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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Selections from Previous Works, by Samuel
+Butler
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Selections from Previous Works
+       and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals
+
+
+Author: Samuel Butler
+
+
+
+Release Date: October 24, 2006  [eBook #19610]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECTIONS FROM PREVIOUS WORKS***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1884 Trubner & Co. edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+SELECTIONS FROM PREVIOUS WORKS
+
+
+_WITH REMARKS ON MR. G. J. ROMANES'_ "_MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS_"
+AND
+A PSALM OF MONTREAL
+
+BY
+SAMUEL BUTLER
+
+"The course of true science, like that of true love, never did run
+smooth."
+PROFESSOR TYNDALL, _Pall Mall Gazette_, Oct 30, 1883.
+
+(OP. 7)
+
+LONDON
+TRUBNER & CO., LUDGATE HILL
+1884
+[_All rights reserved_]
+
+Ballantyne Press
+BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.
+EDINBURGH AND LONDON
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+I delayed these pages some weeks in order to give Mr. Romanes an
+opportunity of explaining his statement that Canon Kingsley wrote about
+instinct and inherited memory in _Nature_, Jan. 18, 1867. {iii}  I wrote
+to the _Athenaeum_ (Jan. 26, 1884) and pointed out that _Nature_ did not
+begin to appear till nearly three years after the date given by Mr.
+Romanes, and that there was nothing from Canon Kingsley on the subject of
+instinct and inherited memory in any number of _Nature_ up to the date of
+Canon Kingsley's death.  I also asked for the correct reference.
+
+This Mr. Romanes has not thought it incumbent upon him to give.  I am
+told I ought not to have expected him to give it, inasmuch as it is no
+longer usual for men of any but the lowest scientific standing to correct
+their misstatements when they are brought to book.  Science is made for
+Fellows of the Royal Society, and for no one else, not Fellows of the
+Royal Society for science; and if the having achieved a certain position
+should still involve being obliged to be as scrupulous and accurate as
+other people, what is the good of the position?  This view of the matter
+is practical, but I regret that Mr. Romanes should have taken it, for his
+having done so has prevented my being able to tell the reader what Canon
+Kingsley said about memory and instinct, and this he might have been glad
+to know.
+
+I suspect, however, that what Canon Kingsley said was after all not very
+important.  If it had been, Mr. Romanes would have probably told us what
+it was in his own book.  I should think it possible that Mr. Romanes--not
+finding Canon Kingsley's words important enough to be quoted, or even
+referred to correctly, or never having seen them himself and not knowing
+exactly what they were, yet being anxious to give every one, and more
+particularly Canon Kingsley, his due--felt that this was an occasion on
+which he might fairly take advantage of his position and say at large
+whatever he was in the humour for saying at the moment.
+
+I should not have thought this possible if I had not ere now had reason
+to set Mr. Romanes down as one who was not likely to be squeamish about
+trifles.  Nevertheless, on this present occasion I certainly did think
+that he had only made a slip such as we all make sometimes, and such as
+he would gladly take the earliest opportunity to correct.  As it is, I do
+not know what to think, except that D.C.L.'s and F.R.S.'s seem to be made
+of much the same frail materials as we ordinary mortals are.
+
+As regards the extracts from my previous books given in this volume, I
+should say that I have revised and corrected the original text
+throughout, and introduced a sentence or two here and there, but have
+nowhere made any important alteration.  I regret greatly that want of
+space has prevented me from being able to give the chapters from Life and
+Habit on "The Abeyance of Memory," and "What we should expect to find if
+Differentiations of Structure and Instinct are mainly due to Memory;" it
+is in these chapters that an explanation of many phenomena is given, of
+which, so far as I know, no explanation of any kind had been previously
+attempted, and in which phenomena having apparently so little connection
+as the sterility of hybrids, the principle underlying longevity, the
+resumption of feral characteristics, the sterility of many animals under
+confinement, are not only made intelligible but are shown to be all part
+and parcel of the same story--all being explicable as soon as Memory is
+made the main factor of heredity.
+
+_Feb._ 16, 1884.
+
+
+
+
+SELECTIONS FROM EREWHON. {1}
+
+
+_CURRENT OPINIONS_.  (CHAPTER X. OF EREWHON.)
+
+
+This is what I gathered.  That in that country if a man falls into ill
+health, or catches any disorder, or fails bodily in any way before he is
+seventy years old, he is tried before a jury of his countrymen, and if
+convicted is held up to public scorn and sentenced more or less severely
+as the case may be.  There are subdivisions of illnesses into crimes and
+misdemeanours as with offences amongst ourselves--a man being punished
+very heavily for serious illness, while failure of eyes or hearing in one
+over sixty-five who has had good health hitherto is dealt with by fine
+only, or imprisonment in default of payment.
+
+But if a man forges a cheque, sets his house on fire, robs with violence
+from the person, or does any other such things as are criminal in our own
+country, he is either taken to a hospital and most carefully tended at
+the public expense, or if he is in good circumstances, he lets it be
+known to all his friends that he is suffering from a severe fit of
+immorality, just as we do when we are ill, and they come and visit him
+with great solicitude, and inquire with interest how it all came about,
+what symptoms first showed themselves, and so forth,--questions which he
+will answer with perfect unreserve; for bad conduct, though considered no
+less deplorable than illness with ourselves, and as unquestionably
+indicating something wrong with the individual who misbehaves, is
+nevertheless held to be the result of either pre-natal or post-natal
+misfortune.  I should add that under certain circumstances poverty and
+ill luck are also considered criminal.
+
+Accordingly, there exists a class of men trained in soul-craft, whom they
+call straighteners, as nearly as I can translate a word which literally
+means "one who bendeth back the crooked."  These men practise much as
+medical men in England, and receive a quasi-surreptitious fee on every
+visit.  They are treated with the same unreserve and obeyed just as
+readily as our own doctors--that is to say, on the whole
+sufficiently--because people know that it is their interest to get well
+as soon as they can, and that they will not be scouted as they would be
+if their bodies were out of order, even though they may have to undergo a
+very painful course of treatment.
+
+When I say that they will not be scouted, I do not mean that an
+Erewhonian offender will suffer no social inconvenience.  Friends will
+fall away from him because of his being less pleasant company, just as we
+ourselves are disclined to make companions of those who are either poor
+or poorly.  No one with a due sense of self-respect will place himself on
+an equality in the matter of affection with those who are less lucky than
+himself in birth, health, money, good looks, capacity, or anything else.
+Indeed, that dislike and even disgust should be felt by the fortunate for
+the unfortunate, or at any rate for those who have been discovered to
+have met with any of the more serious and less familiar misfortunes, is
+not only natural, but desirable for any society, whether of man or brute;
+what progress either of body or soul had been otherwise possible?  The
+fact therefore that the Erewhonians attach none of that guilt to crime
+which they do to physical ailments, does not prevent the more selfish
+among them from neglecting a friend who has robbed a bank, for instance,
+till he has fully recovered; but it does prevent them from even thinking
+of treating criminals with that contemptuous tone which would seem to
+say, "I, if I were you, should be a better man than you are," a tone
+which is held quite reasonable in regard to physical ailment.
+
+Hence, though they conceal ill health by every kind of cunning, they are
+quite open about even the most flagrant mental diseases, should they
+happen to exist, which to do the people justice is not often.  Indeed,
+there are some who, so to speak, are spiritual valetudinarians, and who
+make themselves exceedingly ridiculous by their nervous supposition that
+they are wicked, while they are very tolerable people all the time.  This
+however is exceptional; and on the whole they use much the same reserve
+or unreserve about the state of their moral welfare as we do about our
+health.
+
+It has followed that all the ordinary greetings among ourselves, such as,
+How do you do? and the like, are considered signs of gross ill-breeding;
+nor do the politer classes tolerate even such a common complimentary
+remark as telling a man that he was looking well.  They salute each other
+with, "I hope you are good this morning;" or "I hope you have recovered
+from the snappishness from which you were suffering when I last saw you;"
+and if the person saluted has not been good, or is still snappish, he
+says so, and is condoled with accordingly.  Nay, the straighteners have
+gone so far as to give names from the hypothetical language (as taught at
+the Colleges of Unreason) to all known forms of mental indisposition, and
+have classified them according to a system of their own, which, though I
+could not understand it, seemed to work well in practice, for they are
+always able to tell a man what is the matter with him as soon as they
+have heard his story, and their familiarity with the long names assures
+him that they thoroughly understand his case.
+
+* * * * *
+
+We in England rarely shrink from telling our doctor what is the matter
+with us merely through the fear that he will hurt us.  We let him do his
+worst upon us, and stand it without a murmur, because we are not scouted
+for being ill, and because we know the doctor is doing his best to cure
+us, and can judge of our case better than we can; but we should conceal
+all illness if we were treated as the Erewhonians are when they have
+anything the matter with them; we should do as we do with our moral and
+intellectual diseases,--we should feign health with the most consummate
+art, till we were found out, and should hate a single flogging given by
+way of mere punishment more than the amputation of a limb, if it were
+kindly and courteously performed from a wish to help us out of our
+difficulty, and with the full consciousness on the part of the doctor
+that it was only by an accident of constitution that he was not in the
+like plight himself.  So the Erewhonians take a flogging once a week, and
+a diet of bread and water for two or three months together, whenever
+their straightener recommends it.
+
+I do not suppose that even my host, on having swindled a confiding widow
+out of the whole of her property, was put to more actual suffering than a
+man will readily undergo at the hands of an English doctor.  And yet he
+must have had a very bad time of it.  The sounds I heard were sufficient
+to show that his pain was exquisite, but he never shrank from undergoing
+it.  He was quite sure that it did him good; and I think he was right.  I
+cannot believe that that man will ever embezzle money again.  He may--but
+it will be a long time before he does so.
+
+During my confinement in prison, and on my journey, I had discovered much
+of the above; but it still seemed new and strange, and I was in constant
+fear of committing some rudeness from my inability to look at things from
+the same stand-point as my neighbours; but after a few weeks' stay with
+the Nosnibors I got to understand things better, especially on having
+heard all about my host's illness, of which he told me fully and
+repeatedly.
+
+It seemed he had been on the Stock Exchange of the city for many years
+and had amassed enormous wealth, without exceeding the limits of what was
+generally considered justifiable or at any rate permissible dealing; but
+at length on several occasions he had become aware of a desire to make
+money by fraudulent representations, and had actually dealt with two or
+three sums in a way which had made him rather uncomfortable.  He had
+unfortunately made light of it and pooh-poohed the ailment, until
+circumstances eventually presented themselves which enabled him to cheat
+upon a very considerable scale;--he told me what they were, and they were
+about as bad as anything could be, but I need not detail them;--he seized
+the opportunity, and became aware when it was too late that he must be
+seriously out of order.  He had neglected himself too long.
+
+He drove home at once, broke the news to his wife and daughters as gently
+as he could, and sent off for one of the most celebrated straighteners of
+the kingdom to a consultation with the family practitioner, for the case
+was plainly serious.  On the arrival of the straightener he told his
+story, and expressed his fear that his morals must be permanently
+impaired.
+
+The eminent man reassured him with a few cheering words, and then
+proceeded to make a more careful diagnosis of the case.  He inquired
+concerning Mr. Nosnibor's parents--had their moral health been good?  He
+was answered that there had not been anything seriously amiss with them,
+but that his maternal grandfather, whom he was supposed to resemble
+somewhat in person, had been a consummate scoundrel and had ended his
+days in a hospital,--while a brother of his father's, after having led a
+most flagitious life for many years, had been at last cured by a
+philosopher of a new school, which as far as I could understand it bore
+much the same relation to the old as homoeopathy to allopathy.  The
+straightener shook his head at this, and laughingly replied that the cure
+must have been due to nature.  After a few more questions he wrote a
+prescription and departed.
+
+I saw the prescription.  It ordered a fine to the State of double the
+money embezzled; no food but bread and milk for six months, and a severe
+flogging once a month for twelve.  He had received his eleventh flogging
+on the day of my arrival.  I saw him later on the same afternoon, and he
+was still twinged; but even though he had been minded to do so (which he
+showed no sign of being), there would have been no escape from following
+out the straightener's prescription, for the so-called sanitary laws of
+Erewhon are very rigorous, and unless the straightener was satisfied that
+his orders had been obeyed, the patient would have been taken to a
+hospital (as the poor are), and would have been much worse off.  Such at
+least is the law, but it is never necessary to enforce it.
+
+On a subsequent occasion I was present at an interview between Mr.
+Nosnibor and the family straightener, who was considered competent to
+watch the completion of the cure.  I was struck with the delicacy with
+which he avoided even the remotest semblance of inquiry after the
+physical well-being of his patient, though there was a certain yellowness
+about my host's eyes which argued a bilious habit of body.  To have taken
+notice of this would have been a gross breach of professional etiquette.
+I am told that a straightener sometimes thinks it right to glance at the
+possibility of some slight physical disorder if he finds it important in
+order to assist him in his diagnosis; but the answers which he gets are
+generally untrue or evasive, and he forms his own conclusions upon the
+matter as well as he can.
+
+Sensible men have been known to say that the straightener should in
+strict confidence be told of every physical ailment that is likely to
+bear upon the case; but people are naturally shy of doing this, for they
+do not like lowering themselves in the opinion of the straightener, and
+his ignorance of medical science is supreme.  I heard of one lady however
+who had the hardihood to confess that a furious outbreak of ill-humour
+and extravagant fancies for which she was seeking advice was possibly the
+result of indisposition.  "You should resist that," said the
+straightener, in a kind, but grave voice; "we can do nothing for the
+bodies of our patients; such matters are beyond our province, and I
+desire that I may hear no further particulars."  The lady burst into
+tears, promised faithfully that she would never be unwell again, and kept
+her word.
+
+To return however to Mr. Nosnibor.  As the afternoon wore on many
+carriages drove up with callers to inquire how he had stood his flogging.
+It had been very severe, but the kind inquiries upon every side gave him
+great pleasure, and he assured me that he felt almost tempted to do wrong
+again by the solicitude with which his friends had treated him during his
+recovery: in this I need hardly say that he was not serious.
+
+During the remainder of my stay in the country Mr. Nosnibor was
+constantly attentive to his business, and largely increased his already
+great possessions; but I never heard a whisper to the effect of his
+having been indisposed a second time, or made money by other than the
+most strictly honourable means.  I did hear afterwards in confidence that
+there had been reason to believe that his health had been not a little
+affected by the straightener's treatment, but his friends did not choose
+to be over curious upon the subject, and on his return to his affairs it
+was by common consent passed over as hardly criminal in one who was
+otherwise so much afflicted.  For they regard bodily ailments as the more
+venial in proportion as they have been produced by causes independent of
+the constitution.  Thus if a person ruin his health by excessive
+indulgence at the table, or by drinking, they count it to be almost a
+part of the mental disease which brought it about and so it goes for
+little, but they have no mercy on such illnesses as fevers or catarrhs or
+lung diseases, which to us appear to be beyond the control of the
+individual.  They are only more lenient towards the diseases of the
+young--such as measles, which they think to be like sowing one's wild
+oats--and look over them as pardonable indiscretions if they have not
+been too serious, and if they are atoned for by complete subsequent
+recovery.
+
+
+
+AN EREWHONIAN TRIAL.  (CHAPTER XI. OF EREWHON.)
+
+
+I shall best convey to the reader an idea of the entire perversion of
+thought which exists among this extraordinary people, by describing the
+public trial of a man who was accused of pulmonary consumption--an
+offence which was punished with death until quite recently.  The trial
+did not take place till I had been some months in the country, and I am
+deviating from chronological order in giving an account of it here; but I
+had perhaps better do so in order to exhaust this subject before
+proceeding with others.
+
+The prisoner was placed in the dock, and the jury were sworn much as in
+Europe; almost all our own modes of procedure were reproduced, even to
+the requiring the prisoner to plead guilty or not guilty.  He pleaded not
+guilty and the case proceeded.  The evidence for the prosecution was very
+strong, but I must do the court the justice to observe that the trial was
+absolutely impartial.  Counsel for the prisoner was allowed to urge
+everything that could be said in his defence.
+
+The line taken was that the prisoner was simulating consumption in order
+to defraud an insurance company, from which he was about to buy an
+annuity, and that he hoped thus to obtain it on more advantageous terms.
+If this could have been shown to be the case he would have escaped
+criminal prosecution, and been sent to a hospital as for moral ailment.
+The view however was one which could not be reasonably sustained, in
+spite of all the ingenuity and eloquence of one of the most celebrated
+advocates of the country.  The case was only too clear, for the prisoner
+was almost at the point of death, and it was astonishing that he had not
+been tried and convicted long previously.  His coughing was incessant
+during the whole trial, and it was all that the two jailers in charge of
+him could do to keep him on his legs until it was over.
+
+The summing up of the judge was admirable.  He dwelt upon every point
+that could be construed in favour of the prisoner, but as he proceeded it
+became clear that the evidence was too convincing to admit of doubt, and
+there was but one opinion in the court as to the impending verdict when
+the jury retired from the box.  They were absent for about ten minutes,
+and on their return the foreman pronounced the prisoner guilty.  There
+was a faint murmur of applause but it was instantly repressed.  The judge
+then proceeded to pronounce sentence in words which I can never forget,
+and which I copied out into a note-book next day from the report that was
+published in the leading newspaper.  I must condense it somewhat, and
+nothing which I could say would give more than a faint idea of the
+solemn, not to say majestic, severity with which it was delivered.  The
+sentence was as follows:--
+
+"Prisoner at the bar, you have been accused of the great crime of
+labouring under pulmonary consumption, and after an impartial trial
+before a jury of your countrymen, you have been found guilty.  Against
+the justice of the verdict I can say nothing: the evidence against you
+was conclusive, and it only remains for me to pass such a sentence upon
+you, as shall satisfy the ends of the law.  That sentence must be a very
+severe one.  It pains me much to see one who is yet so young, and whose
+prospects in life were otherwise so excellent, brought to this
+distressing condition by a constitution which I can only regard as
+radically vicious; but yours is no case for compassion: this is not your
+first offence: you have led a career of crime, and have only profited by
+the leniency shown you upon past occasions, to offend yet more seriously
+against the laws and institutions of your country.  You were convicted of
+aggravated bronchitis last year: and I find that though you are now only
+twenty-three years old, you have been imprisoned on no less than fourteen
+occasions for illnesses of a more or less hateful character; in fact, it
+is not too much to say that you have spent the greater part of your life
+in a jail.
+
+"It is all very well for you to say that you came of unhealthy parents,
+and had a severe accident in your childhood which permanently undermined
+your constitution; excuses such as these are the ordinary refuge of the
+criminal; but they cannot for one moment be listened to by the ear of
+justice.  I am not here to enter upon curious metaphysical questions as
+to the origin of this or that--questions to which there would be no end
+were their introduction once tolerated, and which would result in
+throwing the only guilt on the primordial cell, or perhaps even on the
+elementary gases.  There is no question of how you came to be wicked, but
+only this--namely, are you wicked or not?  This has been decided in the
+affirmative, neither can I hesitate for a single moment to say that it
+has been decided justly.  You are a bad and dangerous person, and stand
+branded in the eyes of your fellow-countrymen with one of the most
+heinous known offences.
+
+"It is not my business to justify the law: the law may in some cases have
+its inevitable hardships, and I may feel regret at times that I have not
+the option of passing a less severe sentence than I am compelled to do.
+But yours is no such case; on the contrary, had not the capital
+punishment for consumption been abolished, I should certainly inflict it
+now.
+
+"It is intolerable that an example of such terrible enormity should be
+allowed to go at large unpunished.  Your presence in the society of
+respectable people would lead the less able-bodied to think more lightly
+of all forms of illness; neither can it be permitted that you should have
+the chance of corrupting unborn beings who might hereafter pester you.
+The unborn must not be allowed to come near you: and this not so much for
+their protection (for they are our natural enemies), as for our own; for
+since they will not be utterly gainsaid, it must be seen to that they
+shall be quartered upon those who are least likely to corrupt them.
+
+"But independently of this consideration, and independently of the
+physical guilt which attaches itself to a crime so great as yours, there
+is yet another reason why we should be unable to show you mercy, even if
+we are inclined to do so.  I refer to the existence of a class of men who
+lie hidden among us, and who are called physicians.  Were the severity of
+the law or the current feeling of the country to be relaxed never so
+slightly, these abandoned persons, who are now compelled to practise
+secretly, and who can be consulted only at the greatest risk, would
+become frequent visitors in every household; their organisation and their
+intimate acquaintance with all family secrets would give them a power,
+both social and political, which nothing could resist.  The head of the
+household would become subordinate to the family doctor, who would
+interfere between man and wife, between master and servant, until the
+doctors should be the only depositaries of power in the nation, and have
+all that we hold precious at their mercy.  A time of universal
+dephysicalisation would ensue; medicine-vendors of all kinds would abound
+in our streets and advertise in all our newspapers.  There is one remedy
+for this, and one only.  It is that which the laws of this country have
+long received and acted upon, and consists in the sternest repression of
+all diseases whatsoever, as soon as their existence is made manifest to
+the eye of the law.  Would that that eye were far more piercing than it
+is.
+
+"But I will enlarge no further upon things that are themselves so
+obvious.  You may say that it is not your fault.  The answer is ready
+enough at hand, and it amounts to this--that if you had been born of
+healthy and well-to-do parents, and been well taken care of when you were
+a child, you would never have offended against the laws of your country,
+nor found yourself in your present disgraceful position.  If you tell me
+that you had no hand in your parentage and education, and that it is
+therefore unjust to lay these things to your charge, I answer that
+whether your being in a consumption is your fault or no, it is a fault in
+you, and it is my duty to see that against such faults as this the
+commonwealth shall be protected.  You may say that it is your misfortune
+to be criminal; I answer that it is your crime to be unfortunate.
+
+"I do not hesitate therefore to sentence you to imprisonment, with hard
+labour, for the rest of your miserable existence.  During that period I
+would earnestly entreat you to repent of these wrongs you have done
+already, and to entirely reform the constitution of your whole body.  I
+entertain but little hope that you will pay attention to my advice; you
+are already far too abandoned.  Did it rest with myself, I should add
+nothing in mitigation of the sentence which I have passed, but it is the
+merciful provision of the law that even the most hardened criminal shall
+be allowed some one of the three official remedies, which is to be
+prescribed at the time of his conviction.  I shall therefore order that
+you receive two tablespoonfuls of castor-oil daily, until the pleasure of
+the court be further known."
+
+When the sentence was concluded, the prisoner acknowledged in a few
+scarcely audible words that he was justly punished, and that he had had a
+fair trial.  He was then removed to the prison from which he was never to
+return.  There was a second attempt at applause when the judge had
+finished speaking, but as before it was at once repressed; and though the
+feeling of the court was strongly against the prisoner, there was no show
+of any violence against him, if one may except a little hooting from the
+bystanders when he was being removed in the prisoners' van.  Indeed,
+nothing struck me more during my whole sojourn in the country, than the
+general respect for law and order.
+
+
+
+MALCONTENTS.  (PART OF CHAPTER XII. OF EREWHON.)
+
+
+I write with great diffidence, but it seems to me that there is no
+unfairness in punishing people for their misfortunes, or rewarding them
+for their sheer good luck: it is the normal condition of human life that
+this should be done, and no right-minded person will complain at being
+subjected to the common treatment.  There is no alternative open to us.
+It is idle to say that men are not responsible for their misfortunes.
+What is responsibility?  Surely to be responsible means to be liable to
+have to give an answer should it be demanded, and all things which live
+are responsible for their lives and actions should society see fit to
+question them through the mouth of its authorised agent.
+
+What is the offence of a lamb that we should rear it, and tend it, and
+lull it into security, for the express purpose of killing it?  Its
+offence is the misfortune of being something which society wants to eat,
+and which cannot defend itself.  This is ample.  Who shall limit the
+right of society except society itself?  And what consideration for the
+individual is tolerable unless society be the gainer thereby?  Wherefore
+should a man be so richly rewarded for having been son to a millionaire,
+were it not clearly provable that the common welfare is thus better
+furthered?  We cannot seriously detract from a man's merit in having been
+the son of a rich father without imperilling our own tenure of things
+which we do not wish to jeopardise; if this were otherwise we should not
+let him keep his money for a single hour; we would have it ourselves at
+once.  For property _is_ robbery, but then we are all robbers or would-be
+robbers together, and have found it expedient to organise our thieving,
+as we have found it to organise our lust and our revenge.  Property,
+marriage, the law; as the bed to the river, so rule and convention to the
+instinct.
+
+But to return.  Even in England a man on board a ship with yellow fever
+is held responsible for his mischance, no matter what his being kept in
+quarantine may cost him.  He may catch the fever and die; we cannot help
+it; he must take his chance as other people do; but surely it would be
+desperate unkindness to add contumely to our self-protection, unless,
+indeed, we believe that contumely is one of our best means of
+self-protection.  Again, take the case of maniacs.  We say that they are
+irresponsible for their actions, but we take good care, or ought to take
+good care, that they shall answer to us for their insanity, and we
+imprison them in what we call an asylum (that modern sanctuary!) if we do
+not like their answers.  This is a strange kind of irresponsibility.  What
+we ought to say is that we can afford to be satisfied with a less
+satisfactory answer from a lunatic than from one who is not mad, because
+lunacy is less infectious than crime.
+
+We kill a serpent if we go in danger by it, simply for being such and
+such a serpent in such and such a place; but we never say that the
+serpent has only itself to blame for not having been a harmless creature.
+Its crime is that of being the thing which it is: but this is a capital
+offence, and we are right in killing it out of the way, unless we think
+it more dangerous to do so than to let it escape; nevertheless we pity
+the creature, even though we kill it.
+
+But in the case of him whose trial I have described above, it was
+impossible that any one in the court should not have known that it was
+but by an accident of birth and circumstances that he was not himself
+also in a consumption; and yet none thought that it disgraced them to
+hear the judge give vent to the most cruel truisms about him.  The judge
+himself was a kind and thoughtful person.  He was a man of magnificent
+and benign presence.  He was evidently of an iron constitution, and his
+face wore an expression of the maturest wisdom and experience; yet for
+all this, old and learned as he was, he could not see things which one
+would have thought would have been apparent even to a child.  He could
+not emancipate himself from, nay, it did not even occur to him to feel,
+the bondage of the ideas in which he had been born and bred.  So was it
+with the jury and bystanders; and--most wonderful of all--so was it even
+with the prisoner.  Throughout he seemed fully impressed with the notion
+that he was being dealt with justly: he saw nothing wanton in his being
+told by the judge that he was to be punished, not so much as a necessary
+protection to society (although this was not entirely lost sight of), as
+because he had not been better born and bred than he was.  But this led
+me to hope that he suffered less than he would have done if he had seen
+the matter in the same light that I did.  And, after all, justice is
+relative.
+
+I may here mention that only a few years before my arrival in the
+country, the treatment of all convicted invalids had been much more
+barbarous than now; for no physical remedy was provided, and prisoners
+were put to the severest labour in all sorts of weather, so that most of
+them soon succumbed to the extreme hardships which they suffered; this
+was supposed to be beneficial in some ways, inasmuch as it put the
+country to less expense for the maintenance of its criminal class; but
+the growth of luxury had induced a relaxation of the old severity, and a
+sensitive age would no longer tolerate what appeared to be an excess of
+rigour, even towards the most guilty; moreover, it was found that juries
+were less willing to convict, and justice was often cheated because there
+was no alternative between virtually condemning a man to death and
+letting him go free; it was also held that the country paid in
+recommittals for its overseverity; for those who had been imprisoned even
+for trifling ailments were often permanently disabled by their
+imprisonment; and when a man has been once convicted, it was probable he
+would never afterwards be long off the hands of the country.
+
+These evils had long been apparent and recognised; yet people were too
+indolent, and too indifferent to suffering not their own, to bestir
+themselves about putting an end to them, until at last a benevolent
+reformer devoted his whole life to effecting the necessary changes.  He
+divided illnesses into three classes--those affecting the head, the
+trunk, and the lower limbs--and obtained an enactment that all diseases
+of the head, whether internal or external, should be treated with
+laudanum, those of the body with castor-oil, and those of the lower limbs
+with an embrocation of strong sulphuric acid and water.  It may be said
+that the classification was not sufficiently careful, and that the
+remedies were ill chosen; but it is a hard thing to initiate any reform,
+and it was necessary to familiarise the public mind with the principle,
+by inserting the thin end of the wedge first: it is not therefore to be
+wondered at that among so practical a people there should still be some
+room for improvement.  The mass of the nation are well pleased with
+existing arrangements, and believe that their treatment of criminals
+leaves little or nothing to be desired; but there is an energetic
+minority who hold what are considered to be extreme opinions, and who are
+not at all disposed to rest contented until the principle lately admitted
+has been carried further.
+
+
+
+THE MUSICAL BANKS.  (CHAPTER XIV. OF EREWHON.)
+
+
+On my return to the drawing-room, I found the ladies were just putting
+away their work and preparing to go out.  I asked them where they were
+going.  They answered with a certain air of reserve that they were going
+to the bank to get some money.
+
+Now I had already collected that the mercantile affairs of the
+Erewhonians were conducted on a totally different system from our own; I
+had however gathered little hitherto, except that they had two distinct
+commercial systems, of which the one appealed more strongly to the
+imagination than anything to which we are accustomed in Europe, inasmuch
+as the banks conducted upon this system were decorated in the most
+profuse fashion, and all mercantile transactions were accompanied with
+music, so that they were called musical banks though the music was
+hideous to a European ear.
+
+As for the system itself I never understood it, neither can I do so now:
+they have a code in connection with it, which I have no doubt they
+themselves understand, but no foreigner can hope to do so.  One rule runs
+into and against another as in a most complicated grammar, or as in
+Chinese pronunciation, wherein I am told the slightest change in
+accentuation or tone of voice alters the meaning of a whole sentence.
+Whatever is incoherent in my description must be referred to the fact of
+my never having attained to a full comprehension of the subject.
+
+So far however as I could collect anything certain, they appeared to have
+two entirely distinct currencies, each under the control of its own banks
+and mercantile codes.  The one of them (the one with the musical banks)
+was supposed to be _the_ system, and to give out the currency in which
+all monetary transactions should be carried on.  As far as I could see,
+all who wished to be considered respectable, did keep a certain amount of
+this currency at these banks; nevertheless, if there is one thing of
+which I am more sure than another it is that the amount so kept was but a
+very small part of their possessions.  I think they took the money, put
+it into the bank, and then drew it out again, repeating the process day
+by day, and keeping a certain amount of currency for this purpose and no
+other, while they paid the expenses of the bank with the other coinage.  I
+am sure the managers and cashiers of the musical banks were not paid in
+their own currency.  Mr. Nosnibor used to go to these musical banks, or
+rather to the great mother bank of the city, sometimes but not very
+often.  He was a pillar of one of the other kind of banks, though he held
+some minor office also in these.  The ladies generally went alone; as
+indeed was the case in most families, except on some few great annual
+occasions.
+
+I had long wanted to know more of this strange system, and had the
+greatest desire to accompany my hostess and her daughters.  I had seen
+them go out almost every morning since my arrival, and had noticed that
+they carried their purses in their hands, not exactly ostentatiously, yet
+just so as that those who met them should see whither they were going.  I
+had never yet been asked to go with them myself.
+
+It is not easy to convey a person's manner by words, and I can hardly
+give any idea of the peculiar feeling which came upon me whenever I saw
+the ladies in the hall, with their purses in their hands, and on the
+point of starting for the bank.  There was a something of regret, a
+something as though they would wish to take me with them, but did not
+like to ask me, and yet as though I were hardly to ask to be taken.  I
+was determined however to bring matters to an issue with my hostess about
+my going with them, and after a little parleying and many inquiries as to
+whether I was perfectly sure that I myself wished to go, it was decided
+that I might do so.
+
+We passed through several streets of more or less considerable houses,
+and at last turning round a corner we came upon a large piazza, at the
+end of which was a magnificent building, of a strange but noble
+architecture and of great antiquity.  It did not open directly on to the
+piazza, there being a screen, through which was an archway, between the
+piazza and the actual precincts of the bank.  On passing under the
+archway we found ourselves upon a green sward, round which there ran an
+arcade or cloister, while in front of us uprose the majestic towers of
+the bank and its venerable front, which was divided into three deep
+recesses and adorned with all sorts of marbles and many sculptures.  On
+either side there were beautiful old trees wherein the birds were busy by
+the hundred, and a number of quaint but substantial houses of singularly
+comfortable appearance; they were situated in the midst of orchards and
+gardens, and gave me an impression of great peace and plenty.
+
+Indeed it had been no error to say that this building was one which
+appealed to the imagination; it did more--it carried both imagination and
+judgment by storm.  It was an epic in stone and marble; neither had I
+ever seen anything in the least comparable to it.  I was completely
+charmed and melted.  I felt more conscious of the existence of a remote
+past.  One knows of this always, but the knowledge is never so living as
+in the actual presence of some witness to the life of bygone ages.  I
+felt how short a space of human life was the period of our own existence.
+I was more impressed with my own littleness, and much more inclinable to
+believe that the people whose sense of the fitness of things was equal to
+the upraising of so serene a handiwork, were hardly likely to be wrong in
+the conclusions they might come to upon any subject.  My feeling
+certainly was that the currency of this bank must be the right one.
