the grounds on which it reSts.
A lesson thoroughly learned muSt be like the air which
feels so light, though pressing so heavily against us,
because every pore of our skin is saturated, so to speak,
with it on all sides equally. This perfeftion of knowledge
sometimes extends to positive disbelief in the thing known,
so that the most thorough knower shall believe himself
altogether ignorant. No thief, for example, is such an
utter thief- so good a thief-as the kleptomaniac. Until he
has become a kleptomaniac, and can Steal a horse as it were
by a reflex aftion, he is Still but half a thief, with many
unthievish notions Still clinging to him. Yet the klepto¬
maniac is probably unaware that he can Steal at all, much
less that he can Steal so well. He would be shocked if he
were to know the truth. So again, no man is a great
hypocrite until he has left off knowing that he is a hypo¬
crite. The great hypocrites of the world are almost
invariably under the impression that they are among the
very few really honeSt people to be found; and, as we muSt
all have observed, it is rare to find any one Strongly under
this impression without ourselves having good reason to
be of a different opinion.
Our own existence is another case in point. When we
have once become articulately conscious of existing, it is
an easy matter to begin doubting whether we exist at all.
As long as man was too unreflefting a creature to articu¬
late in words his consciousness of his own existence, he
18
Conscious and Unconscious Knowers
knew very well that he existed, but he did not know that
he knew it. With introspe&ion, and the perception
recognized, for better or worse, that he was a fad, came
also the perception that he had no solid ground for believ¬
ing that he was a fad at all. That nice, sensible, unintro-
spedive people who were too busy trying to exist pleas¬
antly to trouble their heads as to whether they existed or
no -that this beSt part of mankind should have gratefully
caught at such a Straw as Cogito ergo sum , is intelligible
enough. They felt the futility of the whole question, and
were thankful to one who seemed to clench the matter
with a cant catchword, especially with a catchword in a
foreign language; but how one, who was so far gone as
to recognize that he could not prove his own existence,
should be able to comfort himself with such a begging
of the question, would seem unintelligible except upon
the ground of exhaustion.
At the risk of appearing to wander too far from the
matter in hand, a few further examples may perhaps be
given of that irony of nature, by which it comes about that
we so often most know and are, what we least think our¬
selves to know and be- and on the other hand hold moSt
Strongly what we are least capable of demonstrating.
Take the existence of a Personal God, -one of the moSt
profoundly-received and widely-spread ideas that have
ever prevailed among mankind. Has there ever been a
demonstration of the existence of such a God that has
satisfied any considerable seffion of thinkers for long
together? Hardly has what has been conceived to be a
demonstration made its appearance and received a certain
acceptance as though it were a&ual proof, when it has been
impugned with sufficient success to show that, however
true the fa£f itself, the demonstration is naught. I do not
say that this is an argument against the personality of God;
the drift, indeed, of the present reasoning would be
towards an opposite conclusion, inasmuch as it insists
J9
Life and Habit
upon the fad that what is moSt true and beSt known is
often least susceptible of demonstration, owing to the very
perfedness with which it is known; nevertheless, the fad
remains that many men in many ages and countries -the
subtlest thinkers over the whole world for some fifteen
hundred years -have hunted for a demonstration of God’s
personal existence; yet though so many have sought, -
so many, and so able, and for so long a time -none have
found. There is no demonstration which can be pointed
to with any unanimity as settling the matter beyond power
of reasonable cavil. On the contrary, it may be observed
that from the attempt to prove the existence of a personal
God to the denial of that existence altogether, the path is
easy. As in the case of our own existence, it will be found
that they alone are perfed believers in a personal Deity
and in the Christian religion who have not yet begun to
feel that either Stands in need of demonstration. We
observe that most people, whether Christians, or Jews, or
Mohammedans, are unable to give their reasons for the
faith that is in them with any readiness or completeness;
and this is sure proof that they really hold it so utterly as
to have no further sense that it either can be demonstrated
or ought to be so, but feel towards it as towards the air
which they breathe but do not notice. On the other hand,
a living prelate was reported in The Times to have said in
one of his latest charges: “ My belief is that a widely
extended good pradice must be founded upon Christian
dodrine.” The fad of the Archbishop’s recognizing this
as among the number of his beliefs is conclusive evidence
with those who have devoted attention to the laws of
thought, that his mind is not yet clear as to whether or no
there is any connedion at all between Christian dodrine
and widely extended good pradice.
How different from the above uncertain sound is the
full clear note of one who truly believes :
“ The Church of England is commonly called a
Lutheran church, but whoever compares it with the
20
Conscious and Unconscious Knowers
Lutheran churches on the Continent will have reason to
congratulate himself on its superiority. It is in fa& a
church sui generis , yielding in point of dignity, purity, and
decency of its doctrines, establishment, and ceremonies, to
no congregation of chriStians in the world ; modelled to a
certain and considerable extent, but not entirely, by our
great and wise pious reformers on the doftrines of Luther,
so far as they are in conformity with the sure and solid
foundation on which it reSts, and we truSt for ever will
reSt- the authority of the Holy Scriptures, Jesus Christ
himself being the chief corner Stone.” ( Sketch of Modern
and Antient Geography , by Dr. Samuel Butler, of Shrews¬
bury. Ed. 1813.)
This is the language of faith, compelled by the exigen¬
cies of the occasion to be for a short time conscious of its
own existence, but surely very little likely to become so to
the extent of feeling the need of any assistance from reason.
It is the language of one whose convi&ions are securely
founded upon the current opinion of those among whom
he has been born and bred; and of all merely poSt-natal
faiths a faith so founded is the Strongest. It is pleasing to
see that the only alterations in the edition of 1838 consist
in spelling Christians with a capital C and the omission of
the epithet “ wise ” as applied to the reformers, an omis¬
sion more probably suggested by a desire for euphony than
by any nascent doubts concerning the applicability of the
epithet itself.
Again, it has been often and very truly said that it is
not the conscious and self-Styled sceptic, as Shelley for
example, who is the true unbeliever. Such a man as
Shelley will, as indeed his life abundantly proves, have
more in common than not with the true unselfconscious
believer. Gallio again, whose indifference to religious
animosities has won him the cheapest immortality which,
so far as I can remember, was ever yet won, was probably,
if the truth were known, a person of the sincereSt piety.
It is the unconscious unbeliever who is the true infidel,
21
Life and Habit
however greatly he would be surprised to know the truth.
Mr. Spurgeon was reported as having recently asked the
Almighty to “ change our rulers as soon as possible .” 1
There lurks a more profound distrust of God’s power in
these words than in almost any open denial of His exist¬
ence.
So it rather shocks us to find Mr. Darwin writing
{Variations of Animals and Plants under Domestication , vol. ii,
p. 275): “ No doubt, in every case there muSt have been
some exciting cause.” And again, six or seven pages
later: “No doubt, each slight variation muSt have its
efficient cause.” The repetition within so short a space of
this expression of confidence in the impossibility of cause¬
less effeds suggests that Mr. Darwin’s mind at the time
of writing was, unconsciously to himself, in a State of
more or less uneasiness as to whether effeds could not
occasionally come about of themselves, and without cause
of any sort, -that he may have been Standing, in fad, for a
short time upon the brink of a denial of the indeStrudibility
of force and matter.
In like manner, the most perfed humour and irony is
generally quite unconscious. Examples of both are
frequently given by men whom the world considers as
deficient in humour; it is more probably true that these
persons are unconscious of their own delightful power
through the very maStery and perfedion with which they
hold it. There is a play, for instance, of genuine fun in
some of the more serious scientific and theological jour¬
nals which for some time past we have looked for in vain
• a ff
in - .
The following extrad, from a journal which I will not
advertise, may serve as an example :
“ Lycurgus, when they had abandoned to his revenge
1 In Selections from Previous Works (1884) this sentence reads :
“ Mr. Spurgeon was reported as having asked God to remove Lord
Beaconsfield from office ‘ as soon as possible a.t .b.
22
Conscious and Unconscious Knowers
him who had put out his eyes, took him home, and the
punishment he infli&ed upon him was sedulous instruc¬
tions to virtue.’’ Yet this truly comic paper does not
probably know that it is comic, any more than the klepto¬
maniac knows that he Steals, or than John Milton knew
he was a humorist when he wrote a hymn upon the cir¬
cumcision, and spent his honeymoon in composing a
treatise on divorce. No more again did Goethe know
how exquisitely humorous he was when he wrote, in his
Wilhelm Meisfer, that a beautiful tear glistened in
Theresa’s right eye, and then went on to explain that it
glistened in her right eye and not in her left, because she
had had a wart on her left which had been removed -
and successfully. Goethe probably wrote this without a
chuckle ; he believed what a good many people who have
never read Wilhelm Meiffer believe Still, namely, that it
was a work full of pathos, of fine and tender feeling; yet a
less consummate humorist must have felt that there was
scarcely a paragraph in it from first to last the chief merit
of which did not lie in its absurdity.
Another example may be taken from Bacon of the
manner in which sayings which drop from men uncon¬
sciously, give the key of their inner thoughts to another
person, though they themselves know not that they have
such thoughts at all; much less that these thoughts are
their only true convidions. In his Essay on Friendship
the great philosopher writes : “ Reading good books on
morality is a little flat and dead.” Innocent, not to say
pathetic, as this passage may sound it is pregnant with
painful inferences concerning Bacon’s moral charader.
For if he knew that he found reading good books of
morality a little flat and dead, it follows he must have tried
to read them; nor is he saved by the fad: that he found
them a little flat and dead; for though this does indeed
show that he had begun to be so familiar with a few first
principles as to find it more or less exhausting to have his
23
Life and Habit
attention directed to them further -yet his words prove
that they were not so incorporate with him that he should
feel the loathing for further discourse upon the matter
which honeSt people commonly feel now. It will be
remembered that he took bribes when he came to be Lord
Chancellor.
It is on the same principle that we find it so distasteful
to hear one praise another for earnestness. For such
praise raises a suspicion in our minds ( pace the late Dr.
Arnold and his following) that the praiser’s attention muSt
have been arrested by sincerity, as by something more or
less unfamiliar to himself. So universally is this recog¬
nized that the word has for some time been discarded by
reputable people. Truly, if there is one who cannot find
himself in the same room with the Life and Letters of an
earnest person without being made instantly unwell, the
same is a juSt man and perfefi in all his ways.
But enough has perhaps been said. As the fish in the
sea, or the bird in the air, so unreasoningly and inarticu¬
lately safe muSt a man feel before he can be said to know.
It is only those who are ignorant and uncultivated who
can know anything at all in a proper sense of the words.
Cultivation will breed in any man a certainty of the un¬
certainty even of his moSt assured convi&ions. It is
perhaps fortunate for our comfort that we can none of us
be cultivated upon very many subjects, so that consider¬
able scope for assurance will Still remain to us; but
however this may be, we certainly observe it as a fa& that
those are the greatest men who are most uncertain in spite
of certainty, and at the same time moSt certain in spite of
uncertainty, and who are thus best able to feel that there
is nothing in such complete harmony with itself as a flat
contradi&ion in terms. For nature hates that any principle
should breed, so to speak, hermaphroditically, but will
give to each an help meet for it which shall cross it and
be the undoing of it; as in the case of descent with modifi-
24
Qonscious and Unconscious Knowers
cation, of which the essence is that every offspring
resembles its parents, and yet, at the same time, that no
offspring resembles its parents. But for the slightly irri¬
tating Stimulant of this perpetual crossing, we should pass
our lives unconsciously as though in slumber.
Until we have got to understand that though black is
not white, yet it may be whiter than white itself (and any
painter will readily paint that which shall show obviously
as black, yet it shall be whiter than that which shall show
no less obviously as white), we may be good logicians,
but we are Still poor reasoners. Knowledge is in an
inchoate State as long as it is capable of logical treatment ;
it muSt be transmuted into that sense or inStinfi: which
rises altogether above the sphere in which words can have
being at all, otherwise it is not yet incarnate. For sense is
to knowledge what conscience is to reasoning about right
and wrong; the reasoning muSt be so rapid as to defy
conscious reference to first principles, and even at times
to be apparently subversive of them altogether, or the
a&ion will halt. It muSt become automatic before we are
safe with it. While we are fumbling for the grounds of
our convi&ion, our conviftion is prone to fall, as Peter for
lack of faith sinking into the waves of Galilee; so that
the very power to prove at all is an a priori argument
against the truth- or at any rate the pra&ical importance
to the vaSt majority of mankind- of all that is supported by
demonstration. For the power to prove implies a sense of
the need of proof, and things which the majority of
mankind find pra&ically important are in ninety-nine cases
out of a hundred above proof. The need of proof becomes
as obsolete in the case of assured knowledge, as the pra&ice
of fortifying towns in the middle of an old and long settled
country. Who builds defences for that which is im¬
pregnable or little likely to be assailed? The answer is
ready, that unless the defences had been built in former
times it would be impossible to do without them now;
25
Life and Habit
but this does not touch the argument, which is not that
demonstration is unwise, but that as long as a demonstra¬
tion is Still felt necessary, and therefore kept ready to
hand, the subject of such demonstration is not yet securely
known. Qui s’ excuse, s’ accuse ; and unless a matter can
hold its own without the brag and self-assertion of con¬
tinual demonstration, it is Still more or less of a parvenu,
which we shall not lose much by negledfing till it has less
occasion to blow its own trumpet. The only alternative
is that it is an error in process of dete&ion, for if evidence
concerning any opinion has long been deemed superfluous,
and ever after this comes to be again felt necessary, we
know that the opinion is doomed.
If there is any truth in the above, it follows that our
conception of the words “ science ” and “ scientific ” must
undergo some modification. Not that we should speak
slightingly of science, but that we should recognize more
than we do, that there are two diStindf classes of scientific
people corresponding not inaptly with the two main
parties into which the political world is divided. The one
class is deeply versed in those sciences which have already
become the common property of mankind; enjoying,
enforcing, perpetuating, and engraining Still more deeply
into the mind of man acquisitions already approved by
common experience, but somewhat careless about exten¬
sion of empire, or at any rate disinclined, for the most
part, to adtive effort on their own part for the sake of such
extension. These are the quiet peaceable people -neither
progressive nor aggressive-who wish to live and let live,
as their fathers before them. The other class is chiefly
intent upon pushing forward the boundaries of science,
and is comparatively indifferent to what is known already
save in so far as necessary for purposes of extension;
these la$t are called pioneers of science, and to them alone
is the title “ scientific ” commonly accorded. But pioneers,
important to an army as they are, are Still not the army
26
Conscious and Unconscious Knowers
itself, which can get on better without the pioneers than
the pioneers without the army. Surely the class which
knows thoroughly well what it knows, and which adjudi¬
cates upon the value of the discoveries made by the
pioneers -surely this class has as good a right or better
to be called scientific than the pioneers themselves.
These two classes above described blend into one
another with every shade of gradation. Some men are
admirably proficient in the well-known sciences -that is
to say, they have good health, good looks, good temper,
common sense, and energy, and they hold all these good
things in such perfe&ion as to be altogether without intro¬
spection- to be not under the law, but so entirely under
grace that every one who sees them likes them. But such
may, and perhaps more commonly will, have little inclina¬
tion to extend the boundaries of human knowledge;
their aim is in another direction altogether. Of the
pioneers, on the other hand, some are agreeable people,
well versed in the older sciences, though Still more eminent
as pioneers, while others, whose services in this last
capacity have been of inestimable value, are noticeably
ignorant of the sciences which have already become
current with the larger part of mankind- in other words,
they are ugly, rude, and disagreeable people, very pro¬
gressive, it may be, but very aggressive to boot.
The main difference between the two classes lies in the
faCt that the knowledge of the one, so far as it is new, is
known consciously, while that of the other is unconscious,
consisting of sense and inStinCf rather than of recognized
knowledge. So long as a man has these, and of the same
kind as the more powerful body of his fellow-countrymen,
he is a man of science, though he can hardly read or write.
As my great namesake said so well, “ He knows what’s
what, and that’s as high as metaphysic wit can fly.” As is
usual in cases of great proficiency, these true and thorough
knowers do not know that they are scientific, and can
*7
Life and Habit
seldom give a reason for the faith that is in them. They
believe themselves to be ignorant, uncultured men, nor
can even the professors whom they sometimes outwit in
their own professorial domain perceive that they have
been outwitted by men of superior scientific attainments
to their own. The following passage from Dr. Carpenter’s
Mesmerism , Spiritualism , etc., may serve as an illustration:
“It is well known that persons who are conversant
with the geological Stru&ure of a district are often able
to indicate with considerable certainty in what spot and
at what depth water will be found; and men of less
scientific knowledge , but of considerable practical experience
(so that in Dr. Carpenter’s mind there seems to be some
sort of contrast or difference in kind between the know¬
ledge which is derived from observation of fads and
scientific knowledge) -“ frequently arrive at a true con¬
clusion upon this point without being able to assign
reasons for their opinions.
“ Exadly the same may be said in regard to the mineral
Strudure of a mining diStrid; the course of a metallic vein
being often corredly indicated by the shrewd guess of an
observant workman, when the scientific reasoning of the
mining engineer altogether fails.”
Precisely. Here we have exadly the kind of thing we
are in search of : the man who has observed and observed
till the fads are so thoroughly in his head that through
familiarity he has lost sight both of them and of the
processes whereby he deduced his conclusions from them
-is apparently not considered scientific, though he knows
how to solve the problem before him; the mining en¬
gineer, on the other hand, who reasons scientifically -
that is to say, with a knowledge of his own knowledge -
is found not to know, and to fail in discovering the
mineral.
“It is an experience we are continually encountering
in other walks of life,” continues Dr. Carpenter, “ that
28
Conscious and Unconscious Knowers
particular persons are guided- some apparently by an
original and others by an acquired intuition -to conclusions
for which they can give no adequate reason, but which
subsequent events prove to have been corred.” And this,
I take it, implies what I have been above insisting on,
namely, that on becoming intense, knowledge seems also
to become unaware of the grounds on which it rests, or
that it has or requires grounds at all, or indeed even exists.
The only issue between myself and Dr. Carpenter would
appear to be, that Dr. Carpenter, himself an acknowledged
leader in the scientific world, reStri&s the term “ scien¬
tific ” to the people who know that they know, but are
beaten by those who are not so conscious of their own
knowledge; while I say that the term “ scientific ” should
be applied (only that they would not like it) to the nice
sensible people who know what’s what rather than to the
professorial classes.
And this is easily understood when we remember that
the pioneer cannot hope to acquire any of the new
sciences in a single lifetime so perfeddy as to become
unaware of his own knowledge. As a general rule, we
observe him to be Still in a State of a&ive consciousness
concerning whatever particular science he is extending,
and as long as he is in this State he cannot know utterly.
It is, as I have already so often insisted, those who do not
know that they know so much who have the firmest grip
of their knowledge: the beSt class, for example, of our
English youth, who live much in the open air, and, as Lord
Beaconsfield finely said, never read. These are the people
who know best those things which are beSt worth know¬
ing- that is to say, they are the most truly scientific.
Unfortunately, the apparatus necessary for this kind of
science is so coStly as to be within the reach of few,
involving, as it does, an experience in the use of it for
some preceding generations. Even those who are born
with the means within their reach mu$t take no less pains,
29
Life and Habit
and exercise no less self-control, before they can attain
the perfeft unconscious use of them, than would go to the
making of a James Watt or a Stephenson; it is vain, there¬
fore, to hope that this best kind of science can ever be put
within the reach of the many; nevertheless it may be safely
said that all the other and more generally recognized kinds
of science are valueless except in so far as they minister
to this the highest kind. They have no raison d'etre unless
they tend to do away with the necessity for work, and to
diffuse good health, and that good sense which is above
self-consciousness. They are to be encouraged because
they have rendered the most fortunate kind of modern
European possible, and because they tend to make possible
a Still more fortunate kind than any now existing. But
the man who devotes himself to science cannot- with the
rarest, if any, exceptions -belong to this most fortunate
class himself. He occupies a lower place, both scientific¬
ally and morally, for it is not possible but that his drudgery
should somewhat soil him both in mind and health of
body, or, if this be denied, surely it muSt let him and
hinder him in running the race for unconsciousness. We
do not feel that it increases the glory of a king or great
nobleman that he should excel in what is commonly called
science. Certainly he should not go further than Prince
Rupert’s drops. Nor should he excel in music, art,
literature, or theology- all which things are more or less
parts of science. He should be above them all, save in so
far as he can without effort reap renown from the labours
of others. It is a lache in him that he should write music
or books, or paint pictures at all ; but if he must do so, his
work should be at beSt contemptible. Much as we mu$t
condemn Marcus Aurelius, we condemn James I even
more severely.
It is a pity there should exist so general a confusion of
thought upon this subjedl, for it may be asserted without
fear of contradi&ion that there is hardly any form of
3°
Conscious and Unconscious Knowers
immorality now rife which produces more disastrous
effeds upon those who give themselves up to it, and upon
society in general, than the so-called science of those who
know that they know too well to be able to know truly.
With very clever people- the people who know that they
know- it is much as with the members of the early
Corinthian Church, to whom St. Paul wrote, that if they
looked their numbers over, they would not find many
wise, nor powerful, nor well-born people among them.
Dog-fanciers tell us that performing dogs never carry
their tails ; such dogs have eaten of the tree of knowledge,,
and are convinced of sin accordingly- they know that
they know things, in resped of which, therefore, they are
no longer under grace, but under the law, and they have
yet so much grace left as to be ashamed. So with the
human clever dog ; he may speak with the tongues of men
and angels, but so long as he knows that he knows, his
tail will droop. More especially does this hold in the case
of those who are born to wealth and of old family. We
mu$t all feel that a rich young nobleman with a taSte for
science and principles is rarely a pleasant objed. We do
not understand the rich young man in the Bible who
wanted to inherit eternal life, unless, indeed, he merely
wanted to know whether there was not some way by
which he could avoid dying, and even so he is hardly
worth considering. Principles are like logic, which never
yet made a good reasoner of a bad one, but might Still
be occasionally useful if they did not invariably contradid
each other whenever there is any temptation to appeal to
them. They are like fire, good servants but bad masters.
As many people or more have been wrecked on principle
as from want of principle. They are, as their name implies*
of an elementary charader, suitable for beginners only,
and he who has so little mastered them as to have occasion
to refer to them consciously, is out of place in the society
of well-educated people. The truly scientific invariably
3 1
Life and Habit
hate him, and, for the moSt part, the more profoundly in
proportion to the unconsciousness with which they do so.
If the reader hesitates, let him go down into the Streets
and look in the shop-windows at the photographs of
eminent men, whether literary, artistic, or scientific, and
note the work which the consciousness of knowledge has
wrought on nine out of every ten of them; then let him
go to the masterpieces of Greek and Italian art, the truest
preachers of the truest gospel of grace; let him look at the
Venus of Milo, the Discobolus, the St. George of Dona¬
tello. If it had pleased these people to wish to Study,
there was no lack of brains to do it with; but imagine
“what a deal of scorn” would “look beautiful in the
contempt and anger ” of the Venus of Milo’s lip if it were
suggested to her that she should learn to read. Which,
think you, knows moSt, the Theseus, or any modern
professor taken at random? True, learning muSt have a
great share in the advancement of beauty, inasmuch as
beauty is but knowledge perfe&ed and incarnate- but with
the pioneers it is sic vos non vobh\ the grace is not for them,
but for those who come after. Science is like offences. It
muSt needs come, but woe unto that man through whom
it comes ; for there cannot be much beauty where there is
consciousness of knowledge, and while knowledge is Still
new it muSt in the nature of things involve much con¬
sciousness.
It is not knowledge, then, that is incompatible with
beauty; there cannot be too much knowledge, but it muSt
have passed through many people who it is to be feared
muSt be both ugly and disagreeable, before beauty or
grace will have anything to say to it; it muSt be so diffused
throughout a man’s whole being that he shall not be aware
of it, or he will bear himself under it constrainedly as one
under the law, and not as one under grace.
And grace is best, for where grace is, love is not distant.
Grace! the old Pagan ideal whose charm even unlovely
32
Conscious and Unconscious Knowers
Paul could not withstand, but, as the legend tells us, his
soul fainted within him, his heart misgave him, and.
Standing alone on the seashore at dusk, he “ troubled deaf
heaven with his bootless cries,” his thin voice pleading
for grace after the flesh.
The waves came in one after another, the sea-gulls cried
together after their kind, the wind rustled among the dried
canes upon the sandbanks, and there came a voice from
heaven saying, “ Let My grace be sufficient for thee.”
Whereon, failing of the thing itself, he Stole the word and
Strove to crush its meaning to the measure of his own
limitations. But the true grace, with her groves and high
places, and troops of young men and maidens crowned
with flowers, and singing of love and youth and wine-
the true grace he drove out into the wilderness -high up,
it may be, into Piora, and into such-like places. Happy
they who harboured her in her ill report.
It is common to hear men wonder what new faith will
be adopted by mankind if disbelief in the Christian religion
should become general. They seem to expeft that some
new theological or quasi-theological system will arise,
which, mutath mutandis , shall be Christianity over again.
It is a frequent reproach against those who maintain that
the supernatural element of Christianity is without foun¬
dation, that they bring forward no such system of their
own. They pull down but cannot build. We sometimes
hear even those who have come to the same conclusions
as the destroyers say, that having nothing new to set up,
they will not attack the old. But how can people set up
a new superstition, knowing it to be a superstition?
Without faith in their own platform, a faith as intense as
that manifested by the early Christians, how can they
preach? A new superstition will come, but it is in the very
essence of things that its apoStles should have no suspicion
of its real nature; that they should no more recognize
the common element between the new and the old than
33
D
Life and Habit
the early Christians recognized it between their faith and
Paganism. If they did, they would be paralysed. Others
say that the new fabric may be seen rising on every side,
and that the coming religion is science. Certainly its
apoStles preach it without misgiving, but it is not on that
account less possible that it may prove only to be the
coming superstition -like Christianity, true to its true
votaries, and, like Christianity, false to those who follow
it introspeCtively.
It may well be we shall find we have escaped from one
set of taskmasters to fall into the hands of others far more
ruthless. The tyranny of the Church is light in comparison
with that which future generations may have to undergo
at the hands of the doctrinaires. The Church did uphold
a grace of some sort as the summum bonu?n , in comparison
with which all so-called earthly knowledge -knowledge,
that is to say, which had not passed through so many
people as to have become living and incarnate- was unim¬
portant. Do what we may, we are Still drawn to the
unspoken teaching of her less introspective ages with a
force which no falsehood could command. Her build¬
ings, her music, her architecture, touch us as none other
on the whole can do ; when she speaks there are many of
us who think that she denies the deeper truths of her own
profounder mind, and unfortunately her tendency is now
towards more rather than less introspection. The more
she gives way to this -the more she becomes conscious of
knowing- the less she will know. But Still her ideal is in
grace.
The so-called man of science, on the other hand, seems
now generally inclined to make light of all knowledge,
save of the pioneer character. His ideal is in selfconscious
knowledge. Let us have no more Lo, here, with the pro¬
fessor; he very rarely knows what he says he knows;
no sooner has he misled the world for a sufficient time with
a great flourish of trumpets than he is toppled over by one
34
Conscious and Unconscious Knowers
more plausible than himself. He is but medicine-man,
augur, prieSt, in its latest development; useful it may be,
but requiring to be well watched by those who value
freedom. Wait till he has become more powerful, and
note the vagaries which his conceit of knowledge will
indulge in. The Church did not persecute while she was
Still weak. Of course every system has had, and will have,
its heroes, but, as we all very well know, the heroism of
the hero is but remotely due to system; it is due not to
arguments, nor reasoning, nor to any consciously recog¬
nized perceptions, but to those deeper sciences which lie
far beyond the reach of self-analysis, and for the Study of
which there is but one schooling -to have had good fore¬
fathers for many generations.
Above all things, let no unwary reader do me the
injustice of believing in me. In that I write at all I am
among the damned. If he muSt believe in anything, let
him believe in the music of Handel, the painting of Gio¬
vanni Bellini, and in the thirteenth chapter of St. Paul’s
First Epistle to the Corinthians.
But to return. Whenever we find people knowing that
they know this or that, we have the same Story over and
over again. They do not yet know it perfe&ly.
We come, therefore, to the conclusion that our know¬
ledge and reasonings thereupon, only become perfedt,
assured, unhesitating, when they have become automatic,
and are thus exercised without further conscious effort of
the mind, much in the same way as we cannot walk nor
read nor write perfe&ly till we can do so automatically.
35
CHAPTER THREE: APPLICATION OF FOREGOING CHAPTERS
TO CERTAIN HABITS ACQUIRED AFTER BIRTH WHICH ARE
COMMONLY CONSIDERED INSTINCTIVE
fT J HAT IS TRUE OF KNOWING IS ALSO
V / true of willing. The more intensely we will, the
i/\j less is our will deliberate and capable of being
V V recognized as will at all. So that it is common
to hear men declare under certain circumstances that they
had no will, but were forced into their own a&ion under
Stress of passion or temptation. But in the more ordinary
a&ions of life, we observe, as in walking or breathing, that
we do not will anything utterly and without remnant of
hesitation, till we have loSt sight of the fa<3; that we are
exercising our will.
The question, therefore, is forced upon us, how far this
principle extends, and whether there may not be unheeded
examples of its operation which, if we consider them, will
land us in rather unexpe&ed conclusions. If it be granted
that consciousness of knowledge and of volition vanishes
when the knowledge and the volition have become
intense and perfefl, may it not be possible that many
a&ions which we do without knowing how we do them,
and without any conscious exercise of the will-a&ions
which we certainlv could not do if we tried to do them,
* *
nor refrain from doing if for any reason we wished to do
so- are done so easily and so unconsciously owing to
excess of knowledge or experience rather than deficiency,
we having done them too often, knowing how to do them
too well, and having too little hesitation as to the method
of procedure, to be capable of following our own a&ion
without the derangement of such a&ion ; or, in other cases,
because we have so long settled the question, that we have
Stowed away the whole apparatus with which we work in
corners of our system which we cannot now conveniently
reach?
It may be interesting to see whether we can find any
class or classes of a&ions which seem to link adlions which
Application of Foregoing Chapters
for some time after birth we could not do at all, and in
which our proficiency has reached the Stage of unconscious
performance obviously through repeated effort and failure
and through this only, with addons which we could do as
soon as we were born, and concerning which it at first sight
appears absurd to say that they can have been acquired by
any process in the least analogous to what we call experi¬
ence, inasmuch as the creature itself which does them has
only juSt begun to exist, and cannot, therefore, in the
nature of things, have had experience.
Can we see that addons, for the acquisition of which
experience is such an obvious necessity, that whenever
we see the acquisition we assume the experience, gradate
away imperceptibly into addons which seem, according to
all reasonable analogy, to necessitate experience, of which,
however, the time and place are so obscure that they are
not now commonly supposed to have any conneddon with
bona fide experience at all?
Eating and drinking appear to be such addons. The
new-born child cannot eat, and cannot drink, but he can
swallow as soon as he is born; and swallowing appears (as
we may remark in passing) to have been an earlier faculty
of animal life than that of eating with teeth. The ease and
unconsciousness with which we eat and drink is clearly
attributable to praddce ; but a very little praddce seems to
go a long way- a suspiciously small amount of praddce -
as though somewhere or at some other time there muSt
have been more praddce than we can account for. We can
very readily Stop eating or drinking, and can follow our
own addon without difficulty in either process; but, as
regards swallowing, which is the earlier habit, we have
less power of self-analysis and control: when we have
once committed ourselves beyond a certain point to
swallowing, we muSt finish doing so, -that is to say, our
control over the operation ceases. Also, a Still smaller
experience seems necessary for the acquisition of the power
37
Life and Habit
to swallow than for that of eating; and if we get into a
difficulty we choke, and are more at a loss how to become
introspe&ive than we are about eating and drinking.
Why should a baby be able to swallow -which one
would have said was the more complicated process of the
two -with so much less pra£Hce than it takes him to learn
to eat? How comes it that he exhibits in the case of the
more difficult operation all the phenomena which ordin¬
arily accompany a more complete mastery and longer
pra&ice? Analogy points in the dire&ion of thinking that
the necessary experience cannot have been wanting, and
that, too, not in such a quibbling sort as when people talk
about inherited habit or the experience of the race, which,
without explanation, is to plain-speaking persons very
much the same, in regard to the individual, as no experi¬
ence at all, but bona fide in the child’s own person.
Breathing, again, is an a£ion acquired after birth,
generally with some little hesitation and difficulty, but
Still acquired in a time seldom longer, as I am informed,
than ten minutes or a quarter of an hour. For an art which
has to be acquired at all, there seems here, as in the case of
eating, to be a disproportion between, on the one hand,
the intricacy of the process performed, and on the other,
the shortness of the time taken to acquire the practice,
and the ease and unconsciousness with which its exercise
is continued from the moment of acquisition.
We observe that in later life much less difficult and
intricate operations than breathing require much longer
pra&ice before they can be mastered to the extent of
unconscious performance. We observe also that the
phenomena attendant on the learning by an infant to
breathe are extremely like those attendant upon the repe¬
tition of some performance by one who has done the same
thing very often before, but who requires juSt a little
prompting to set him off, on getting which, the whole
familiar routine presents itself before him, and he repeats
38
Application of Foregoing Chapters
his task by rote. Surely then we are justified in suspe&ing
that there muSt have been more bona fide personal recollec¬
tion and experience, with more effort and failure on the
part of the infant itself than meet the eye.
It should be noticed, also, that our control over breath¬
ing is very limited. We can hold our breath a little, or
breathe a little faster for a short time, but we cannot do
this for long, and after having gone without air for a
certain time we muSt breathe.
Seeing and hearing require some pra&ice before their
free use is mastered, but not very much. They are so far
within our control that we can see more by looking
harder, and hear more by listening attentively- but they
are beyond our control in so far as that we muSt see and
hear the greater part of what presents itself to us as near,
and at the same time unfamiliar, unless we turn away or
shut our eyes, or Stop our ears by a mechanical process;
and when we do this it is a sign that we have already
involuntarily seen or heard more than we wished. The
familiar, whether sight or sound, very commonly escapes
us.
Take again the processes of digestion, the a&ion of the
heart, and the oxygenization of the blood- processes of
extreme intricacy, done almost entirely unconsciously, and
quite beyond the control of our volition.
Is it possible that our unconsciousness concerning our
own performance of all these processes arises from over¬
experience?
Is there anything in digestion, or the oxygenization of
the blood, different in kind to the rapid unconscious a&ion
of a man playing a difficult piece of music on the piano?
There may be in degree, but as a man who sits down to
play what he well knows, plays on, when once Started,
almost, as we say, mechanically, so, having eaten his
dinner, he digests it as a matter of course, unless it has been
in some way unfamiliar to him, or he to it, owing to some
39
Life and Habit
derangement or occurrence with which he is unfamiliar,
and under which therefore he is at a loss how to comport
himself, as a player would be at a loss how to play with
gloves on, or with gout in his fingers, or if set to play
music upside down.
Can we show that all the acquired aCtions of childhood
and after-life, which we now do unconsciously, or without
conscious exercise of the will, are familiar aCts-aCts which
we have already done a very great number of times ?
Can we also show that there are no acquired aCtions
which we can perform in this automatic manner, which
were not at one time difficult, requiring attention, and
liable to repeated failure, our volition failing to command
obedience from the members which should carry its pur¬
poses into execution?
If so, analogy will point in the direction of thinking that
other aCts which we do even more unconsciously may only
escape our power of self-examination and control because
they are even more familiar- because we have done them
oftener; and we may imagine that if there were a micro¬
scope which could show us the minutest atoms of con¬
sciousness and volition, we should find that the apparently
mo^t automatic aCtions were yet done in due course, upon
a balance of considerations, and under the deliberate
exercise of the will. We should thus incline to think that
even such an aCtion as the oxygeni2ation of its blood by
an infant of ten minutes old, can only be done so well and
so unconsciously, after repeated failures on the part of the
infant itself.
True, as has been already implied, we do not imme¬
diately see when the baby could have made the necessary
mistakes and acquired that infinite practice without which
it could never go through such complex processes satis¬
factorily; we have therefore invented the word “ hered¬
ity,” and consider it as accounting for the phenomena;
but a little reflection will show that though this word may
40
Application of Foregoing Chapters
be a very good way of Stating the difficulty, it does nothing
towards removing it.
Why should heredity enable a creature to dispense with
the experience which we see to be necessary in all other
cases before difficult operations can be performed success-
fully?
What is this talk that is made about the experience of the
race , as though the experience of one man could profit
another who knows nothing about him? If a man eats
his dinner, it nourishes him and not his neighbour; if he
learns a difficult art, it is he that can do it and not his
neighbour. Yet, pra&ically, we see that the vicarious
experience, which seems so contrary to our common
observation, does nevertheless appear to hold good in the
case of creatures and their descendants. Is there, then,
any way of bringing these apparently confli&ing phe¬
nomena under the operation of one law? Is there any way
of showing that this experience of the race, of which so
much is said without the least attempt to show in what way
it may or does become the experience of the individual, is
in sober seriousness the experience of one single being
only, repeating in a great many different ways certain
performances with which it has become exceedingly
familiar?
It comes to this -that we muSt either suppose the condi¬
tions of experience to differ during the earlier Stages of life
from those which we observe them to become during the
heyday of any existence- and this would appear very
gratuitous, tolerable only as a suggestion because the
beginnings of life are so obscure, that in such twilight we
may do pretty much whatever we please without danger of
being found out- or that we must suppose the continuity
of life and sameness between living beings, whether plants
or animals, and their descendants, to be far closer than
we have hitherto believed; so that the experience of one
person is not enjoyed by his successor, so much as that the
4i
Life and Habit
successor is bona fide an elongation of the life of his pro¬
genitors, imbued with their memories, profiting by their
experiences -which are, in fad, his own until he leaves
their bodies -and only unconscious of the extent of these
memories and experiences owing to their vaStness and
already infinite repetition.
Certainly it presents itself to us as a singular coincid¬
ence:
I. That we are most conscious of, and have mo ft control over ,
such habits as speech, the upright position, the arts and
sciences -which are acquisitions peculiar to the human
race, always acquired after birth, and not common to
ourselves and any ancestor who had not become entirely
human.
II. That we are less conscious of, and have less control over,
the use of teeth, swallowing, breathing, seeing, and hearing
-which were acquisitions of our pre-human ancestry, and
for which we had provided ourselves with all the necessary
apparatus before we saw light, but which are Still, geo¬
logically speaking, recent, or comparatively recent.
III. That we are mo ft unconscious of, and have least control
over, our digestion, which we have in common even with
our invertebrate ancestry, and which is a habit of extreme
antiquity.
There is something too like method in this for it to be
taken as the result of mere chance -chance again being
another illustration of Nature’s love of a contradiction in
terms; for everything is chance, and nothing is chance.
And you may take it that all is chance or nothing chance,
according as you please, but you must not have half
chance and half not chance- which, however, in praftice
is juSt what you muft have.
Does it not seem as though the older and more con¬
firmed the habit, the more unquestioning the a£t of voli¬
tion, till, in the case of the oldest habits, the pra&ice of
succeeding existences has so formulated the procedure
42
At tli cation of Foregoing Chapters
that, on being once committed to such and such a line
beyond a certain point, the subsequent course is so clear
as to be open to no further doubt and admit of no alterna¬
tive, till the very power of questioning is gone, and even
the consciousness of volition? And this too upon matters
which, in earlier Stages of man’s existence, admitted of
passionate argument and anxious deliberation whether to
resolve them thus or thus, with heroic hazard and experi¬
ment, which on the losing side proved to be vice, and on
the winning virtue. For there was passionate argument
once what shape a man’s teeth should be, nor can the
colour of his hair be considered as even yet settled, or
likely to be settled for a very long time.
It is one againSt legion when a creature tries to differ
from his own past selves. He must yield or die if he wants
to differ widely, so as to lack natural inStin&s, such as
hunger or thirSt, or 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 unruly hordes within him at this
moment and overmastering him. “ Do this, this, this,
which we too have done, and found our profit in it,” cry
the souls of his forefathers within him. Faint are the far
ones, coming and going as the sound of bells wafted on
to a high mountain; loud and clear are the near ones,
urgent as an alarm of fire. “ Withhold,” cry some.
“ Go on boldly,” cry others. “ Me, me, me, revert
hitherward, my descendant,” shouts one as it were from
some high vantage-ground over the heads of the clamor¬
ous multitude. “ Nay, but me, me, me,” echoes another;
and our former selves fight within us and wrangle for our
possession. Have we not here what is commonly called
an internal tumult , when dead pleasures and pains tug within
us hither and thither? Then may the battle be decided by
what people are pleased to call our own experience. Our
43
Life and Habit
own indeed ! What is our own save by mere courtesy of
speech? A matter of fashion. Sanddon sanddfieth and
fashion fashioneth. And so with death- the moSt inexor¬
able of all conventions.
However this may be, we may assume it as an axiom
with regard to addons acquired after birth, that we never
do them automatically save as the result of long praddce,
and after having thus acquired perfedt mastery over the
addon in question.
But given the praddce or experience, and the intricacy
of the process to be performed appears to matter very
little. There is hardly anything conceivable as being done
by man, which a certain amount of familiarity will not
enable him to do unintrospeddvely and without conscious
effort. “ The moSt complex and difficult movements,”
writes Mr. Darwin, “ can in time be performed without
the least effort or consciousness.” All the main business
of life is done unconsciously or semi-unconsciously. For
what is the main business of life? We work that we may
eat and digest, rather than eat and digest that we may
work ; this, at any rate, is the normal State of things : the
more important business then is that which is carried on
unconsciously. So again the addon of the brain, which
goes on prior to our realizing the idea in which it results,
is not perceived by the individual. So also all the deeper
springs of addon and conviddon. The residuum with
which we fret and worry ourselves is a mere matter of
detail, as the higgling and haggling of the market, which
is not over the bulk of the price, but over the laSt half¬
penny.
Shall we say, then, that a baby of a day old sucks (which
involves the whole principle of the pump, and hence a
profound praddcal knowledge of the laws of pneumatics
and hydrostatics), digests, oxygenizes its blood (millions
of years before Sir Humphry Davy discovered oxygen),
sees and hears -all moSt difficult and complicated opera-
44
(^Application of Foregoing Qhapters
tions, involving an unconscious knowledge of the fafts
concerning optics and acoustics, compared with which the
conscious discoveries of Newton seem like the guesses of
an amateur?- shall we say that a baby can do all these
things at once, doing them so well and so regularly,
without being even able to dire# its attention to them,
and without mistake, and at the same time not know how
to do them, and never have done them before?
Such an assertion would be a contradi#ion to the whole
experience of mankind. Surely the onus probandi muSt reSt
with him who makes it.
A man may make a lucky hit now and again by what
is called a fluke, but even this muSt be only a little in
advance of his other performances of the same kind. He
may multiply seven by eight by a fluke after a little Study
of the multiplication table, but he will not be able to
extra# the cube root of 4913 by a fluke, without long
training in arithmetic, any more than an agricultural
labourer would be able to operate successfully for catara#.
If, then, a grown man cannot perform so simple an opera¬
tion as that, we will say, for catara#, unless he have been
long trained in other similar operations, and until he has
done what comes to the same thing many times over, with
what show of reason can we maintain that one who is so
far less capable than a grown man, can perform such vastly
more difficult operations, without knowing how to do
them, and without ever having done them before? There
is no sign of “ fluke ” about the circulation of a baby’s
blood. There may perhaps be some little hesitation about
its earliest breathing, but this, as a general rule, soon
passes over, both breathing and circulation, within an
hour after birth, being as regular and easy as at any time
during life. Is it. reasonable, then, to say that the baby
does these things without knowing how to do them, and
without ever having done them before, and continues to
do them by a series of lifelong flukes ?
45
Life and Habit
It would be well if those who feel inclined to hazard
such an assertion would find some other instances of
intricate processes gone through by people who know
nothing about them, and who never had any praffice
therein. What is to know how to do a thing? Surely to
do it. What is proof that we know how to do a thing?
Surely the faff that we can do it. A man shows that he
knows how to throw the boomerang by throwing the
boomerang. No amount of talking or writing can get over
this; ipsofaffo, that a baby breathes and makes its blood
circulate, it knows how to do so ; and the faff that it does
not know its own knowledge is only proof of the per-
feffion of that knowledge, and of the vaSt number of paSt
occasions on which it muSt have been exercised already.
As has been said already, it is less obvious when the baby
could have gained its experience, so as to be able so readily
to remember exaffly what to do; but it is ?nore easy to
suppose that the necessary occasions cannot have been wanting. ,
than that the power which we observe should have been obtained
without praffice and memory .
If we saw any self-consciousness on the baby’s part
about its breathing or circulation, we might suspeff that
it had had less experience, or had profited less by its
experience, than its neighbours -exaffly in the same
manner as we suspeff a deficiency of any quality which
we see a man inclined to parade. We all become intro-
speffive when we find that we do not know our business,
and whenever we are introspeffive we may generally
suspeff that we are on the verge of unproficiency. Un¬
fortunately, in the case of sickly children, we observe that
they sometimes do become conscious of their breathing
and circulation, juSt as in later life we become conscious
that we have a liver or a digestion. In that case there is
always something wrong. The baby that becomes aware
of his breathing does not know how to breathe, and will
suffer for his ignorance and incapacity, exaffly in the same
46
Application of Foregoing Chapters
way as he will suffer in later life for ignorance and inca¬
pacity in any other resped in which his peers are commonly
knowing and capable. In the case of inability to breathe,
the punishment is corporal, breathing being a matter of
fashion, so old and long settled that nature can admit of
no departure from the established custom, and the proce¬
dure in case of failure is as much formulated as the fashion
itself. In the case of the circulation, the whole perform¬
ance has become one so utterly of rote, that the mere
discovery that we could do it at all was considered one of
the highest flights of human genius.
