I have said above that on page 113 of his recent work Mr. Romanes
declares the analogies between the memory with which we are familiar in
daily life, and hereditary memory, to be "so numerous and precise" as to
justify us in considering them as of one and the same kind.
This is certainly his meaning, but, with the exception of the words
within inverted commas, it is not his language. His own words are
these:--
"Profound, however, as our ignorance unquestionably is concerning the
physical substratum of memory, I think we are at least justified in
regarding this substratum as the same both in ganglionic or organic,
and in conscious or psychological memory, seeing that the analogies
between them are so numerous and precise. Consciousness is but an
adjunct which arises when the physical processes, owing to infrequency
of repetition, complexity of operation, or other causes, involve what
I have before called ganglionic friction."
I submit that I have correctly translated Mr. Romanes' meaning, and also
that we have a right to complain of his not saying what he has to say in
words which will involve less "ganglionic friction" on the part of the
reader.
Another example may be found on p. 43 of Mr. Romanes' book. "Lastly," he
writes, "just as innumerable special mechanisms of muscular
co-ordinations are found to be inherited, innumerable special
associations of ideas are found to be the same, and in one case as in the
other the strength of the organically imposed connection is found to bear
a direct proportion to the frequency with which in the history of the
species it has occurred.
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