+
+We crossed the sward and entered the building.  If the outside had been
+impressive the inside was even more so.  It was very lofty and divided
+into several parts by walls which rested upon massive pillars; the
+windows were filled with glass, on which had been painted the principal
+commercial incidents of the bank for many ages.  In a remote part of the
+building there were men and boys singing; this was the only disturbing
+feature, for as the gamut was still unknown, there was no music in the
+country which could be agreeable to a European ear.  The singers seemed
+to have derived their inspirations from the songs of birds and the
+wailing of the wind, which last they tried to imitate in melancholy
+cadences which at times degenerated into a howl.  To my thinking the
+noise was hideous, but it produced a great effect upon my companions, who
+professed themselves much moved.  As soon as the singing was over the
+ladies requested me to stay where I was, while they went inside the place
+from which it had seemed to come.
+
+During their absence certain reflections forced themselves upon me.
+
+In the first place, it struck me as strange that the building should be
+so nearly empty; I was almost alone, and the few besides myself had been
+led by curiosity, and had no intention of doing business with the bank.
+But there might be more inside.  I stole up to the curtain, and ventured
+to draw the extreme edge of it on one side.  No, there was hardly any one
+there.  I saw a large number of cashiers, all at their desks ready to pay
+cheques, and one or two who seemed to be the managing partners.  I also
+saw my hostess and her daughters and two or three other ladies; also
+three or four old women and the boys from one of the neighbouring
+Colleges of Unreason; but there was no one else.  This did not look as
+though the bank was doing a very large business; and yet I had always
+been told that every one in the city dealt with this establishment.
+
+I cannot describe all that took place in these inner precincts, for a
+sinister-looking person in a black gown came and made unpleasant gestures
+at me for peeping.  I happened to have in my pocket one of the musical
+bank pieces, which had been given me by Mrs. Nosnibor, so I tried to tip
+him with it; but having seen what it was, he became so angry that it was
+all I could do to pacify him.  When he was gone I ventured to take a
+second look, and saw Zulora in the very act of giving a piece of paper
+which looked like a cheque to one of the cashiers.  He did not examine
+it, but putting his hand into an antique coffer hard by, he pulled out a
+quantity of dull-looking metal pieces apparently at random, and handed
+them over without counting them; neither did Zulora count them, but put
+them into her purse and departed.  It seemed a very singular proceeding,
+but I supposed that they knew their own business best, at any rate Zulora
+seemed quite satisfied, thanked him for the money, and began making
+towards the curtain: on this I let it drop and retreated to a reasonable
+distance.
+
+Mrs. Nosnibor and her daughters soon joined me.  For some few minutes we
+all kept silence, but at last I ventured to remark that the bank was not
+so busy to-day as it probably often was.  On this Mrs. Nosnibor said that
+it was indeed melancholy to see what little heed people paid to the most
+precious of all institutions.  I could say nothing in reply, but I have
+ever been of opinion that the greater part of mankind do approximately
+know where they get that which does them good.  Mrs. Nosnibor went on to
+say that I must not imagine there was any want of confidence in the bank
+because I had seen so few people there; the heart of the country was
+thoroughly devoted to these establishments, and any sign of their being
+in danger would bring in support from the most unexpected quarters.  It
+was only because people knew them to be so very safe, that in some cases
+(as she lamented to say in Mr. Nosnibor's) they felt that their support
+was unnecessary.  Moreover these institutions never departed from the
+safest and most approved banking principles.  Thus they never allowed
+interest on deposit, a thing now frequently done by certain bubble
+companies, which by doing an illegitimate trade had drawn many customers
+away; and even the shareholders were fewer than formerly, owing to the
+innovations of these unscrupulous persons.
+
+It came out by and by that the musical banks paid little or no dividend,
+but divided their profits by way of bonus on the original shares once in
+every three hundred and fifty years; and as it was now only two hundred
+years since there had been one of these distributions, people felt that
+they could not hope for another in their own time and preferred
+investments whereby they got some more tangible return; all which, she
+said, was very melancholy to think of.
+
+Having made these last admissions, she returned to her original
+statement, namely, that every one in the country really supported the
+bank.  As to the fewness of the people, and the absence of the
+able-bodied, she pointed out to me with some justice that this was
+exactly what we ought to expect.  The men who were most conversant about
+the stability of human institutions, such as the lawyers, men of science,
+doctors, statesmen, painters, and the like, were just those who were most
+likely to be misled by their own fancied accomplishments, and to be made
+unduly suspicious by their licentious desire for greater present return,
+which was at the root of nine-tenths of the opposition, by their vanity,
+which would prompt them to affect superiority to the prejudices of the
+vulgar, and by the stings of their own conscience, which was constantly
+upbraiding them in the most cruel manner on account of their bodies,
+which were generally diseased; let a person's intellect be never so
+sound, unless his body were in absolute health, he could form no judgment
+worth having on matters of this kind.  The body was everything: it need
+not perhaps be such a _strong_ body (she said this because she saw I was
+thinking of the old and infirm-looking folks whom I had seen in the
+bank), but it must be in perfect health; in this case, the less active
+strength it had the more free would be the working of the intellect, and
+therefore the sounder the conclusion.  The people, then, whom I had seen
+at the bank were in reality the very ones whose opinions were most worth
+having; they declared its advantages to be incalculable, and even
+professed to consider the immediate return to be far larger than they
+were entitled to; and so she ran on, nor did she leave off till we had
+got back to the house.
+
+She might say what she pleased, but her manner was not one that carried
+much conviction; and later on I saw signs of general indifference to
+these banks that were not to be mistaken.  Their supporters often denied
+it, but the denial was generally so couched as to add another proof of
+its existence.  In commercial panics, and in times of general distress,
+the people as a mass did not so much as even think of turning to these
+banks.  A few individuals might do so, some from habit and early
+training, some from hope of gain, but few from a genuine belief that the
+money was good; the masses turned instinctively to the other currency.  In
+a conversation with one of the musical bank managers I ventured to hint
+this as plainly as politeness would allow.  He said that it had been more
+or less true till lately; but that now they had put fresh stained glass
+windows into all the banks in the country, and repaired the buildings,
+and enlarged the organs, and taken to talking nicely to the people in the
+streets, and to remembering the ages of their children and giving them
+things when they were ill, so that all would henceforth go smoothly.
+
+"But haven't you done anything to the money itself?" said I timidly.
+
+To this day I do not know exactly what the bank-manager said, but it came
+to this in the end--that I had better not meddle with things that I did
+not understand.
+
+On reviewing the whole matter, I can be certain of this much only, that
+the money given out at the musical banks is not the current coin of the
+realm.  It is not the money with which the people do as a general rule
+buy their bread, meat, and clothing.  It is like it; some coins very like
+it; and it is not counterfeit.  It is not, take it all round, a spurious
+article made of base metal in imitation of the money which is in daily
+use; but it is a distinct coinage which, though I do not suppose it ever
+actually superseded the ordinary gold, silver, and copper, was probably
+issued by authority, and was intended to supplant those metals.  Some of
+the pieces were really of exquisite beauty; and some were, I do verily
+believe, nothing but the ordinary currency, only that there was another
+head and name in place of that of the commonwealth.  And here was one of
+the great marvels; for those who were most strongly in favour of this
+coinage maintained, and even grew more excited if they were opposed here
+than on any other matter, that the very self-same coin with the head of
+the commonwealth upon it was of little if any value, while it became
+exceedingly precious it stamped with the other image.
+
+Some of the coins were plainly bad; of these last there were not many;
+still there were enough for them to be not uncommon.  These were entirely
+composed of alloy; they would bend easily, would melt away to nothing
+with a little heat, and were quite unsuited for a currency.  Yet there
+were few of the wealthier classes who did not maintain that even these
+coins were genuine good money, though they were chary of taking them.
+Every one knew this, so they were seldom offered; but all thought it
+incumbent upon them to retain a good many in their possession, and to let
+them be seen from time to time in their hands and purses.  Of course
+people knew their real value exceedingly well; but few, if any, dared to
+say what that value was; or if they did, it would be only in certain
+companies or in writing in the newspapers anonymously.  Strange! there
+was hardly any insinuation against this coinage which they would not
+tolerate and even applaud in their daily papers; and yet, if the same
+thing were said without ambiguity to their faces--nominative case verb
+and accusative being all in their right places, and doubt impossible--they
+would consider themselves very seriously and justly outraged, and accuse
+the speaker of being unwell.
+
+I never could understand, neither can I do so now, why a single currency
+should not suffice them; it would seem to me as though all their dealings
+would have been thus greatly simplified; but I was met with a look of
+horror if ever I dared to hint at it.  Even those who to my certain
+knowledge kept only just enough money at the musical banks to swear by,
+would call the other banks (where their securities really lay) cold,
+deadening, paralysing, and the like.  I noticed another thing moreover
+which struck me greatly.  I was taken to the opening of one of these
+banks in a neighbouring town, and saw a large assemblage of cashiers and
+managers.  I sat opposite them and scanned their faces attentively.  They
+did not please me; they lacked, with a few exceptions, the true
+Erewhonian frankness; and an equal number from any other class would have
+looked happier and better men.  When I met them in the streets they did
+not seem like other people, but had, as a general rule, a cramped
+expression upon their faces which pained and depressed me.
+
+Those who came from the country were better; they seemed to have lived
+less as a separate class, and to be freer and healthier; but in spite of
+my seeing not a few whose looks were benign and noble, I could not help
+asking myself concerning the greater number of those whom I met, whether
+Erewhon would be a better country if their expression were to be
+transferred to the people in general.  I answered myself emphatically,
+no.  A man's expression is his sacrament; it is the outward and visible
+sign of his inward and spiritual grace, or, want of grace; and as I
+looked at the majority of these men, I could not help feeling that there
+must be a something in their lives which had stunted their natural
+development, and that they would have been more healthily-minded in any
+other profession.
+
+I was always sorry for them, for in nine cases out of ten they were well-
+meaning persons; they were in the main very poorly paid; their
+constitutions were as a rule above suspicion; and there were recorded
+numberless instances of their self-sacrifice and generosity; but they had
+had the misfortune to have been betrayed into a false position at an age
+for the most part when their judgment was not matured, and after having
+been kept in studied ignorance of the real difficulties of the system.
+But this did not make their position the less a false one, and its bad
+effects upon themselves were unmistakable.
+
+Few people would speak quite openly and freely before them, which struck
+me as a very bad sign.  When they were in the room every one would talk
+as though all currency save that of the musical banks should be
+abolished; and yet they knew perfectly well that even the cashiers
+themselves hardly used the musical bank money more than other people.  It
+was expected of them that they should appear to do so, but this was all.
+The less thoughtful of them did not seem particularly unhappy, but many
+were plainly sick at heart, though perhaps they hardly knew it, and would
+not have owned to being so.  Some few were opponents of the whole system;
+but these were liable to be dismissed from their employment at any
+moment, and this rendered them very careful, for a man who had once been
+cashier at a musical bank was out of the field for other employment, and
+was generally unfitted for it by reason of that course of treatment which
+was commonly called his education.  In fact it was a career from which
+retreat was virtually impossible, and into which young men were generally
+induced to enter before they could be reasonably expected, considering
+their training, to have formed any opinions of their own.  Few indeed
+were those who had the courage to insist on seeing both sides of the
+question before they committed themselves to either.  One would have
+thought that this was an elementary principle,--one of the first things
+that an honourable man would teach his boy to do; but in practice it was
+not so.
+
+I even saw cases in which parents bought the right of presenting to the
+office of cashier at one of these banks, with the fixed determination
+that some one of their sons (perhaps a mere child) should fill it.  There
+was the lad himself--growing up with every promise of becoming a good and
+honourable man--but utterly without warning concerning the iron shoe
+which his natural protector was providing for him.  Who could say that
+the whole thing would not end in a life-long lie, and vain chafing to
+escape?
+
+I confess that there were few things in Erewhon which shocked me more
+than this.
+
+
+
+BIRTH FORMULAE.  (CHAPTER XVII. OF EREWHON.)
+
+
+I heard what follows not from Arowhena, but from Mr. Nosnibor and some of
+the gentlemen who occasionally dined at the house: they told me that the
+Erewhonians believe in pre-existence; and not only this (of which I will
+write more fully in the next chapter), but they believe that it is of
+their own free act and deed in a previous state that people come to be
+born into this world at all.
+
+They hold that the unborn are perpetually plaguing and tormenting the
+married (and sometimes even the unmarried) of both sexes, fluttering
+about them incessantly, and giving them no peace either of mind or body
+until they have consented to take them under their protection.  If this
+were not so--this is at least what they urge--it would be a monstrous
+freedom for one man to take with another, to say that he should undergo
+the chances and changes of this mortal life without any option in the
+matter.  No man would have any right to get married at all, inasmuch as
+he can never tell what misery his doing so may entail forcibly upon his
+children who cannot be unhappy as long as they remain unborn.  They feel
+this so strongly that they are resolved to shift the blame on to other
+shoulders; they have therefore invented a long mythology as to the world
+in which the unborn people live, what they do, and the arts and
+machinations to which they have recourse in order to get themselves into
+our own world.
+
+I cannot think they seriously believe in this mythology concerning pre-
+existence; they do and they do not; they do not know themselves what they
+believe; all they know is that it is a disease not to believe as they do.
+The only thing of which they are quite sure is that it is the pestering
+of the unborn, which causes them to be brought into this world, and that
+they would not be here if they would only let peaceable people alone.
+
+It would be hard to disprove this position, and they might have a good
+case if they would only leave it as it stands.  But this they will not
+do; they must have assurance doubly sure; they must have the written word
+of the child itself as soon as it is born, giving the parents indemnity
+from all responsibility on the score of its birth, and asserting its own
+pre-existence.  They have therefore devised something which they call a
+birth formula--a document which varies in words according to the caution
+of parents, but is much the same practically in all cases; for it has
+been the business of the Erewhonian lawyers during many ages to exercise
+their skill in perfecting it and providing for every contingency.
+
+These formulae are printed on common paper at a moderate cost for the
+poor; but the rich have them written on parchment and handsomely bound,
+so that the getting up of a person's birth formula is a test of his
+social position.  They commence by setting forth, That whereas A. B. was
+a member of the kingdom of the unborn, where he was well provided for in
+every way, and had no cause of discontent, &c. &c., he did of his own
+wanton restlessness conceive a desire to enter into this present world;
+that thereon having taken the necessary steps as set forth in laws of the
+unborn kingdom, he set himself with malice aforethought to plague and
+pester two unfortunate people who had never wronged him, and who were
+quite contented until he conceived this base design against their peace;
+for which wrong he now humbly entreats their pardon.  He acknowledges
+that he is responsible for all physical blemishes and deficiencies which
+may render him answerable to the laws of his country; that his parents
+have nothing whatever to do with any of these things; and that they have
+a right to kill him at once if they be so minded, though he entreats them
+to show their marvellous goodness and clemency towards him by sparing his
+life.  If they will do this he promises to be their most abject creature
+during his earlier years, and indeed unto his life's end, unless they
+should see fit in their abundant generosity to remit some portion of his
+service hereafter.  And so the formula continues, going sometimes into
+very minute details, according to the fancies of family lawyers, who will
+not make it any shorter than they can help.
+
+The deed being thus prepared, on the third or fourth day after the birth
+of the child, or as they call it, the "final importunity," the friends
+gather together, and there is a feast held, where they are all very
+melancholy--as a general rule, I believe quite truly so--and make
+presents to the father and mother of the child in order to console them
+for the injury which has just been done them by the unborn.  By and by
+the child himself is brought down by his nurse, and the company begin to
+rail upon him, upbraiding him for his impertinence and asking him what
+amends he proposes to make for the wrong that he has committed, and how
+he can look for care and nourishment from those who have perhaps already
+been injured by the unborn on some ten or twelve occasions; for they say
+of people with large families, that they have suffered terrible injuries
+from the unborn; till at last, when this has been carried far enough,
+some one suggests the formula, which is brought forth and solemnly read
+to the child by the family straightener.  This gentleman is always
+invited on these occasions, for the very fact of intrusion into a
+peaceful family shows a depravity on the part of the child which requires
+his professional services.
+
+On being teased by the reading and tweaked by the nurse, the child will
+commonly fall a-crying, which is reckoned a good sign as showing a
+consciousness of guilt.  He is thereon asked, Does he assent to the
+formula? on which, as he still continues crying and can obviously make no
+answer, some one of the friends comes forward and undertakes to sign the
+document on his behalf, feeling sure (so he says) that the child would do
+it if he only knew how, and that he will release the present signer from
+his engagement on arriving at maturity.  The friend then inscribes the
+signature of the child at the foot of the parchment, which is held to
+bind the child as much as though he had signed it himself.  Even this,
+however, does not fully content them, for they feel a little uneasy until
+they have got the child's own signature after all.  So when he is about
+fourteen these good people partly bribe him by promises of greater
+liberty and good things, and partly intimidate him through their great
+power of making themselves passively unpleasant to him, so that though
+there is a show of freedom made, there is really none, and partly they
+use the offices of the teachers in the Colleges of Unreason, till at
+last, in one way or another, they take very good care that he shall sign
+the paper by which he professes to have been a free agent in coming into
+the world, and to take all the responsibility of having done so on to his
+own shoulders.  And yet, though this document is in theory the most
+important which any one can sign in his whole life, they will have him
+commit himself to it at an age when neither they nor the law will for
+many a year allow any one else to bind him to the smallest obligation, no
+matter how righteously he may owe it, because they hold him too young to
+know what he is about.
+
+I thought this seemed rather hard, and not of a piece with the many
+admirable institutions existing among them.  I once ventured to say a
+part of what I thought about it to one of the Professors of Unreason.  I
+asked him whether he did not think it would do serious harm to a lad's
+principles, and weaken his sense of the sanctity of his word, and of
+truth generally, that he should be led into entering upon an engagement
+which it was so plainly impossible he should keep even for a single day
+with tolerable integrity--whether, in fact, the teachers who so led him,
+or who taught anything as a certainty of which they were themselves
+uncertain, were not earning their living by impairing the truth-sense of
+their pupils.  The professor, who was a delightful person, seemed
+surprised at the view I took, and gave me to understand, perhaps justly
+enough, that I ought not to make so much fuss about a trifle.  No one, he
+said, expected that the boy either would or could do all that he
+undertook; but the world was full of compromises; and there was hardly
+any engagement which would bear being interpreted literally.  Human
+language was too gross a vehicle of thought--thought being incapable of
+absolute translation.  He added, that as there can be no translation from
+one language into another which shall not scant the meaning somewhat, or
+enlarge upon it, so there is no language which can render thought without
+a jarring and a harshness somewhere--and so forth; all of which seemed to
+come to this in the end, that it was the custom of the country, and that
+the Erewhonians were a conservative people; that the boy would have to
+begin compromising sooner or later, and this was part of his education in
+the art.  It was perhaps to be regretted that compromise should be as
+necessary as it was; still it was necessary, and the sooner the boy got
+to understand it the better for himself.  But they never tell this to the
+boy.
+
+From the book of their mythology about the unborn I made the extracts
+which will form the following chapter.
+
+
+
+THE WORLD OF THE UNBORN.  (PART OF CHAPTER XVII. OF EREWHON.)
+
+
+The Erewhonians say it was by chance only that the earth and stars and
+all the heavenly worlds began to roll from east to west, and not from
+west to east, and in like manner they say it is by chance that man is
+drawn through life with his face to the past instead of to the future.
+For the future is there as much as the past, only that we may not see it.
+Is it not in the loins of the past, and must not the past alter before
+the future can do so?
+
+They have a fable that there was a race of men tried upon the earth once,
+who knew the future better than the past, but that they died in a
+twelvemonth from the misery which their knowledge caused them.  They say
+that if any were to be born too prescient now, he would die miserably,
+before he had time to transmit so peace-destroying a faculty to
+descendants.
+
+Strange fate for man!  He must perish if he get that, which he must
+perish if he strive not after.  If he strive not after it he is no better
+than the brutes, if he get it he is more miserable than the devils.
+
+Having waded through many chapters like the above, I came at last to the
+unborn themselves, and found that they were held to be souls pure and
+simple, having no actual bodies, but living in a sort of gaseous yet more
+or less anthropomorphic existence, like that of a ghost; they have thus
+neither flesh nor blood nor warmth.  Nevertheless they are supposed to
+have local habitations and cities wherein they dwell, though these are as
+unsubstantial as their inhabitants; they are even thought to eat and
+drink some thin ambrosial sustenance, and generally to be capable of
+doing whatever mankind can do, only after a visionary ghostly fashion, as
+in a dream.  On the other hand, as long as they remain where they are
+they never die--the only form of death in the unborn world being the
+leaving it for our own.  They are believed to be extremely numerous, far
+more so than mankind.  They arrive from unknown planets, full grown, in
+large batches at a time; but they can only leave the unborn world by
+taking the steps necessary for their arrival here--which is, in fact, by
+suicide.
+
+They ought to be a happy people, for they have no extremes of good or ill
+fortune; never marrying, but living in a state much like that fabled by
+the poets as the primitive condition of mankind.  In spite of this,
+however, they are incessantly complaining; they know that we in this
+world have bodies, and indeed they know everything else about us, for
+they move among us whithersoever they will, and can read our thoughts, as
+well as survey our actions at pleasure.  One would think that this should
+be enough for them; and indeed most of them are alive to the desperate
+risk which they will run by indulging themselves in that body with
+"sensible warm motion" which they so much desire; nevertheless, there are
+some to whom the _ennui_ of a disembodied existence is so intolerable
+that they will venture anything for a change; so they resolve to quit.
+The conditions which they must accept are so uncertain, that none but the
+most foolish of the unborn will consent to take them; and it is from
+these and these only that our own ranks are recruited.
+
+When they have finally made up their minds to leave, they must go before
+the magistrate of the nearest town and sign an affidavit of their desire
+to quit their then existence.  On their having done this, the magistrate
+reads them the conditions which they must accept, and which are so long
+that I can only extract some of the principal points, which are mainly
+the following:--
+
+First, they must take a potion which will destroy their memory and sense
+of identity; they must go into the world helpless, and without a will of
+their own; they must draw lots for their dispositions before they go, and
+take it, such as it is, for better or worse--neither are they to be
+allowed any choice in the matter of the body which they so much desire;
+they are simply allotted by chance, and without appeal, to two people
+whom it is their business to find and pester until they adopt them.  Who
+these are to be, whether rich or poor, kind or unkind, healthy or
+diseased, there is no knowing; they have, in fact, to entrust themselves
+for many years to the care of those for whose good constitution and good
+sense they have no sort of guarantee.
+
+It is curious to read the lectures which the wiser heads give to those
+who are meditating a change.  They talk with them as we talk with a
+spendthrift, and with about as much success.
+
+"To be born," they say, "is a felony--it is a capital crime, for which
+sentence may be executed at any moment after the commission of the
+offence.  You may perhaps happen to live for some seventy or eighty
+years, but what is that, in comparison with the eternity which you now
+enjoy?  And even though the sentence were commuted, and you were allowed
+to live for ever, you would in time become so terribly weary of life that
+execution would be the greatest mercy to you.  Consider the infinite
+risk; to be born of wicked parents and trained in vice! to be born of
+silly parents, and trained to unrealities! of parents who regard you as a
+sort of chattel or property, belonging more to them than to yourself!
+Again, you may draw utterly unsympathetic parents, who will never be able
+to understand you, and who will thwart you as long as they can to the
+utmost of their power (as a hen when she has hatched a duckling), and
+then call you ungrateful because you do not love them, or parents who may
+look upon you as a thing to be cowed while it is still young, lest it
+should give them trouble hereafter by having wishes and feelings of its
+own.
+
+"In later life, when you have been finally allowed to pass muster as a
+full member of the world, you will yourself become liable to the
+pesterings of the unborn--and a very happy life you may be led in
+consequence!  For we solicit so strongly that a few only--nor these the
+best--can refuse us; and yet not to refuse is much the same as going into
+partnership with half a dozen different people about whom one can know
+absolutely nothing beforehand--not even whether one is going into
+partnership with men or women, nor with how many of either.  Delude not
+yourself with thinking that you will be wiser than your parents.  You may
+be an age in advance of _them_, but unless you are one of the great ones
+(and if you are one of the great ones, woe betide you), you will still be
+an age behind your children.
+
+"Imagine what it must be to have an unborn quartered upon you, who is of
+a different temperament to your own; nay, half a dozen such, who will not
+love you though you may tell them that you have stinted yourself in a
+thousand ways to provide for their well-being,--who will forget all that
+self-sacrifice of which you are yourself so conscious, and of whom you
+may never be sure that they are not bearing a grudge against you for
+errors of judgment into which you may have fallen, but which you had
+hoped had been long since atoned for.  Ingratitude such as this is not
+uncommon, yet fancy what it must be to bear!  It is hard upon the
+duckling to have been hatched by a hen, but is it not also hard upon the
+hen to have hatched the duckling?
+
+"Consider it again, we pray you, not for our sake but for your own.  Your
+initial character you must draw by lot; but whatever it is, it can only
+come to a tolerably successful development after long training; remember
+that over that training you will have no control.  It is possible, and
+even probable, that whatever you may get in after life which is of real
+pleasure and service to you, will have to be won in spite of, rather than
+by the help of, those whom you are now about to pester, and that you will
+only win your freedom after years of a painful struggle, in which it will
+be hard to say whether you have suffered most injury, or inflicted it.
+
+"Remember also, that if you go into the world you will have free will;
+that you will be obliged to have it, that there is no escaping it, that
+you will be fettered to it during your whole life, and must on every
+occasion do that which on the whole seems best to you at any given time,
+no matter whether you are right or wrong in choosing it.  Your mind will
+be a balance for considerations, and your action will go with the heavier
+scale.  How it shall fall will depend upon the kind of scales which you
+may have drawn at birth, the bias which they will have obtained by use,
+and the weight of the immediate considerations.  If the scales were good
+to start with, and if they have not been outrageously tampered with in
+childhood, and if the combinations into which you enter are average ones,
+you may come off well; but there are too many "ifs" in this, and with the
+failure of any one of them your misery is assured.  Reflect on this, and
+remember that should the ill come upon you, you will have yourself to
+thank, for it is your own choice to be born, and there is no compulsion
+in the matter.
+
+"Not that we deny the existence of pleasures among mankind; there is a
+certain show of sundry phases of contentment which may even amount to
+very considerable happiness; but mark how they are distributed over a
+man's life, belonging, all the keenest of them, to the fore part, and few
+indeed to the after.  Can there be any pleasure worth purchasing with the
+miseries of a decrepit age?  If you are good, strong, and handsome, you
+have a fine fortune indeed at twenty, but how much of it will be left at
+sixty?  For you must live on your capital; there is no investing your
+powers so that you may get a small annuity of life for ever: you must eat
+up your principal bit by bit and be tortured by seeing it grow
+continually smaller and smaller, even though you happen to escape being
+rudely robbed of it by crime or casualty.  Remember, too, that there
+never yet was a man of forty who would not come back into the world of
+the unborn if he could do so with decency and honour.  Being in the
+world, he will as a general rule stay till he is forced to go; but do you
+think that he would consent to be born again, and re-live his life, if he
+had the offer of doing so?  Do not think it.  If he could so alter the
+past as that he should never have come into being at all, do you not
+think that he would do it very gladly?  What was it that one of their own
+poets meant, if it was not this, when he cried out upon the day in which
+he was born, and the night in which it was said there is a man child
+conceived?  'For now,' he says, 'I should have lain still and been quiet,
+I should have slept; then had I been at rest with kings and counsellors
+of the earth, which built desolate places for themselves; or with princes
+that had gold, who filled their houses with silver; or as an hidden
+untimely birth, I had not been; as infants which never saw light.  There
+the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.'  Be very
+sure that the guilt of being born carries this punishment at times to all
+men; but how can they ask for pity, or complain of any mischief that may
+befall them, having entered open-eyed into the snare?
+
+"One word more and we have done.  If any faint remembrance, as of a
+dream, flit in some puzzled moment across your brain, and you shall feel
+that the potion which is to be given you shall not have done its work,
+and the memory of this existence which you are leaving endeavours vainly
+to return; we say in such a moment, when you clutch at the dream but it
+eludes your grasp, and you watch it, as Orpheus watched Eurydice, gliding
+back again into the twilight kingdom, fly--fly--if you can remember the
+advice--to the haven of your present and immediate duty, taking shelter
+incessantly in the work which you have in hand.  This much you may
+perhaps recall; and this, if you will imprint it deeply upon your every
+faculty, will be most likely to bring you safely and honourably home
+through the trials that are before you." {47}
+
+This is the fashion in which they reason with those who would be for
+leaving them, but it is seldom that they do much good, for none but the
+unquiet and unreasonable ever think of being born, and those who are
+foolish enough to think of it are generally foolish enough to do it.
+Finding therefore that they can do no more, the friends follow weeping to
+the courthouse of the chief magistrate, where the one who wishes to be
+born declares solemnly and openly that he accepts the conditions attached
+to his decision.  On this he is presented with the potion, which
+immediately destroys his memory and sense of identity, and dissipates the
+thin gaseous tenement which he has inhabited: he becomes a bare vital
+principle, not to be perceived by human senses, nor appreciated by any
+chemical test.  He has but one instinct, which is that he is to go to
+such and such a place, where he will find two persons whom he is to
+importune till they consent to undertake him; but whether he is to find
+these persons among the race of Chowbok or the Erewhonians themselves is
+not for him to choose.
+
+
+
+
+SELECTIONS FROM THE FAIR HAVEN.
+
+
+MEMOIR OF THE LATE JOHN PICKARD OWEN.  (CHAPTER I. OF THE FAIR HAVEN.)
+{48}
+
+
+The subject of this memoir, and author of the work which follows it, was
+born in Goodge Street, Tottenham Court Road, London, on the 5th of
+February 1832.  He was my elder brother by about eighteen months.  Our
+father and mother had once been rich, but through a succession of
+unavoidable misfortunes they were left with but a slender income when my
+brother and myself were about three and four years old.  My father died
+some five or six years afterwards, and we only recollected him as a
+singularly gentle and humorous playmate who doted upon us both and never
+spoke unkindly.
+
+The charm of such a recollection can never be dispelled; both my brother
+and myself returned his love with interest, and cherished his memory with
+the most affectionate regret, from the day on which he left us till the
+time came that the one of us was again to see him face to face.  So sweet
+and winning was his nature that his slightest wish was our law--and
+whenever we pleased him, no matter how little, he never failed to thank
+us as though we had done him a service which we should have had a perfect
+right to withhold.  How proud were we upon any of these occasions, and
+how we courted the opportunity of being thanked!  He did indeed well know
+the art of becoming idolised by his children, and dearly did he prize the
+results of his own proficiency; yet truly there was no art about it; all
+arose spontaneously from the well-spring of a sympathetic nature which
+was quick to feel as others felt, whether old or young, rich or poor,
+wise or foolish.  On one point alone did he neglect us--I refer to our
+religious education.  On all other matters he was the kindest and most
+careful teacher in the world.  Love and gratitude be to his memory!
+
+My mother loved us no less ardently than my father, but she was of a
+quicker temper, and less adept at conciliating affection.  She must have
+been exceedingly handsome when she was young, and was still comely when
+we first remembered her; she was also highly accomplished, but she felt
+my father's loss of fortune more keenly than my father himself, and it
+preyed upon her mind, though rather for our sake than for her own.  Had
+we not known my father we should have loved her better than any one in
+the world, but affection goes by comparison, and my father spoiled us for
+any one but himself; indeed, in after life, I remember my mother's
+telling me, with many tears, how jealous she had often been of the love
+we bore him, and how mean she had thought it of him to entrust all
+scolding or repression to her, so that he might have more than his due
+share of our affection.  Not that I believe my father did this
+consciously; still, he so greatly hated scolding that I dare say we might
+often have got off scot-free when we really deserved reproof had not my
+mother undertaken the _onus_ of scolding us herself.  We therefore
+naturally feared her more than my father, and fearing more we loved less.
+For as love casteth out fear, so fear love.
+
+This must have been hard to bear, and my mother scarcely knew the way to
+bear it.  She tried to upbraid us, in little ways, into loving her as
+much as my father; the more she tried this, the less we could succeed in
+doing it; and so on and so on in a fashion which need not be detailed.
+Not but what we really loved her deeply, while her affection for us was
+insurpassable; still we loved her less than we loved my father, and this
+was the grievance.
+
+My father entrusted our religious education entirely to my mother.  He
+was himself, I am assured, of a deeply religious turn of mind, and a
+thoroughly consistent member of the Church of England; but he conceived,
+and perhaps rightly, that it is the mother who should first teach her
+children to lift their hands in prayer, and impart to them a knowledge of
+the One in whom we live and move and have our being.  My mother accepted
+the task gladly, for in spite of a certain narrowness of view--the
+natural but deplorable result of her earlier surroundings--she was one of
+the most truly pious women whom I have ever known; unfortunately for
+herself and us she had been trained in the lowest school of Evangelical
+literalism--a school which in after life both my brother and myself came
+to regard as the main obstacle to the complete overthrow of unbelief; we
+therefore looked upon it with something stronger than aversion, and for
+my own part I still deem it perhaps the most insidious enemy which the
+cause of Christ has ever encountered.  But of this more hereafter.