It has been said a day will come when the Polar ice
shall have accumulated, till it forms vaSt continents many
thousands of feet above the level of the sea, all of solid ice.
The weight of this mass will, it is believed, cause the world
to topple over on its axis, so that the earth will be upset
as an ant-heap overturned by a ploughshare. In that day
the icebergs will come crunching againSt our proudest
cities, razing them from off the face of the earth as though
they were made of rotten blotting-paper. There is no
respeft now of Handel nor of Shakespeare ; the works of
Rembrandt and Bellini fossilize at the bottom of the sea.
Grace, beauty, and wit, all that is precious in music,
literature, and art- all gone. In the morning there was
Europe. In the evening there are no more populous cities
nor busy hum of men, but a sea of jagged ice, a lurid sun¬
set, and the doom of many ages. Then shall a scared
remnant escape in places, and settle upon the changed
continent when the waters have subsided- a simple people,
busy hunting shellfish on the drying ocean beds, and with
little time for introspe&ion; yet they can read and write
and sum, for by that time these accomplishments will have
become universal, and will be acquired as easily as we
now learn to talk; but they do so as a matter of course,
and without self-consciousness. Also they make the
simpler kinds of machinery too easily to be able to follow
47
Life and Habit
their own operations -the manner of their own apprentice¬
ship being to them as a buried city. May we not imagine
that, after the lapse of another ten thousand years or so,
some one of them may again become cursed with luSt of
introspection, and a second Harvey may astonish the world
by discovering that it can read and write, and that Steam-
engines do not grow, but are made? It may be safely
prophesied that he will die a martyr, and be honoured in
the fourth generation.
48
CHAPTER FOUR! APPLICATION OF THE FOREGOING PRIN¬
CIPLES TO ACTIONS AND HABITS ACQUIRED BEFORE BIRTH
But if we once admit the principle
that consciousness and volition have a tendency to
[vanish as soon as pradlice has rendered any habit
exceedingly familiar, so that the mere presence of an
elaborate but unconscious performance shall carry with it a
presumption of infinite pra&ice, we shall find it impossible
to draw the line at those a&ions which we see acquired
after birth, no matter at how early a period. The whole
history and development of the embryo in all its Stages
forces itself on our consideration. Birth has been made
too much of. It is a salient feature in the history of the
individual, but not more salient than a hundred others,
and far less so than the commencement of his existence as a
single cell uniting in itself elements derived from both
parents, or perhaps than any point in his whole existence
as an embryo. For many years after we are born we are
Still very incomplete. We cease to oxygenize our blood
vicariously as soon as we are born, but we Still derive our
sustenance from our mothers. Birth is the beginning of
doubt, the first hankering after scepticism, the dreaming
of a dawn of trouble, the end of certainty and of settled
convi&ions. Not but what before birth there have been
unsettled convi&ions (more’s the pity) with not a few,
and after birth we have Still so made up our minds upon
many points as to have no further need of reflexion con¬
cerning them; nevertheless, in the main, birth is the end
of that time when we really knew our business, and the
beginning of the days wherein we know not what we
would do, or do. It is therefore the beginning of con¬
sciousness, and infancy is as the dozing of one who turns
in his bed on waking, and takes another short sleep before
he rises. When we were yet unborn, our thoughts kept
the roadway decently enough; then were we blessed; we
thought as every man thinks, and held the same opinions
as our fathers and mothers had done upon nearly every
49 E
Life and Habit
subjed. Life was not an art- and a very difficult art-
much too difficult to be acquired in a lifetime; it was a
science of which we were consummate masters.
In this sense, then, birth may indeed be looked upon as
the most salient feature in a man’s life; but this is not at all
the sense in which it is commonly so regarded. It is
commonly considered as the point at which we begin to
live. More truly it is the point at which we leave off know¬
ing how to live.
A chicken, for example, is never so full of conscious¬
ness, adivity, reasoning faculty, and volition, as when
it is an embryo in the eggshell, making bones, and flesh,
and feathers, and eyes, and claws, with nothing but a little
warmth and white of egg to make them from. This is
indeed to make bricks with a small modicum of Straw.
There is no man in the whole world who knows con¬
sciously and articulately as much as a half-hatched hen’s
egg knows unconsciously. Surely the egg in its own way
muSt know quite as much as the chicken does. We say
of the chicken that it knows how to run about as soon as
it is hatched. So it does ; but had it no knowledge before
it was hatched ? What made it lay the foundations of those
limbs which should enable it to run about? What made
it grow a horny tip to its bill before it was hatched, so
that it might peck all round the larger end of the eggshell
and make a hole for itself to get out at? Having once got
outside the eggshell, the chicken throws away this horny
tip; but is it reasonable to suppose that it would have
grown it at all unless it had known that it would want
something with which to break the eggshell? And again,
is it in the least agreeable to our experience that such
elaborate machinery should be made without endeavour,
failure, perseverance, intelligent contrivance, experience,
and pradice?
In the presence of such considerations, it seems im¬
possible to refrain from thinking that there mu$t be a
5°
Application of Foregoing Principles
closer continuity of identity, life, and memory, between
successive generations than we generally imagine. To
shear the thread of life, and hence of memory, between one
generation and its successor, is, so to speak, a brutal
measure, an ad of intelledual butchery, and like all such
strong high-handed measures, a sign of weakness in him
who is capable of it till all other remedies have been
exhausted. It is mere horse science, akin to the theories
of the convulsioniSts in the geological kingdom, and of
the believers in the supernatural origin of the species of
plants and animals. Yet it is to be feared that we have
not a few among us who would feel shocked rather at the
attempt towards a milder treatment of the fads before
them, than at a continuance of the present crass tyranny
with which we try to crush them inside our preconceived
opinions. It is quite common to hear men of education
maintain that not even when it was on the point of being
hatched, had the chicken sense enough to know that it
wanted to get outside the eggshell. It did indeed peck all
round the end of the shell, which, if it wanted to get out,
would certainly be the easiest way of effeding its purpose;
but it did not, they say, peck because it was aware of this,
but “ promiscuously.” Curious, such a uniformity of
promiscuous adion among so many eggs for so many
generations. If we see a man knock a hole in a wall on
finding that he cannot get out of a place by any other
means, and if we see him knock this hole in a very
workmanlike way, with an implement which he has been
at great pains to make for a long time pail, but which he
throws away as soon as he has no longer use for it, thus
showing that he had made it expressly for the purpose of
escape, do we say that this person made the implement and
broke the wall of his prison promiscuously? No jury
would acquit a burglar on these grounds. Then why,
without much more evidence to the contrary than we
have, or can hope to have, should we not suppose that
5 1
Life and Habit
with chickens, as with men, signs of contrivance are
indeed signs of contrivance, however quick, subtle, and
untraceable the contrivance may be? Again, I have heard
people argue that though the chicken, when nearly hatched*
had such a glimmering of sense that it pecked the shell
because it wanted to get out, yet that it is not conceivable
that, so long before it was hatched, it should have had the
sense to grow the horny tip to its bill for use when wanted.
This, at any rate, they say, it mu$t have grown, as the
persons previously referred to would maintain, pro¬
miscuously.
Now no one indeed supposes that the chicken does
what it does, with the same self-consciousness with which
a tailor makes a suit of clothes. Not any one who has
thought upon the subjefi: is likely to do the chicken so
great an injustice. The probability is that it knows what
it is about to an extent greater than any tailor ever did or
will, for, to say the least of it, many thousands of years to
come. It works with such absolute certainty and so vaSt
an experience, that it is utterly incapable of following the
operations of its own mind- as accountants have been
known to add up long columns of pounds, shillings, and
pence, running the three fingers of one hand, a finger for
each column, up the page, and putting the result down
corre&ly at the bottom, apparently without an effort.
In the case of the accountant, we say that the processes
which his mind goes through are so rapid and subtle as to
elude his own power of observation as well as ours. We
do not deny that his mind goes through processes of some
kind; we very readily admit that it muSt do so, and say
that these processes are so rapid and subtle, owing, as a
general rule, to long experience in addition. Why then
should we find it difficult to conceive that this principle,
which we observe to play so large a part in mental physi-
ology, wherever we can observe mental physiology at all,
may have a share also in the performance of intricate
52
Application of Foregoing Principles
operations otherwise inexplicable, though the creature
performing them is not man, or man only in embryo?
Again, after the chicken is hatched, it grows more
feathers and bones and blood, but we Still say that it
knows nothing about all this. What then do we say it
does know? I am almost ashamed to confess that we only
credit it with knowing what it appears to know by pro¬
cesses which we find very easy to follow, or perhaps
rather, which we find it absolutely impossible to avoid
following, as recognizing too great a family likeness
between them, and those which are moSt easily followed
in our own minds, to be able to sit down in comfort under
a denial of the resemblance. Thus, for example, if we see
a chicken running away from a fox, we do admit that the
chicken knows the fox would kill it if it caught it.
On the other hand, if we allow that the half-hatched
chicken grew the horny tip to be ready for use, with an
intensity of unconscious contrivance which can be only
attributed to experience, we are driven to admit that from
the first moment the hen began to sit upon it -and earlier,
too, than this -the egg was always full of consciousness
and volition, and that during its embryological condition
the unhatched chicken is doing exa&ly what it continues
doing from the moment it is hatched till it dies; that is
to say, attempting to better itself, doing (as Aristotle says
all creatures do all things upon all occasions) what it
considers moSt for its advantage under the existing cir¬
cumstances. What it may think moSt advantageous will
depend, while it is in the eggshell, upon exadtly the same
causes as will influence its opinions in later life- to wit,
upon its habits, its past circumstances and ways of think¬
ing ; for there is nothing, as Shakespeare tells us, good or
ill, but thinking makes it so.
The egg thinks feathers more to its advantage than hair
or fur, and much more easily made. If it could speak, it
would probably tell us that we could make them ourselves
53
Life and Habit
very easily after a few lessons, if we took the trouble to
try, but that hair was another matter, which it really could
not see how any protoplasm could be got to make.
Indeed, during the more intense and addve part of our
existence, in the earliest Stages, that is to say, of our
embryological life, we could probably have turned our
protoplasm into feathers instead of hair if we had cared
about doing so. If the chicken can make feathers, there
seems no sufficient reason for thinking that we cannot do
so, beyond the fadt that we prefer hair, and have preferred
it for so many ages that we have lost the art along with
the desire of making feathers, if indeed any of our an¬
cestors ever possessed it. The Stuff with which we make
hair is praftically the same as that with which chickens
make feathers. It is nothing but protoplasm, and proto¬
plasm is like certain prophecies, out of which anything can
be made by the creature which wants to make it. Every¬
thing depends upon whether a creature knows its own
mind sufficiently well, and has enough faith in its own
powers of achievement. When these two requisites are
wanting, the Strongest giant cannot lift a two-ounce
weight; when they are given, a bullock can take an
eyelash out of its eye with its hind-foot, or a minute jelly
speck can build itself a house out of various materials
which it will seledt according to its purpose with the nicest
care, though it has neither brain to think with, nor eyes to
see with, nor hands nor feet to work with, nor is it any¬
thing but a minute speck of jelly- faith and protoplasm
only.
That this is indeed so, the following passage from Dr.
Carpenter’s Mental Physiology may serve to show :
“ The simplest type of an animal consists of a minute
mass of ‘ protoplasm/ or living jelly, which is not yet
differentiated into ‘ organs 9 ; every part having the same
endowments, and taking an equal share in every addon
which the creature performs. One of these c jelly specks/
54
Application of Foregoing Principles
the amoeba, moves itself about by changing the form of its
body, extemporizing a foot (or pseudopodium), first in one
direction and then in another; and then, when it has met
with a nutritive particle, extemporizes a Stomach for its
reception, by wrapping its soft body around it. Another,
instead of going about in search of food, remains in one
place, but pro j efts its protoplasmic substance into long
pseudopodia, which entrap and draw in very minute par¬
ticles, or absorb nutrient material from the liquid through
which they extend themselves, and are continually
becoming fused (as it were) into the central body, which
is itself continually giving off new pseudopodia. Now we
can scarcely conceive that a creature of such simplicity
should possess any diStinft consciousness of its needs ” (why
not?), “ or that its aftions should be direfted by any
intention of its own; and yet the writer has lately found
results of the most singular elaborateness to be wrought
out by the instrumentality of these minute jelly specks,
which build up tests or casings of the most regular geo¬
metrical symmetry of form, and of the most artificial
construction.”
On this Dr. Carpenter remarks : 4 4 Suppose a human
mason to be put down by the side of a pile of Stones of
various shapes and sizes, and to be told to build a dome
of these, smooth on both surfaces, without using more
than the least possible quantity of a very tenacious, but
very coStly, cement, in holding the Stones together. If he
accomplished this well, he would receive credit for great
intelligence and skill. Yet this is exaftly what these little
4 jelly specks ’ do on a most minute scale; the 4 teSts 9 they
conStruft, when highly magnified, bearing comparison
with the most skilful masonry of man. From the same
sandy bottom one species picks up the coarser quartz grains,
cements them together with phosphate of iron secreted from
its own substance ” (should not this rather be, 44 which it
has contrived in some way or other to manufafture ”?),
55
Life and Habit
“ and thus conStru&s a flask-shaped ‘ test,’ having a short
neck and a large single orifice. Another picks up the
finett grains, and puts them together, with the same
cement, into perfe&ly spherical ‘ tests 9 of the mo£t extra¬
ordinary finish, perforated with numerous small pores
disposed at pretty regular intervals. Another sele&s the
minutetf sand grains and the terminal portions of sponge
spicules, and works them up together- apparently with no
cement at all, by the mere laying of the spicules -into
perfect white spheres, like homoeopathic globules, each
having a single-fissured orifice. And another, which
makes a Straight, many-chambered ‘ test,’ that resembles in
form the chambered shell of an orthoceratite-the conical
mouth of each chamber proje&ing into the cavity of the
next -while forming the walls of its chambers of ordinary
sand grains rather loosely held together, shapes the conical
mouth of the successive chambers by firmly cementing
together grains of ferruginous quartz, which it must have
picked out from the general mass.”
“ To give these adions,” continues Dr. Carpenter, “ the
vague designation of ‘ inStindive ’ does not in the least
help us to account for them, since what we want is to
discover the mechanism by which they are worked out;
and it is moSt difficult to conceive how so artificial a
seledion can be made by a creature so simple ” {Mental
Physiology , 4th ed., pp. 41-43).
This is what protoplasm can do when it has the talisman
of faith- of faith which worketh all wonders, either in the
heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters
under the earth. Truly if a man have faith, even as a grain
of muStard seed, though he may not be able to remove
mountains, he will at any rate be able to do what is no less
difficult- make a muStard plant.
But this is a barren kind of comfort; for we have not,
and in the nature of things cannot have, sufficient faith
in the unfamiliar to attempt enterprises in resped of which
56
e. Application of Foregoing Principles
we have had little or no experience. We think we cannot
succeed with them, and we cannot succeed with them for
this very reason. The essence of faith involves the notion
of familiarity, which can grow but slowly, from experience
to confidence, and can make no sudden leap at any time.
Such faith cannot be founded upon reason, -that is to say,
upon a recognized perception on the part of the person
holding it that he is holding it, and of the reasons for his
doing so- or it will shift as other reasons come to disturb
it. A faith built upon recognized reason is a house built
upon the sand. It muSt be built upon the current cant and
practice of one’s peers, for this is the rock which, though
not immovable- and itself formerly a quicksand- is Still
most hard to move.
But however this may be, we observe broadly that the
intensity of the will to make this or that, and of the confid¬
ence that it can be made, depends upon the length of
time during which the maker’s fathers before him have
wanted and made this same thing; the older the custom
the more inveterate the habit, and, with the exception,
perhaps, that the reproductive system is generally the
crowning a£t of development- an exception which I will
hereafter explain- the earlier its manifestation, until, for
some reason or another, we relinquish this habit, whatever
it may be, and take to another, which we muSt, as a general
rule, again adhere to for a vast number of generations,
before it will permanently supplant the older one. In our
own case, the habit of breathing like a fish through gills
may serve as an example. We have now left off this, but
we breathed through gills formerly for so many genera¬
tions that we Still do so a little; this fashion of breathing
Still crosses our embryological existence like a faint
memory or dream, for not easily is an inveterate habit
broken. On the other hand- again speaking broadly -
the more recent the habit the later the fashion of its organ,
as with the teeth, speech, and the higher intellectual
57
Life and Habit
powers, which are too new for development before we
are adually born.
But to return for a short time to Dr. Carpenter. Dr.
Carpenter evidently feels, what must indeed be felt by
every candid mind, that there is no sufficient reason for
supposing that these little specks of jelly, without brain,
or eyes, or Stomach, or hands, or feet- the very lowest
known form, in fad, of animal life -are not imbued with a
consciousness of their needs, and with the reasoning
faculties which shall enable them to gratify those needs in
a manner, all things considered, equalling the highest
flights of the ingenuity of the highest animal -man. This
is no exaggeration. It is true, that in an earlier part of the
passage. Dr. Carpenter has said that we can scarcely con¬
ceive so simple a creature to “ possess any diStind con -
sciousness of its needs, or that its adions should be direded
by any intention of its own ” ; but, on the other hand, a
little lower down he says, that if a workman did what
comes to the same thing as what the amoeba does, he
“ would receive credit for great intelligence and skill.”
Now if an amoeba can do that, for which a workman
would receive credit as for a highly skilful and intelligent
performance, the amoeba should receive no less credit
than the workman; he should also be no less credited
with skill and intelligence, which words unquestionably
involve a diStind consciousness of needs and an adion
direded by an intention of its own. So that Dr. Carpenter
seems to blow hot and cold with one breath. Nevertheless
there can be no doubt to which side the minds of the great
majority of mankind will incline upon the evidence before
them; they will say that the creature is highly reasonable
and intelligent, though they would readily admit that long
pradice and familiarity may have exhausted its powers of
attention to all the Stages of its own performance, juSt as
a pradised workman in building a wall certainly does not
consciously follow all the processes which he goes through.
5 8
Application of Foregoing Principles
As an example, however, of the extreme dislike which
philosophers of a certain school have for making the
admissions which seem somewhat grudgingly conceded
by Dr. Carpenter, we may take the paragraph which
immediately follows the ones which we have ju$t quoted.
Dr. Carpenter there writes :
“ The writer has often amused himself and others,
when by the seaside, with getting a terebella (a marine
worm that cases its body in a sandy tube) out of its house,,
and then, putting it into a saucer of water with a supply
of sand and comminuted shell, watching its appropria¬
tion of these materials in constructing a new tube. The
extended tentacles soon spread themselves over the bottom
of the saucer and lay hold of whatever comes in their way,
4 all being fish that comes to their net,’ and in half an hour
or thereabouts the new house is finished, though on a very
rude and artificial type. Now here the organization is far
higher; the instrumentality obviously serves the needs of
the animal and suffices for them; and we characterize the
aCtion, on account of its uniformity and apparent un-
intelligence, as inStinCtive.”
No comment will, one would think, be necessary to
make the reader feel that the difference between the
terebella and the amoeba is one of degree rather than kind,
and that if the aCtion of the second is as conscious and
reasonable as that, we will say, of a bird making her nest,
the aCtion of the first should be so also. It is only a
question of being a little less skilful, or more so, but skill
and intelligence seem present in both cases. Moreover,
it is more clever of the terebella to have made itself the
limbs with which it can work, than of the amoeba to be
able to work without limbs; and perhaps it is more
sensible also to want a less elaborate dwelling, provided
it is sufficient for practical purposes. But whether the
terebella be less intelligent than the amoeba or not, it does
quite enough to establish its claim to intelligence; and
59
Life and Habit
one does not see ground for the satisfadion which Dr.
■Carpenter appears to find at having, as it were, taken the
taSte of the amoeba’s performance out of our mouth, by
setting us about the less elaborate performance of the
terebella, which he thinks he can call unintelligent and
inStindive.
I may be mistaken in the impression I have derived from
the paragraphs I have quoted. I can only say they give
me the impression that I have tried to convey to the reader,
i.e., that the writer’s assent to anything like intelligence, or
consciousness of needs, in an animal low down in the scale
of life, is grudging, and that he is more comfortable when
he has got hold of one to which he thinks he can point
and say that here, at any rate, is an unintelligent and
merely inStindive creature. I have called attention to the
passage as an example of the intelledual bias of a large
number of exceedingly able and thoughtful persons,
among whom, so far as I am able to form an opinion, few
have greater claims to our respedful attention than Dr.
Carpenter himself.
For the embryo of a chicken, then, we claim exa&ly the
same kind of reasoning power and contrivance which we
claim for the amoeba, or for our own intelligent per¬
formances in later life. We do not claim for it much, if
any, perception of its own forethought, for we know very
well that it is among the mo$t prominent features of
intelledual adivity that, after a number of repetitions,
adion ceases to be perceived, and that it does not, in
ordinary cases, cease to be perceived till after a very great
number of repetitions. The fad that the embryo chicken
makes itself always as nearly as may be in the same way,
would lead us to suppose that it would be unconscious
of much of its own adion, provided it were always the same
thicken which made itself over and over again. So far as we can
see, it always is unconscious of the greater part of its own
wonderful performance. Surely, then, we have a pre-
60
Application of Foregoing Principles
sumption that it is the same chicken which makes itself over
and over again ; for such unconsciousness is not won,
according to our experience, by any other means than by
frequent repetition of the same ad on the part of one and
the same individual. How this can be we shall perceive
in subsequent chapters. In the meantime, we may say that
all life, knowledge, and volition would seem to be merely
a continuation or elongation of the life, knowledge, and
volition of the primordial cell (whatever this may be),
which slumbers but never dies -which has grown, and
multiplied, and differentiated itself into the compound life
of the world, and which never becomes conscious of
knowing what it has once learnt effedually, till it is for
some reason on the point of, or in danger of, forgetting it.
The adion, therefore, of an embryo making its way up
in the world from a simple cell to a baby, developing for
itself eyes, ears, hands, and feet while yet unborn, proves
to be exadly of one and the same kind as that of a man of
fifty who goes into the city and tells his broker to buy
him so many Great Northern A shares -that is to say, an
effort of the will exercised in due course on a balance of
considerations as to the immediate expediency, and guided
by past experience. If the embryo had only made itself
as seldom as a man goes into the city and buys shares, it
would be conscious of its adion; and if a man bought
shares as often as he had made his body, he would buy
shares without knowing anything about it. Viewed in
this light children who do not reach birth are but pre-natal
spendthrifts, ne’er-do-weels, inconsiderate innovators,
the unfortunate in business, either through their own fault
or that of others, or through inevitable mischances, beings
who are culled out before birth instead of after; so that
even the lowest idiot, the most contemptible in health or
beauty, may yet refled with pride that they were born.
Certainly we observe that those who have had good for¬
tune (mother and sole cause of virtue, and sole virtue in
61
Life and Habit
itself), and have profited by their experience, and known
their business best before birth, so that they made them¬
selves both to be and to look well, do commonly on an
average prove to know it best in after-life. They grow
their clothes best who have grown their limbs best. Those
who have not remembered how to finish their own bodies
fairly well rarely finish anything well in later life. But
how small is the addition to their unconscious attainments
which even the Titans of human intellefl: have consciously
accomplished, in comparison with the problems solved by
the meanest baby living, nay, even by a miscarriage! In
other words, how vast is that back knowledge over which
we have gone faSt asleep, through the prosiness of per¬
petual repetition; and how little in comparison, is that
whose novelty keeps it Still within the scope of our
conscious perception ! What is the discovery of the laws
of gravitation as compared with the knowledge which
sleeps in every hen’s egg upon a kitchen shelf?
It is all a matter of habit and fashion. Thus we see
kings and councillors of the earth admired for facing death
before what they are pleased to call dishonour. If, on
being required to go without anything they have been
accustomed to, or to change their habits, or do what is
unusual in the case of other kings under like circumstances,
then, if they fold their cloak decently around them, and
die upon the spot of shame at having had it even required
of them to do thus or thus, then are they kings indeed, of
old race, that know their business from generation to
generation. Or if, we will say, a prince, on having his
dinner brought to him ill-cooked, were to feel the indig¬
nity so keenly as that he should turn his face to the wall,
and breathe out his wounded soul in one sigh, do we not
admire him as a “ real prince,” who knows the business of
princes so well that he can conceive of nothing foreign
to it in connection with himself, the bare effort to realize
a State of things other than what princes have been ac-
Application of Foregoing Principles
cuStomed to being immediately fatal to him? Yet is there
no less than this in the demise of every half-hatched hen’s
egg, shaken rudely by a schoolboy, or negleXed by a
truant mother; for surely the prince would not die if
he knew how to do otherwise, and the hen’s egg only
dies of being required to do something to which it is not
accustomed.
But the further consideration of this and other like
reflexions would too long detain us. Suffice it that we
have established the position that all living creatures
which show any signs of intelligence, must certainly
each one have already gone through the embryonic Stages
an infinite number of times, or they could no more have
achieved the intricate process of self-development un¬
consciously, than they could play the piano unconsciously
without any previous knowledge of the instrument. It
remains, therefore, to show the when and where of their
having done so, and this leads us naturally to the subjeX
of the following chapter- Personal Identity.
63
CHAPTER FIVE: PERSONAL IDENTITY
TRANGE DIFFICULTIES HAVE BEEN RAISED
^ by some,” says Bishop Butler, “ concerning personal
^ identity, or the sameness of living agents as implied
in the notion of our existing now and hereafter, or
indeed in any two consecutive moments.” But in truth
it is not easy to see the Strangeness of the difficulty, if the
words either “ personal ” or “ identity ” are used in any
Stri&ness.
Personality is one of those ideas with which we are
so familiar that we have lost sight of the foundations upon
which it rests. We regard our personality as a simple
definite whole; as a plain, palpable, individual thing,
which can be seen going about the Streets or sitting indoors
at home; as something which la-Sts us our lifetime, and
about the confines of which no doubt can exist in the
minds of reasonable people. But in truth this “ we,”
which looks so simple and definite, is a nebulous and
indefinable aggregation of many component parts which
war not a little among themselves, our perception of our
existence at all being perhaps due to this very clash of
warfare, as our sense of sound and light is due to the jarring
of vibrations. Moreover, as the component parts of our
identity change from moment to moment, our personality
becomes a thing dependent upon time present, which has
no logical existence, but lives only upon the sufferance of
times past and future, slipping out of our hands into the
domain of one or other of these two claimants the moment
we try to apprehend it. And not only is our personality
as fleeting as the present moment, but the parts which
compose it blend some of them so imperceptibly into, and
are so inextricably linked on to, outside things which
clearly form no part of our personality, that when we try
to bring ourselves to book, and to determine wherein we
consist, or draw a line where we begin or end, we find
ourselves baffled. There is nothing but fusion and con¬
fusion.
64
Persona/ Identity
Putting theology on one side, and dealing only with the
common sense of mankind, our body is certainly part of
our personality. With the deStru&ion of our bodies, our
personality, as far as we can follow it, comes to a full Stop;
and with every modification of them it is correspondingly
modified. But what are the limits of our bodies ? They
are composed of parts, some of them so unessential as to
be hardly included in personality at all, and to be separable
from ourselves without perceptible effed, as hair, nails,
and daily waste of tissue. Again, other parts are very
important, as our hands, feet, arms, legs, etc., but Still are
no essential parts of our “ self ” or “ soul,” which con¬
tinues to exist- though in a modified condition- in spite of
their amputation. Other parts, as the brain, heart, and
blood, are so essential that they cannot be dispensed with,
yet it is impossible to say that personality consists in any
one of them.
Each one of these component members of our personality
is continually dying and being born again, supported in
this process by the food we eat, the water we drink, and
the air we breathe; which three things link us on, and
fetter us down, to the organic and inorganic world about
us. For our meat and drink, though no part of our per¬
sonality before we eat and drink, cannot, after we have
done so, be separated entirely from us without the destruc¬
tion of our personality altogether, so far as we can follow
it; and who shall say at what precise moment our food
has or has not become part of ourselves? A famished
man eats food; after a short time his whole personality
is so palpably affe&ed that we know the food to have
entered into him and taken, as it were, possession of him;
but who can say at what precise moment it did so? Thus
we find that we melt away into outside things and are
rooted into them, as plants into the soil in which they
grow, nor can any man say he consists absolutely in this
or that, nor define himself so certainly as to include neither
65 F
Life and Habit
more nor less than himself ; many undoubted parts of his
personality being more separable from it, and changing
it less when so separated, both to his own senses and
those of other people, than other parts which are Stri&ly
speaking no parts at all.
A man’s clothes, for example, as they lie on a chair at
night are no part of him, but when he wears them they
would appear to be so, as being a kind of food which
warms him and hatches him, and the loss of which may
kill him of cold. If this be denied, and a man’s clothes
be considered as no part of his self, nevertheless they,
with his money, and it may perhaps be added his religious
opinions, Stamp a man’s individuality as Strongly as any
natural feature can Stamp it. Change in Style of dress,
gain or loss of money, make a man feel and appear more
changed than having his chin shaved or his nails cut.
In fad, as soon as we leave common parlance on one side,
and try for a scientific definition of personality, we find
that there is none possible, any more than there can be a
demonstration of the fa£t that we exist at all- a demonstra¬
tion for which, as for that of a personal God, many have
hunted, but which none have found. The only solid
foundation is, as in the case of the earth’s cruSt, pretty
near the surface of things; the deeper we try to go, the
damper, darker, and altogether more uncongenial we find
it. There is no quagmire of superstition into which we
may not be easily lured if we once cut ourselves adrift from
those superficial aspe&s of things, in which alone our
nature permits us to be comforted.
Common parlance, however, settles the difficulty
readily enough (as indeed it settles most others if they show
signs of awkwardness) by the simple process of ignoring
it : we decline, and very properly, to go into the question
of where personality begins and ends, but assume it to be
known by every one, and throw the onus of not knowing
it upon the over-curious, who had better think as their
66
Personal Identity
neighbours do, right or wrong, or there is no knowing
into what villainy they may not presently fall.
Assuming, then, that every one knows what is meant
by the word 44 person ” (and such superstitious bases as
this are the foundations upon which all a&ion, whether of
man, beaSt, or plant, is conStru&ed and rendered possible;
for even the corn in the fields grows upon a superstitious
basis as to its own existence, and only turns the earth and
moisture into wheat through the conceit of its own ability
to do so, without which faith it were powerless ; and the
lichen only grows upon the granite rock by first saying to
itself, 44 I think I can do it ” ; so that it would not be able
to grow unless it thought it could grow, and would not
think it could grow unless it found itself able to grow, and
thus spends its life arguing moSt virtuously in a most
vicious circle- basing a&ion upon hypothesis, which
hypothesis is in turn based upon action)- assuming that
we know what is meant by the word 44 person,” we say
that we are one and the same person from birth till death,
so that whatever is done by or happens to any one between
birth and death is said to happen to or be done by one
individual. This in pra&ice is found sufficient for the law
courts and the purposes of daily life, which, being full
of hurry and the pressure of business, can only tolerate
compromise, or conventional rendering of intricate
phenomena. When fa&s of extreme complexity have
to be daily and hourly dealt with by people whose time
is money, they mu£t be simplified, and treated much as a
painter treats them, drawing them in squarely, seizing the
more important features, and negle&ing all that does not
assert itself as too essential to be passed over- hence the
slang and cant words of every profession, and indeed all
language; for language at be$t is but a kind of 4 4 patter,”
the only way, it is true, in many cases, of expressing our
ideas to one another, but Still a very bad way, and not for
one moment comparable to the unspoken speech which we
67
Life and Habit
may sometimes have recourse to. The metaphors and
jafons de parler to which even in the plainest speech we are
perpetually recurring (as, for example, in these last two
lines, “ plain,” “ perpetually,” and “ recurring,” are all
words based on metaphor, and hence more or less liable
to mislead) often deceive us, as though there were nothing
more than what we see and say, and as though words,
instead of being, as they are, the creatures of our con¬
venience, had some claim to be the adhial ideas themselves
concerning which we are conversing.
This is so well expressed in a letter I have recently
received from a friend, now in New Zealand, and certainly .
not intended by him for publication, that I shall venture to
quote the passage, but should say that I do so without his
knowledge or permission which I should not be able to
receive before this book muSt be completed.
“ Words, words, words,” he writes, “ are the Stumbling-
blocks in the way of truth. Until you think of things as
they are, and not of the words that misrepresent them,
you cannot think rightly. Words produce the appearance
of hard and faSt lines where there are none. Words divide ;
thus we call this a man, that an ape, that a monkey, while
they are all only differentiations of the same thing. To
think of a thing they must be got rid of: they are the
clothes that thoughts wear- only the clothes. I say this
over and over again, for there is nothing of more import¬
ance. Other men’s words will Stop you at the beginning
of an investigation. A man may play with words all his
life, arranging them and rearranging them like dominoes.
If I could think to you without words you would under¬
stand me better.”
If such remarks as the above hold good at all, they do so
with the words “ personal identity.” The least refle&ion
will show that personal identity in any sort of Stri&ness is
an impossibility. The expression is one of the many ways
in which we are obliged to scamp our thoughts through
68
Personal Identity
pressure of other business which pays us better. For
surely all reasonable people will feel that an infant an
hour before birth, when in the eye of the law he has no
existence, and could not be called a peer for another sixty
minutes, though his father were a peer, and already dead,-
surely such an embryo is more personally identical with
the baby into which he develops within an hour’s time
than the born baby is so with itself (if the expression may
be pardoned), one, twenty, or it may be eighty years after
birth. There is more sameness of matter ; there are fewer
differences of any kind perceptible by a third person; there
is more sense of continuity on the part of the person him¬
self, and far more of all that goes to make up our sense of
sameness of personality between an embryo an hour before
birth and the child on being born, than there is between
the child ju$t born and the man of twenty. Yet there is no
hesitation about admitting sameness of personality between
these two la$t.
On the other hand, if that hazy contradidion in terms,
“ personal identity,” be once allowed to retreat behind the
threshold of the womb, it has eluded us once for all.
What is true of one hour before birth is true of two, and
so on till we get back to the impregnate ovum, which may
fairly claim to have been personally identical with the
man of eighty into which it ultimately developed, in spite
of the fad that there is no particle of same matter nor sense
of continuity between them, nor recognized community
of inStind, nor indeed of anything which, on a prima facie
view of the matter, goes to the making up of that which we
call identity.
There is far more of all these things common to the
impregnate ovum and the ovum immediately before
impregnation, or again between the impregnate ovum and
both the ovum before impregnation and the spermatozoon
which impregnated it. Nor, if we admit personal identity
between the ovum and the odogenarian, is there any
Life and Habit
sufficient reason why we should not admit it between the
impregnate ovum and the two factors of which it is com¬
posed, which two fa&ors are but offshoots from two
diStind personalities, of which they are as much part as
the apple is of the apple-tree; so that an impregnate ovum
cannot without a violation of first principles be debarred
from claiming personal identity with both its parents, and
hence, by an easy chain of reasoning, with each of the
impregnate ova from which its parents were developed.
So that each ovum when impregnate should be con¬
sidered not as descended from its ancestors, but as being
a continuation of the personality of every ovum in the
chain of its ancestry, every which ovum it actually is as truly
as the o&ogenarian is the same identity with the ovum from
which he has been developed. The two cases Stand or fall
together.
This process cannot Stop short of the primordial cell,
which again will probably turn out to be but a brief
reSting-place. We therefore prove each one of us to be
actually the primordial cell which never died nor dies, but
has differentiated itself into the life of the world, all living
beings whatever being one wfith it, and members one of
another.
To look at the matter for a moment in another light, it
will be admitted that if the primordial cell had been killed
before leaving issue, all its possible descendants would
have been killed at one and the same time. It is hard to
see how this single fad does not establish at the point, as it
were, of a logical bayonet, an identity between any creature
and all others that are descended from it.
In Bishop Butler’s first dissertation on personality, we
find expressed very much the same opinions as would
follow from the above considerations, though they are
mentioned by the Bishop only to be condemned, namely,
“ that personality is not a permanent but a transient thing;
that it lives and dies, begins and ends continually; that no
7°
Personal Identity
man can any more remain one and the same person two
moments together, than two successive moments can be
one and the same moment ” ; in which case, he continues,
our present self would not be “ in reality the same with
the self of yesterday, but another like self or person coming
up in its room and mistaken for it, to which another self
will succeed to-morrow.” This view the Bishop proceeds
to reduce to absurdity by saying, “ It must be a fallacy
upon ourselves to charge our present selves with anything
we did, or to imagine our present selves interested in
anything which befell us yesterday; or that our present
self will be interested in what will befall us to-morrow.
This, I say, muSt follow, for if the self or person of to-day
and that of to-morrow are not the same, but only like
persons, the person of to-day is really no more interested
in what will befall the person of to-morrow than in what
will befall any other person. It may be thought, perhaps,
that this is not a juSt representation of the opinion we are
speaking of, because those who maintain it allow that a
person is the same as far back as his remembrance reaches.
And indeed they do use the words identity and same person .
Nor will language permit these words to be laid aside,
since, if they were, there muSt be I know not what ridicu¬
lous periphrasis substituted in the room of them. But
they cannot consistently with themselves mean that the
person is really the same. For it is self-evident that the
personality cannot be really the same, if, as they expressly
assert, that in which it consists is not the same. And as
consistently with themselves they cannot, so I think it
appears they do not mean that the person is really the
same, but only that he is so in a fiditious sense; in such
a sense only as they assert- for this they do assert- that
any number of persons whatever may be the same person.
The bare unfolding of this notion, and laying it thus
naked and open, seems the best confutation of it.”
This fencing, for it does not deserve the name of serious
7i
Life and Habit
disputation, is rendered possible by the laxness with which
the words “ identical ” and “ identity ” are ordinarily
used. Bishop Butler would not seriously deny that per¬
sonality undergoes great changes between infancy and
old age, and hence that it mu$t undergo some change from
moment to moment. So universally is this recognized,
that it is common to hear it said of such and such a man
that he is not at all the person he was, or of such and such
another that he is twice the man he used to be- expressions
than which none nearer the truth can well be found. On
the other hand, those whom Bishop Butler is intending to
confute would be the first to admit that, though there are
many changes between infancy and old age, yet they come
about in any one individual under such circumstances as
we are all agreed in considering as the faff or s of personal
identity rather than as hindrances thereto -that is to say
that there has been no entire and permanent death on the
part of the individual between any two phases of his exist¬
ence, and that any one phase has had a lasting, though
perhaps imperceptible, effedt upon all succeeding ones*
So that no one ever seriously argued in the manner
supposed by Bishop Butler, unless with modifications and
saving clauses, to which it does not suit his purpose to call
attention.
Identical Stridlly means “ one and the same ” ; and if it
were tied down to its StridfeSt usage, it would indeed
follow very logically, as we have said already, that no such
thing as personal identity is possible, but that the case
adfually is as Bishop Butler has supposed his opponents
without qualification to maintain it. In common use,
however, the word “ identical ” is taken to mean anything
so like another that no vital or essential differences can be
perceived between them, as in the case of two specimens
of the same kind of plant, when we say they are identical
in spite of considerable individual differences. So with
two impressions of a print from the same plate; so with
72
’Personal Identity
the plate itself, which is somewhat modified with every
impression taken from it. In like manner “ identity ” is
not held to its Strid meaning -absolute sameness -but is
predicated rightly of a pa$t and present which are now
very widely asunder, provided they have been continu¬
ously conneded by links so small as not to give too sudden
a sense of change at any one point; as, for instance, in the
case of the Thames at Oxford and Windsor, or again at
Greenwich, we say the same river flows by all three places,
by which we mean that much of the water at Greenwich
has come down from Oxford and Windsor in a continuous
Stream. How sudden a change at any one point, or how
great a difference between the two extremes is sufficient
to bar identity, is one of the most uncertain things imagin¬
able, and seems to be decided on different grounds in
- different cases, sometimes intelligibly, and again at others
arbitrarily and capriciously.
Personal identity is barred at one end, in the common
opinion, by birth, and at the other by death. Before birth,
a child cannot complain either by himself or another, in
such way as to set the law in motion; after death he is also
powerless to make himself felt by society, except in so far
as he can do so by ads done before the breath has left his
body. At any point between birth and death he is liable,
either by himself or another, to affed his fellow-creatures \
hence, no other two epochs can be found of equal con¬
venience for social purposes; they have therefore been
seized by society as the two determining points which
settle where personal identity begins and ends -society
being rightly concerned with its own practical convenience
rather than with the abStrad truth concerning its individual
members. No one who is capable of refledion will deny
that the limitation of personality is arbitrary to a degree as
regards birth, nor yet that it is so very possibly as regards
death; as for intermediate points, no doubt it would be
more Stridly accurate to say, “ you are the now phase of
73
Life and Habit
the person I met last night,” or “ you are the being which
has been evolved from the being I met la$t night,” than
“ you are the person I met la$t night.” But life is too short
for the periphrases which would crowd upon us from
every quarter, if we did not set our face against all that is
under the surface of things, unless, that is to say, the
going beneath the surface is, for some special chance of
profit, excusable or capable of extenuation.
74
chapter six: personal identity— continued
HOW ARBITRARY CURRENT NOTIONS
concerning identity really are, may perhaps be
perceived by reflecting upon some of the many
different phases of reproduction.
DireCt reproduction in which a creation reproduces
another, the facsimile, or nearly so, of itself may perhaps
occur among the lowest forms of animal life; but it is
certainly not the rule among beings of a higher order.
A hen lays an egg, which egg becomes a chicken, which
chicken, in the course of time, becomes a hen.
A moth lays an egg, which egg becomes a caterpillar,
which caterpillar, after going through several Stages,
becomes a chrysalis, which chrysalis becomes a moth.
A medusa begets a ciliated larva, the larva begets a
polyp, the polyp begets a Strobila, and the Strobila begets
a medusa again; the cycle of reprodu&ion being com¬
pleted in the fourth generation.
A frog lays an egg, which egg becomes a tadpole; the
tadpole, after more or fewer intermediate Stages, becomes
a frog.
The mammals lay eggs, which they hatch inside their
own bodies, instead of outside them; but the difference
is one of degree and not of kind. In all these cases how
difficult is it to say where identity begins or ends, or again
where death begins or ends, or where reprodu&ion begins
or ends.
How small and unimportant is the difference between
the changes which a caterpillar undergoes before becoming
a moth, and those of a Strobila before becoming a medusa.
Yet in the one case we say the caterpillar does not die, but
is changed (though, if the various changes in its existence
be produced metagenetically, as is the case with many
inse&s, it would appear to make a clean sweep of every
organ of its existence, and Start de novo , growing a head
where its feet were, and so on -at least twice between its
lives as caterpillar and butterfly); in this case, however,
75
Life and Habit
we say the caterpillar does not die, but is changed; being,
nevertheless, one personality with the moth, into which
it is developed. But in the case of the Strobila we say that
it is not changed, but dies, and is no part of the personality
of the medusa.
We say the egg becomes the caterpillar, not by the death
of the egg and birth of the caterpillar, but by the ordinary
process of nutrition and waste- waste and repair-waSte
and repair continually. In like manner we say the cater¬
pillar becomes the chrysalis, and the chrysalis the moth,
not through the death of either one or the other, but by
the development of the same creature, and the ordinary
processes of waste and repair. But the medusa after three
or four cycles becomes the medusa again, not, we say, by
these same processes of nutrition and waste, but by a
series of generations, each one involving an adhial birth
and an adual death. Why this difference? Surely only
because the changes in the offspring of the medusa are
marked by the leaving a little more husk behind them, and
that husk less shrivelled, than is left on the occasion of each
change between the caterpillar and the butterfly. A little
more residuum, which residuum, it may be, can move
about; and though shrivelling from hour to hour, may
yet leave a little more offspring before it is reduced to
powder; or again, perhaps, because in the one case,
though the a&ors are changed, they are changed behind
the scenes, and come on in parts and dresses, more nearly
resembling those of the original a&ors, than in the other.
When the caterpillar emerges from the egg, almost all
that was inside the egg has become caterpillar ; the shell is
nearly empty, and cannot move; therefore we do not
count it, and call the caterpillar a continuation of the egg’s
existence, and personally identical with the egg. So with
the chrysalis and the moth; but after the moth has laid
her eggs she can Still move her wings about, and she looks
nearly as large as she did before she laid them; besides.
Persona/ Identity
she may yet lay a few more, therefore we do not consider
the moth’s life as continued in the life of her eggs, but
rather in their husk, which we Still call the moth, and
which we say dies in a day or two, and there is an end of it.
Moreover, if we hold the moth’s life to be continued in
that of her eggs, we shall be forced to admit her to be
personally identical with each single egg, and, hence, each
egg to be identical with every other egg, as far as the paSt,
and community of memories, are concerned; and it is
not easy at first to break the spell which words have cast
around us, and to feel that one person may become many
persons, and that many different persons may be pra&ically
one and the same person, as far as their past experience is
concerned; and again, that two or more persons may unite
and become one person, with the memories and experi¬
ences of both, though this has been adhially the case with
every one of us.
Our present way of looking at these matters is perfe&ly
right and reasonable, so long as we bear in mind that it is a
Jafon de parler , a sort of hieroglyphic which shall Stand for
the course of nature, but nothing more. Repair (as is now
universally admitted by physiologists) is only a phase of
reprodu&ion, or rather reprodu&ion and repair are only
phases of the same power; and again, death and the ordin¬
ary daily waste of tissue, are phases of the same thing.
As for identity it is determined in any true sense of the
word, not by death alone, but by a combination of death
and failure of issue, whether of mind or body.
To repeat. Wherever there is a separate centre of
thought and action, we see that it is conne&ed with its
successive Stages of being, by a series of infinitely small
changes from moment to moment, with, perhaps, at times
more Startling and rapid changes, but, nevertheless, with
no such sudden, complete, and unrepaired break up of the
preceding condition, as we shall agree in calling death.
