Luck or Cunning as the Main Means of Organic Modification | Page 3

is in the dark; but come what may, some of them are sure to
have arrived at conclusions diametrically opposed to our own upon
every subject connected with art, science, philosophy, and religion; it is
plain, therefore, that if posterity is to be pleased, it can only be at the
cost of repelling some present readers. Unwilling as I am to do this, I
still hold it the lesser of two evils; I will be as brief, however, as the
interests of the opinions I am supporting will allow.
In "Life and Habit" I contended that heredity was a mode of memory. I
endeavoured to show that all hereditary traits, whether of mind or body,
are inherited in virtue of, and as a manifestation of, the same power
whereby we are able to remember intelligently what we did half an
hour, yesterday, or a twelvemonth since, and this in no figurative but in
a perfectly real sense. If life be compared to an equation of a hundred
unknown quantities, I followed Professor Hering of Prague in reducing
it to one of ninety-nine only, by showing two of the supposed unknown
quantities to be so closely allied that they should count as one. I
maintained that instinct was inherited memory, and this without
admitting more exceptions and qualifying clauses than arise, as it were,
by way of harmonics from every proposition, and must be neglected if
thought and language are to be possible.
I showed that if the view for which I was contending was taken, many
facts which, though familiar, were still without explanation or
connection with our other ideas, would remain no longer isolated, but
be seen at once as joined with the mainland of our most assured
convictions. Among the things thus brought more comfortably home to
us was the principle underlying longevity. It became apparent why
some living beings should live longer than others, and how any race
must be treated whose longevity it is desired to increase. Hitherto we

had known that an elephant was a long-lived animal and a fly
short-lived, but we could give no reason why the one should live longer
than the other; that is to say, it did not follow in immediate coherence
with, or as intimately associated with, any familiar principle that an
animal which is late in the full development of its reproductive system
will tend to live longer than one which reproduces early. If the theory
of "Life and Habit" be admitted, the fact of a slow-growing animal
being in general longer lived than a quick developer is seen to be
connected with, and to follow as a matter of course from, the fact of our
being able to remember anything at all, and all the well-known traits of
memory, as observed where we can best take note of them, are
perceived to be reproduced with singular fidelity in the development of
an animal from its embryonic stages to maturity.
Take this view, and the very general sterility of hybrids from being a
CRUX of the theory of descent becomes a stronghold of defence. It
appears as part of the same story as the benefit derived from judicious,
and the mischief from injudicious, crossing; and this, in its turn, is seen
as part of the same story, as the good we get from change of air and
scene when we are overworked. I will not amplify; but reversion to
long-lost, or feral, characteristics, the phenomena of old age, the fact of
the reproductive system being generally the last to arrive at
maturity--few further developments occurring in any organism after
this has been attained--the sterility of many animals in confinement, the
development in both males and females under certain circumstances of
the characteristics of the opposite sex, the latency of memory, the
unconsciousness with which we grow, and indeed perform all familiar
actions, these points, though hitherto, most of them, so apparently
inexplicable that no one even attempted to explain them, became at
once intelligible, if the contentions of "Life and Habit" were admitted.
Before I had finished writing this book I fell in with Professor Mivart's
"Genesis of Species," and for the first time understood the distinction
between the Lamarckian and Charles-Darwinian systems of evolution.
This had not, so far as I then knew, been as yet made clear to us by any
of our more prominent writers upon the subject of descent with
modification; the distinction was unknown to the general public, and

indeed is only now beginning to be widely understood. While reading
Mr. Mivart's book, however, I became aware that I was being faced by
two facts, each incontrovertible, but each, if its leading exponents were
to be trusted, incompatible with the other.
On the one hand there was descent; we could not read Mr. Darwin's
books