+
+My mother, as I said, threw her whole soul into the work of our religious
+education.  Whatever she believed she believed literally, and, if I may
+say so, with a harshness of realisation which left little scope for
+imagination or mystery.  Her ideas concerning heaven and her solutions of
+life's enigmas were clear and simple, but they could only be reconciled
+with certain obvious facts--such as the omnipotence and all-goodness of
+God--by leaving many things absolutely out of sight.  And this my mother
+succeeded effectually in doing.  She never doubted that her opinions
+comprised the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; she
+therefore made haste to sow the good seed in our tender minds, and so far
+succeeded that when my brother was four years old he could repeat the
+Apostles' Creed, the general confession, and the Lord's Prayer without a
+blunder.  My mother made herself believe that he delighted in them; but,
+alas! it was far otherwise; for strange as it may appear concerning one
+whose later life was a continual prayer, in childhood he detested nothing
+so much as being made to pray, and to learn his catechism.  In this I am
+sorry to say we were both heartily of a mind.  As for Sunday the less
+said the better.
+
+I have already hinted (but as a warning to other parents had better,
+perhaps, express myself more plainly) that this aversion was probably the
+result of my mother's undue eagerness to reap an artificial fruit of lip-
+service, which could have little meaning to the heart of one so young.  I
+believe that the severe check which the natural growth of faith
+experienced in my brother's case was due almost entirely to this cause,
+and to the school of literalism in which he had been trained; but,
+however this may be, we both of us hated being made to say our prayers.
+Morning and evening it was our one bugbear, and we would avoid it, as
+indeed children generally will, by every artifice which we could employ.
+
+Thus we were in the habit of feigning to be asleep shortly before prayer
+time, and would gratefully hear my father tell my mother that it was a
+shame to wake us; whereon he would carry us up to bed in a state
+apparently of the profoundest slumber when we were really wide awake and
+in great fear of detection.  For we knew how to pretend to be asleep, but
+we did not know how we ought to wake again; there was nothing for it
+therefore when we were once committed, but to go on sleeping till we were
+fairly undressed and put to bed, and could wake up safely in the dark.
+But deceit is never long successful, and we were at last ignominiously
+exposed.
+
+It happened one evening that my mother suspected my brother John, and
+tried to open his little hands which were lying clasped in front of him.
+Now my brother was as yet very crude and inconsistent in his theories
+concerning sleep, and had no conception what a real sleeper would do
+under these circumstances.  Fear deprived him of his powers of
+reflection, and he thus unfortunately concluded that because sleepers, so
+far as he had observed them, were always motionless, therefore they must
+be rigid and incapable of motion; and indeed that any movement, under any
+circumstances (for from his earliest childhood he liked to carry his
+theories to their legitimate conclusion), would be physically impossible
+for one who was really sleeping; forgetful, oh! unhappy one, of the
+flexibility of his own body on being carried up stairs, and, more unhappy
+still, ignorant of the art of waking.  He therefore clenched his fingers
+harder and harder as he felt my mother trying to unfold them, while his
+head hung listless, and his eyes were closed as though he were sleeping
+sweetly.  It is needless to detail the agony of shame that followed.  My
+mother begged my father to box his ears, which my father flatly refused
+to do.  Then she boxed them herself, and there followed a scene, and a
+day or two of disgrace for both of us.
+
+Shortly after this there happened another misadventure.  A lady came to
+stay with my mother, and was to sleep in a bed that had been brought into
+our nursery, for my father's fortunes had already failed, and we were
+living in a humble way.  We were still but four and five years old, so
+the arrangement was not unnatural, and it was assumed that we should be
+asleep before the lady went to bed, and be down stairs before she would
+get up in the morning.  But the arrival of this lady and her being put to
+sleep in the nursery were great events to us in those days, and being
+particularly wanted to go to sleep, we of course sat up in bed talking
+and keeping ourselves awake till she should come up stairs.  Perhaps we
+had fancied that she would give us something, but if so we were
+disappointed.  However, whether this was the case or not, we were wide
+awake when our visitor came to bed, and having no particular object to
+gain, we made no pretence of sleeping.  The lady kissed us both, told us
+to lie still and go to sleep like good children, and then began doing her
+hair.
+
+I remember this was the occasion on which my brother discovered a good
+many things in connection with the fair sex which had hitherto been
+beyond his ken; more especially that the mass of petticoats and clothes
+which envelop the female form were not, as he expressed it to me, "all
+solid woman," but that women were not in reality more substantially built
+than men, and had legs as much as he had--a fact which he had never yet
+realised.  On this he for a long time considered them as impostors, who
+had wronged him by leading him to suppose that they had far more "body in
+them" (so he said) than he now found they had.
+
+This was a sort of thing which he regarded with stern moral reprobation.
+If he had been old enough to have a solicitor I believe he would have put
+the matter into his hands, as well as certain other things which had
+lately troubled him.  For but recently my mother had bought a fowl, and
+he had seen it plucked, and the inside taken out; his irritation had been
+extreme on discovering that fowls were not all solid flesh, but that
+their insides--and these formed, as it appeared to him, an enormous
+percentage of the bird--were perfectly useless.  He was now beginning to
+understand that sheep and cows were also hollow as far as good meat was
+concerned; the flesh they had was only a mouthful in comparison with what
+they ought to have considering their apparent bulk: insignificant, mere
+skin and bone covering a cavern.  What right had they, or anything else,
+to assert themselves as so big, and prove so empty?  And now this
+discovery of woman's falsehood was quite too much for him.  The world
+itself was hollow, made up of shams and delusions, full of sound and fury
+signifying nothing.
+
+Truly a prosaic young gentleman enough.  Everything with him was to be
+exactly in all its parts what it appeared on the face of it, and
+everything was to go on doing exactly what it had been doing hitherto.  If
+a thing looked solid, it was to be very solid; if hollow, very hollow;
+nothing was to be half and half, and nothing was to change unless he had
+himself already become accustomed to its times and manners of changing;
+there were to be no exceptions and no contradictions; all things were to
+be perfectly consistent, and all premisses to be carried with extremest
+rigour to their legitimate conclusions.  Heaven was to be very neat (for
+he was always tidy himself), and free from sudden shocks to the nervous
+system, such as those caused by dogs barking at him, or cows driven in
+the streets.  God was to resemble my father, and the Holy Spirit to bear
+some sort of indistinct analogy to my mother.
+
+Such were the ideal theories of his childhood--unconsciously formed, but
+very firmly believed in.  As he grew up he made such modifications as
+were forced upon him by enlarged perceptions, but every modification was
+an effort to him, in spite of a continual and successful resistance to
+what he recognised as his initial mental defect.
+
+I may perhaps be allowed to say here, in reference to a remark in the
+preceding paragraph, that both my brother and myself used to notice it as
+an almost invariable rule that children's earliest ideas of God are
+modelled upon the character of their father--if they have one.  Should
+the father be kind, considerate, full of the warmest love, fond of
+showing it, and reserved only about his displeasure, the child, having
+learned to look upon God as his Heavenly Father through the Lord's Prayer
+and our Church Services, will feel towards God as he does towards his own
+father; this conception will stick to a man for years and years after he
+has attained manhood--probably it will never leave him.  On the other
+hand, if a man has found his earthly father harsh and uncongenial, his
+conception of his Heavenly Parent will be painful.  He will begin by
+seeing God as an exaggerated likeness of his father.  He will therefore
+shrink from Him.  The rottenness of still-born love in the heart of a
+child poisons the blood of the soul, and hence, later, crime.
+
+To return, however, to the lady.  When she had put on her night-gown, she
+knelt down by her bed-side and, to our consternation, began to say her
+prayers.  This was a cruel blow to both of us; we had always been under
+the impression that grown-up people were not made to say their prayers,
+and the idea of any one saying them of his or her own accord had never
+occurred to us as possible.  Of course the lady would not say her prayers
+if she were not obliged; and yet she did say them; therefore she must be
+obliged to say them; therefore we should be obliged to say them, and this
+was a great disappointment.  Awe-struck and open-mouthed we listened
+while the lady prayed aloud and with a good deal of pathos for many
+virtues and blessings which I do not now remember, and finally for my
+father and mother and for both of us--shortly afterwards she rose, blew
+out the light and got into bed.  Every word that she said had confirmed
+our worst apprehensions: it was just what we had been taught to say
+ourselves.
+
+Next morning we compared notes and drew some painful inferences; but in
+the course of the day our spirits rallied.  We agreed that there were
+many mysteries in connection with life and things which it was high time
+to unravel, and that an opportunity was now afforded us which might not
+readily occur again.  All we had to do was to be true to ourselves and
+equal to the occasion.  We laid our plans with great astuteness.  We
+would be fast asleep when the lady came up to bed, but our heads should
+be turned in the direction of her bed, and covered with clothes, all but
+a single peep-hole.  My brother, as the eldest, had clearly a right to be
+nearest the lady, but I could see sufficiently, and could depend on his
+reporting faithfully whatever should escape me.
+
+There was no chance of her giving us anything--if she had meant to do so
+she would have done it sooner; she might, indeed, consider the moment of
+her departure as the most auspicious for this purpose, but then she was
+not going yet, and the interval was at our own disposal.  We spent the
+afternoon in trying to learn to snore, but we were not certain about it,
+and in the end concluded that as snoring was not _de rigueur_ we had
+better dispense with it.
+
+We were put to bed; the light was taken away; we were told to go to
+sleep, and promised faithfully that we would do so; the tongue indeed
+swore, but the mind was unsworn.  It was agreed that we should keep
+pinching one another to prevent our going to sleep.  We did so at
+frequent intervals; at last our patience was rewarded with the heavy
+creak, as of a stout elderly lady labouring up the stairs, and presently
+our victim entered.
+
+To cut a long story short, the lady on satisfying herself that we were
+asleep, never said her prayers at all; during the remainder of her visit
+whenever she found us awake she always said them, but when she thought we
+were asleep, she never prayed.  I should perhaps say that we had the
+matter out with her before she left, and that the consequences were
+unpleasant for all parties; they added to the troubles in which we were
+already involved as to our prayers, and were indirectly among the
+earliest causes which led my brother to look with scepticism upon
+religion.
+
+For awhile, however, all went on as though nothing had happened.  An
+effect of distrust, indeed, remained after the cause had been forgotten,
+but my brother was still too young to oppose anything that my mother told
+him, and to all outward appearance he grew in grace no less rapidly than
+in stature.
+
+For years we led a quiet and eventless life, broken only by the one great
+sorrow of our father's death.  Shortly after this we were sent to a day
+school in Bloomsbury.  We were neither of us very happy there, but my
+brother, who always took kindly to his books, picked up a fair knowledge
+of Latin and Greek; he also learned to draw, and to exercise himself a
+little in English composition.  When I was about fourteen my mother
+capitalised a part of her income and started me off to America, where she
+had friends who could give me a helping hand; by their kindness I was
+enabled, after an absence of twenty years, to return with a handsome
+income, but not, alas! before the death of my mother.
+
+Up to the time of my departure my mother continued to read the Bible with
+us and explain it.  She had become enamoured of those millenarian
+opinions which laid hold of so many some twenty-five or thirty years ago.
+The Apocalypse was perhaps her favourite book in the Bible, and she was
+imbued with a conviction that all the many and varied horrors with which
+it teems were upon the eve of their accomplishment.  The year eighteen
+hundred and forty-eight was to be (as indeed it was) a time of general
+bloodshed and confusion, while in eighteen hundred and sixty-six, should
+it please God to spare her, her eyes would be gladdened by the visible
+descent of the Son of Man with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel,
+with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ should rise first; then
+she, as one of them that were alive, would be caught up with other saints
+into the air, and would possibly receive while rising some distinguishing
+token of confidence and approbation which should fall with due
+impressiveness upon the surrounding multitude; then would come the
+consummation of all things, and she would be ever with the Lord.  She
+died peaceably in her bed before she could know that a commercial panic
+was the nearest approach to the fulfilment of prophecy which the year
+eighteen hundred and sixty-six brought forth.
+
+These opinions of my mother's injured her naturally healthy and vigorous
+mind by leading her to indulge in all manner of dreamy and fanciful
+interpretations of Scripture, which any but the most narrow literalist
+would feel at once to be untenable.  Thus several times she expressed to
+us her conviction that my brother and myself were to be the two witnesses
+mentioned in the eleventh chapter of the Book of Revelation, and dilated
+upon the gratification she should experience upon finding that we had
+indeed been reserved for a position of such distinction.  We were as yet
+mere children, and naturally took all for granted that our mother told
+us; we therefore made a careful examination of the passage which threw
+light upon our future.  On finding that the prospect was gloomy and full
+of bloodshed we protested against the honours which were intended for us,
+more especially when we reflected that the mother of the two witnesses
+was not menaced in Scripture with any particular discomfort.  If we were
+to be martyrs, my mother ought to wish to be a martyr too, whereas
+nothing was farther from her intention.  Her notion clearly was that we
+were to be massacred somewhere in the streets of London, in consequence
+of the anti-Christian machinations of the Pope; that after lying about
+unburied for three days and a half we were to come to life again; and
+finally, that we should conspicuously ascend to heaven, in front,
+perhaps, of the Foundling Hospital.
+
+She was not herself indeed to share either our martyrdom or our
+glorification, but was to survive us many years on earth, living in an
+odour of great sanctity and reflected splendour, as the central and most
+august figure in a select society.  She would perhaps be able indirectly,
+through her sons' influence with the Almighty, to have a voice in most of
+the arrangements both of this world and of the next.  If all this were to
+come true (and things seemed very like it), those friends who had
+neglected us in our adversity would not find it too easy to be restored
+to favour, however greatly they might desire it--that is to say, they
+would not have found it too easy in the case of one less magnanimous and
+spiritually-minded than herself.  My mother said but little of the above
+directly, but the fragments which occasionally escaped her were pregnant,
+and on looking back it is easy to perceive that she must have been
+building one of the most stupendous aerial fabrics that have ever been
+reared.
+
+I have given the above in its more amusing aspect, and am half afraid
+that I may appear to be making a jest of weakness on the part of one of
+the most devotedly unselfish mothers who have ever existed.  But one can
+love while smiling, and the very wildness of my mother's dream serves to
+show how entirely her whole soul was occupied with the things which are
+above.  To her, religion was all in all; the earth was but a place of
+pilgrimage--only so far important as it was a possible road to heaven.
+She impressed this upon both of us by every word and action--instant in
+season and out of season, so that she might but fill us more deeply with
+a sense of the things belonging to our peace.
+
+But the inevitable consequences happened; my mother had aimed too high
+and had overshot her mark.  The influence indeed of her guileless and
+unworldly nature remained impressed upon my brother even during the time
+of his extremest unbelief (perhaps his ultimate safety is in the main
+referable to this cause, and to the happy memories of my father, which
+had predisposed him to love God), but my mother had insisted on the most
+minute verbal accuracy of every part of the Bible; she had also dwelt
+upon the duty of independent research, and on the necessity of giving up
+everything rather than assent to things which our conscience did not
+assent to.  No one could have more effectually taught us to try _to
+think_ the truth, and we had taken her at her word because our hearts
+told us that she was right.  But she required three incompatible things.
+When my brother grew older he came to feel that independent and
+unflinching examination, with a determination to abide by the results,
+would lead him to reject the point which to my mother was more important
+than any other--I mean the absolute accuracy of the Gospel records.  My
+mother was inexpressibly shocked at hearing my brother doubt the
+authenticity of the Epistle to the Hebrews; and then, as it appeared to
+him, she tried to make him violate the duties of examination and candour
+which he had learnt too thoroughly to unlearn.  Thereon came pain and an
+estrangement which was none the less profound for being mutually
+concealed.  It seemed to my mother that he would not give up the
+wilfulness of his own opinions for her and for his Redeemer's sake.  To
+him it seemed that he was ready to give up not only his mother but Christ
+Himself for Christ's sake.
+
+This estrangement was the gradual work of some five or six years, during
+which my brother was between eleven and seventeen years old.  At
+seventeen, I am told that he was remarkably well informed and clever.  His
+manners were, like my father's, singularly genial, and his appearance
+very prepossessing.  He had as yet no doubt concerning the soundness of
+any fundamental Christian doctrine, but his mind was already too active
+to allow of his being contented with my mother's childlike faith.  There
+were points on which he did not indeed doubt, but which it would none the
+less be interesting to consider; such for example as the perfectibility
+of the regenerate Christian, and the meaning of the mysterious central
+chapters of the Epistle to the Romans.  He was engaged in these
+researches though still only a boy, when an event occurred which gave the
+first real shock to his faith.
+
+He was accustomed to teach in a school for the poorest children every
+Sunday afternoon, a task for which his patience and good temper well
+fitted him.  On one occasion, however, while he was explaining the effect
+of baptism to one of his favourite pupils, he discovered to his great
+surprise that the boy had never been baptized.  He pushed his inquiries
+further, and found that out of the fifteen boys in his class only five
+had been baptized, and, not only so, but that no difference in
+disposition or conduct could be discovered between the regenerate boys
+and the unregenerate.  The good and bad boys were distributed in
+proportions equal to the respective numbers of the baptized and
+unbaptized.  In spite of a certain impetuosity of natural character, he
+was also of a matter-of-fact and experimental turn of mind; he therefore
+went through the whole school, which numbered about a hundred boys, and
+found out who had been baptized and who had not.  The same results
+appeared.  The majority had not been baptized; yet the good and bad
+dispositions were so distributed as to preclude all possibility of
+maintaining that the baptized boys were better than the unbaptized.
+
+The reader may smile at the idea of any one's faith being troubled by a
+fact of which the explanation is so obvious, but as a matter of fact my
+brother was seriously and painfully shocked.  The teacher to whom he
+applied for a solution of the difficulty was not a man of any real power,
+and reported my brother to the rector for having disturbed the school by
+his inquiries.  The rector was old and self-opinionated; the difficulty,
+indeed, was plainly as new to him as it had been to my brother, but
+instead of saying so at once, and referring to any recognised theological
+authority, he tried to put him off with words which seemed intended to
+silence him rather than to satisfy him; finally he lost his temper, and
+my brother fell under suspicion of unorthodoxy.
+
+This kind of treatment did not answer with my brother.  He alludes to it
+resentfully in the introductory chapter of his book.  He became
+suspicious that a preconceived opinion was being defended at the expense
+of honest scrutiny, and was thus driven upon his own unaided
+investigation.  The result may be guessed: he began to go astray, and
+strayed further and further.  The children of God, he reasoned, the
+members of Christ and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven, were no more
+spiritually minded than the children of the world and the devil.  Was
+then the grace of God a gift which left no trace whatever upon those who
+were possessed of it?  A thing the presence or absence of which might be
+ascertained by consulting the parish registry, but was not discernible in
+conduct?  The grace of man was more clearly perceptible than this.
+Assuredly there must be a screw loose somewhere, which, for aught he
+knew, might be jeopardising the salvation of all Christendom.  Where then
+was this loose screw to be found?
+
+He concluded after some months of reflection that the mischief was caused
+by the system of sponsors and by infant baptism.  He, therefore, to my
+mother's inexpressible grief, joined the Baptists, and was immersed in a
+pond near Dorking.  With the Baptists he remained quiet about three
+months, and then began to quarrel with his instructors as to their
+doctrine of predestination.  Shortly afterwards he came accidentally upon
+a fascinating stranger who was no less struck with my brother than my
+brother with him, and this gentleman, who turned out to be a Roman
+Catholic missionary, landed him in the Church of Rome, where he felt sure
+that he had now found rest for his soul.  But here, too, he was mistaken;
+after about two years he rebelled against the stifling of all free
+inquiry; on this rebellion the flood-gates of scepticism were opened, and
+he was soon battling with unbelief.  He then fell in with one who was a
+pure Deist, and was shorn of every shred of dogma which he had ever held,
+except a belief in the personality and providence of the Creator.
+
+On reviewing his letters written to me about this time, I am painfully
+struck with the manner in which they show that all these pitiable
+vagaries were to be traced to a single cause--a cause which still exists
+to the misleading of hundreds of thousands, and which, I fear, seems
+likely to continue in full force for many a year to come--I mean, to a
+false system of training which teaches people to regard Christianity as a
+thing one and indivisible, to be accepted entirely in the strictest
+reading of the letter, or to be rejected as absolutely untrue.  The fact
+is, that all permanent truth is as one of those coal measures, a seam of
+which lies near the surface, and even crops up above the ground, but
+which is generally of an inferior quality and soon worked out; beneath it
+there comes a labour of sand and clay, and then at last the true seam of
+precious quality, and in virtually inexhaustible supply.  The truth which
+is on the surface is rarely the whole truth.  It is seldom until this has
+been worked out and done with--as in the case of the apparent flatness of
+the earth--that unchangeable truth is discovered.  It is the glory of the
+Lord to conceal a matter: it is the glory of the king to find it out.  If
+my brother, from whom I have taken the above illustration, had had some
+judicious and wide-minded friend, to correct and supplement the mainly
+admirable principles which had been instilled into him by my mother, he
+would have been saved years of spiritual wandering; but, as it was, he
+fell in with one after another, each in his own way as literal and
+unspiritual as the other--each impressed with one aspect of religious
+truth, and with one only.  In the end he became perhaps the widest-minded
+and most original thinker whom I have ever met; but no one from his early
+manhood could have augured this result; on the contrary, he showed every
+sign of being likely to develop into one of those who can never see more
+than one side of a question at a time, in spite of their seeing that side
+with singular clearness of mental vision.  In after life, he often met
+with mere lads who seemed to him to be years and years in advance of what
+he had been at their age, and would say, smiling, "With a great sum
+obtained I this freedom; but thou wast free-born."
+
+Yet when one comes to think of it, a late development and laborious
+growth are generally more fruitful than those which are over early
+luxuriant.  Drawing an illustration from the art of painting, with which
+he was well acquainted, my brother used to say that all the greatest
+painters had begun with a hard and precise manner, from which they had
+only broken after several years of effort; and that in like manner all
+the early schools were founded upon definiteness of outline to the
+exclusion of truth of effect.  This may be true; but in my brother's case
+there was something even more unpromising than this; there was a
+commonness, so to speak, of mental execution, from which no one could
+have foreseen his after-emancipation.  Yet in the course of time he was
+indeed emancipated to the very uttermost, while his bonds will, I firmly
+trust, be found to have been of inestimable service to the whole human
+race.
+
+For although it was so many years before he was enabled to see the
+Christian scheme _as a whole_, or even to conceive the idea that there
+was any whole at all, other than each one of the stages of opinion
+through which he was at the time passing; yet when the idea was at length
+presented to him by one whom I must not name, the discarded fragments of
+his faith assumed shape, and formed themselves into a consistently
+organised scheme.  Then became apparent the value of his knowledge of the
+details of so many different sides of Christian verity.  Buried in the
+details, he had hitherto ignored the fact that they were only the
+unessential developments of certain component parts.  Awakening to the
+perception of the whole after an intimate acquaintance with the details,
+he was able to realise the position and meaning of all that he had
+hitherto experienced in a way which has been vouchsafed to few, if any
+others.  Thus he became truly a broad Churchman.  Not broad in the
+ordinary and ill-considered use of the term (for the broad Churchman is
+as little able to sympathise with Romanists, extreme High Churchmen and
+Dissenters, as these are with himself--he is only one of a sect which is
+called by the name of broad, though it is no broader than its own base),
+but in the true sense of being able to believe in the naturalness,
+legitimacy, and truth _qua_ Christianity even of those doctrines which
+seem to stand most widely and irreconcilably asunder.
+
+
+
+
+SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT.
+
+
+ON CERTAIN ACQUIRED HABITS.  (FROM CHAPTER I. OF LIFE AND HABIT.) {68}
+
+
+It will be our business in the following chapters to consider whether the
+unconsciousness, or quasi-unconsciousness, with which we perform certain
+acquired actions, throws any light upon Embryology and inherited
+instincts, and otherwise to follow the train of thought which the class
+of actions above mentioned may suggest.  More especially I propose to
+consider them in so far as they bear upon the origin of species and the
+continuation of life by successive generations, whether in the animal or
+vegetable kingdoms.
+
+Taking then, the art of playing the piano as an example of the kind of
+action we are in search of, we observe that a practised player will
+perform very difficult pieces apparently without effort, often, indeed,
+while thinking and talking of something quite other than his music; yet
+he will play accurately and, possibly, with much expression.  If he has
+been playing a fugue, say in four parts, he will have kept each part well
+distinct, in such a manner as to prove that his mind was not prevented,
+by its other occupations, from consciously or unconsciously following
+four distinct trains of musical thought at the same time, nor from making
+his fingers act in exactly the required manner as regards each note of
+each part.
+
+It commonly happens that in the course of four or five minutes a player
+may have struck four or five thousand notes.  If we take into
+consideration the rests, dotted notes, accidentals, variations of time,
+&c., we shall find his attention must have been exercised on many more
+occasions than when he was actually striking notes: so that it may not be
+too much to say that the attention of a first-rate player has been
+exercised--to an infinitesimally small extent--but still truly
+exercised--on as many as ten thousand occasions within the space of five
+minutes, for no note can be struck nor point attended to without a
+certain amount of attention, no matter how rapidly or unconsciously
+given.
+
+Moreover, each act of attention has been followed by an act of volition,
+and each act of volition by a muscular action, which is composed of many
+minor actions; some so small that we can no more follow them than the
+player himself can perceive them; nevertheless, it may have been
+perfectly plain that the player was not attending to what he was doing,
+but was listening to conversation on some other subject, not to say
+joining in it himself.  If he has been playing the violin, he may have
+done all the above, and may also have been walking about.  Herr Joachim
+would unquestionably be able to do all that has here been described.
+
+So complete may be the player's unconsciousness of the attention he is
+giving, and the brain power he is exerting, that we may find it difficult
+to awaken his attention to any particular part of his performance without
+putting him out.  Indeed we cannot do so.  We observe that he finds it
+hardly less difficult to compass a voluntary consciousness of what he has
+once learnt so thoroughly that it has passed, so to speak, into the
+domain of unconsciousness, than he found it to learn the note or passage
+in the first instance.  The effort after a second consciousness of detail
+baffles him--compels him to turn to his music or play slowly.  In fact it
+seems as though he knows the piece too well to be able to know that he
+knows it, and is only conscious of knowing those passages which he does
+not know so thoroughly.
+
+At the end of his performance, his power of recollecting appears to be no
+less annihilated than was his consciousness of attention and volition.
+For of the thousands of acts requiring the exercise of both the one and
+the other, which he has done during the five minutes, we will say, of his
+performance, he will remember hardly one when it is over.  If he calls to
+mind anything beyond the main fact that he has played such and such a
+piece, it will probably be some passage which he has found more difficult
+than the others, and with the like of which he has not been so long
+familiar.  All the rest he will forget as completely as the breath which
+he has drawn while playing.
+
+He finds it difficult to remember even the difficulties he experienced in
+learning to play.  A few may have so impressed him that they remain with
+him, but the greater part will have escaped him as completely as the
+remembrance of what he ate, or how he put on his clothes, this day ten
+years ago; nevertheless, it is plain he does in reality remember more
+than he remembers remembering, for he avoids mistakes which he made at
+one time, and his performance proves that all the notes are in his
+memory, though if called upon to play such and such a bar at random from
+the middle of the piece, and neither more nor less, he will probably say
+that he cannot remember it unless he begins from the beginning of the
+phrase which leads to it.
+
+In spite, however, of the performer's present proficiency, our experience
+of the manner in which proficiency is usually acquired warrants us in
+assuming that there must have been a time when what is now so easy as to
+be done without conscious effort of the brain was only done by means of
+brain work which was very keenly perceived, even to fatigue and positive
+distress.  Even now, if the player is playing something the like of which
+he has not met before, we observe he pauses and becomes immediately
+conscious of attention.
+
+We draw the inference, therefore, as regards pianoforte or violin
+playing, that the more the familiarity or knowledge of the art, the less
+is there consciousness of such knowledge; even so far as that there
+should be almost as much difficulty in awakening consciousness which has
+become, so to speak, latent,--a consciousness of that which is known too
+well to admit of recognised self-analysis while the knowledge is being
+exercised--as in creating a consciousness of that which is not yet well
+enough known to be properly designated as known at all.  On the other
+hand, we observe that the less the familiarity or knowledge, the greater
+the consciousness of whatever knowledge there is.
+
+* * * * *
+
+To sum up, then, briefly.  It would appear as though perfect knowledge
+and perfect ignorance were extremes which meet and become
+indistinguishable from one another; so also perfect volition and perfect
+absence of volition, perfect memory and perfect forgetfulness; for we are
+unconscious of knowing, willing, or remembering, either from not yet
+having known or willed, or from knowing and willing so well and so
+intensely as to be no longer conscious of either.  Conscious knowledge
+and volition are of attention; attention is of suspense; suspense is of
+doubt; doubt is of uncertainty; uncertainty is of ignorance; so that the
+mere fact of conscious knowing or willing implies the presence of more or
+less novelty and doubt.
+
+It would also appear as a general principle on a superficial view of the
+foregoing instances (and the reader may readily supply himself with
+others which are perhaps more to the purpose), that unconscious knowledge
+and unconscious volition are never acquired otherwise than as the result
+of experience, familiarity, or habit; so that whenever we observe a
+person able to do any complicated action unconsciously, we may assume
+both that he must have done it very often before he could acquire so
+great proficiency, and also that there must have been a time when he did
+not know how to do it at all.
+
+We may assume that there was a time when he was yet so nearly on the
+point of neither knowing nor willing perfectly, that he was quite alive
+to whatever knowledge or volition he could exert; going further back, we
+shall find him still more keenly alive to a less perfect knowledge;
+earlier still, we find him well aware that he does not know nor will
+correctly, but trying hard to do both the one and the other; and so on,
+back and back, till both difficulty and consciousness become little more
+than "a sound of going," as it were, in the brain, a flitting to and fro
+of something barely recognisable as the desire to will or know at
+all--much less as the desire to know or will definitely this or that.
+Finally they retreat beyond our ken into the repose--the inorganic
+kingdom--of as yet unawakened interest.
+
+In either case--the repose of perfect ignorance or of perfect
+knowledge--disturbance is troublesome.  When first starting on an
+Atlantic steamer, our rest is hindered by the screw; after a short time,
+it is hindered if the screw stops.  A uniform impression is practically
+no impression.  One cannot either learn or unlearn without pains or pain.
+
+
+
+CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS KNOWERS THE LAW AND GRACE.  (FROM CHAPTER II.
+OF LIFE AND HABIT.)
+
+
+Certain it is that we know best what we are least conscious of knowing,
+or at any rate least able to prove; as, for example, our own existence,
+or that there is a country England.  If any one asks us for proof on
+matters of this sort, we have none ready, and are justly annoyed at being
+called to consider what we regard as settled questions.  Again, there is
+hardly anything which so much affects our actions as the centre of the
+earth (unless, perhaps, it be that still hotter and more unprofitable
+spot the centre of the universe), for we are incessantly trying to get as
+near it as circumstances will allow, or to avoid getting nearer than is
+for the time being convenient.  Walking, running, standing, sitting,
+lying, waking, or sleeping, from birth till death it is a paramount
+object with us; even after death--if it be not fanciful to say so--it is
+one of the few things of which what is left of us can still feel the
+influence; yet what can engross less of our attention than this dark and
+distant spot so many thousands of miles away?
+
+The air we breathe, so long as it is neither too hot nor cold, nor rough,
+nor full of smoke--that is to say, so long as it is in that state with
+which we are best acquainted--seldom enters into our thoughts; yet there
+is hardly anything with which we are more incessantly occupied night and
+day.
+
+Indeed, it is not too much to say that we have no really profound
+knowledge upon any subject--no knowledge on the strength of which we are
+ready to act at moments unhesitatingly without either preparation or
+after-thought--till we have left off feeling conscious of the possession
+of such knowledge, and of the grounds on which it rests.  A lesson
+thoroughly learned must be like the air which feels so light, though
+pressing so heavily against us, because every pore of our skin is
+saturated, so to speak, with it on all sides equally.  This perfection of
+knowledge sometimes extends to positive disbelief in the thing known, so
+that the most thorough knower shall believe himself altogether ignorant.
+No thief, for example, is such an utter thief--so _good_ a thief--as the
+kleptomaniac.  Until he has become a kleptomaniac, and can steal a horse
+as it were by a reflex action, he is still but half a thief, with many
+unthievish notions still clinging to him.  Yet the kleptomaniac is
+probably unaware that he can steal at all, much less that he can steal so
+well.  He would be shocked if he were to know the truth.  So again, no
+man is a great hypocrite until he has left off knowing that he is a
+hypocrite.  The great hypocrites of the world are almost invariably under
+the impression that they are among the very few really honest people to
+be found; and, as we must all have observed, it is rare to find any one
+strongly under this impression without ourselves having good reason to
+differ from him.
+
+Again, it has been often and very truly said that it is not the conscious
+and self-styled sceptic, as Shelley, for example, who is the true
+unbeliever.  Such a man as Shelley will, as indeed his life abundantly
+proves, have more in common than not with the true unselfconscious
+believer.  Gallio again, whose indifference to religious animosities has
+won him the cheapest immortality which, so far as I can remember, was
+ever yet won, was probably, if the truth were known, a person of the
+sincerest piety.  It is the unconscious unbeliever who is the true
+infidel, however greatly he would be surprised to know the truth.  Mr.
+Spurgeon was reported as having asked God to remove Lord Beaconsfield
+from office "_as soon as possible_."  There lurks a more profound
+distrust of God's power in these words than in almost any open denial of
+His existence.