The branching out from it at different times of new centres
77
Life and Habit
of thought and aCtion, has commonly as little appreciable
effeCt upon the parent-Stock as the fall of an apple full of
ripe seeds has upon an apple-tree; and though the life
of the parent, from the date of the branching off of such
personalities, is more truly continued in these than in the
residuum of its own life, we should find ourselves involved
in a good deal of trouble if we were commonly to take this
view of the matter. The residuum has generally the upper
hand. He has more money, and can eat up his new life
more easily than his new life him. A moral residuum will
therefore prefer to see the remainder of his life in his own
person, than in that of his descendants, and will aCt accord¬
ingly. Hence we, in common with moSt other living
beings, ignore the offspring as forming part of the per¬
sonality of the parent, except in so far as that we make the
father liable for its support and for its extravagances (than
which no greater proof need be wished that the law is at
heart a philosopher, and perceives the completeness of the
personal identity between father and son) for twenty-one
years from birth. In other respeCts we are accustomed,
probably rather from considerations of practical conveni¬
ence than as the result of pure reason, to ignore the identity
between parent and offspring as completely as we ignore
personality before birth. With these exceptions, however,
the common opinion concerning personal identity is
reasonable enough, and is found to consist neither in
consciousness of such identity, nor yet in the power of
recollecting its various phases (for it is plain that identity
survives the distinction or suspension of both these), but
in the faCt that the various Stages appear to the majority of
people to have been in some way or other linked together.
For a very little reflection will show that identity, as
commonly predicated of living agents, does not consist
in identity of matter, of which there is no same particle in
die infant, we will say, and the oCtogenarian into whom he
has developed. Nor, again, does it depend upon sameness
78
Personal Identity
of form or fashion; for personality is felt to survive
frequent and radical modification of Stru&ure, as in the
case of caterpillars and other inse&s. Mr. Darwin, quoting
from Professor Owen, tells us ( Variations of Animals and
Plants under Domestication, vol. ii, p. 362, ed. 1875) that in
the case of what is called metagenetic development, “ the
new parts are not moulded upon the inner surface of the
old ones. The plastic force has changed its course of
operation. The outer case , and all that gave form and char alter
to the precedent individual , perish , and are caSt off ; they are not
changed into the corresponding parts of the new individual.
These are due to a new and diStinft developmental pro¬
cess.” Assuredly, there is more birth and death in the
world than is dreamt of by the greater part of us ; but it is
so masked, and, on the whole, so little to our purpose, that
we fail to see it. Yet radical and sweeping as the changes
of organism above described muSt be, we do not feel them
to be more a bar to personal identity than the considerable
changes which take place in the Stru&ure of our own bodies
between youth and old age.
Perhaps the moSt Striking illustration of this is to be
found in the case of some Echinoderms, concerning which
Mr. Darwin tells us, that “ the animal in the second Stage
of development is formed almost like a bud within the
animal of the first Stage, the latter being then cast off like
an old vestment, yet sometimes maintaining for a short
period an independent vitality ” ( Variations of Animals and
Plants under Domestication , vol. ii, p. 362, ed. 1875).
Nor yet does personality depend upon any conscious¬
ness or sense of such personality on the part of the creature
itself- it is not likely that the moth remembers having been
a caterpillar, more than we ourselves remember having
been children of a day old. It depends simply upon the
fa& that the various phases of existence have been linked
together, by links which we agree in considering sufficient
to cause identity, and that they have flowed the one out
79
Life and Habit
of the other in what we see as a continuous, though it may¬
be at times a troubled, Stream. This is the very essence of
personality, but it involves the probable unity of all
animal and vegetable life, as being, in reality, nothing but
one single creature, of which the component members
are but, as it were, blood corpuscles or individual cells;
life being a sort of leaven, which, if once introduced into
the world, will leaven it altogether; or of fire, which will
consume all it can burn; or of air or water, which will
turn most things into themselves. Indeed, no difficulty
would probably be felt about admitting the continued
existence of personal identity between parents and their
offspring through all time (there being no sudden break at
any time between the existence of any maternal parent and
that of its offspring), were it not that after a certain time
the changes in outward appearance between descendants
and ancestors become very great, the two seeming to Stand
so far apart, that it seems absurd in any way to say that
they are one and the same being; much in the same way
as after a time- though exadly when no one can say-
the Thames becomes the sea. Moreover, the separation
of the identity is pradically of far greater importance to it
than its continuance. We want to be ourselves; we do
not want any one else to claim part and parcel of our
identity. This community of identities is not found to
answer in everyday life. When then our love of independ¬
ence is backed up by the fad that continuity of life between
parents and offspring is a matter which depends on things
which are a good deal hidden, and that thus birth gives us
an opportunity of pretending that there has been a sudden
leap into a separate life; when also we have regard to the
utter ignorance of embryology, which prevailed till quite
recently, it is not surprising that our ordinary language
should be found to have regard to what is important and
obvious, rather than to what is not quite obvious, and is
quite unimportant.
80
Personal Identity
Personality is the creature of time and space, changing,
as time changes, imperceptibly; we are therefore driven to
deal with it as with all continuous and blending things;
as with time, for example, itself, which we divide into days,
and seasons, and times, and years, into divisions that are
often arbitrary, but coincide, on the whole, as nearly as
we can make them do so, with the more marked changes
which we can observe. We lay hold, in fad, of anything
we can catch; the moSt important feature in any existence
as regards ourselves being that which we can beSt lay hold
of, rather than that which is most essential to the existence
itself. We can lay hold of the continued personality of the
egg and the moth into which the egg develops, but it is
less easy to catch sight of the continued personality
between the moth and the eggs which she lays ; yet the one
continuation of personality is juSt as true and free from
quibble as the other. A moth becomes each egg that she
lays, and that she does so she will in good time show by
doing, now that she has got a fresh Start, as near as may
be what she did when first she was an egg, and then a moth,
before; and this I take it, so far as I can gather from
looking at life and things generally, she would not be able
to do if she had not travelled the same road often enough
already, to be able to know it in her sleep and blindfold,
that is to say, to remember it without any conscious ad of
memory.
So also a grain of wheat is linked with an ear, containing,
we will say, a dozen grains, by a series of changes so subtle
that we cannot say at what moment the original grain
became the blade, nor when each ear of the head became
possessed of an individual centre of adion. To say that
each grain of the head is personally identical with the
original grain would perhaps be an abuse of terms; but
it can be no abuse to say that each grain is a continuation
of the personality of the original grain, and if so, of every
grain in the chain of its own ancestry; and that, as being
81 G
Life and Habit
such a continuation, it muSt be Stored with the memories
and experiences of its past existences, to be recollected
under the circumstances moSt favourable to recollection*
i.e., when under similar conditions to those when the
impression was laSt made and laSt remembered. Truly*
then, in each case the new egg and the new grain is the egg,
and the grain from which its parent sprang, as completely
as the full-grown ox is the calf from which it has grown.
Again, in the case of some weeping trees, whose boughs
spring up into fresh trees when they have reached the
ground, who shall say at what time they cease to be mem¬
bers of the parent tree ? In the case of cuttings from plants
it is easy to elude the difficulty by making a parade of the
sharp and sudden aCt of separation from the parent Stock,
but this is only a piece of mental sleight of hand; the
cutting remains as much part of its parent plant as though
it had never been severed from it; it goes on profiting
by the experience which it had before it was cut off, as
much as though it had never been cut off at all. This will
be more readily seen in the case of worms which have been
cut in half. Let a worm be cut in half, and the two halves
will become fresh worms; which of them is the original
worm? Surely both. Perhaps no simpler case than this
could readily be found of the manner in which personality
eludes us, the moment we try to investigate its real
nature. There are few ideas which on first consideration
appear so simple, and none which becomes more utterly
incapable of limitation or definition as soon as it is
examined closely.
Finally, Mr. Darwin (1 Variations of Animals and Plants
under Domefiication, vol. ii, p. 38, ed. 1875), writes:
“ Even with plants multiplied by bulbs, layers, etc.,
which may in one sense be said to form part of the same
individual,” etc., etc.; and again, p. 58, “ The same rule
holds good with plants when propagated by bulbs, offsets,
etc., which in one sense Still form parts of the same indi-
82
Personal Identity
vidual,” etc. In each of these passages it is plain that the
difficulty of separating the personality of the offspring
from that of the parent plant is present to his mind. Yet,
p. 351 of the same volume as above, he tells us that asexual
generation “ is effected in many ways -by the formation
of buds of various kinds, and by fissiparous generation,
that is, by spontaneous or artificial division.” The multi¬
plication of plants by bulbs and layers clearly comes under
this head, nor will any essential difference be felt between
one kind of asexual generation and another; if, then, the
offspring formed by bulbs and layers is in one sense part
of the original plant, so also, it would appear, is all off¬
spring developed by asexual generation in its manifold
phases.
If we now turn to p. 357, we find the conclusion
arrived at, as it would appear, on the moSt satisfa&ory
evidence, that “ sexual and asexual reprodu&ion are not
seen to differ essentially; and . . . that asexual reprodu&ion,
the power of regrowth, and development are all parts of
one and the same great law.” Does it not then follow,
quite reasonably and necessarily, that all offspring, how¬
ever generated, is in one sense part of the individuality of its
parent or parents. The question, therefore, turns upon
“ in what sense ” this may be said to be the case? To
which I would venture to reply, “ In the same sense as the
parent plant (which is but the representative of the outside
matter which it has assimilated during growth, and of
its own powers of development) is the same individual
that it was when it was itself an offset, or a cow the same
individual that it was when it was a calf- but no other-
• yy
wise.
Not much difficulty will be felt about supposing the
offset of a plant, to be imbued with the memory of the
past history of the plant of which it is an offset. It is part
of the plant itself, and will know whatever the plant
knows. Why, then, should there be more difficulty in
83
Life and Habit
‘supposing the offspring of the highest mammals to
remember in a profound but unselfconscious way the
anterior history of the creatures of which they too have
been part and parcel?
Personal identity, then, is much like species itself.
It is now, thanks to Mr. Darwin, generally held that species
blend or have blended into one another; so that any
possibility of arrangement and apparent subdivision into
definite groups, is due to the suppression by death both of
individuals and whole genera, which, had they been now
existing, would have linked all living beings by a series
of gradations so subtle that little classification could have
been attempted. What we have failed to see is that the
individual is as much linked on to other individuals as the
species is linked on to other species. How it is that the
one great personality of life as a whole, should have split
itself up into so many centres of thought and aCtion, each
one of which is wholly, or at any rate nearly unconscious
of its connexion with the other members, instead of having
grown up into a huge polyp, or as it were coral reef or
compound animal over the whole world, which should be
conscious but of its own one single existence; how it is
that the daily waste of this creature should be carried on
by the conscious death of its individual members, instead
of by the unconscious waste of tissue which goes on in the
bodies of each individual (if indeed the tissue which we
waste daily in our own bodies is so unconscious of its
birth and death as we suppose) ; how, again, that the daily
repair of this huge creature life should have become
decentralized, and be carried on by conscious reproduction
on the part of its component items, instead of by the
unconscious nutrition of the whole from a single centre,
as the nutrition of our own bodies would appear (though
perhaps falsely) to be carried on; these are matters upon
which I dare not speculate here, but on which some
reflections may follow in subsequent chapters.
84
CHAPTER SEVEN: OUR SUBORDINATE PERSONALITIES
yr TTE HAVE SEEN THAT WE CAN APPRE-
V / hend neither the beginning nor the end of our
l / personality, which comes up out of infinity as
¥ V an island out of the sea, so gently, that none can
say when it is first visible on our mental horizon, and fades
away in the case of those who leave offspring, so imper¬
ceptibly that none can say when it is out of sight. But,
like the island, whether we can see it or no, it is always
there. Not only are we infinite as regards time, but we
are so also as regards extension, being so linked on to the
external world that we cannot say where we either begin
or end. If those who so frequently declare that man is a
finite creature would point out his boundaries, it might
lead to a better understanding.
Nevertheless, we are in the habit of considering that
our personahty, or soul, no matter where it begins or ends,
and no matter what it comprises, is nevertheless a single
thing, uncompounded of other souls. Yet there is nothing
more certain than that this is not at ah the case, but that
every individual person is a compound creature, being
made up of an infinite number of diStinCt centres of sensa¬
tion and will, each one of which is personal, and has a soul
and individual existence, a reproductive system, intelli¬
gence, and memory of its own, with probably its hopes
and fears, its times of scarcity and repletion, and a con¬
viction that it is itself the centre of the universe.
True, no one is aware of more than one individuality
in his own person at one time. We are, indeed, often
greatly influenced by other people, so much so, that we
aCt on many occasions in accordance with their will
rather than our own, making our aCtions answer to their
sensations, and register their conclusions and not our own;
for the time being, we become so completely part of them,
that we are ready to do things most distasteful and danger¬
ous to us, if they think it for their advantage that we should
do so. Thus we sometimes see people become mere pro-
85
Life and Habit
cesses of their wives or nearest relations. Yet there is a
something which blinds us, so that we cannot see how
completely we are possessed by the souls which influence
us upon these occasions. We Still think we are ourselves,
and ourselves only, and are as certain as we can be of any
fad, that we are single sentient beings, uncompounded of
other sentient beings, and that our adion is determined by
the operation of a single will.
But in reality, over and above this possession of our
souls by others of our own species, the will of the lower
animals often enters into our bodies and possesses them,
making us do as they will, and not as we will; as, for
example, when people try to drive pigs, or are run away
with by a restive horse, or are attacked by a savage animal
which masters them. It is absurd to say that a person is a
single “ ego ” when he is in the clutches of a lion. Even
when we are alone, and uninfluenced by other people
except in so far as we remember their wishes, we yet
generally conform to the usages which the current feeling
of our peers has taught us to resped ; their will having so
mastered our original nature, that, do what we may, we
can never again separate ourselves and dwell in the iso¬
lation of our own single personality. And even though
we succeeded in this, and made a clean sweep of every
mental influence which had ever been brought to bear
upon us, and though at the same time we were alone in
some desert where there was neither beaSt nor bird to
attrad our attention or in any way influence our adion,
yet we could not escape the parasites which abound within
us; whose adion, as every medical man well knows, is
often such as to drive men to the commission of grave
crimes, or to throw them into convulsions, make lunatics
of them, kill them-when but for the existence and course
of condud pursued by these parasites they would have
done no wrong to any man.
These parasites -are they part of us or no? Some are
86
Our Subordinate Personalities
plainly not so in any Stri& sense of the word, yet their
a&ion may, in cases which it is unnecessary to detail,
affeft us so powerfully that we are irresistibly impelled to
a ft in such or such a manner; and yet we are as wholly
unconscious of any impulse outside of our own “ ego ”
as though they were part of ourselves; others again are
essential to our very existence, as the corpuscles of the
blood, which the beSt authorities concur in supposing
to be composed of an infinite number of living souls, on
whose welfare the healthy condition of our blood, and
hence of our whole bodies, depends. We breathe that
they may breathe, not that we may do so; we only care
about oxygen in so far as the infinitely small beings which
course up and down in our veins care about it : the whole
arrangement and mechanism of our lungs may be our
doing, but is for their convenience, and they only serve us
because it suits their purpose to do so, as long as we serve
them. Who shall draw the line between the parasites
which are part of us, and the parasites which are not part
of us? Or again, between the influence of those parasites
which are within us, but are yet not and the external
influence of other sentient beings and our fellow-men?
There is no line possible. Everything melts away into
everything else; there are no hard edges; it is only from
a little distance that we see the eifeft as of individual
features and existences. When we go close up, there is
nothing but a blur and confused mass of apparently
meaningless touches, as in a picture by Turner.1
The following passage from Mr. Darwin’s provisional
theory of Pangenesis will sufficiently show that the above
is no Strange and paradoxical view put forward wantonly,
but that it follows as a matter of course from the con¬
clusions arrived at by those who are acknowledged leaders
in the scientific world. Mr. Darwin writes thus :
“ The functional independence of the elements or units of the
1 This sentence is deleted in Butler’s revised copy, -a.t.b.
87
Life and Habit
body.- Physiologies agree that the whole organism con¬
sists of a multitude of elemental parts, which are to a great
extent independent of one another. Each organ, says
Claude Bernard, has its proper life, its autonomy; it can
develop and reproduce itself independently of the adjoin¬
ing tissues. A great German authority, Virchow, asserts
Still more emphatically that each system consists of ‘ an
enormous mass of minute centres of a&ion. . . . Every
element has its own special a&ion, and even though it
derive its Stimulus to aftivity from other parts, yet alone
effe&s the aftual performance of duties. . . . Every single
epithelial and muscular fibre-cell leads a sort of parasitical
existence in relation to the rest of the body. . . . Every
single bone corpuscle really possesses conditions of
nutrition peculiar to itself.’ Each element, as Sir J. Paget
remarks, lives its appointed time, and then dies, and is
replaced after being caSt off or absorbed. I presume that
no physiologist doubts that, for instance, each bone
corpuscle of the finger differs from the corresponding
corpuscle in the corresponding joint of the toe,” etc., etc.
(1 Variations of Animals and Plants under Domestication,
vol. ii, pp. 364, 365, ed. 1875).
In a work on heredity by M. Ribot,1 1 find him saying,
“ Some recent authors attribute a memory ” (and if so,
surely every attribute of complete individuality) “ to
every organic element of the body ” ; among them Dr.
Maudsley, who is quoted by M. Ribot, as saying, “ The
permanent effe&s of a particular virus, such as that of the
variola, in the constitution, shows that the organic element
remembers for the remainder of its life certain modifica¬
tions it has received. The manner in which a cicatrix in a
child’s finger grows with the growth of the body, proves,
as has been shown by Paget, that the organic element of
the part does not forget the impression it has received.
What has been said about the different nervous centres of
1 Heredity. English trans., London, 1875.
88
Our Subordinate Personalities
the body demonstrates the existence of a memory in the
nerve cells diffused through the heart and intestines; in
those of the spinal cord, in the cells of the motor ganglia,
and in the cells of the cortical substance of the cerebral
hemispheres.”
Now, if words have any meaning at all, it must follow
from the passages quoted above, that each cell in the
human body is a person with an intelligent soul, of a low
class, perhaps, but Still differing from our own more
complex soul in degree, and not in kind; and, like our¬
selves, being born, living, and dying. So that each single
creature, whether man or beaSt, proves to be as a ray of
white light, which, though single, is compounded of the
red, blue, and yellow rays. It would appear, then, as
though “ we,” “ our souls,” or “ selves,” or “ person¬
alities,” or by whatever name we may prefer to be called,
are but the consensus and full flowing Stream of countless
sensations and impulses on the part of our tributary souls
or “ selves,” who probably know no more that we exist,
and that they exist as part of us, than a microscopic water-
flea knows the results of speCtrum analysis, or than an
agricultural labourer knows the working of the British
constitution; and of whom we know no more, until some
misconduct on our part, or some confusion of ideas on
theirs, has driven them into insurrection, than we do of the
habits and feelings of some class widely separated from our
own.
These component souls are of many and very different
natures, living in territories which are to them vast con¬
tinents, and rivers, and seas, but which are yet only the
bodies of our other component souls; coral reefs and
sponge-beds within us ; the animal itself being a kind of
mean proportional between its house and its soul, and
none being able to say where house ends and animal
begins, more than they can say where animal ends and
soul begins. For our bones within us are but inside walls
89
hife and Habit
and buttresses, that is to say, houses constructed of lime
and Stone, as it were, by coral inse&s; and our houses
without us are but outside bones, a kind of exterior
skeleton or shell, so that we perish of cold if permanently
and suddenly deprived of the coverings which warm us
and cherish us, as the wing of a hen cherishes her chickens.
If we consider the shells of many living creatures, we shall
find it hard to say whether they are rather houses, or part
of the animal itself, being, as they are, inseparable from
the animal, without the destruction of its personality.
Is it possible, then, to avoid imagining that if we have
within us so many tributary souls, so utterly different from
the soul which they unite to form, that they neither can
perceive us, nor we them, though it is in us that they live
and move and have their being, and though we are what
we are, solely as the result of their co-operation- is it
possible to avoid imagining that we may be ourselves
atoms, undesignedly combining to form some vaster being,
though we are utterly incapable of perceiving that any
such being exists, or of realizing the scheme or scope of
our own combination? And this, too, not a spiritual
being, which, without matter, or what we think matter of
some sort, is as complete nonsense to us as though men
bade us love and lean upon an intelligent vacuum, but a
being with what is virtually flesh and blood and bones;
with organs, senses, dimensions, in some way analogous
to our own, into some other part of which being, at the
time of our great change we must infallibly re-enter,
Starting clean anew, with bygones bygones, and no more
ache for ever from either age or antecedents. Truly,
sufficient for the life is the evil thereof. Any speculations
of ours concerning the nature of such a being, must be as
futile and little valuable as those of a blood corpuscle
might be expefted to be concerning the nature of man;
but if I were myself a blood corpuscle, I should be amused
at making the discovery that I was not only enjoying life
90
Our Subordinate Personalities
in my own sphere, but was bona fide part of an animal which
would not die with myself, and in which I might thus
think of myself as continuing to live to all eternity, or to
what, as far as my poor power of thought would carry me,
mu$t seem pra&ically eternal. But, after all, the amuse¬
ment would be of a rather dreary nature.
On the other hand, if I were the being of whom such
an introspe&ive blood corpuscle was a component item,
I should conceive he served me better by attending to my
blood and making himself a successful corpuscle, than by
speculating about my nature. He would serve me best
by serving himself best, without being over curious. I
should expeft that my blood might suffer if his brain were
to become too a&ive. If, therefore, I could discover the
vein in which he was, I should let him out to begin life
anew in some other and, qua me, more profitable capacity.
With the units of our bodies it is as with the Stars of
heaven: there is neither speech nor language, but their
voices are heard among them. Our will is the fiat of their
colle&ive wisdom; it is they who make us do whatever
we do -it is they who should be rewarded if they have
done well, or hanged if they have committed murder.
When the balance of power is well preserved among them,
when they respeft each other’s rights and work har¬
moniously together, then we thrive and are well ; if we are
ill, it is because they are quarrelling with themselves, or
are gone on Strike for this or that addition to their environ¬
ment, and our do&or muSt pacify or chastise them as best
he may. They are we and we are they; and when we die
it is but a redistribution of the balance of power among
them or a change of dynasty, the result, it may be, of
heroic Struggle, with more epics and love romances than
we could read from now to the Millennium, if they were
so written down that we could comprehend them.
It is plain, then, that the more we examine the question
of personality the more it baffles us, the only safeguard
91
Life and Habit
against utter confusion and idleness of thought being to
fall back upon the superficial and commonsense view,
and refuse to tolerate discussions which seem to hold out
little prosped of commercial value, and which would
compel us, if logically followed, to be at the inconvenience
of altering our opinions upon matters which we have come
to consider as settled.
And we observe that this is what is pradically done by
some of our ablest philosophers, who seem unwilling,
if one may say so without presumption, to accept the
conclusions to which their own experiments and observa¬
tions would seem to point.
Dr. Carpenter, for example, quotes the well-known
experiments upon headless frogs. If we cut off a frog’s
head and pinch any part of its skin, the animal at once
begins to move away with the same regularity as though
the brain had not been removed. Flourens took guinea-
pigs, deprived them of the cerebral lobes, and then irritated
their skin; the animals immediately walked, leaped, and
trotted about, but when the irritation was discontinued
they ceased to move. Headless birds, under excitation,
can Still perform with their wings the rhythmic movements
of flying. But here are some fads more curious Still, and
more difficult of explanation. If we take a frog or a Strong
and healthy triton, and subjed it to various experiments;
if we touch, pinch, or burn it with acetic acid, and if then,
after decapitating the animal, we subject it to the same
experiments, it will be seen that the reactions are exadly
the same ; it will Strive to be free of the pain, and to shake
off the acetic acid that is burning it; it will bring its foot
up to the part of its body that is irritated, and this move¬
ment of the member will follow the irritation wherever
it may be produced.
The above is mainly taken from M. Ribot’s work on
heredity rather than Dr. Carpenter’s, because M. Ribot tells
us that the head of the frog was a&ually cut off, a fad
92
Our Subordinate Personalities
which does not appear so plainly in Dr. Carpenter’s allu¬
sion to the same experiments. But Dr. Carpenter tells
us that after the brain of a frog has been re moved -which would
seem to be much the same thing as though its head were
cut off- “ if acetic acid be applied over the upper and under
part of the thigh, the foot of the same side will wipe it
away; but if that foot be cut off , after some ineffectual efforts
and a short period of inaction ,” during which it is hard not
to surmise that the headless body is considering what it
had better do under the circumstances, “ the same movement
will be made by the foot of the opposite side,” which, to ordinary
people, would convey the impression that the headless
body was capable of feeling the impressions it had
received, and of reasoning upon them by a psychological
aft; and this of course involves the possession of a soul
of some sort.
Here is a frog whose right thigh you burn with acetic
acid. Very naturally it tries to get at the place with its
right foot to remove the acid. You then cut off the frog’s
head, and put more acetic acid on the same place: the
headless frog, or rather the body of the late frog, does juSt
what the frog did before its head was cut off- it tries to
get at the place with its right foot. You now cut off its
right foot : the headless body deliberates, and after a while
tries to do with its left foot what it can no longer do with
its right. Plain matter-of-faft people will draw their own
inference. They will not be seduced from the superficial
view of the matter. They will say that the headless body
can Still, to some extent, feel, think, and aft, and if so,
that it muSt have a living soul.
Dr. Carpenter writes as follows : “ Now the perform¬
ance of these, as well as of many other movements, that
show a most remarkable adaptation to a purpose, might
be supposed to indicate that sensations are called up by the
impressions , and that the animal can not only feel, but can
voluntarily direft its movements so as to get rid of the
93
Life and Habit
irritation which annoys it. But such an inference would
be inconsistent with other faffs. In the first place, the
motions performed under such circumstances are never
spontaneous, but are always excited by a Stimulus of some
kind.”
Here we pause to ask ourselves whether any aftion of
any creature under any circumstances is ever excited
without “ Stimulus of some kind,” and unless we can
answer this question in the affirmative, it is not easy to see
how Dr. Carpenter’s obje&ion is valid.
44 Thus,” he continues, 44 a decapitated frog ” (here then
we have it that the frog’s head was actually cut off) 44 after
the first violent convulsive movements occasioned by the
operation have passed away, remains at rest until it is
touched; and then the leg, or its whole body may be
thrown into sudden aftion, which suddenly subsides
again.” (How does this quiescence when it no longer feels
anything show that the 44 leg or whole body ” had not
perceived something which made it feel when it was not
quiescent?)-44 Again we find that such movements may
be performed not only when the brain has been removed,
the spinal cord remaining entire, but also when the spinal
cord has been itself cut across, so as to be divided into two
or more portions, each of them completely isolated from
each other, and from other parts of the nervous centres.
Thus, if the head of a frog be cut off, and its spinal cord
be divided in the middle of the back, so that its fore legs
remain connected with the upper part, and its hind legs
with the lower, each pair of members may be excited to
movements by Stimulants applied to itself; but the two
pairs will not exhibit any consentaneous motions, as they
will do when the spinal cord is undivided.”
This may be put perhaps more plainly thus. If you
take a frog and cut it into three pieces -say, the head for
one piece, the fore-legs and shoulder for another, and the
hind legs for a third -and then irritate any one of these
94
Our Subordinate Personalities ]
pieces, you will find it move much as it would have"moved
under like irritation if the animal had remained undivided,
but you will no longer find any concert between the move¬
ments of the three pieces ; that is to say, if you irritate the
head, the other two pieces will remain quiet, and if you
irritate the hind legs, you will excite no a&ion in the fore
legs or head.
Dr. Carpenter continues : “ Or if the spinal cord be cut
across without the removal of the brain, the lower limbs
may be excited to movement by an appropriate Stimulant,
though the animal has clearly no power over them, whilst
the upper part remains under its control as completely as
before.”
Why are the head and shoulders “ the animal ” more
than the hind legs under these circumstances? Neither
half can exist long without the other; the two parts,
therefore, being equally important to each other, we have
surely as good a right to claim the title of “ the animal ”
for the hind legs, and to maintain that they have no power
over the head and shoulders, as any one else has to claim
the animalship for these last. What we say is, that the
animal has ceased to exist as a frog on being cut in half,
and that the two halves are no longer, either of them, the
frog, but are simply pieces of Still living organism, each
of which has a soul of its own, being capable of sensation,
and of intelligent psychological a&ion as the consequence
of its sensations, though the one part has probably a much
higher and more intelligent soul than the other, and
neither part has a soul for a moment comparable in power
and durability to that of the original frog.
“ Now it is scarcely conceivable,” continues Dr. Car¬
penter, “ that in this laSt case sensations should be felt
and volition exercised through the instrumentality of that
portion of the spinal cord which remains conne&ed with
the nerves of the posterior extremities, but which is cut
off from the brain. For if it were so, there must be two*
95
Life and Habit
diStind centres of sensation and will in the same animal,
the attributes of the brain not being affeded; and by
dividing the spinal cord into two or more segments we
might thus create in the body of one animal two or more
such independent centres in addition to that which holds
its proper place in the head.”
In the face of the fads before us, it does not seem far¬
fetched to suppose that there are two, or indeed an infinite
number of centres of sensation and will in an animal, the
attributes of whose brain are not affeded, but that these
centres, while the brain is intad, habitually ad in con-
nedion with and in subordination to a central authority;
as in the ordinary State of the fish trade, fish is caught, we
will say, at Yarmouth, sent up to London, and then sent
down to Yarmouth again to be eaten, instead of being
eaten at Yarmouth when caught. But from the phenomena
exhibited by three pieces of an animal, it is impossible to
argue that the causes of the phenomena were present in
the quondam animal itself; the memory of an infinite
series of generations having so habituated the local centres
of sensation and will, to ad in concert with the central
government, that as long as they can get at that govern¬
ment, they are absolutely incapable of ading independ¬
ently. When thrown on their own resources, they are so
demoralized by ages of inter-dependence, that they die
after a few efforts at self-assertion, from sheer unfamiliarity
with the position, and inability to recognize themselves
when disjointed rudely from their habitual associations.
In conclusion, Dr. Carpenter says, “ To say that two
or more diStind centres of sensation and will are present
in such a case, would really be the same as saying that we
have the power of constituting two or more diStind egos
in one body, which is tnanijeltly absurd .” One sees the
absurdity of maintaining that we can make one frog into
two frogs by cutting a frog into two pieces, but there is
no absurdity in believing that the two pieces have minor
96
Our Subordinate Personalities
centres of sensation and intelligence within themselves,
which, when the animal is entire, aft in such concert with
each other that it is not easy to deteft their originally
autonomous charafter, but which, when deprived of their
power of afting in concert, are thrown back upon earlier
habit, now too long forgotten to be capable of permanent
resumption.
Illustrations are apt to mislead, nevertheless they may
perhaps be sometimes tolerated. Suppose, for example,
that London to the extent, say, of a circle with a six-mile
radius from Charing Cross, were utterly annihilated in the
space of five minutes during the Session of Parliament.
Suppose, also, that two entirely impassable barriers, say of
five miles in width, half a mile high, and red hot, were
thrown across England; one from Gloucester to Harwich,
and another from Liverpool to Hull, and at the same time
the sea were to become a mass of molten lava, so that no
water communication should be possible; the political,
mercantile, social, and intelleftual life of the country
would be convulsed in a manner which it is hardly possible
to realize. Hundreds of thousands would die through the
dislocation of existing arrangements. Nevertheless, each
of the three parts into which England was divided would
show signs of provincial life for which it would find certain
imperfeft organizations ready to hand. Bristol, Birming¬
ham, Liverpool, and Manchester, accustomed though they
are to aft in subordination to London, would probably
take up the reins of government in their several seftions;
they would make their town councils into local govern¬
ments, appoint judges from the ablest of their magistrates,
organize relief committees, and endeavour as well as they
could to remove any acetic acid that might be now poured
on Wiltshire, Warwickshire, or Northumberland, but no
concert between the three divisions of the country would
be any longer possible. Should we be justified, under
these circumstances, in calling any of the three parts of
97 h
Life and Habit
England, England? Or, again, when we observed the
provincial aftion to be as nearly like that of the original
undivided nation as circumstances would allow, should we
be justified in saying that the aftion, such as it was, was not
political? And, lastly, should we for a moment think that
an admission that the provincial aftion was of a bona fide
political character would involve the supposition that
England, undivided, had more than one “ ego ” as Eng¬
land, no matter how many subordinate “ egos ” might
go to the making of it, each one of which proved, on
emergency, to be capable of a feeble autonomy?
M. Ribot would seem to take a juSter view of the
phenomenon when he says (p. 222 of the English trans¬
lation) :
“ We can hardly say that here the movements are co¬
ordinated like those of a machine; the afts of the animal
are adapted to a special end; we find in them the char-
afters of intelligence and will, a knowledge and choice of
means, since they are as variable as the cause which
provokes them.
“ If these, then, and similar afts, were such that both the
impressions which produced them and the afts them¬
selves were perceived by the animal, would they not be
called psychological? Is there not in them all that consti¬
tutes an intelligent aft- adaptation of means to ends; not a
general and vague adaptation, but a determinate adaptation
to a determinate end? In the reflex aftion we find all that
constitutes in some sort the very groundwork of an in¬
telligent aft- that is to say, the same series of Stages, in the
same order, with the same relations between them. We
have thus, in the reflex aft, all that constitutes the psycho¬
logical aft except consciousness. The reflex aft, which
is physiological, differs in nothing from the psychological
aft, save only in this -that it is without consciousness.”
The only remark which suggests itself upon this, is that
we have no right to say that the part of the animal which
98
Our Subordinate Personalities
moves does not also perceive its own ad of motion, as
much as it has perceived the impression which has caused
it to move. It is plain “ the animal ” cannot do so, for
the animal cannot be said to be any longer in existence.
Half a frog is not a frog ; nevertheless, if the hind legs are
capable, as M. Ribot appears to admit, of “ perceiving the
impression ” which produces their adion, and if in that
adion there is (and there would certainly appear to be so)
“ all that constitutes an intelligent ad, ... a determinate
adaptation to a determinate end,” one fails to see on what
ground they should be supposed to be incapable of per¬
ceiving their own adion, in which case the adion of the
hind legs becomes diStindly psychological.
Secondly, M. Ribot appears to forget that it is the
tendency of all psychological adion to become uncon¬
scious on being frequently repeated, and that no line can
be drawn between psychological ads and those reflex ads
which he calls physiological. All we can say is, that there
are ads which we do without knowing that we do them;
but the analogy of many habits which we have been able
to watch in their passage from laborious consciousness to
perfed unconsciousness, would suggest that all adion is
really psychological, only that the soul’s adion becomes
invisible to ourselves after it has been repeated sufficiently
often- that there is, in fad, a law as simple as in the case
of optics or gravitation, whereby conscious perception of
any adion shall vary inversely as the square, say, of its
being repeated.
It is easy to understand the advantage to the individual
of this power of doing things rightly without thinking
about them; for were there no such power, the attention
would be incapable of following the multitude of matters
which would be continually arresting it; those animals
which had developed a power of working automatically,
and without a recurrence to first principles when they had
once mastered any particular process, would, in the com-
99
Life and Habit
mon course of events, Stand a better chance of continuing
their species, and thus of transmitting their new power
to their descendants.
M. Ribot declines to pursue the subjeft further, and has
only cursorily alluded to it. He writes, however, that, on
the “ obscure problem ” of the difference between reflex
and psychological a&ions, some say, “ when there can be
no consciousness, because the brain is wanting, there is,
in spite of appearances, only mechanism,” whilst others
maintain, that “ when there is sele&ion, reflexion,
psychical aftion, there must also be consciousness in spite
of appearances.” A litde later (p. 223), he says, “ It is
quite possible that if a headless animal could live a sufficient
length of time ” (that is to say, if the hind legs of an animal
could live a sufficient length of time without the brain),
“ there would be found in it ” {them) “ a consciousness
like that of the lower species, which would consist merely
in the faculty of apprehending the external world.” (Why
merely? It is more than apprehending the outside world
to be able to try to do a thing with one’s left foot, when
one finds that one cannot do it with one’s right.) “ It
would not be corredf to say that the amphioxus, the only
one among fishes and vertebrata which has a spinal cord
without a brain, has no consciousness because it has no
brain; and if it be admitted that the little ganglia of the
invertebrata can form a consciousness, the same may hold
good for the spinal cord.”
We conclude, therefore, that it is within the common
scope and meaning of the words “ personal identity,” not
only that one creature can become many as the moth
becomes manifold in her eggs, but that each individual
may be manifold in the sense of being compounded of a
va^t number of subordinate individualities which have
their separate lives within him, with their hopes, and fears,
and intrigues, being born and dying within us, many
generations of them, during our single lifetime.
100
Our Subordinate Personalities
“ An organic being,” writes Mr. Darwin, “ is a micro¬
cosm, a little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating
organisms, inconceivably minute, and numerous as the
Stars in heaven.”
As these myriads of smaller organisms are parts and
processes of us, so are we but parts and processes of life
at large.
IOI
CHAPTER EIGHT! APPLICATION OF THE FOREGOING
CHAPTERS -THE ASSIMILATION OF OUTSIDE MATTER
i
IET US NOW RETURN TO THE POSITION
which we left at the end of the fourth chapter. We
had then concluded that the self-development of each
— f new life in succeeding generations -the various Stages
through which it passes (as it would appear, at first sight,
without rhyme or reason) -the manner in which it pre¬
pares Structures of the most surpassing intricacy and
delicacy, for which it has no use at the time when it pre¬
pares them- and the many elaborate instincts which it
exhibits immediately on, and indeed before, birth- all
point in the direction of habit and memory, as the only
causes which can account for them.
Why should the embryo of any animal go through so
many Stages -embryological allusions to forefathers of a
widely different type? And why, again, should the germs
of the same kind of creature always go through the same
Stages? If the germ of any animal now living is, in its
simplest State, but part of the personal identity of one of the
original germs of all life whatsoever, and hence, if any
now living organism muSt be considered without quibble
as being itself millions of years old, and as imbued with
an intense though unconscious memory of all that it has
done sufficiently often to have made a permanent impres¬
sion; if this be so, we can answer the above questions
perfectly well. The creature goes through so many inter¬
mediate Stages between its earliest State and its latest
development, for the simplest of all reasons, namely,
because this is the road by which it has always hitherto
travelled to its present differentiation; this is the road it
knows, and into every turn and up or down of which
it has been guided by the force of circumstances and the
balance of considerations. These, aCting in such a manner
for such and such a time, caused it to travel in such and
such fashion, which fashion having been once sufficiently
established, becomes a matter of trick or routine to which
102
The Assimilation of Outside Matter
the creature is Still a slave, and in which it confirms itself
by repetition in each succeeding generation. However
long, tedious, and at times painful their journey may be,
Still they are 44 used to it,” and therefore it is 44 nothing
to them.”
Thus I suppose, as almost every one else, so far as I can
gather, supposes, that we are descended from ancestors
of widely different chara&ers to our own. If we could
see some of our forefathers a million years back, we should
find them unlike anything we could call man; if we were
to go back fifty million years, we should find them, it may
be, fishes pure and simple, breathing through gills, and
unable to exist for many minutes in air.
It is admitted on all hands that there is more or less
analogy between the embryological development of the
individual, and the various phases or conditions of life
through which his forefathers have passed. I suppose,
then, that the fish of fifty million years back and the man
of to-day are one single living being, in the same sense, or
very nearly so, as the odfogenarian is one single living
being with the infant from which he has grown; and that
the fish has lived himself into manhood, not as we live
out our little life, living, and living, and living till we die,
but living by pulsations, so to speak; living so far, and
after a certain time going into a new body, and throwing
off the old; making his body much as we make anything
that we want, and have often made already, that is to say,
as nearly as may be in the same way as he made it last time;
also that he is as unable as we ourselves are, to make what
he wants without going though the usual processes with
which he is familiar, even though there may be other
better ways of doing the same thing, which might not
be far to seek, if the creature thought them better, and
had not got so accustomed to such and such a method,
that he would only be baffled and put out by any attempt
to teach him otherwise.
103
Life and Habit
And this oneness of personality between ourselves and
our supposed fishlike ancestors of many millions of years
ago, must hold also between each individual one of us
and the single pair of fishes from which we are each (on
the present momentary hypothesis) descended; and it
muSt also hold between such pair of fishes and all their
descendants besides man, it may be some of them birds,
and others fishes; all these descendants, whether human
or otherwise, being but the way in which the creature
(which was a pair of fishes when we first took it in hand
though it was a hundred thousand other things as well,
and had been all manner of other things before any part
of it became fishlike) continues to exist- its manner, in
fa£t, of growing. As the manner in which the human
body grows is by the continued birth and death, in our
single lifetime, of many generations of cells which we
know nothing about, but say that we have had only one
hand or foot all our lives, when we have really had many,
one after another; so this huge compound creature, life,
probably thinks itself but one single animal whose com¬
ponent cells, as it may imagine, grow, and it may be waste
and repair, but do not die.
It may be that the cells of which we are built up, and
which we have already seen muSt be considered as separate
persons, each one of them with a life and memory of its
own- it may be that these cells reckon time in a manner
inconceivable by us, so that no word can convey any idea of
it whatever. What may to them appear a long and painful
process may to us be so instantaneous as to escape us
altogether, we wanting some microscope to show us the
details of time. If, in like njanner, we were to allow our
imagination to conceive the existence of a being as much
in need of a microscope for our time and affairs as we for
those of our own component cells, the years would be to
such a being but as the winkings or the twinklings of an
eye. Would he think then, that all the ants and flies of one
104
The Assimilation of Outside Matter
wink were different from those of the next? or would he
not rather believe that they were always the same flies, and,
again, always the same men and women, if he could see
them at all, and if the whole human race did not appear to
him as a sort of spreading and lichen-like growth over the
earth, not differentiated at all into individuals? With the
help of a microscope and the intelligent exercise of his
reason, he would in time conceive the truth. He would
put Covent Garden Market on the field of his microscope*
and would perhaps write a great deal of nonsense about
the unerring “ inStindf ” which taught each costermonger
to recognize his own basket or his own donkey-cart; and
this, mutatu mutandis , is what we are getting to do as
regards our own bodies. What I wish is, to make the
same sort of Step in an upward diredtion which has already
been taken in a downward one, and to show reason for
thinking that we are only component atoms of a single
compound creature, life, which has probably a diStindt
conception of its own personality though none whatever
of ours, more than we of our own units. I wish also to
show reason for thinking that this creature, life, has only
come to be what it is, by the same sort of process as that
by which any human art or manufadture is developed, i.e.y
through constantly doing the same thing over and over
again, beginning from something which is barely recog¬
nizable as faith, or as the desire to know, or do, or live
at all, and as to the origin of which we are in utter dark¬
ness, -and growing till it is first conscious of effort, then
conscious of power, then powerful with but litde con¬
sciousness, and finally, so powerful and so charged with
memory as to be absolutely without all self-consciousness
whatever, except as regards its latest phases in each of its
many differentiations, or when placed in such new cir¬
cumstances as compel it to choose between death and a
reconsideration of its position.
No conjedfcure can be hazarded as to how the smallest
105
Life and Habit
particle of matter became so imbued with faith that it must
be considered as the beginning of life, or as to what such
faith is, except that it is the very essence of all things, and
that it has no foundation.
In this way, then, I conceive we can fairly transfer the
experience of the race to the individual, without any other
meaning to our words than what they would naturally
suggest; that is to say, that there is in every impregnate
ovum a bona fide memory, which carries it back not only
to the time when it was laSt an impregnate ovum, but to
that earlier date when it was the very beginning of life
at all, which same creature it Still is, whether as man or
ovum, and hence imbued, so far as time and circumstance
allow, with all its memories. Surely this is no Strained
hypothesis; for the mere fad that the germ, from the
earliest moment that we are able to deted it, appears to be
so perfedly familiar with its business, ads with so little
hesitation and so little introspedion or reference to
principles, this alone should incline us to susped that it
muSt be armed with that which, so far as we observe in
daily life, can alone ensure such a result -to wit, long
pradice, and the memory of many similar performances.
The difficulty is, that we are conscious of no such
memory in our own persons, and beyond the one great
proof of memory given by the adual repetition of the
performance -and of some of the latest deviations from
the ordinary performance (and this proof ought in itself,
one would have thought, to outweigh any save the diredeSt
evidence to the contrary) we can deted no symptom of
any such mental operation as recolledion on the part of
the embryo. On the other hand, we have seen that we
know most intensely those things that we are least con¬
scious of knowing; we will moSt intensely what we are
least conscious of willing; we feel continually without
knowing that we feel, and our attention is hourly arrested
without our attention being arrested by the arresting of
106
The Assimilation of Outside Matter
our attention. Memory is no less capable of unconscious
exercise, and on becoming intense through frequent repe¬
tition, vanishes no less completely as a conscious aftion
of the mind than knowledge and volition. We mn§t
all be aware of instances in which it is plain we muSt have
remembered, without being in the smallest degree con¬
scious of remembering. Is it then absurd to suppose that
our past existences have been repeated on such a vast
number of occasions that the germ, linked on to all pre¬
ceding germs, and, by once having become part of their
identity, imbued with all their memories, remembers too
intensely to be conscious of remembering, and works on
with the same kind of unconsciousness with which we
play, or walk, or read, until something unfamiliar happens
to us ? and is it not singularly in accordance with this view
that consciousness should begin with that part of the
creature’s performance with which it is least familiar, as
having repeated it least often -that is to say, in our own
case, with the commencement of our human life- at birth,
or thereabouts ?
