Life and Habit

t performance is most likely to resemble one or other of these; we only remember our earlier pe

ch successive occasion, and are for the m

in plain English-if any one gives us a new idea which is not too far ahead of us, such an idea is often of great service to us, and may give new life to our work-in fact, we soon go back, unless we more or less frequently come into contact with new ideas, and are capable of understanding and making use of them; if; on the other hand, they a

it is fixed, we cease to have much recollection of the manner in

milarity in the surroundings. We want to go on doing what we did when

produce a lasting impression, and be liable to return with sudden force at some distant time, and then to go on returning to us at intervals. So

much of the old identity of which it was once indisputably part, that it remembers what it did when it was part of that identity as soon as it finds i

thers; but it might also hardly less commonly show a more marked recollection of the one history than of the other, thus more distinctly resembling one parent than the other. And this is what we observe to be the case. Not only so far as that the offspring is almost invariably either male or female, and generally resembles rather the one parent than the other, but also that in spite of such preponderance of one s

me story, though in different words, should resemble each oth

nt than a parent; for we observe that we very often repeat a performance in a manner resembling that of some earlier, but still recent, repetition; ra

ward progress. No creature can repeat at will, and immediately, its highest flight. It needs repose. The generations are the essays of any given race towards the highest ideal which it is as yet able to see ahead of itself, a

press tedious and complicated histories into a very narrow compass, remembering no single performance in particular. For we observe this in nature, both as regards the

ns as are inseparable from the repetition of any performance by a living being (as contrasted with a machine), but no more. And this is what actually happens. A man may cut his wisdom-teeth a little later than he gets his beard and whiskers, or a little earl

atures should appear; for we cannot suppose offspring to remember anything that happens to the parent subsequently to the parent's ceasing to contain the offspring within itself; from the average age, therefore, of reproduction, o

f old age, which interesting subject I am unab

e the longest lived; I am not certain, however, how far what is called alternate

ion of the individuals marrying is in no res

t bearing which memory has upon health, and both occasionally cross the memories of our component cells with slightly new experiences, and be careful not to put them either suddenly or for long together into conditions which they will not be able to understand. Nothing is so likely to make our cells forget themselves, as neglect of one or other of these considerations. They will either fail to recogni

y should therefore either be let alone, if possible, without notice other than dignified silence, till their spleen is over, and till they have remembered themselves; or they should be reasoned with as by one who agrees with them, and who is anxious to see things as far as possible from their own point of view. And this is how experience teaches that we must dea

rmanent, may be looked for in the fact that when the wound is only small, the damaged cells are snubbed, so to speak, by the vast majority of

e supposed to do; for there would seem little reason to doubt that there are clever embryos and stupid embryos, with better or worse memories, as the case may be, of how they dealt with their protoplasm before, and better or worse able to see how they can do better now; and that embryos differ as widely in intellectual and moral capacity, and in a general sense of the

t difficult to doubt that from the very moment of impregnation, and onward, there has been a corresponding difference in the embryo-and that of six unbor

ppy performer to vary his ordinary performance-one set of people telling him he has always hitherto done thus, and the other saying no less loudly that he did it thus;-and he were suddenly to become convinced that they each spoke the truth. In such a case he will either completely break down, if the advice be too conflicting, or if it be less conflicting, he may yet be so exhausted by the one supreme effort of fusing these expe

h the female element, but be incapable of causing an embryo to be developed, as seems to have been the case with some of Thuret

itten above supplies a very

win con

s. Mr. Salter has recently given the results of an examination of about five hundred eggs produced from various crosses between three species of Gallus and their hybrids; the majority of these eggs had been fertilised; and in the majority of the fertilised eggs, the embryos had either been partially developed, and had then perished, or had become nearly

the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals may perhaps think it worth while to keep an eye even on the embryos of hybrids and first crosse

s plants,

. . It may be here worth noticing, that in some cases of parthenogenesis, the embryos within the eggs of silk moths, which have not been fert

other. So that failure here must be referred to the utter absence of that little internal stimulant of slightly conflicting memory which the creature has always hitherto experienced, and without which it fails to recognise itself. In either case, then, whether with hybrids or in cases of parthenogenesis, the early death of the embryo is due to inability

hatever their habits may be, if great enough, tends to af

on the n

power of acting injuriously on the reproductive system. The whole case is quite peculiar, for these organs, tho