+
+In like manner, the most perfect humour and irony is generally quite
+unconscious.  Examples of both are frequently given by men whom the world
+considers as deficient in humour; it is more probably true that these
+persons are unconscious of their own delightful power through the very
+mastery and perfection with which they hold it.  There is a play, for
+instance, of genuine fun in some of the more serious scientific and
+theological journals which for some time past we have looked for in vain
+in "---"
+
+The following extract, from a journal which I will not advertise, may
+serve as an example:
+
+"Lycurgus, when they had abandoned to his revenge him who had put out his
+eyes, took him home, and the punishment he inflicted upon him was
+sedulous instructions to virtue."  Yet this truly comic paper does not
+probably know that it is comic, any more than the kleptomaniac knows that
+he steals, or than John Milton knew he was a humorist when he wrote a
+hymn upon the circumcision, and spent his honeymoon in composing a
+treatise on divorce.  No more again did Goethe know how exquisitely
+humorous he was when he wrote, in his Wilhelm Meister, that a beautiful
+tear glistened in Theresa's right eye, and then went on to explain that
+it glistened in her right eye and not in her left, because she had had a
+wart on her left which had been removed--and successfully.  Goethe
+probably wrote this without a chuckle; he believed what a good many
+people who have never read Wilhelm Meister believe still, namely, that it
+was a work full of pathos--of fine and tender feeling; yet a less
+consummate humorist must have felt that there was scarcely a paragraph in
+it from first to last the chief merit of which did not lie in its
+absurdity.
+
+But enough has perhaps been said.  As the fish in the sea, or the bird in
+the air, so unreasoningly and inarticulately safe must a man feel before
+he can be said to know.  It is only those who are ignorant and
+uncultivated who can know anything at all in a proper sense of the words.
+Cultivation will breed in any man a certainty of the uncertainty even of
+his most assured convictions.  It is perhaps fortunate for our comfort
+that we can none of us be cultivated upon very many subjects, so that
+considerable scope for assurance will still remain to us; but however
+this may be, we certainly observe it as a fact that those are the
+greatest men who are most uncertain in spite of certainty, and at the
+same time most certain in spite of uncertainty, and who are thus best
+able to feel that there is nothing in such complete harmony with itself
+as a flat contradiction in terms.  For nature hates that any principle
+should breed, so to speak, hermaphroditically, but will give to each an
+help meet for it which shall cross it and be the undoing of it; as in the
+case of descent with modification, of which the essence is that every
+offspring resembles its parents, and yet, at the same time, that no
+offspring resembles its parents.  But for the slightly irritating
+stimulant of this perpetual crossing, we should pass our lives
+unconsciously as though in slumber.
+
+Until we have got to understand that though black is not white, yet it
+may be whiter than white itself (and any painter will readily paint that
+which shall show obviously as black, yet it shall be whiter than that
+which shall show no less obviously as white), we may be good logicians,
+but we are still poor reasoners.  Knowledge is in an inchoate state as
+long as it is capable of logical treatment; it must be transmuted into
+that sense or instinct which rises altogether above the sphere in which
+words can have being at all, otherwise it is not yet incarnate.  For
+sense is to knowledge what conscience is to reasoning about light and
+wrong; the reasoning must be so rapid as to defy conscious reference to
+first principles, and even at times to be apparently subversive of them
+altogether, or the action will halt.  It must become automatic before we
+are safe with it.  While we are fumbling for the grounds of our
+conviction, our conviction is prone to fall, as Peter for lack of faith
+sinking into the waves of Galilee; so that the very power to prove at all
+is an _a priori_ argument against the truth--or at any rate the practical
+importance to the vast majority of mankind--of all that is supported by
+demonstration.  For the power to prove implies a sense of the need of
+proof, and things which the majority of mankind find practically
+important are in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred above proof.  The
+need of proof becomes as obsolete in the case of assured knowledge, as
+the practice of fortifying towns in the middle of an old and long-settled
+country.  Who builds defences for that which is impregnable or little
+likely to be assailed?  The answer is ready, that unless the defences had
+been built in former times it would be impossible to do without them now;
+but this does not touch the argument, which is not that demonstration is
+unwise but that as long as a demonstration is still felt necessary, and
+therefore kept ready to hand, the subject of such demonstration is not
+yet securely known.  _Qui s'excuse_, _s'accuse_; and unless a matter can
+hold its own without the brag and self-assertion of continual
+demonstration, it is still more or less of a parvenu, which we shall not
+lose much by neglecting till it has less occasion to blow its own
+trumpet.  The only alternative is that it is an error in process of
+detection, for if evidence concerning any opinion has long been deemed
+superfluous, and ever after this comes to be again felt necessary, we
+know that the opinion is doomed.
+
+If there is any truth in the above, it follows that our conception of the
+words "science" and "scientific" must undergo some modification.  Not
+that we should speak slightingly of science, but that we should recognise
+more than we do, that there are two distinct classes of scientific
+people, corresponding not inaptly with the two main parties into which
+the political world is divided.  The one class is deeply versed in those
+sciences which have already become the common property of mankind;
+enjoying, enforcing, perpetuating, and engraining still more deeply into
+the mind of man acquisitions already approved by common experience, but
+somewhat careless about extension of empire, or at any rate disinclined,
+for the most part, to active effort on their own part for the sake of
+such extension--neither progressive, in fact, nor aggressive--but quiet,
+peaceable people, who wish to live and let live, as their fathers before
+them; while the other class is chiefly intent upon pushing forward the
+boundaries of science, and is comparatively indifferent to what is known
+already save in so far as necessary for purposes of extension.  These
+last are called pioneers of science, and to them alone is the title
+"scientific" commonly accorded; but pioneers, important to an army as
+they are, are still not the army itself, which can get on better without
+the pioneers than the pioneers without the army.  Surely the class which
+knows thoroughly well what it knows, and which adjudicates upon the value
+of the discoveries made by the pioneers--surely this class has as good a
+right or better to be called scientific than the pioneers themselves.
+
+These two classes above described blend into one another with every shade
+of gradation.  Some are admirably proficient in the well-known
+sciences--that is to say, they have good health, good looks, good temper,
+common sense, and energy, and they hold all these good things in such
+perfection as to be altogether without introspection--to be not under the
+law, but so entirely under grace that every one who sees them likes them.
+But such may, and perhaps more commonly will, have very little
+inclination to extend the boundaries of human knowledge; their aim is in
+another direction altogether.  Of the pioneers, on the other hand, some
+are agreeable people, well versed in the older sciences, though still
+more eminent as pioneers, while others, whose services in this last
+capacity have been of inestimable value, are noticeably ignorant of the
+sciences which have already become current with the larger part of
+mankind--in other words, they are ugly, rude, and disagreeable people,
+very progressive, it may be, but very aggressive to boot.
+
+The main difference between these two classes lies in the fact that the
+knowledge of the one, so far as it is new, is known consciously, while
+that of the other is unconscious, consisting of sense and instinct rather
+than of recognised knowledge.  So long as a man has these, and of the
+same kind as the more powerful body of his fellow-countrymen, he is a man
+of science though he can hardly read or write.  As my great namesake said
+so well, "He knows what's what, and that's as high as metaphysic wit can
+fly."  As is usual in cases of great proficiency, these true and thorough
+knowers do not know that they are scientific, and can seldom give a
+reason for the faith that is in them.  They believe themselves to be
+ignorant, uncultured men, nor can even the professors whom they sometimes
+outwit in their own professorial domain perceive that they have been
+outwitted by men of superior scientific attainments to their own.  The
+following passage from Dr. Carpenter's "Mesmerism, Spiritualism," &c.,
+may serve as an illustration:--
+
+"It is well known that persons who are conversant with the geological
+structure of a district are often able to indicate with considerable
+certainty in what spot and at what depth water will be found; and men _of
+less scientific knowledge_, _but of considerable practical
+experience_"--(so that in Dr. Carpenter's mind there seems to be some
+sort of contrast or difference in kind between the knowledge which is
+derived from observation of facts and scientific knowledge)--"frequently
+arrive at a true conclusion upon this point without being able to assign
+reasons for their opinions."
+
+"Exactly the same may be said in regard to the mineral structure of a
+mining district; the course of a metallic vein being often correctly
+indicated by the shrewd guess of an _observant_ workman, when _the
+scientific reasoning_ of the mining engineer altogether fails."
+
+Precisely.  Here we have exactly the kind of thing we are in search of:
+the man who has observed and observed till the facts are so thoroughly in
+his head that through familiarity he has lost sight both of them and of
+the processes whereby he deduced his conclusions from them--is apparently
+not considered scientific, though he knows how to solve the problem
+before him; the mining engineer, on the other hand, who reasons
+scientifically--that is to say, with a knowledge of his own knowledge--is
+found not to know, and to fail in discovering the mineral.
+
+"It is an experience we are continually encountering in other walks of
+life," continues Dr. Carpenter, "that particular persons are guided--some
+apparently by an original and others by _an acquired intuition_--to
+conclusions for which they can give no adequate reason, but which
+subsequent events prove to have been correct."  And this, I take it,
+implies what I have been above insisting on, namely, that on becoming
+intense, knowledge seems also to become unaware of the grounds on which
+it rests, or that it has or requires grounds at all, or indeed even
+exists.  The only issue between myself and Dr. Carpenter would appear to
+be that Dr. Carpenter, himself an acknowledged leader in the scientific
+world, restricts the term "scientific" to the people who know that they
+know, but are beaten by those who are not so conscious of their own
+knowledge; while I say that the term "scientific" should be applied (only
+that they would not like it) to the nice sensible people who know what's
+what rather than to the professorial classes.
+
+And this is easily understood when we remember that the pioneer cannot
+hope to acquire any of the new sciences in a single lifetime so perfectly
+as to become unaware of his own knowledge.  As a general rule, we observe
+him to be still in a state of active consciousness concerning whatever
+particular science he is extending, and as long as he is in this state he
+cannot know utterly.  It is, as I have already so often insisted, those
+who do not know that they know so much who have the firmest grip of their
+knowledge: the best class, for example, of our English youth, who live
+much in the open air, and, as Lord Beaconsfield finely said, never read.
+These are the people who know best those things which are best worth
+knowing--that is to say, they are the most truly scientific.
+
+Unfortunately, the apparatus necessary for this kind of science is so
+costly as to be within the reach of few, involving, as it does, an
+experience in the use of it for some preceding generations.  Even those
+who are born with the means within their reach must take no less pains,
+and exercise no less self-control, before they can attain the perfect
+unconscious use of them, than would go to the making of a James Watt or a
+Stephenson; it is vain, therefore, to hope that this best kind of science
+can ever be put within the reach of the many; nevertheless it may be
+safely said that all the other and more generally recognised kinds of
+science are valueless except in so far as they minister to this the
+highest kind.  They have no _raison d'etre_ unless they tend to do away
+with the necessity for work, and to diffuse good health, and that good
+sense which is above self-consciousness.  They are to be encouraged
+because they have rendered the most fortunate kind of modern European
+possible, and because they tend to make possible a still more fortunate
+kind than any now existing.  But the man who devotes himself to science
+cannot--with the rarest, if any, exceptions--belong to this most
+fortunate class himself.  He occupies a lower place, both scientifically
+and morally, for it is not possible but that his drudgery should somewhat
+soil him both in mind and health of body, or, if this be denied, surely
+it must let him and hinder him in running the race for unconsciousness.
+We do not feel that it increases the glory of a king or great nobleman
+that he should excel in what is commonly called science.  Certainly he
+should not go further than Prince Rupert's drops.  Nor should he excel in
+music, art, literature, or theology--all which things are more or less
+parts of science.  He should be above them all, save in so far as he can
+without effort reap renown from the labours of others.  It is a _lache_
+in him that he should write music or books, or paint pictures at all; but
+if he must do so, his work should be at best contemptible.  Much as we
+must condemn Marcus Aurelius, we condemn James I. even more severely.
+
+It is a pity there should exist so general a confusion of thought upon
+this subject, for it may be asserted without fear of contradiction that
+there is hardly any form of immorality now rife which produces more
+disastrous effects upon those who give themselves up to it, and upon
+society in general, than the so-called science of those who know that
+they know too well to be able to know truly.  With very clever people--the
+people who know that they know--it is much as with the members of the
+early Corinthian Church, to whom St. Paul wrote, that if they looked
+their numbers over, they would not find many wise, nor powerful, nor well-
+born people among them.  Dog-fanciers tell us that performing dogs never
+carry their tails; such dogs have eaten of the tree of knowledge, and are
+convinced of sin accordingly--they know that they know things, in respect
+of which, therefore, they are no longer under grace, but under the law,
+and they have yet so much grace left as to be ashamed.  So with the human
+clever dog; he may speak with the tongues of men and angels, but so long
+as he knows that he knows, his tail will droop.
+
+More especially does this hold in the case of those who are born to
+wealth and of old family.  We must all feel that a rich young nobleman
+with a taste for science and principles is rarely a pleasant object.  We
+do not understand the rich young man in the Bible who wanted to inherit
+eternal life, unless, indeed, he merely wanted to know whether there was
+not some way by which he could avoid dying, and even so he is hardly
+worth considering.  Principles are like logic, which never yet made a
+good reasoner of a bad one, but might still be occasionally useful if
+they did not invariably contradict each other whenever there is any
+temptation to appeal to them.  They are like fire, good servants but bad
+masters.  As many people or more have been wrecked on principle as from
+want of principle.  They are, as their name implies, of an elementary
+character, suitable for beginners only, and he who has so little mastered
+them as to have occasion to refer to them consciously, is out of place in
+the society of well-educated people.  The truly scientific invariably
+hate him, and, for the most part, the more profoundly in proportion to
+the unconsciousness with which they do so.
+
+If the reader hesitates, let him go down into the streets and look in the
+shop-windows at the photographs of eminent men, whether literary,
+artistic, or scientific, and note the work which the consciousness of
+knowledge has wrought on nine out of every ten of them; then let him go
+to the masterpieces of Greek and Italian art, the truest preachers of the
+truest gospel of grace; let him look at the Venus of Milo, the
+Discobolus, the St. George of Donatello.  If it had pleased these people
+to wish to study, there was no lack of brains to do it with; but imagine
+"what a deal of scorn" would "look beautiful in the contempt and anger"
+of the Venus of Milo's lip if it were suggested to her that she should
+learn to read.  Which, think you, knows most, the Theseus, or any modern
+professor taken at random?  True, learning must have a great share in the
+advancement of beauty, inasmuch as beauty is but knowledge perfected and
+incarnate--but with the pioneers it is _sic vos non vobis_; the grace is
+not for them, but for those who come after.  Science is like offences.  It
+must needs come, but woe unto that man through whom it comes; for there
+cannot be much beauty where there is consciousness of knowledge, and
+while knowledge is still new it must in the nature of things involve much
+consciousness.
+
+It is not knowledge, then, that is incompatible with beauty; there cannot
+be too much knowledge, but it must have passed through many people who it
+is to be feared must be both ugly and disagreeable, before beauty or
+grace will have anything to say to it; it must be so diffused throughout
+a man's whole being that he shall not be aware of it, or he will bear
+himself under it constrainedly as one under the law, and not as one under
+grace.
+
+And grace is best, for where grace is, love is not distant.  Grace! the
+old Pagan ideal whose charm even unlovely Paul could not withstand, but,
+as the legend tells us, his soul fainted within him, his heart misgave
+him, and, standing alone on the seashore at dusk, he "troubled deaf
+heaven with his bootless cries," his thin voice pleading for grace after
+the flesh.
+
+The waves came in one after another, the sea-gulls cried together after
+their kind, the wind rustled among the dried canes upon the sandbanks,
+and there came a voice from heaven saying, "Let My grace be sufficient
+for thee."  Whereon, failing of the thing itself, he stole the word and
+strove to crush its meaning to the measure of his own limitations.  But
+the true grace, with her groves and high places, and troops of young men
+and maidens crowned with flowers, and singing of love and youth and
+wine--the true grace he drove out into the wilderness--high up, it may
+be, into Piora, and into such-like places.  Happy they who harboured her
+in her ill report.
+
+It is common to hear men wonder what new faith will be adopted by mankind
+if disbelief in the Christian religion should become general.  They seem
+to expect that some new theological or quasi-theological system will
+arise, which, _mutatis mutandis_, shall be Christianity over again.  It
+is a frequent reproach against those who maintain that the supernatural
+element of Christianity is without foundation, that they bring forward no
+such system of their own.  They pull down but cannot build.  We sometimes
+hear even those who have come to the same conclusions as the destroyers
+say, that having nothing new to set up, they will not attack the old.  But
+how can people set up a new superstition, knowing it to be a
+superstition?  Without faith in their own platform, a faith as intense as
+that manifested by the early Christians, how can they preach?  A new
+superstition will come, but it is in the very essence of things that its
+apostles should have no suspicion of its real nature; that they should no
+more recognise the common element between the new and the old than the
+early Christians recognised it between their faith and Paganism.  If they
+did, they would be paralysed.  Others say that the new fabric may be seen
+rising on every side, and that the coming religion is science.  Certainly
+its apostles preach it without misgiving, but it is not on that account
+less possible that it may prove only to be the coming superstition--like
+Christianity, true to its true votaries, and, like Christianity, false to
+those who follow it introspectively.
+
+It may well be we shall find we have escaped from one set of taskmasters
+to fall into the hands of others far more ruthless.  The tyranny of the
+Church is light in comparison with that which future generations may have
+to undergo at the hands of the doctrinaires.  The Church did uphold a
+grace of some sort as the _summum bonum_, in comparison with which all so-
+called earthly knowledge--knowledge, that is to say, which had not passed
+through so many people as to have become living and incarnate--was
+unimportant.  Do what we may, we are still drawn to the unspoken teaching
+of her less introspective ages with a force which no falsehood could
+command.  Her buildings, her music, her architecture, touch us as none
+other on the whole can do; when she speaks there are many of us who think
+that she denies the deeper truths of her own profounder mind, and
+unfortunately her tendency is now towards more rather than less
+introspection.  The more she gives way to this--the more she becomes
+conscious of knowing--the less she will know.  But still her ideal is in
+grace.
+
+The so-called man of science, on the other hand, seems now generally
+inclined to make light of all knowledge, save of the pioneer character.
+His ideal is in self-conscious knowledge.  Let us have no more Lo, here,
+with the professor; he very rarely knows what he says he knows; no sooner
+has he misled the world for a sufficient time with a great flourish of
+trumpets than he is toppled over by one more plausible than himself.  He
+is but medicine-man, augur, priest, in its latest development; useful it
+may be, but requiring to be well watched by those who value freedom.  Wait
+till he has become more powerful, and note the vagaries which his conceit
+of knowledge will indulge in.  The Church did not persecute while she was
+still weak.  Of course every system has had, and will have, its heroes,
+but, as we all very well know, the heroism of the hero is but remotely
+due to system; it is due not to arguments, nor reasoning, nor to any
+consciously recognised perceptions, but to those deeper sciences which
+lie far beyond the reach of self-analysis, and for the study of which
+there is but one schooling--to have had good forefathers for many
+generations.
+
+Above all things let no unwary reader do me the injustice of believing in
+_me_.  In that I write at all I am among the damned.  If he must believe
+in anything, let him believe in the music of Handel, the painting of
+Giovanni Bellini, and in the thirteenth chapter of St. Paul's First
+Epistle to the Corinthians.
+
+But to return.  Whenever we find people knowing that they know this or
+that, we have the same story over and over again.  They do not yet know
+it perfectly.
+
+We come, therefore, to the conclusion that our knowledge and reasonings
+thereupon, only become perfect, assured, unhesitating, when they have
+become automatic, and are thus exercised without further conscious effort
+of the mind, much in the same way as we cannot walk nor read nor write
+perfectly till we can do so automatically.
+
+
+
+APPLICATION OF FOREGOING CHAPTERS TO CERTAIN HABITS ACQUIRED AFTER BIRTH
+WHICH ARE COMMONLY CONSIDERED INSTINCTIVE.  (CHAPTER III. OF LIFE AND
+HABIT.)
+
+
+What is true of knowing is also true of willing.  The more intensely we
+will, the less is our will deliberate and capable of being recognised as
+will at all.  So that it is common to hear men declare under certain
+circumstances that they had no will, but were forced into their own
+action under stress of passion or temptation.  But in the more ordinary
+actions of life, we observe, as in walking or breathing, that we do not
+will anything utterly and without remnant of hesitation, till we have
+lost sight of the fact that we are exercising our will.
+
+The question, therefore, is forced upon us, how far this principle
+extends, and whether there may not be unheeded examples of its operation
+which, if we consider them, will land us in rather unexpected
+conclusions.  If it be granted that consciousness of knowledge and of
+volition vanishes when the knowledge and the volition have become intense
+and perfect, may it not be possible that many actions which we do without
+knowing how we do them, and without any conscious exercise of the
+will--actions which we certainly could not do if we tried to do them, nor
+refrain from doing if for any reason we wished to do so--are done so
+easily and so unconsciously owing to excess of knowledge or experience
+rather than deficiency, we having done them too often, knowing how to do
+them too well, and having too little hesitation as to the method of
+procedure, to be capable of following our own action, without the
+derangement of such action altogether; or, in other cases, because we
+have so long settled the question that we have stowed away the whole
+apparatus with which we work in corners of our system which we cannot now
+conveniently reach?
+
+It may be interesting to see whether we can find any class or classes of
+actions which link actions which for some time after birth we could not
+do at all, and in which our proficiency has reached the stage of
+unconscious performance obviously through repeated effort and failure,
+and through this only, with actions which we could do as soon as we were
+born, and concerning which it would at first sight appear absurd to say
+that they can have been acquired by any process in the least analogous to
+what we commonly call experience, inasmuch as the creature itself which
+does them has only just begun to exist, and cannot, therefore, in the
+very nature of things, have had experience.
+
+Can we see that actions, for the acquisition of which experience is such
+an obvious necessity, that whenever we see the acquisition we assume the
+experience, gradate away imperceptibly into actions which seem, according
+to all reasonable analogy, to necessitate experience--of which, however,
+the time and place are so obscure, that they are not now commonly
+supposed to have any connection with _bona fide_ experience at all.
+
+Eating and drinking appear to be such actions.  The new-born child cannot
+eat, and cannot drink, but he can swallow as soon as he is born; and
+swallowing appears (as we may remark in passing) to have been an earlier
+faculty of animal life than that of eating with teeth.  The ease and
+unconsciousness with which we eat and drink is clearly attributable to
+practice; but a very little practice seems to go a long way--a
+suspiciously small amount of practice--as though somewhere or at some
+other time there must have been more practice than we can account for.  We
+can very readily stop eating or drinking, and can follow our own action
+without difficulty in either process; but as regards swallowing, which is
+the earlier habit, we have less power of self-analysis and control: when
+we have once committed ourselves beyond a certain point to swallowing, we
+must finish doing so,--that is to say, our control over the operation
+ceases.  Also, a still smaller experience seems necessary for the
+acquisition of the power to swallow than appeared necessary in the case
+of eating; and if we get into a difficulty we choke, and are more at a
+loss how to become introspective than we are about eating and drinking.
+
+Why should a baby be able to swallow--which one would have said was the
+more complicated process of the two--with so much less practice than it
+takes him to learn to eat?  How comes it that he exhibits in the case of
+the more difficult operation all the phenomena which ordinarily accompany
+a more complete mastery and longer practice?  Analogy points in the
+direction of thinking that the necessary experience cannot have been
+wanting, and that, too, not in such a quibbling sort as when people talk
+about inherited habit or the experience of the race, which, without
+explanation, is to plain-speaking persons very much the same, in regard
+to the individual, as no experience at all, but _bona fide_ in the
+child's own person.
+
+Breathing, again, is an action acquired after birth, generally with some
+little hesitation and difficulty, but still acquired in a time seldom
+longer, as I am informed, than ten minutes or a quarter of an hour.  For
+an art which has to be acquired at all, there seems here, as in the case
+of eating, to be a disproportion between, on the one hand, the intricacy
+of the process performed, and on the other, the shortness of the time
+taken to acquire the practice, and the ease and unconsciousness with
+which its exercise is continued from the moment of acquisition.
+
+We observe that in later life much less difficult and intricate
+operations than breathing require much longer practice before they can be
+mastered to the extent of unconscious performance.  We observe also that
+the phenomena attendant on the learning by an infant to breathe are
+extremely like those attendant upon the repetition of some performance by
+one who has done it very often before, but who requires just a little
+prompting to set him off, on getting which, the whole familiar routine
+presents itself before him, and he repeats his task by rote.  Surely then
+we are justified in suspecting that there must have been more _bona fide_
+personal recollection and experience, with more effort and failure on the
+part of the infant itself, than meet the eye.
+
+It should be noticed, also that our control over breathing is very
+limited.  We can hold our breath a little, or breathe a little faster for
+a short time, but we cannot do this for long, and after having gone
+without air for a certain time we must breathe.
+
+Seeing and hearing require some practice before their free use is
+mastered, but not very much.  They are so far within our control that we
+can see more by looking harder, and hear more by listening
+attentively--but they are beyond our control in so far as that we must
+see and hear the greater part of what presents itself to us as near, and
+at the same time unfamiliar, unless we turn away or shut our eyes, or
+stop our ears by a mechanical process; and when we do this it is a sign
+that we have already involuntarily seen or heard more than we wished.  The
+familiar, whether sight or sound, very commonly escapes us.
+
+Take again the processes of digestion, the action of the heart, and the
+oxygenisation of the blood--processes of extreme intricacy, done almost
+entirely unconsciously, and quite beyond the control of our volition.
+
+Is it possible that our unconsciousness concerning our own performance of
+all these processes arises from over-experience?
+
+Is there anything in digestion or the oxygenisation of the blood
+different in kind to the rapid unconscious action of a man playing a
+difficult piece of music on the piano?  There may be in degree, but as a
+man who sits down to play what he well knows, plays on when once started,
+almost, as we say, mechanically, so, having eaten his dinner, he digests
+it as a matter of course, unless it has been in some way unfamiliar to
+him or he to it, owing to some derangement or occurrence with which he is
+unfamiliar, and under which therefore he is at a loss how to comport
+himself, as a player would be at a loss how to play with gloves on, or
+with gout in his fingers, or if set to play music upside down.
+
+Can we show that all the acquired actions of childhood and after-life,
+which we now do unconsciously, or without conscious exercise of the will,
+are familiar acts--acts which we have already done a very great number of
+times?
+
+Can we also show that there are no acquired actions which we can perform
+in this automatic manner which were not at one time difficult, requiring
+attention, and liable to repeated failure, our volition failing to
+command obedience from the members which should carry its purposes into
+execution?
+
+If so, analogy will point in the direction of thinking that other acts
+which we do even more unconsciously may only escape our power of self-
+examination and control because they are even more familiar--because we
+have done them oftener; and we may imagine that if there were a
+microscope which could show us the minutest atoms of consciousness and
+volition, we should find that even the apparently most automatic actions
+were yet done in due course, upon a balance of considerations, and under
+the deliberate exercise of the will.
+
+We should also incline to think that even such an action as the
+oxygenisation of its blood by an infant of ten minutes' old, can only be
+done so well and so unconsciously, after repeated failures on the part of
+the infant itself.
+
+True, as has been already implied, we do not immediately see when the
+baby could have made the necessary mistakes and acquired that infinite
+practice without which it could never go through such complex processes
+satisfactorily; we have therefore invented the word "heredity," and
+consider it as accounting for the phenomena; but a little reflection will
+show that though this word may be a very good way of stating the
+difficulty, it does nothing whatever towards removing it. {96}
+
+Why should heredity enable a creature to dispense with the experience
+which we see to be necessary in all other cases before difficult
+operations can be performed successfully?
+
+What is this talk that is made about the experience _of the race_, as
+though the experience of one man could profit another who knows nothing
+about him?  If a man eats his dinner, it nourishes _him_ and not his
+neighbour; if he learns a difficult art, it is _he_ that can do it and
+not his neighbour.  Yet, practically, we see that the vicarious
+experience, which seems so contrary to our common observation, does
+nevertheless appear to hold good in the case of creatures and their
+descendants.  Is there, then, any way of bringing these apparently
+conflicting phenomena under the operation of one law?  Is there any way
+of showing that this experience of the race, of which so much is said
+without the least attempt to show in what way it may or does become the
+experience of the individual, is in sober seriousness the experience of
+one single being only, repeating in a great many different ways certain
+performances with which it has become exceedingly familiar?
+
+It comes to this--that we must either suppose the conditions of
+experience to differ during the earlier stages of life from those which
+we observe them to become during the heyday of any existence--and this
+would appear very gratuitous, tolerable only as a suggestion because the
+beginnings of life are so obscure, that in such twilight we may do pretty
+much whatever we please without fear of being found out--or that we must
+suppose continuity of life and sameness between living beings, whether
+plants or animals, and their descendants, to be far closer than we have
+hitherto believed; so that the experience of one person is not enjoyed by
+his successor, so much as that the successor is _bona fide_ an elongation
+of the life of his progenitors, imbued with their memories, profiting by
+their experiences--which are, in fact, his own until he leaves their
+bodies--and only unconscious of the extent of these memories and
+experiences owing to their vastness and already infinite repetition.
+
+Certainly it presents itself to us as a singular coincidence--
+
+I.  That we are _most conscious of_, _and have most control over_, such
+habits as speech, the upright position, the arts and sciences--which are
+acquisitions peculiar to the human race, always acquired after birth, and
+not common to ourselves and any ancestor who had not become entirely
+human.
+
+II.  That we are _less conscious of_, _and have less control over_, the
+use of teeth, swallowing, breathing, seeing and hearing--which were
+acquisitions of our prehuman ancestry, and for which we had provided
+ourselves with all the necessary apparatus before we saw light, but which
+are still, geologically speaking, recent, or comparatively recent.
+
+ill.  That we are _most unconscious of_, _and have least control over_,
+our digestion, which we have in common even with our invertebrate
+ancestry, and which is a habit of extreme antiquity.
+
+There is something too like method in this for it to be taken as the
+result of mere chance--chance again being but another illustration of
+Nature's love of a contradiction in terms; for everything is chance, and
+nothing is chance.  And you may take it that all is chance or nothing
+chance, according as you please, but you must not have half chance and
+half not chance--which, however, in practice is just what you _must_
+have.
+
+Does it not seem as though the older and more confirmed the habit, the
+more unquestioning the act of volition, till, in the case of the oldest
+habits, the practice of succeeding existences has so formulated the
+procedure, that, on being once committed to such and such a line beyond a
+certain point, the subsequent course is so clear as to be open to no
+further doubt, and admit of no alternative, till the very power of
+questioning is gone, and even the consciousness of volition?  And this
+too upon matters which, in earlier stages of a man's existence, admitted
+of passionate argument and anxious deliberation whether to resolve them
+thus or thus, with heroic hazard and experiment, which on the losing side
+proved to be vice, and on the winning virtue.  For there was passionate
+argument once what shape a man's teeth should be, nor can the colour of
+his hair be considered as even yet settled, or likely to be settled for a
+very long time.
+
+It is one against legion when a creature tries to differ from his own
+past selves.  He must yield or die if he wants to differ widely, so as to
+lack natural instincts, such as hunger or thirst, or not to gratify them.
+It is more righteous in a man that he should "eat strange food," and that
+his cheek should "so much as lank not," than that he should starve if the
+strange food be at his command.  His past selves are living in unruly
+hordes within him at this moment and overmastering him.  "Do this, this,
+this, which we too have done, and found our profit in it," cry the souls
+of his forefathers within him.  Faint are the far ones, coming and going
+as the sound of bells wafted on to a high mountain; loud and clear are
+the near ones, urgent as an alarm of fire.  "Withhold," cry some.  "Go on
+boldly," cry others.  "Me, me, me, revert hitherward, my descendant,"
+shouts one as it were from some high vantage-ground over the heads of the
+clamorous multitude.  "Nay, but me, me, me," echoes another; and our
+former selves fight within us and wrangle for our possession.  Have we
+not here what is commonly called an _internal tumult_, when dead
+pleasures and pains tug within us hither and thither?  Then may the
+battle be decided by what people are pleased to call our own experience.
+Our own indeed!  What is our own save by mere courtesy of speech?  A
+matter of fashion.  Sanction sanctifieth and fashion fashioneth.  And so
+with death--the most inexorable of all conventions.
+
+However this may be, we may assume it as an axiom with regard to actions
+acquired after birth, that we never do them automatically save as the
+result of long practice, and after having thus acquired perfect mastery
+over the action in question.
+
+But given the practice or experience, and the intricacy of the process to
+be performed appears to matter very little.  There is hardly anything
+conceivable as being done by man, which a certain amount of familiarity
+will not enable him to do, unintrospectively, and without conscious
+effort.  "The most complex and difficult movements," writes Mr. Darwin,
+"can in time be performed without the least effort or consciousness."  All
+the main business of life is done thus unconsciously or
+semi-unconsciously.  For what is the main business of life?  We work that
+we may eat and digest, rather than eat and digest that we may work; this,
+at any rate, is the normal state of things; the more important business
+then is that which is carried on unconsciously.  So again, the action of
+the brain, which goes on prior to our realising the idea in which it
+results, is not perceived by the individual.  So also all the deeper
+springs of action and conviction.  The residuum with which we fret and
+worry ourselves is a mere matter of detail, as the higgling and haggling
+of the market, which is not over the bulk of the price, but over the last
+halfpenny.
+
+Shall we say, then, that a baby of a day old sucks (which involves the
+whole principle of the pump, and hence a profound practical knowledge of
+the laws of pneumatics and hydrostatics), digests, oxygenises its blood
+(millions of years before Sir Humphry Davy discovered oxygen), sees and
+hears--all most difficult and complicated operations, involving an
+unconscious knowledge of the facts concerning optics and acoustics,
+compared with which the conscious discoveries of Newton sink into utter
+insignificance?  Shall we say that a baby can do all these things at
+once, doing them so well and so regularly, without being even able to
+direct its attention to them, and without mistake, and at the same time
+not know how to do them, and never have done them before?