It is certainly noteworthy that the embryo is never at a
loss, unless something happens to it which has not
usually happened to its forefathers, and which in the
nature of things it cannot remember.
When events are happening to it which have ordinarily
happened to its forefathers, and which it would therefore
remember, if it was possessed of the kind of memory
which we are here attributing to it, it acts precisely as it
would all if it were possessed of such memory .
When, on the other hand, events are happening to it
which, if it has the kind of memory we are attributing
to it, would baffle that memory, or which have rarely or
never been included in the category of its recolle&ions,
it alts precisely as a creature alts when its recollection is disturbed ,
or rvhen it is required to do something which it has never done
before.
107
Life and Habit
We cannot remember having been in the embryonic
Stage, but we do not on that account deny that we ever
were in such a Stage at all. On a little refledion it will
appear no more reasonable to maintain that, when we were
in the embryonic Stage, we did not remember our past
existences, than to say that we never were embryos at all.
We cannot remember what we did or did not recoiled
in that State; we cannot now remember having grown the
eyes which we undoubtedly did grow, much less can we
remember whether or not we then remembered having
grown them before; but it is probable that our memory
was then, in resped of our previous existences as embryos,
as much more intense than it is now in resped of our
childhood, as our power of acquiring a new language was
greater when we were one or two years old, than when we
were twenty. And why should this power of acquiring
languages be greater at two years than at twenty, but that
for many generations we have learnt to speak at about this
age, and hence look to learn to do so again on reaching it,
juSt as we looked to making eyes, when the time came at
which we were accustomed to make them ?
If we once had the memory of having been infants
(which we had from day to day during infancy), and have
loSt it, we may well have had other and more intense
memories which we have loSt no less completely. Indeed,
there is nothing more extraordinary in the supposition
that the impregnate ovum has an intense sense of its con¬
tinuity with, and therefore of its identity with, the two
impregnate ova from which it has sprung, than in the fad
that we have no sense of our continuity with ourselves as
infants. If, then, there is no a priori objedion to this view,
and if the impregnate ovum ads in such a manner as to
carry the Strongest convidion that it muSt have already on
many occasions done what it is doing now, and that it has
a vivid though unconscious recolledion of what all, and
more especially its nearer, ancestral ova did under similar
108
The e Assimilation of Outside ^Matter
circumstances, there would seem to be little doubt what
conclusion we ought to come to.
A hen’s egg, for example, as soon as the hen begins to
sit, sets to work immediately to do as nearly as may be
what the two eggs from which its father and mother were
hatched did when hens began to sit upon them. The
inference would seem almost irresistible, that the second
egg remembers the course pursued by the eggs from
which it has sprung, and of whose present identity it is
unquestionably a part-phase; it also seems irresistibly
forced upon us to believe that the intensity of this memory
is the secret of its easy a&ion.
It has, I believe, been often remarked, that a hen is only
an egg’s way of making another egg. Every creature
muSt be allowed to “ run ” its own development in its
own way; the egg’s way may seem a very roundabout
manner of doing things ; but it is its way, and it is one of
which man, upon the whole, has no great reason to com¬
plain. Why the fowl should be considered more alive
than the egg, and why it should be said that the hen
lays the egg, and not that the egg lays the hen, these are
questions which lie beyond the power of philosophic
explanation, but are perhaps moSt answerable by con¬
sidering the conceit of man, and his habit, persisted in
during many ages, of ignoring all that does not remind
him of himself, or hurt him, or profit him ; also by con¬
sidering the use of language, which, if it is to serve at all,
can only do so by ignoring a vaSt number of fa£is which
gradually drop out of mind from being out of sight.
But, perhaps, after all, the real reason is, that the egg does
not cackle when it has laid the hen, and that it works
towards the hen with gradual and noiseless Steps, which
we can watch if we be so minded; whereas, we can less
easily watch the Steps which lead from the hen to the egg,
but hear a noise, and see an egg where there was no egg.
Therefore, we say, the development of the fowl from the
109
Life and Habit
egg bears no sort of resemblance to that of the egg from
the fowl, whereas in truth, a hen, or any other living
creature, is only the primordial cell’s way of going back
upon itself.
But to return. We see an egg, A, which evidently
knows its own meaning perfe&ly well, and we know that
a twelvemonth ago there were two other such eggs, B and
C, which have now disappeared, but from which we know
A to have been so continuously developed as to be part
of the present form of their identity. A’s meaning is seen
to be precisely the same as B and Cs meaning; A’s per¬
sonal appearance is, to all intents and purposes, B and Cs
personal appearance ; it would seem, then, unreasonable to
deny that A is only B and C come back, with such modifi¬
cation as they may have incurred since their disappearance;
and that, in spite of any such modification, they remember
in A perfe&ly well what they did as B and C.
We have considered the question of personal identity
so as to see whether, without abuse of terms, we can claim
it as existing between any two generations of living agents
(and if between two, then between any number up to
infinity), and we found that we were not only at liberty
to claim this, but that we are compelled irresistibly to do so,
unless, that is to say, we would think very differently con¬
cerning personal identity than we do at present. We
found it impossible to hold the ordinary commonsense
opinions concerning personal identity without admitting
that we are personally identical with all our forefathers,
who have successfully assimilated outside matter to them¬
selves, and by assimilation imbued it with all their own
memories ; we being nothing else than this outside matter
so assimilated and imbued with such memories. This, at
least, will, I believe, balance the account corre&ly.
A few remarks upon the assimilation of outside matter
by living organisms may perhaps be hazarded here.
As long as any living organism can maintain itself in a
no
The Assimilation of Outside Matter
position to which it has been accustomed, more or less
nearly, both in its own life and in those of its forefathers,
nothing can harm it. As long as the organism is familiar
with the position, and remembers its antecedents, nothing
can assimilate it. It must be first dislodged from the
position with which it is familiar, as being able to remem¬
ber it, before mischief can happen to it. Nothing can
assimilate living organism.
On the other hand, the moment living organism loses
sight of its own position and antecedents, it is liable to
immediate assimilation, and to be thus familiarized with
the position and antecedents of some other creature. If
any living organism be kept for but a very short time in a
position wholly different from what it has been accustomed
to in its own life, and in the lives of its forefathers, it
commonly loses its memories completely, once and for
ever; but it muSt immediately acquire new ones, for
nothing can know nothing; everything muSt remember
either its own antecedents, or some one else’s. And as
nothing can know nothing, so nothing can believe in
nothing.
A grain of corn, for example, has never been accustomed
to find itself in a hen’s Stomach— neither it nor its fore¬
fathers. For a grain so placed leaves no offspring, and
hence cannot transmit its experience. The first minute or
so after being eaten, it may think it has juSt been sown,
and begin to prepare for sprouting, but in a few seconds,
it discovers the environment to be unfamiliar; it therefore
gets frightened, loses its head, is carried into the gizzard,
and comminuted among the gizzard Stones. The hen
succeeded in putting it into a position with which it was
unfamiliar; from this it was an easy Stage to assimilating
it entirely. Once assimilated, the grain ceases to remember
any more as a grain, but becomes initiated into all that
happens to, and has happened to, fowls for countless ages.
Then it will attack all other grains whenever it sees them;
hi
Life and Habit
there is no such persecutor of grain, as another grain when
it has once fairly identified itself with a hen.
We may remark in passing, that if anything be once
familiarized with anything, it is content. The only things
we really care for in life are familiar things ; let us have the
means of doing what we have been accustomed to do,
of dressing as we have been accustomed to dress, of eating
as we have been accustomed to eat, and let us have no less
liberty than we are accustomed to have, and laSt, but not
least, let us not be disturbed in thinking as we have been
accustomed to think, and the vaSt majority of mankind
will be very fairly contented- all plants and animals will
certainly be so. This would seem to suggest a possible
do£trine of a future State; concerning which we may
refled that though, after we die, we cease to be familiar
with ourselves, we shall nevertheless become immediately
familiar with many other histories compared with which
our present life muSt then seem intolerably uninteresting.
This is the reason why a very heavy and sudden shock
to the nervous system does not pain, but kills outright at
once; while one with which the system can, at any rate,
try to familiarize itself is exceedingly painful. We cannot
bear unfamiliarity. The part that is treated in a manner
with which it is not familiar cries immediately to the brain
-its central government- for help, and makes itself
generally as troublesome as it can, till it is in some way
comforted. Indeed, the law againSt cruelty to animals is
but an example of the hatred we feel on seeing even dumb
creatures put into positions with which they are not
familiar. We hate this so much for ourselves that we will
not tolerate it for other creatures if we can possibly avoid
it. So again, it is said, that when Andromeda and Perseus
had travelled but a little way from the rock where Andro¬
meda had so long been chained, she began upbraiding him
with the loss of her dragon, who, on the whole, she said,
had been very good to her. The only things we really hate
1 12
The Assimilation of Outside Matter
are unfamiliar things, and though nature would not be
nature if she did not cross our love of the familiar with a
love also of the unfamiliar, yet there can be no doubt
which of the two principles is master.
Let us return, however, to the grain of corn. If the
grain had had presence of mind to avoid being carried into
the gizzard Stones, as many seeds do which are carried for
hundreds of miles in birds’ Stomachs, and if it had per¬
suaded itself that the novelty of the position was not
greater than it could very well manage to put up with-
2, in fa&, it had not known when it was beaten- it might
have Stuck in the hen’s Stomach and begun to grow; in
this case it would have assimilated a good part of the hen
before many days were over; for hens are not familiar
with grains that grow in their Stomachs, and unless the one
in question was as Strongminded for a hen, as the grain that
could avoid being assimilated would be for a grain, the
hen would soon cease to take an interest in her antecedents.
It is to be doubted, however, whether a grain has ever
been grown which has had Strength of mind enough to
avoid being set off its balance on finding itself inside a
hen’s gizzard. For living organism is the creature of habit
and routine, and the inside of a gizzard is not in the grain’s
programme.
Suppose, then, that the grain, instead of being carried
into the gizzard, had Stuck in the hen’s throat and choked
her. It would now find itself in a position very like what
it had often been in before. That is to say, it would be
in a damp, dark, quiet place, not too far from light, and
with decaying matter around it. It would therefore loiow
perfe&ly well what to do, and would begin to grow until
disturbed, and again put into a position with which it
might, very possibly, be unfamiliar.
The great question between vast masses of living
organism is simply this : “ Am I to put you into a position
with which your forefathers have been unfamiliar, or are
113 1
Life and Habit
you to put me into one about which my own have been
in like manner ignorant? ” Man is only the dominant
animal on the earth, because he can, as a general rule,
settle this question in his own favour.
The only manner in which an organism, which has once
forgotten its antecedents, can ever recover its memory,
is by being assimilated by a creature of its own kind; one,
moreover, which knows its business, or is not in such a
false position as to be compelled to be aware of being so.
It was, doubtless, owing to the recognition of this fa&,
that some Eastern nations, as we are told by Herodotus,
were in the habit of eating their deceased parents -for
matter which has once been assimilated by any identity or
personality becomes, for all pradlical purposes, part of the
assimilating personality.
The bearing of the above will become obvious when we
return, as we will now do, to the question of personal
identity. The only difficulty would seem to He in our
unfamiliarity with the real meanings which we attach to
words in daily use. Hence, while recognizing continuity
without sudden break as the underlying principle of
identity, we forget that this involves personal identity
between all the beings who are in one chain of descent,
the numbers of such beings, whether in succession or
contemporaneous, going for nothing at all. Thus we take
two eggs, one male and one female, and hatch them; after
some months the pair of fowls so hatched, having suc¬
ceeded in putting a va$t quantity of grain and worms into
false positions, become full-grown, breed, and produce a
dozen new eggs.
Two live fowls and a dozen eggs are the present phase
of the personality of the two original eggs. They are also
part of the present phase of the personality of all the worms
and grain which the fowls have assimilated from their
leaving the eggshell; but the personalities of these la$t do
not count; they have lo$t their grain and worm memories,
114
The Assimilation of Outside Matter
and are inStindt with the memories of the whole ancestry
of the creature which has assimilated them.
We cannot, perhaps, Stri&ly say that the two fowls and
the dozen new eggs adhially are the two original eggs;
these two eggs are no longer in existence, and we see the
two birds themselves which were hatched from them.
A bird cannot be called an egg without an abuse of terms.
Nevertheless, it is doubtful how far we should not say
this, for it is only with a mental reserve- and with no
greater mental reserve- that we predicate absolute identity
concerning any living being for two consecutive moments ;
and it is certainly as free from quibble to say to two fowls
and a dozen eggs, “ you are the two eggs I had on my
kitchen shelf twelve months ago,” as to say to a man,
“ you are the child whom I remember thirty years ago
in your mother’s arms.” In either case we mean, “ you
have been continually putting other organisms into a false
position, and then assimilating them, ever since I la$t saw
you, while nothing has yet occurred to put you into such a
false position as to have made you lose the memory of
your antecedents.”
It would seem perfectly fair, therefore, to say to any
egg of the twelve, or to the two fowls and the whole
twelve eggs together, 4 6 you were a couple of eggs twelve
months ago; twelve months before that you were four
eggs ” ; and so on, ad infinitum , the number neither of the
ancestors nor of the descendants counting for anything,
and continuity being the sole thing looked to. From daily
observation we are familiar with the fa£t that identity
does both unite with other identities, so that a single new
identity is the result, and does also split itself up into
several identities, so that the one becomes many. This is
plain from the manner in which the male and female
sexual elements unite to form a single ovum, which we
observe to be inStinft with the memories of both the indi¬
viduals from which it has been derived; and there is the
ii5
Life and Habit
additional consideration, that each of the elements whose
fusion goes to make up the impregnate ovum, is held by
some to be itself composed of a fused mass of germs, which
Stand very much in the same relation to the spermatozoon
and ovum, as the living cellular units of which we are
composed do to ourselves -that is to say, are living inde¬
pendent organisms, which probably have no conception
of the existence of the spermatozoon nor of the ovum, more
than the spermatozoon or ovum have of theirs.
This, at least, is what I gather from Mr. Darwin’s pro¬
visional theory of Pangenesis; and, again, from one of the
concluding sentences in his Effects of Cross and Self Fer¬
tilisation, where, asking the question why two sexes have
been developed, he replies that the answer seems to lie
“ in the great good which is derived from the fusion of
two somewhat differentiated individuals. With the excep¬
tion,” he continues, “ of the lowest organisms this is
possible only by means of the sexual elements -these con-
sifting of cells separated from the body 99 (i.e., separated from
the bodies of each parent) “ containing the germs of every
part 99 (i.e., consisting of the seeds or germs from which
each individual cell of the coming organism will be
developed- these seeds or germs having been shed by each
individual cell of the parent forms), “ and capable of being
fused completely together 99 (i.e., so at least I gather, capable of
being fused completely, in the same way as the cells of
our own bodies are fused, and thus, of forming a single
living personality in the case of both the male and female
element; which elements are themselves capable of a
second fusion so as to form the impregnate ovum). This
single impregnate ovum, then, is a single identity that has
taken the place of, and come up in the room of, two diStinCt
personalities, each of whose characteristics it, to a certain
extent, partakes, and which consist, each one of them,
of the fused germs of a vaSt mass of other personalities.
As regards the dispersion of one identity into many,
ii6
The Assimilation of Outside Matter
this also is a matter of daily observation in the case of all
female creatures that are with egg or young; the identity
of the young with the female parent is in many respe&s
so complete, as to need no enforcing, in spite of the
entrance into the offspring of all the elements derived from
the male parent, and of the gradual separation of the two
identities, which becomes more and more complete, till
in time it is hard to conceive that they can ever have been
united.
Numbers, therefore, go for nothing; and, as far as
identity or continued personality goes, it is as fair to say
to the two fowls, above referred to, “ you were four fowls
twelve months ago,” as it is to say to a dozen eggs, “ you
were two eggs twelve months ago.” But here a difficulty
meets us ; for if we say, “ you were two eggs twelve
months ago,” it follows that we mean, “ you are now
those two eggs ” ; juSt as when we say to a person, “ you
were such and such a boy twenty years ago,” we mean,
“ you are now that boy, or all that represents him ” ; it
would seem, then, that in like manner we should say to
the two fowls, “ vou are the four fowls who between them
laid the two eggs from which you sprung.” But it may
be that all these four fowls are Still to be seen running
about; we should be therefore saying, “ you two fowls are
really not yourselves only, but you are also the other four
fowls into the bargain”; and this might be philosophic¬
ally true, and might, perhaps, be considered so, but for
the convenience of the law courts.
The difficulty would seem to arise from the fa£ that
the eggs must disappear before fowls can be hatched from
them, whereas, the hens so hatched may outlive the
development of other hens, from the eggs which they in
due course have laid. The original eggs being out of
sight are out of mind, and it is without an effort that we
acquiesce in the assertion, that the dozen new eggs a&ually
are the two original ones. But the original four fowls
1 17
Life and Habit
being Still in sight, cannot be ignored, we only, therefore,
see the new ones as growths from the original ones.
The Strift rendering of the fa£ts should be, “ you are
part of the present phase of the identity of such and such
a paSt identity,” z.e.y either of the two eggs or the four
fowls, as the case may be; this will put the eggs and the
fowls, as it were, into the same box, and will meet both
the philosophical and legal requirements of the case, only
it is a little long.
So far then, as regards aftual identity of personality;
which, we find, will allow us to say, that eggs are part
of the present phase of a certain paSt identity, whether
of other eggs, or of fowls, or chickens, and in like manner
that chickens are part of the present phase of certain
other chickens, or eggs, or fowls ; in fa&, that anything is
part of the present phase of any paSt identity in the line
of its ancestry. But as regards the a&ual memory of such
identity (unconscious memory, but Still clearly memory),
we observe that the egg, as long as it is an egg, appears to
have a very diStinft recolledlion of having been an egg
before, and the fowl of having been a fowl before, but
that neither egg nor fowl appear to have any recolle&ion
of any other Stage of their paSt existences, than the one
corresponding to that in which they are themselves at the
moment existing.
So we, at six or seven years old, have no recolle&ion of
ever having been infants, much less of having been
embryos ; but the manner in which we shed our teeth and
make new ones, and the way in which we grow generally,
making ourselves for the moSt part exceedingly like what
we made ourselves, in the person of some one of our nearer
ancestors, and not unfrequently repeating- the very blun¬
ders which we made upon that occasion when we come
to a corresponding age, proves moSt incontestably that we
remember our paSt existences, though too utterly to be
capable of introspeftion in the matter. So, when we grow
118
The Assimilation of Outside Matter
wisdom teeth, at the age it may be of one or two and
twenty, it is plain we remember our past existences at that
age, however completely we may have forgotten the earlier
Stages of our present existence. It may be said that it is the
jaw which remembers, and not we, but it seems hard to
deny the jaw a right of citizenship in our personality;
and in the case of a growing boy, every part of him seems
to remember equally well, and if every part of him com¬
bined does not make him , there would seem but little use
in continuing the argument further.
In like manner, a caterpillar appears not to remember
having been an egg, either in its present or any past exist¬
ence. It has no concern with eggs as soon as it is hatched,
but it clearly remembers not only having been a caterpillar
before, but also having turned itself into a chrysalis before;
for when the time comes for it to do this, it is at no loss,
as it would certainly be if the position was unfamiliar,
but it immediately begins doing what it did when laSt
it was in a like case, repeating the process as nearly as the
environment will allow, taking every Step in the same
order as laSt time, and doing its work with that ease and
perfe&ion which we observe to belong to the force of
habit, and to be utterly incompatible with any other
supposition than that of long long pradlice.
Once having become a chrysalis, its memory of its
caterpillarhood appears to leave it for good and all, not
to return until it again assumes the shape of a caterpillar
by process of descent. Its memory now overleaps all
paSt modifications, and reverts to the time when it was
laSt what it is now, and though it is probable that both
caterpillar and chrysalis, on any given day of their existence
in either of these forms, have some sort of dim power of
recoiled! ing what happened to them yesterday, or the day
before; yet it is plain their main memory goes back to the
corresponding day of their laSt existence in their present
form, the chrysalis remembering what happened to it
119
Life and Habit
on such a day far more pra&ically, though less consciously,
than what happened to it yesterday; and naturally, for
yesterday is but once, and its past existences have been
legion. Hence, it prepares its wings in due time, doing
each day what it did on the corresponding day of its laSt
chrysalishood, and at length becoming a moth; whereon
its circumstances are so changed that it loses all sense of
its identity as a chrysalis (as completely as we, for pre¬
cisely the same reason, lose all sense of our identity with
ourselves as infants), and remembers nothing but its past
existences as a moth.
We observe this to hold throughout the animal and
vegetable kingdoms. In any one phase of the existence
of the lower animals, we observe that they remember the
corresponding Stage, and a little on either side of it, of all
their past existences for a very great length of time. In
their present existence they remember a little behind the
present moment (remembering more and more the higher
they advance in the scale of life), and being able to foresee
about as much as they could foresee in their past existences,
sometimes more and sometimes less. As with memory,
so with prescience. The higher they advance in the scale
of life the more prescient they are. It must, of course, be
remembered, and will later on be more fully dwelt upon,
that no offspring can remember anything which happens
to its parents after it and its parents have parted company;
and this is why there is, perhaps, more irregularity as
regards our wisdom-teeth than about anything else that
we grow; inasmuch as it muSt not uncommonly have
happened in a long series of generations, that the offspring
has been born before the parents have grown their wisdom-
teeth, and thus there will be faults in the memory.
Is there, then, anything in memory, as we observe it in
ourselves and others, under circumstances in which we
shall agree in calling it memory pure and simple without
ambiguity of terms -is there any tiling in memory which
120
The Assimilation of Outside Matter
bars us from supposing it capable of overleaping a long
time of abeyance, and thus of enabling each impregnate
ovum, or each grain, to remember what it did when la$t
in a like condition, and to go on remembering the corre¬
sponding period of its prior developments throughout the
whole period of its present growth, though such memory
has entirely failed as regards the interim between any two
corresponding periods, and is not consciously recognized
by the individual as being exercised at all?
121
CHAPTER NINE: ON THE ABEYANCE OF MEMORY
IET US ASSUME, FOR THE MOMENT, THAT
the a&ion of each impregnate germ is due to memory,
which, as it were, pulsates anew in each succeeding
— ^generation, so that immediately on impregnation, the
germ’s memory reverts to the last occasion on which it
was in a like condition, and recognizing the position, is at
no loss what to do. It is plain that in all cases where there
are two parents, that is to say, in the greater number of
cases, whether in the vegetable or animal kingdoms,
there muSt be two such laSt occasions, each of which will
have an equal claim upon the attention of the new germ.
Its memory would therefore revert to both, and though it
would probably adhere more closely to the course which
it took either as its father or its mother, and thus come out
eventually male or female, yet it would be not a little
influenced by the less potent memory.
And not only this, but each of the germs to which the
memory of the new germ reverts, is itself imbued with the
memories of its own parent germs, and these again with
the memories of preceding generations, and so on ad
infinitum ; so that, ex hypothesis the germ must become
inStind with all these memories, epitomized as after long
time, and unperceived though they may well be, not to
say obliterated in part or entirely so far as many features
are concerned, by more recent impressions. In this case,
we muSt conceive of the impregnate germ as of a creature
which has to repeat a performance already repeated before
on countless different occasions, but with no more varia¬
tion on the more recent ones than is inevitable in the repe¬
tition of any performance by an intelligent being.
Now if we take the moSt parallel case to this which we
can find, and consider what we should ourselves do under
such circumstances, that is to say, if we consider what
course is adually taken by beings who are influenced by
what we all call memory, when they repeat an already
often-repeated performance, and if we find a very Strong
122
On the Abeyance of Memory
analogy between the course so taken by ourselves, and
that which from whatever cause we observe to be taken
by a living germ, we shall surely be much inclined to think
that there mu£t be a similarity in the causes of a&ion in
each case; and hence, to conclude, that the adtion of the
germ is due to memory.
It will, therefore, be necessary to consider the general
tendency of our minds in regard to impressions made
upon us, and the memory of such impressions.
Deep impressions upon the memory are made in two
ways, differing rather in degree than kind, but with two
somewhat widely different results. They are made:
I. By unfamiliar objects, or combinations, which come
at comparatively long intervals, and produce their effedi,
as it were, by one hard blow. The effedi of these will vary
with the unfamiliarity of the impressions themselves, and
the manner in which they seem likely to lead to a further
development of the unfamiliar, with the question,
whether they seem likely to compel us to change our
habits, either for better or worse.
Thus, if an objedt or incident be very unfamiliar, as, we
will say, a whale or an iceberg to one travelling to America
for the first time, it will make a deep impression, though
but little affe&ing our interests; but if we Struck againSt
the iceberg and were shipwrecked, or nearly so, it would
produce a much deeper impression, we should think much
more about icebergs, and remember much more about
them, than if we had merely seen one. So, also, if we were
able to catch the whale and sell its oil, we should have a
deep impression made upon us. In either case we see that
the amount of unfamiliarity, either present or prospective,
is the main determinant of the depth of the impression.
As with consciousness and volition, so with sudden
unfamiliarity. It impresses us more and more deeply the
more unfamiliar it is, until it reaches such a point of
impressiveness as to make no further impression at all;
123
Life and Habit
on which we then and there die. For death only kills
through unfamiliarity- that is to say, because the new
position, whatever it is, is so wide a cross as compared
with the old one, that we cannot fuse the two so as to
understand the combination ; hence we lose all recognition
of, and faith in, ourselves and our surroundings.
But however much we imagine we remember concern¬
ing the details of any remarkable impression which has
been made us by a single blow, we do not remember as
much or nearly as much as we think we do. The subordin¬
ate details soon drop out of mind. Those who think they
remember even such a momentous matter as the battle
of Waterloo recall now probably but half a dozen episodes,
a gleam here, and a gleam there, so that what they call
remembering the battle of Waterloo is, in fa&, little more
than a kind of dreaming- so soon vanishes the memory of
any unrepeated occurrence.
As for smaller impressions, there is very little of what
happens to us in each week that will be in our memories
a week hence; a man of eighty remembers few of the
unrepeated incidents of his life beyond those of the last
fortnight, a little here, and a litde there, forming a matter
of perhaps six weeks or two months in all, if everything
that he can call to mind were afted over again with no
greater fullness than he can remember it. As for incidents
that have been often repeated, his mind Strikes a balance
of its past reminiscences, remembering the two or three
last performances, and a general method of procedure,
but nothing more.
If, then, the recolle&ion of all that is not very novel,
or very often repeated, so soon fades from our own minds,
during what we consider as our single lifetime, what
wonder that the details of our daily experience should find
no place in that brief epitome of them which is all we can
give in so small a volume as offspring?
If we cannot ourselves remember the hundred-thous-
124
On the Abeyance of Memory
andth part of what happened to us during our own child'
hood, how can we expeft our offspring to remember more
than what, through frequent repetition, they can now
remember as a residuum, or general impression. On the
other hand, whatever we remember in consequence of
but a single impression, we remember consciously. We
can at will recall details, and are perfectly well aware, when
we do so, that we are recolle&ing. A man who has never
seen death looks for the first time upon the dead face of
some near relative or friend. He gazes for a few short
minutes, but the impression thus made does not soon pass
out of his mind. He remembers the room, the hour of the
day or night, and if by day, what sort of a day. He
remembers in what part of the room, and how disposed
the body of the deceased was lying. Twenty years after¬
wards he can, at will, recall all these matters to his mind,
and pi&ure to himself the scene as he originally witnessed
it.
The reason is plain : the impression was very unfamiliar,
and affe&ed the beholder, both as regards the loss of one
who was dear to him, and as reminding him with more
than common force that he will one day die himself.
Moreover, the impression was a simple one, not involving
much subordinate detail; we have in this case, therefore,
an example of the most lasting kind of impression that
can be made by a single unrepeated event. But if we
examine ourselves closely, we shall find that after a lapse
of years we do not remember as much as we think we do,
even in such a case as this ; and that beyond the incidents
above mentioned, and the expression upon the face of the
dead person, we remember little of what we can so
consciously and vividly recall.
II. Deep impressions are also made by the repetition,
more or less often, of a feeble impression which, if un¬
repeated, would have soon passed out of our minds. We
observe, therefore, that we remember be£t what we have
125
Life and Habit
done least often -any unfamiliar deviation, that is to say,
from our ordinary method of procedure -and what we
have done most often, with which, therefore, we are most
familiar; our memory being mainly affeded by the force
of novelty and the force of routine -the moSt unfamiliar,
and the most familiar, incidents or objeds.
But we remember impressions which have been made
upon us by force of routine, in a very different way to that
in which we remember a single deep impression. As
regards this second class, which comprises far the most
numerous and important of the impressions with which
our memory is Stored, it is often only by the fad of our
performance itself that we are able to recognize or show
to others that we remember at all. We often do not
remember how, or when, or where we acquired our know¬
ledge. All we remember is, that we did learn, and that
at one time and another we have done this or that very
often.
As regards this second class of impressions we may
observe :
i. That as a general rule we remember only the indi¬
vidual features of the last few repetitions of the ad- if,
indeed, we remember this much. The influence of pre¬
ceding ones is to be found only in the general average of
the procedure, which is modified by them, but uncon¬
sciously to ourselves. Take, for example, some celebrated
singer, or pianoforte player, who has sung the same air, or
performed the same sonata several hundreds or, it may be,
thousands of times : of the details of individual perform¬
ances, he can probably call to mind none but those of the
la$t few days, yet there can be no question that his present
performance is affeded by, and modified by, all his
previous ones ; the care he has bestowed on these being
the secret of his present proficiency.
In each performance (the performer being supposed in
the same State of mental and bodily health), the tendency
126
On the Abeyance of Memory
will be to repeat the immediately preceding performances
more nearly than remoter ones. It is the common tend¬
ency of living beings to go on doing what they have
been doing moSt recently. The laSt habit is the Strongest.
Hence, if he took great pains last time, he will play better
now, and will take a like degree of pains, and play better
Still next time, and so go on improving while life and
vigour laSt. If, on the other hand, he took less pains laSt
time, he will play worse now, and be inclined to take little
pains next time, and so gradually deteriorate. This, at
leaSt, is the common everyday experience of mankind.
So with painters, a&ors, and professional men of every
description; after a little while the memory of many paSt
performances Strikes a sort of fused balance in the mind,
which results in a general method of procedure with but
little conscious memory of even the latest performances,
and with none whatever of by far the greater number of
the remoter ones.
Still, it is noteworthy, that the memory of some even
of these will occasionally assert itself, so far as we can see,
arbitrarily, the reason why this or that occasion should
Still haunt us, when others like them are forgotten, depend¬
ing on some cause too subtle for our powers of observa¬
tion.
Even with such a simple matter as our daily dressing
and undressing, we may remember some few details of our
yesterday’s toilet, but we retain nothing but a general and
fused recolle&ion of the many thousand earlier occasions
on which we have dressed, or gone to bed. Men invari¬
ably put the same leg first into their trousers -this is the
survival of memory in a residuum; but they cannot, till
they actually put on a pair of trousers, remember which
leg they do put in first ; this is the rapid fading away of any
small individual impression.
The seasons may serve as another illustration ; we have
a general recollection of the kind of weather which is
127
Life and Habit
seasonable for any month in a year; what flowers are due
about what time, and whether the spring is on the whole
backward or early; but we cannot remember the weather
on any particular day a year ago, unless some unusual
incident has impressed it upon our memory. We can
remember, as a general rule, what kind of season it was,
upon the whole, a year ago, or perhaps, even two years;
but more than this, we rarely remember, except in such
cases as the winter of 1854-1855, or the summer of 1868;
the reft is all merged.
We observe, then, that as regards small and often
repeated impressions, our tendency is to remember beft,
and in moft detail, what we have been doing moft recendy,
and what in general has occurred moft recendy, but that
the earlier impressions, though forgotten individually, are
nevertheless not wholly loft.
2. When we have done anything very often, and have
got into the habit of doing it, we generally take the various
fteps in the same order ; in many cases this seems to be a
sine qua non for our repetition of the action at all. Thus,
there is probably no living man who could repeat the
words of “ God save the Queen ” backwards, without
much hesitation and many miftakes ; so the musician and
the singer muft perform their pieces in the order of the
notes as written, or at any rate as they ordinarily perform
them; they cannot transpose bars or read them back¬
wards without being put out, nor would the audience
recognize the impressions they have been accuftomed to,
unless these impressions are made in the accuftomed order.
3. If, when we have once got well into the habit of
doing anything in a certain way, some one shows us some
other way of doing it, or some way which would in part
modify our procedure, or if in our endeavours to improve,
we have hit upon some new idea which seems likely to
help us, and thus we vary our course, on the next occasion
we remember this idea by reason of its novelty, but if we
128
On the oAbeyance of oL "Memory
try to repeat it, we often find the residuum of our old
memories pulling us so Strongly into our old groove that
we have the greatest difficulty in repeating our perform¬
ance in the new manner; there is a clashing of memories,
a conflict, which if the idea is very new, and involves, so to
speak, too sudden a cross -too wide a departure from our
ordinary course- will sometimes render the performance
monstrous, or baffle us altogether, the new memory failing
to fuse harmoniously with the old. If the idea is not too
widely different from our older ones, we can cross them
with it, but with more or less difficulty, as a general rule,
in proportion to the amount of variation. The whole
process of understanding a thing consists in this, and, so
far as I can see at present, in this only.
Sometimes we repeat the new performance for a few
times, in a way which shows that the fusion of memories
is Still in force; and then insensibly revert to the old, in
which case the memory of the new soon fades away,
leaving a residuum too feeble to contend against that of
our many earlier memories of the same kind. If, however,
the new way is obviously to our advantage, we make an
effort to retain it, and gradually getting into the habit of
using it, come to remember it by force of routine, as we
originally remembered it by force of novelty. Even as
regards our own discoveries, we do not always succeed
in remembering our most improved and most Striking
performances, so as to be able to repeat them at will
immediately : in any such performance we may have gone
some way beyond our ordinary powers, owing to some
unconscious adfion of the mind. The supreme effort has
exhausted us, and we muSt rest on our oars a little, before
we make further progress; or we may even fall back a
little, before we make another leap in advance.
In this resped, almost every conceivable degree of varia¬
tion is observable, according to differences of character
and circumstances. Sometimes the new impression has
129 K
Life and Habit
to be made upon us many times from without, before the
earlier Strain of addon is eliminated ; in this case, there will
long remain a tendency to revert to the earlier habit.
Sometimes, after the impression has been once made,
we repeat our old way two or three times, and then
revert to the new, which gradually ouSts the old; some¬
times, on the other hand, a single impression, though
involving considerable departure from our routine, makes
its mark so deeply that we adopt the new at once, though
not without difficulty, and repeat it in our next perform¬
ance, and henceforward in all others ; but those who vary
their performance thus readily will show a tendency to
vary subsequent performances according as they receive
fresh ideas from others, or reason them out independently.
They are men of genius.
This holds good concerning all addons which we do
habitually, whether they involve laborious acquirement or
not. Thus, if we have varied our usual dinner in some
way that leaves a favourable impression upon our minds,
so that our dinner may, in the language of the horti¬
culturist, be said to have “ sported/’ our tendency will be
to revert to this particular dinner either next day, or as
soon as circumstances will allow, but it is possible that
several hundred dinners may elapse before we can do so
successfully, or before our memory reverts to this par¬
ticular dinner.
4. As regards our habitual addons, however uncon¬
sciously we remember them, we, nevertheless, remember
them with far greater intensity than many individual
impressions or addons, it may be of much greater moment,
that have happened to us more recently. Thus, many a
man who has familiarized himself, for example, with the
odes of Horace, so as to have had them at his fingers’ ends
as the result of many repetitions, will be able years hence
to repeat a given ode, though unable to remember any
circumstance in connexion with his having learnt it, and
1 30
On the Abeyance of Memory
no less unable to remember when he repeated it last. A
ho£t of individual circumstances, many of them not
unimportant, will have dropped out of his mind, along
with a mass of literature read but once or twice, and not
impressed upon the memory by several repetitions; but
he returns to the well-known ode with so little effort, that
he would not know that he was remembering unless his
reason told him so. The ode seems more like something
born with him.
We observe, also, that people who have become
imbecile, or whose memory is much impaired, yet fre¬
quently retain their power of recalling impressions which
have been long ago repeatedly made upon them.
In such cases, people are sometimes seen to forget
what happened last week, yesterday, or an hour ago,
without even the smallest power of recovering their
recolledion; but the oft repeated earlier impression
remains, though there may be no memory whatever of
how it came to be impressed so deeply. The phenomena
of memory, therefore, are exadly like those of conscious¬
ness and volition, in so far as that the consciousness of
recolledion vanishes, when the power of recolledion has
become intense. When we are aware that we are recollect¬
ing, and are trying, perhaps hard, to recoiled, it is a sign
that we do not recoiled utterly. When we remember
utterly and intensely, there is no conscious effort of
recolledion; our recolledion can only be recognized by
ourselves and others, through our performance itself,
which testifies to the existence of a memory, that we could
not otherwise follow or deted.
5 . When circumstances have led us to change our habits
of life- as when the university has succeeded school, or
professional life the university- we get into many fresh
ways, and leave many old ones. But on revisiting the old
scene, unless the lapse of time has been inordinately great,
we experience a desire to revert to old habits. We say
131
Life and Habit
that old associations crowd upon us. Let a Trinity man,
after thirty years’ absence from Cambridge, pace for five
minutes in the cloister of Nevile’s Court, and listen to the
echo of his footfall, as it licks up against the end of the
cloister, or let an old Johnian Stand wherever he likes in
the third Court of St. John’s, in either case he will find
the thirty years drop out of his life, as if they were half
an hour; his life will have rolled back upon itself, to the
date when he was an undergraduate, and his inStinft will
be to do almost mechanically, whatever it would have
come moSt natural to him to do, when he was last there
at the same season of the year and the same hour of the
day; and it is plain this is due to similarity of environ¬
ment, for if the place he revisits be much changed, there
will be little or no association.
So those who are accustomed at intervals to cross the
Atlantic, get into certain habits on board ship, different
to their usual ones. It may be that at home they never
play whiSt; on board ship they do nothing else all the
evening. At home they never touch spirits; on the
voyage they regularly take a glass of something before
they go to bed. They do not smoke at home ; here they
are smoking all day. Once the voyage is at an end, they
return without an effort to their usual habits, and do not
feel any wish for cards, spirits, or tobacco. They do not
remember yesterday, when they did want all these things ;
at leaSt, not with such force as to be influenced by it in
their desires and addons; their true memory- the memory
which makes them want, and do, reverts to the last
occasion on which they were in circumstances like their
present; they therefore want now what they wanted then,
and nothing more; but when the time comes for them to
go on shipboard again, no sooner do they smell the smell
of the ship, than their real memory reverts to the times
when they were laSt at sea, and Striking a balance of their
recolledfions, they smoke, play cards, and drink whisky
and water.
132
On the Abeyance of Memory
We observe it then as a matter of the commonest daily
occurrence within our own experience, that memory
does fade completely away, and recur with the recurrence
of surroundings like those which made any particular
impression in the first instance. We observe that there is
hardly any limit to the completeness and the length of
time during which our memory may remain in abeyance.
A smell may remind an old man of eighty of some incident
of his childhood, forgotten for nearly as many years as
he has lived. In other words, we observe that when an
impression has been repeatedly made in a certain sequence
on any living organism- that impression not having been
prejudicial to the creature itself- the organism will have
a tendency, on reassuming the shape and conditions in
which it was when the impression was laSt made, to
remember the impression, and therefore to do again now
what it did then; all intermediate memories dropping
clean out of mind, so far as they have any effect upon
addon.
6. Finally, we should note the suddenness and apparent
caprice with which memory will assert itself at odd times ;
we have been saying or doing this or that, when suddenly
a memory of something which happened to us, perhaps in
infancy, comes into our head; nor can we in the least
conned: this recolledion with the subjed: of which we have
juSt been thinking, though doubtless there has been a
connection, too rapid and subtle for our apprehension.
The foregoing phenomena of memory, so far as we can
judge, would appear to be present themselves throughout
the animal and vegetable kingdoms. This will be readily
admitted as regards animals; as regards plants it may be
inferred from the fad: that they generally go on doing what
they have been doing most lately, though accustomed to
make certain changes at certain points in their existence.
When the time comes for these changes, they appear to
know it, and either bud forth into leaf, or shed their leaves,
as the case may be. If we keep a bulb in a paper bag it
133
Life and Habit
seems to remember having been a bulb before, until the
time comes for it to put forth roots and grow. Then, if we
supply it with earth and moisture, it seems to know where
it is, and to go on doing now whatever it did when it was
laSt planted; but if we keep it in the bag too long, it
' rows that it ought, according to its last experience, to
be treated differently, and shows plain symptoms of
uneasiness; it is diSt raffed by the bag, which makes it
remember its bulbhood, and also by the want of earth
and water, without which associations its memory of its
previous growth cannot be duly kindled. Its roots,
therefore, which are moSt accustomed to earth and water,
do not grow; but its leaves, which do not require contact
with these things to jog their memory, make a more
decided effort at development- a faff which would seem
to go Strongly in favour of the funffional independence of
the parts of all but the very simplest living organisms, if,
indeed, more evidence were wanted in support of this.
134
CHAPTER TEN! WHAT WE SHOULD EXPECT TO FIND IF
DIFFERENTIATIONS OF STRUCTURE AND INSTINCT ARE
MAINLY DUE TO MEMORY
TO REPEAT BRIEFLY; -WE REMEMBER BEST
our la$t few performances of any given kind, and
our present performance is most likely to resemble
one or other of these; we only remember our earlier
performances by way of residuum; nevertheless, at times,
some older feature is liable to reappear.
We take our Steps in the same order on each successive
occasion, and are for the most part incapable of changing
that order.
The introdudion of slightly new elements into our
manner is attended with benefit; the new can be fused
with the old, and the monotony of our adion is relieved.
But if the new element is too foreign, we cannot fuse the
old and new -nature seeming equally to hate too wide a
deviation from our ordinary pradice, and no deviation
at all. Or, in plain English- if any one gives us a new
idea which is not too far ahead of us, such an idea is often
of great service to us, and may give new life to our work-
in fad, we soon go back, unless we more or less frequently
come into contad with new ideas, and are capable of
understanding and making use of them; if, on the other
hand, they are too new, and too little led up to, so that
we find them too Strange and hard to be able to understand
them and adopt them, then they put us out, with every
degree of completeness -from simply causing us to fail
in this or that particular part, to rendering us incapable
of even trying to do our work at all, from pure despair
of succeeding.
It requires many repetitions to fix an impression firmly;
but when it is fixed, we cease to have much recolledion
of the manner in which it came to be so, or of any single
and particular recurrence.
Our memory is mainly called into adion by force of
association and similarity in the surroundings. We want
*35
Life and Habit
to go on doing what we did when we were last as we are
now, and we forget what we did in the meantime.
These rules, however, are liable to many exceptions;
as for example, that a single and apparently not very
extraordinary occurrence may sometimes produce a lasting
impression, and be liable to return with sudden force at
some distant time, and then to go on returning to us at
intervals. Some incidents, in fadt, we know not how nor
why, dwell with us much longer than others which were
apparently quite as noteworthy or perhaps more so.
Now I submit that if the above observations are juSt,
and if, also, the offspring, after having become a new and
separate personality, yet retains so much of the old identity
of which it was once indisputably part, that it remembers
what it did when it was part of that identity as soon as it
finds itself in circumstances which are calculated to refresh
its memory owing to their similarity to certain antecedent
ones, then we should expedf to find :
I. That offspring should, as a general rule, resemble its
own most immediate progenitors; that is to say, that it
should remember best what it has been doing moSt
recently. The memory being a fusion of its recolledfions
of what it did, both when it was its father and also when
it was its mother, the offspring should have a very common
tendency to resemble both parents, the one in some
respedts, and the other in others ; but it might also hardly
less commonly show a more marked recolledlion of the
one history than of the other, thus more diStindfcly
resembling one parent than the other. And this is what
we observe to be the case. Not only so far as that the
offspring is almost invariably either male or female, and
generally resembles rather the one parent than the other,
but also that in spite of such preponderance of one set
of recolledlions, the sexual charadters and inStindts of the
opposite sex appear, whether in male or female, though
undeveloped and incapable of development except by
136
What We ePMight Expeft
abnormal treatment, such as has occasionally caused milk
to be developed in the mammary glands of males; or by
mutilation, or failure of sexual inStinfr through age, upon
which, male characteristics frequently appear in the
females of any species.
Brothers and sisters, each giving their own version
of the same Story, though in different words, should
resemble each other more closely than more distant rela¬
tions. This too we see.
But it should frequently happen that offspring should
resemble its penultimate rather than its latest phase, and
should thus be more like a grand-parent than a parent;
for we observe that we very often repeat a performance
in a manner resembling that of some earlier, but Still
recent, repetition; rather than on the precise lines of our
very laSt performance. FirSt-cousins may in this case
resemble each other more closely than brothers and sisters.
More especially, we should not expe<ff very successful
men to be fathers of particularly gifted children; for the
beSt men are, as it were, the happy thoughts and successes
of the race-nature’s “ flukes,” so to speak, in her onward
progress. No creature can repeat at will, and immediately*
its highest flight. It needs repose. The generations are
the essays of any given race towards the highest ideal
which it is as yet able to see ahead of itself, and this, in
the nature of things, cannot be very far ; so that we should
expeft to see success followed by more or less failure, and
failure by success -a very successful creature being a great
“ fluke.” And this is what we find.
In its earlier Stages the embryo should be simply con¬
scious of a general method of procedure on the part of
its forefathers, and should, by reason of long pra&ice,
compress tedious and complicated histories into a very
narrow compass, remembering no single performance in
particular. For we observe this in nature, both as regards
the sleight-of-hand which pra&ice gives to those who are
137
Life and Habit
\
thoroughly familiar with their business, and also as regards
the fusion of remoter memories into a general residuum.
