Unconscious Memory

Mr. Darwin met "Evol

believing that Dr. Krause's article would have been allowed to repose unaltered in the pages of the well-known German scientific jou

But Mr. Darwin is not a clear writer, and it is impossible to say whether he is referring to the announcement of "Evolution, Old and New"-in which case he means that the arrangements for the translation of Dr. Krause's article were made before the end of February 1879, and before any public intimation could have reached him as to the substance of the book on which I was then engaged-or to the advertisements of

n November 1879, I got it, and looking at th

et even with regard to man we are in the habit of saying, that one can never know what so-and-so is good for. The purpose-like is that which ap

above might have had "Evolution, Old and New," in hi

his grandson has opened up for us, but to wish to revive it at the present day, as has actually be

h one of the first that would be likely to catch a reader's eye, and the last he would carry away with him. I ther

d been reading could not by any possibility

win,' the author of the 'Zoonomia,' 'Botanic Garden,' and other works. This article bears the title of a 'Contribution to the History of the Des

a note a

is scientific reputation, together with his knowl

may be, Mr. Darwin pins himself down with every circumstance of preciseness to giving Dr. Krause's article as it

distinctly precludes his readers from supposing that any passage they might meet with could have been written in reference to, or by the light of, my book. If anything appeared condemnatory of

hout sufficient grounds,-as if it was likely, indeed, that Mr. Darwin should think what I had said of sufficient importance to be affected by it. It was plain that some one besides myself, of whom I as yet knew nothing, had been writing about the elder Darwin, and had taken much the same line concerning him that I

ttle surprised me, and a notice of the fact that Coleridge when writing on Stillingfleet had used the word "Darwinising." Mr. R. Garnett h

tation, but changed my mind and continued it without erasing the commas. It seemed to me that these commas had bothered Dr. Krause, and made him think it safer to leave something out, for the line he omits is a very good one. I noticed that he translated "Mais comme nous voulons toujours tout rapporter à un certain but," "But we, always wishing to refer," &c., while I had it, "But we, ever on the look-out to refer," &c.; and "Nous ne faisons pas attention que nous altérons la philosophie," "We fail to see that thus we deprive philosophy of her true character," whereas I had "We fail to see that we thus rob philosophy of her true character." This last was too much; and though i

nd in the fortnight before Kosmos came had got far enough forward for all practical purposes-that is to say, with the help of a

lace in any part of the genuine article. I looked for the passage about Coleridge's using the word "Darwinising"; it was not to be found in the German. I looked for the piece I had quoted from Buffon about rudimentary organs; but there was nothing of it, nor indeed any reference to Buffon. It was plain, therefore, that the article which Mr. Darwin had given was not the one he professed to be giving. I read Mr. Darwin's preface over again to see whether he left himself any loophole. There was not a chink or cranny through which escape was possible. The only inference that could be drawn was either that some

the English, which with great labour I managed

s ardour for travel and influenced his career as a scientific investigator. How much more impressively must the works of Dr. Erasmus Darwin, with their reiterated foreshadowin

I had been struck with on first reading, and which was not in the German, its place being taken by a much longer passage which had no place in the

objects must have produced a still deeper impression upon him, pointing, as they do, to questions which hay attained so great a prominence at the present day; such as, Why is any creature anywhere such as we actually see it and nothi

r. Darwin's book. There is new matter on each one of the pp. 132–139, while almost the whole of pp. 147–152 inclusive, and the whole of pp. 211–216 inclusive, are spurious-that is to say, not wh

concluding sentence quoted above, [44b] I could no longer doubt that the articl

Krause happened to get hold of it. He helped himself-not to much, but to enough; made what other additions to and omissions from his article he thought would best meet "Evolution, Old and New," and then fell to condemning that book in a finale that was meant to be crushing. Nothing was said about the revision which Dr. Krause's work had undergone, b

it in full, and said that it was thoroughly justified. He then mused forth a general gnome that the "confidence of writers who deal in semi-scientific paradoxes is commonly in inverse proportion to their grasp of the subject." Again my vanity suggested to me that I was the person for whose benefit this gnome was intended. My vanity

Popular Science Review for January 1880, in flat contradiction to Mr. Darwin's preface, said that only part of Dr

his anachronism has been committed by Mr. Samuel Butler in a . . . little volume now before us, and it is doubtless to this, which appeared while his own work was in progress [italics mine] that Dr. Krause alludes in the foregoing passage." Considering that the editor of the Popular Science Review and

in, stating the facts as they appeared to myself, and asking an explanation, which I would have gladly strained a good many p

ry 2,

win, Esq.,

smos which contains the text of Dr. Krause's article on

ch Mr. Dallas has translated, but his translation contains long and important passages which are not in t

n I have taken as regards Dr. Erasmus Darwin in my book, "Evolution, Old and New," and which I believe I was the first to take

his grandson has opened up for us, but to wish to revive it at the present day, as has actually be

n sent me from Germany c

rance, while the accuracy of the translation as though from the February number of Kosmos is, as you expressly say, guaranteed by Mr. Dallas's "scientific reputation together with his knowledge of German," your readers will

ed to obtain the edition which contains the passage above ref

therefore, to ask for the explanation which I do not dou

g is Mr. Dar

ry 3,

al will soon appear in German, and I believe will be a much larger book than the English one; for, with Dr. Krause's consent, many long extracts from Miss Seward were omitted (as well as much other matter), from being in my opinion superfluous for the English reader. I believe that the omitted parts will appear as notes in the German edition. Should there be a reprint of

nths sooner than it actually did, and prior to the work which it attacked; when he maintained that what was being done was "so common a practice that it never occurred," to him-the writer of some twenty volumes-to do what all literary men must know to be inexorably requisite, I thought this was going far beyond what was permissible in honourable warfare, and that it was time, in the interests of literary and scientific morality, even more than in my own, to appeal to public opinion. I was particularly struck with the use of the words "it never occurred to me," and felt how completely of a piece it was with the opening paragraph of the "Origin of Species." It was not merely that it did not occur to Mr. D

now dealing to myself; when I thought of these great men, now dumb, who had borne the burden and heat of the day, and whose laurels had been filched from them; of the manner, too, in which Mr. Darwin had been abetted by those who should have been the first to detect the fallacy which had misled him; of the hotbed of intrigue which science has now become; of the disrepute into which we English must fall as a natio

on reflection I felt that little good was likely to come of a second letter, if what I had already written was not enough. I therefore wrote t

is is so-as if public opinion rather approved of what Mr. Darwin had done, and of his silence than otherwise. I saw the "Life of Erasmus Darwin" more frequently and more prominently advertised now than I had seen it hitherto-perhaps in the hope of selling off the adulterated copies, and being able to reprint the work with a corrected title page. Presently I saw Professor Huxley hastening to the rescue with his lecture on the coming of age of the "Origin of Species," and by May it was easy for Professor Ray Lankester to imply that Mr. Darwin was the greatest of living men. I have since noticed two or three other controversies raging in the Athen?um and Times; in each of these cases I saw it assumed that t

, if it has been committed by one whom they recognise as of their own persuasion. It must be remembered that facts cannot be respected by the scientist in the

icism and audacity with which the wrong complained of was committed and persisted in. I trust, however, that, though not indifferent to this, my indignation has been mainly roused, as when I wrote "Evolution, Old and New," b