Romanes' shoulders
hide a good deal that people were not going to observe too closely while
Mr. Darwin wore it.
REMARKS ON MR. ROMANES' MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS--(_concluded_).
I gather that in the end the late Mr. Darwin himself admitted the
soundness of the view which the reader will have found insisted upon in
the extracts from my earlier books given in this volume. Mr. Romanes
quotes a letter written by Mr. Darwin in the last year of his life, in
which he speaks of an intelligent action gradually becoming
"_instinctive_, _i.e._, _memory transmitted from one generation to
another_." {243a}
Briefly, the stages of Mr. Darwin's opinion upon the subject of
hereditary memory are as follows:--
1859. "It would be _the most serious error_ to suppose that the greater
number of instincts have been acquired by habit in one generation and
transmitted by inheritance to succeeding generations." {243b} And this
more especially applies to the instincts of many ants.
1876. "It would be _a serious error_ to suppose" &c., as before. {243c}
1881. "We should remember _what a mass of inherited knowledge_ is
crowded into the minute brain of a worker ant." {243d}
1881 or 1882. Speaking of a given habitual action Mr. Darwin writes:--"It
does not seem to me at all incredible that this action [and why this more
than any other habitual action?] should then become instinctive:" _i.
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