II. We should exped: to find that the offspring, whether
in its embryonic condition, or in any Stage of development
till it has reached maturity, should adopt nearly the same
order in going through all its various Stages. There
should be such slight variations as are inseparable from
the repetition of any performance by a living being (as
contrasted with a machine), but no more. And this is
what a&ually happens. A man may cut his wisdom-teeth
a little later than he gets his beard and whiskers, or a little
earlier; but on the whole, he adheres to his usual order,
and is completely set off his balance, and upset in his
performance, if that order be interfered with suddenly.
It is, however, likely that gradual modifications of order
have been made and then adhered to.
After any animal has reached the period at which it
ordinarily begins to continue its race, we should exped:
that it should show little further power of development,
or, at any rate, that few great changes of Stru&ure or fresh
features should appear; for we cannot suppose offspring
to remember anything that happens to the parent subse¬
quently to the parent’s ceasing to contain the offspring
within itself; from the average age, therefore, of repro¬
duction, offspring would cease to have any further experi¬
ence on which to fall back, and would thus continue to
make the best use of what it already knew, till memory
failing either in one part or another, the organism would
begin to decay.
To this cause must be referred the phenomena of old
age, which interesting subjed I am unable to pursue within
the limits of this volume.
Those creatures who are longest in reaching maturity
might be expeded also to be the longest lived; I am not
certain, however, how far what is called alternate genera¬
tion militates againSt this view, but I do not think it does
so seriously.
138
What We Might Expett
Lateness of marriage, provided the constitution of the
individuals marrying is in no resped impaired, should
also tend to longevity.
I believe that all the above will be found sufficiently
well supported by fads. If so, when we feel that we are
getting old we should try and give our cells such treatment
as they will find it most easy to understand, through their
experience of their own individual life, which, however,
can only guide them inferentially, and to a very small
extent; and throughout life we should remember the
important bearing which memory has upon health, and
both occasionally cross the memories of our component
cells with slightly new experiences, and be careful not to
put them either suddenly or for long together into con¬
ditions which they will not be able to understand. Nothing
is so likely to make our cells forget themselves, as negled
of one or other of these considerations. They will either
fail to recognize themselves completely, in which case we
shall die ; or they will go on Strike, more or less seriously
as the case may be, or perhaps, rather, they will try and
remember their usual course, and fail ; they will therefore
try some other, and will probably make a mess of it, as
people generally do when they try to do things which they
do not understand, unless indeed they have very excep¬
tional capacity.
It also follows that when we are ill, our cells being in
such or such a State of mind, and inclined to hold a corre¬
sponding opinion with more or less unreasoning violence,
should not be puzzled more than they are puzzled already,
by being contradi&ed too suddenly; for they will not be
in a frame of mind which can understand the position of
an open opponent: they should therefore either be let
alone, if possible, without notice other than dignified
silence, till their spleen is over, and till they have remem¬
bered themselves ; or they should be reasoned with as by
one who agrees with them, and who is anxious to see
things as far as possible from their own point of view.
*39
Life and Habit
And diis is how experience teaches that we muSt deal with
monomaniacs, whom we simply infuriate by contradi&ion,
but whose delusion we can sometimes persuade to hang
itself if we but give it sufficient rope. All which has its
bearing upon politics, too, at much sacrifice, it may be, of
political principles, but a politician who cannot see
principles where principle-mongers fail to see them, is a
dangerous person.
I may say, in passing, that the reason why a small
wound heals, and leaves no scar, while a larger one leaves
a mark which is more or less permanent, may be looked
for in the fa£t that when the wound is only small, the
damaged cells are snubbed, so to speak, by the vaSt
majority of the unhurt cells in their own neighbourhood.
When the wound is more serious they can Stick to it, and
bear each other out that they were hurt.
III. We should expedl to find a predominance of sexual
over asexual generation, in the arrangements of nature for
continuing her various species, inasmuch as two heads are
better than one, and a locus poenitentiae is thus given to the
embryo -an opportunity of correcting the experience of
one parent by that of the other. And this is what the
more intelligent embryos may be supposed to do; for
there would seem little reason to doubt that there are
clever embryos and Stupid embrvos, with better or worse
memories, as the case may be, of how they dealt with their
protoplasm before, and better or worse able to see how
they can do better now ; and that embryos differ as widely
in intellectual and moral capacity, and in a general sense
of the fitness of things, and of what will look well into the
bargain, as those larger embryos -to wit, children- do.
Indeed, it would seem probable that all our mental powers
muSt go through a quasi-embryological condition, much
as the power of keeping, and wisely spending, money
muSt do so, and that all the qualities of human thought
and character are to be found in the embryo.
140
What We Might Expeff
Those who have observed at what an early age differ¬
ences of intellect and temper show themselves in the
young, for example, of cats and dogs, will find it difficult
to doubt that from the very moment of impregnation,
and onward, there has been a corresponding difference
in the embryo -and that of six unborn puppies, one, we
will say, has been throughout the'whole process of develop¬
ment more sensible and better looking- a nicer embryo,
in fad- than the others.
IV. We should exped to find that all species, whether
of plants or animals, are occasionally benefited by a cross;
but we should also exped that a cross should have a
tendency to introduce a disturbing element, if it be too
wide, inasmuch as the offspring would be pulled hither
and thither by two confliding memories or advices, much
as though a number of people speaking at once were
without previous warning to advise an unhappy per¬
former to vary his ordinary performance -one set of people
telling him he has always hitherto done thus, and the other
saying no less loudly that he did it thus; -and he were
suddenly to become convinced that they each spoke the
truth. In such a case he will either completely break down,
if the advice be too confliding, or if it be less confliding,
he may yet be so exhausted by the one supreme effort of
fusing these experiences that he will never be able to
perform again; or if the conflid of experience be not
great enough to produce such a permanent effed as this,
it will yet, if it be at all serious, probably damage his
performances on their next several occasions, through his
inability to fuse the experiences into a harmonious whole,
or, in other words, to understand the ideas which are
prescribed to him; for to fuse is only to understand.
And this is absolutely what we find in fad. Mr. Darwin
writes concerning hybrids and first crosses : “ The male
element may reach the female element, but be incapable of
causing an embryo to be developed, as seems to have been
141
Life and Habit
the case with some of Thuret’s experiments on Fuci.
No explanation can be given of these fads any more than
why certain trees cannot be grafted on others.”
I submit that what I have written above supplies a very
fair prima facie explanation.
Mr. Darwin continues :
“ Lastly, an embryo may be developed, and then perish
at an early period. This latter alternative has not been
sufficiently attended to; but I believe, from observations
communicated to me by Mr. Hewitt, who has had great
experience in hybridizing pheasants and fowls, that the
early death of the embryo is a very frequent cause of
Sterility in first crosses. Mr. Salter has recently given the
results of an examination of about five hundred eggs
produced from various crosses between three species of
Gallus and their hybrids; the majority of these eggs had
been fertilized; and in the majority of the fertilized eggs,
the embryos had either been partially developed, and had
then perished, or had become nearly mature, but the young
chickens had been unable to break through the shell.
Of the chickens which were born more than four-fifths
died within the first few days, or at latest weeks, ‘ without
any obvious cause, apparently from mere inability to live,’
so that from the five hundred eggs only twelve chickens
were reared ” (( Origin of Species, p. 249, ed. 1876).
No wonder the poor creatures died, distracted as they
were by the internal tumult of confli&ing memories. But
they muSt have suffered greatly; and the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals may perhaps think it
worth while to keep an eye even on the embryos of hybrids
and first crosses. Five hundred creatures puzzled to death
is not a pleasant subjeft for contemplation. Ten or a dozen
should, I think, be sufficient for the future.
As regards plants, we read:
“ Hybridized embryos probably often perish in like
manner ... of which faff Max Wichura has given some
142
What We Might Ex petit
Striking cases with hybrid willows. ... It may be here
worth noticing, that in some cases of parthenogenesis, the
embryos within the eggs of silk moths, which have not
been fertilized, pass through their early Stages of develop¬
ment, and then perish like the embryos produced by a
cross between diStind species ” {ibid.).
This laSt fad would at first sight seem to make against
me, but we must consider that the presence of a double
memory, provided it be not too confliding, would be a
part of the experience of the silk moth’s egg, which
might be then as fatally puzzled by the monotony of a
single memory as it would be by two memories which
were not sufficiently like each other. So that failure here
muSt be referred to the utter absence of that little internal
Stimulant of slightly confliding memory which the
creature has always hitherto experienced, and without
which it fails to recognize itself. In either case, then,
whether with hybrids or in cases of parthenogenesis, the
early death of the embryo is due to inability to recoiled,
owing to a fault in the chain of associated ideas. All the
fads here given are an excellent illustration of the principle,
elsewhere insisted upon by Mr. Darwin, that any great and
sudden change of surroundings has a tendency to induce
Sterility ; on which head he writes ( Variations of Animals
and Plants under Domeffication, vol. ii, p. 143, ed. 1875):
“ It would appear that any change in the habits of life,
whatever their habits may be, if great enough, tends to
affed in an inexplicable manner the powers of reproduc¬
tion.”
And again on the next page :
“ Finally, we muSt conclude, limited though the con¬
clusion is, that changed conditions of life have an especial
power of ading injuriously on the reprodudive system.
The whole case is quite peculiar, for these organs, though
not diseased, are thus rendered incapable of performing
their proper fundions, or perform them imperfedly.”
*43
Life and Habit
One is inclined to doubt whether the blame may not
reS t with the inability on the part of the creature repro¬
duced to recognize the new surroundings, and hence with
its failing to know itself. And this seems to be in some
measure supported- but not in such a manner as I can
hold to be quite satisfadory-by the continuation of the
passage in the Origin of Species, from which I have juSt been
quoting-for Mr. Darwin goes on to say:
“ Hybrids, however, are differently circumstanced
before and after birth. When born, and living in a
country where their parents live, they are generally placed
under suitable conditions of life. But a hybrid partakes
of only half of the nature and condition of its mother; it
may therefore before birth, as long as it is nourished
within its mother’s womb, or within the egg or seed
produced by its mother, be exposed to conditions in
some degree unsuitable, and consequently be liable to
perish at an early period. ...” After which, however, the
conclusion arrived at is, that, “ after all, the cause more
probably lies in some imperfedion in the original ad of
impregnation, causing the embryo to be imperfedly
developed rather than in the conditions to which it is
subsequently exposed.” A conclusion which I am not
prepared to accept.
Returning to my second alternative, that is to say, to
the case of hybrids which are born well developed and
healthy, but nevertheless perfedly Sterile, it is less obvious
why, having succeeded in understanding the confliding
memories of their parents, they should fail to produce
offspring; but I do not think the reader will feel surprised
that this should be the case. The following anecdote, true
or false, may not be out of place here :
“ Plutarch tells us of a magpie, belonging to a barber
at Rome, which could imitate to a nicety almost every
word it heard. Some trumpets happened one day to be
sounded before the shop, and for a day or two afterwards
144
What We Might Expert
the magpie was quite mute, and seemed pensive and
melancholy. All who knew it were greatly surprised at
its silence; and it was supposed that the sound of the
trumpets had so Stunned it as to deprive it at once of both
voice and hearing. It soon appeared, however, that this
was far from being the case; for, says Plutarch, the bird
had been all the time occupied in profound meditation.
Studying how to imitate the sound of the trumpets; and
when at laSt master of it, the magpie, to the astonishment
of all its friends, suddenly broke its long silence by a
perfect imitation of the flourish of trumpets it had heard,
observing with the greatest exactness all the repetitions.
Stops, and changes. The acquisition of this lesson had , however ,
exhausted the whole of the magpie9 s Bock of intellect, for it made
it forget everything it had learned before ” ( Percy Anecdotes ,
InStinft, p. 1 66).
Or, perhaps, more seriously, the memory of every im¬
pregnate ovum from which every ancestor of a mule, for
example, has sprung, has reverted to a very long period
of time during which its forefathers have been creatures
like that which it is itself now going to become : thus, the
impregnate ovum from which the mule’s father was
developed remembered nothing but horse memories ; but
it felt its faith in these supported by the recolle&ion of a
vati number of previous generations, in which it was, to all
intents and purposes, what it now is. In like manner, the
impregnate ovum from which the mule’s mother was
developed would be backed by the assurance that it had
done what it is going to do now a hundred thousand times
already. All would thus be plain sailing. A horse and
a donkey would result. These two are brought together;
an impregnate ovum is produced which finds an unusual
conflid of memory between the two lines of its ancestors,
nevertheless, being accustomed to some conflidf, it manages
to get over the difficulty, as on either side it finds itself backed
by a very long series of sufficiently Beady memory . A mule
145 L
Life and Habit
results -a creature so distinctly different from either horse
or donkey, that reproduction is baffled, owing to the
creature’s having nothing but its own knowledge of itself
to fall back upon, behind which there comes an immediate
dislocation, or fault of memory, which is sufficient to bar
identity, and hence reproduction, by rendering too severe
an appeal to reason necessary- for no creature can repro¬
duce itself on the shallow foundation which reason can
alone give. Ordinarily, therefore, the hybrid, or the
spermatozoon or ovum, which it may throw off (as the
case may be), finds one single experience too small to give
it the necessary faith, on the Strength of which even to try
to reproduce itself. In other cases the hybrid itself has
failed to be developed; in others the hybrid, or first cross,
is almost fertile; in others it is fertile, but produces
depraved issue. The result will vary with the capacities
of the creatures crossed, and the amount of conflict
between their several experiences.
The above view would remove all difficulties out of the
way of evolution, in so far as the Sterility of hybrids is
concerned. For it would thus appear that this Sterility
has nothing to do with any supposed immutable or fixed
limits of species, but results simply from the same principle
which prevents old friends, no matter how intimate in
youth, from returning to their old intimacy after a lapse
of years, during which they have been subjected to widely
different influences, inasmuch as they will each have
contra&ed new habits, and have got into new ways, which
they do not like now to alter.
We should expeCt that our domesticated plants and
animals should vary most, inasmuch as these have been
subjected to changed conditions which would disturb the
memory, and, breaking the chain of recolleCtion, through
failure of some one or other of the associated ideas, would
thus direCtly and most markedly affeCt the reproductive
system. Every reader of Mr. Darwin will know that this
What We Might Expert
is what a&ually happens, and also that when once a plant
or animal begins to vary, it will probably vary a good deal
further; which, again, is what we should expeft-the dis¬
turbance of the memory introducing a fresh fa&or of dis¬
turbance, which has to be dealt with by the offspring as it
be$t may. Mr. Darwin writes : 44 All our domesticated
productions, with the rarest exceptions, vary far more than
natural species ” ( Animals and Plants , vol. ii, p. 241, ed.
i8?5)-
On my third supposition, i.e., when the difference
between parents has not been great enough to baffle
reproduction on the part of the first cross, but when the
histories of the father and mother have been, nevertheless,
widely different- as in the case of Europeans and Indians -
we should expeCf to have a race of offspring who should
seem to be quite clear only about those points, on which
their progenitors on both sides were in accord before the
manifold divergencies in their experiences commenced;
that is to say, the offspring should show a tendency to
revert to an early savage condition.
That this indeed occurs may be seen from Mr. Darwin’s
Animals and Plants (vol. ii, p. 21, ed. 1875), where we find
that travellers in all parts of the world have frequently
remarked 44 on the degraded Bate and savage condition of crossed
races of man.” A few lines lower down Mr. Darwin tells
us that he was himself Struck with the fa& that, in South
America, men of complicated descent between Negroes,
Indians, and Spaniards seldom had, whatever the cause
might be, a good expression. “ Livingstone ” (continues
Mr. Darwin) 44 remarks, 4 It is unaccountable why half-
caStes are so much more cruel than the Portuguese, but
such is undoubtedly the case.’ An inhabitant remarked
to Livingstone, 4 God made white men, and God made
black men, but the devil made half-caStes.’ ” A little
further on Mr. Darwin says that we may 44 perhaps infer
that the degraded State of so many half-caStes is in part due
147
Life and Habit
to reversion to a primitive and savage condition , induced by the
aft of crossing, even if mainly due to the unfavourable moral
conditions under which they are generally reared.” Why
the crossing should produce this particular tendency
would seem to be intelligible enough, if the fashion and
instincts of offspring are, in any case, nothing but the
memories of its past existences ; but it would hardly seem
to be so upon any of the theories now generally accepted;
as, indeed, is very readily admitted by Mr. Darwin himself,
who even, as regards purely-bred animals and plants,
remarks that “ we are quite unable to assign any proximate
cause ” for their tendency to at times reassume long-loSt
characters.
If the reader will follow for himself the remaining
phenomena of reversion, he will, I believe, find them all
explicable on the theory that they are due to memory of
paSt experiences fused, and modified- at times specifically
and definitely- by changed conditions. There is, however,
one apparently very important phenomenon which I do
not at this moment see how to conned! with memory,
namely, the tendency on the part of offspring to revert to
an earlier impregnation. Mr. Darwin’s Provisional Theory
of Pangenesis seemed to afford a satisfactory explana¬
tion of this; but the connection with memory was not
immediately apparent. I think it likely, however, that this
difficulty will vanish on further consideration, so I will not
do more than call attention to it here.
The instincts of certain neuter insects hardly bear
upon reversion, but will be dealt with at some length in
chapter 12.
V. We should expect to find, as was insisted on in the
preceding section in reference to the Sterility of hybrids,
that it required many, or at any rate several, generations
of changed habits before a sufficiently deep impression
could be made upon the living being (who muSt be
regarded always as one person in his whole line of ascent
148
What We Might Expeft
or descent) for it to be unconsciously remembered by him,
when making himself anew in any succeeding generation,
and thus to make him modify his method of procedure
during his next embry ological de vel opment . N evertheles s ,
we should expeft to find that sometimes a very deep single
impression made upon a living organism should be
remembered by it, even when it is next in an embryonic
condition.
That this is so, we find from Mr. Darwin, who writes
( Animals and Plants , vol. ii, p. 57, ed. 1875): “ There is
ample evidence that the effeft of mutilations and of acci¬
dents, especially, or perhaps exclusively, when followed
by disease ” (which would certainly intensify the impres¬
sion made), “ are occasionally inherited. There can be no
doubt that the evil effe&s of the long continued exposure
of the parent to injurious conditions are sometimes trans¬
mitted to the offspring.” As regards impressions of a less
Striking chara&er, it is so universally admitted that they
are not observed to be repeated in what is called the off¬
spring, until they have been confirmed in what is called the
parent, for several generations, but that after several
generations, more or fewer as the case may be, they often
are transmitted- that it seems unnecessary to say more
upon the matter. Perhaps, however, the following
passage from Mr. Darwin may be admitted as conclusive :
“ That they ” (acquired a&ions) “ are inherited, we see
with horses in certain transmitted paces, such as cantering
and ambling, which are not natural to them -in the
pointing of young pointers, and the setting of young
setters -in the peculiar manner of flight of certain breeds
of the pigeon, etc. We have analogous cases with man¬
kind in the inheritance of tricks or unusual gestures.” . . .
(Expression of the Emotions , p. 29.)
In another place Mr. Darwin writes :
“ How again can we explain the inherited effects of the
use or disuse of particular organs? The domesticated
149 "
Life and Habit
duck flies less and walks more than the wild duck, and
its limb bones have become diminished and increased in a
corresponding manner in comparison with those of the
wild duck. A horse is trained to certain paces, and the
colt inherits similar consensual movements. The domesti¬
cated rabbit becomes tame from close confinement; the
dog intelligent from associating with man; the retriever
is taught to fetch and carry; and these mental endow¬
ments and bodily powers are all inherited ” ( Animals and
Plants, vol. ii, p. 367, ed. 1875).
“ Nothing,” he continues, “ in the whole circuit of
physiology is more wonderful. How can the use or
disuse of a particular limb, or of the brain, affed a small
aggregate of reproductive cells, seated in a distant part
of the body in such a manner that the being developed
from these cells inherits the charader of one or both
parents? Even an imperfed answer to this question
would be satisfadory ” ( Animals and Plants , vol. ii, p. 367,
ed. 1875).
With such an imperfed answer will I attempt to satisfy
the reader, as to say that there appears to be that kind of
continuity of existence and sameness of personality,
between parents and offspring, which would lead us to
exped that the impressions made upon the parent should
be epitomized in the offspring, when they have been or
have become important enough, through repetition in the
history of several so-called existences, to have earned a
place in that smaller edition, which is issued from genera¬
tion to generation; or, in other words, when they have
been made so deeply, either at one blow or through many,
that the offspring can remember them. In pradice we
observe this to be the case- so that the answer lies in the
assertion that offspring and parent, being in one sense but
the same individual, there is no great wonder that, in one
sense, the first should remember what had happened to the
latter; and that, too, much in the same way as the indi-
150
What We Might Expert
vidual remembers the events in the earlier history of what
he calls his own lifetime, but condensed, and pruned of
detail, and remembered as by one who has had a hoSt of
other matters to attend to in the interim.
It is thus easy to understand why such a rite as circum¬
cision, though pra&ised during many ages, should have
produced little, if any, modification tending to make cir¬
cumcision unnecessary. On the view here supported such
modification would be more surprising than not, for unless
the impression made upon the parent was of a grave
chara&er-and probably unless also aggravated by subse¬
quent confusion of memories in the cells surrounding the
part originally impressed- the parent himself would not
be sufficiently impressed to prevent him from reproducing
himself, as he had already done upon an infinite number
of past occasions. The child, therefore, in the womb
would do what the father in the womb had done before
him, nor should any trace of memory concerning circum¬
cision be expe&ed till the eighth day after birth, when,
but for the fa& that the impression in this case is forgotten
almost as soon as made, some slight presentiment of
coming discomfort might, after a large number of genera¬
tions, perhaps be looked for as a general rule. It would
not, however, be surprising, that the efieft of circumcision
should be occasionally inherited, and it would appear as
though this was sometimes actually the case.
The question should turn upon whether the disuse of
an organ has arisen:
1. From an internal desire on the part of the creature
disusing it, to be quit of an organ which it finds trouble¬
some.
2. From changed conditions and habits which render
the organ no longer necessary, or which lead the creature
to lay greater Stress on certain other organs or modifica¬
tions.
3. From the wish of others outside itself; the effeft
151
Life and Habit .
produced in this case being perhaps neither very good nor
very bad for the individual, and resulting in no grave
impression upon the organism as a whole.
4. From a single deep impression on a parent, affeding
both himself as a whole, and gravely confusing the
memories of the cells to be reproduced, or his memories
in resped of those cells -according as one adopts Pan¬
genesis and supposes a memory to “ run ” each gemmule,
or as one supposes one memory to “ run ” the whole
impregnate ovum- a compromise between these two views
being nevertheless perhaps possible, inasmuch as the
combined memories of ah the cells may possibly be the
memory which “ runs ” the impregnate ovum, juSt as we
are ourselves the combination of all our cells, each one of
which is both autonomous, and also takes its share in the
central government. But within the limits of this volume
it is absolutely impossible for me to go into this question.
In the first case -under which some instances which
belong more Stridly to the fourth would sometimes, but
rarely, come -the organ should soon go, and sooner or
later leave no rudiment, though Still perhaps to be found
crossing the life of the embryo, and then disappearing.
In the second it should go more slowly, and leave, it
may be, a rudimentary Strudure.
In the third it should show little or no sign of natural
decrease for a very long time.
In the fourth there may be absolute and total Sterility,
or Sterility in regard to the particular organ, or a scar
which shall show that the memory of the wound and of
each Step in the process of healing has been remembered;
or there may be simply such disturbance in the reproduced
organ as shall show a confused recolledion of injury.
There may be infinite gradations between the first and
laSt of these possibilities.
I think that the fads, as given by Mr. Darwin {Animals
and Plants , vol. i, pp. 466-472, ed. 1875), will bear out the
152
What We Might Expetf
above to the satisfa&ion of the reader. I can, however*
only quote the following passage:
44 . . . Brown Sequard has bred during thirty years
many thousand guinea-pigs, . . . nor has he ever seen a
guinea-pig born without toes which was not the offspring
of parents which had gnawed off their own toes , owing to the
sciatic nerve having been divided. Of this fad thirteen
instances were carefully recorded, and a greater number
were seen; yet Brown Sequard speaks of such cases as
among the rarer forms of inheritance. It is a Still more
interesting fad-4 that the sciatic nerve in the congenitally
toeless animal has inherited the power of passing through
all the different morbid Hates which have occurred in one
of its parents from the time of division till after its reunion
with the peripheric end. It is not therefore the power of
simply performing an adion which is inherited, but the
power of performing a whole series of adions in a certain
order.5 55
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, 44 that what is transmitted is the
morbid State of the nervous system,55 due to the operation
performed on the parents.
A little lower down Mr. Darwin writes that Professor
RolleSton has given him two cases-44 namely, of two men*
one of whom had his knee, and the other his cheek*
severely cut, and both had children born with exadly the
same spot marked or scarred.55
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 exped that it should be remembered by the
offspring as something which he has done all his life*
D3
Life and Habit
and which he has therefore no longer any occasion to
learn; he will ad, therefore, as people say, intfinftively.
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 fad when association wakens the memory;
it will need no inStrudion, and- unless when it has been
taught to look for it during many generations -will exped
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 cocoon, 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
E/notions , p. 30).
And, indeed, when we consider that after a time the
moSt complex and difficult adions come to be performed
by man without the least effort or consciousness -that
offspring cannot be considered as anything but a con¬
tinuation of the parent life, whose past habits and experi¬
ences it epitomizes when they have been sufficiently often
repeated to produce a lasting impression- that conscious¬
ness 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 pradised-and finally, that the real
presence of memory is testified rather by performance of
the repeated adion on recurrence of like surroundings,
than by consciousness of recolleding 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
inStindive adions, 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
154
What We Might Exp eft
ever taken -when, I say, we consider all these faffs, 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 exaffly
those which we should expeff to find.
VII. We should also expeff that the memory of
animals, as regards their earlier existences, was solely
Stimulated by association. For we find, from Professor
Bain, that “ afiions, 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 In te /left,
2nd ed. 1864, p. 332). And Professor Huxley says
( Elementary Lessons in Physiology , 5 th 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 produ&ion 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 passages from Mr. Darwin’s Expression of the
Emotions (p. 30, ed. 1872).
We should, therefore, expert that when the offspring
found itself in the presence of objeffs which had called
up such and such ideas for a sufficient number of genera¬
tions, 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 recognize the ideas
as having ever before been present to them or not.”
I think we might also expeff that no other force, save
*5 5
Life and Habit
that of association, should have power to kindle, so to
speak, into the flame of affion 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 expeft
of them in this respefi is plain, not only from the perform¬
ance of the moSt intricate and difficult afiions- difficult
both physically and intelleffually-at an age, and under
circumstances which preclude all possibility of what we
call inStrufiion, but from the faff that deviations from the
parental inStindf, or rather the recurrence of a memory,
unless in connexion with the accustomed train of associa¬
tions, 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 association, we
should expeff 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 corre¬
sponding 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 asserted 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 effeff among observers generally.
He continues : “ It is curious on what little evidence
this belief reSts. Many of our domesticated animals could
156
What We Might Exp eft
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 fad 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 fad 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 Animals and Plan is (vol. ii, ed. 1875) we find
that “ the re-appearance of coloured, longitudinal Stripes
on young feral pigs cannot be attributed to the dired
adion 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 association and memory- the creature, in fad, having
157
Life and Habit
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 ( Animals and Plants , vol. ii, pp. 51-57,
ed. 1 87 5). The existence of the tendency is not likely to
be denied. The instances given by Mr. Darwin are Stri&ly
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 fad 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 lea^t, is what we observe daily.
Nor again can we believe, as some have fancifully
imagined, that the remembrance of any occurrence of
which the effed has been entirely, or almost entirely
mental, should be remembered by offspring with any
definiteness. The intelled of the offspring might be
158
What We Might Expert
affeded, for better or worse, by the general nature of the
intelle&ual 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 definite¬
ness 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 re¬
membered this or that in some paSt existence, is purely
imaginary, and due rather to unconscious recognition of
the fad that we certainly have lived before, than to any
adual occurrence corresponding to the supposed recollec¬
tion.
And lastly, we should look to find in the adion of
memory, as between one generation and another, a
reflection of the many anomalies and exceptions to ordin¬
ary 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 exped 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 assuredly we find it so in fad.
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 fads, 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
assured that a hoSt of long-loSt charaders lie ready to be
evolved under proper conditions ” (does not one almost
long to substitute the word “ memories ” for the word
“ charaders ” ?) “ How can we make intelligible, and
*59
Life and Habit
conned with other fads, this wonderful and common
capacity of reversion -this power of calling back to life
long-loSt charaders? ” ( Animals and Plants , 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 prosped of
a clear understanding.
One word more. Abundant fads are to be found which
point inevitably, as will appear more plainly in the follow¬
ing chapter, in the diredion of thinking that offspring
inherits the memories of its parents; but I know of no
single fad which suggests that parents are in the smallest
degree affeded (other than sympathetically) by the
memories of their offspring after that offspring has been born .
Whether the unborn offspring affeds 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
fad 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.
160
CHAPTER ELEVEN: INSTINCT AS INHERITED MEMORY
I HAVE ALREADY ALLUDED TO M. RIBOT’S
work on heredity, from which I will now take the
following passages.
M. Ribot writes :
“ InStind is innate, i.e., anterior to aU individual experi¬
ence” This I deny on grounds already abundantly
apparent; but let it pass. “ Whereas intelligence is
developed slowly by accumulated experience, inStind is
perfed from the first 99 (Heredity, p. 14).
The memory of a habit or experience will not commonly
be transmitted to offspring in that perfedion which is
called “ inStind,” till the habit or experience has been
repeated in several generations with more or less uni¬
formity; for otherwise the impression made will not be
Strong enough to endure through the busy and difficult
task of reprodudion. 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 circumstances little further to be
desired, and hence that it should have been little varied
during many generations. We should exped that it
would be transmitted in a more or less partial, varying,
imperfed, 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 repetition of the habit will become Stable,
and hence 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 refledion, for
161 M
Life and Habit
people cannot be always opening up settled questions;
if they thought a matter all over yesterday they cannot
think it all over again to-day; what they thought then
they will think now, and will a & upon their opinion;
and this, too, in spite sometimes of considerable misgiving,
that if they were to think further they could find a better
course. It is not, therefore, to be expe&ed that “ inStinft ”
should show signs of that hesitating and tentative addon
which results from knowledge that is Still so imperfeCt as
to be aftively self-conscious ; nor yet that it should grow
or vary perceptibly, unless under such changed condi¬
tions as shall baffle memory, and present the alternative of
either invention -that is to say, variation- or death. But
every inStinCI muSt have passed through the laboriously in¬
telligent Stages through which human civilizations and
mechanical inventions are now passing; and he who would
Study the origin of an inStinCI with its development, par¬
tial transmission, further growth, further transmission,
approach to more unrefle&ing 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 assuredly
one day reach the unconscious State of equilibrium which
we observe in the Stru&ures 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
162
Inftinfl as Inherited Memory
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 convi&ions. Such races refuse to see changes in their
surroundings as long as they can, but when compelled
to recognize them, they throw up the game because they
cannot and will not, or will not and cannot, invent. This
is perfe&ly 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 pre¬
sence 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.
163
Life and Habit
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 fir^t 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
fa& is not the beSt corre&ive for dogmatism that we are
likely to find.
We can understand that a pigeon might in the course
of ages grow to be a peacock 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 peacock, 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 passing fancy to be
so gorgeously arrayed; it would therefore lack that faith
without which no a&ion, and with which every a&ion,
is possible.
That creatures have conceived the idea of making them¬
selves like other creatures or obje&s 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 butterflies, which give out such a Strong
164
Inftinff as Inherited Memory
odour that nothing will eat them, and which are hence
mimicked both in appearance and flight by a very different
kind of butterfly; and, again, we see that certain birds,
without any particular desire of gain, no sooner hear any
sound than they begin to mimic it, merely for the pleasure
of mimicking; so we all enjoy to mimic, or to hear good
mimicry, so also monkeys imitate the aCtions which they
observe, from pure force of sympathy. To mimic, or to
wish to mimic, is doubtless often one of the first Steps
towards varying in any given dire&ion. 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 title should be “ On the Fine Arts as bearing on the
Reproductive System,” of which the title 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 selec¬
tion ” 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 peacock 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 peacock;
but we cannot believe either that a bird like a pigeon
should be able to apprehend any ideal so different from
itself as a peacock, and make towards it, or that man,
having wished to breed a bird anything like a peacock from
a bird anything like a pigeon, would be able to succeed
in accumulating accidental peacock-like variations till he
165
Life and Habit
had made the bird he was in search of, no matter in what
number of generations; much less can we believe that
the accumulation of small fortuitous variations by
“ natural sele&ion ” 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 wrang¬
ler. 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 praCHcal 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 pra&ice. Races which
vary considerably muSt be considered as clever, but it may
be speculative, people who commonly have a genius in
some special dire&ion, as perhaps for mimicry, perhaps for
beauty, perhaps for music, perhaps for the higher mathe¬
matics, but seldom in more than one or two directions;
while “ inflexible organizations,” 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.
Inftinfi as Inherited Memory
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
perfedly well what it can, and what it cannot do with
water, owing to its recolledion 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 imperfed ”
explanation of what else it can be due to “ would,” to
quote from Mr. Darwin, “ be satisfadory.”
“ Intelligence gropes about, tries this way and that,
misses its objed, commits mistakes, and correds them.”
Yes. Because intelligence is of consciousness, and con¬
sciousness 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.
“ InStind advances with a mechanical certainty.”
Why mechanical? Should not “ with apparent cer¬
tainty ” suffice?
“ Hence comes its unconscious charader.”
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 assumption. What is certain is that inStind
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 ]aw, but under the grace of a
settled convidion.
167
Life and Habit
“ All seems dire&ed by thought.”
Yes; because all has been in earlier existences directed
by thought.
“ Without ever arriving at thought.”
Because it has got patf thought , and though “ dire&ed by
thought ” originally, is now travelling in exa&ly the
opposite direction. It is not likely to reach thought again,
till people get to know worse and worse how to do things,
the oftener they practise them.
“ And if this phenomenon appear Strange, it muSt be
observed that analogous States occur in ourselves. AU
that w e do from habit -walking, writing, or practising a mechanical
all, for instance -all these and many other very complex alts are
performed without consciousness .
“ InStindl appears Stationary. It does not, like intelli¬
gence, seem to grow and decay, to gain and to lose. It
does not improve.”
Naturally. For improvement can only as a general rule
be looked for along the line of latest development, that
is to say, in matters concerning which the creature is being
Still consciously exercised. Older questions are settled,
and the solution muSt be accepted as final, for the question
of living at all would be reduced to an absurdity, if every¬
thing decided upon one day was to be undecided again
the next; as with painting or music, so with life and
politics, let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind,
for decision with wrong will be commonly a better policy
than indecision -I had almost added with right; and a firm
purpose with risk will be better than an infirm one with
temporary exemption from disaster. Every race has
made its great blunders, to which it has nevertheless
adhered, inasmuch as the corresponding modification of
other Strudhires and inStindls was found preferable to the
revolution which would be caused by a radical change
of Stru&ure, with consequent havoc among a legion of
vested interests. Rudimentary organs are, as has been
168
Infiinct as Inherited <£ "Memory
often said, the survivals of these interests -the signs of
their peaceful and gradual extin&ion as living faiths ; they
are also instances of the difficulty of breaking through any
cant or trick which we have long pra&ised, and which is
not sufficiently troublesome to make it a serious object
with us to cure ourselves of the habit.
“ If it does not remain perfe&ly invariable, at least it
only varies within very narrow limits; and though this
question has been warmly debated in our day, and is yet
unsettled, we may yet say that in inStinfi: immutability is
the law, variation the exception.”
This is quite as it should be. Genius will occasionally
rise a little above convention, but with an old convention
immutability will be the rule.
“ Such,” continues M. Ribot, “ are the admitted char¬
acters of inStinCt.”
Yes; but are they not also the admitted characters of
habitual actions that are due to memorv?
J
At the bottom of p. 15 M. Ribot quotes the following
from Mr. Darwin :
“ We have reason to believe that aboriginal habits
are long retained under domestication. Thus with the
common ass, we see signs of its original desert-life in its
Strong dislike to cross the smallest Stream of water, and
in its pleasure in rolling in the duSt. The same Strong
dislike to cross a Stream is common to the camel which
has been domesticated from a very early period. Young
pigs, though so tame, sometimes squat when frightened,
and then try to conceal themselves, even in an open and
bare place. Young turkeys, and occasionally even young
fowls, when the hen gives the danger-cry, run away and
try to hide themselves, like young partridges or pheasants,
in order that their mother may take flight, of which she
has loSt the power. The musk duck in its native country
often perches and rooSts on trees, and our domesticated
musk ducks, though sluggish birds, are fond of perching
169
Life and Habit
on the tops of barns, walls, etc. . . . We know that the
dog, however well and regularly fed, often buries like the
fox any superfluous food ; we see him turning round and
round on a carpet as if to trample down grass to form a
bed. ... In the delight with which lambs and kids crowd
together and frisk upon the smallest hillock we see a
veStige of their former alpine habits.”
What does this delightful passage go to show, if not
that the young in all these cases muSt Still have a latent
memory of their past existences, which is called into an
a&ive condition as soon as the associated ideas present
themselves ?
Returning to M. Ribot’s own observations, we find he
tells us that it usually requires three or four generations
to fix the results of training, and to prevent a return to
the inStin&s of the wild State. I think, however, it would
not be presumptuous to suppose that if an animal after
only three or four generations of training be restored to
its original conditions of life, it will forget its intermediate
training and return to its old ways, almost as readily as a
London Street arab would forget the beneficial efle&s of a
week’s training in a reformatory school, if he were then
turned loose again on the Streets. So if we hatch wild
ducks’ eggs under a tame duck, the ducklings “ will have
scarce left the egg-shell when they obey the inStin&s of
their race and take their flight.” So the colts from wild
horses, and mongrel young between wild and domesticated
horses, betray traces of their earlier memories.
On this M. Ribot says : “ Originally man had con¬
siderable trouble in taming the animals which are now
domesticated; and his work would have been in vain
had not heredity ” (memory) “ come to his aid. It may
be said that after man has modified a wild animal to his
will, there goes on in its progeny a silent conflict between
two heredities ” (memories), “ the one tending to fix the
acquired modifications and the other to preserve the
170
Intfinfi as Inherited Memory
primitive instincts. The latter often get the maStery, and
only after several generations is training sure of victory.
But we may see that in either case heredity ” (memory)
“ always asserts its rights.”
How marvellously is the above passage elucidated and
made to fit in with the results of our recognized experience,
by the simple substitution of the word “ memory ” for
“ heredity.”
“ Among the higher animals ”-to continue quoting -
“ which are possessed not only of inStind, but also of
intelligence, nothing is more common than to see mental
dispositions, which have evidently been acquired, so
fixed by heredity, that they are confounded with inStind,
so spontaneous and automatic do they become. Young
pointers have been known to point the first time they were
taken out, sometimes even better than dogs that had been
for a long time in training. The habit of saving life is
hereditary in breeds that have been brought up to it, as is
also the shepherd dog’s habit of moving around the flock
and guarding it.”
As soon as we have grasped the notion, that inStind is
only the epitome of past experience, revised, correded,
made perfed, and learnt by rote, we no longer find any
desire to separate “ inStind ” from “ mental dispositions,
which have evidently been acquired and fixed by heredity,”
for the simple reason that they are one and the same thing.
A few more examples are all that my limits will allow -
they abound on every side, and the difficulty lies only in
seleding-M. Ribot being to hand, I will venture to lay
him under Still further contributions.
On page 19 we find:
“ Knight has shown experimentally the truth of the
proverb, 4 A good hound is bred so he took every care
that when the pups were first taken into the field, they
should receive no guidance from older dogs; yet the very
first day, one of the pups Stood trembling with anxiety,
171
Life and Habit
having his eyes fixed and all his muscles strained at the
partridges which their parents had been trained to point . A
spaniel belonging to a breed which had been trained to
woodcock-shooting, knew perfe&ly well from the first
how to aft like an old dog, avoiding places where the
ground was frozen, and where it was, therefore, useless
to seek the game, as there was no scent. Finally, a young
polecat terrier was thrown into a State of great excitement
the first time he ever saw one of these animals, while a
spaniel remained perfe&ly calm.
“ In South America, according to Roulin, dogs belong¬
ing to a breed that has long been trained to the dangerous
chase of the peccary, when taken for the first time into the
woods, know the tactics to adopt quite as well as the old
dogs, and that without any instruction. Dogs of other
races, and unacquainted with the tactics, are killed at once,
no matter how Strong they may be. The American grey¬
hound, instead of leaping at the Stag, attacks him by the
belly, and throws him over, as his ancestors had been
trained to do in hunting the Indians.
“ Thus,1 then, heredity transmits modification no less
than natural inStin&s.”
Should not this rather be-“ thus, then, we see that not
only older and remoter habits, but habits which have been
practised for a comparatively small number of generations,
may be so deeply impressed on the individual that they
may dwell in his memory, surviving the so-called change
of personality which he undergoes in each successive
generation ” ?
“ There is, however, an important difference to be
noted: the heredity of inStinCts admits of no exceptions,
while in that of modifications there are many,”
It may be well doubted how far the heredity of inStinCts
admits of no exceptions; on the contrary, it would seem
probable that in many races geniuses have from time to
time arisen who remembered not only their paSt experi-
172
Inflinft as Inherited Memory
ences, as far as adion and habit went, but have been able
to rise in some degree above habit where they felt that
improvement was possible, and who carried such improve¬
ment into further pradice, by slightly modifying their
Strudure in the desired diredion on the next occasion that
they had a chance of dealing with protoplasm at all. It is
by these rare instances of intelledual genius (and I would
add of moral genius, if many of the inStinds and Strudures
of plants and animals did not show that they had got into
a region as far above morals -other than enlightened self-
intereSt-as they are above articulate consciousness of their
own aims in many other respeds)-it is by these instances
of either rare good luck or rare genius that many species
have been, in all probability, originated or modified.
Nevertheless inappreciable modification of inStind is, and
ought to be, the rule.
As to M. Ribot’s assertion, that to the heredity of modi¬
fications there are many exceptions, I readily agree with
it, and can only say that it is exadly what I should exped;
the lesson long since learnt by rote, and repeated in an
infinite number of generations, would be repeated unin-
telligently, and with little or no difference, save from a rare
accidental slip, the effed of which would be the culling
out of the bungler who was guilty of it, or from the Still
rarer appearance of an individual of real genius ; while the
newer lesson would be repeated both with more hesitation
and uncertainty, and with more intelligence; and this is
well conveyed in M. Ribot’s next sentence, for he says:
“ It is only when variations have been firmly rooted; when
having become organic, they constitute a second nature,
which supplants the first; when, like inStind, they have
assumed a mechanical charader, that they can be trans¬
mitted.”
How nearly M. Ribot comes to the opinion which I
myself venture to propound will appear from the follow¬
ing further quotation. After dealing with somnambulism,
173
Life and Habit
and saying, that if somnambulism were permanent and
innate, it would be impossible to distinguish it from
inStinft, he continues :
44 Hence it is less difficult than is generally supposed, to
conceive how intelligence may become inStinft; we might
even say that, leaving out of consideration the chara&er
of innateness, to which we will return, we have seen the
metamorphosis take place. There can then be no ground for
making inftinft a faculty apart , sui generis , a phenomenon so
mysterious, so Strange, that usually no other explanation
of it is offered but that of attributing it to the dire& a& of
the Deity. This whole mistake is the result of a defeftive
psychology which makes no account of the unconscious
a£Hvity of the soul.”
We are tempted to add: 44 and which also makes no
account of the bona fide chara&er of the continued per¬
sonality of successive generations.”
44 But we are so accustomed,” he continues, 44 to con¬
trast the charafters of inStinft with those of intelligence -
to say that inStind is innate, invariable, automatic, while
intelligence is something acquired, variable, spontaneous -
that it looks at first paradoxical to assert that inStinft and
intelligence are identical.
“It is said that inStind is innate. But if, on the one
hand, we bear in mind that many inStin&s are acquired,
and that, according to a theory hereafter to be explained ”
(which theory, I frankly confess, I never was able to get
hold of), 44 all infiincis are only hereditary habits ” (italics
mine) ; 44 if, on the other hand, we observe that intelligence
is in some sense held to be innate by all modern schools of
philosophy, which agree to reje& the theory of the tabula
rasa ” (if there is no tabula rasa , there is continued psycho¬
logical personality, or words have lo$t their meaning),
44 and to accept either latent ideas, or a priori forms of
thought ” (surely only a periphrasis for continued per¬
sonality and memory) 44 or pre-ordination of the nervous
174
Intfinft as Inherited Memory
system and of the organism; it will be seen that this character
of innateness does not constitute an absolute distinction between
inStinct and intelligence. i
“ It is true that intelligence is variable, but so also is
inStinft, as we have seen. In winter, the Rhine beaver
plasters his wall to windward ; once he was a builder, now
a burrower; once he lived in society, now he is solitary.
Intelligence itself can scarcely be more variable. . . .
InStinS may be modified, loSt, reawakened.
“ Although intelligence is, as a rule, conscious, it may
also become unconscious and automatic, without losing
its identity. Neither is inStindt always so blind, so me¬
chanical, as is supposed, for at times it is at fault. The
wasp that has faultily trimmed a leaf of its paper begins
again. The bee only gives the hexagonal form to its cell
after many attempts and alterations. It is difficult to
believe that the loftier inStindts ” (and surely, then, the
more recent inStindfcs) “ of the higher animals are not
accompanied by at leaSt a confused consciousness. There is,
therefore, no absolute diStindfion between inStindi and
intelligence; there is not a single characteristic which,
seriously considered, remains the exclusive property of
either. The contrast established between inStindtive adts
and intelledlual adts is, nevertheless, perfedtly true, but
only when we compare the extremes. As inStinct rises it
approaches intelligence -as intelligence descends it approaches
inStinCt.”
