parents and children were so also; and without this conception of the matter, which in its way is just as true as the more commonly received one, we could not extend the experience of parents to offspring. It was not in the bond or nexus of our ideas to consider experience as appertaining to more than a single individual in the common acceptance of the term; these two ideas were so closely bound together that wherever the one went the other went perforce. Here, indeed, in the very passage of Mr. Spencer's just referred to, the race is throughout regarded as "a series of individuals" -without an attempt to call attention to that other view, in virtue of which we are able to extend to many an idea we had been accustomed to confine to one.

In his chapter on Memory, Mr. Spencer certainly approaches the Heringian view. He says, "On the one hand, Instinct may be regarded as a kind of organized memory; on the other, Memory may be regarded as a kind of incipient instinct" (Principles of Psychology, 2nd ed., vol. i, p. 445). Here the ball has fallen into his hands, but if he had got firm hold of it he could not have written, "Instinct may be regarded as a kind of," etc.; to us there is neither "kind of " about it; we require, may be regarded as nor "Instinct is inherited memory," with an explanation making it intelligible how memory can come to be inherited at all. I do not like, again, calling memory a kind of incipient instinct"; as Mr. Spencer puts them the words have a pleasant antithesis, but "instinct is inherited memory covers all the ground, and to say that memory is inherited instinct is surplusage.

Nor does he stick to it long when he says that “instinct is a kind of organized memory," for two pages later he says that memory, to be memory at all, must be tolerably conscious or deliberate; he, therefore (vol. i, p. 447), denies that there can be such a thing as unconscious memory; but without this it is impossible for us to see instinct as the "kind of organized memory" which he has just been calling it, inasmuch as instinct is notably undeliberate and unreflecting.

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A few pages farther on (vol. i, p. 452) he finds himself driven to unconscious memory after all, and says that "conscious memory passes into unconscious or organic memory." Having admitted unconscious memory, he declares (vol. i, p. 450) that “as fast as those connections among psychical states, which we form in memory, grow by constant repetition automatic-they cease to be part of memory," or, in other words, he again denies that there can be an unconscious memory.

"Mr. Spencer doubtless saw that he was involved in contradiction in terms, and having always understood that contradictions in terms were very dreadful things-which, of course, under some circumstances they are-thought it well so to express himself that his readers should be more likely to push on than dwell on what was before them at the moment. I should be the last to complain of him merely on the ground that he could not escape contradiction in terms: who can? When facts conflict, contradict one another, melt into one another as the colours of the spectrum so insensibly that none can say where one begins and the other ends, contradictions in terms become first fruits of thought and speech. They are the basis of intellectual consciousness, in the same way that a physical obstacle is the basis of physical sensation. No opposition, no sensation, applies as much to the psychical as to the physical kingdom, as soon as these two have got well above the horizon of our thoughts and can be seen as two. No contradiction, no consciousness; no cross, no crown; contradictions are the very small deadlocks without which there is no going; going is our sense of a succession of small impediments or deadlocks; it is a succession of cutting Gordian knots, which on a small scale please or pain as the case may be; on a larger, give an ecstasy of pleasure, or shock to the extreme of endurance; and on a still larger, kill whether they be on the right side or the wrong. Nature, as I said in Life and Habit, hates that any principle should breed hermaphroditically, but will give to each an helpmeet for it which shall cross it and be the undoing of it; and in the

undoing, do; and in the doing, undo, and so ad infinitum. Cross-fertilization is just as necessary for continued fertility of ideas as for that of organic life, and the attempt to frown this or that down merely on the ground that it involves contradiction in terms, without at the same time showing that the contradiction is on a larger scale than healthy thought can stomach, argues either small sense or small sincerity on the part of those who make it. The contradictions employed by Mr. Spencer are objectionable, not on the ground of their being contradictions at all, but on the ground of their being blinked, and used unintelligently.

