{228a}
I have said on page 96 of this book that the word "heredity" may be a
very good way of stating the difficulty which meets us when we observe
the reappearance of like characteristics, whether of body or mind, in
successive generations, but that it does nothing whatever towards
removing it.
It is here that Mr. Herbert Spencer, the late Mr. G. H. Lewes, and Mr.
Romanes fail. Mr. Herbert Spencer does indeed go so far in one place as
to call instinct "organised memory," {228b} and Mr. G. H. Lewes
attributes many instincts to what he calls the "lapsing of intelligence."
{228c} So does Mr. Herbert Spencer, {228d} whom Mr. Romanes should have
known that Mr. Lewis was following. Mr. Romanes, in his recent work,
Mental Evolution in Animals (November, 1883), endorses this, and
frequently uses such expressions as "the lifetime of the species," {228e}
"hereditary experience," {228f} and "hereditary memory and instinct,"
{228g} but none of these writers (and indeed no writer that I know of
except Professor Hering of Prague, for a translation of whose address on
this subject I must refer the reader to my book Unconscious Memory) has
shown a comprehension of the fact that these expressions are unexplained
so long as "heredity," whereby they explain them, is unexplained; and
none of them sees the importance of emphasizing Memory, and making it as
it were the keystone of the system.
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