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.
MR. HERBERT SPENCER wrote to the _Athenæum_ (April 5, 1884), and quoted certain passages from the 1855 edition of his “Principles of Psychology,” “the meanings and implications” from which he contended were sufficiently clear. The passages he quoted were as follows:—
Though it is manifest that reflex and instinctive sequences are not determined by the experiences of the _individual_ organism manifesting them, yet there still remains the hypothesis that they are determined by the experiences of the _race_ of organisms forming its ancestry, which by infinite repetition in countless successive generations have established these sequences as organic relations (p. 526).