+
+Such an assertion would be a contradiction to the whole experience of
+mankind.  Surely the _onus probandi_ must rest with him who makes it.
+
+A man may make a lucky hit now and again by what is called a fluke, but
+even this must be only a little in advance of his other performances of
+the same kind.  He may multiply seven by eight by a fluke after a little
+study of the multiplication table, but he will not be able to extract the
+cube root of 4913 by a fluke, without long training in arithmetic, any
+more than an agricultural labourer would be able to operate successfully
+for cataract.  If, then, a grown man cannot perform so simple an
+operation as that, we will say, for cataract, unless he have been long
+trained in other similar operations, and until he has done what comes to
+the same thing many times over, with what show of reason can we maintain
+that one who is so far less capable than a grown man, can perform such
+vastly more difficult operations, without knowing how to do them, and
+without ever having done them before?  There is no sign of "fluke" about
+the circulation of a baby's blood.  There may perhaps be some little
+hesitation about its earliest breathing, but this, as a general rule,
+soon passes over, both breathing and circulation, within an hour after
+birth, being as regular and easy as at any time during life.  Is it
+reasonable, then, to say that the baby does these things without knowing
+how to do them, and without ever having done them before, and continues
+to do them by a series of lifelong flukes?
+
+It would be well if those who feel inclined to hazard such an assertion
+would find some other instances of intricate processes gone through by
+people who know nothing about them, and who never had any practice
+therein.  What _is_ to know how to do a thing?  Surely to do it.  What is
+proof that we know how to do a thing?  Surely the fact that we can do it.
+A man shows that he knows how to throw the boomerang by throwing the
+boomerang.  No amount of talking or writing can get over this; _ipso
+facto_, that a baby breathes and makes its blood circulate, it knows how
+to do so; and the fact that it does not know its own knowledge is only
+proof of the perfection of that knowledge, and of the vast number of past
+occasions on which it must have been exercised already.  As has been said
+already, it is less obvious when the baby could have gained its
+experience, so as to be able so readily to remember exactly what to do;
+_but it is more easy to suppose that the necessary occasions cannot have
+been wanting_, _than that the power which we observe_, _should have been
+obtained without practice and memory_.
+
+If we saw any self-consciousness on the baby's part about its breathing
+or circulation, we might suspect that it had had less experience, or had
+profited less by its experience, than its neighbours--exactly in the same
+manner as we suspect a deficiency of any quality which we see a man
+inclined to parade.  We all become introspective when we find that we do
+not know our business, and whenever we are introspective we may generally
+suspect that we are on the verge of unproficiency.  Unfortunately, in the
+case of sickly children we observe that they sometimes do become
+conscious of their breathing and circulation, just as in later life we
+become conscious that we have a liver or a digestion.  In that case there
+is always something wrong.  The baby that becomes aware of its breathing
+does not know how to breathe and will suffer for his ignorance and
+incapacity, exactly in the same way as he will suffer in later life for
+ignorance and incapacity in any other respect in which his peers are
+commonly knowing and capable.  In the case of inability to breathe, the
+punishment is corporal, breathing being a matter of fashion, so old and
+long settled that nature can admit of no departure from the established
+custom, and the procedure in case of failure is as much formulated as the
+fashion itself.  In the case of the circulation, the whole performance
+has become one so utterly of rote, that the mere discovery that we could
+do it at all was considered one of the highest flights of human genius.
+
+It has been said a day will come when the Polar ice shall have
+accumulated, till it forms vast continents many thousands of feet above
+the level of the sea, all of solid ice.  The weight of this mass will, it
+is believed, cause the world to topple over on its axis, so that the
+earth will be upset as an ant-heap overturned by a ploughshare.  In that
+day the icebergs will come crunching against our proudest cities, razing
+them from off the face of the earth as though they were made of rotten
+blotting-paper.  There is no respect now of Handel nor of Shakespeare;
+the works of Rembrandt and Bellini fossilise at the bottom of the sea.
+Grace, beauty, and wit, all that is precious in music, literature, and
+art--all gone.  In the morning there was Europe.  In the evening there
+are no more populous cities nor busy hum of men, but a sea of jagged ice,
+a lurid sunset, and the doom of many ages.  Then shall a scared remnant
+escape in places, and settle upon the changed continent when the waters
+have subsided--a simple people, busy hunting shellfish on the drying
+ocean beds, and with little time for introspection; yet they can read and
+write and sum, for by that time these accomplishments will have become
+universal, and will be acquired as easily as we now learn to talk; but
+they do so as a matter of course, and without self-consciousness.  Also
+they make the simpler kinds of machinery too easily to be able to follow
+their own operations--the manner of their own apprenticeship being to
+them as a buried city.  May we not imagine that, after the lapse of
+another ten thousand years or so, some one of them may again become
+cursed with lust of introspection, and a second Harvey may astonish the
+world by discovering that it can read and write, and that steam-engines
+do not grow, but are made?  It may be safely prophesied that he will die
+a martyr, and be honoured in the fourth generation.
+
+
+
+PERSONAL IDENTITY.  (CHAPTER V. OF LIFE AND HABIT.)
+
+
+"Strange difficulties have been raised by some," says Bishop Butler,
+"concerning personal identity, or the sameness of living agents as
+implied in the notion of our existing now and hereafter, or indeed in any
+two consecutive moments."  But in truth it is not easy to see the
+strangeness of the difficulty, if the words either "personal" or
+"identity" are used in any strictness.
+
+Personality is one of those ideas with which we are so familiar that we
+have lost sight of the foundations upon which it rests.  We regard our
+personality as a simple definite whole; as a plain, palpable, individual
+thing, which can be seen going about the streets or sitting indoors at
+home; as something which lasts us our lifetime, and about the confines of
+which no doubt can exist in the minds of reasonable people.  But in truth
+this "we," which looks so simple and definite, is a nebulous and
+indefinable aggregation of many component parts which war not a little
+among themselves, our perception of our existence at all being perhaps
+due to this very clash of warfare, as our sense of sound and light is due
+to the jarring of vibrations.  Moreover, as the component parts of our
+identity change from moment to moment, our personality becomes a thing
+dependent upon time present, which has no logical existence, but lives
+only upon the sufferance of times past and future, slipping out of our
+hands into the domain of one or other of these two claimants the moment
+we try to apprehend it.  And not only is our personality as fleeting as
+the present moment, but the parts which compose it blend some of them so
+imperceptibly into, and are so inextricably linked on to, outside things
+which clearly form no part of our personality, that when we try to bring
+ourselves to book and determine wherein we consist, or to draw a line as
+to where we begin or end, we find ourselves baffled.  There is nothing
+but fusion and confusion.
+
+Putting theology on one side, and dealing only with the common sense of
+mankind, our body is certainly part of our personality.  With the
+destruction of our bodies, our personality, as far as we can follow it,
+comes to a full stop; and with every modification of them it is
+correspondingly modified.  But what are the limits of our bodies?  They
+are composed of parts, some of them so unessential as to be hardly
+included in personality at all, and to be separable from ourselves
+without perceptible effect, as hair, nails, and daily waste of tissue.
+Again, other parts are very important, as our hands, feet, arms, legs,
+&c., but still are no essential parts of our "self" or "soul," which
+continues to exist, though in a modified condition, in spite of their
+amputation.  Other parts, as the brain, heart, and blood, are so
+essential that they cannot be dispensed with, yet it is impossible to say
+that personality consists in any one of them.
+
+Each one of these component members of our personality is continually
+dying and being born again, supported in this process by the food we eat,
+the water we drink, and the air we breathe; which three things link us
+on, and fetter us down, to the organic and inorganic world about us.  For
+our meat and drink, though no part of our personality before we eat and
+drink, cannot, after we have done so, be separated entirely from us
+without the destruction of our personality altogether, so far as we can
+follow it; and who shall say at what precise moment our food has or has
+not become part of ourselves?  A famished man eats food; after a short
+time his whole personality is so palpably affected that we know the food
+to have entered into him and taken, as it were, possession of him; but
+who can say at what precise moment it did so?  Thus we find that we melt
+away into outside things and are rooted into them as plants into the soil
+in which they grow, nor can any man say he consists absolutely in this or
+that, nor define himself so certainly as to include neither more nor less
+than himself; many undoubted parts of his personality being more
+separable from it, and changing it less when so separated, both to his
+own senses and those of other people, than other parts which are strictly
+speaking no parts at all.
+
+A man's clothes, for example, as they lie on a chair at night are no part
+of him, but when he wears them they would appear to be so, as being a
+kind of food which warms him and hatches him, and the loss of which may
+kill him of cold.  If this be denied, and a man's clothes be considered
+as no part of his self, nevertheless they, with his money, and it may
+perhaps be added his religious opinions, stamp a man's individuality as
+strongly as any natural feature can stamp it.  Change in style of dress,
+gain or loss of money, make a man feel and appear more changed than
+having his chin shaved or his nails cut.  In fact, as soon as we leave
+common parlance on one side, and try for a scientific definition of
+personality, we find that there is none possible, any more than there can
+be a demonstration of the fact that we exist at all--a demonstration for
+which, as for that of a personal God, many have hunted but which none
+have found.  The only solid foundation is, as in the case of the earth's
+crust, pretty near the surface of things; the deeper we try to go, the
+damper, darker, and altogether more uncongenial we find it.  There is no
+quagmire of superstition into which we may not be easily lured if we once
+cut ourselves adrift from those superficial aspects of things, in which
+alone our nature permits us to be comforted.
+
+Common parlance, however, settles the difficulty readily enough (as
+indeed it settles most others if they show signs of awkwardness) by the
+simple process of ignoring it: we decline, and very properly, to go into
+the question of where personality begins and ends, but assume it to be
+known by every one, and throw the onus of not knowing it upon the over-
+curious, who had better think as their neighbours do, right or wrong, or
+there is no knowing into what villany they may not presently fall.
+
+Assuming, then, that every one knows what is meant by the word "person"
+(and such superstitious bases as this are the foundations upon which all
+action, whether of man, beast, or plant, is constructed and rendered
+possible; for even the corn in the fields grows upon a superstitious
+basis as to its own existence, and only turns the earth and moisture into
+wheat through the conceit of its own ability to do so, without which
+faith it were powerless; and the lichen only grows upon the granite rock
+by first saying to itself, "I think I can do it;" so that it would not be
+able to grow unless it thought it could grow, and would not think it
+could grow unless it found itself able to grow, and thus spends its life
+arguing most virtuously in a most vicious circle--basing action upon
+hypothesis, which hypothesis is in turn based upon action)--assuming that
+we know what is meant by the word "person," we say that we are one and
+the same person from birth till death, so that whatever is done by or
+happens to any one between birth and death, is said to happen to or be
+done by one individual.  This in practice is found sufficient for the law
+courts and the purposes of daily life, which, being full of hurry and the
+pressure of business, can only tolerate compromise, or conventional
+rendering of intricate phenomena.  When facts of extreme complexity have
+to be daily and hourly dealt with by people whose time is money, they
+must be simplified, and treated much as a painter treats them, drawing
+them in squarely, seizing the more important features, and neglecting all
+that does not assert itself as too essential to be passed over--hence the
+slang and cant words of every profession, and indeed all language; for
+language at best is but a kind of "patter," the only way, it is true, in
+many cases, of expressing our ideas to one another, but still a very bad
+way, and not for one moment comparable to the unspoken speech which we
+may sometimes have recourse to.  The metaphors and _facons de parler_ to
+which even in the plainest speech we are perpetually recurring (as, for
+example, in this last two lines, "plain," "perpetually," and "recurring,"
+are all words based on metaphor, and hence more or less liable to
+mislead) often deceive us, as though there were nothing more than what we
+see and say, and as though words, instead of being, as they are, the
+creatures of our convenience, had some claim to be the actual ideas
+themselves concerning which we are conversing.
+
+This is so well expressed in a letter I have recently received from a
+friend, now in New Zealand, and certainly not intended by him for
+publication, that I shall venture to quote the passage, but should say
+that I do so without his knowledge or permission which I should not be
+able to receive before this book must be completed.
+
+"Words, words, words," he writes, "are the stumbling-blocks in the way of
+truth.  Until you think of things as they are, and not of the words that
+misrepresent them, you cannot think rightly.  Words produce the
+appearance of hard and fast lines where there are none.  Words divide;
+thus we call this a man, that an ape, that a monkey, while they are all
+only differentiations of the same thing.  To think of a thing they must
+be got rid of: they are the clothes that thoughts wear--only the clothes.
+I say this over and over again, for there is nothing of more importance.
+Other men's words will stop you at the beginning of an investigation.  A
+man may play with words all his life, arranging them and rearranging them
+like dominoes.  If I could _think_ to you without words you would
+understand me better."
+
+If such remarks as the above hold good at all, they do so with the words
+"personal identity."  The least reflection will show that personal
+identity in any sort of strictness is an impossibility.  The expression
+is one of the many ways in which we are obliged to scamp our thoughts
+through pressure of other business which pays us better.  For surely all
+reasonable people will feel that an infant an hour before birth, when in
+the eye of the law he has no existence, and could not be called a peer
+for another sixty minutes, though his father were a peer, and already
+dead,--surely such an embryo is more personally identical with the baby
+into which he develops within an hour's time than the born baby is so
+with itself (if the expression may be pardoned), one, twenty, or it may
+be eighty years after birth.  There is more sameness of matter; there are
+fewer differences of any kind perceptible by a third person; there is
+more sense of continuity on the part of the person himself, and far more
+of all that goes to make up our sense of sameness of personality between
+an embryo an hour before birth and the child on being born, than there is
+between the child just born and the man of twenty.  Yet there is no
+hesitation about admitting sameness of personality between these two
+last.
+
+On the other hand, if that hazy contradiction in terms, "personal
+identity," be once allowed to retreat behind the threshold of the womb,
+it has eluded us once for all.  What is true of one hour before birth is
+true of two, and so on till we get back to the impregnate ovum, which may
+fairly claim to have been personally identical with the man of eighty
+into which it ultimately developed, in spite of the fact that there is no
+particle of same matter nor sense of continuity between them, nor
+recognised community of instinct, nor indeed of anything which on a
+_prima facie_ view of the matter goes to the making up of that which we
+call identity.
+
+There is far more of all these things common to the impregnate ovum and
+the ovum immediately before impregnation, or again between the impregnate
+ovum, and both the ovum before impregnation and the spermatozoon which
+impregnated it.  Nor, if we admit personal identity between the ovum and
+the octogenarian, is there any sufficient reason why we should not admit
+it between the impregnate ovum and the two factors of which it is
+composed, which two factors are but offshoots from two distinct
+personalities, of which they are as much part as the apple is of the
+apple-tree; so that an impregnate ovum cannot without a violation of
+first principles be debarred from claiming personal identity with both
+its parents, and hence, by an easy chain of reasoning, _with each of the
+impregnate ova from which its parents were developed_.
+
+So that each ovum when impregnate should be considered not as descended
+from its ancestors, but as being a continuation of the personality of
+every ovum in the chain of its ancestry, every which ovum _it actually
+is_ as truly as the octogenarian _is_ the same identity with the ovum
+from which he has been developed.  The two cases stand or fall together.
+
+This process cannot stop short of the primordial cell, which again will
+probably turn out to be but a brief resting-place.  We therefore prove
+each one of us to _be actually_ the primordial cell which never died nor
+dies, but has differentiated itself into the life of the world, all
+living beings whatever, being one with it, and members one of another.
+
+To look at the matter for a moment in another light, it will be admitted
+that if the primordial cell had been killed before leaving issue, all its
+possible descendants would have been killed at one and the same time.  It
+is hard to see how this single fact does not establish at the point, as
+it were, of a logical bayonet, an identity between any creature and all
+others that are descended from it.
+
+* * * * *
+
+The fencing (for it does not deserve the name of serious disputation)
+with which Bishop Butler meets his opponents is rendered possible by the
+laxness with which the words "identical" and "identity" are ordinarily
+used.  Bishop Butler would not seriously deny that personality undergoes
+great changes between infancy and old age, and hence that it must undergo
+some change from moment to moment.  So universally is this recognised,
+that it is common to hear it said of such and such a man that he is not
+at all the person he was, or of such and such another that he is twice
+the man he used to be--expressions than which none nearer the truth can
+well be found.  On the other hand, those whom Bishop Butler is intending
+to confute would be the first to admit that, though there are many
+changes between infancy and old age, yet they come about in any one
+individual under such circumstances as we are all agreed in considering
+as the factors of personal identity rather than as hindrances
+thereto--that is to say that there has been no entire and permanent death
+on the part of the individual between any two phases of his existence,
+and that any one phase has had a lasting though perhaps imperceptible
+effect upon all succeeding ones.  So that no one ever seriously argued in
+the manner supposed by Bishop Butler, unless with modifications and
+saving clauses, to which it does not suit his purpose to call attention.
+
+* * * * *
+
+No doubt it would be more strictly accurate to say "you are the now phase
+of the person I met last night," or "you are the being which has been
+evolved from the being I met last night," than "you are the person I met
+last night."  But life is too short for the periphrases which would crowd
+upon us from every quarter, if we did not set our face against all that
+is under the surface of things, unless, that is to say, the going beneath
+the surface is, for some special chance of profit, excusable or capable
+of extenuation.
+
+* * * * *
+
+Take again the case of some weeping trees, whose boughs spring up into
+fresh trees when they have reached the ground, who shall say at what time
+they cease to be members of the parent tree?  In the case of cuttings
+from plants it is easy to elude the difficulty by making a parade of the
+sharp and sudden act of separation from the parent stock, but this is
+only a piece of mental sleight of hand; the cutting remains as much part
+of its parent plant as though it had never been severed from it; it goes
+on profiting by the experience which it had before it was cut off, as
+much as though it had never been cut off at all.  This will be more
+readily seen in the case of worms which have been cut in half.  Let a
+worm be cut in half, and the two halves will become fresh worms; which of
+them is the original worm?  Surely both.  Perhaps no simpler cage than
+this could readily be found of the manner in which personality eludes us,
+the moment we try to investigate its real nature.  There are few ideas
+which on first consideration appear so simple, and none which becomes
+more utterly incapable of limitation or definition as soon as it is
+examined closely.
+
+It has gone the way of species.  It is now generally held that species
+blend or have blended into one another; so that any possibility of
+arrangement and apparent subdivision into definite groups, is due to the
+suppression by death both of individuals and whole genera, which, had
+they been now existing, would have linked all living beings by a series
+of gradations so subtle that little classification could have been
+attempted.  What we have failed to see is that the individual is as much
+linked onto other individuals as the species is linked on to other
+species.  How it is that the one great personality of life as a whole,
+should have split itself up into so many centres of thought and action,
+each one of which is wholly, or at any rate nearly unconscious of its
+connection with the other members, instead of having grown up into a huge
+polyp, or as it were coral reef or compound animal over the whole world,
+which should be conscious but of its own one single existence; how it is
+that the daily waste of this creature should be carried on by the
+conscious death of its individual members, instead of by the unconscious
+waste of tissue which goes on in the bodies of each individual (if indeed
+the tissue which we waste daily in our own bodies is so unconscious of
+its birth and death as we suppose); how, again, that the daily repair of
+this huge creature life should have become decentralised, and be carried
+on by conscious reproduction on the part of its component items, instead
+of by the unconscious nutrition of the whole from a single centre, as the
+nutrition of our own bodies would appear (though perhaps falsely) to be
+carried on; these are matters upon which I dare not speculate here, but
+on which some reflections may follow in subsequent chapters.
+
+
+
+INSTINCT AS INHERITED MEMORY.  (CHAPTER XI. OF LIFE AND HABIT.)
+
+
+Obviously the memory of a habit or experience will not commonly be
+transmitted to offspring in that perfection which is called "instinct,"
+till the habit or experience has been repeated in several generations
+with more or less uniformity; for otherwise the impression made will not
+be strong enough to endure through the busy and difficult task of
+reproduction.  This of course involves that the habit shall have
+attained, as it were, equilibrium with the creature's sense of its own
+needs, so that it shall have long seemed the best course possible,
+leaving upon the whole and under ordinary circumstances little further to
+be desired, and hence that it should have been little varied during many
+generations.  We should expect that it would be transmitted in a more or
+less partial, varying, imperfect, and intelligent condition before
+equilibrium had been attained; it would, however, continually tend
+towards equilibrium.
+
+When this stage has been reached, as regards any habit, the creature will
+cease trying to improve; on which the repetition of the habit will become
+stable, and hence capable of more unerring transmission--but at the same
+time improvement will cease; the habit will become fixed, and be perhaps
+transmitted at an earlier and earlier age, till it has reached that date
+of manifestation which shall be found most agreeable to the other habits
+of the creature.  It will also be manifested, as a matter of course,
+without further consciousness or reflection, for people cannot be always
+opening up settled questions; if they thought a matter all over yesterday
+they cannot think it all over again to-day, what they thought then they
+will think now, and will act upon their opinion; and this, too, even in
+spite sometimes of misgiving, that if they were to think still further
+they could find a still better course.  It is not, therefore, to be
+expected that "instinct" should show signs of that hesitating and
+tentative action which results from knowledge that is still so imperfect
+as to be actively self-conscious; nor yet that it should grow or vary
+perceptibly unless under such changed conditions as shall baffle memory,
+and present the alternative of either invention--that is to say,
+variation--or death.
+
+But every instinct must have passed through the laboriously intelligent
+stages through which human civilisations _and mechanical inventions_ are
+now passing; and he who would study the origin of an instinct with its
+development, partial transmission, further growth, further transmission,
+approach to more unreflecting stability, and finally, its perfection as
+an unerring and unerringly transmitted instinct, must look to laws,
+customs, _and machinery_ as his best instructors.  Customs and machines
+are instincts _and organs_ now in process of development; they will
+assuredly one day reach the unconscious state of equilibrium which we
+observe in the structures and instincts of bees and ants, and an approach
+to which may be found among some savage nations.  We may reflect,
+however, not without pleasure, that this condition--the true
+millennium--is still distant.  Nevertheless the ants and bees seem happy;
+perhaps more happy than when so many social questions were in as hot
+discussion among them as other and not dissimilar ones will one day be
+amongst ourselves.
+
+And this, as will be apparent, opens up the whole question of the
+stability of species, which we cannot follow further here, than to say,
+that according to the balance of testimony, many plants and animals do
+appear to have reached a phase of being from which they are hard to
+move--that is to say, they will die sooner than be at the pains of
+altering their habits--true martyrs to their convictions.  Such races
+refuse to see changes in their surroundings as long as they can, but when
+compelled to recognise them, they throw up the game because they cannot
+and will not, or will not and cannot, invent.
+
+This is perfectly intelligible, for a race is nothing but a long-lived
+individual, and like any individual, or tribe of men whom we have yet
+observed, will have its special capacities and its special limitations,
+though, as in the case of the individual, so also with the race, it is
+exceedingly hard to say what those limitations are, and why, having been
+able to go so far, it should go no further.  Every man and every race is
+capable of education up to a certain point, but not to the extent of
+being made from a sow's ear into a silk purse.  The proximate cause of
+the limitation seems to lie in the absence of the wish to go further; the
+presence or absence of the wish will depend upon the nature and
+surroundings of the individual, which is simply a way of saying that one
+can get no further, but that as the song (with a slight alteration)
+says:--
+
+   "Some breeds do, and some breeds don't,
+   Some breeds will, but this breed won't:
+   I tried very often to see if it would,
+   But it said it really couldn't, and I don't think it could."
+
+* * * * *
+
+M. Ribot in his work on Heredity {119} writes (p. 14):--"The duckling
+hatched by the hen makes straight for water."  In what conceivable way
+can we account for this, except on the supposition that the duckling
+knows perfectly well what it can and what it cannot do with water, owing
+to its recollection of what it did when it was still one individuality
+with its parents, and hence, when it was a duckling before?
+
+"The squirrel, before it knows anything of winter, lays up a store of
+nuts.  A bird when hatched in a cage will, when given its freedom, build
+for itself a nest like that of its parents, out of the same materials,
+and of the same shape."
+
+If this is not due to memory, "even an imperfect" explanation of what
+else it can be due to, "would," to quote from Mr. Darwin, "be
+satisfactory."
+
+"Intelligence gropes about, tries this way and that, misses its object,
+commits mistakes, and corrects them."
+
+Yes.  Because intelligence is of consciousness, and consciousness is of
+attention, and attention is of uncertainty, and uncertainty is of
+ignorance or want of consciousness.  Intelligence is not yet thoroughly
+up to its business.
+
+"Instinct advances with a mechanical certainty, hence comes its
+unconscious character.  It knows nothing either of ends, or of the means
+of attaining them: it implies no comparison, judgment, or choice."
+
+This is assumption.  What is certain is that instinct does not betray
+signs of self-consciousness as to its own knowledge.  It has dismissed
+reference to first principles, and is no longer under the law, but under
+the grace of a settled conviction.
+
+"All seems directed by thought."
+
+Yes; because all _has been_ in earlier existences directed by thought.
+
+"Without ever arriving at thought."
+
+Because it has _got past thought_, and though "directed by thought"
+originally, is now travelling in exactly the opposite direction.  It is
+not likely to reach thought again, till people get to know worse and
+worse how to do things, the oftener they practise them.
+
+"And if this phenomenon appear strange, it must be observed that
+analogous states occur in ourselves.  _All that we do from
+habit_--_walking_, _writing_, _or practising a mechanical act_, _for
+instance_--_all these and many other very complex acts are performed
+without consciousness_.
+
+"Instinct appears stationary.  It does not, like intelligence, seem to
+grow and decay, to gain and to lose.  It does not improve."
+
+Naturally.  For improvement can only as a general rule be looked for
+along the line of latest development, that is to say, in matters
+concerning which the creature is being still consciously exercised.  Older
+questions are settled, and the solution must be accepted as final, for
+the question of living at all would be reduced to an absurdity, if
+everything decided upon one day was to be undecided again the next; as
+with painting or music, so with life and politics, let every man be fully
+persuaded in his own mind, for decision with wrong will be commonly a
+better policy than indecision--I had almost added with right; and a firm
+purpose with risk will be better than an infirm one with temporary
+exemption from disaster.  Every race has made its great blunders, to
+which it has nevertheless adhered, inasmuch as the corresponding
+modification of other structures and instincts was found preferable to
+the revolution which would be caused by a radical change of structure,
+with consequent havoc among a legion of vested interests.  Rudimentary
+organs are, as has been often said, the survivals of these interests--the
+signs of their peaceful and gradual extinction as living faiths; they are
+also instances of the difficulty of breaking through any cant or trick
+which we have long practised, and which is not sufficiently troublesome
+to make it a serious object with us to cure ourselves of the habit.
+
+"If it does not remain perfectly invariable, at least it only varies
+within very narrow limits; and though this question has been warmly
+debated in our day and is yet unsettled, we may yet say that in instinct
+immutability is the law, variation the exception."
+
+This is quite as it should be.  Genius will occasionally rise a little
+above convention, but with an old convention immutability will be the
+rule.
+
+"Such," continues M. Ribot, "are the admitted characters of instinct."
+
+Yes; but are they not also the admitted characters of habitual actions
+that are due to memory?
+
+* * * * *
+
+M. Ribot says a little further on: "Originally man had considerable
+trouble in taming the animals which are now domesticated; and his work
+would have been in vain had not heredity" (memory) "come to his aid.  It
+may be said that after man has modified a wild animal to his will, there
+goes on in its progeny a silent conflict between two heredities"
+(memories), "the one tending to fix the acquired modifications and the
+other to preserve the primitive instincts.  The latter often get the
+mastery, and only after several generations is training sure of victory.
+But we may see that in either case heredity" (memory) "always asserts its
+rights."
+
+How marvellously is the above passage elucidated and made to fit in with
+the results of our recognised experience, by the simple substitution of
+the word "memory" for heredity.
+
+* * * * *
+
+I cannot refrain from bringing forward a few more instances of what I
+think must be considered by every reader as hereditary memory.  Sydney
+Smith writes:--
+
+"Sir James Hall hatched some chickens in an oven.  Within a few minutes
+after the shell was broken, a spider was turned loose before this very
+youthful brood; the destroyer of flies had hardly proceeded more than a
+few inches, before he was descried by one of these oven-born chickens,
+and, at one peck of his bill, immediately devoured.  This certainly was
+not imitation.  A female goat very near delivery died; Galen cut out the
+young kid, and placed before it a bundle of hay, a bunch of fruit, and a
+pan of milk; the young kid smelt to them all very attentively, and then
+began to lap the milk.  This was not imitation.  And what is commonly and
+rightly called instinct, cannot be explained away under the notion of its
+being imitation."  (Lecture xvii. on Moral Philosophy.)
+
+It cannot, indeed, be explained away under the notion of its being
+imitation, but I think it may well be so under that of its being memory.
+
+Again, a little further on in the same lecture as that above quoted from,
+we find:--
+
+"Ants and beavers lay up magazines.  Where do they get their knowledge
+that it will not be so easy to collect food in rainy weather as it is in
+summer?  Men and women know these things, because their grandpapas and
+grandmammas have told them so.  Ants hatched from the egg artificially,
+or birds hatched in this manner, have all this knowledge by intuition,
+without the smallest communication with any of their relations.  Now
+observe what the solitary wasp does; she digs several holes in the sand,
+in each of which she deposits an egg, though she certainly knows not (?)
+that an animal is deposited in that egg, and still less that this animal
+must be nourished with other animals.  She collects a few green flies,
+rolls them up neatly in several parcels (like Bologna sausages), and
+stuffs one parcel into each hole where an egg is deposited.  When the
+wasp worm is hatched, it finds a store of provision ready made; and what
+is most curious, the quantity allotted to each is exactly sufficient to
+support it, till it attains the period of wasphood, and can provide for
+itself.  This instinct of the parent wasp is the more remarkable as it
+does not feed upon flesh itself.  Here the little creature has never seen
+its parent; for by the time it is born, the parent is always eaten by
+sparrows; and yet, without the slightest education, or previous
+experience, it does everything that the parent did before it.  Now the
+objectors to the doctrine of instinct may say what they please, but young
+tailors have no intuitive method of making pantaloons; a new-born mercer
+cannot measure diaper; nature teaches a cook's daughter nothing about
+sippets.  All these things require with us seven years' apprenticeship;
+but insects are like Moliere's persons of quality--they know everything
+(as Moliere says) without having learnt anything.  'Les gens de qualite
+savent tout, sans avoir rien appris.'"
+
+How completely all difficulty vanishes from the facts so pleasantly told
+in this passage when we bear in mind the true nature of personal
+identity, the ordinary working of memory, and the vanishing tendency of
+consciousness concerning what we know exceedingly well.
+
+My last instance I take from M. Ribot, who writes:--"Gratiolet, in his
+_Anatomie Comparee du Systems Nerveux_, states that an old piece of
+wolf's skin, with the hair all worn away, when set before a little dog,
+threw the animal into convulsions of fear by the slight scent attaching
+to it.  The dog had never seen a wolf, and we can only explain this alarm
+by the hereditary transmission of certain sentiments, coupled with a
+certain perception of the sense of smell."  ("Heredity," p. 43.)
+
+I should prefer to say "we can only explain the alarm by supposing that
+the smell of the wolf's skin"--the sense of smell being, as we all know,
+more powerful to recall the ideas that have been associated with it than
+any other sense--"brought up the ideas with which it had been associated
+in the dog's mind during many previous existences"--he on smelling the
+wolf's skin remembering all about wolves perfectly well.
+
+
+
+CONCLUDING REMARKS.  (FROM CHAPTER XV. OF LIFE AND HABIT.)
+
+
+Here, then, I leave my case, though well aware that I have crossed the
+threshold only of my subject.  My work is of a tentative character, put
+before the public as a sketch or design for a, possibly, further
+endeavour, in which I hope to derive assistance from the criticisms which
+this present volume may elicit. {125}  Such as it is, however, for the
+present I must leave it.
+
+We have seen that we cannot do anything thoroughly till we can do it
+unconsciously, and that we cannot do anything unconsciously till we can
+do it thoroughly; this at first seems illogical; but logic and
+consistency are luxuries for the gods, and the lower animals, only.  Thus
+a boy cannot really know how to swim till he can swim, but he cannot swim
+till he knows how to swim.  Conscious effort is but the process of
+rubbing off the rough corners from these two contradictory statements,
+till they eventually fit into one another so closely that it is
+impossible to disjoin them.
+
+Whenever we see any creature able to go through any complicated and
+difficult process with little or no effort--whether it be a bird building
+her nest, or a hen's egg making itself into a chicken, or an ovum turning
+itself into a baby--we may conclude that the creature has done the same
+thing on a very great number of past occasions.
+
+We found the phenomena exhibited by heredity to be so like those of
+memory, and to be so inexplicable on any other supposition than that they
+were modes of memory, that it was easier to suppose them due to memory in
+spite of the fact that we cannot remember having recollected, than to
+believe that because we cannot so remember, therefore the phenomena
+cannot be due to memory.
+
+We were thus led to consider "personal identity," in order to see whether
+there was sufficient reason for denying that the experience, which we
+must have clearly gained somewhere, was gained by us when we were in the
+persons of our forefathers; we found, not without surprise, that unless
+we admitted that it might be so gained, in so far as that we once
+_actually were_ our remotest ancestor, we must change our ideas
+concerning personality altogether.