ngs, and hence with its failing to know itself. And this seems to be in some measure supported-but not in such a manner as I can hold to be quit

therefore before birth, as long as it is nourished within its mother's womb, or within the egg or seed produced by its mother, be exposed to conditions in some degree unsuitable, and consequently be liable to perish at an early period . . . " After which, however, the conclusion

erile, it is less obvious why, having succeeded in understanding the conflicting memories of their parents, they should fail to produce offspring;

f the trumpets had so stunned it as to deprive it at once of both voice and hearing. It soon appeared, however, that this was far from being the case; for, says Plutarch, the bird had been all the time occupied in profound meditation, studying how to imitate the sound of the trumpets; and when at last master of it, the magpie, to the astonishment of all its friends, s

and times already. All would thus be plain sailing. A horse and a donkey would result. These two are brought together; an impregnate ovum is produced which finds an unusual conflict of memory between the two lines of its ancestors, nevertheless, being accustomed to some conflict, it manages to get over the difficulty, as on either side it finds itself backed by a very long series of sufficiently steady memory. A mule results-a creature so distinctly different from either horse or donkey, that reproduction is baffled, owing to the creature's having nothing but its own knowledge of itself to fall back upon, behind which there comes an immediate dislocation, or fault of memory, which is sufficient to bar id

upposed immutable or fixed limits of species, but results simply from the same principle which prevents old friends, no matter how intimate in youth, from returning to their old intimacy after a laps

ctly and most markedly affect the reproductive system. Every reader of Mr. Darwin will know that this is what actually happens, and also that when once a plant or animal begins to vary, it will probably vary a good deal further; which, again, is what we should expect-the disturbance of

ve been, nevertheless, widely different-as in the case of Europeans and Indians-we should expect to have a race of offspring who should seem to be quite clear only about those points, on which their

Darwin) "remarks, 'It is unaccountable why half-castes are so much more cruel than the Portuguese, but such is undoubtedly the case.' An inhabitant remarked to Livingstone, 'God made white men, and God made black men, but the devil made half-castes.'" A little further on Mr. Darwin says that we may "perhaps infer that the degraded state of so many half-castes is in part due to reversion to a primitive and savage condition, induced by the act of crossing, even if mainly due to the unfavourable moral conditions under which they are gene

ions. There is, however, one apparently very important phenomenon which I do not at this moment see how to connect with memory, namely, the tendency on the part of offspring to revert to an earlier impregnation. Mr. Darwin's "Provisional Theory of Pangenesi

hardly bear upon reversion, but will be

upon the living being (who must be regarded always as one person in his whole line of ascent or descent) for it to be unconsciously remembered by him, when making himself anew in any succeeding generation, and thus to make him modify his method

lly inherited. There can be no doubt that the evil effects of the long continued exposure of the parent to injurious conditions are sometimes transmitted to the offspring." As regards impressions of a less striking character, it is so universally admitted that they are not observed to be repeated in what is called the offspri

atural to them-in the pointing of young pointers, and the setting of young setters-in the peculiar manner of flight of certain breeds of the p

lace Mr. Dar

in a corresponding manner in comparison with those of the wild duck. A horse is trained to certain paces, and the colt inherits similar consensual movements. The domesticated rabbit becomes tame from close confineme

a small aggregate of reproductive cells, seated in a distant part of the body in such a manner that the being developed from these cells inherits the

history of several so-called existences to have earned a place in that smaller edition, which is issued from generation to generation; or, in other words, when they have been made so deeply, either at one blow or through many, that the offspring can remember them. In practice we observe this to be the case-so that the answer lies in the assertion that offspring and parent, being in one s

emories in the cells surrounding the part originally impressed-the parent himself would not be sufficiently impressed to prevent him from reproducing himself, as he had already done upon an infinite number of past occasions. The child, therefore, in the womb would do what the father in the womb had done before him, nor should any trace of memory concerning circumcision be expected till the eighth day af

upon whether the disuse

of the creature disusing it, to be quit

gan no longer necessary, or which lead the creature to la

s case being perhaps neither very good nor very bad for the individua

each gemmule, or as one supposes one memory to "run" the whole impregnate ovum-a compromise between these two views being nevertheless perhaps possible, inasmuch as the combined memories of all the cells may possibly be the memory which "runs" the impregn

sometimes, but rarely, come-the organ should soon go, and sooner or later leave no rudimen

ore slowly, and leave, it ma

ittle or no sign of natural d

memory of the wound and of each step in the process of healing has been remembered; or there may be simply such disturbance in the reproduc

