Luck or Cunning as the Main Means of Organic Modification | Page 8

for the Church. I was once inside the

Linnean Society's rooms, but have no present wish to go there again;
though not a man of science, however, I have never affected
indifference to the facts and arguments which men of science have
made it their business to lay before us; on the contrary, I have given the
greater part of my time to their consideration for several years past. I
should not, however, say this unless led to do so by regard to the
interests of theories which I believe to be as nearly important as any
theories can be which do not directly involve money or bodily
convenience.
The second complaint against me is to the effect that I have made no
original experiments, but have taken all my facts at second hand. This
is true, but I do not see what it has to do with the question. If the facts
are sound, how can it matter whether A or B collected them? If
Professor Huxley, for example, has made a series of valuable original
observations (not that I know of his having done so), why am I to make
them over again? What are fact-collectors worth if the fact
co-ordinators may not rely upon them? It seems to me that no one need
do more than go to the best sources for his facts, and tell his readers
where he got them. If I had had occasion for more facts I daresay I
should have taken the necessary steps to get hold of them, but there was
no difficulty on this score; every text-book supplied me with all, and
more than all, I wanted; my complaint was that the facts which Mr.
Darwin supplied would not bear the construction he tried to put upon
them; I tried, therefore, to make them bear another which seemed at
once more sound and more commodious; rightly or wrongly I set up as
a builder, not as a burner of bricks, and the complaint so often brought
against me of not having made experiments is about as reasonable as
complaint against an architect on the score of his not having quarried
with his own hands a single one of the stones which he has used in
building. Let my opponents show that the facts which they and I use in
common are unsound, or that I have misapplied them, and I will gladly
learn my mistake, but this has hardly, to my knowledge, been attempted.
To me it seems that the chief difference between myself and some of
my opponents lies in this, that I take my facts from them with
acknowledgment, and they take their theories from me-- without.

One word more and I have done. I should like to say that I do not return
to the connection between memory and heredity under the impression
that I shall do myself much good by doing so. My own share in the
matter was very small. The theory that heredity is only a mode of
memory is not mine, but Professor Hering's. He wrote in 1870, and I
not till 1877. I should be only too glad if he would take his theory and
follow it up himself; assuredly he could do so much better than I can;
but with the exception of his one not lengthy address published some
fifteen or sixteen years ago he has said nothing upon the subject, so far
at least as I have been able to ascertain; I tried hard to draw him in
1880, but could get nothing out of him. If, again, any of our more
influential writers, not a few of whom evidently think on this matter
much as I do, would eschew ambiguities and tell us what they mean in
plain language, I would let the matter rest in their abler hands, but of
this there does not seem much chance at present.
I wish there was, for in spite of the interest I have felt in working the
theory out and the information I have been able to collect while doing
so, I must confess that I have found it somewhat of a white elephant. It
has got me into the hottest of hot water, made a literary Ishmael of me,
lost me friends whom I have been sorry to lose, cost me a good deal of
money, done everything to me, in fact, which a good theory ought not
to do. Still, as it seems to have taken up with me, and no one else is
inclined to treat it fairly, I shall continue to report its developments
from time to time as long as life and health are spared me. Moreover,
Ishmaels are not without their uses, and they are not a drug in the
market just now.
I may