+
+We therefore assumed that the phenomena of heredity, whether as regards
+instinct or structure, were due to memory of past experiences,
+accumulated and fused till they had become automatic, or quasi automatic,
+much in the same way as after a long life--
+
+   . . . "Old experience doth attain
+   To something like prophetic strain."
+
+After dealing with certain phenomena of memory, but more especially with
+its abeyance and revival, we inquired what the principal corresponding
+phenomena of life and species should be, on the hypothesis that they were
+mainly due to memory.
+
+I think I may say that we found the hypothesis fit in with actual facts
+in a sufficiently satisfactory manner.  We found not a few matters, as,
+for example, the sterility of hybrids, the principle underlying
+longevity, the phenomena of old age, and puberty as generally near the
+end of development, explain themselves with more completeness than I have
+yet heard of their being explained on any other hypothesis.  Most indeed
+of these phenomena have been left hitherto without even an attempt at an
+explanation.
+
+We considered the most important difficulty in the way of instinct as
+hereditary habit, namely, the structure and instincts of neuter insects;
+these are very unlike those of their parents, and cannot, apparently, be
+transmitted to offspring by individuals of the previous generation, in
+whom such structure and instincts appeared, inasmuch as these creatures
+are sterile.  I do not say that the difficulty is wholly removed,
+inasmuch as some obscurity must be admitted to remain as to the manner in
+which the structure of the larva is aborted; this obscurity is likely to
+remain till we know more of the early history of civilisation among bees
+than I can find that we know at present; but I believe the difficulty was
+reduced to such proportions as to make it little likely to be felt in
+comparison with that of attributing instinct to any other cause than
+inherited habit, or memory on the part of offspring, of habits contracted
+in the persons of its ancestors. {127}
+
+We then inquired what was the great principle underlying variation, and
+answered, with Lamarck, that it must be "sense of need;" and though not
+without being haunted by suspicion of a vicious circle, and also well
+aware that we were not much nearer the origin of life than when we
+started, we still concluded that here was the truest origin of species,
+and hence of genera; and that the accumulation of variations, which in
+time amounted to specific and generic differences, was due to
+intelligence and memory on the part of the creature varying, rather than
+to the operation of what Mr. Darwin has called "natural selection."  At
+the same time we admitted that the course of nature is very much as Mr.
+Darwin has represented it, in this respect, in so far as that there is a
+struggle for existence, and that the weaker must go to the wall.  But we
+denied that this part of the course of nature would lead to much, if any,
+accumulation of variation, unless the variation was directed mainly by
+intelligent sense of need, with continued personality and memory.
+
+We conclude, therefore, that the small, apparently structureless,
+impregnate ovum from which we have each one of us sprung, has a potential
+recollection of all that has happened to each one of its ancestors prior
+to the period at which any such ancestor has issued from the bodies of
+its progenitors--provided, that is to say, a sufficiently deep, or
+sufficiently often-repeated, impression has been made to admit of its
+being remembered at all.
+
+Each step of normal development will lead the impregnate ovum up to, and
+remind it of, its next ordinary course of action, in the same way as we,
+when we recite a well-known passage, are led up to each successive
+sentence by the sentence which has immediately preceded it.
+
+And for this reason, namely, that as it takes two people "to tell" a
+thing--a speaker and a comprehending listener, without which last, though
+much may have been said, there has been nothing told--so also it takes
+two people, as it were, to "remember" a thing--the creature remembering,
+and the surroundings of the creature at the time it last remembered.
+Hence, though the ovum immediately after impregnation is instinct with
+all the memories of both parents, not one of these memories can normally
+become active till both the ovum itself, and its surroundings, are
+sufficiently like what they respectively were, when the occurrence now to
+be remembered last took place.  The memory will then immediately return,
+and the creature will do as it did on the last occasion that it was in
+like case as now.  This ensures that similarity of order shall be
+preserved in all the stages of development in successive generations.
+
+Life then is the being possessed of memory.  We are all the same stuff to
+start with; plants and animals only differ from one another because they
+remember different things; they grow up in the shapes they bear because
+these shapes are the embodiments of their ideas concerning their own past
+history; they are forms of faith or faiths of form whichever the reader
+chooses.
+
+Hence the term "Natural History," as applied to the different plants and
+animals around us.  For surely the study of natural history means only
+the study of plants and animals themselves, which, at the moment of using
+the words "Natural History," we assume to be the most important part of
+nature.
+
+A living creature well supported by a mass of healthy ancestral memory is
+a young and growing creature, free from ache or pain, and thoroughly
+acquainted with its business so far, but with much yet to be reminded of.
+A creature which finds itself and its surroundings not so unlike those of
+its parents about the time of their begetting it, as to be compelled to
+recognise that it never yet was in any such position, is a creature in
+the heyday of life.  A creature which begins to be aware of itself is one
+which is beginning to recognise that the situation is a new one.
+
+It is the young and fair, then, who are the truly old and truly
+experienced; it is they who alone have a trustworthy memory to guide
+them; they alone know things as they are, and it is from them that, as we
+grow older, we must study if we would still cling to truth.  The whole
+charm of youth lies in its advantage over age in respect of experience,
+and where this has for some reason failed, or been misapplied, the charm
+is broken.  When we say that we are getting old, we should say rather
+that we are getting new or young, and are suffering from inexperience,
+which drives us into doing things which we do not understand, and lands
+us, eventually, in the utter impotence of death.  The kingdom of heaven
+is the kingdom of little children.
+
+
+
+
+SELECTIONS FROM EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. {131}
+
+
+IMPOTENCE OF PALEY'S CONCLUSION.  THE TELEOLOGY OF THE EVOLUTIONIST.
+(FROM CHAPTER III. OF EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW.)
+
+
+If we conceive of ourselves as looking simultaneously upon a real foot,
+and upon an admirably constructed artificial one, placed by the side of
+it, the idea of design, and design by an intelligent living being with a
+body and soul (without which, the use of the word design is delusive),
+will present itself strongly to our minds in connection both with the
+true foot and with the model; but we find another idea asserting itself
+with even greater strength, namely, that the design of the true foot is
+infinitely more intricate, and yet is carried into execution in far more
+masterly manner than that of the model.  We not only feel that there is a
+wider difference between the ability, time, and care which have been
+lavished on the real foot and upon the model, than there is between the
+skill and the time taken to produce Westminster Abbey, and that bestowed
+upon a gingerbread cake stuck with sugar plums so as to represent it, but
+also that these two objects must have been manufactured on different
+principles.  We do not for a moment doubt that the real foot was
+designed, but we are so astonished at the dexterity of the designer that
+we are at a loss for some time to think who could have designed it, where
+he can live, in what manner he studied, for how long, and by what
+processes he carried out his design, when matured, into actual practice.
+Until recently it was thought that there was no answer to many of these
+questions, more especially to those which bear upon the mode of
+manufacture.  For the last hundred years, however, the importance of a
+study has been recognised which does actually reveal to us in no small
+degree the processes by which the human foot is manufactured, so that in
+our endeavour to lay our hands upon the points of difference between the
+kind of design with which the foot itself is designed, and the design of
+the model, we turn naturally to the guidance of those who have made this
+study their specialty; and a very wide difference does this study,
+embryology, at once reveal to us.
+
+Writing of the successive changes through which each embryo is forced to
+pass, the late Mr. G. H. Lewes says that "none of these phases have any
+adaptation to the future state of the animal, but are in positive
+contradiction to it or are simply purposeless; whereas all show stamped
+on them the unmistakable characters of _ancestral_ adaptation, and the
+progressions of organic evolution.  What does the fact imply?  There is
+not a single known example of a complex organism which is not developed
+out of simpler forms.  Before it can attain the complex structure which
+distinguishes it, there must be an evolution of forms similar to those
+which distinguish the structure of organisms lower in the series.  On the
+hypothesis of a plan which prearranged the organic world, nothing could
+be more unworthy of a supreme intelligence than this inability to
+construct an organism at once, without making several previous tentative
+efforts, undoing to-day what was so carefully done yesterday, and
+_repeating for centuries the same tentatives in the same succession_.  Do
+not let us blink this consideration.  There is a traditional phrase much
+in vogue among the anthropomorphists, which arose naturally enough from a
+tendency to take human methods as an explanation of the Divine--a phrase
+which becomes a sort of argument--'The Great Architect.'  But if we are
+to admit the human point of view, a glance at the facts of embryology
+must produce very uncomfortable reflections.  For what should we say to
+an architect who was unable, or being able was obstinately unwilling, to
+erect a palace except by first using his materials in the shape of a hut,
+then pulling them down and rebuilding them as a cottage, then adding
+story to story and room to room, _not_ with any reference to the ultimate
+purposes of the palace, but wholly with reference to the way in which
+houses were constructed in ancient times?  What should we say to the
+architect who could not form a museum out of bricks and mortar, but was
+forced to begin as if going to construct a mansion, and after proceeding
+some way in this direction, altered his plan into a palace, and that
+again into a museum?  Yet this is the sort of succession on which
+organisms are constructed.  The fact has long been familiar; how has it
+been reconciled with infinite wisdom?  Let the following passage answer
+for a thousand:--'The embryo is nothing like the miniature of the adult.
+For a long while the body in its entirety and in its details, presents
+the strangest of spectacles.  Day by day and hour by hour, the aspect of
+the scene changes, and this instability is exhibited by the most
+essential parts no less than by the accessory parts.  One would say that
+nature feels her way, and only reaches the goal after many times missing
+the path' (on dirait que la nature tatonne et ne conduit son oeuvre a bon
+fin, qu'apres s'etre souvent trompee)." {134a}
+
+The above passage does not, I think, affect the evidence for design which
+we adduced in the preceding chapter. {134b}  However strange the process
+of manufacture may appear, when the work comes to be turned out the
+design is too manifest to be doubted.
+
+If the reader were to come upon some lawyer's deed which dealt with
+matters of such unspeakable intricacy that it baffled his imagination to
+conceive how it could ever have been drafted, and if in spite of this he
+were to find the intricacy of the provisions to be made, exceeded only by
+the ease and simplicity with which the deed providing for them was found
+to work in practice; and after this, if he were to discover that the
+deed, by whomsoever drawn, had nevertheless been drafted upon principles
+which at first seemed very foreign to any according to which he was in
+the habit of drafting deeds himself, as for example, that the draftsman
+had begun to draft a will as a marriage settlement, and so forth--yet an
+observer would not, I take it, do either of two things.  He would not in
+the face of the result deny the design, making himself judge rather of
+the method of procedure than of the achievement.  Nor yet after insisting
+in the manner of Paley, on the wonderful proofs of intention and on the
+exquisite provisions which were to be found in every syllable--thus
+leading us up to the highest pitch of expectation--would he present us
+with such an impotent conclusion as that the designer, though a living
+person and a true designer, was yet immaterial and intangible, a
+something, in fact, which proves to be a nothing; an omniscient and
+omnipotent vacuum.
+
+Our observer would feel he need not have been at such pains to establish
+his design if this was to be the upshot of his reasoning.  He would
+therefore admit the design, and by consequence the designer, but would
+probably ask a little time for reflection before he ventured to say who,
+or what, or where the designer was.  Then gaining some insight into the
+manner in which the deed had been drawn, he would conclude that the
+draftsman was a specialist who had had long practice in this particular
+kind of work, but who now worked almost as it might be said automatically
+and without consciousness, and found it difficult to depart from a
+habitual method of procedure.
+
+We turn, then, on Paley, and say to him: "We have admitted your design
+and your designer.  Where is he?  Show him to us.  If you cannot show him
+to us as flesh and blood, show him as flesh and sap; show him as a living
+cell; show him as protoplasm.  Lower than this we should not fairly go;
+it is not in the bond or _nexus_ of our ideas that something utterly
+inanimate and inorganic should scheme, design, contrive, and elaborate
+structures which can make mistakes: it may elaborate low unerring things,
+like crystals, but it cannot elaborate those which have the power to err.
+Nevertheless, we will commit such abuse with our understandings as to
+waive this point, and we will ask you to show him to us as air which, if
+it cannot be seen yet can be felt, weighed, handled, transferred from
+place to place, be judged by its effects, and so forth; or if this may
+not be, give us half a grain of hydrogen, diffused through all space and
+invested with some of the minor attributes of matter; or if you cannot do
+this, give us an imponderable like electricity, or even the higher
+mathematics, but give us something or throw off the mask and tell us
+fairly out that it is your paid profession to hoodwink us on this matter
+if you can, and that you are but doing your best to earn an honest
+living."
+
+We may fancy Paley as turning the tables upon us and as saying; "But you
+too have admitted a designer--you too then must mean a designer with a
+body and soul, who must be somewhere to be found in space, and who must
+live in time.  Where is this your designer?  Can you show him more than I
+can?  Can you lay your finger on him and demonstrate him so that a child
+shall see him and know him, and find what was heretofore an isolated idea
+concerning him, combine itself instantaneously with the idea of the
+designer, we will say, of the human foot, so that no power on earth shall
+henceforth tear those two ideas asunder?  Surely if you cannot do this,
+you too are trifling with words, and abusing your own mind and that of
+your reader.  Where, then, is your designer of man?  Who made him?  And
+where, again, is your designer of beasts and birds, of fishes and of
+plants?"
+
+Our answer is simple enough; it is that we can and do point to a living
+tangible person with flesh, blood, eyes, nose, ears, organs, senses,
+dimensions, who did of his own cunning after infinite proof of every kind
+of hazard and experiment scheme out and fashion each organ of the human
+body.  This is the person whom we claim as the designer and artificer of
+that body, and he is the one of all others the best fitted for the task
+by his antecedents, and his practical knowledge of the requirements of
+the case--for he is man himself.
+
+Not man, the individual of any given generation, but man in the entirety
+of his existence from the dawn of life onwards to the present moment.  In
+like manner we say that the designer of all organisms is so incorporate
+with the organisms themselves--so lives, moves, and has its being in
+those organisms, and is so one with them--they in it, and it in them--that
+it is more consistent with reason and the common use of words to see the
+designer of each living form in the living form itself, than to look for
+its designer in some other place or person.
+
+Thus we have a third alternative presented to us.
+
+Mr. Charles Darwin and his followers deny design, as having any
+appreciable share in the formation of organism at all.
+
+Paley and the theologians insist on design, but upon a designer outside
+the universe and the organism.
+
+The third opinion is that suggested in the first instance and carried out
+to a very high degree of development by Buffon.  It was improved, and
+indeed, made almost perfect by Dr. Erasmus Darwin, but too much neglected
+by him after he had put it forward.  It was borrowed, as I think we may
+say with some confidence, from Dr. Darwin by Lamarck, and was followed up
+by him ardently thenceforth, during the remainder of his life, though
+somewhat less perfectly comprehended by him than it had been by Dr.
+Darwin.  It is that the design which has designed organisms, has resided
+within, and been embodied in, the organisms themselves.
+
+
+
+FAILURE OF THE FIRST EVOLUTIONISTS TO SEE THEIR POSITION AS TELEOLOGICAL.
+(CHAPTER IV. OF EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW.)
+
+
+It follows from the doctrine of Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, if not
+from that of Buffon himself, that the majority of organs are as purposive
+to the evolutionist as to the theologian, and far more intelligibly so.
+Circumstances, however, prevented these writers from acknowledging this
+fact to the world, and perhaps even to themselves.  Their _crux_ was, as
+it still is to so many evolutionists, the presence of rudimentary organs,
+and the processes of embryological development.  They would not admit
+that rudimentary and therefore useless organs were designed by a Creator
+to take their place once and for ever as part of a scheme whose main idea
+was, that every animal structure was to serve some useful end in
+connection with its possessor.
+
+This was the doctrine of final causes as then commonly held; in the face
+of rudimentary organs it was absurd.  Buffon was above all things else a
+plain matter of fact thinker, who refused to go far beyond the obvious.
+Like all other profound writers, he was, if I may say so, profoundly
+superficial.  He felt that the aim of research does not consist in the
+knowing this or that, but in the easing of the desire to know or
+understand more completely--in the peace of mind which passeth all
+understanding.  His was the perfection of a healthy mental organism by
+which over effort is felt to be as vicious and contemptible as indolence.
+He knew this too well to know the grounds of his knowledge, but we
+smaller people who know it less completely, can see that such felicitous
+instinctive tempering together of the two great contradictory principles,
+love of effort and love of ease, has underlain every healthy step of all
+healthy growth, whether of vegetable or animal, from the earliest
+conceivable time to the present moment.  Nothing is worth looking at
+which is seen either too obviously or with too much difficulty.  Nothing
+is worth doing or well done which is not done fairly easily, and some
+little deficiency of effort is more pardonable than any very perceptible
+excess, for virtue has ever erred on the side of self-indulgence rather
+than of asceticism.
+
+According to Buffon, then--as also according to Dr. Darwin, who was just
+such another practical and genial thinker, and who was distinctly a pupil
+of Buffon, though a most intelligent and original one--if an organ after
+a reasonable amount of inspection appeared to be useless, it was to be
+called useless without more ado, and theories were to be ordered out of
+court if they were troublesome.  In like manner, if animals breed freely
+_inter se_ before our eyes, as for example the horse and ass, the fact
+was to be noted, but no animals were to be classed as capable of
+interbreeding until they had asserted their right to such classification
+by breeding with tolerable certainty.  If, again, an animal looked as if
+it felt, that is to say, if it moved about pretty quickly or made a
+noise, it must be held to feel; if it did neither of these things it did
+not look as if it felt, and therefore it must be said not to feel.  _De
+non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem est lex_ was one of the chief
+axioms of their philosophy; no writers have had a greater horror of
+mystery or of ideas that have not become so mastered as to be, or to have
+been, superficial.  Lamarck was one of those men of whom I believe it has
+been said that they have brain upon the brain.  He had his theory that an
+animal could not feel unless it had a nervous system, and at least a
+spinal marrow--and that it could not think at all without a brain--all
+his facts, therefore, have to be made to square with this.  With Buffon
+and Dr. Darwin we feel safe that however wrong they may sometimes be,
+their conclusions have always been arrived at on that fairly superficial
+view of things in which, as I have elsewhere said, our nature alone
+permits us to be comforted.
+
+To these writers, then, the doctrine of final causes for rudimentary
+organs was a piece of mystification and an absurdity; no less fatal to
+any such doctrine were the processes of embryological development.  It
+was plain that the commonly received teleology must be given up; but the
+idea of design or purpose was so associated in their minds with
+theological design that they avoided it altogether.  They seem to have
+forgotten that an internal purpose is as much purpose as an external one;
+hence, unfortunately, though their whole theory of development is
+intensely purposive, it is the fact rather than the name of teleology
+which has hitherto been insisted upon, even by the greatest writers on
+evolution--the name having been most persistently denied even by those
+who were most insisting on the thing itself.
+
+It is easy to understand the difficulty felt by the fathers of evolution
+when we remember how much had to be seen before the facts could lie well
+before them.  It was necessary to attain, firstly, to a perception of the
+unity of person between parents and offspring in successive generations;
+secondly, it must be seen that an organism's memory (within the
+limitations to which all memory is subject) goes back for generations
+beyond its birth, to the first beginnings in fact, of which we know
+anything whatever; thirdly, the latency of that memory, as of memory
+generally, till the associated ideas are reproduced, must be brought to
+bear upon the facts of heredity; and lastly, the unconsciousness with
+which habitual actions come to be performed, must be assigned as the
+explanation of the unconsciousness with which we grow and discharge most
+of our natural functions.
+
+Buffon was too busy with the fact that animals descended with
+modification at all, to go beyond the development and illustration of
+this great truth.  I doubt whether he ever saw more than the first, and
+that dimly, of the four considerations above stated.
+
+Dr. Darwin was the first to point out the first two considerations; he
+did so with some clearness, but can hardly be said to have understood
+their full importance: the two latter ideas do not appear to have
+occurred to him.
+
+Lamarck had little if any perception of any one of the four.  When,
+however, they are firmly seized and brought into their due bearings one
+upon another, the facts of heredity become as simple as those of a man
+making a tobacco pipe, and rudimentary organs are seen to be essentially
+of the same character as the little rudimentary protuberance at the
+bottom of the pipe to which I referred in 'Erewhon.' {141}
+
+These organs are now no longer useful, but they once were so, and were
+therefore once purposive, though not so now.  They are the expressions of
+a bygone usefulness; sayings, as it were, about which there was at one
+time infinite wrangling, as to what both the meaning and the expression
+should best be, so that they then had living significance in the mouths
+of those who used them, though they have become such mere shibboleths and
+cant formulae to ourselves that we think no more of their meaning than we
+do of Julius Caesar in the month of July.  They continue to be reproduced
+through the force of habit, and through indisposition to get out of any
+familiar groove of action until it becomes too unpleasant for us to
+remain in it any longer.  It has long been felt that embryology and
+rudimentary structures indicated community of descent.  Dr. Darwin and
+Lamarck insisted on this, as have all subsequent writers on evolution;
+but the explanation why and how the structures come to be
+repeated--namely, that they are simply examples of the force of habit--can
+only be perceived intelligently by those who admit such unity between
+parents and offspring as that the self-development of the latter can be
+properly called habitual (as being a repetition of an act by one and the
+same individual), and can only be fully sympathised with by those who
+recognise that if habit be admitted as the key to the fact at all, the
+unconscious manner in which the habit comes to be repeated is only of a
+piece with all our other observations concerning habit.  For the fuller
+development of the foregoing, I must refer the reader to my work "Life
+and Habit."
+
+The purposiveness, which even Dr. Darwin (and Lamarck still less) seems
+never to have quite recognised in spite of their having insisted so much
+on what amounts to the same thing, now comes into full view.  It is seen
+that the organs external to the body, and those internal to it, are the
+second as much as the first, things which we have made for our own
+convenience, and with a prevision that we shall have need of them; the
+main difference between the manufacture of these two classes of organs
+being, that we have made the one kind so often that we can no longer
+follow the processes whereby we make them, while the others are new
+things which we must make introspectively or not at all, and which are
+not yet so incorporate with our vitality as that we should think they
+grow instead of being manufactured.  The manufacture of the tool, and the
+manufacture of the living organ prove therefore to be but two species of
+the same genus, which, though widely differentiated, have descended as it
+were from one common filament of desire and inventive faculty.  The
+greater or less complexity of the organs goes for very little.  It is
+only a question of the amount of intelligence and voluntary
+self-adaptation which we must admit, and this must be settled rather by
+an appeal to what we find in organism, and observe concerning it, than by
+what we may have imagined _a priori_.
+
+Given a small speck of jelly with some power of slightly varying its
+actions in accordance with slightly varying circumstances and
+desires--given such a jelly-speck with a power of assimilating other
+matter, and thus of reproducing itself, given also that it should be
+possessed of a memory and a reproductive system, and we can show how the
+whole animal world can have descended it may be from an _amoeba_ without
+interference from without, and how every organ in every creature is
+designed at first roughly and tentatively but finally fashioned with the
+most consummate perfection, by the creature which has had need of that
+organ, which best knew what it wanted, and was never satisfied till it
+had got that which was the best suited to its varying circumstances in
+their entirety.  We can even show how, if it becomes worth the
+Ethiopian's while to try and change his skin, or the leopard's to change
+his spots, they can assuredly change them within a not unreasonable time
+and adapt their covering to their own will and convenience, and to that
+of none other; thus what is commonly conceived of as direct creation by
+God is moved back to a time and space inconceivable in their remoteness,
+while the aim and design so obvious in nature are shown to be still at
+work around us, growing ever busier and busier, and advancing from day to
+day both in knowledge and power.
+
+It was reserved for Mr. Charles Darwin and for those who have too rashly
+followed him to deny purpose as having had any share in the development
+of animal and vegetable organs; to see no evidence of design in those
+wonderful provisions which have been the marvel and delight of observers
+in all ages.  The one who has drawn our attention more than perhaps any
+other living writer to those very marvels of co-adaptation, is the
+foremost to maintain that they are the result not of desire and design,
+either within the creature or without it, but of blind chance, working no
+whither, and due but to the accumulation of innumerable lucky accidents.
+
+"There are men," writes Professor Tyndal in the _Nineteenth Century_ for
+last November, {144} "and by no means the minority, who, however wealthy
+in regard to facts, can never rise into the region of principles; and
+they are sometimes intolerant of those that can.  They are formed to plod
+meritoriously on in the lower levels of thought; unpossessed of the
+pinions necessary to reach the heights, they cannot realise the mental
+act--the act of inspiration it might well be called--by which a man of
+genius, after long pondering and proving, reaches a theoretic conception
+which unravels and illuminates the tangle of centuries of observation and
+experiment.  There are minds, it may be said in passing, who, at the
+present moment, stand in this relation to Mr. Darwin."
+
+The more rhapsodical parts of the above must go for what they are worth,
+but I should be sorry to think that what remains conveyed a censure which
+might fall justly on myself.  As I read the earlier part of the passage I
+confess that I imagined the conclusion was going to be very different
+from what it proved to be.  Fresh from the study of the older men and
+also of Mr. Darwin himself, I failed to see that Mr. Darwin had
+"unravelled and illuminated" a tangled skein, but believed him, on the
+contrary, to have tangled and obscured what his predecessors had made in
+great part, if not wholly, plain.  With the older writers, I had felt as
+though in the hands of men who wished to understand themselves and to
+make their reader understand them with the smallest possible exertion.
+The older men, if not in full daylight, at any rate saw in what quarter
+of the sky the dawn was breaking, and were looking steadily towards it.
+It is not they who have put their hands over their own eyes and ours, and
+who are crying out that there is no light, but chance and blindness
+everywhere.
+
+
+
+THE TELEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION OF ORGANISM.  (CHAPTER V. OF EVOLUTION, OLD
+AND NEW.)
+
+
+I have stated the foregoing in what I take to be an extreme logical
+development, in order that the reader may more easily perceive the
+consequences of those premises which I am endeavouring to re-establish.
+But it must not be supposed that an animal or plant has ever conceived
+the idea of some organ widely different from any it was yet possessed of,
+and has set itself to design it in detail and grow towards it.
+
+The small jelly-speck, which we call the amoeba, has no organs save what
+it can extemporise as occasion arises.  If it wants to get at anything,
+it thrusts out part of its jelly, which thus serves it as an arm or hand:
+when the arm has served its purpose, it is absorbed into the rest of the
+jelly, and has now to do the duty of a stomach by helping to wrap up what
+it has just purveyed.  The small round jelly-speck spreads itself out and
+envelops its food, so that the whole creature is now a stomach, and
+nothing but a stomach.  Having digested its food, it again becomes a
+jelly-speck, and is again ready to turn part of itself into hand or foot
+as its next convenience may dictate.  It is not to be believed that such
+a creature as this, which is probably just sensitive to light and nothing
+more, should be able to form any conception of an eye and set itself to
+work to grow one, any more than it is believable that he who first
+observed the magnifying power of a dew-drop, or even he who first
+constructed a rude lens, should have had any idea in his mind of Lord
+Rosse's telescope with all its parts and appliances.  Nothing could be
+well conceived more foreign to experience and common sense.  Animals and
+plants have travelled to their present forms as a man has travelled to
+any one of his own most complicated inventions.  Slowly, step by step,
+through many blunders and mischances which have worked together for good
+to those that have persevered in elasticity.  They have travelled as man
+has travelled, with but little perception of a want till there was also
+some perception of a power, and with but little perception of a power
+till there was a dim sense of want; want stimulating power, and power
+stimulating want; and both so based upon each other that no one can say
+which is the true foundation, but rather that they must be both baseless
+and, as it were, meteoric in mid air.  They have seen very little ahead
+of a present power or need, and have been then most moral, when most
+inclined to pierce a little into futurity, but also when most obstinately
+declining to pierce too far, and busy mainly with the present.  They have
+been so far blindfolded that they could see but for a few steps in front
+of them, yet so far free to see that those steps were taken with aim and
+definitely, and not in the dark.
+
+"Plus il a su," says Buffon, speaking of man, "plus il a pu, mais aussi
+moins il a fait, moins il a su."  This holds good wherever life holds
+good.  Wherever there is life there is a moral government of rewards and
+punishments understood by the amoeba neither better nor worse than by
+man.  The history of organic development is the history of a moral
+struggle.
+
+As for the origin of a creature able to feel want and power and as to
+what want and power spring from, we know nothing as yet, nor does it seem
+worth while to go into this question until an understanding has been come
+to as to whether the interaction of want and power in some low form or
+forms of life which could assimilate matter, reproduce themselves, vary
+their actions, and be capable of remembering, will or will not suffice to
+explain the development of the varied organs and desires which we see in
+the higher vertebrates and man.  When this question has been settled,
+then it will be time to push our inquiries farther back.
+
+But given such a low form of life as here postulated, and there is no
+force in Paley's pretended objection to the Darwinism of his time.
+
+"Give our philosopher," he says, "appetencies; give him a portion of
+living irritable matter (a nerve or the clipping of a nerve) to work
+upon; give also to his incipient or progressive forms the power of
+propagating their like in every stage of their alteration; and if he is
+to be believed, he could replenish the world with all the vegetable and
+animal productions which we now see in it." {148}
+
+After meeting this theory with answers which need not detain us, he
+continues:--
+
+"The senses of animals appear to me quite incapable of receiving the
+explanation of their origin which this theory affords.  Including under
+the word 'sense' the organ and the perception, we have no account of
+either.  How will our philosopher get at vision or make an eye?  Or,
+suppose the eye formed, would the perception follow?  The same of the
+other senses.  And this objection holds its force, ascribe what you will
+to the hand of time, to the power of habit, to changes too slow to be
+observed by man, or brought within any comparison which he is able to
+make of past things with the present.  Concede what you please to these
+arbitrary and unattested superstitions, how will they help you?  Here is
+no inception.  No laws, no course, no powers of nature which prevail at
+present, nor any analogous to these would give commencement to a new
+sense; and it is in vain to inquire how that might proceed which would
+never _begin_."
+
+In answer to this, let us suppose that some inhabitants of another world
+were to see a modern philosopher so using a microscope that they should
+believe it to be a part of the philosopher's own person, which he could
+cut off from and join again to himself at pleasure, and suppose there
+were a controversy as to how this microscope had originated, and that one
+party maintained the man had made it little by little because he wanted
+it, while the other declared this to be absurd and impossible; I ask,
+would this latter party be justified in arguing that microscopes could
+never have been perfected by degrees through the preservation of and
+accumulation of small successive improvements inasmuch as men could not
+have begun to want to use microscopes until they had had a microscope
+which should show them that such an instrument would be useful to them,
+and that hence there is nothing to account for the _beginning_ of
+microscopes, which might indeed make some progress when once originated,
+but which could never originate?
+
+It might be pointed out to such a reasoner, firstly, that as regards any
+acquired power the various stages in the acquisition of which he might be
+supposed able to remember, he would find that logic notwithstanding, the
+wish did originate the power, and yet was originated by it, both coming
+up gradually out of something which was not recognisable as either power
+or wish, and advancing through vain beating of the air, to a vague
+effort, and from this to definite effort with failure, and from this to
+definite effort with success, and from this to success with little
+consciousness of effort, and from this to success with such complete
+absence of effort that he now acts unconsciously and without power of
+introspection, and that, do what he will, he can rarely or never draw a
+sharp dividing line whereat anything shall be said to begin, though none
+less certain that there has been a continuity in discontinuity, and a
+discontinuity in continuity between it and certain other past things;
+moreover, that his opponents postulated so much beginning of the
+microscope as that there should be a dew-drop, even as our evolutionists
+start with a sense of touch, of which sense all the others are
+modifications, so that not one of them, but is resolvable into touch by
+more or less easy stages; and secondly, that the question is one of fact
+and of the more evident deductions therefrom, and should not be carried
+back to those remote beginnings where the nature of the facts is so
+purely a matter of conjecture and inference.
+
+No plant or animal, then, according to our view, would be able to
+conceive more than a very slight improvement on its organisation at a
+given time, so clearly as to make the efforts towards it that would
+result in growth of the required modification; nor would these efforts be
+made with any far-sighted perception of what next and next and after, but
+only of what next; while many of the happiest thoughts would come like
+all other happy thoughts--thoughtlessly; by a chain of reasoning too
+swift and subtle for conscious analysis by the individual.  Some of these
+modifications would be noticeable, but the majority would involve no more
+noticeable difference that can be detected between the length of the
+shortest day, and that of the shortest but one.
+
+Thus a bird whose toes were not webbed, but who had under force of
+circumstances little by little in the course of many generations learned
+to swim, either from having lived near a lake, and having learnt the art
+owing to its fishing habits, or from wading about in shallow pools by the
+sea-side at low water and finding itself sometimes a little out of its
+depth and just managing to scramble over the intermediate yard or so
+between it and safety--such a bird did not probably conceive the idea of
+swimming on the water and set itself to learn to do so, and then conceive
+the idea of webbed feet and set itself to get webbed feet.  The bird
+found itself in some small difficulty, out of which it either saw, or at
+any rate found that it could extricate itself by striking out vigorously
+with its feet and extending its toes as far as ever it could; it thus
+began to learn the art of swimming and conceived the idea of swimming
+synchronously, or nearly so; or perhaps wishing to get over a yard or two
+of deep water, and trying to do so without being at the trouble of rising
+to fly, it would splash and struggle its way over the water, and thus
+practically swim, though without much perception of what it had been
+doing.  Finding that no harm had come to it, the bird would do the same
+again and again; it would thus presently lose fear, and would be able to
+act more calmly; then it would begin to find out that it could swim a
+little, and if its food lay much in the water so that it would be of
+great advantage to it to be able to alight and rest without being forced
+to return to land, it would begin to make a practice of swimming.  It
+would now discover that it could swim the more easily according as its
+feet presented a more extended surface to the water; it would therefore
+keep its toes extended wherever it swam, and as far as in it lay, would
+make the most of whatever skin was already at the base of its toes.  After
+many generations it would become web-footed, if doing as above described
+should have been found continuously convenient, so that the bird should
+have continuously used the skin about its toes as much as possible in
+this direction.