M. Ribot and myself (if I may venture to say so) are
continually on the verge of coming to an understanding,
when, at the very moment that we seem most likely to do
so, we fly, as it were, to opposite poles. Surely the
passage laSt quoted should be, “ As inStindt falls,” i.e,,
becomes less and less certain of its ground, “ it approaches
intelligence; as intelligence rises,” i.e., becomes more and
more convinced of the truth and expediency of its con-
vidfcions-“ it approaches inStindh”
175
Life and Habit
Enough has been said to show that the opinions which
I am advancing are not new, but I have looked in vain
for the conclusions which, it appears to me, M. Ribot
should draw from his fadls; throughout his interesting
book I find the fads which it would seem should have
guided him to the conclusions, and sometimes almost the
conclusions themselves, but he never seems quite to have
reached them, nor has he arranged his fads so that others
are likely to deduce them, unless they had already arrived
at them by another road. I cannot, however, sufficiendy
express my obligations to M. Ribot.
I cannot refrain from bringing forward a few more
instances of what I think muSt be considered by every
reader as hereditary memory. Sydney Smith writes :
“ Sir James Hall hatched some chickens in an oven.
Within a few minutes after the shell was broken, a spider
was turned loose before this very youthful brood; the
destroyer of flies had hardly proceeded more than a few
inches, before he was descried by one of these oven-born
chickens, and, at one peck of his bill, immediately de¬
voured. This certainly was not imitation. A female goat
very near delivery died; Galen cut out the young kid,
and placed before it a bundle of hay, a bunch of fruit, and
a pan of milk; the young kid smelt to them all very
attentively, and then began to lap the milk. This was not
imitation. And what is commonly and rightly called
inStin<T, cannot be explained away, under the notion of its
being imitation ” (Lecture xvii, on Moral Philosophy).
It cannot, indeed, be explained away under the notion
of its being imitation, but I think it may well be so under
that of its being memory.
Again, a little further on in the same le&ure, as that
above quoted from, we find:
“Ants and beavers lay up magazines. Where do they
get their knowledge that it will not be so easy to colled:
food in rainy weather, as it is in summer? Men and
176
Inftinff as Inherited Memory
women know these things, because their grandpapas and
grandmammas have told them so. Ants hatched from
the egg artificially, or birds hatched in this manner, have
all this knowledge by intuition, without the smallest
communication with any of their relations. Now observe
what the solitary wasp does ; she digs several holes in the
sand, in each of which she deposits an egg, though she
certainly knows not (?) that an animal is deposited in that
egg, and Still less that this animal muSt be nourished with
other animals. She colle&s a few green flies, rolls them up
neatly in several parcels (like Bologna sausages), and
Stuffs one parcel into each hole where an egg is deposited.
When the wasp worm is hatched, it finds a Store of pro¬
vision ready made ; and what is moSt curious, the quantity
allotted to each is exa&ly sufficient to support it, till it
attains the period of wasphood, and can provide for itself.
This inStinft of the parent wasp is the more remarkable
as it does not feed upon flesh itself. Here the little creature
has never seen its parent; for by the time it is born, the
parent is always eaten by sparrows; and yet, without the
slightest education, or previous experience, it does every¬
thing that the parent did before it. Now the obje&ors
to the do&rine of inStinfl may say what they please, but
young tailors have no intuitive method of making panta¬
loons; a new-born mercer cannot measure diaper; nature
teaches a cook’s daughter nothing about sippets. All these
things require with us seven years’ apprenticeship; but
inse&s are like Moliere’s persons of quality- they know
everything (as Moliere says), without having learnt any¬
thing. ‘ Les gens de qualite savent tout, sans avoir rien
appris.’ ”
How completely all difficulty vanishes from the fa&s
so pleasantly told in this passage when we bear in mind
the true nature of personal identity, the ordinary working
of memory, and the vanishing tendency of consciousness
concerning what we know exceedingly well.
177
N
Life and Habit
My la$t instance I take from M. Ribot, who writes:
“ Gratiolet, in his Anatom ie Comparee du Sj ft erne Nerveux ,
States that an old piece of wolf’s skin, with the hair all
worn away, when set before a little dog, threw the animal
into convulsions of fear by the slight scent attaching to it.
The dog had never seen a wolf, and we can only explain
this alarm by the hereditary transmission of certain senti¬
ments, coupled with a certain perception of the sense of
smell ” ( Heredity , p. 43).
I should prefer to say “ we can only explain the alarm
by supposing that the smell of the wolf’s skin ’’-the
sense of smell being as we all know, more powerful to
recall the ideas that have been associated with it than any
other sense- “ brought up the ideas with which it had
been associated in the dog’s mind during many previous
existences ”-he on smelling the wolf’s skin remembering
all about wolves perfe&ly well.
178
CHAPTER TWELVE! INSTINCTS OF NEUTER INSECTS
IN THIS CHAPTER I WILL CONSIDER, AS
briefly as possible, the Strongest argument that I have
been able to discover against the supposition that
inStindl is chiefly due to habit. I have said “ the Strong¬
est argument”; I should have said, the only argument
that Struck me as offering on the face of it serious diffi¬
culties.
Turning, then, to Mr. Darwin’s chapter on inStinft
( Origin of Species, p. 205, ed. 1876), we find substantially
much the same views as those taken at a later date by
M. Ribot, and referred to in the preceding chapter. Mr.
Darwin writes :
“ An a&ion, which we ourselves require experience to
enable us to perform, when performed by an animal, more
especially a very young one, without experience, and when
performed by many animals in the same way without their
knowing for what purpose it is performed, is usually said
to be inStinftive.”
The above should Stri&ly be, “ without their being
conscious of their own knowledge concerning the purpose
for which they aft as they do ”; and though some may
say that the two phrases come to the same thing, I think
there is an important difference, as what I propose dis¬
tinguishes ignorance from over-familiarity, both which
States are alike unself-conscious, though with widely
different results.
“ But I could show,” continues Mr. Darwin, “ that
none of these chara&ers are universal. A little dose of
judgement or reason, as Pierre Huber expresses it, often
comes into play even with animals low in the scale of
nature.
“ Frederick Cuvier and several of the older meta¬
physicians have compared inStindl with habit.”
I would go further and would say, that inStindt, in the
great majority of cases, is habit pure and simple, contra&ed
originally by some one or more individuals; pra&ised,
179
Life and Habit
probably, in a consciously intelligent manner during many
successive lives, until the habit has acquired the highest
perfedfion which the circumstances admitted ; and, finally,
so deeply impressed upon the memory as to survive that
efFacement of minor impressions which generally takes
place in every fresh life- wave or generation.
I would say, that unless the identity of offspring with
their parents be so far admitted that the children be
allowed to remember the deeper impressions engraved on
the minds of those who begot them, it is little less than
trifling to talk, as so many writers do, about inherited
habit, or the experience of the race, or, indeed, accumu¬
lated variations of inStindfs.
When an inStindf is not habit, as resulting from memory
pure and simple, it is habit modified by some treatment,
generally in the youth or embryonic Stages of the indi¬
vidual, which disturbs his memory, and drives him on to
some unusual course, inasmuch as he cannot recognize
and remember his usual one by reason of the change now
made in it. Habits and inStindfs, again, may be modified
by any important change in the condition of the parents,
which will then both affedt the parent’s sense of his own
identity, and also create more or less fault, or dislocation
of memory, in the offspring immediately behind the
memory of his laSt life. Change of food may at times be
sufficient to create a specific modification- that is to say,
to affedt all the individuals whose food is so changed, in
one and the same way -whether as regards Strudiure or
habit. Thus we see that certain changes in food (and
domicile), from those with which its ancestors have been
familiar, will disturb the memory of a queen bee’s egg,
and set it at such disadvantage as to make it make itself
into a neuter bee ; but yet we find that the larva thus partly
aborted may have its memories restored to it, if not
already too much disturbed, and may thus return to its
condition as a queen bee, if it only again be restored to
180
Inftintfs of Neuter Insetts
the food and domicile, which its past memories can alone
remember.
So we see that opium, tobacco, alcohol, hasheesh, and
tea produce certain effe&s upon our own Stru&ure and
inStin&s. But though capable of modification, and of
specific modification, which may in time become inherited,
and hence resolve itself into a true inStind or settled ques¬
tion, yet I maintain that the main bulk of the inStind
(whether as affeding Strudure or habits of life) will be
derived from memory pure and simple; the individual
growing up in the shape he does, and liking to do this or
that when he is grown up, simply from recolledion of
what he did laSt time, and of what on the whole suited him.
For it muSt be remembered that a drug which should
destroy some one part at an early embryonic Stage, and
thus prevent it from development, would prevent the
creature from recognizing the surroundings which affeded
that part when he was JaSt alive and unmutilated, as being
the same as his present surroundings. He would be
puzzled, for he would be viewing the position from a
different Standpoint. If any important item in a number
of associated ideas disappears, the plot fails; and a great
internal change is an exceedingly important item. Life
and things to a creature so treated at an early embryonic
Stage would not be life and things as he last remembered
them; hence he would not be able to do the same now
as he did then; that is to say, he would vary both in
Strudure and inStind; but if the creature were tolerably
uniform to Start with, and were treated in a tolerably
uniform way, we might exped the effed produced to be
much the same in all ordinary cases.
We see, also, that any important change in treatment
and surroundings, if not sufficient to kill, would and does
tend to produce not only variability but Sterility, as part
of the same Story and for the same reason -namely, default
of memory; this default will be of every degree of
181
Life and Habit
intensity, from total failure, to a slight disturbance of
memory as affe&ing some one particular organ only ; that
is to say, from total Sterility, to a slight variation in an
unimportant part. So that even the slightest conceivable
variations should be referred to changed conditions , external or
internal , and to their disturbing effects upon the memory ; and
Sterility, without any apparent disease of the reproductive
system, may be referred not so much to special delicacy or
susceptibility of the organs of reproduction as to inability
on the part of the creature to know where it is, and to
recognize itself as the same creature which it has been
accustomed to reproduce.
Mr. Darwin thinks that the comparison of habit with
inStinCt gives “ an accurate notion of the frame of mind
under which an inStinCtive aCtion is performed, but not,”
he thinks, “ of its origin.”
“ How unconsciously,” Mr. Darwin continues, “ many
habitual a&ions are performed, indeed not rarely in direCt
opposition to our conscious will! Yet they may be modi¬
fied by the will or by reason. Habits easily become
associated with other habits, with certain periods of time
and States of body. When once acquired, they often
remain constant throughout life. Several other points of
resemblance between inStin&s and habits could be pointed
out. As in repeating a well-known song, so in inStin&s,
one aCHon follows another by a sort of rhythm. If a
person be interrupted in a song or in repeating anything
by rote, he is generally forced to go back to recover the
habitual train of thought; so P. Huber found it was with a
caterpillar, which makes a very complicated hammock.
For if he took a caterpillar which had completed its
hammock up to, say, the sixth Stage of conStru&ion, and
put it into a hammock completed up only to the third
Stage, the caterpillar simply re-performed the fourth, fifth,
and sixth Stages of conStru&ion. If, however, a caterpillar
was taken out of a hammock made up, for instance, to
182
Inftinrts of Neuter Inserts
the third Stage, and was put into one finished up to the
sixth Stage, so that much of its work was already done for
it, far from deriving any benefit from this, it was much
embarrassed, and in order to complete its hammock,
seemed forced to Start from the third Stage, where it had
left off, and thus tried to complete the already finished
work.”
I see I muSt have unconsciously taken my first chapter
from this passage, but it is immaterial. I owe Mr. Darwin
much more than this. I owe it to him that I believe in
evolution at all. I owe him for almost all the fafts which
have led me to differ from him, and which I feel absolutely
safe in taking for granted, if he has advanced them.
Nevertheless, I believe that the conclusion arrived at in the
passage which I will next quote is a mistaken one, and that
not a little only, but fundamentally. I shall therefore
venture to dispute it.
The passage runs :
“ If we suppose any habitual a&ion to become inherited
-and it can be shown that this does sometimes happen -
then the resemblance between what originally was a habit
and an inStindt becomes so close as not to be distinguished.
. . . But it ivould be a serious error to suppose that the greater
number of intfintfs have been acquired by habit in one generation ,
and then transmitted by inheritance to succeeding generations .
It can be clearly shown that the moH wonderful inBinfts ivith
which we are acquainted -namely, those of the hive-bee and of
many ants , could not possibly have been acquired by habit ”
( Origin of Species , p. 206, ed. 1876.) The italics in this
passage are mine.
No difficulty is opposed to my view (as I call it, for the
sake of brevity) by such an inStin<ff as that of ants to milk
aphids. Such inStin&s may be supposed to have been
acquired in much the same way as the inStinft of a farmer
to keep a cow. Accidental discovery of the fa<ff that the
excretion was good, with “ a little dose of judgement or
183
Life and Habit
reason ” from time to time appearing in an exceptionally
clever ant, and by him communicated to his fellows, till
the habit was so confirmed as to be capable of transmission
in full unself-consciousness (if indeed the inStind be unself¬
conscious in this case), would, I think, explain this as
readily as the slow and gradual accumulations of inStinds
which had never passed through the intelligent and self-
conscious Stage, but had always prompted adion without
any idea of a why or a wherefore on the part of the creature
itself.
For it muSt be remembered, as I am afraid I have
already perhaps too often said, that even when we have
got a slight variation of inStind, due to some cause which
we know nothing about, but which I will not even for a
moment call “ spontaneous a word that should be cut
out of every didionary, or in some way branded as perhaps
the moSt misleading in the language-we cannot see how
it comes to be repeated in successive generations, so as
to be capable of being aded upon by “ natural seledion ”
and accumulated, unless it be also capable of being remem¬
bered by the offspring of the varying creature. It may be
answered that we cannot know anything about this, but
that “ like father like son ” is an ultimate fad: in nature.
I can only answer that I never observe any “ like father
like son ” without the son’s both having had every oppor¬
tunity of remembering, and showing every symptom of
having remembered, in which case I decline to go further
than memory (whatever memory may be) as the cause of
the phenomenon.
But besides inheritance, teaching mu$t be admitted as a
means of at any rate modifying an inStind. We observe
this in our own case; and we know that animals have
great powers of communicating their ideas to one another,
though their manner of doing this is as incomprehensible
by us as a plant’s knowledge of chemistry, or the manner
in which an amoeba makes its test, or a spider its web,
184
Inftinffs of Neuter Insets
without having gone through a long course of mathe¬
matics. I think most readers will allow that our early
training and the theological systems of the last eighteen
hundred years are likely to have made us involuntarily
under-estimate the powers of animals low in the scale of
life, both as regards intelligence and the power of com¬
municating their ideas to one another; but even now we
admit that ants have great powers in this respefh
A habit, however, which is taught to the young of each
successive generation, by older members of the com¬
munity who have themselves received it by inStru&ion,.
should surely rank as an inherited habit, and be considered
as due to memory, though personal teaching be necessary
to complete the inheritance.
An obje&ion suggests itself that if such a habit as the
flight of birds, which seems to require a little personal
supervision and inStru&ion before it is acquired perfectly,
were really due to memory, the need of inStru&ion would
after a time cease, inasmuch as the creature would re¬
member its paSt method of procedure, and would thus
come to need no more teaching. The answer lies in the
faff, that if a creature gets to depend upon teaching and
personal help for any matter, its memory will make it look
for such help on each repetition of the aftion; so we see
that no man’s memory will exert itself much until he is
thrown upon memory as his only resource. We may read
a page of a book a hundred times, but we do not remember
it by heart unless we have either cultivated our powders of
learning to repeat, or have taken pains to learn this par¬
ticular page.
And whether we read from a book, or whether we
repeat by heart, the repetition is Still due to memory;
only in the one case the memory is exerted to recall some¬
thing which one saw only half a second ago, and in the
other, to recall something not seen for a much longer
period. So I imagine an inStinff or habit may be called
185
Life and Habit
an inherited habit, and assigned to memory, even though
the memory dates, not from the performance of the adion
by the learner when he was adually part of the personality
of the teacher, but rather from a performance witnessed
by, or explained by the teacher to, the pupil at a period
subsequent to birth. In either case the habit is inherited
in the sense of being acquired in one generation, and
transmitted with such modifications as genius and experi¬
ence may have suggested.
Mr. Darwin would probably admit this without hesita¬
tion; when, therefore, he says that certain inStinds could
not possibly have been acquired by habit, he must mean
that they could not, under the circumstances, have been
remembered by the pupil in the person of the teacher, and
that it would be a serious error to suppose that the greater
number of inStinds can be thus remembered. To which
I assent readily so far as that it is difficult (though not
impossible) to see how some of the moSt wonderful
inStinds of neuter ants and bees can be due to the fad
that the neuter ant or bee was ever in part, or in some
respeds, another neuter ant or bee in a previous genera¬
tion. At the same time I maintain that this does not
militate against the supposition that both inStind and
strudure are in the main due to memory. For the power
of receiving any communication, and ading on it, is due
to memory; and the neuter ant or bee may have received
its lesson from another neuter ant or bee, who had it from
another and modified it; and so back and back, till the
foundation of the habit is reached, and is found to present
little more than the faintest family likeness to its more
complex descendant. Surely Mr. Darwin cannot mean
that it can be shown that the wonderful inStinds of neuter
ants and bees cannot have been acquired either, as above,
by inStrudion, or by some not immediately obvious form
of inherited transmission, but that they must be due to the
fad that the ant or bee is, as it were, such and such a
186
InHintts of Neuter Inserts
machine, of which if you touch such and such a spring,
you will get a corresponding a&ion. If he does, he will
find, so far as I can see, no escape from a position very
similar to the one which I put into the mouth of the first
of the two professors, who dealt with the question of
machinery in my earlier work, Erewhon , and which I have
since found that my great namesake made fun of in the
following lines :
“ . . . They now begun
To spur their living engines on.
For as whipped tops and bandy’d balls,
The learned hold are animals :
So horses they affirm to be
Mere engines made by geometry.
And were invented first from engines
As Indian Britons were from Penguins.”
Hudibras , Canto ii, line 53, etc.
I can see, then, no difficulty in the development of the
ordinary so-called inStin&s, whether of ants or bees, or the
cuckoo, or any other animal, on the supposition that they
were, for the most part, intelligently acquired with more
or less labour, as the case may be, in much the same way
as we see any art or science now in process of acquisition
among ourselves, but were ultimately remembered by
offspring, or communicated to it. When the limits of the
race’s capacity had been attained (and most races seem to
have their limits, unsatisfa&ory though the expression
may very fairly be considered), or when the creature had
got into a condition, so to speak, of equilibrium with its
surroundings, there would be no new development of
inStin&s, and the old ones would cease to be improved,
inasmuch as there would be no more reasoning or differ¬
ence of opinion concerning them. The race, therefore, or
species would remain in tfatu quo till either domesticated,
and so brought into contact with new ideas and placed in
187
Life and Habit
changed conditions, or put under such pressure, in a wild
State, as should force it to further invention, or extinguish
it if incapable of rising to the occasion. That inStind and
Stru&ure may be acquired by pradice in one or more
generations, and remembered in succeeding ones, is
admitted by Mr. Darwin, for he allows ( Origin of Species ,
p. 206) that habitual adion does sometimes become in¬
herited, and, though he does not seem to conceive of such
adion as due to memory, yet it is inconceivable how it is
inherited, if not as the result of memory.
It muSt be admitted, however, that when we come to
consider the Strudures as well as the inStinds of some of
the neuter inseds, our difficulties seem greatly increased.
The neuter hive-bees have a cavity in their thighs in which
to keep the wax, which it is their business to colled; but
the drones and queen, which alone bear offspring, colled
no wax, and therefore neither want, nor have, any such
cavity. The neuter bees are also, if I understand rightly,
furnished with a proboscis or trunk for extrading honey
from flowers, whereas the fertile bees, who gather no
honey, have no such proboscis. Imagine, if the reader
will, that the neuter bees differ Still more widely from the
fertile ones; how, then, can they in any sense be said to
derive organs from their parents, which not one of their
parents for millions of generations has ever had? How,
again, can it be supposed that they transmit these organs
to the future neuter members of the community when they
are perfedly Sterile?
One can understand that the young neuter bee might be
taught to make a hexagonal cell (though I have not found
that any one has seen the lesson being given) inasmuch as
it does not make the cell till after birth, and till after it has
seen other neuter bees who might tell it much in, qua us,
a very little time; but we can hardly understand its grow¬
ing a proboscis before it could possibly want it, or pre¬
paring a cavity in its thigh, to have it ready to put wax
188
Inftinfis of Neuter Insefts
into, when none of its predecessors had ever done so, by
supposing oral communication, during the larvahood.
Nevertheless, it must not be forgotten that bees seem to
know secrets about reprodu&ion, which utterly baffle
ourselves; for example, the queen bee appears to know
how to deposit male or female eggs at will; and this is a
matter of almost inconceivable sociological importance,
denoting a corresponding amount of sociological and
physiological knowledge generally. It should not, then,
surprise us if the race should possess other secrets, whose
working we are unable to follow, or even deted at all.
Sydney Smith, indeed, writes :
“ The warmest admirers of honey, and the greatest
friends to bees, will never, I presume, contend that the
young swarm, who begin making honey three or four
months after they are born, and immediately conStruft
these mathematical cells, should have gained their geo¬
metrical knowledge as we gain ours, and in three months’
time outstrip Mr. Maclaurin in mathematics as much as
they did in making honey. It would take a senior wrangler
at Cambridge ten hours a day for three years together to
know enough mathematics for the calculation of these
problems, with which not only every queen bee, but every
undergraduate grub, is acquainted the moment it is born.”
This laSt Statement may be a little too Strong, but it will
at once occur to the reader, that as we know the bees do
surpass Mr. Maclaurin in the power of making honey,
they may also surpass him in capacity for those branches
of mathematics with which it has been their business to
be conversant during many millions of years, and also in
knowledge of physiology and psychology in so far as
the knowledge bears upon the interests of their own
community.
We know that the larva which develops into a neuter
bee, and that again which in time becomes a queen bee,
are the same kind of larva to Start with; and that if you
189
Life and Habit
give one of these larvae the food and treatment which
all its foremothers have been accustomed to, it will turn
out with all the Strudure and inStinds of its foremothers -
and that it only fails to do this because it has been fed, and
otherwise treated, in such a manner as not one of its fore¬
mothers was ever yet fed or treated. So far, this is exadly
what we should exped, on the view that Strudure and
inStind are alike mainly due to memory, or to medicined
memory. Give the larva a fair chance of knowing where
it is, and it shows that it remembers by doing exadly what
it did before. Give it a different kind of food and house,
and it cannot be expeded to be anything else than puzzled.
It remembers a great deal. It comes out a bee, and
nothing but a bee; but it is an aborted bee; it is, in fad,
mutilated before birth instead of after- with inStind, as
well as growth, correlated to its abortion, as we see
happens frequently in the case of animals a good deal
higher than bees that have been mutilated at a Stage much
later than that at which the abortion of neuter bees
commences.
The larvae being similar to Start with, and being simi¬
larly mutilated by change of food and dwelling,
will naturally exhibit much similarity of inStind and
Stru&ure on arriving at maturity. When driven from
their usual course, they must take some new course or die.
There is nothing Strange in the fad that similar beings
puzzled similarly should take a similar line of adion. I
grant, however, that it is hard to see how change of food
and treatment can puzzle an insed into such “ complex
growth ” as that it should make a cavity in its thigh, grow
an invaluable proboscis, and betray a pradical knowledge
of difficult mathematical problems.
But it muSt be remembered that the memory of having
been queen bees and drones -which is all that according
to my supposition the larvae can remember (on a first view
of the case), in their own proper persons -would never-
190
Intfintts of Neuter Inserts
theless carry with it a potential recollection of all the social
arrangements of the hive. They would thus potentially
remember that the mass of the bees were always neuter
bees; they would remember potentially the habits of
these bees, so far as drones and queens know anything
about them; and this may be supposed to be a very
thorough acquaintance; in like manner, and with the
same limitation, they would know from the very moment
that they left the queen’s body that neuter bees had a
proboscis to gather honey with, and cavities in their thighs
to put wax into, and that cells were to be made with certain
angles -for surely it is not crediting the queen with more
knowledge than she is likely to possess, if we suppose her
to have a fair acquaintance with the phenomena of wax
and cells generally, even though she does not make any;
they would know (while Still larvae- and earlier) the kind
of cells into which neuter bees were commonly put, and
the kind of treatment they commonly received -they
might therefore, as eggs -immediately on finding their
recolleClion driven from its usual course, so that they
muSt either find some other course, or die -know that they
were being treated as neuter bees are treated, and that
they were expeCled to develop into neuter bees accordingly;
they might know all this, and a great deal more into the
bargain, inasmuch as even before being adhially deposited
as eggs they would know and remember potentially, but
unconsciously, all that their parents knew and remembered
intensely. Is it, then, astonishing that they should adapt
themselves so readily to the position which they know it is
for the social welfare of the community, and hence of
themselves, that they should occupy, and that they should
know that they will want a cavity in their thighs and a
proboscis, and hence make such implements out of their
protoplasm as readily as they make their wings ?
I admit that, under normal treatment, none of the above-
mentioned potential memories would be kindled into such
191
Life and Habit
a State of a£tivity that aftion would follow upon them,
until the creature had attained a more or less similar
condition to that in which its parent was when these
memories were a&ive within its mind : but the essence of
the matter is, that these larvae have been treated abnormally,
so that if they do not die, there is nothing for it but that
they muSt vary. One cannot argue from the normal to
the abnormal. It would not, then, be Strange if the poten¬
tial memories should (owing to the margin for premature
or tardy development which association admits) serve to
give the puzzled larvae a hint as to the course which they
had better take, or that, at any rate, it should gready
supplement the inStru&ion of the “ nurse ” bees them¬
selves by rendering the larvae so, as it were, inflammable
on this point, that a spark should set them in a blaze.
Abortion is generally premature. Thus the scars referred
to in the last chapter but one as having appeared on the
children of men who had been correspondingly wounded,
should not, under normal circumstances, have appeared
in the offspring till the children had got fairly near the
same condition generally as that in which their fathers
were when they were wounded, and even then, normally,
there should have been an instrument to wound them,
much as their fathers had been wounded. Association,
however, does not always Stick to the letter of its bond.
The line, again, might certainly be taken that the
difference in Stru&ure and inStin&s between neuter and
fertile bees is due to the specific effedls of certain food and
treatment; yet, though one would be sorry to set limits
to the convertibility of food and genius, it seems hard to
believe that there can be any untutored food which should
teach a bee to make a hexagonal cell as soon as it was born,
or which, before it was born, should teach it to prepare
such Stru&ures as it would require in after life. If, then,
food be considered as a direct agent in causing the Struc¬
tures and instinct, and not an indirect agent, merely
192
Inftintfs of Neuter Inserts
indicating to the larva itself that it is to make itself after
the fashion of neuter bees, then we should bear in mind
that, at any rate, it has been leavened and prepared in the
Stomachs of those neuter bees into which the larva is now
expeded to develop itself, and may thus have in it more
true germinative matter- gemmules, in fad- than is com¬
monly supposed. Food, when sufficiendy assimilated
(the whole question turning upon what is “ sufficiendy ”),
becomes Stored with all the experience and memories of
the assimilating creature; corn becomes hen, and knows
nothing but hen, when hen has eaten it. We know also
that the neuter working-bees injed matter into the cell
after the larva has been produced; nor would it seem
harsh to suppose that though devoid of a reprodudive
system like that of their parents, they may yet be pradically
not so neuter as is commonlv believed. One cannot sav
what gemmules of thigh and proboscis may not have got
into the neutral bees’ Stomachs, if they assimilate their
food sufficiently, and thus into the larva.
Mr. Darwin will be the first to admit that though a
creature have no reprodudive system, in any ordinary
sense of the word, yet every unit or cell of its body may
throw off gemmules which may be free to move over
every part of the whole organism, and which “ natural
seledion ” might in time cause to Stray into food which
had been sufficiently prepared in the Stomachs of the
neuter bees.
I cannot say, then, precisely in what way, but I can see
no reason for doubting that in some of the ways suggested
above, or in some combination of them, the phenomena
of the inStinds of neuter ants and bees can be brought into
the same category as the inStinds and Strudure of fertile
animals. At any rate, I see the great fad that when treated
as thev have been accustomed to be treated, these neuters
ad as though they remembered, and accordingly become
queen bees ; and that they only depart from their ancestral
193 o
Life and Habit
course on being treated in such fashion as their ancestors
can never have remembered; also, that when they have
been thrown off their accustomed line of thought and
adlion, they only take that of their nurses, who have been
about them from the moment of their being deposited as
eggs by the queen bee, who have fed them from their
own bodies, and between whom and them there may have
been all manner of physical and mental communication,
of which we know no more than we do of the power
which enables a bee to find its way home after infinite
shifting and turning among flowers, which no human
powers could systematize so as to avoid confusion.
Or take it thus : We know that mutilation at an early age
produces an effedt upon the Stru&ure and inStindls of cattle,
sheep, and horses ; and it might be presumed that if feasible
at an earlier age, it would produce a Still more marked
effedh We observe that the effedt produced is uniform, or
nearly so. Suppose mutilation to produce a little more
effeft than it does, as we might easily do, if cattle, sheep,
and horses had been for ages accustomed to a mutilated
class living among them, which class had been always a
caSte apart, and had fed the young neuters from their own
bodies, from an early embryonic Stage onwards; would
any one in this case dream of advancing the Strudhire and
inStindls of this mutilated class againSt the dodtrine that in-
Stindf is inherited habit? Or, if inclined to do this, would
he not at once refrain, on remembering that the process of
mutilation might be arrested, and the embryo be developed
into an entire animal by simply treating it in the way to
which all its ancestors had been accustomed? Surely he
would not allow the difficulty (which I muSt admit in some
measure to remain) to outweigh the evidence derivable
from these very neuter insedts themselves, as well as from
such a vast number of other sources -all pointing in the
diredfion of inStindl as inherited habit.
Or take, again, the constitution of the Church of Eng-
194
Inftinfls of Neuter Inserts
land. The bishops are the spiritual queens, the clergy are
the neuter workers. They differ widely in stru&ure (for
dress muSt be considered as a part of Strudure), in the
delicacy of the food they eat and the kind of house they
inhabit, and also in many of their inStinds, from the
bishops, who are their spiritual parents. Not only this,
but there are two diStind kinds of neuter workers -prieSts
and deacons; and of the former there are deans, arch¬
deacons, prebends, canons, rural deans, vicars, redors,
curates, yet all spiritually sterile. In spite of this Sterility,
however, is there anyone who will maintain that the
widely differing Strudures and inStinds of these caStes are
not due to inherited spiritual habit? Still less will he be
inclined to do so when he refleds that by such slight
modification of treatment as consecration and endowment
any one of them can be rendered spiritually fertile.
Lastly, it muSt be remembered that the inStind to make
cells and honey is one which has no very great hold upon
its possessors. Bees can make cells and honey, nor do
they seem to have any very violent objedion to doing so;
but it is quite clear that there is nothing in their Strudure
and inStinds which urges them on to do these things for
the mere love of doing them, as a hen is urged to sit upon
a chalk Stone, concerning which she probably is at heart
utterly sceptical, rather than not sit at all. There is no
honey and cell-making inStind so Strong as the inStind to
eat, if they are hungry, or to grow wings, and make them¬
selves into bees at all. Like ourselves, so long as they can
get plenty to eat and drink, they will do no work. Under
these circumstances, not one drop of honey nor one par¬
ticle of wax will they colled, except, I presume, to make
cells for the rearing of their young.
Sydney Smith writes :
“ The most curious instance of a change of inStind is
recorded by Darwin. The bees carried over to Barbados
and the Western Isles ceased to lay up any honey after
*95
Life and Habit
the first year, as they found it not useful to them. They
found the weather so fine, and materials for making honey
so plentiful, that they quitted their grave, prudent, and
mercantile charader, became exceedingly profligate and
debauched, ate up their capital, resolved to work no more,
and amused themselves by flying about the sugar-houses
and Stinging the blacks ” (Ledure xvii, on Moral Philo-
sophy). The ease, then, with which the honey-gathering
and cell-making habits are relinquished, would seem to
point Strongly in the direction of their acquisition at a
comparatively late period of development.
I have dealt with bees only, and not with ants, which
would perhaps seem to present greater difficulty, inasmuch
as in some families of these there are two, or even three,
caStes of neuters with well-marked and wide differences of
Stru&ure and inStind; but I think the reader will agree
with me that the ants are sufficiently covered by the bees,
and that enough, therefore, has been said already. Mr.
Darwin supposes that these modifications of Strudure and
inStind have been efieded by the accumulation of numer¬
ous slight, profitable, spontaneous variations on the part
of the fertile parents, which has caused them (so, at least,
I understand him) to lay this or that particular kind of egg,
which should develop into a kind of bee or ant, with this
or that particular inStind, which inStind is merely a co¬
ordination with Strudure, and in no way attributable to
use or habit in preceding generations.
Even so, one cannot see that the habit of laying this
particular kind of egg might not be due to use and memory
in previous generations on the part of the fertile parents,
for “ the numerous slight spontaneous variations,” on
which “ natural seledion 99 is to work, muSt have had
some cause than which none more reasonable than sense
of need and experience presents itself; and there seems
hardly any limit to what long-continued faith and desire,
aided by intelligence, may be able to effed. But if sense
196
lnttinffs of Neuter Inserts
of need and experience are denied, I see no escape from
the view that machines are new species of life.
Mr. Darwin concludes : “ I am surprised that no one
has hitherto advanced this demonstrative case of neuter
inse&s against the well-known do&rine of inherited habit
as advanced by Lamarck ” (( Origin of Species , p. 233, ed.
1876).
After reading this, one feels as though there was no
more to be said. The well-known do&rine of inherited
habit, as advanced by Lamarck, has indeed been long
since so thoroughly exploded, that it is not worth while
to go into an explanation of what it was, or to refute it in
detail. Here, however, is an argument againSt it, which
is so much better than anything advanced yet, that one
is surprised it has never been made use of; so we will
juSt advance it, as it were, to slay the slain, and pass on.
Such, at least, is the effeft which the paragraph above
quoted produced upon myself, and would, I think, pro¬
duce on the great majority of readers. When driven by
the exigencies of my own position to examine the value
of the demonstration more closely, I conclude, either that
I have utterly failed to grasp Mr. Darwin’s meaning, or
that I have no less completely mistaken the value and
bearing of the fa&s I have myself advanced in these few
last pages. Failing this, my surprise is, not that “ no one
has hitherto advanced ” the inStin&s of neuter inse&s as a
demonstrative case againSt the do&rine of inherited habit,
but rather that Mr. Darwin should have thought the case
demonstrative ; or again, when I remember that the neuter
working bee is only an aborted queen, and may be turned
back again into a queen, by giving it such treatment as it
can alone be expected to remember -then I am surprised
that the Stru&ure and inStin&s of neuter bees has never (if
never) been brought forward in support of the do&rine
of inherited habit as advanced by Lamarck, and againSt
any theory which would rob such inStin&s of their founda-
*97
Life and Habit
tion in intelligence, and of their connexion with experi¬
ence and memory.
As for the inStinCi: to mutilate, that is as easily accounted
for as any other inherited habit, whether of man to mutilate
cattle, or of ants to make slaves, or of birds to make their
neSts. I can see no way of accounting for the existence of
any one of these inStinCte, except on the supposition that
they have arisen gradually, through perceptions of power
and need on the part of the animal which exhibits them-
these two perceptions advancing hand in hand from gen¬
eration to generation, and being accumulated in time and
in the common course of nature.
I have already sufficiently guarded against being sup¬
posed to maintain that very long before an inStinCt or
Structure was developed, the creature descried it in the
far future, and made towards it. We do not observe this
to be the manner of human progress. Our mechanical
inventions, which, as I ventured to say in Erervhon ,
through the mouth of the second professor, are really
nothing but extra-corporaneous limbs -a wooden leg
being nothing but a bad kind of flesh leg, and a flesh leg
being only a much better kind of wooden leg than any
creature could be expeCted to manufacture introspeCUvely
and consciously- our mechanical inventions have almost
invariably grown up from small beginnings, and without
any very distant foresight on the part of the inventors.
When Watt perfected the Steam engine, he did not, it
seems, foresee the locomotive, much less would any one
expeCt a savage to invent a Steam engine. A child breathes
automatically, because it has learnt to breathe little by
little, and has now breathed for an incalculable length of
time ; but it cannot open oySters at all, nor even conceive
the idea of opening oySters for two or three years after
it is born, for the simple reason that this lesson is one
which it is only beginning to learn. All I maintain is,
that, give a child as many generations of praCfice in
198
Inftinffs of Neuter Insefis
opening oysters as it has had in breathing or sucking, and
it would on being born, turn to the oySter-knife no less
naturally than to the breaSt. We observe that among cer¬
tain families of men there has been a tendency to vary in
the direction of the use and development of machinery;
and that in a certain Still smaller number of families, there
seems to be an almost infinitely great capacity for varying
and inventing still further, whether socially or mechanic¬
ally; while other families, and perhaps the greater
number, reach a certain point and Stop; but we also
observe that not even the most inventive races ever see
very far ahead. I suppose the progress of plants and
animals to be exadily analogous to this.
Mr. Darwin has always maintained that the effedts of
use and disuse are highly important in the development
of Strudhire, and if, as he has said, habits are sometimes
inherited- then they should sometimes be important also
in the development of inStindl, or habit. But what does
the development of an inStindi or Strudhire, or, indeed, any
effedl upon the organism produced by “ use and disuse,”
imply? It implies an effedl produced by a desire to do
something for which the organism was not originally well
adapted or sufficient, but for which it has come to be
sufficient in consequence of the desire. The wish has
been father to the power; but this again opens up the
whole theory of Lamarck, that the development of organs
has been due to the wants or desires of the animal in which
the organ appears. So far as I can see, I am insisting on
little more than this.
Once grant that a blacksmith’s arm grows thicker
through hammering iron, and you have an organ modified
in accordance with a need or wish. Let the desire and the
pradfice be remembered, and go on for long enough, and
the slight alterations of the organ will be accumulated,
until they are checked either by the creature’s having
got all that he cares about making serious further effort
199
/
Life and Habit
to obtain, or until his wants prove inconvenient to other
creatures that are Stronger than he, and he is hence
brought to a Standstill. Use and disuse, then, with me,
and, as I gather also, with Lamarck, are the keys to the
position, coupled, of course, with continued personality
and memory. No sudden and Striking changes would be
effefted, except that occasionally a blunder might prove a
happy accident, as happens not unfrequently with painters,
musicians, chemists, and inventors at the present day;
or sometimes a creature, with exceptional powers of
memory or reflexion, would make his appearance in this
race or in that. We all profit by our accidents as well as
by our more cunning contrivances, so that analogy would
point in the diredion of thinking that many of the moSt
happy thoughts in the animal and vegetable kingdom were
originated much as certain discoveries that have been
made by accident among ourselves. These would be
originally blind variations, though even so, probably less
blind than w^e think, if we could know the whole truth.
When originated, they would be eagerly taken advantage
of and improved upon by the animal in whom they
appeared; but it cannot be supposed that they would be
very far in advance of the laSt Step gained, more than are
those “ flukes ” which sometimes enable us to go so far
beyond our own ordinary powers. For if they were, the
animal would despair of repeating them. No creature
hopes, or even wishes, for very much more than he has
been accustomed to all his life, he and his family, and the
others whom he can understand, around him. It has been
well said that “ enough ” is always “ a little more than
one has.” We do not try for things which we believe to
be beyond our reach, hence one would exped that the
fortunes, as it were, of animals should have been built up
gradually. Our own riches grow with our desires and the
pains we take in pursuit of them, and our desires vary and
increase with our means of gratifying them; but unless
200
Inffintfs of Neuter Insetfs
with men of exceptional business aptitude, wealth grows
gradually by the adding field to field and farm to farm;
so with the limbs and inStin&s of animals ; these are but
the things they have made or bought with their money,
or with money that has been left them by their forefathers,
which, though it is neither silver nor gold, but faith and
protoplasm only, is good money and capital notwith¬
standing.
I have already admitted that inStinft may be modified
by food or drugs, which may affeft a Stru&ure or habit
as powerfully as we see certain poisons affeft the Stru&ure
of plants by producing, as Mr. Darwin tells us, very
complex galls upon their leaves. I do not, therefore,
for a moment insist on habit as the sole cause of inStinft.
Ever}T habit muSt have had its originating cause, and the
causes which have Started one habit will from time to time
Start or modify others; nor can I explain why some
individuals of a race should be cleverer than others, any
more than I can explain why they should exist at all;
nevertheless, I observe it to be a fa£t that differences in
intelligence and power of growth are universal in the
individuals of all those races which we can best watch.
I also moSt readily admit that the common course of
nature would both cause many variations to arise inde¬
pendently of any desire on the part of the animal (much
as we have lately seen that the moons of Mars were on
the point of being discovered three hundred years ago,
merely through Galileo sending to Kepler a Latin anagram
which Kepler could not understand, and arranged into
the line— “ Salve ambktineum geminatum Martia proles ,” and
interpreted to mean that Mars had two moons, whereas
Galileo had meant to say “ Althsimum planetam tergeminum
observavi ” meaning that he had seen Saturn’s ring), and
w-ould also preserve and accumulate such variations when
they had arisen ; but I can no more believe that the won¬
derful adaptation of Stru&ures to needs, which we see
201
Life and Habit
around us in such an infinite number of plants and animals,
can have arisen without a perception of those needs on
the part of the creature in whom the Structure appears,
than I can believe that the form of the dray-horse or
greyhound -so well adapted both to the needs of the
animal in his daily service to man, and to the desires of
man, that the creature should do him this daily service-
can have arisen without any desire on man’s part to pro¬
duce this particular Structure, or without the inherited
habit of performing the corresponding aCtions for man,
on the part of the greyhound and dray-horse.
And I believe that this will be felt as reasonable by
the great majority of my readers. I believe that nine fairly
intelligent and observant men out of ten, if they were
asked which they thought most likely to have been the
main cause of the development of the various phases either
of Stru&ure or inStinCt which we see around us, namely-
sense of need, or even whim, and hence -occasional dis¬
covery, helped by an occasional piece of good luck, com¬
municated, it may be, and generally adopted, long prac¬
tised, remembered by offspring, modified by changed
surroundings, and accumulated in the course of time- or,
the accumulation of small divergent, indefinite, and per¬
fectly unintelligent variations, preserved through the
survival of their possessor in the Struggle for existence,
and hence in time leading to wide differences from the
original type -would answer in favour of the former
alternative; and if for no other cause yet for this -that in
the human race, which we are beSt able to watch, and
between which and the lower animals no difference in kind
will, I think, be supposed, but only in degree, we observe
that progress muSt have an internal current setting in a
definite direction, but whither we know not for very long
beforehand; and that without such internal current there
is Stagnation. Our own progress -or variation -is due not
to small, fortuitous inventions or modifications which
202
Inftinfls of Neuter Insects
have enabled their fortunate possessors to survive in times
of difficulty, not, in fad, to Strokes of luck (though these,
of course, have had some effed-but not more, probably,
than Strokes of ill luck have counteraded) but to Strokes of
cunning- to a sense of need, and to Study of the paSt and
present which have given shrewd people a key with which
to unlock the chambers of the future.
Further, Mr. Darwin himself says (. Animals and Plants ,
vol. ii, p. 237, ed. 1875):
“ But I think we muSt take a broader view and conclude
that organic beings when subjeded during several genera¬
tions to any change whatever in their conditions tend to
vary : the kind of variation ivhich ensues depending in most cases
in a far higher degree on the nature or constitution of the being , than
on the nature of the changed conditions .” And this we observe
in man. The history of a man prior to his birth is more
important as far as his success or failure goes than his
surroundings after birth, important though these may
indeed be. The able man rises in spite of a thousand
hindrances, the fool fails in spite of every advantage.
“ Natural seledion,” however, does not make either the
able man or the fool. It only deals with him after other
causes have made him, and would seem in the end to
amount to little more than to a Statement of the fad that
when variations have arisen they will accumulate. One
cannot look, as has already been said, for the origin of
species in that part of the course of nature which settles
the preservation or extindion of variations which have
already arisen from some unknown cause, but one muSt
look for it in the causes that have led to variation at all.
These causes muSt get, as it were, behind the back of
“ natural seledion,” which is rather a shield and hindrance
to our perception of our own ignorance than an explana¬
tion of what these causes are.
The remarks made above will apply equally to plants
such as the mistletoe and red clover. For the sake of
203
Life and Habit
brevity I will deal only with the mistletoe, which seems
to be the more Striking case. Mr. Darwin writes:
“ Naturalists continually refer to external conditions,
such as climate, food, etc., as the only possible cause of
variation. In one limited sense, as we shall hereafter see,
this may be true; but it is preposterous to attribute to
mere external conditions the Stru&ure, for instance, of the
woodpecker, with its feet, tail, beak, and tongue, so admir¬
ably adapted to catch inserts under the bark of trees. In
the case of the mistletoe, which draws its nourishment from
certain trees, which has seeds that muSt be transported by
certain birds, and which has flowers with separate sexes
absolutely requiring the agency of certain insedts to bring
pollen from one flower to another, it is equally preposter¬
ous to account for the Strudhire of this parasite with its
relations to several diStindl organic beings, by the efledt of
external conditions, or of habit, or of the volition of the
plant itself” ( Origin of Species, p. 3, ed. 1876).
