e._,
_memory transmitted from one generation to another_. {244a}
And yet in 1839 or thereabouts, Mr. Darwin had pretty nearly grasped the
conception from which until the last year or two of his life he so
fatally strayed; for in his contribution to the volumes giving an account
of the voyages of the _Adventure_ and _Beagle_, he wrote: "Nature by
making habit omnipotent and its effects hereditary, has fitted the
Fuegian for the climate and productions of his country" (p. 237).
What is the secret of the long departure from the simple common-sense
view of the matter which he took when he was a young man? I imagine
simply what I have referred to in the preceding chapter,--over-anxiety to
appear to be differing from his grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and
Lamarck.
I believe I may say that Mr. Darwin before he died not only admitted the
connection between memory and heredity, but came also to see that he must
readmit that design in organism which he had so many years opposed. For
in the preface to Hermann Muller's Fertilisation of Flowers, {244b} which
bears a date only a very few weeks prior to Mr. Darwin's death, I find
him saying:--"Design in nature has for a long time deeply interested many
men, and though the subject must now be looked at from a somewhat
different point of view from what was formerly the case, it is not on
that account rendered less interesting.
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