+
+For there is a margin in every organic structure (and perhaps more than
+we imagine in things inorganic also), which will admit of references, as
+it were, side notes, and glosses upon the original text.  It is on this
+margin that we may err or wander--the greatness of a mistake depending
+rather upon the extent of the departure from the original text, than on
+the direction that the departure takes.  A little error on the bad side
+is more pardonable, and less likely to hurt the organism than a too great
+departure upon the right one.  This is a fundamental proposition in any
+true system of ethics, the question what is too much or too sudden being
+decided by much the same higgling as settles the price of butter in a
+country market, and being as invisible as the link which connects the
+last moment of desire with the first of power and performance, and with
+the material result achieved.
+
+It is on this margin that the fulcrum is to be found, whereby we obtain
+the little purchase over our structure, that enables us to achieve great
+results if we use it steadily, with judgment, and with neither too little
+effort nor too much.  It is by employing this that those who have a fancy
+to move their ears or toes without moving other organs learn to do so.
+There is a man at the Agricultural Hall now {153a} playing the violin
+with his toes, and playing it, as I am told, sufficiently well.  The eye
+of the sailor, the wrist of the conjuror, the toe of the professional
+medium, are all found capable of development to an astonishing degree,
+even in a single lifetime; but in every case success has been attained by
+the simple process of making the best of whatever power a man has had at
+any given time, and by being on the look-out to take advantage of
+accident, and even of misfortune.  If a man would learn to paint, he must
+not theorise concerning art, nor think much what he would do beforehand,
+but he must do _something_--whatever under the circumstances will come
+handiest and easiest to him; and he must do that something as well as he
+can.  This will presently open the door for something else, and a way
+will show itself which no conceivable amount of searching would have
+discovered, but which yet could never have been discovered by sitting
+still and taking no pains at all.  "Dans l'animal," says Buffon, "il y a
+moins de jugement que de sentiment." {153b}
+
+It may appear as though this were blowing hot and cold with the same
+breath, inasmuch as I am insisting that important modifications of
+structure have been always purposive; and at the same time am denying
+that the creature modified has had any far-seeing purpose in the greater
+part of all those actions which have at length modified both structure
+and instinct.  Thus I say that a bird learns to swim without having any
+purpose of learning to swim before it set itself to make those movements
+which have resulted in its being able to do so.  At the same time I
+maintain that it has only learned to swim by trying to swim, and this
+involves the very purpose which I have just denied.  The reconciliation
+of these two apparently irreconcilable contentions must be found in the
+consideration that the bird was not the less trying to swim, merely
+because it did not know the name we have chosen to give to the art which
+it was trying to master, nor yet how great were the resources of that
+art.  A person, who knew all about swimming, if from some bank he could
+watch our supposed bird's first attempt to scramble over a short space of
+deep water, would at once declare that the bird was trying to swim--if
+not actually swimming.  Provided then that there is a very little
+perception of, and prescience concerning, the means whereby the next
+desired end may be attained, it matters not how little in advance that
+end may be of present desire or faculties; it is still reached through
+purpose, and must be called purposive.  Again, no matter how many of
+these small steps be taken, nor how absolute was the want of purpose or
+prescience concerning any but the one being actually taken at any given
+moment, this does not bar the result from having been arrived at through
+design and purpose.  If each one of the small steps is purposive the
+result is purposive, though there was never purpose extended over more
+than one, two, or perhaps at most three steps at a time.
+
+Returning to the art of painting for an example, are we to say that the
+proficiency which such a student as was supposed above will certainly
+attain, is not due to design, merely because it was not until he had
+already become three parts excellent that he knew the full purport of all
+that he had been doing?  When he began he had but vague notions of what
+he would do.  He had a wish to learn to represent nature, but the line
+into which he has settled down has probably proved very different from
+that which he proposed to himself originally.  Because he has taken
+advantage of his accidents, is it, therefore, one whit the less true that
+his success is the result of his desires and his design?  The _Times_
+pointed out some time ago that the theory which now associates meteors
+and comets in the most unmistakable manner, was suggested by one
+accident, and confirmed by another.  But the writer added well that "such
+accidents happen only to the zealous student of nature's secrets."  In
+the same way the bird that is taking to the habit of swimming, and of
+making the most of whatever skin it already has between its toes, will
+have doubtless to thank accidents for no small part of its progress; but
+they will be such accidents as could never have happened to or been taken
+advantage of by any creature which was not zealously trying to make the
+most of itself--and between such accidents as this, and design, the line
+is hard to draw; for if we go deep enough we shall find that most of our
+design resolves itself into as it were a shaking of the bag to see what
+will come out that will suit our purpose, and yet at the same time that
+most of our shaking of the bag resolves itself into a design that the bag
+shall contain only such and such things, or thereabouts.
+
+Again, the fact that animals are no longer conscious of design and
+purpose in much that they do, but act unreflectingly, and as we sometimes
+say concerning ourselves "automatically" or "mechanically"--that they
+have no idea whatever of the steps, whereby they have travelled to their
+present state, and show no sign of doubt about what must have been at one
+time the subject of all manner of doubts, difficulties, and
+discussions--that whatever sign of reflection they now exhibit is to be
+found only in case of some novel feature or difficulty presenting itself;
+these facts do not bar that the results achieved should be attributed to
+an inception in reason, design and purpose, no matter how rapidly and as
+we call it instinctively, the creatures may now act.
+
+For if we look closely at such an invention as the steam engine in its
+latest and most complicated developments, about which there can be no
+dispute but that they are achievements of reason, purpose and design, we
+shall find them present us with examples of all those features the
+presence of which in the handiwork of animals is too often held to bar
+reason and purpose from having had any share therein.
+
+Assuredly such men as the Marquis of Worcester and Captain Savery had
+very imperfect ideas as to the upshot of their own action.  The simplest
+steam engine now in use in England is probably a marvel of ingenuity as
+compared with the highest development which appeared possible to these
+two great men, while our newest and most highly complicated engines would
+seem to them more like living beings than machines.  Many, again, of the
+steps leading to the present development have been due to action which
+had but little heed of the steam engine, being the inventions of
+attendants whose desire was to save themselves the trouble of turning
+this or that cock, and who were indifferent to any other end than their
+own immediate convenience.  No step in fact along the whole route was
+ever taken with much perception of what would be the next step after the
+one being taken at any given moment.
+
+Nor do we find that an engine made after any old and well-known pattern
+is now made with much more consciousness of design than we can suppose a
+bird's nest to be built with.  The greater number of the parts of any
+such engine, are made by the gross as it were like screw and nuts, which
+are turned out by machinery and in respect of which the labour of design
+is now no more felt than is the design of him who first invented the
+wheel.  It is only when circumstances require any modification in the
+article to be manufactured that thought and design will come into play
+again; but I take it few will deny that if circumstances compel a bird
+either to give up a nest three-parts built altogether, or to make some
+trifling deviation from its ordinary practice, it will in nine cases out
+of ten make such deviation as shall show that it had thought the matter
+over, and had on the whole concluded to take such and such a course, that
+is to say, that it had reasoned and had acted with such purpose as its
+reason had dictated.
+
+And I imagine that this is the utmost that any one can claim even for
+man's own boasted powers.  Set the man who has been accustomed to make
+engines of one type, to make engines of another type without any
+intermediate course of training or instruction, and he will make no
+better figure with his engines than a thrush would do if commanded by her
+mate to make a nest like a blackbird.  It is vain then to contend that
+the ease and certainty with which an action is performed, even though it
+may have now become matter of such fixed habit that it cannot be suddenly
+and seriously modified without rendering the whole performance abortive,
+is any argument against that action having been an achievement of design
+and reason in respect of each one of the steps that have led to it; and
+if in respect of each one of the steps then as regards the entire action;
+for we see our own most reasoned actions become no less easy, unerring,
+automatic, and unconscious, than the actions which we call instinctive
+when they have been repeated a sufficient number of times.
+
+* * * * *
+
+If the foregoing be granted, and it be admitted that the unconsciousness
+and seeming automatism with which any action may be performed is no bar
+to its having a foundation in memory, reason, and at one time consciously
+recognised effort--and this I believe to be the chief addition which I
+have ventured to make to the theory of Buffon and Dr. Erasmus Darwin--then
+the wideness of the difference between the Darwinism of eighty years ago
+and the Darwinism of to-day becomes immediately apparent, and it also
+becomes apparent, how important and interesting is the issue which is
+raised between them.
+
+According to the older Darwinism the lungs are just as purposive as the
+corkscrew.  They, no less than the corkscrew, are a piece of mechanism
+designed and gradually improved upon and perfected by an intelligent
+creature for the gratification of its own needs.  True there are many
+important differences between mechanism which is part of the body, and
+mechanism which is no such part, but the differences are such as do not
+affect the fact that in each case the result, whether, for example, lungs
+or corkscrew, is due to desire, invention, and design.
+
+And now I will ask one more question, which may seem, perhaps, to have
+but little importance, but which I find personally interesting.  I have
+been told by a reviewer, of whom upon the whole I have little reason to
+complain, that the theory I put forward in "Life and Habit," and which I
+am now again insisting on, is pessimism--pure and simple.  I have a very
+vague idea what pessimism means, but I should be sorry to believe that I
+am a pessimist.  Which, I would ask, is the pessimist?  He who sees love
+of beauty, design, steadfastness of purpose, intelligence, courage, and
+every quality to which success has assigned the name of "worth" as having
+drawn the pattern of every leaf and organ now and in all past time, or he
+who sees nothing in the world of nature but a chapter of accidents and of
+forces interacting blindly?
+
+
+
+BUFFON--MEMOIR.  (CHAPTER VIII. OF EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW.)
+
+
+Buffon, says M. Flourens, was born at Montbar, on the 7th of September
+1707; he died in Paris, at the Jardin du Roi, on the 16th of April 1788,
+aged 81 years.  More than fifty of these years, as he used himself to
+say, he had passed at his writing-desk.  His father was a councillor of
+the parliament of Burgundy.  His mother was celebrated for her wit, and
+Buffon cherished her memory.
+
+He studied at Dijon with much _eclat_, and shortly after leaving became
+accidentally acquainted with the Duke of Kingston, a young Englishman of
+his own age, who was travelling abroad with a tutor.  The three travelled
+together in France and Italy, and Buffon then passed some months in
+England.
+
+Returning to France, he translated Hales's Vegetable Statics and Newton's
+Treatise on Fluxions.  He refers to several English writers on natural
+history in the course of his work, but I see he repeated spells the
+English name Willoughby, "Willulghby."  He was appointed superintendent
+of the Jardin du Roi in 1739, and from thenceforth devoted himself to
+science.
+
+In 1752 Buffon married Mdlle de Saint Belin, whose beauty and charm of
+manner were extolled by all her contemporaries.  One son was born to him,
+who entered the army, became a colonel, and I grieve to say, was
+guillotined at the age of twenty-nine, a few days only before the
+extinction of the Reign of Terror.
+
+Of this youth, who inherited the personal comeliness and ability of his
+father, little is recorded except the following story.  Having fallen
+into the water and been nearly drowned when he was about twelve years
+old, he was afterwards accused of having been afraid: "I was so little
+afraid," he answered, "that though I had been offered the hundred years
+which my grandfather lived, I would have died then and there, if I could
+have added one year to the life of my father;" then thinking for a
+minute, a flush suffused his face and he added, "but I should petition
+for one quarter of an hour in which to exult over the thought of what I
+was about to do."
+
+On the scaffold he showed much composure, smiling half proudly, half
+reproachfully, yet wholly kindly upon the crowd in front of him.
+"Citoyens," he said, "Je me nomine Buffon," and laid his head upon the
+block.
+
+The noblest outcome of the old and decaying order, overwhelmed in the
+most hateful birth frenzy of the new.  So in those cataclysms and
+revolutions which take place in our own bodies during their development,
+when we seem studying in order to become fishes and suddenly make, as it
+were, different arrangements and resolve on becoming men--so, doubtless,
+many good cells must go, and their united death cry comes up, it may be,
+in the pain which an infant feels on teething.  But to return.  The man
+who could be father of such a son, and who could retain that son's
+affection, as it is well known that Buffon retained it, may not perhaps
+always be strictly accurate, but it will be as well to pay attention to
+whatever he may think fit to tell us.  These are the only people whom it
+is worth while to look to and study from.
+
+"Glory," said Buffon, after speaking of the hours during which he had
+laboured, "glory comes always after labour if she can--_and she generally
+can_."  But in his case she could not well help herself.  "He was
+conspicuous," says M. Flourens, "for elevation and force of character,
+for a love of greatness and true magnificence in all he did.  His great
+wealth, his handsome person, and graceful manners seemed in
+correspondence with the splendour of his genius, so that of all the gifts
+which Fortune has in it her power to bestow she had denied him nothing."
+
+Many of his epigrammatic sayings have passed into proverbs: for example,
+that "genius is but a supreme capacity for taking pains."  Another and
+still more celebrated passage shall be given in its entirety and with its
+original setting.
+
+"Style," says Buffon, "is the only passport to posterity.  It is not
+range of information, nor mastery of some little known branch of science,
+nor yet novelty of matter that will ensure immortality.  Works that can
+claim all this will yet die if they are conversant about trivial objects
+only, or written without taste, genius, and true nobility of mind; for
+range of information, knowledge of details, novelty of discovery are of a
+volatile essence and fly off readily into other hands that know better
+how to treat them.  The matter is foreign to the man, and is not of him;
+the manner is the man himself." {162}
+
+"Le style, c'est l'homme memo."  Elsewhere he tells us what true style
+is, but I quote from memory and cannot be sure of the passage.  "Le
+style," he says "est comme le bonheur; il vient de la douceur de l'ame."
+
+Is it possible not to think of the following?--
+
+"But whether there be prophecies they shall fail; whether there be
+tongues they shall cease; whether there be knowledge it shall vanish away
+. . . and now abideth faith, hope and charity, these three; but the
+greatest of these is charity." {163}
+
+
+
+BUFFON'S METHOD--THE IRONICAL CHARACTER OF HIS WORK.  (CHAPTER IX. OF
+EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW.)
+
+
+Buffon's idea of a method amounts almost to the denial of the possibility
+of method at all.  "The true method," he writes, "is the complete
+description and exact history of each particular object," {164a} and
+later on he asks, "is it not more simple, more natural and more true to
+call an ass an ass, and a cat a cat, than to say, without knowing why,
+that an ass is a horse, and a cat a lynx?" {164b}
+
+He admits such divisions as between animals and vegetables, or between
+vegetables and minerals, but that done, he rejects all others that can be
+founded on the nature of things themselves.  He concludes that one who
+could see living forms as a whole and without preconceived opinions,
+would classify animals according to the relations in which he found
+himself standing towards them:--
+
+   "Those which he finds most necessary and useful to him will occupy the
+   first rank; thus he will give the precedence among the lower animals
+   to the dog and the horse; he will next concern himself with those
+   which without being domesticated, nevertheless occupy the same country
+   and climate as himself, as for example stags, hares, and all wild
+   animals; nor will it be till after he has familiarised himself with
+   all these that curiosity will lead him to inquire what inhabitants
+   there may be in foreign climates, such as elephants, dromedaries, &c.
+   The same will hold good for fishes, birds, insects, shells, and for
+   all nature's other productions; he will study them in proportion to
+   the profit which he can draw from them; he will consider them in that
+   order in which they enter into his daily life; he will arrange them in
+   his head according to this order, which is in fact that in which he
+   has become acquainted with them, and in which it concerns him to think
+   about them, This order--the most natural of all--is the one which I
+   have thought it well to follow in this volume.  My classification has
+   no more mystery in it than the reader has just seen . . . it is
+   preferable to the most profound and ingenious that can be conceived,
+   for there is none of all the classifications which ever have been made
+   or ever can be, which has not more of an arbitrary character than this
+   has.  Take it for all in all," he concludes, "it is more easy, more
+   agreeable, and more useful, to consider things in their relation to
+   ourselves than from any other standpoint." {165}
+
+   "Has it not a better effect not only in a treatise on natural history,
+   but in a picture or any work of art to arrange objects in the order
+   and place in which they are commonly found, than to force them into
+   association in virtue of some theory of our own?  Is it not better to
+   let the dog which has toes, come after the horse which has a single
+   hoof, in the same way as we see him follow the horse in daily life,
+   than to follow up the horse by the zebra, an animal which is little
+   known to us, and which has no other connection with the horse than the
+   fact that it has a single hoof?" {166a}
+
+Can we suppose that Buffon really saw no more connection than this?  The
+writer whom we shall presently find {166b} declining to admit any
+essential difference between the skeletons of man and of the horse, can
+here see no resemblance between the zebra and the horse, except that they
+each have a single hoof.  Is he to be taken at his word?
+
+It is perhaps necessary to tell the reader that Buffon carried the
+foregoing scheme into practice as nearly as he could in the first fifteen
+volumes of his Natural History.  He begins with man--and then goes on to
+the horse, the ass, the cow, sheep, goat, pig, dog, &c.  One would be
+glad to know whether he found it always more easy to know in what order
+of familiarity this or that animal would stand to the majority of his
+readers than other classifiers have found it to know whether an
+individual more resembles one species or another; probably he never gave
+the matter a thought after he had gone through the first dozen most
+familiar animals, but settled generally down into a classification which
+becomes more and more specific--as when he treats of the apes and
+monkeys--till he reaches the birds, when he openly abandons his original
+idea, in deference, as he says, to the opinion of "le peuple des
+naturalistes."
+
+Perhaps the key to this piece of apparent extravagance is to be found in
+the word "mysterieuse." {166c}  Buffon wished to raise a standing protest
+against mystery mongering.  Or perhaps more probably, he wished at once
+to turn to animals under domestication, so as to insist early on the main
+object of his work--the plasticity of animal forms.
+
+I am inclined to think that a vein of irony pervades the whole or much
+the greater part of Buffon's work, and that he intended to convey one
+meaning to one set of readers, and another to another; indeed, it is
+often impossible to believe that he is not writing between his lines for
+the discerning, what the undiscerning were not intended to see.  It must
+be remembered that his Natural History has two sides,--a scientific and a
+popular one.  May we not imagine that Buffon would be unwilling to debar
+himself from speaking to those who could understand him, and yet would
+wish like Handel and Shakespeare to address the many, as well as the few?
+But the only manner in which these seemingly irreconcilable ends could be
+attained, would be by the use of language which should be self-adjusting
+to the capacity of the reader.  So keen an observer can hardly have been
+blind to the signs of the times which were already close at hand.  Free-
+thinker though he was, he was also a powerful member of the aristocracy,
+and little likely to demean himself--for so he would doubtless hold it--by
+playing the part of Voltaire or Rousseau.  He would help those who could
+see to see still further, but he would not dazzle eyes that were yet
+imperfect with a light brighter than they could stand.  He would
+therefore impose upon people, as much as he thought was for their good;
+but, on the other hand, he would not allow inferior men to mystify them.
+
+"In the private character of Buffon," says Sir William Jardine in a
+characteristic passage, "we regret there is not much to praise; his
+disposition was kind and benevolent, and he was generally beloved by his
+inferiors, followers, and dependants, which were numerous over his
+extensive property; he was strictly honourable, and was an affectionate
+parent.  In early youth he had entered into the pleasures and
+dissipations of life, and licentious habits seem to have been retained to
+the end.  But the great blemish in such a mind was his declared
+infidelity; it presents one of those exceptions among the persons who
+have been devoted to the study of nature; and it is not easy to imagine a
+mind apparently with such powers, scarcely acknowledging a Creator, and
+when noticed, only by an arraignment for what appeared wanting or
+defective in His great works.  So openly, indeed, was the freedom of his
+religious opinions expressed, that the indignation of the Sorbonne was
+provoked.  He had to enter into an explanation which he in some way
+rendered satisfactory; and while he afterwards attended to the outward
+ordinances of religion, he considered them as a system of faith for the
+multitude, and regarded those most impolitic who most opposed them."
+{168}
+
+This is partly correct and partly not.  Buffon was a free-thinker, and as
+I have sufficiently explained, a decided opponent of the doctrine that
+rudimentary and therefore useless organs were designed by a Creator in
+order to serve some useful end throughout all time to the creature in
+which they are found.
+
+He was not, surely, to hide the magnificent conceptions which he had been
+the first to grasp, from those who were worthy to receive them; on the
+other hand he would not tell the uninstructed what they would interpret
+as a licence to do whatever they pleased, inasmuch as there was no God.
+What he did was to point so irresistibly in the right direction, that a
+reader of any intelligence should be in no doubt as to the road he ought
+to take, and then to contradict himself so flatly as to reassure those
+who would be shocked by a truth for which they were not yet ready.  If I
+am right in the view which I have taken of Buffon's work, it is not easy
+to see how he could have formed a finer scheme, nor have carried it out
+more finely.
+
+I should, however, warn the reader to be on his guard against accepting
+my view too hastily.  So far as I know I stand alone in taking it.
+Neither Dr. Darwin, nor Flourens, nor Isidore Geoffroy, nor Mr. Charles
+Darwin see any subrisive humour in Buffon's pages; but it must be
+remembered that Flourens was a strong opponent of mutability, and
+probably paid but little heed to what Buffon said on this question;
+Isidore Geoffroy is not a safe guide, few men indeed less so.  Mr.
+Charles Darwin seems to have adopted the one half of Isidore Geoffrey's
+conclusions without verifying either; and Dr. Erasmus Darwin, who has no
+small share of a very pleasant conscious humour, yet sometimes rises to
+such heights of unconscious humour, that Buffon's puny labour may well
+have been invisible to him.  Dr. Darwin wrote a great deal of poetry,
+some of which was about the common pump.  Miss Seward tells us, that he
+"illustrated this familiar object with a picture of Maternal Beauty
+administering sustenance to her infant."  Buffon could not have done
+anything like this.
+
+Buffon never, then, "arraigned the Creator for what was wanting or
+defective in His works;" on the contrary, whenever he was led up by an
+irresistible chain of reasoning to conclusions which should make men
+recast their ideas concerning the Deity, he invariably retreats under
+cover of an appeal to revelation.  Naturally enough, the Sorbonne
+objected to an artifice which even Buffon could not conceal completely.
+They did not like being undermined; like Buffon himself, they preferred
+imposing upon the people, to seeing others do so.  Buffon made his peace
+with the Sorbonne immediately, and, perhaps, from that time forward,
+contradicted himself a little more impudently than heretofore.
+
+It is probably for the reasons above suggested that Buffon did not
+propound a connected scheme of evolution or descent with modification,
+but scattered his theory in fragments up and down his work in the
+prefatory remarks with which he introduces the more striking animals or
+classes of animals.  He never wastes evolutionary matter in the preface
+to an uninteresting animal; and the more interesting the animal, the more
+evolution will there be commonly found.  When he comes to describe the
+animal more familiarly--and he generally begins a fresh chapter or half
+chapter when he does so--he writes no more about evolution, but gives an
+admirable description, which no one can fail to enjoy, and which I cannot
+think is nearly so inaccurate as is commonly supposed.  These
+descriptions are the parts which Buffon intended for the general reader,
+expecting, doubtless, and desiring that such a reader should skip the dry
+parts he had been addressing to the more studious.  It is true the
+descriptions are written _ad captandum_, as are all great works, but they
+succeed in captivating, having been composed with all the pains a man of
+genius and of great perseverance could bestow upon them.  If I am not
+mistaken, he looked to these parts of his work to keep the whole alive
+till the time should come when the philosophical side of his writings
+should be understood and appreciated.
+
+Thus the goat breeds with the sheep, and may therefore serve as the text
+for a dissertation on hybridism, which is accordingly given in the
+preface to this animal.  The presence of rudimentary organs under a pig's
+hoof suggests an attack upon the doctrine of final causes in so far as it
+is pretended that every part of every animal or plant was specially
+designed with a view to the wants of the animal or plant itself, once and
+forever throughout all time.  The dog with his great variety of breeds
+gives an opportunity for an article on the formation of breeds and sub-
+breeds by man's artificial selection.  The cat is not honoured with any
+philosophical reflection, and comes in for nothing but abuse.  The hare
+suggests the rabbit, and the rabbit is a rapid breeder, although the hare
+is an unusually slow one; but this is near enough, so the hare shall
+serve us for the theme of a discourse on the geometrical ratio of
+increase and the balance of power which may be observed in nature.  When
+we come to the carnivora, additional reflections follow upon the
+necessity for death, and even for violent death; this leads to the
+question whether the creatures that are killed suffer pain; here, then,
+will be the proper place for considering the sensations of animals
+generally.
+
+Perhaps the most pregnant passage concerning evolution is to be found in
+the preface to the ass, which is so near the beginning of the work as to
+be only the second animal of which Buffon treats after having described
+man himself.  It points strongly in the direction of his having believed
+all animal forms to have been descended from one single common ancestral
+type.  Buffon did not probably choose to take his very first opportunity
+in order to insist upon matter that should point in this direction; but
+the considerations were too important to be deferred long, and are
+accordingly put forward under cover of the ass, his second animal.
+
+When we consider the force with which Buffon's conclusion is led up to;
+the obviousness of the conclusion itself when the premises are once
+admitted; the impossibility that such a conclusion should be again lost
+sight of if the reasonableness of its being drawn had been once admitted;
+the position in his scheme which is assigned to it by its propounder; the
+persistency with which he demonstrates during forty years thereafter that
+the premises, which he has declared should establish the conclusion in
+question, are indisputable;--when we consider, too, that we are dealing
+with a man of unquestionable genius, and that the times and circumstances
+of his life were such as would go far to explain reserve and irony--is
+it, I would ask, reasonable to suppose that Buffon did not in his own
+mind, and from the first, draw the inference to which he leads his
+reader, merely because from time to time he tells the reader, with a
+shrug of the shoulders, that _he_ draws no inferences opposed to the Book
+of Genesis?  Is it not more likely that Buffon intended his reader to
+draw his inferences for himself, and perhaps to value them all the more
+highly on that account?
+
+The passage to which I am alluding is as follows:--
+
+   "If from the boundless variety which animated nature presents to us,
+   we choose the body of some animal or even that of man himself to serve
+   as a model with which to compare the bodies of other organised beings,
+   we shall find that though all these beings have an individuality of
+   their own, and are distinguished from one another by differences of
+   which the gradations are infinitely subtle, there exists at the same
+   time a primitive and general design which we can follow for a long
+   way, and the departures from which (_degenerations_) are far more
+   gentle than those from mere outward resemblance.  For not to mention
+   organs of digestion, circulation, and generation, which are common to
+   all animals, and without which the animal would cease to be an animal,
+   and could neither continue to exist nor reproduce itself--there is
+   none the less even in those very parts which constitute the main
+   difference in outward appearance, a striking resemblance which carries
+   with it irresistibly the idea of a single pattern after which all
+   would appear to have been conceived.  The horse, for example--what can
+   at first sight seem more unlike mankind?  Yet when we compare man and
+   horse point by point and detail by detail, is not our wonder excited
+   rather by the points of resemblance than of difference that are to be
+   found between them?  Take the skeleton of a man; bend forward the
+   bones in the region of the pelvis, shorten the thigh bones, and those
+   of the leg and arm, lengthen those of the feet and hands, run the
+   joints together, lengthen the jaws, and shorten the frontal bone,
+   finally, lengthen the spine, and the skeleton will now be that of a
+   man no longer, but will have become that of a horse--for it is easy to
+   imagine that in lengthening the spine and the jaws we shall at the
+   same time have increased the number of the vertebrae, ribs, and teeth.
+   It is but in the number of these bones, which may be considered
+   accessory, and by the lengthening, shortening, or mode of attachment
+   of others, that the skeleton of the horse differs from that of the
+   human body. . . . We find ribs in man, in all the quadrupeds, in
+   birds, in fishes, and we may find traces of them as far down as the
+   turtle, in which they seem still to be sketched out by means of
+   furrows that are to be found beneath the shell.  Let it be remembered
+   that the foot of the horse, which seems so different from a man's
+   hand, is, nevertheless, as M. Daubenton has pointed out, composed of
+   the same bones, and that we have at the end of each of our fingers a
+   nail corresponding to the hoof of a horse's foot.  Judge, then,
+   whether this hidden resemblance is not more marvellous than any
+   outward differences--whether this constancy to a single plan of
+   structure which we may follow from man to the quadrupeds, from the
+   quadrupeds to the cetacea, from the cetacea to birds, from birds to
+   reptiles, from reptiles to fishes--in which all such essential parts
+   as heart, intestines, spine are invariably found--whether, I say, this
+   does not seem to indicate that the Creator when He made them would use
+   but a single main idea, though at the same time varying it in every
+   conceivable way, so that man might admire equally the magnificence of
+   the execution and the simplicity of the design." {174}
+
+   "If we regard the matter thus, not only the ass and the horse, _but
+   even man himself_, _the apes_, _the quadrupeds_, _and all animals
+   might be regarded but as forming members of one and the same family_.
+   But are we to conclude that within this vast family which the Creator
+   has called into existence out of nothing, there are other and smaller
+   families, projected as it were by Nature, and brought forth by her in
+   the natural course of events and after a long time, of which some
+   contain but two members, as the ass and the horse, others many
+   members, as the weasel, martin, stoat, ferret, &c., and that on the
+   same principle there are families of vegetables, containing ten,
+   twenty, or thirty plants, as the case may be?  If such families had
+   any real existence they could have been formed only by crossing, by
+   the accumulation of successive variations (_variation successive_),
+   and by degeneration from an original type; but if we once admit that
+   there are families of plants and animals, so that the ass may be of
+   the family of the horse, and that the one may only differ from the
+   other through degeneration from a common ancestor, we might be driven
+   to admit that the ape is of the family of man, that he is but a
+   degenerate man, and that he and man have had a common ancestor, even
+   as the ass and horse have had.  It would follow then that every
+   family, whether animal or vegetable, had sprung from a single stock,
+   which after a succession of generations had become higher in the case
+   of some of its descendants and lower in that of others."
+
+What inference could be more aptly drawn?  But it was not one which
+Buffon was going to put before the general public.  He had said enough
+for the discerning, and continues with what is intended to make the
+conclusions they should draw even plainer to them, while it conceals them
+still more carefully from the general reader.
+
+"The naturalists who are so ready to establish families among animals and
+vegetables, do not seem to have sufficiently considered the consequences
+which should follow from their premises, for these would limit direct
+creation to as small a number of forms as any one might think fit
+(reduisoient le produit immediat de la creation, aun nombre d'individus
+aussi petit que l'on voudroit).  _For if it were once shown that we had
+right grounds for establishing these families_; _if the point were once
+gained that among animals and vegetables there had been_, _I do not say
+several species_, _but even a single one_, _which had been produced in
+the course of direct descent from another species_; _if for example it
+could be once shown that the ass was but a degeneration from the
+horse_--_then there is no further limit to be set to the power of
+nature_, _and we should not be wrong in supposing that with sufficient
+time she could have evolved all other organised forms from one primordial
+type_ (_et l'on n'auroit pas tort de supposer_, _que d'un seul etre elle
+a su tirer avec le temps tous les autres etres organises_)."
+
+Buffon now felt that he had sailed as near the wind as was desirable.  His
+next sentence is as follows:--
+
+"But no!  It is certain _from revelation_ that all animals have alike
+been favoured with the grace of an act of direct creation, and that the
+first pair of every species issued full formed from the hands of the
+Creator." {176}
+
+This might be taken as _bona fide_, if it had been written by Bonnet, but
+it is impossible to accept it from Buffon.  It is only those who judge
+him at second hand, or by isolated passages, who can hold that he failed
+to see the consequences of his own premises.  No one could have seen more
+clearly, nor have said more lucidly, what should suffice to show a
+sympathetic reader the conclusion he ought to come to.  Even when
+ironical, his irony is not the ill-natured irony of one who is merely
+amusing himself at other people's expense, but the serious and legitimate
+irony of one who must either limit the circle of those to whom he
+appeals, or must know how to make the same language appeal differently to
+the different capacities of his readers, and who trusts to the good sense
+of the discerning to understand the difficulty of his position and make
+due allowance for it.
+
+The compromise which he thought fit to put before the public was that
+"Each species has a type of which the principal features are engraved in
+indelible and eternally permanent characters, while all accessory touches
+vary." {177a}  It would be satisfactory to know where an accessory touch
+is supposed to begin and end.
+
+And again:--
+
+   "The essential characteristics of every animal have been conserved
+   without alteration in their most important parts. . . . The
+   individuals of each genus still represent the same forms as they did
+   in the earliest ages, especially in the case of the larger animals"
+   (so that the generic forms even of the larger animals prove not to be
+   the same, but only "especially" the same as in the earliest ages).
+   {177b}
+
+This transparently illogical position is maintained ostensibly from first
+to last, much in the same spirit as in the two foregoing passages,
+written at intervals of thirteen years.  But they are to be read by the
+light of the earlier one--placed as a lantern to the wary upon the
+threshold of his work in 1753--to the effect that a single,
+well-substantiated case of degeneration would make it conceivable that
+all living beings were descended from but one common ancestor.  If after
+having led up to this by a remorseless logic, a man is found five-and-
+twenty years later still substantiating cases of degeneration, as he has
+been substantiating them unceasingly in thirty quartos during the whole
+interval, there should be little question how seriously we are to take
+him when he wishes us to stop short of the conclusions he has told us we
+ought to draw from the premises that he has made it the business of his
+life to establish--especially when we know that he has a Sorbonne to keep
+a sharp eye upon him.