., vol. i. pp. 466–472, ed. 1875), will bear out the above to the satisf

s were carefully recorded, and a greater number were seen; yet Brown Séquard speaks of such cases as among the rarer forms of inheritance. It is a still more interesting fact-'that the sciatic nerve in the congenitally toeless animal has inherited the power of passing through all the diffe

cure which is now accordingly repeated. Brown Séquard concludes, as Mr. Darwin tells us, "that what is

ases-"namely, of two men, one of whom had his knee, and the other his cheek, sever

learn; he will act, therefore, as people say, instinctively. No matter how complex and difficult the process, if the parents have done it sufficiently often (that is to say, for a sufficient number of generations), the offspring will remember the fact when association wakens the memory; it will need no instruction, and-unless when it has been taught to look for it during many generations-will expect none. This may be seen in the case of t

, as completely as the consciousness of complex and difficult movements vanishes as soon as they have been sufficiently practised-and finally, that the real presence of memory is testified rather by performance of the repeated action on recurrence of like surroundings, than by consciousness of recollecting on the part of the individual-so that not only should there be no reasonable bar to our attributing the whole range of the more comple

observe are exactly those wh

e others are apt to be brought up in idea" ("The Senses and the Intellect," 2d ed. 1864, p. 332). And Prof. Huxley says ("Elementary Lessons in Physiology," 5th ed. 1872, p. 306), "It may be laid down as a rule that if any two mental states be called up together, or in succession, with due frequency and vividness, the subsequent production of the one of them wil

"with due frequency and vividness"-it being of the same age as its parents were, and generally in like case as when the ideas were called up in the minds of the parents-the same ideas shoul

have power to kindle, so to speak, into the flame of action the atomic spark of m

ll possibility of what we call instruction, but from the fact that deviations from the parental instinct, or rather the recurrence of a memory, unless in connection with the accustomed train of associations, is of comparatively rare occurrence; the result,

lso that peculiarities should tend to show themselves at a corresponding age in the offspring and in the parents. As regards the tendency to resume feral habits, Mr. Darwin, though apparently of opinion that the tendency to do this has been much exaggerated, y

e is a considerable opinion to thi

bbits are turned out in Europe, they generally re-acquire the colouring of the wild animal;" "there can be no doubt," he says, "that this really does occur," though he seems inclined to account for it by the fact that oddly-coloured and conspicuous animals would suffer much from beasts of prey and from being easily shot. "The best known case of reversion:" he continues, "and that on which the widely-spread belief in its universality apparently rests, is that of pigs. These animals have run wild in the West Indies, South America, and the Falkland Islands, and have everywhere re-acquired the dark colour, the thick bristles, and great tusks of the wild boar; and the young have re-acquired longitudinal stripes." And on page 22 of "Plants a

hic changes, and even as regards transmitted acquired actions, and tricks acquired before the time when the offspring has issued from the body of the parent, or on an average of many generations does so; but it cannot for a moment be supposed that the offspring knows by inheritance anything about what happens to the parent subsequently to the offspring's being born. Hence the appearance of diseases in the offspring, at comparatively late periods in life, but at the same age as, or earlier, than in the parents, must be regarded as due to

shock to a parent might destroy or weaken the intellect of the offspring; but unless a deep impression were made upon the cells of the body, and deepened by subsequent disease, we could not expect it to be remembered with any definiteness, or precision. We may talk as we will about mental pain, and mental scars, but after all, the impressions they leave are incomparably

-from whom it is impossible to quote too much or too fully, inasmuch as no one else can furnish such a store of facts, so well arranged, and so above all suspicion of either carelessness or want of candour-so that, however we may differ from him, it is he himself who shows us how to do so, and whose pupils we all are-Mr. Darwin writes: "In every living being we may rest assured that a host of long-lost characters lie ready to be evolved under proper conditions" (does not one almost long to substitute

st degree affected (other than sympathetically) by the memories of their offspring after that offspring has been born. Whether the unborn offspring affects the memory of the mother in some particulars, and whether we have here the explanation of occasional reversion to a previous