I cannot see this. To me it seems Still more preposter¬
ous to account for it by the adtion of “ natural seledlion ”
operating upon indefinite variations. It would be pre¬
posterous to suppose that a bird very different from a
woodpecker should have had a conception of a wood¬
pecker, and so by volition gradually grown towards it.
So in like manner with the mistletoe. Neither plant nor
bird knew how far they were going, or saw more than
a very little ahead as to the means of remedying this or
that with which they were dissatisfied, or of getting this
or that which they desired; but given perceptions at all,
and thus a sense of needs and of the gratification of those
needs, and thus hope and fear, and a sense of content and
discontent- given also the lowest power of gratifying those
needs -given also that some individuals have these powers
in a higher degree than others -given also continued per¬
sonality and memory over a vaSt extent of time -and the
whole phenomena of species and genera resolve them-
204
Inftincfs of Neuter Inserts
selves into an illustration of the old proverb, that what is
one man’s meat is another man’s poison. Life in its lowest
form under the above conditions -and we cannot conceive
of life at all without them- would be bound to vary, and
to result after not so very many millions of years in the
infinite forms and inStin&s which we see around us.
205
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: LAMARCK AND MR. DARWIN
[T WILL HAVE BEEN SEEN THAT IN THE
preceding pages the theory of evolution, as originally
propounded by Lamarck, has been more than once
supported, as against the later theory concerning it put
forward by Mr. Darwin, and now generally accepted.
It is not possible for me, within the limits at my com¬
mand, to do anything like justice to the arguments that
may be brought forward in favour of either of these two
theories. Mr. Darwin’s books are at the command of
every one; and so much has been discovered since La¬
marck’s day, that if he were living now, he would probably
State his case very differently; I shall therefore content
myself with a few brief remarks, which will hardly, how¬
ever, aspire to the dignity of argument.
According to Mr. Darwin, differentiations of Strufture
and inStindl have mainly come about through the accumu¬
lation of small, fortuitous variations without intelligence
or desire upon the part of the creature varying; modifica¬
tion, however, through desire and sense of need, is not
denied entirely, inasmuch as considerable effeft is ascribed
by Mr. Darwin to use and disuse, which involves, as has
been already said, the modification of a Stru&ure in
accordance with the wishes of its possessor.
According to Lamarck, genera and species have been
evolved, in the main, by exaddy the same process as that
by which human inventions and civilizations are now
progressing ; and this involves that intelligence, ingenuity,
heroism, and all the elements of romance, should have had
the main share in the development of every herb and living
creature around us.
I take the following brief outline of the most important
part of Lamarck’s theory from vol. xxxvi of the Natural¬
ist’s Library (Edinburgh, 1843):
“ The more simple bodies,” says the editor, giving
Lamarck’s opinion without endorsing it, “ are easily
formed, and this being the case, it is easy to conceive how
206
Lamarck^ and Mr. Darwin
in the lapse of time animals of a more complex Structure
should be produced,/^ it mutt be admitted as a fundamental
law , that the production of a new organ in an animal body results
from any new want or desire it may experience. The first
effort of a being juSt beginning to develop itself muSt be
to procure subsistence, and hence in time there comes to
be produced a Stomach or alimentary cavity.” (Thus we
saw that the amoeba is in the habit of “ extemporizing ” a
Stomach when it wants one.) “ Other wants occasioned
by circumstances will lead to other efforts, which, in their
turn, will generate new organs.”
Lamarck’s wonderful conception was hampered by an
unnecessary adjund, namely, a belief in an inherent tend¬
ency towards progressive development in every low
organism. He was thus driven to account for the presence
of many very low and very ancient organisms at the present
day, and fell back upon the theory, which is not yet
supported by evidence, that such low forms are Still
continually coming into existence from inorganic matter.
But there seems no necessity to suppose that all low forms
should possess an inherent tendency towards progression.
It would be enough that there should occasionally arise
somewhat more gifted specimens of one or more original
forms. These would vary, and the ball would be thus set
rolling, while the less gifted would remain in ttatu quo ,
provided they were sufficiently gifted to escape extin&ion.
Nor do I gather that Lamarck insisted on continued
personality and memory so as to account for heredity at
all, and so as to see life as a single, or as at any rate, only
a few, vaSt compound animals, but without the conne&ing
organism between each component item in the whole
creature, which is found in animals that are Stri&ly called
compound. Until continued personality and memory are
connected with the idea of heredity, heredity of any kind
is little more than a term for something which one does
not understand. But there seems little a priori difficulty as
207
Life and Habit
regards Lamarck’s main idea, now that Mr. Darwin has
familiarized us with evolution, and made us feel what a
vast array of fa&s can be brought forward in support of it.
Mr. Darwin tells us, in the preface to his last edition of
the Origin of Species, that Lamarck was partly led to his
conclusions by the analogy of domestic produ&ions. It is
rather hard to say what these words imply; they may
mean anything from a baby to an apple dumpling, but if
they imply that Lamarck drew inspirations from the
gradual development of the mechanical inventions of man,
and from the progress of man’s ideas, I would say that
of all sources this would seem to be the safest and moSt
fertile from which to draw.
Plants and animals under domestication are indeed a
suggestive field for Study, but machines are the manner in
which man is varying at this moment. We know how our
own minds work, and how our mechanical organizations
-for, in all sober seriousness, this is what it comes to-
have progressed hand in hand with our desires; some¬
times the power a little ahead, and sometimes the desire;
sometimes both combining to form an organ with almost
infinite capacity for variation, and sometimes compara¬
tively early reaching the limit of utmost development in
respeft of any new conception, and accordingly coming
to a full Stop; sometimes making leaps and bounds, and
sometimes advancing sluggishly. Here we are behind the
scenes, and can see how the whole thing works. We have
man, the very animal which we can best understand,
caught in the very a£l of variation, through his own needs,
and not through the needs of others; the whole process
is a natural one; the varying of a creature as much in a
wild State as the ants and butterflies are wild. There is less
occasion here for the continual 44 might be ” and 44 may
be,” which we are compelled to put up with when dealing
with plants and animals, of the workings of whose minds
we can only obscurely judge. Also, there is more prospeft
208
Lamarck^ an<d <^\Lr. <rDarwin
of pecuniary profit attaching to the careful Study of ma¬
chinery than can be generally hoped for from the Study of
the lower animals ; and though I admit that this considera¬
tion should not be carried too far, a great deal of very
unnecessary suffering will be spared to the lower animals ;
for much that passes for natural history is little better than
prying into other people’s business, from no other motive
than curiosity. I would, therefore, Strongly advise the
reader to use man, and the present races of man, and the
growing inventions and conceptions of man, as his guide,
if he would seek to form an independent judgment on the
development of organic life. For all growth is only
somebody making something.
Lamarck’s theories fell into disrepute, partly because
they were too Startling to be capable of ready fusion with
existing ideas; they were, in fad, too wide a cross for
fertility; partly because they fell upon evil times, during
the readion that followed the French Revolution; partly
because, unless I am mistaken, he did not sufficiently link
on the experience of the race to that of the individual, nor
perceive the importance of the principle that consciousness,
memory, volition, intelligence, etc., vanish, or become
latent, on becoming intense. He also appears to have
mixed up matter with his system, which was either plainly
wrong, or so incapable of proof as to enable people to
laugh at him, and pooh-pooh him; but I believe it will
come to be perceived, that he has received somewhat
scant justice at the hands of his successors, and that his
“ crude theories,” as they have been somewhat cheaply
called, are far from having had their laSt say.
Returning to Mr. Darwin, we find, as we have already
seen, that it is hard to say exadly how much Mr. Darwin
differs from Lamarck, and how much he agrees with him.
Mr. Darwin has always maintained that use and disuse
are highly important, and this implies that the effed
produced on the parent should be remembered by the
209 p
Life and Habit
offspring, in the same way as the memory of a wound is
transmitted by one set of cells to succeeding ones, who
long repeat the scar, though it may fade finally away.
Also, after dealing with the manner in which one eye of a
young flat-fish travels round the head till both eyes are
on the same side of the fish, he gives ( Origin of Species ,
p. 1 8 8, ed. 1875) an instance of a Stru&ure “ which appar¬
ently owes its origin exclusively to use or habit.” He
refers to the tail of some American monkeys “ which has
been converted into a wonderfully perfeCt prehensile
organ, and serves as a fifth hand. A reviewer,” he con¬
tinues, ... “ remarks on this Structure-4 It is impossible
to believe that in any number of ages the first slight
incipient tendency to grasp, could preserve the lives of the
individuals possessing it, or favour their chance of having
and of rearing offspring.’ But there is no necessity for any
such belief. Habit, and this almost implies that some
benefit, great or small, is thus derived, would in all proba¬
bility suffice for the work.” If, then, habit can do this-
and it is no small thing to develop a wonderfully perfect
prehensile organ which can serve as a fifth hand- how
much more may not habit do, even though unaided, as
Mr. Darwin supposes to have been the case in this instance,
by “ natural selection ”? After attributing many of the
Structural and inStinCtive differences of plants and animals
to the effects of use- as we may plainly do with Mr. Dar¬
win’s own consent- after attributing a good deal more to
unknown causes, and a good deal to changed conditions,
which are bound, if at all important, to result either in
Sterility or variation -how much of the work of originating
species is left for natural selection? -which, as Mr. Darwin
admits ( Origin of Species, p. 63, ed. 1876), does not induce
variability , but “ implies only the preservation of such
variations as arise , and are beneficial to the being under its
conditions of life ” ? An important part assuredly, and
one which we can never sufficiently thank Mr. Darwin
210
Lamarck^ and Mr. Darwin
for having put so forcibly before us, but an indirect part
only, like the part played by time and space, and not, I
think, the one which Mr. Darwin would assign to it.
Mr. Darwin himself has admitted that in the earlier
editions of his Origin of Species he “ under-rated, as it now
seems probable, the frequency and importance of modifi¬
cations due to spontaneous variability.” And this involves
the having over-rated the aCtion of “ natural selection ”
as an agent in the evolution of species. But one gathers
that he Still believes the accumulation of small and for¬
tuitous variations through the agency of “ natural selec¬
tion ” to be the main cause of the present divergencies of
Stru&ure and inStinCt. I do not, however, think that Mr.
Darwin is clear about his own meaning. I think the
prominence given to “ natural selection ” in connexion
with the “ origin of species ” has led him, in spite of
himself, and in spite of bis being on his guard (as is clearly
shown by the paragraph on page 63 Origin of Species, above
referred to), to regard “ natural selection ” as in some way
accounting for variation, juSt as the use of the dangerous
word “ spontaneous,” -though he is so often on his guard
againSt it, and so frequently prefaces it with the words
“ so-called,” -would seem to have led him into very
serious confusion of thought in the passage quoted at the
beginning of this paragraph.
For after saying that he had under-rated “ the fre¬
quency and importance of modifications due to spon¬
taneous variability,” he continues, “ but it is impossible
to attribute to this cause the innumerable Stru&ures which
are so well adapted to the habits of life of each species.”
That is to say, it is impossible to attribute these innumer¬
able Structures to spontaneous variability.
What is spontaneous variability?
Clearly, from his preceding paragraph, Mr. Darwin
means only “ so-called spontaneous variations,” such as
“ the appearance of a moss-rose on a common rose, or of
211
Life and Habit
a neCtarine on a peach-tree,” which he gives as good
examples of so-called spontaneous variation.
And these variations are, after all, due to causes, but
to unknown causes ; spontaneous variation being, in faCt,
but another name for variation due to causes which we
know nothing about, but in no possible sense a cause of
variation . So that when we come to put clearly before our
minds exaCtly what the sentence we are considering
amounts to, it comes to this: that it is impossible to
attribute the innumerable Structures which are so well
adapted to the habits of life of each species to unhioivn
causes .
“ I can no more believe in thisf continues Mr. Darwin,
“ than that the well-adapted form of a race-horse or grey¬
hound, which, before the principle of selection by man
was well understood, excited so much surprise in the
minds of the older naturalists, can thus be explained ”
( Origin of Species, p. 171, ed. 1876).
Or, in other words, 4 4 1 can no more believe that the
well-adapted Structures of species are due to unknown
causes, than I can believe that the well-adapted form of a
race-horse can be explained by being attributed to un¬
known causes.”
I have puzzled over this paragraph for several hours
with the sincereSt desire to get at the precise idea which
underlies it, but the more I have Studied it the more con¬
vinced I am that it does not contain, or at any rate convey,
any clear or definite idea at all. If I thought it was a mere
slip, I should not call attention to it; this book will
probably have slips enough of its own without introducing
those of a great man unnecessarily; but I submit that it is
necessary to call attention to it here, inasmuch as it is
impossible to believe that after years of reflection upon his
subjeCt, Mr. Darwin should have written as above,
especially in such a place, if his mind was really clear about
his own position. Immediately after the admission of a
212
'Lamarck., and Mr. Darwin
certain amount of miscalculation, there comes a more or
less exculpatory sentence which sounds so right that
ninety-nine people out of a hundred would walk through
it, unless led by some exigency of their own position to
examine it closely, but which yet upon examination proves
to be as nearly meaningless as a sentence can be.
The weak point in Mr. Darwin’s theory would seem
to be a deficiency, so to speak, of motive power to origin¬
ate and dired: the variations which time is to accumulate.
It deals admirably with the accumulation of variations in
creatures already varying, but it does not provide a
sufficient number of sufficiently important variations to be
accumulated. Given the motive power which Lamarck
suggested, and Mr. Darwin’s mechanism would appear
(with the help of memory, as bearing upon reprodu&ion,
of continued personality, and hence of inherited habit,
and of the vanishing tendency of consciousness) to work
with perfect ease. Mr. Darwin has made us all feel that
in some way or other variations are accumulated , and that
evolution is the true solution of the present widely different
Stru&ures around us, whereas, before he wrote, hardly
any one believed this. However we may differ from him
in detail, the present general acceptance of evolution muSt
remain as his work, and a more valuable work can hardly
be imagined. Nevertheless, I cannot think that “ natural
selection,” working upon small, fortuitous, indefinite,
unintelligent variations, would produce the results we see
around us. One wants something that will give a more
definite aim to variations, and hence, at times, cause
bolder leaps in advance. One cannot but doubt whether
so many plants and animals would be being so continually
saved “ by the skin of their teeth,” as must be so saved if
the variations from which genera ultimately arise are as
small in their commencement and at each successive Stage
as Mr. Darwin seems to believe. God- to use the lan¬
guage of the Bible -is not extreme to mark what is done
213
Life and Habit
amiss, whether with plant or beaft or man; on the other
hand, when towers of Siloam fall, they fall on the juft
as well as the unjuft.
One feels, on considering Mr. Darwin’s position, that
if it be admitted that there is in the loweft creature a power
to vary, no matter how small, one has got in this power
as near the “ origin of species ” as one can ever hope to
get. For no one professes to account for the origin of
life; but if a creature with a power to vary reproduces
itself at all, it muft reproduce another creature which shall
also have the power to vary ; so that, given time and space
enough, there is no knowing where such a creature could
or would ftop.
If the primordial cell had been only capable of repro¬
ducing itself once, there would have followed a single line
of descendants, the chain of which might at any moment
have been broken by casualty. Doubtless the millionth
repetition would have differed very materially from the
original- as widely, perhaps, as wx differ from the prim¬
ordial cell; but it would only have differed by addition,
and could no more in any generation resume its lateft
development without having passed through the initial
ftage of being what its firft forefather was, and doing what
its firft forefather did, and without going through all or a
sufficient number of the fteps whereby it had reached its
lateft differentiation, than water can rise above its own
level.
The very idea, then, of reprodu&ion/ involves, unless
I am miftaken, that, no matter how fiiuch the creature
reproducing itself may gain in power and versatility, it
muft ftill always begin with itself again in each generation.
The primordial cell being capable of reproducing itself
not only once, but many times over, each of the creatures
which it produces muft be similarly gifted; hence the
geometrical ratio of increase and the exifting divergence
of type. In each generation it will pass rapidly and
214
Lamarck, and Mr. Darwin
unconsciously through all the earlier Stages of which
there has been infinite experience, and for which the con¬
ditions are reproduced with sufficient similarity to cause
no failure of memory or hesitation; but in each genera¬
tion, when it comes to the part in which the course is not
so clear, it will become conscious; Still, however, where
the course is plain, as in breathing, digesting, etc., retain¬
ing unconsciousness. Thus organs which present all the
appearance of being designed- as, for example, the tip for
its beak prepared by the embryo chicken -would be pre¬
pared in the end, as it were, by rote, and without sense of
design, though none the less owing their origin to design.
The question is not concerning evolution, but as to the
main cause which has led to evolution in such and such
shapes. To me it seems that the “ Origin of Variation,”
whatever it is, is the only true “ Origin of Species,” and
that this muSt, as Lamarck insisted, be looked for in the
needs and experiences of the creatures varying. Unless
we can explain the origin of variations, we are met by the
unexplained at every Hep in the progress of a creature from
its original homogeneous condition to its differentiation,
we will say, as an elephant; so that to say that an elephant
has become an elephant through the accumulation of a
vast number of small, fortuitous, but unexplained varia¬
tions in some lower creatures, is really to say that it has
become an elephant owing to a series of causes about
which we know nothing whatever, or, in other words,
that one does not know how it came to be an elephant.
But to say that an elephant has become an elephant owing
to a series of variations, nine-tenths of which were caused
by the wishes of the creature or creatures from which the
elephant is descended- this is to offer a reason, and defin¬
itely put the insoluble one Step further back. The ques¬
tion will then turn upon the sufficiency of the reason- that
is to say, whether the hypothesis is borne out by fads.
The effeds of competition would, of course, have an
215
Life and Habit
extremely important effed upon any creature, in the same
way as any other condition of nature under which it lived,
mu$t affed its sense of need and its opinions generally.
The results of competition would be, as it were, the
decisions of an arbiter settling the question whether such
and such variation was really to the animal’s advantage
or not- a matter on which the animal will, on the whole,
have formed a pretty fair judgment for itself. Undoubtedly
the pa ft decisions of such an arbiter would affect the conduit of the
creature , which would have doubtiess had its shortcomings
and blunders, and would amend them. The creature
would shape its course according to its experience of the
common course of events, but it would be continually
trying and often successfully, to evade the law by all
manner of sharp practice. New precedents would thus
arise, so that the law would shift with time and circum¬
stances; but the law would not otherwise dired the
channels into which life would flow, than as laws, whether
natural or artificial, have affeded the development of the
widely differing trades and professions among mankind.
These have had their origin rather in the needs and experi¬
ences of mankind than in any laws.
To put much the same as the above in different words.
Assume that small favourable variations are preserved
more commonly, in proportion to their numbers, than is
perhaps the case, and assume that considerable variations
occur more rarely than they probably do occur, how
account for any variation at all? “Natural selection ”
cannot create the smallest variation unless it ads through
perception of its mode of operation, recognized inarticu¬
lately, but none the less clearly, by the creature varying.
“ Natural seledion ” operates on what it finds, and not on
what it has made. Animals that have been wise and lucky
five longer and breed more than others less wise and
lucky. Assuredly. The wise and lucky animals transmit
their wisdom and luck. Assuredly. They add to their
216
Lamarck, and Mr. Darwin
powers, and diverge into widely different directions.
Assuredly. What is the cause of this? Surely the fadt
that they were capable of feeling needs, and that they
differed in their needs and manner of gratifying them, and
that they continued to live in successive generations, rather
than the fad that when lucky and wise they thrived and
bred more descendants. This last is an accessory hardly
less important for the development of species than the fad
of the continuation of life at all ; but it is an accessory of
much the same kind as this, for if animals continue to live
at all, they must live in soj?ie ivay , and will find that there
are good ways and bad ways of living. An animal which
discovers the good way will gradually develop further
powers, and so species will get further and further apart;
but the origin of this is to be looked for, not in the power
which decides whether this or that way was good, but in
the cause which determines the creature, consciously or
unconsciously, to try this or that way.
But Mr. Darwin might say that this is not a fair way
of Stating the issue. He might say, “ You beg the question;
you assume that there is an inherent tendency in animals
towards progressive development, whereas I say that
there is no good evidence of any such tendency. I main¬
tain that the differences that have from time to time arisen
have come about mainly from causes so far beyond our
ken that we can only call them spontaneous; and if so,
natural selection which you muSt allow to have at any
rate played an important part in the accumulation of varia¬
tions, muSt also be allowed to be the nearest thing to the
cause of specific differences, which we are able to arrive
at.”
Thus he writes ( Origin of Species , p. 176, ed. 1876):
“ Although we have no good evidence of the existence
in organic beings of an innate tendency towards pro¬
gressive development, yet this necessarily follows, as I
have attempted to show in the fourth chapter, through
217
Life and Habit
the continued aftion of natural sele&ion.” Mr. Darwin
does not say that organic beings have no tendency to vary
at all, but only that there is no good evidence that they
have a tendency to progressive development, which, I
take it, means, to see an ideal a long way off, and very
different to their present selves, which ideal they think
will suit them, and towards which they accordingly make.
I would admit this as contrary to all experience. I doubt
whether plants and animals have any innate tendency to vary
at all, being led to question this by gathering from Animals
and Plants under Domeffication that this is Mr. Darwin’s own
opinion. I am inclined rather to think that they have only
an innate power to vary slightly, in accordance with changed
conditions, and an innate capability of being affe&ed both
in Stru&ure and inStindl, by causes similar to those which
we observe to affeft ourselves. But however this may be
they do vary somewhat, and unless they did, they would
not in time have come to be so widely different from each
other as they now are. The question is as to the origin
and character of these variations.
We say they mainly originate in a creature through a
sense of its needs, and vary through the varying surround¬
ings which will cause those needs to vary, and through the
opening up of new desires in many creatures, as the conse¬
quence of the gratification of old ones; they depend
greatly on differences of individual capacity and tempera¬
ment; they are communicated, and in the course of time
transmitted, as what we call hereditary habits or Strudhires,
though these are only, in truth, intense and epitomized
memories of how certain creatures liked to deal with
protoplasm. The question whether this or that is really
good or ill, is settled, as the proof of the pudding by the
eating thereof, i.e., by the rigorous competitive examina¬
tions through which moSt living organisms muSt pass.
Mr. Darwin says that there is no good evidence in support
of any great principle, or tendency on the part of the
218
. Lamarck^ and Mr. Darwin
creature itself, which would Steer variation, as it were, and
keep its head Straight, but that the most marvellous
adaptations of Structures to needs are simply the result of
small and blind variations, accumulated by the operation
of “ natural selection, ” which is thus the main cause of the
origin of species.
Enough has perhaps already been said to make the
reader feel that the question wants reopening; I shall,
therefore, here only remark that we may assume no funda¬
mental difference as regards intelligence, memory, and
sense of needs to exist between man and the lowest animals,
and that in man we do distinctly see a tendency towards
progressive development, operating through his power of
profiting by and transmitting his experience, but operating
in directions which man cannot foresee for- any long dis¬
tance. We also see this in many of the higher animals
under domestication, as with horses which have learnt
to canter and dogs which point; more especially we
observe it along the line of latest development, where
equilibrium of settled convictions has not yet been fully
attained. One neither finds nor expeCts much a priori
knowledge, whether in man or beaSt; but one does find
some littie in the beginnings of, and throughout the
development of, every habit, at the commencement of
which, and on every successive improvement in which,
deduCtive and induCtive methods are, as it were, fused.
Thus the effeCt, where we can best watch its causes, seems
mainly produced by a desire for a definite objeCt-in some
cases a serious and sensible desire, in others an idle one,
in others, again, a mistaken one; and sometimes by a
blunder which, in the hands of an otherwise able creature,
has turned up trumps. In wild animals and plants the
divergences have been accumulated, if they answered to
the prolonged desires of the creature itself, and if these
desires were to its true ultimate good; with plants or
animals under domestication they have been accumulated
219
Life and Habit
if they answered a little to the original wishes of the
creature, and much, to the wishes of man. As long as
man continued to like them, they would be advantageous
to the creature; when he tired of them, they would be
disadvantageous to it, and would accumulate no longer.
Surely the results produced in the adaptation of Stru&ure
to need among many plants and ins efts are better accounted
for on this, which I suppose to be Lamarck’s view, namely,
by supposing that what goes on amongst ourselves has
gone on amongst all creatures, than by supposing that
these adaptations are the results of perfe&ly blind and
unintelligent variations.
Let me give two examples of such adaptations, taken
from Mr. St. George Mivart’s Genesis of Species , to winch
work I would wish particularly to call the reader’s atten¬
tion. He should also read Mr. Darwin’s answers to Mr.
Mivart ( Origin of Species, p. 176, ed. 1876, and onwards).
Mr. Mivart writes :
“ Some inserts which imitate leaves extend the imitation
even to the very injuries on those leaves made by the
attacks of insefls or fungi. Thus speaking of the walking-
stick inse&s, Mr. Wallace says, c One of these creatures
obtained by myself in Borneo ( ceroxjlus laceratus) was
covered over with foliaceous excrescences of a clear olive
green colour, so as exa&ly to resemble a Stick grown over
by a creeping moss or jungermannia. The Dyak who
brought it me assured me it was grown over with moss,
though alive, and it was only after a moSt minute examina¬
tion that I could convince myself it was not so.’ Again,
as to the leaf butterfly, he says, ‘ We come to a Still more
extraordinary part of the imitation, for we find representa¬
tions of leaves in every Stage of decay, variously blotched,
and mildewed, and pierced with holes, and in many cases
irregularly covered with powdery black dots, gathered
into patches and spots so closely resembling the various
kinds of minute fungi that grow on dead leaves, that it is
220
Lamarck^ and Mr. Darwin
impossible to avoid thinking at first sight that the butter¬
flies themselves have been attacked by real fungi/ 99
I can no more believe that these artificial fungi in which
the moth arrays itself are due to the accumulation of
minute, perfedtly blind, and unintelligent variations, than
I can believe that the artificial flowers which a woman
wears in her hat can have got there without design; or
that a dete&ive puts on plain clothes without the slightest
intention of making his vidtim think that he is not a
policeman.
Again Mr. Mivart writes :
“In the work just referred to [The Fertilisation of
Orchids\, Mr. Darwin gives a series of the most wonderful
and minute contrivances, by which the visits of insedts
are utilized for the fertilization of orchids -Strudlures so
wonderful that nothing could well be more so, except the
attribution of their origin to minute, fortuitous, and
indefinite variations.
“ The instances are too numerous and too long to
quote, but in his Origin of Species he describes two which
muSt not be passed over. In one ( corjanthes ) the orchid
has its lower lip enlarged into a bucket, above which
Stand two water-secreting horns. These latter replenish
the bucket, from which, when half-filled, the water over¬
flows by a spout on one side. Bees visiting the flower fall
into the bucket and crawl out at the spout. By the peculiar
arrangement of the parts of the flower, the first bee which
does so, carries away the pollen mass glued to his back,
and then when he has his next involuntary bath in another
flower, as he crawls out, the pollen attached to him comes
in contadt with the Stigma of that second flower and
fertilizes it. In the other example (catasetum), when a bee
gnaws a certain part of the flower, he inevitably touches a
long delicate projedtion which Mr. Darwin calls the
‘ antenna/ ‘ This antenna transmits a vibration to a
membrane which is instantly ruptured; this sets free a
221
\
Life and Habit
spring by which the pollen mass is shot forth like an
arrow in the right dire&ion, and adheres by its viscid
extremity to the back of the bee ’ ” ( Genesis of Species ,
p. 63).
No one can tell a Story so charmingly as Mr. Darwin,
but I can no more believe that all this has come about
without design on the part of the orchid, and a gradual
perception of the advantages it is able to take over the
bee, and a righteous determination to enjoy them, than
I can believe that a mousetrap or a Steam-engine is the
result of the accumulation of blind minute fortuitous
variations in a creature called man, which creature has
never wanted either mousetraps or Steam-engines, but
has had a sort of promiscuous tendency to make them, and
was benefited by making them, so that those of the race
who had a tendency to make them survived and left issue,
which issue would thus naturally tend to make more
mousetraps and more Steam-engines.
Pursuing this idea Still further, can we for a moment
believe that these additions to our limbs -for this is what
they are -have mainly come about through the occasional
birth of individuals who, without design on their own
parts, nevertheless made them better or worse, and who,
accordingly, either survived and transmitted their im¬
provement, or perished, they and their incapacity together?
When I can believe in this, then- and not till then- can
I believe in an origin of species which does not resolve
itself mainly into sense of need, faith, intelligence, and
memory. Then, and not till then, can I believe that such
organs as the eye and ear can have arisen in any other way
than as the result of that kind of mental ingenuity, and of
moral as well as physical capacity, without which, till then,
I should have considered such an invention as the Steam-
engine to be impossible.
222
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: MR. MIVART AND MR. DARWIN
\ DISTINGUISHED ZOOLOGIST, MR.
St. George Mivart,” writes Mr. Darwin, “has
recently colleded all the objections which have
. ever been advanced by myself and others against
the theory of natural sele&ion, as propounded by Mr.
Wallace and myself, and has illustrated them with admir¬
able art and force” (( Origin of Species , p. 176, ed. 1876).
I have already referred the reader to Mr. Mivart’s work,
but quote the above passage as showing that Mr. Mivart
will not, probably, be found to have left much unsaid that
would appear to make against Mr. Darwin’s theory. It
is incumbent upon me both to see how far Mr. Mivart’s
objections are weighty as against Mr. Darwin, and also
whether or not they tell with equal force against the view
which I am myself advocating. I will therefore touch
briefly upon the most important of them, with the pur¬
pose of showing that they are serious as against the
dodrine that small fortuitous variations are the origin of
species, but that they have no force against evolution as
guided by intelligence and memory.
But before doing this, I would demur to the words used
by Mr. Darwin, and juSt quoted above, namely, “ the
theory of natural seledion.” I imagine that I see in them
the fallacy which I believe to run through almost all Mr.
Darwin’s work, namely, that “ natural selection ” is a
theory (if, indeed, it can be a theory at all), in some way
accounting for the origin of variation, and so of species -
“ natural selection,” as we have already seen, being unable
to “ induce variability,” and being only able to accumulate
what- on the occasion of each successive variation, and so
during the whole process -must have been originated by
something else.
Again, Mr. Darwin writes : “ In considering the origin
of species it is quite conceivable that a naturalist, refled-
ing on the mutual affinities of organic beings, or their em-
bryological relations, their geographical distribution,
223
Life and Ldabit
geological succession, and other such fads, might come
to the conclusion that species had not been independently-
created, but had descended, like varieties from other
species. Nevertheless, such a conclusion, even if well
founded, would be unsatisfactory, until it could be shown
how the innumerable species inhabiting this world had
been modified, so as to acquire that perfection of Structure
and co-adaptation which justly excites our admiration ”
( Origin of Species, p. 2, ed. 1876).
After reading the above we feel that nothing more
satisfactory could be desired. We are sure that we are
in the hands of one who can indeed tell us “ how the
innumerable species inhabiting this world have been
modified,” and we are no less sure that though others
may have written upon the subjeCt before, there has been,
as yet, no satisfactory explanation put forward of the grand
principle upon which modification has proceeded. Then
follows a delightful volume, with faCts upon faCts con¬
cerning animals, all showing that species is due to suc¬
cessive small modifications accumulated in the course of
nature. But one cannot suppose that Lamarck ever
doubted this ; for he can never have meant to say, that a
low form of life made itself into an elephant at one or two
great bounds ; and if he did not mean this, he must have
meant that it made itself into an elephant through the
accumulation of small successive modifications ; these, he
mu$t have seen, were capable of accumulation in the
scheme of nature, though he may not have dwelt on the
manner in which this is accomplished, inasmuch as it is
obviously a matter of secondary importance in comparison
with the origin of the variations themselves. We believe,
however, throughout Mr. Darwin’s book, that we are
being told what we expe&ed to be told ; and so convinced
are we, by the fads adduced, that in some way or other
evolution muSt be true, and so grateful are we for being
allowed to think this, that we put down the volume with-
224
Mr. Mivart and Mr. Darwin
out perceiving that, whereas Lamarck did adduce a great
and general cause of variation, the insufficiency of which,
in spite of errors of detail, has yet to be shown, Mr.
Darwin’s main cause of variation resolves itself into a
confession of ignorance.
This, however, should detraCl but litde from our
admiration for Mr. Darwin’s achievement. Any one can
make people see a thing if he puts it in the right way, but
Mr. Darwin made us see evolution, in spite of his having
put it, in what seems to not a few, an exceedingly mistaken
way. Yet his triumph is complete, for no matter how
much any one now moves the foundation, he cannot shake
the superStru&ure, which has become so currendy accepted
as to be above the need of any support from reason, and
to be as difficult to destroy as it was originally difficult of
construction. Less than twenty years ago, we never met
with, or heard of, any one who accepted evolution; we
did not even know that such a doCtrine had ever been
broached; unless it was that some one now and again
said that there was a very dreadful book going about like a
rampant lion, called Vetfiges of Creation , whereon we said
that we would on no account read it, leSt it should shake
our faith; then we would shake our heads and talk of the
preposterous folly and wickedness of such shallow specu¬
lations. Had not the book of Genesis been written for
our learning? Yet, now, who seriously disputes the main
principles of evolution? I cannot believe that there is a
bishop on the bench at this moment who does not accept
them; even the “ holy prieSts ” themselves bless evolution
as their predecessors blessed Cleopatra- when they ought
not. It is not he who first conceives an idea, nor he who
sets it on its legs and makes it go on all fours, but he who
makes other people accept the main conclusion, whether
on right grounds or on wrong ones, who has done the
greatest work as regards the promulgation of an opinion.
And this is what Mr. Darwin has done for evolution. He
225 Q
Life and Habit
has made us think that we know the origin of species, and
so of genera, in spite of his utmost efforts to assure us that
we know nothing of the causes from which the vast
majority of modifications have arisen -that is to say, he
has made us think we know the whole road, though he
has almost ostentatiously blindfolded us at every Step of
the journey. But to the end of time, if the question be
asked, “ Who taught people to believe in evolution? ”
there can only be one answer- that it was Mr. Darwin.
*
Mr. Mivart urges with much force the difficulty of
Starting any modification on which “ natural selection ”
is to work, and of getting a creature to vary in any definite
direction. Thus, after quoting from Mr. Wallace some
of the wonderful cases of “ mimicry ” which are to be
found among inseCts, he writes :
“ Now, let us suppose that the ancestors of these
various animals were all destitute of the very special pro¬
tection they at present possess, as on the Darwinian hypo¬
thesis we muSt do. Let it be also conceded that small
deviations from the antecedent colouring or form would
tend to make some of their ancestors escape destruction,
by causing them more or less frequently to be passed over
or mistaken by their persecutors. Yet the deviation muSt,
as the event has shown, in each case, be in some definite
direction, whether it be towards some other animal or
plant, or towards some dead or inorganic matter. But as,
according to Mr. Darwin’s theory, there is a constant
tendency to indefinite variation, and as the minute incipi¬
ent variations will be in ail directions, they muSt tend to
neutralize each other, and at first to form such unstable
modifications, that it is difficult, if not impossible, to see
how such indefinite modifications of insignificant be¬
ginnings can ever build up a sufficiendy appreciable
resemblance to a leaf, bamboo, or other objeCt for ‘ natural
226
Mr. Mivart and Mr. Darwin
sele&ion,’ to sei2e upon and perpetuate. This difficulty is
augmented when we consider- a point to be dwelt upon
hereafter-how necessary it is that many individuals
should be similarly modified simultaneously. This has
been insisted on in an able article in the North British
Jkeview for June 1867, p. 286, and the consideration of the
article has occasioned Mr. Darwin ” (1 Origin of Species ,
p. 104, 5 th ed.), “ to make an important modification in
his views ” ( Genesis of Species, p. 38).
To this Mr. Darwin rejoins :
“ But in all the foregoing cases the inse&s in their
original State, no doubt, presented some rude and acci¬
dental resemblance to an objeft commonly found in the
Stations frequented by them. Nor is this improbable,
considering the almost infinite number of surrounding
obje&s, and the diversity of form and colour of the hoSt
of inse&s that exist ” ( Origin of Species, p. 182, ed. 1876).
Mr. Mivart has juSt said : “ It is difficult to see how such
indefinite modifications of insignificant beginnings can
ever build up a sufficiently appreciable resemblance to a leaf,
bamboo, or other objett,for e natural selection ’ to work upon.”
The answer is, that “ natural sele&ion ” did not begin
to work until, from unknown causes, an appreciable resemblance
had nevertheless been presented. I think the reader will agree
with me that the development of the lowest life into a
creature which bears even “ a rude resemblance ” to the
obje&s commonly found in the Station in which it is
moving in its present differentiation, requires more
explanation than is given by the word “ accidental.”
Mr. Darwin continues : “ As some rude resemblance is
necessary for the first Start,” etc.; and a little lower he
writes : “ Assuming that an inseft originally happened to
resemble in some degree a dead twig or a decayed leaf, and
that it varied slightly in many ways, then all the variations
which rendered the inseft at all more like any such objed,
and thus favoured its escape, would be preserved, while
227
Life and Habit
other variations would be negledled, and ultimately loSt,
or if they rendered the insedl at all less like the imitated
objedt, they would be eliminated.”
But here, again, we are required to begin with Natural
Seledlion when the work is already in great part done,
owing to causes about which we are left completely in
the dark; we may, I think, fairly demur to the insedts
originally happening to resemble in some degree a dead
twig or a decayed leaf. And when we bear in mind that
the variations, being supposed by Mr. Darwin to be
indefinite, or devoid of aim, will appear in every diredtion,
we cannot forget what Mr. Mivart insists upon, namely,
that the chances of many favourable variations being
counterafted by other unfavourable ones in the same
creature are not inconsiderable. Nor, again, is it likely
that the favourable variation would make its mark upon
the race, and escape being absorbed in the course of a few
generations, unless- as Mr. Mivart elsewhere points out,
in a passage to which I shall call the reader’s attention
presently- a larger number of similarly varying creatures
made their appearance at the same time than there seems
sufficient reason to anticipate, if the variations can be
called fortuitous.
“ There would,” continues Mr. Darwin, “ indeed be
force in Mr. Mivart’s objedhon if we were to attempt to
account for the above resemblances, independently of
‘natural seledfion,’ through mere fludhiating variability;
but as the case Stands, there is none.”
This comes to saying that, if there was no power in
nature which operates so that of all the many fludhiating
variations, those only are preserved which tend to the
resemblance which is beneficial to the creature, then
indeed there would be difficulty in understanding how
the resemblance could have come about; but that as there
is a beneficial resemblance to Start with, and as there is a
power in nature which would preserve and accumulate
228
Mr. Mivart and Mr. Darwin
further beneficial resemblance, should it arise from this
cause or that, the difficulty is removed. But Mr. Mivart
does not, I take it, deny the existence of such a power in
nature, as Mr. Darwin supposes, though, if I understand
him rightly, he does not see that its operation upon small
fortuitous variations is at all the simple and obvious process,
which on a superficial view of the case it would appear
to be. He thinks -and I believe the reader will agree
with him- that this process is too slow and too risky.
What he wants to know is, how the insed came even
rudely to resemble the objed, and how, if its variations
are indefinite, we are ever to get into such a condition
as to be able to report progress, owing to the constant
liability of the creature which has varied favourably, to
play the part of Penelope and undo its work, by varying
in some one of the infinite number of other diredions
which are open to it- all of which, except this one, tend
to destroy the resemblance, and yet may be in some other
resped even more advantageous to the creature, and so
tend to its preservation. Moreover, here, too, I think
(though I cannot be sure), we have a recurrence of the
original fallacy in the words- “ If we were to account for
the above resemblances, independently of ‘ natural selec¬
tion/ through mere fluduating variability.” Surely Mr.
Darwin does, after all, “ account for the resemblances
through mere fluduating variability,” for “ natural selec¬
tion ” does not account for one single variation in the
whole list of them from first to last, other than indiredly,
as shown in the preceding chapter.
It is impossible for me to continue this subjed further;
but I would beg the reader to refer to other paragraphs
in the neighbourhood of the one juSt quoted, in which he
may- though I do not think he will- see reason to think
that I should have given Mr. Darwin’s answer more fully.
I do not quote Mr. Darwin’s next paragraph, inasmuch as
I see no great difficulty about “ the last touches of per-
229
Life and Habit
feftion in mimicry,” provided Mr. Darwin’s theory will
account for any mimicry at all. If it could do this, it
might as well do more; but a Strong impression is left on
my mind, that without the help of something over and
above the power to vary, which should give a definite aim
to variations, all the “ natural sele&ion ” in the world
would not have prevented Stagnation and self-Stultification,
owing to the indefinite tendency of the variations, which
thus could not have developed either a preyer or a preyee,
but would have gone round and round and round the
primordial cell till they were weary of it.
As against Mr. Darwin, therefore, I think that the
obje&ion juSt given from Mr. Mivart is fatal. I believe,
also, that the reader will feel the force of it much more
Strongly if he will turn to Mr. Mivart’s own pages.
AgainSt the view which I am myself supporting, the
obje&ion breaks down entirely, for grant “ a little dose of
judgement and reason ” on the part of the creature itself
-grant also continued personality and memory- and a
definite tendency is at once given to the variations. The
process is thus Started, and is kept Straight, and helped
forward through every Stage by “ the little dose of
reason,” etc., which enabled it to take its first Step. We
are, in faft, no longer without a helm, but can Steer each
creature that is so discontented with its condition, as to
make a serious effort to better itself, into some- and into
a very distant- harbour.
*
It has been objefted against Mr. Darwin’s theory that
if all species and genera have come to differ through the
accumulation of minute but- as a general rule -fortuitous
variations, there has not been time enough, so far as we
are able to gather, for the evolution of all existing forms
by so slow a process. On this subject I would again refer
the reader to Mr. Mivart’s book, from which I take the
following :
230
Mr. Mivart and Mr. Darwin
“ Sir William Thomson has lately advanced arguments
from three diStindt lines of inquiry agreeing in one
approximate result. The three lines of inquiry are-
(i) the adfion of the tides upon the earth’s rotation; (2)
the probable length of time during which the sun has
illuminated this planet; and (3) the temperature of the
interior of the earth. The result arrived at by these
investigations is a conclusion that the existing State of
things on the earth, life on the earth, all geological history
showing continuity of life, muSt be limited within some
such period of past time as one hundred million years.
The first question which suggests itself, supposing Sir W.
Thomson’s views to be corredt, is: Has this period been
anything like enough for the evolution of all organic
forms by ‘ natural selection ’ ? The second is : Has the
period been anything like enough for the deposition of
the Strata which muSt have been deposited if all organic
forms have been evolved by minute Steps, according to
the Darwinian theory? ” ( Genesis of Species, p. 154).
Mr. Mivart then quotes from Mr. Murphy- whose
work I have not seen- the following passage r
“ Darwin juStly mentions the greyhound as being equal
to any natural species in the perfedt co-ordination of its
parts, c all adapted for extreme fleetness and for running
down weak prey.’ Yet it is an artificial species (and not
physiologically a species at all) formed by a long-con¬
tinued seledtion under domestication; and there is no
reason to suppose that any of the variations which have
been seledted to form it have been other than gradual and
almost imperceptible. Suppose that it has taken five
hundred years to form the greyhound out of his wolf-like
ancestor. This is a mere guess, but it gives the order of
magnitude. Now, if so, how long would it take to obtain
an elephant from a protozoon or even from a tadpole-like
fish? Ought it not to take much more than a million
times as long? ” ( Genesis of Species, p. 155).
I should be very sorry to pronounce any opinion upon
231
Life and Habit
the foregoing data; but a general impression is left upon
my mind, that if the differences between an elephant and
a tadpole-like fish have arisen from the accumulation of
small variations that have had no dire&ion given them by
intelligence and sense of needs, then no time conceivable
by man would suffice for their development. But grant
“ a little dose of reason and judgement,” even to animals
low down in the scale of nature, and grant this, not only
during their later life, but during their embryological
existence, and see with what infinitely greater precision of
aim and with what increased speed the variations would
arise. Evolution entirely unaided by inherent intelligence
muSt be a very slow, if not quite inconceivable, process.
Evolution helped by intelligence would Still be slow, but
not so desperately slow. One can conceive that there has
been sufficient time for the second, but one cannot con¬
ceive it for the first.
*
I find from Mr. Mivart that obje&ion has been taken to
Mr. Darwin’s views, on account of the great odds that
exist against the appearance of any given variation at one
and the same time, in a sufficient number of individuals, to
prevent its being obliterated almost as soon as produced
by the admixture of unvaried blood which would so
greatly preponderate around it; and indeed the necessity
for a nearly simultaneous and similar variation, or readi¬
ness so to vary on the part of many individuals, seems
almost a postulate for evolution at all. On this subject
Mr. Mivart writes :
“ The North British Review (speaking of the supposition
that species is changed by the survival of a few individuals
in a century through a similar and favourable variation)
says :
“ c It is very difficult to see how this can be accom¬
plished, even when the variation is eminently favourable
232
c JVlr. <Z "Mivart and c 7idr. 'Darwin
indeed ; and Still more, when the advantage gained is very
slight, as muSt generally be the case. The advantage,
whatever it may be, is utterly outbalanced by numerical
inferiority. A million creatures are born; ten thousand
survive to produce offspring. One of the million has
twice as good a chance as any other of surviving, but the
chances are fifty to one against the gifted individual being
one of the hundred survivors. No doubt the chances are
twice as great againSt any other individual, but this does
not prevent their being enormously in favour of some
average individual. However slight the advantage may
be, if it is shared by half the individuals produced, it will
probably be present in at least fifty-one of the survivors,
and in a larger proportion of their offspring; but the
chances are against the preservation of any one “ sport ”
(/.*., sudden marked variation) in a numerous tribe. The
vague use of an imperfe&ly-underStood doftrine of chance,
has led Darwinian supporters, first, to confuse the two
cases above distinguished, and secondly, to imagine that
a very slight balance in favour of some individual sport
muSt lead to its perpetuation. All that can be said
is that in the above example the favoured sport would be
preserved once in fifty times. Let us consider what will
be its influence on the main Stock when preserved. It will
breed and have a progeny of say ioo; now this progeny
will, on the whole, be intermediate between the average
individual and the sport. The odds in favour of one of
this generation of the new breed will be, say one and a
half to one, as compared with the average individual ; the
odds in their favour will, therefore, be less than that of
their parents; but owing to their greater number the
chances are that about one and a half of them would
survive. Unless these breed together- a moSt improbable
event -their progeny would again approach the average
individual; there would be 150 of them, and their superi¬
ority would be, say in the ratio of one and a quarter to one ;
233
Life and Habit
the probability would now be that nearly two of them
would survive, and have 200 children with an eighth
superiority. Rather more than two of these would
survive; but the superiority would again dwindle; until
after a few generations it would no longer be observed,
and would count for no more in the Struggle for life than
any of the hundred trifling advantages which occur in the
ordinary organs.