But though it is not possible for any one to get a clear conception of Mr. Spencer's meaning, we may say with more confidence what it was that he did not mean. He did not mean to make memory the keystone of his system; he has none of that sense of the unifying, binding force of memory which Professor Hering has so well expressed, nor does he show any signs of perceiving the far-reaching consequences that ensue if the phenomena of heredity are considered as phenomena of memory. Thus, when he is dealing with the phenomena of old age (vol. i, p. 538, 2nd ed.) he does not ascribe them to lapse and failure of memory, nor surmise the principle underlying longevity. He never mentions memory in connection with heredity without presently saying something which makes us involuntarily think of a man missing an easy catch at cricket; it is only rarely, however, that he connects the two at all. I have only been able to find the word " inherited" or any derivative of the verb "to inherit" in connection with memory once in all the 1300 long pages of the Principles of Psychology. It occurs in vol. ii, p. 200, 2nd ed., where the words stand, “Memory, inherited or acquired." I submit that this was unintelligible when Mr. Spencer wrote it, for want of an explanation which he never gave; I submit, also, that he could not have left it unexplained, nor yet as an unrepeated expression not introduced till late in his work, if he had had any idea of its pregnancy.

At any rate, whether he intended to imply what he now implies that he intended to imply (for Mr. Spencer, like the late Mr. Darwin, is fond of qualifying phrases), I have shown that those most able and willing to understand him did not take him to mean what he now appears anxious to have it supposed that he meant. Surely, moreover, if he had meant it he would have spoken sooner, when he saw his meaning had been missed. I can, however, have no hesitation in saying that if I had known the Principles of Psychology earlier, as well as I know the work now, I should have used it largely. It may be interesting, before we leave Mr. Spencer, to see whether he even now assigns to continued personality and memory the place assigned to it by Professor Hering and myself. I will therefore give the concluding words of the letter to the Athenaeum already referred to, in which he tells us to stand aside. He writes:

"I still hold that inheritance of functionally produced modifications is the chief factor throughout the higher Stages of organic evolution, bodily as well as mental (see Principles of Biology, i, 166), while I recognize the truth that throughout the lower stages survival of the fittest is the chief factor, and in the lowest the almost exclusive factor."

This is the same confused and confusing utterance which Mr. Spencer has been giving us any time this thirty years. According to him the fact that variations can be inherited and accumulated has less to do with the first development of organic life, than the fact that if a square organism happens to get into a square hole, it will live longer and more happily than a square organism which happens to get into a round one; he declares" the survival of the fittest "-and this is nothing but the fact that those who "fit" best into their surroundings will live longest and most comfortably-to have more to do with the development of the amoeba into, we will say, a mollusc than heredity itself. True, "inheritance of functionally produced modifications" is allowed to be the chief factor throughout the "higher stages of organic evolution," but it has very little to do in the lower; in these

the almost exclusive factor" is not heredity, or inheritance, but "survival of the fittest."

Of course we know that Mr. Spencer does not believe this; of course, also, all who are fairly well up in the history of the development theory will see why Mr. Spencer has attempted to draw this distinction between the "factors" of the development of the higher and lower forms of life; but no matter how or why Mr. Spencer has been led to say what he has, he has no business to have said it. What can we think of a writer who, after so many years of writing upon his subject, in a passage in which he should make his meaning doubly clear, inasmuch as he is claiming ground taken by other writers, declares that though hereditary use and disuse, or, to use his own words, "the inheritance of functionally produced modifications," is indeed very important in connection with the development of the higher forms of life, yet heredity itself has little or nothing to do with that of the lower? Variations, whether produced functionally or not, can only be perpetuated and accumulated because they can be inherited;-and this applies just as much to the lower as to the higher forms of life; the question which Professor Hering and I have tried to answer is," How comes it that anything can be inherited at all? In virtue of what power is it that offspring can repeat and improve upon the performances of their parents? Our answer was, "Because in a very valid sense, though not perhaps in the most usually understood, there is continued personality and an abiding memory between successive generations." How does Mr. Spencer's confession of faith touch this? If any meaning can be extracted from his words, he is no more supporting this view now than he was when he wrote the passages he has adduced to show that he was supporting it thirty years ago; but after all no coherent meaning can be got out of Mr. Spencer's letter-except, of course, that Professor Hering and myself are to stand aside. I have abundantly shown that I am very ready to do this in favour of Professor Hering, but see no reason for admitting Mr. Spencer's claim to have been among the forestallers of Life and Habit.