Unconscious Memory

and statement o

ll living beings, from the moment of their conception to that of their fullest development, to be founded in volition and design, though these have been so long

onditions, the survival of the fittest (which, as I see Mr. H. B. Baildon has just said, "sometimes comes to mean merely the survival of the survivors" [146]) being taken almost as a matter of course. According to t

together latent and without effect, it is because the undulations of the molecular substance of the body which are its supposed explanation are during these periods too feeble to generate action, until they are augmented in force through an accession of suitable undulations issuing from exterior objects; or, in other words, until r

as in the egg, and to be stimulated by an intense but unconscious recollection of the action taken by its ancestors when they were first hatched. It is guided in the course it takes by the experience it can th

ies for the explanation of which the leading men of science express themselves at a loss. The following

factory grounds for the belief that they needs must do so. The analogy of a machine, that sooner or later must be brought to a standstill by the wear and tear of its parts, does not hold, inasmuch as the animal mechanism is continually renewed and repaired; and though it is true that individual components

n, and decay. The crayfish dies as a state dies, and all states that we have heard of die sooner or later. There are some savages who have not yet arrived at the conception that death is the necessary end of all living beings, and who consider even the gentlest death from old age as violent and abnormal; so Professor Huxley seems to fi

it," but which then as now I believe to be unsound. Seeing, however, as I have pointed out at the end of the preceding chapter, that Von Hartmann has touched upon it, and being aware that a plausible case can be made out for it, I will state it and refute it here. When I say

invariably followed by like consequents should be sufficient for our purpose? Why should the fact that a given kind of chrysalis in a given condition will always become a butterfly within a ce

he course taken when the process was last repeated. On the contrary, we are assured that molecules in some distant part of the world, which had never entered into such and such a known combination themselves, nor held concert with other molecules that had been so combined, and which, therefore, could have had no experience and no memory, would none the less act upon one another in that one way in which ot

ed one, involving a multitude of actions and subordinate processes, which follow one upon the other, and each one of which has a beginning, a middle, and an end, though they all come to pass in what appears to be an instant of time. Yet at no

y given combination. If, then, so great uniformity of action as nothing can exceed is manifested by atoms to which no one will impute memory, why this desire for memory, as though it were the only way of accounting for regularity

he proportions proper for the formation of water. Why, then, not recognise this fact, and ascribe repeated similarity of living action to the reproduction of the necessary antecedents, with no more sense of connection

is a fit combination for a nose to spring from. Dr. X-'s father died of angina pectoris at the age of forty-nine; so did Dr. X-. Can it be pretended that Dr. X- remembered having died of angina pectoris at the age of forty-nine when in the pe

did so at over forty. By our own showing, therefore, recollection can have nothing to do with the matter. Yet who can doubt that gout is due to inheritance as much as eyes and noses? In what respects do the two things differ so that we should refer the inheritance of eyes and noses to memory, while denying any connection between memory and gout? We

r and greater vigour in the extreme of old age, and even for days after death itself. It can hardly be doubted that an especial tendency to develop these characteristics runs as an inheritance in certain fami

th me for some time as above, co

ther say that a chrysalis becomes a butterfly because it is the thing that it is, and, being that kind of thing, must act in such and such a manner and in such a manner only, so that the act of one generation has no more to do with the act of the next than the fact of cream being churned into butter in a dairy one day has to do with other cream being churnable into butter in the following

mental organism if I felt the need of it, for his own ingenious attack on my position,

agents be men and women or chemical substances. "If there be two cowards perfectly similar in every respect, and if they be subjected in a perfectly similar way to two terrifying agents, which are themselves perfectly similar, there are few who will not expect a perfect sim

the neighbourhood, and on getting down into the street asks a policeman at the corner which is the best eating-house within easy distance. The policeman tells him of three houses, one of whic

twelve he would begin to be hungry; but his beginning to be hungry cannot be connected with his remembering having begun to be hungry yesterday. He would begin to be hungry just as much whether he remembered or no. At one o'clock he again takes down his hat and leaves the office, not because he remembers having done so yesterday, but because he wants his hat to go out with. Being again in the street, and a

repeat the same actions in exactly the same way, until some external circumstances, such as his being sent away, modify the situation. Till this or some other modification occurs, he will day after day go down into the street without knowing where to go; day after day he will see the same policeman at the corner of the same street,

y observable. He wants his dinner, indeed, goes down into the street, and sees the policeman as yesterday, but he does not ask the policeman; he remembers what the policeman told him and what he did, and therefore goes straight to the eating-house without wasting time: nor does he dine off the same dish two days running, for he remembers what he had yesterday and likes variety. If, then, similarity of action is rather hindered than promoted by memory,