“ ‘ An illustration will bring this conception home.
Suppose a white man to have been wrecked on an island
inhabited by negroes, and to have established himself in
friendly relations with a powerful tribe, whose customs
he has learnt. Suppose him to possess the physical
Strength, energy, and ability of a dominant white race, and
let the food of the island suit his constitution; grant him
every advantage which we can conceive a white to possess
over the native; concede that in the Struggle for existence,
his chance of a long life will be much superior to that of
the native chiefs ; yet from all these admissions there does
not follow the conclusion, that after a limited or unlimited
number of generations, the inhabitants of the island will
be white. Our shipwrecked hero would probably become
king; he would kill a great many blacks in the Struggle for
existence ; he would have a great many wives and children.
... In the first generation there will be some dozens of
intelligent young mulattoes, much superior in average
intelligence to the negroes. We might exped the throne
for some generations to be occupied by a more or less
yellow king; but can any one believe that the whole island
will gradually acquire a white, or even a yellow popula¬
tion? . . . Darwin says, that in the Struggle for life a grain
may turn the balance in favour of a given Structure, which
will then be preserved. But one of the weights in the
scale of nature is due to the number of a given tribe. Let
there be 7000 A’s and 7000 B’s representing two varieties *
of a given animal, and let all the B’s, in virtue of a slight
234
Mr. Mivart and Mr. Darwin
difference of Structure, have the better chance by o Part»
We muSt allow that there is a slight probability that the
descendants of B will supplant the descendants of A ; but
let there be 7001 A’s against 7000 B’s at first, and the
chances are once more equal, while if there be 7002 A’s
to Start, the odds would be laid on the A’s. Thus they
Stand a greater chance of being killed; but, then, they can
better afford to be killed. The grain will only turn the
scales when these are very nicely balanced, and an advan¬
tage in numbers counts for weight, even as an advantage
in Structure. As the numbers of the favoured variety
diminish, so muSt its relative advantages increase, if the
chance of its existence is to surpass the chance of its ex¬
tinction, until hardly any conceivable advantage would
enable the descendants of a single pair to exterminate the
descendants of many thousands, if they and their descend¬
ants are supposed to breed freely with the inferior variety,
and so gradually lose their ascendancy ’ ” (North British
Review , June 1867, p. 286; Genesis of Species, p. 64, and
onwards).
AgainSt this it should be remembered that there is
always an antecedent probability that several specimens
of a given variation would appear at one time and place.
This would probably be the case even on Mr. Darwin’s
hypothesis, that the variations are fortuitous; if they are
mainly guided by sense of need and intelligence, it would
almost certainly be so, for all would have much the same
idea as to their well-being, and the same cause which
would lead one to vary in this direction would lead not a
few others to do so at the same time, or to follow suit.
Thus we see that many human ideas and inventions have
been conceived independently but simultaneously. The
chances, moreover, of specimens that have varied success¬
fully, intermarrying, are, I think, greater than the reviewer
above quoted from would admit. I believe that on the
hypothesis that the variations are fortuitous, and certainly
235
Life and Habit
on the supposition that they are intelligent, they might
be looked for in members of the same family, who would
hence have a better chance of finding each other out.
Serious as is the difficulty advanced by the reviewer as
against Mr. Darwin’s theory, it may be in great measure
parried without departing from Mr. Darwin’s own posi¬
tion, but the “ little dose of judgement and reason ”
removes it, absolutely and entirely. As for the reviewer’s
shipwrecked hero, surely the reviewer must know that
Mr. Darwin would no more expedl an island of black men
to be turned white, or even perceptibly whitened after
a few generations, than the reviewer himself would do so.
But if we turn from what “ might ” or what “ would ”
happen to what “ does ” happen, we find that a few white
families have nearly driven the Indian from the United
States, the Australian natives from Australia, and the
Maoris from New Zealand. True, these few families
have been helped by immigration; but it will be admitted
that this has only accelerated a result which would other¬
wise, none the less surely, have been effe&ed.
There is all the difference between a sudden sport, or
even a variety introduced from a foreign source, and the
gradual, intelligent, and, in the main Steady, growth of a
race towards ends always a little, but not much, in advance
of what it can at present compass, until it has reached
equilibrium with its surroundings. So far as Mr. Darwin’s
variations are of the nature of “ sport,” rare, and
owing to nothing that we can in the least assign to any
known cause, the reviewer’s obje&ions carry much weight*
AgainSt the view here advocated, they are powerless.
*
I cannot here go into the difficulties of the geologic
record, but they too will, I believe, be felt to be almost
infinitely simplified by supposing the development of
Stru&ure and inStinft to be guided by intelligence and
236
Mr. Mivart and Mr. Darwin
memory, which, even under unstable conditions, would
be able to meet in some measure the demands made upon
them.
*
When Mr. Mivart deals with evolution and ethics, I am
afraid that I differ from him even more widely than I have
done from Mr. Darwin. He writes ( Genesis of Species ,
p. 234): “ . . . We may safely affirm that ‘ natural selec¬
tion 9 could not have produced from the sensations of
pleasure and pain experienced by brutes a higher degree
of morality than was useful ; therefore it could have pro¬
duced any amount of ‘ beneficial habits/ but not abhor¬
rence of certain a£ts as impure and sinful.”
Possibly “ natural selection ” may not be able to do
much in the way of accumulating variations that do not
arise; but that, according to the views supported in this
volume, all that is highest and moSt beautiful in the soul,
as well as in the body, could be, and has been, /developed
from beings lower than man, I do not greatly doubt.
Mr. Mivart and myself would probably differ as to what
is and what is not beautiful. Thus he writes of “ the
noble virtue of a Marcus Aurelius ” (p. 235), than whom,
for my own part, I know few respe&able figures in history
to whom I am less attra&ed. I cannot but think that Mr.
Mivart has taken his estimate of this emperor at second¬
hand, and without reference to the writings which happily
enable us to form a fair estimate of his real chara&er.
Take the opening paragraphs of the Thoughts of Marcus
Aurelius, as translated by Mr. Long :
“ From the reputation and remembrance of my father
[I learned] modesty and a manly character; from my
mother, piety and beneficence, abstinence not only from
evil deeds, but even from evil thoughts. . . . From my
great-grandfather, not to have frequented public schools,
and to have had good teachers at home, and to know that
237
Life and Habit
on such things a man should spend liberally. . . . From
Diognetus ... [I learned] to have become intimate with
philosophy, . . . and to have written dialogues in my
youth, and to have desired a plank bed and skin, and
whatever else of the kind belongs to the Grecian discipline.
. . . From RuSticus I received the impression that my
chara&er required improvement and discipline ” ; and so
on to the end of the chapter, near which, however, it is
right to say that there appears a redeeming touch, in so
far as that he thanks the gods that he could not write
poetry, and that he had never occupied himself about the
appearance of things in the heavens.
Or, again, opening Mr. Long’s translation at random
I find (p. 37):
“ As physicians have always their instruments and
knives ready for cases which suddenly require their skill,
so do thou have principles ready for the understanding
of things divine and human, and for doing everything,
even the smallest, with a recolle&ion of the bond that
unites the divine and human to one another. For neither
wilt thou do anything well which pertains to man without
at the same time having a reference to things divine; nor
the contrary.”
Unhappy one ! No wonder the Roman empire went to
pieces soon after him. If I remember rightly, he estab¬
lished and subsidized professorships in all parts of his
dominions. Whereon the same befell the arts and litera¬
ture of Rome as befell Italian painting after the Academic
system had taken ro*ot at Bologna under the Caracci.
Mr. Martin Tupper, again, is an amiable and well-meaning
man, but we should hardly like to see him in Lord Beacons-
field’s place. The Athenians poisoned Socrates; and
Aristophanes -than whom few more profoundly religious
men have ever been born- did not, so far as we can gather,
think the worse of his countrymen on that account. It is
not improbable that if they had poisoned Plato too,
238
Mr. Mivart and Mr. Darwin
Aristophanes would have been well enough pleased; but
I think he would have preferred either of these two men
to Marcus Aurelius.
I know nothing about cc the loving but manly devotion
of a St. Lewis/’ but I Strongly suspeCI that Mr. Mivart has
taken him, too, upon hearsay.
On the other hand, among dogs we find examples of
every heroic quality, and of all that is most perfectly
charming to us in man.
As for the possible development of the more brutal
human natures from the more brutal inStin&s of the lower
animals, those who read a horrible Story told in a note,
pp. 233, 234 of Mr. Mivart’s Genesis of Species, will feel no
difficulty on that score. I muSt admit, however, that the
telling of that Story seems to me ‘to be a mistake in a philo¬
sophical work, which should not, I think, unless under
compulsion, deal either with the horrors of the French
Revolution- or of the Spanish or Italian Inquisition.
For the reSt of Mr. Mivart’s objections, I muSt refer the
reader to his own work. I have been unable to find a
single one, which I do not believe to be easily met by the
Lamarckian view, with the additions (if indeed they are
additions, for I muSt own to no very profound knowledge
of what Lamarck did or did not say), which I have in this
volume proposed to make to it. At the same time I admit,
that as against the Darwinian view, many of them seem
quite unanswerable.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: CONCLUDING REMARKS
Here, then, i leave my case, though
well aware that I have crossed the threshold only
of my subjedt My work is of a tentative chara&er,
put before the public as a sketch or design for a,
possibly, further endeavour, in which I hope to derive
assistance from the criticisms which this present volume
may elicit. Such as it is, however, for the present I must
leave it.
We have seen that we cannot do anything thoroughly
till we can do it unconsciously, and that we cannot do
anything unconsciously till we can do it thoroughly; this
at first seems illogical; but logic and consistency are
luxuries for the gods, and the lower animals, only. Thus
a boy cannot really know how to swim till he can swim,
but he cannot swim till he knows how to swim. Conscious
effort is but the process of rubbing off the rough corners
from these two contradi&ory Statements, till they eventu¬
ally fit into one another so closely that it is impossible to
disjoin them.
Whenever, therefore, we see any creature able to go
through any complicated and difficult process with little
or no effort- whether it be a bird building her neSt, or a
hen’s egg making itself into a chicken, or an ovum turning
itself into a baby- we may conclude that the creature has
done the same thing on a very great number of past
occasions.
We found the phenomena exhibited by heredity to be
so like those of memory, and to be so inexplicable on any
other supposition than that they were modes of memory,
that it was easier to suppose them due to memory in spite
of the fa& that we cannot remember having recolle&ed,
than to believe that because we cannot so remember,
therefore the phenomena cannot be due to memory.
We were thus led to consider “ personal identity,” in
order to see whether there was sufficient reason for deny¬
ing that the experience, which we mu$t have clearly gained
240
Concluding Remarks
somewhere, was gained by us when we were in the persons
of our forefathers; we found, not without surprise, that
unless we admitted that it might be so gained, in so far
as that we once actually were our remotest ancestor, we muSt
change our ideas concerning personality altogether.
We therefore assumed that the phenomena of heredity,
whether as regards inStin& or Strudhire, were due to
memory of past experiences, accumulated and fused till
they had become automatic, or quasi-automatic, much in
the same way as after a long life—
“ . . . Old experience do attain
To something like prophetic Strain.”
After dealing with certain phenomena of memory, but
more especially with its abeyance and revival, we inquired
what the principal corresponding phenomena of life and
species should be, on the hypothesis that tjaey were mainly
due to memory.
I think I may say that we found the hypothesis fit in with
a&ual fadfs in a sufficiendy satisfactory manner. We
found not a few matters, as, for example, the Sterility of
hybrids, the principle underlying longevity, the pheno¬
mena of old age, and puberty as generally near the end of
development, explain themselves with more completeness
than I have yet heard of their being explained on any other
hypothesis. MoSt, indeed, of these phenomena have been
left hitherto without even an attempt at explanation.
We considered the most important difficulty in the way
of inStindfc as hereditary habit, namely, the Stru&ure and
inStindts of neuter insedfcs; these are very unlike those of
their parents, and cannot, apparendy, be transmitted to
offspring by individuals of the previous generation, in
whom such Strudhire and inStindfcs appeared, inasmuch as
these creatures are Sterile. I do not say that the difficulty
is wholly removed, inasmuch as some obscurity muSt be
admitted to remain as to the manner in which the Strudhire
241
R
Life and Habit
of the larva is aborted; this obscurity is likely to remain
till we know more of the early history of civilization among
bees than I can find that we know at present ; but I believe
the difficulty was reduced to such proportions as to make
it little likely to be felt in comparison with that of attri¬
buting inStind to any other cause than inherited habit,
or memory on the part of offspring, of habits contra&ed
in the persons of its ancestors.
We then inquired what was the great principle under¬
lying variation, and answered, with Lamarck, that it muSt
be “sense of need”; and though not without being
haunted by suspicion of a vicious circle, and also well
aware that we were not much nearer the origin of life than
when we Started, we Still concluded that here was the
truest origin of species, and hence of genera; and that the
accumulation of variations, which in time amounted to
specific and generic differences, was due to intelligence and
memory on the part of the creature varying, rather than
to the operation of what Mr. Darwin has called “ natural
sele&ion.” At the same time we admitted that the course
of nature is very much as Mr. Darwin has represented it,
in this respeft, in so far as that there is a Struggle for exist¬
ence, and that the weaker must go to the wall. But we
denied that this part of the course of nature would lead
to much, if any, accumulation of variation, unless the
variation was directed mainly by intelligent sense of need,
with continued personality and memory.
We conclude, therefore, that the small, apparently
Structureless, impregnate ovum from which we have each
one of us sprung, has a potential recollection of all that
has happened to each one of its ancestors prior to the
period at which any such ancestor has issued from the
bodies of its progenitors -provided, that is to say, a
sufficiently deep, or sufficiently often-repeated, impression
has been made to admit of its being remembered at all.
Each Step of normal development will lead the im-
242
Concluding Remarks
pregnate ovum up to, and remind it of, its next ordinary
course of a&ion, in the same way as we, when we recite a
well-known passage, are led up to each successive sentence
by the sentence which has immediately preceded it.
And for this reason, namely, that as it takes two people
“ to tell ” a thing- a speaker and a comprehending
listener, without which laSt, though much may have been
said, there has been nothing told- so also it takes two
people, as it were, to “ remember ” a thing -the creature
remembering, and the surroundings of the creature at the
time it last remembered. Hence, though the ovum
immediately after impregnation is inStinft with all the
memories of both parents, not one of these memories can
normally become aftive till both the ovum itself, and its
surroundings, are sufficiently like what they respe&ively
were, when the occurrence now to be remembered laSt
took place. The memory will then imihediately return,
and the creature will do as it did on the laSt occasion that
it was in like case as now. This ensures that similarity
of order shall be preserved in all the Stages of development,
in successive generations.
Life, then, is faith founded upon experience, which
experience is in its turn founded upon faith- or more
simply, it is memory. Plants and animals only differ from
one another because they remember different things;
plants and animals only grow up in the shapes they assume
because this shape is their memory, their idea concerning
their own paSt history.
Hence the term “ Natural History,” as applied to the
different plants and animals around us. For surely the
Study of natural history means only the Study of plants and
animals themselves, which, at the moment of using the
words “ Natural History,” we assume to be the most
important part of nature.
A living creature well supported by a mass of healthy
ancestral memory is a young and growing creature, free
243
Life and Habit
from ache or pain, and thoroughly acquainted with its
business so far, but with much yet to be reminded of.
A creature which finds itself and its surroundings not so
unlike those of its parents about the time of their begetting
it, as to be compelled to recognize that it never yet was in
any such position, is a creature in the heyday of life. A
creature which begins to be aware of itself is one which is
beginning to recognize that the situation is a new one.
It is the young and fair, then, who are the truly old and
truly experienced; it is they who alone have a trustworthy
memory to guide them; they alone know things as they
are, and it is from them that, as we grow older, we must
Study if we would Still cling to truth. The whole charm
of youth lies in its advantage over age in resped of experi¬
ence, and where this has for some reason failed, or been
misapplied, the charm is broken. When we say that we
are getting old, we should say rather that we are getting
new or young, and are suffering from inexperience, which
drives us into doing things which we do not understand,
and lands us, eventually, in the utter impotence of death.
The kingdom of heaven is the kingdom of little children.
A living creature bereft of all memory dies. If bereft
of a great part of memory, it swoons or sleeps ; and when
its memory returns, we say it has returned to life.
Life and death, then, should be memory and forgetful¬
ness, for we are dead to all that we have forgotten.
• Life is that property of matter whereby it can remember.
Matter which can remember is living; matter which
cannot remember is dead.
Life, then , is memory . The life of a creature is the memory
of a creature. We are all the same Stuff to Start with, but
we remember different things, and if we did not remember
different things we should be absolutely like each other.
As for the Stuff itself , we know nothing save only that it is
“ such as dreams are made of.”
*
244
Concluding Remarks
I am aware that there are many expressions throughout
this book which are not scientifically accurate. Thus I
imply that we tend towards the centre of the earth, when,
I believe, I should say that we tend towards the centre of
gravity of the earth. I speak of “ the primordial cell,”
when I mean only the earliest form of life, and I thus not
only assume a single origin of life when there is no neces¬
sity for doing so, and perhaps no evidence to this effedt,
but I do so in spite of the fadt that the amoeba, which seems
to be “ the simplest form of life,” does not appear to be
a cell at all. I have used the word “ beget,” of what,
I am told, is asexual generation, whereas the word should
be confined to sexual generation only. Many more such
errors have been pointed out to me, and I doubt not that
a larger number remain of which I know nothing now, but
of which I may perhaps be told presently.
I did not, however, think that in a work of this de¬
scription the additional words which would have been
required for scientific accuracy were worth the paper and
ink and loss of breadth which their introduction would
entail. Besides, I know nothing about science, and it is
as well that there should be no mistake on this head;
I neither know, nor want to know, more detail than is
necessary to enable me to give a fairly broad and com¬
prehensive view of my subject. When for the purpose of
giving this, a matter importunately insisted on being made
out, I endeavoured to make it out as well as I could;
otherwise -that is to say, if it did not insist on being
looked into, in spite of a good deal of snubbing, I held
that, as it was blurred and indistinct in nature, I had better
so render it in my work.
Nevertheless, if one has gone for some time through
a wood full of burrs, some of them are bound to Stick.
I am afraid that I have left more such burrs in one part
and another of my book, than the kind of reader whom I
alone wish to please will perhaps put up with. For-
245
Life and Habit
tunately, this kind of reader is the beSt-natured critic in
the world, and is long-suffering of a good deal that the
more consciously scientific will not tolerate; I wish,
however, that I had not used such expressions as “ centres
of thought and adion ” quite so often.
As for the kind of inaccuracy already alluded to, my
reader will not, I take it, as a general rule, know, or wish
to know, much more about science than I do, sometimes
perhaps even less; so that he and I shall commonly be
wrong in the same places, and our two wrongs will make
a sufficiently satisfactory right for practical purposes.
Of course, if I were a specialist writing a treatise or
primer on such and such a point of detail, I admit that
scientific accuracy would be de rigueur ; but I have been
trying to paint a picture rather than to make a diagram,
and I claim the painter’s licence “ quid lib et audendi. ’ ’ I have
done my utmost to give the spirit of my subjeCt, but if the
letter interfered with the spirit, I have sacrificed it without
remorse.
May not what is commonly called a scientific subjeCt
have artistic value which it is a pity to negled? But if a
sub j eft is to be treated artistically -that is to say, with a
desire to consider not only the fads, but the way in which
the reader will feel concerning those fads, and the way
in which he will wish to see them rendered, thus making
his mind a fador of the intention, over and above the
subjed itself- then the writer muSt not be denied a painter’s
licence. If one is painting a hillside at a sufficient distance,
and cannot see whether it is covered with cheStnut-trees
or walnuts, one is not bound to go across the valley to see.
If one is painting a city, it is not necessary that one should
know the names of the Streets. If a house or tree Stands
inconveniendy for one’s purpose, it muSt go without more
ado; if two important features, neither of which can be
left out, want a litde bringing together or separating before
the spirit of the place can be well given, they muSt be
246
Concluding Remarks
brought together, or separated. Which is a more truthful
view of Shrewsbury, for example, from a spot where
St. Alkmund’s spire is in parallax with St. Mary’s -a view
which should give only the one spire which can be seen,
or one which should give them both, although the one is
hidden? There would be, I take it, more representation
in the misrepresentation than in the representation- “ the
half would be greater than the whole,” unless, that is to
say, one expressly told the spectator that St. Alkmund’s
spire was hidden behind St. Mary’s -a sort of explanation
which seldom adds to the poetical value of any work of
art. Do what one may, and no matter how scientific one
may be, one cannot attain absolute truth. The question
is rather, how do people like to have their error? than, will
they go without any error at all? All truth and no error
cannot be given by the scientist more than by the artist;
each has to sacrifice truth in one way or another; and even
if perfeCt truth could be given, it is doubtful whether it
would not resolve itself into unconsciousness pure and
simple, consciousness being, as it were, the clash of small
conflicting perceptions, without which there is neither
intelligence nor recollection possible. It is not, then, what
a man has said, nor what he has put down with aCtual
paint upon his canvas, which speaks to us with living
language-// is what he has thought to us (as is so well put in
the letter quoted on page 68), by which our opinion
should be guided; -what has he made us feel that he had
it in him, and wished to do ? If he has said or painted
enough to make us feel that he meant and felt as we should
wash him to have done, he has done the utmost that man
can hope to do.
I feel sure that no additional amount of technical
accuracy would make me more likely to succeed, in this
respeCt, if I have otherwise failed; and as this is the only
success about which I greatly care, I have left my scientific
inaccuracies uncorre&ed, even when aware of them. At
247
Life and Habit
the same time, I should say that I have taken all possible
pains as regards anything which I thought could materially
affed: the argument one way or another.
It may be said that I have fallen between two stools,
and that the subject is one which, in my hands, has shown
neither artistic nor scientific value. This would be serious.
To fall between two Stools, and to be hanged for a lamb,
are the two crimes which -
“ Nor gods, nor men, nor any schools allow.”
Of the latter, I go in but little danger; about the former,
I shall know better when the public have enlightened me.
The pra&ical value of the views here advanced (if they
be admitted as true at all) would appear to be not incon¬
siderable, alike as regards politics or the well-being of the
community, and medicine which deals with that of the
individual. In the first case we see the rationale of com¬
promise, and the equal folly of making experiments upon
too large a scale, and of not making them at all. We see
that new ideas cannot be fused with old, save gradually
and by patiently leading up to them in such a way as to
admit of a sense of continued identity between the old
and the new. This should teach us moderation. For
even though nature wishes to travel in a certain dire&ion,
she insists on being allowed to take her own time; she will
not be hurried, and will cull a creature out even more
surely for forestalling her wishes too readily, than for
lagging a little behind them. So the greatest musicians,
painters, and poets owe their greatness rather to their
fusion and assimilation of all the good that has been done
up to, and especially near about, their own time, than to
any very Startling Steps they have taken in advance. Such
men will be sure to take some, and important, Steps for¬
ward; for unless they have this power, they will not be
able to assimilate well what has been done already, and if
they have it, their Study of older work will almost indefi-
248
Concluding Remarks
nitely assist it; but, on the whole, they owe their greatness
to their completer fusion and assimilation of older ideas ;
for nature is diStin&ly a fairly liberal conservative rather
than a conservative liberal. All which is well said in the
old couplet :
“ Be not the first by whom the new is tried.
Nor yet the laSt to throw the old aside.”
Mutatis mutandis , the above would seem to hold as truly
about medicine as about politics. We cannot reason with
our cells, for they know so much more than we do that
they cannot understand us ; but though we cannot reason
with them, we can find out what they have been most
accustomed to, and what, therefore, they are most likely
to exped; we can see that they get this, as far as it is in
our power to give it them, and may then generally leave
the reSt to them, only bearing in mind that they will rebel
equally against too sudden a change of treatment, and no
change at all.
Friends have complained to me that they can never tell
whether I am in jeSt or earnest. I think, however, it
should be sufficiently apparent that I am in very serious
earnest, perhaps too much so, from the first page of my
book to the last. I am not aware of a single argument put
forward which is not a bona fide argument, although,
perhaps, sometimes admitting of a humorous side. If a
grain of corn looks like a piece of chaff, I confess I prefer
it occasionally to something which looks like a grain, but
which turns out to be a piece of chaff only. There is no
lack of matter of this description going about in some
very decorous volumes; I have, therefore, endeavoured,
for a third time, to furnish the public with a book whose
fault should lie rather in the diredion of seeming less
serious than it is, than of being less so than it seems.
At the same time, I admit that when I began to write
upon my subjed I did not seriously believe in it. I saw,
249
Life and Habit
as it were, a pebble upon the ground, with a sheen that
pleased me; taking it up, I turned it over and over for
my amusement, and found it always grow brighter and
brighter the more I examined it. At length I became
fascinated, and gave loose rein to self-illusion. The
aspeft of the world seemed changed; the trifle which I
had picked up idly had proved to be a talisman of inestim¬
able value, and had opened a door through which I caught
glimpses of a Strange and interesting transformation. Then
came one who told me that the Stone was not mine, but
that it had been dropped by Lamarck, to whom it belonged
rightfully, but who had lost it; whereon I said I cared not
who was the owner, if only I might use it and enjoy it.
Now, therefore, having polished it with what art and care
one who is no jeweller could beStow upon it, I return it,
as best I may, to its possessor.
What am I to think or say? That I tried to deceive
others till I have fallen a vidlim to my own falsehood?
Surely this is the most reasonable conclusion to arrive at.
Or that I have really found Lamarck’s talisman, which
had been for some time lost sight of?
Will the reader bid me wake with him to a world of
chance and blindness? Or can I persuade him to dream
with me of a more living faith than either he or I had as
yet conceived as possible? As I have said, reason points
remorselessly to an awakening, but faith and hope Still
beckon to the dream.
250
Index
ABORTION I90, I92
accidents, we all profit by our 200
accidents and mutilations, inherited effe&s of
acetic acid, experiments on frogs with
actions, psychological and physiological
actions and habits acquired before birth
ACTORS
age, old. See Longevity
AMERICA
American monkeys, C. Darwin on the tail of
AMOEBA
AMPHIOXUS
ancestors, our semi-simious
ANDROMEDA and PERSEUS
animals, cruelty to
memory of, Stimulated by association
M. Ribot on inStin& of
fortunes of, built up gradually
wise and lucky, live longer
animals and plants, domesticated, vary in reprodu&ion
resumption of feral habits in
differences of, due to the effe&s of use
innate tendency towards progressive development
origin and chara&er of variation in
shape of, is their memory
See also Darwin, C.
ANTS 162, 176, I77, I83-I87, I93, 196
149
92> 93
95, 98-100
49-63
76
123
210
5 5, 58-60, 165, 245
100
10
112
112
155. 156
170-176, 178
200
216, 217
146, 147
156, 157
210
217-219
218, 219
243
APHIDS
ARISTOPHANES
ARISTOTLE
arithmetic, Zerah Colburn and
Arnold, Dr. Thomas
arts and SCIENCES
ASS
assimilation of outside matter by living organisms
of older ideas
association and memory
ATHENIANS
ATLANTIC
aurelius Antoninus, Marcus
AUSTRALIA
183
238
53
11-13
24
42
169
110-121
248, 249
135, 1 54-i 57, 192
238
132
30, 237-239
236
EABY
3ACON, Francis
208
23, 24
231
Life and Habit
baily, Francis, on Zerah Colburn
bain. Prof. Alex., his The Senses and the
BARBADOS
beaconsfield, Lord
BEAUTY
BEAVERS
BEES
bellini, Giovanni
Bernard, Claude
bible, rich young man in the
birds, mimicry of
flight of, due to memory
BIRMINGHAM
birth, habits acquired after
actions and habits acquired before
BIRTH and DEATH
blood, circulation of the
oxygenization of the
BLOOD CORPUSCLES
BOLOGNA
BOLOGNA SAUSAGES
bones are houses
books on morality, Bacon on reading
BORNEO
BREATHING
breeding, hermaphroditic
artificial
BRISTOL
BRITISH CONSTITUTION
brown-sequard, on guinea-pigs
BULBS
butler, Joseph, Bp. of Durham
butler, Samuel, his Hudibras quoted
butler, Dr. Samuel, of Shrewsbury
BUTTERFLIES
Intellect quoted
11-13
155
J95
22 note , 29, 238
32, 166
175. 176
162, 180, 186-196, 221
35, 47
88
3i
165
183
97
36-48
49-63
67, 69, 73, 76, 77, 79, io4
7, 45-47
39, 40, 44, 49
80, 87, 90, 91
238
177
89, 90
good 23
220
38, 39, 42, 45-47, !98, *99
24
165, 166, 231
97
89
I5>
82, 83, 133, 134
64, 70-72
187
20, 21, 27
75, 76, 164, 165, 220, 221
CAMBRIDGE 1 3 2, 1 89
CAMEL l6^
CARACCI 238
CARDS 132.
carpenter, W. B., his Mental Physiology quoted 11-13, 54-60
his Mesmerism, Spiritualism, etc. quoted 28, 29
quotes experiments on frogs 92-96
252
Index
Catasetum
CATERPILLARS
P. Huber on
CATS
cell, primordial
CELLS
221
75, 76, 79, XI9, 120
182, 183
141, 156
61, 70, no, 214, 230, 245
89, 104, 116, 139, 140, 151, 152
'centres of thought and action' 246
Ceroxylus laceratus 220
chance, illustration of Nature's love of a contradi&ion 42
CHARING CROSS 97
chemistry, a plant's knowledge of 184
chickens, hatching of 50-54
embryo of 60, 61, 142, 215
S. Smith on the hereditary memory of 176
CHRISTIANITY 20, 21, 33, 34
CHRYSALIS 75, 76, 1 1 9, 120
CHURCH, the
church, Corinthian
church, Lutheran
church of England, Dr. S. Butler on the
constitution of the
circles, vicious, arguing in
circulation of the blood
CIRCUMCISION
CLEOPATRA
CLOTHES
colburn, Zerah
competition, effe&s of, in variation
conscious and unconscious knowers
CORINTHIAN CHURCH
CORN
Coryanthes
COVENT GARDEN MARKET
CUCKOO
CUSTOMS
CUVIER, F.
34, 35
3i
20, 21
20, 21
194, 195
164
7, 45-47
15 1
225
62, 66, 68
11-14
215, 216
17-35
3i
67, m-114
221
105
187
162
179
87, 1 16, 148
116
141-144
Darwin, C., his theory of Pangenesis
his Effefts of Cross and Self Fertilisation
on the Sterility of hybrids
his Variations of Animals and Plants under Domefiication 143-160
his Expression of the Emotions 149, 154, 155
on use and disuse 199, 206, 209
*53
Life and Habit
Lamarck and Darwin
his Origin of Species
Mivart and Darwin
his 'Fertilisation of Orchids
taught people to believe in evolution
davy. Sir Humphry
death, the most inexorable of all conventions
birth and 67, 69,
is forgetfulness
DESCENT WITH MODIFICATION
DESIRE and POWER
development, metagenetic
progressive, in animals and plants
DIGESTION
DINNER
DIOGNETUS
DISCOBOLUS
DOGS 31, 141, I49,
domestic productions
domestication, animals and plants under
See also Darwin, C.
DONATELLO
DRESS
DRESSING
DRUGS
DUCKLINGS
DUCKS
dumpling, apple
DYAK
206-222, 224, 22 5
210-224
220-239
221
226
44
44
73, 76, 77, 79, I04
244
24, 2. 5
163-166, 208, 219
75, 79
217-219
39, 42, 44, 4^
41, 130
238
132
150, 166, 171, 172
208
169, 170, 219
32
66
I27
181, 201
167, 170
150, 169, 170
208
220
EARNESTNESS
EATING and DRINKING
echinoderms, Mr. Darwin on
EDUCATION
EGGS
'ego'
ELEPHANT
EMBRYO
EQUILIBRIUM
Erervhon
EULER, L.
EUROPEANS
'even an imperfeft answer would be satisfa&ory*
254
24
37
79
163, 166
50-53, 62, 63, 75-82, 100, 109-118
86, 87, 96, 98
165, 215, 224, 231, 232
49-54, 60-69, 102-108
161, 162, 187, 219
187, 198
12
J47
150, 167
Index
EVOLUTION
146, 185
Lamarck's and Darwin's theories of
206-222, 224, 225
C. Darwin taught people to believe in
226
is slow
232
existences, we remember our past
118, 119
EXPERIENCE
36-62
experiments, folly of making, on too large a scale 248
Expression of the Emotions , C. Darwin's
149, 154, 15 5
eye, winkings or the twinklings of an
104
eye of flat-fish, C. Darwin on
210
FAITH and DESIRE
105, 106, 165, 196
FAITH and PROTOPLASM
54-57, 201
FALKLAND ISLANDS
157
FASHION
44, 47, 57
feral habits, C. Darwin on resumption of
156, 157
FERMAT, P. de
12
Fertilisation of Orchids , C. Darwin's
221
FIRST-COUSINS
137
FISH
57, i°3> 104, 210
FLIES
104, 105, 177
flourens, M. J. P., experiment on guinea-pigs
92
'flukes'
FOOD
FORTUITOUS VARIATIONS
FOWLS
FOX
FRENCH REVOLUTION
frog, body of the late
FROGS
FUCI
fungi, moth arrays itself in
GALEN
GALILEE
GALILEO
gallio, cheap immortality of
GALLUS
GEMMULES
GENERATION
GENESIS, book of
GEOLOGY
GERMS
43, 65, 66,
166, 206,
1 14,
45, i37> 200
180, 192, 193, 201
211, 213, 221-235
115, 117, 118, 142
170
209, 239
93
75, 92-9<>
142
221
176
25
201
21
142
152, 193
83, 138, 140, 245
225
231
122, 169, 173
255
Life and Habit
GESTICULATION
GIZZARD STONES
GLOUCESTER
GOAT
god, a personal
god is not extreme to mark what is done amiss
"god save the Queen’
goethe, J. W. von, his Wilhelm Met Her
GOOSE
GRACE and THE LAW
GRAIN
GRAIN and CHAFF
GRATIOLET, L. P.
GRAVITATION
GREAT NORTHERN SHARES
GREENWICH
GREYHOUND 1 66,
GUINEA-PIGS
IO, II
III, 113
97
176
19, 20, 66
213
128
23
1 66
8> 27» 31-33* 167
111-114
249
178
62
61
73
172, 202, 212, 231
92> *53
habits, acquired
acquired after birth
acquired before birth
hereditary
habits and instincts
HAIR
half-castes, on the state of
hall. Sir James
HANDEL
harvey, William
HARWICH
hen’s egg
stomach
HEREDITY and MEMORY
See also Ribot, Th.
HERMAPHRODITIC BREEDING
HERODOTUS
HEWITT, Mr.
HORACE
HORSES
huber, Pierre
HULL
HUXLEY, Prof.
hybrids, Sterility of
1-16
36-48
49-63
218
182, 183
7, 43, 53, 54, 65
147, 148
176
35, 47
48
97
62, 63, 75, 109, no
111-113
40, 41, 170-172, 207, 240, 241
24
114
142
130
149, 150, 166, 170, 202
179, 182, 183
97
155
141-146, 241
256
Index
‘identity'
ICEBERGS
IDEAS
‘identical' and
identity, personal. See Personal identity
IMBECILES
imitation in inse&s and butterflies
improve, if we do not, we grow worse
INDIANS
‘inflexible organizations'
inheritance
inquisition, the
insects, imitation in
fertilization of orchids by
insects, neuter. See Neuter inserts
instinct, differentiations of, due to memory
instinct as inherited memory
intelligence 167,
inventions 162, 198,
47> 123
135, 166, 184, 185
7^-74
131
220, 221
158
147, 236
166
183-185
239
220
221
135-160
161-178
168, 174, 175, 185
199, 202, 208, 209
james i. King of England 30
Joachim, Herr 3
KEPLER, J. 201
KINGDOM of heaven 244
kleptomaniac 18, 23
knight, T. A., on inherited inStinft of dogs 171, 172
knowers, conscious and unconscious 17—3 5
knowing and willing 36, 106
LAMARCK and DARWIN
lamarck, his talisman
LAMBS
language a kind of ‘patter'
languages, power of acquiring
law, the, and grace
LAW COURTS
law does not direft life
LETTER and SPIRIT
206-222, 224, 225
250
170
67
108
8, 27. 31-53. 167
67, 1 17
216
246
lewis, St., Mivart on the loving but manly devotion of a 239
life ' 104-106, 168
life is memory 243, 244
LIVERPOOL 97
Livingstone, on the cruelty of half-castes 147
257 S
Life and Habit
logic, principles are like 3 1
logic and consistency are luxuries 240
London 96, 97
London street arab 170
long, George, his translation of Marcus Aurelius 2 3 7, 2 3 8
LONGEVITY 1 3 8, 1 3 9, 24 1
luther, Martin 21
LYCURGUS 22, 23
MACHINES 162, 187, I97, I99, 208, 209
MACLAURIN, C. 1 89
magpie, Plutarch on the 144, 145
MAMMALS 75
MANCHESTER 97
MAORIS 236
MARRIAGE 1 39
MARS 201
MASONS 5 5
MATHEMATICS 1 66, 1 8 5, I 89, I90
matter, assimilation of outside 110-121
maudsley. Dr. H. 88, 89
'me, me, me' 43
medicine and politics 248, 249
MEDUSA 75, 76
MEMORY 4-7, 15, 118-121, I81-I9O, 240-244
on the abeyance of 1 22-1 34
impressions on, made by unfamiliar obje&s 123-12 5
impressions on, made by repetition 125-134
memory and instinct 135-178
METAGENETIC DEVELOPMENT 75> 79
MICROCOSM IOI
MICROSCOPE 40, IO4, 105
MILLENNIUM, the 91, 1 62
milton, John 23
MIMICRY 165, l66, 226, 229, 230
MISTLETOE 204
mivart, St. George, and Darwin 220-239
MOLifcRE, on persons of quality 177
monkeys, imitation of 165
American, C. Darwin on the tail of 210
monomaniacs 140
moths 75—81, 100, 120, 143, 154, 155, 221
MOUSETRAPS 222
258
Index
MULE
murphy, J. J., on the greyhound
MUSIC
MUTILATIONS
I45> *46
231
166, 168
149, 194, 198
NATURAL SELECTION and VARIATION
naturalist's LIBRARY
nature a fairly liberal conservative
nature will not be hurried
nature's 'flukes'
nature's love of a contradiction
NEGROES
NEUTER insects
nevile's court
newton, Sir Isaac
new Zealand, letter from, on words
North British Review
NORTHUMBERLAND
2IO-239
206, 207
249
248
137
42
147, 234, 235
179-205, 241, 242
1 3 2
45
68
227, 232-235
97
'on the fine arts as bearing on the Reproductive System' 165
optics and acoustics, baby's knowledge of 45
orchids, fertilization of, by inseCts 221
organs, rudimentary 168, 169
ovum 69, 70, 106-122, 145, 152, 242, 243
owen. Prof. R. 79
oxford 73
OXYGEN 87
oxy geniz ation of the blood 39, 40, 44, 49
OYSTERS 198, I99
PAGET, Sir J.
PAINTING
pangenesis, theory of
PARASITES
PARENTS and OFFSPRING
PARLIAMENT
PARTHENOGENESIS
PARTRIDGES
PAUL, St.
PEACOCK
PENELOPE
Percy Anecdotes , InStinCt, quoted
PERSONAL IDENTITY
88
l68, 238, 246, 247
87, Il6, 148, 152
86-88
69-72, 78-84
97
143
169, 172
3i» 33» 35
164, 165
229
144, 145
64-84, 1 1 4, 240
Life and Habit
personalities, our subordinate
85-101
PERSONALITY
64-84
PETER, St.
25
PHEASANTS
142, 169
PIANOFORTE PLAYING
2-4, 8, 9, 39, 40, 126, 127
PIGEONS
149, 164, 165
PIGS
157, 169
PIORA
33
plants, offspring of, part of the
same individual 82,83
hybridization of
142, 143
See also Animals and Plants and Darwin, C.
PLATO
238
PLUTARCH
144, 145
pneumatics and hydrostatics, baby's knowledge of 44, 45
POISONS
201
POLAR ICE
47
POLECAT TERRIER
172
POLITICS
140, 168, 248, 249
PORTUGUESE
147
power and desire
163-166, 208, 219
PRIMORDIAL CELL
61, 70, no, 214, 230, 245
PROTOPLASM
54-58, 140, 173, 191, 201, 218
PROTOZOON
231
PSEUDOPODIA
55
psychological and physiological a&ions 95, 98-100
PUBERTY and MEMORY
241
Quidlibet audendi
246
RABBITS
150, 157
RACES
163, 166, 168, 187, 199, 201
READING
6» 7. 9
reason, a little dose of
230, 232, 236
recollection
131
REMBRANDT
47
REPETITION
125-134, 182, 185
REPRODUCTION
75-77> 83, 138, 146, 147, 161, 214
REVERSION
145-148, 156-160
RHINE BEAVER
175
ribot, Th., and heredity
88, 92, 98-100, 161, 167-179
riches grow with desires
200
ROLLESTON, Prof. G.
153
ROME
144, 238
260
Index
roulin, on inherited inStinft of dogs
RUDIMENTARY ORGANS
rupert. Prince, his drops
RUSTICUS
st. John's college
SALTER, Mr.
sanction sanctifieth
Saturn's ring
scars and wounds
science, I know nothing about
science and scientific men
seasons
SEEING and HEARING
selves and souls
SHAKESPEARE
SHARES
SHELLEY
SHREWSBURY
siloam, towers of
SLEIGHT-OF-HAND
smell, as a reminder
smith, Sydney, on memory
on bees
society for the Prevention of Cruelty
SOCRATES
'some breeds do,' etc.
SOMNAMBULISM
SOULS
SOUTH AMERICA
SPANIARDS
SPANIEL
SPECIFIC DIFFERENCES
SPECTRUM ANALYSIS
SPEECH
SPERMATOZOON
SPIRITS
SPONTANEOUS VARIATIONS
‘sports'
spurgeon, Charles
squirrel, M. Ribot on the
STEAM ENGINES
Stephenson, George
172
168, 169
30
238
132
142
44
201
140, 152, 153, 192, 210
*, 245
26-35
127, 128
39> 42
43. 89
47. 53
6l
21
247
214
82, I37
133, 178
176, 177
I89, I95, 196
142
238
163
x73> *74
89, 90
*47 9 x57j *12
*47
*72
2*7
89
10, 42
1 1 6, 146
132
174, 184, 196, 211, 212, 217
x3°> 233, 236
22, and note
*67
48, 198, 222
30
to Animals
261
Life and Habit
STERILITY 152, l66, 1 8 1, 182
STERILITY OF HYBRIDS j I4I-I44, 146, 241
STROBILA %f 75 , 76
structure and instinct, differentiations of, due to memory 13 5-160
SWALLOWING 37, 38, 42
Tabula rasa
TADPOLE
TALKING
TEACHING
TEETH
TEREBELLA
THAMES
THEOLOGICAL SYSTEMS
THESEUS
Thomson, Sir William
THOUGHT
THURET, G.
Times
titans of human intellect
TOBACCO
TRANSMISSION
TREES
TRINITY COLLEGE
tupper, Martin
TURKEYS
TURNER, J. M. W.
174
75, 231, 232
8, 10
184-186
37, 42, 43, IX9> I2°» *3®
59
73, 80
33, 185
32
230, 231
162, 166, 168
142
6, 20
62
132, 181
161, 162, 172, 173, 178, 183-188
82, 142
132
238
169
87
unconscious and conscious knowers 17-35
unfamiliar objects, impressions made on memory by 123-12 5
unfamiliarity, we cannot bear 1 1 2
united states 236
use and disuse 149-15 3, 166, 167, 199, 200, 206, 20^
VARIATIONS l66, 180-184, 200-239
VENUS OF MILO 32
Veiiiges of Creation 225
VIBRATIONS 64
virchow, R. 88
virtue, good fortune mother and sole cause of 61
WALKING 7, 8, 9, 168
WALLACE, A. R. 220, 221, 223, 22^
262
Index
'WARWICKSHIRE
WASPS
Waterloo, battle of
watt, James
wealth grows gradually
WEST INDIES
WESTERN ISLES
WHALE
WICHURA, Max
Wilhelm Met Her, Goethe's
WILL
WILTSHIRE
WINDSOR
WOLF
WOODPECKER
words like clothes
worm, marine
WORMS
wounds and scars
wrangler, senior
WRITING
97
177
124
3°j 198
201
157
*95
123
142
23
2-8, 15, 36, 39-43
97
73
178, 231
204
68
59
S2, 114
140, 152, 153, 192, 210
166, 189
5, 6, 9, 168
96
244
YARMOUTH
young and fair the truly old and experienced
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