+
+I believe that if the reader will bear in mind the twofold, serious and
+ironical, character of Buffon's work he will understand it, and feel an
+admiration for it which will grow continually greater and greater the
+more he studies it, otherwise he will miss the whole point.
+
+Buffon on one of the early pages of his first volume protested against
+the introduction of either "_plaisanterie_" or "_equivoque_" (p. 25) into
+a serious work.  But I have observed that there is an unconscious irony
+in most disclaimers of this nature.  When a writer begins by saying that
+he has "an ineradicable tendency to make things clear," we may infer that
+we are going to be puzzled; so when he shows that he is haunted by a
+sense of the impropriety of allowing humour to intrude into his work, we
+may hope to be amused as well as interested.  As showing how far the
+objection to humour which he expressed upon his twenty-fifth page
+succeeded in carrying him safely over his twenty-sixth and
+twenty-seventh, I will quote the following, which begins on page twenty-
+six:--
+
+   "Aldrovandus is the most learned and laborious of all naturalists;
+   after sixty years of work he has left an immense number of volumes
+   behind him, which have been printed at various times, the greater
+   number of them after his death.  It would be possible to reduce them
+   to a tenth part if we could rid them of all useless and foreign
+   matter, and of a prolixity which I find almost overwhelming; were this
+   only done, his books should be regarded as among the best we have on
+   the subject of natural history in its entirety.  The plan of his work
+   is good, his classification distinguished for its good sense, his
+   dividing lines well marked, his descriptions sufficiently
+   accurate--monotonous it is true, but painstaking; the historical part
+   of his work is less good; it is often confused and fabulous, and the
+   author shows too manifestly the credulous tendencies of his mind.
+
+   "While going over his work, I have been struck with that defect, or
+   rather excess, which we find in almost all the books of a hundred or a
+   couple of hundred years ago, and which prevails still among the
+   Germans--I mean with that quantity of useless erudition with which
+   they intentionally swell out their works, and the result of which is
+   that their subject is overlaid with a mass of extraneous matter on
+   which they enlarge with great complacency, but with no consideration
+   whatever for their readers.  They seem, in fact, to have forgotten
+   what they have to say in their endeavour to tell us what has been said
+   by other people.
+
+   "I picture to myself a man like Aldrovandus, after he has once
+   conceived the design of writing a complete natural history.  I see him
+   in his library reading, one after the other, ancients, moderns,
+   philosophers, theologians, jurisconsults, historians, travellers,
+   poets, and reading with no other end than with that of catching at all
+   words and phrases which can be forced from far or near into some kind
+   of relation with his subject.  I see him copying all these passages,
+   or getting them copied for him, and arranging them in alphabetical
+   order.  He fills many portfolios with all manner of notes, often taken
+   without either discrimination or research, and at last sets himself to
+   write with a resolve that not one of all these notes shall remain
+   unused.  The result is that when he comes to his account of the cow or
+   of the hen, he will tell us all that has ever yet been said about cows
+   or hens; all that the ancients ever thought about them; all that has
+   ever been imagined concerning their virtues, characters, and courage;
+   every purpose to which they have ever yet been put; every story of
+   every old woman that he can lay hold of; all the miracles which
+   certain religions have ascribed to them; all the superstitions they
+   have given rise to; all the metaphors and allegories which poets have
+   drawn from them; the attributes that have been assigned to them; the
+   representations that have been made of them in hieroglyphics and
+   armorial bearings, in a word all the histories and all fables in which
+   there was ever yet any mention either of a cow or hen.  How much
+   natural history is likely to be found in such a lumber-room? and how
+   is one to lay one's hand upon the little that there may actually be?"
+   {180}
+
+It is hoped that the reader will see Buffon, much as Buffon saw the
+learned Aldrovandus.  He should see him going into his library, &c., and
+quietly chuckling to himself as he wrote such a passage as the one in
+which we lately found him saying that the larger animals had "especially"
+the same generic forms as they had always had.  And the reader should
+probably see Daubenton chuckling also.
+
+
+
+
+EXTRACTS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY.
+
+
+RECAPITULATION AND STATEMENT OF AN OBJECTION.  (CHAPTER X. OF UNCONSCIOUS
+MEMORY.) {181a}
+
+
+The true theory of unconscious action is that of Professor Hering, from
+whose lecture {181b} it is no strained conclusion to gather that he holds
+the action of all living beings, from the moment of conception to that of
+fullest development, to be founded in volition and design, though these
+have been so long lost sight of that the work is now carried on, as it
+were, departmentally and in due course according to an official routine
+which can hardly be departed from.
+
+This involves the older "Darwinism" and the theory of Lamarck, according
+to which the modification of living forms has been effected mainly
+through the needs of the living forms themselves, which vary with varying
+conditions--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" {181c}) being taken as a matter of course.  According to
+this view of evolution, there is a remarkable analogy between the
+development of living organs, or tools, and that of those organs or tools
+external to the body which has been so rapid during the last few thousand
+years.
+
+Animals and plants, according to Professor Hering, are guided throughout
+their development, and preserve the due order in each step they take,
+through memory of the course they took on past occasions when in the
+persons of their ancestors.  I am afraid I have already too often said
+that if this memory remains for long periods together latent and without
+effect, it is because the vibrations 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 similar vibrations issuing from exterior objects; or, in
+other words, until recollection is stimulated by a return of the
+associated ideas.  On this the internal agitation becomes so much
+enhanced, that equilibrium is visibly disturbed, and the action ensues
+which is proper to the vibrations of the particular substance under the
+particular conditions.  This, at least, is what I suppose Professor
+Hering to intend.
+
+Leaving the explanation of memory on one side, and confining ourselves to
+the fact of memory only, a caterpillar on being just hatched is supposed,
+according to this theory, to lose its memory of the time it was 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 thus command.  Each
+step it takes recalls a new recollection, and thus it goes through a
+development as a performer performs a piece of music, each bar leading
+his recollection to the bar that should next follow.
+
+In Life and Habit will be found examples of the manner in which this view
+solves a number of difficulties for the explanation of which the leading
+men of science express themselves at a loss.  The following from
+Professor Huxley's recent work upon the crayfish may serve for an
+example.  Professor Huxley writes:--
+
+   "It is a widely received notion that the energies of living matter
+   have a tendency to decline and finally disappear, and that the death
+   of the body as a whole is a necessary correlate of its life.  That all
+   living beings sooner or later perish needs no demonstration, but it
+   would be difficult to find satisfactory 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 of the
+   body are constantly dying, yet their places are taken by vigorous
+   successors.  A city remains notwithstanding the constant death-rate of
+   its inhabitants; and such an organism as a crayfish is only a
+   corporate unity, made up of innumerable partially independent
+   individualities."--_The Crayfish_, p. 127.
+
+Surely the theory which I have indicated above makes the reason plain why
+no organism can permanently outlive its experience of past lives.  The
+death of such a body corporate as the crayfish is due to the social
+condition becoming more complex than there is memory of past experience
+to deal with.  Hence social disruption, insubordination, 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 find a difficulty in seeing that though a city
+commonly outlives many generations of its citizens, yet cities and states
+are in the end no less mortal than individuals.  "The _city_," he says,
+"remains."  Yes, but not for ever.  When Professor Huxley can find a city
+that will last for ever, he may wonder that a crayfish does not last for
+ever.
+
+I have already here and elsewhere said all that I can yet bring forward
+in support of Professor Hering's theory; it now remains for me to meet
+the most troublesome objection to it that I have been able to think of--an
+objection which I had before me when I wrote Life and Habit, but which
+then as now I believe to be unsound.  Seeing, however, that a plausible
+case can be made out for it, I will state it and refute it here.  When I
+say refute it, I do not mean that I shall have done with it--for it is
+plain that it opens up a vaster question in the relations between the so-
+called organic and inorganic worlds--but that I will refute the
+supposition that it any way militates against Professor Hering's theory.
+
+"Why," it may be asked, "should we go out of our way to invent
+unconscious memory--the existence of which must at the best remain an
+inference {184}--when the observed fact that like antecedents are
+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 certain time be
+connected with memory when it is not pretended that memory has anything
+to do with the invariableness with which oxygen and hydrogen when mixed
+in certain proportions make water?"
+
+We assume confidently that if a drop of water were decomposed into its
+component parts, and if these were brought together again, and again
+decomposed and again brought together any number of times over, the
+results would be invariably the same, whether decomposition or
+combination, yet no one will refer the invariableness of the action
+during each repetition, to recollection by the gaseous molecules of the
+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 other like
+combinations of atoms have acted under like circumstances, as readily as
+though they had been combined and separated and recombined again a
+hundred or a hundred thousand times.  It is this assumption, tacitly made
+by every man, beast, and plant in the universe, throughout all time and
+in every action of their lives, that has made any improvement in action
+possible--for it is this which lies at the root of the power to profit by
+experience.  I do not exactly know _why_ we make this assumption, and I
+cannot find out that any one else knows much better than myself, but I do
+not recommend any one to dispute it.
+
+As we admit of no doubt concerning the main result, so we do not suppose
+an alternative to lie before any atom of any molecule at any moment
+during the process of combination.  This process is, in all probability,
+an exceedingly complicated 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 point do we conceive
+of any atom as swerving ever such a little to right or left of a
+determined course, but invest each one of them with so much of the divine
+attributes as that with it there shall be no variableness neither shadow
+of turning.
+
+We attribute this regularity of action to what we call the necessity of
+things, as determined by the nature of the atoms and the circumstances in
+which they are placed.  We say that only one proximate result can ever
+arise from any 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 of action in living beings?  Sameness of
+action may be seen abundantly where there is no room for anything that we
+can consistently call memory.  In these cases we say that it is due to
+sameness of substance in same circumstances.
+
+The most cursory reflection upon our actions will show us that it is no
+more possible for living action to have more than one set of proximate
+consequents at any given time than for oxygen and hydrogen when mixed in
+the 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 between the steps in the action, or memory of similar action
+taken before, than we suppose on the part of oxygen and hydrogen
+molecules between the several occasions on which they may have been
+disunited and reunited?
+
+A boy catches the measles not because he remembers having caught them in
+the persons of his father and mother, but because he is a fit soil for a
+certain kind of seed to grow upon.  In like manner he should be said to
+grow his nose because he 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 person of his
+father, and accordingly, when he came to be forty-nine years old himself,
+died also?  For this to hold, Dr. X---'s father must have begotten him
+after he was dead; for the son could not remember the father's death
+before it happened.
+
+As for the diseases of old age, so very commonly inherited, they are
+developed for the most part not only long after the average age of
+reproduction, but at a time when no appreciable amount of memory of any
+previous existence can remain; for a man will not have many male
+ancestors who become parents at over sixty years old, nor female
+ancestors who 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 may have a ghost of a pretence for saying that a man grows
+a nose by rote, or even that he catches the measles or whooping-cough by
+rote; but do we mean to say that he develops the gout by rote in his old
+age if he comes of a gouty family?  If, then, rote and red-tape have
+nothing to do with the one, why should they with the other?
+
+Remember also the cases in which aged females develop male
+characteristics.  Here are growths, often of not inconsiderable extent,
+which make their appearance during the decay of the body, and grow with
+greater 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
+families; here then is perhaps the best case that can be found of a
+development strictly inherited, but having clearly nothing whatever to do
+with memory.  Why should not all development stand upon the same footing?
+
+A friend who had been arguing with me for some time as above, concluded
+with the following words:--
+
+"If you cannot be content with the similar action of similar substances
+(living or non-living) under similar circumstances--if you cannot accept
+this as an ultimate fact, but consider it necessary to connect repetition
+of similar action with memory before you can rest in it and be
+thankful--be consistent, and introduce this memory which you find so
+necessary into the inorganic world also.  Either 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 week--either say this or else develop some mental
+condition--which I have no doubt you will be very well able to do if you
+feel the want of it--in which you can make out a case for saying that
+oxygen and hydrogen on being brought together, and cream on being
+churned, are in some way acquainted with, and mindful of, action taken by
+other cream, and other oxygen and hydrogen on past occasions."
+
+I felt inclined to reply that my friend need not twit me with being able
+to develop a mental organism if I felt the need of it, for his own
+ingenious attack on my position, and indeed every action of his life, was
+but an example of this omnipresent principle.
+
+When he was gone, however, I thought over what he had been saying.  I
+endeavoured to see how far I could get on without volition and memory,
+and reasoned as follows:--A repetition of like antecedents will be
+certainly followed by a repetition of like consequents, whether the
+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 similarity
+in the running away, even though ten thousand years intervene between the
+original combination and its repetition." {189}  Here certainly there is
+no coming into play of memory, more than in the pan of cream on two
+successive churning days, yet the action is similar.
+
+A clerk in an office has an hour in the middle of the day for dinner.
+About half-past twelve he begins to feel hungry; at one he takes down his
+hat and leaves the office.  He does not yet know 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 which is a little farther off than the other two,
+but is cheaper.  Money being a greater object to him than time, the clerk
+decides on going to the cheaper house.  He goes, is satisfied, and
+returns.
+
+Next day he wants his dinner at the same hour, and--it will be
+said--remembering his satisfaction of yesterday, will go to the same
+place as before.  But what has his memory to do with it?  Suppose him to
+have forgotten all the circumstances of the preceding day from the moment
+of his beginning to feel hungry onward, though in other respects sound in
+mind and body, and unchanged generally.  At half-past 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 again ignorant of the neighbourhood (for
+he remembers nothing of yesterday), he sees the same policeman at the
+corner of the street, and asks him the same question as before; the
+policeman gives him the same answer, and money being still an object to
+him, the cheapest eating-house is again selected; he goes there, finds
+the same _menu_, makes the same choice for the same reasons, eats, is
+satisfied, and returns.
+
+What similarity of action can be greater than this, and at the same time
+more incontrovertible?  But it has nothing to do with memory; on the
+contrary, it is just because the clerk has no memory that his action of
+the second day so exactly resembles that of the first.  As long as he has
+no power of recollecting, he will day after day 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, and (for we may as well suppose that
+the policeman has no memory too) he will ask and be answered, and ask and
+be answered, till he and the policeman die of old age.  This similarity
+of action is plainly due to that--whatever it is--which ensures that like
+persons or things when placed in like circumstances shall behave in a
+like manner.
+
+Allow the clerk ever such a little memory, and the similarity of action
+will disappear; for the fact of remembering what happened to him on the
+first day he went out in search of dinner will be a modification in him
+in regard to his then condition when he next goes out to get his dinner.
+He had no such memory on the first day, and he has upon the second.  Some
+modification of action must ensue upon this modification of the actor,
+and this is immediately 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, why introduce it
+into such cases as the repetition of the embryonic processes by
+successive generations?  The embryos of a well-fixed breed, such as the
+goose, are almost as much alike as water is to water, and by consequence
+one goose comes to be almost as like another as water to water.  Why
+should it not be supposed to become so upon the same grounds--namely,
+that it is made of the same stuffs, and put together in like proportions
+in the same manner?
+
+
+
+ON CYCLES.  (CHAPTER XI. OF UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY.)
+
+
+The one faith on which all normal living beings consciously or
+unconsciously act, is that like antecedents will be followed by like
+consequents.  This is the one true and catholic faith, undemonstrable,
+but except a living being believe which, without doubt it shall perish
+everlastingly.  In the assurance of this all action is taken.  But if
+this fundamental article is admitted, it follows that if ever a complete
+cycle were formed, so that the whole universe of one instant were to
+repeat itself absolutely in a subsequent one, no matter after what
+interval of time, then the course of the events between these two moments
+would go on repeating itself for ever and ever afterwards in due order,
+down to the minutest detail, in an endless series of cycles like a
+circulating decimal.  For the universe comprises everything; there could
+therefore be no disturbance from without.  Once a cycle, always a cycle.
+
+Let us suppose the earth of given weight, moving with given momentum in a
+given path, and under given conditions in every respect, to find itself
+at any one time conditioned in all these respects as it was conditioned
+at some past moment; then it must move exactly in the same path as the
+one it took when at the beginning of the cycle it has just completed, and
+must therefore in the course of time fulfil a second cycle, and therefore
+a third, and so on for ever and ever, with no more chance of escape than
+a circulating decimal has, if the circumstances have been reproduced with
+perfect accuracy as to draw it into such a whirlpool.
+
+We see something very like this actually happen in the yearly revolutions
+of the planets round the sun.  But the relations between, we will say,
+the earth and the sun are not reproduced absolutely.  These relations
+deal only with a small part of the universe, and even in this small part
+the relation of the parts _inter se_ has never yet been reproduced with
+the perfection of accuracy necessary for our argument.  They are liable,
+moreover, to disturbance from events which may or may not actually occur
+(as, for example, our being struck by a comet, or the sun's coming within
+a certain distance of another sun), but of which, if they do occur, no
+one can foresee the effects.  Nevertheless the conditions have been so
+nearly repeated that there is no appreciable difference in the relations
+between the earth and sun on one New Year's Day and on another, nor is
+there reason for expecting such change within any reasonable time.
+
+If there is to be an eternal series of cycles involving the whole
+universe, it is plain that not one single atom must be excluded.  Exclude
+a single molecule of hydrogen from the ring, or vary the relative
+positions of two molecules only, and the charm is broken; an element of
+disturbance has been introduced, of which the utmost that can be said is
+that it may not prevent the ensuing of a long series of very nearly
+perfect cycles before similarity in recurrence is destroyed, but which
+must inevitably prevent absolute identity of repetition.  The movement of
+the series becomes no longer a cycle, but spiral, and convergent or
+divergent at a greater or less rate according to circumstances.
+
+We cannot conceive of all the atoms in the universe standing twice over
+in absolutely the same relation each one of them to every other.  There
+are too many of them, and they are too much mixed; but, as has been just
+said, in the planets and their satellites we do see large groups of atoms
+whose movements recur with some approach to precision.  The same holds
+good also with certain comets and with the sun himself.  The result is
+that our days and nights and seasons follow one another with nearly
+perfect regularity from year to year, and have done so for as long time
+as we know anything for certain.  A vast preponderance of all the action
+that takes place around us is cyclical action.  Within the great cycle of
+the planetary revolution of our own earth, and as a consequence thereof,
+we have the minor cycle of the seasons; these generate atmospheric
+cycles.  Water is evaporated from the ocean and conveyed to
+mountain-ranges, where it is cooled, and whence it returns again to the
+sea.  This cycle of events is being repeated again and again with little
+appreciable variation.  The tides, and winds in certain latitudes, go
+round and round the world with what amounts to continuous regularity.
+There are storms of wind and rain called cyclones.  In the case of these,
+the cycle is not very complete, the movement, therefore, is spiral, and
+the tendency to recur is comparatively soon lost.  It is a common saying
+that history repeats itself, so that anarchy will lead to despotism and
+despotism to anarchy; every nation can point to instances of men's minds
+having gone round and round so nearly in a perfect cycle that many
+revolutions have occurred before the cessation of a tendency to recur.
+Lastly, in the generation of plants and animals we have, perhaps, the
+most striking and common example of the inevitable tendency of all action
+to repeat itself when it has once proximately done so.  Let only one
+living being have once succeeded in producing a being like itself, and
+thus have returned, so to speak, upon itself, and a series of generations
+must follow of necessity, unless some matter interfere which had no part
+in the original combination, and, as it may happen, kill the first
+reproductive creature or all its descendants within a few generations.  If
+no such mishap occurs as this, and if the recurrence of the conditions is
+sufficiently perfect, a series of generations follows with as much
+certainty as a series of seasons follows upon the cycle of the relations
+between the earth and sun.
+
+Let the first periodically recurring substance--we will say A--be able to
+recur or reproduce itself, not once only, but many times over, as A1, A2,
+&c.; let A also have consciousness and a sense of self-interest, which
+qualities must, _ex hypothesi_, be reproduced in each one of its
+offspring; let these get placed in circumstances which differ
+sufficiently to destroy the cycle in theory without doing so
+practically--that is to say, to reduce the rotation to a spiral, but to a
+spiral with so little deviation from perfect cycularity as for each
+revolution to appear practically a cycle, though after many revolutions
+the deviation becomes perceptible; then some such differentiations of
+animal and vegetable life as we actually see follow as matters of course.
+A1 and A2 have a sense of self-interest as A had, but they are not
+precisely in circumstances similar to A's, nor, it may be, to each
+other's; they will therefore act somewhat differently, and every living
+being is modified by a change of action.  Having become modified, they
+follow the spirit of A's action more essentially in begetting a creature
+like themselves than in begetting one like A; for the essence of A's act
+was not the reproduction of A, but the reproduction of a creature like
+the one from which it sprung--that is to say, a creature bearing traces
+in its body of the main influences that have worked upon its parent.
+
+Within the cycle of reproduction there are cycles upon cycles in the life
+of each individual, whether animal or plant.  Observe the action of our
+lungs and heart, how regular it is, and how a cycle having been once
+established, it is repeated many millions of times in an individual of
+average health and longevity.  Remember also that it is this
+periodicity--this inevitable tendency of all atoms in combination to
+repeat any combination which they have once repeated, unless forcibly
+prevented from doing so--which alone renders nine-tenths of our
+mechanical inventions of practical use to us.  There is not internal
+periodicity about a hammer or a saw, but there is in the steam-engine or
+watermill when once set in motion.  The actions of these machines recur
+in a regular series, at regular intervals, with the unerringness of
+circulating decimals.
+
+When we bear in mind, then, the omnipresence of this tendency in the
+world around us, the absolute freedom from exception which attends its
+action, the manner in which it holds equally good upon the vastest and
+the smallest scale, and the completeness of its accord with our ideas of
+what must inevitably happen when a like combination is placed in
+circumstances like those in which it was placed before--when we bear in
+mind all this, is it possible not to connect the facts together, and to
+refer cycles of living generations to the same unalterableness in the
+action of like matter under like circumstances which makes Jupiter and
+Saturn revolve round the sun, or the piston of a steam-engine move up and
+down as long as the steam acts upon it?
+
+But who will attribute memory to the hands of a clock, to a piston-rod,
+to air or water in a storm or in course of evaporation, to the earth and
+planets in their circuits round the sun, or to the atoms of the universe,
+if they too be moving in a cycle vaster than we can take account of?
+{198a}  And if not, why introduce it into the embryonic development of
+living beings, when there is not a particle of evidence in support of its
+actual presence, when regularity of action can be ensured just as well
+without it as with it, and when at the best it is considered as existing
+under circumstances which it baffles us to conceive, inasmuch as it is
+supposed to be exercised without any conscious recollection?  Surely a
+memory which is exercised without any consciousness of recollecting is
+only a periphrasis for the absence of any memory at all. {198b}
+
+
+
+REPUTATION--MEMORY AT ONCE A PROMOTER AND A DISTURBER OF UNIFORMITY OF
+ACTION AND STRUCTURE.  (CHAPTER XII. OF UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY.)
+
+
+To meet the objections in the two foregoing chapters, I need do little
+more than show that the fact of certain often inherited diseases and
+developments, whether of youth or old age, being obviously not due to a
+memory on the part of offspring of like diseases and developments in the
+parents, does not militate against supposing that embryonic and youthful
+development generally is due to memory.
+
+This is the main part of the objection; the rest resolves itself into an
+assertion that there is no evidence in support of instinct and embryonic
+development being due to memory, and a contention that the necessity of
+each particular moment in each particular case is sufficient to account
+for the facts without the introduction of memory.
+
+I will deal with these two last points briefly first.  As regards the
+evidence in support of the theory that instinct and growth are due to a
+rapid unconscious memory of past experiences and developments in the
+persons of the ancestors of the living form in which they appear, I must
+refer my readers to Life and Habit, and to the translation of Professor
+Hering's lecture given in Chapter VI. of Unconscious Memory.  I will only
+repeat here that a chrysalis, we will say, is as much one and the same
+person with the chrysalis of its preceding generation, as this last is
+one and the same person with the egg or caterpillar from which it sprang.
+You cannot deny personal identity between two successive generations
+without sooner or later denying it during the successive stages in the
+single life of what we call one individual; nor can you admit personal
+identity through the stages of a long and varied life (embryonic and post-
+natal) without admitting it to endure through an endless series of
+generations.
+
+The personal identity of successive generations being admitted, the
+possibility of the second of two generations remembering what happened to
+it in the first is obvious.  The _a priori_ objection, therefore, is
+removed, and the question becomes one of fact--does the offspring act as
+if it remembered?
+
+The answer to this question is not only that it does so act, but that it
+is not possible to account for either its development or its early
+instinctive actions upon any other hypothesis than that of its
+remembering, and remembering exceedingly well.
+
+The only alternative is to declare with Von Hartmann that a living being
+may display a vast and varied information concerning all manner of
+details, and be able to perform most intricate operations, independently
+of experience and practice.  Once admit knowledge independent of
+experience, and farewell to sober sense and reason from that moment.
+
+Firstly, then, we show that offspring has had every facility for
+remembering; secondly, that it shows every appearance of having
+remembered; thirdly, that no other hypothesis except memory can be
+brought forward, so as to account for the phenomena of instinct and
+heredity generally, which is not easily reducible to an absurdity.  Beyond
+this we do not care to go, and must allow those to differ from us who
+require further evidence.
+
+As regards the argument that the necessity of each moment will account
+for likeness of result, without there being any need for introducing
+memory, I admit that likeness of consequents is due to likeness of
+antecedents, and I grant this will hold as good with embryos as with
+oxygen and hydrogen gas; what will cover the one will cover the other,
+for the writs of the laws common to all matter run within the womb as
+freely as elsewhere; but admitting that there are combinations into which
+living beings enter with a faculty called memory which has its effects
+upon their conduct, and admitting that such combinations are from time to
+time repeated (as we observe in the case of a practised performer playing
+a piece of music which he has committed to memory), then I maintain that
+though, indeed, the likeness of one performance to its immediate
+predecessor is due to likeness of the combinations immediately preceding
+the two performances, yet memory plays so important a part in both these
+combinations as to make it a distinguishing feature in them, and
+therefore proper to be insisted upon.  We do not, for example, say that
+Herr Joachim played such and such a sonata without the music, because he
+was such and such an arrangement of matter in such and such
+circumstances, resembling those under which he played without music on
+some past occasion.  This goes without saying; we say only that he played
+the music by heart or by memory, as he had often played it before.
+
+To the objector that a caterpillar becomes a chrysalis not because it
+remembers and takes the action taken by its fathers and mothers in due
+course before it, but because when matter is in such a physical and
+mental state as to be called caterpillar, it must perforce assume
+presently such another physical and mental state as to be called
+chrysalis, and that therefore there is no memory in the case--to this
+objector I rejoin that the offspring caterpillar would not have become so
+like the parent as to make the next or chrysalis stage a matter of
+necessity, unless both parent and offspring had been influenced by
+something that we usually call memory.  For it is this very possession of
+a common memory which has guided the offspring into the path taken by,
+and hence to a virtually same condition with, the parent, and which
+guided the parent in its turn to a state virtually identical with a
+corresponding state in the existence of its own parent.  To memory,
+therefore, the most prominent place in the transaction is assigned
+rightly.
+
+To deny that will guided by memory has anything to do with the
+development of embryos seems like denying that a desire to obstruct has
+anything to do with the recent conduct of certain members in the House of
+Commons.  What should we think of one who said that the action of these
+gentlemen had nothing to do with a desire to embarrass the Government,
+but was simply the necessary outcome of the chemical and mechanical
+forces at work, which being such and such, the action which we see is
+inevitable, and has therefore nothing to do with wilful obstruction?  We
+should answer that there was doubtless a great deal of chemical and
+mechanical action in the matter; perhaps, for aught we knew or cared, it
+was all chemical and mechanical; but if so, then a desire to obstruct
+parliamentary business is involved in certain kinds of chemical and
+mechanical action, and that the kinds involving this had preceded the
+recent proceedings of the members in question.  If asked to prove this,
+we can get no further than that such action as has been taken has never
+been seen except as following after and in consequence of a desire to
+obstruct; that this is our nomenclature, and that we can no more be
+expected to change it than to change our mother tongue at the bidding of
+a foreigner.
+
+A little reflection will convince the reader that he will be unable to
+deny will and memory to the embryo without at the same time denying their
+existence everywhere, and maintaining that they have no place in the
+acquisition of a habit, nor indeed in any human action.  He will feel
+that the actions, and the relation of one action to another which he
+observes in embryos is such as is never seen except in association with
+and as a consequence of will and memory.  He will therefore say that it
+is due to will and memory.  To say that these are the necessary outcome
+of certain antecedents is not to destroy them: granted that they are--a
+man does not cease to be a man when we reflect that he has had a father
+and mother, neither do will and memory cease to be will and memory on the
+ground that they cannot come causeless.  They are manifest minute by
+minute to the perception of all people who can keep out of lunatic
+asylums, and this tribunal, though not infallible, is nevertheless our
+ultimate court of appeal--the final arbitrator in all disputed cases.
+
+We must remember that there is no action, however original or peculiar,
+which is not in respect of far the greater number of its details founded
+upon memory.  If a desperate man blows his brains out--an action which he
+can do once in a lifetime only, and which none of his ancestors can have
+done before leaving offspring--still nine hundred and ninety-nine
+thousandths of the movements necessary to achieve his end consist of
+habitual movements--movements, that is to say, which were once difficult,
+but which have been practised and practised by the help of memory until
+they are now performed automatically.  We can no more have an action than
+a creative effort of the imagination cut off from memory.  Ideas and
+actions seem almost to resemble matter and force in respect of the
+impossibility of originating or destroying them; nearly all that are, are
+memories of other ideas and actions, transmitted but not created,
+disappearing but not perishing.
+
+It appears, then, that when in Chapter X. we supposed the clerk who
+wanted his dinner to forget on a second day the action he had taken the
+day before, we still, without perhaps perceiving it, supposed him to be
+guided by memory in all the details of his action, such as his taking
+down his hat and going out into the street.  We could not, indeed,
+deprive him of all memory without absolutely paralysing his action.
+
+Nevertheless new ideas, new faiths, and new actions do in the course of
+time come about, the living expressions of which we may see in the new
+forms of life which from time to time have arisen and are still arising,
+and in the increase of our own knowledge and mechanical inventions.  But
+it is only a very little new that is added at a time, and that little is
+generally due to the desire to attain an end which cannot be attained by
+any of the means for which there exists a perceived precedent in the
+memory.  When this is the case, either the memory is further ransacked
+for any forgotten shreds of details a combination of which may serve the
+desired purpose; or action is taken in the dark, which sometimes succeeds
+and becomes a fertile source of further combinations; or we are brought
+to a dead stop.  All action is random in respect of any of the minute
+actions which compose it that are not done in consequence of memory, real
+or supposed.  So that random, or action taken in the dark, or illusion,
+lies at the very root of progress.
+
+I will now consider the objection that the phenomena of instinct and
+embryonic development ought not to be ascribed to memory, inasmuch as
+certain other phenomena of heredity, such as gout, cannot be ascribed to
+it.
+
+Those who object in this way forget that our actions fall into two main
+classes: those which we have often repeated before by means of a regular
+series of subordinate actions beginning and ending at a certain tolerably
+well-defined point--as when Herr Joachim plays a sonata in public, or
+when we dress or undress ourselves; and actions the details of which are
+indeed guided by memory, but which in their general scope and purpose are
+new--as when we are being married, or presented at court.
+
+At each point in any action of the first of the two kinds above referred
+to there is a memory (conscious or unconscious according to the less or
+greater number of times the action has been repeated), not only of the
+steps in the present and previous performances which have led up to the
+particular point that may be selected, _but also of the particular point
+itself_; there is therefore, at each point in a habitual performance, a
+memory at once of like antecedents _and of a like present_.
+
+If the memory, whether of the antecedent or the present, were absolutely
+perfect; that is to say, if the vibrations in the nervous system (or, if
+the reader likes it better, if the molecular change in the particular
+nerves affected--for molecular change is only a change in the character
+of the vibrations going on within the molecules--it is nothing else than
+this)--it the vibrations in the particular nerves affected by any
+occurrence continued on each fresh repetition of the occurrence in their
+full original strength and without having been interfered with by any
+other vibrations; and if, again, the new waves running into the faint old
+ones from exterior objects and restoring the lapsed molecular state of
+the nerves to a pristine condition were absolutely identical in character
+on each repetition of the occurrence with the waves that ran in upon the
+last occasion, then there would be no change in the action, and no
+modification or improvement could take place.  For though indeed the
+latest performance would always have one memory more than the latest but
+one to guide it, yet the memories being identical, it would not matter
+how many or how few they were.
+
+On any repetition, however, the circumstances, external or internal, or
+both, never are absolutely identical: there is some slight variation in
+each individual case, and some part of this variation is remembered, with
+approbation or disapprobation as the case may be.
+
+The fact, therefore, that on each repetition of the action there is one
+memory more than on the last but one, and that this memory is slightly
+different from its predecessor, is seen to be an inherent and, _ex
+hypothesi_, necessarily disturbing factor in all habitual action--and the
+life of an organism should, as has been sufficiently insisted on, be
+regarded as the habitual action of a single individual, namely, of the
+organism itself, and of its ancestors.  This is the key to accumulation
+of improvement, whether in the arts which we assiduously practise during
+our single life, or in the structures and instincts of successive
+generations.  The memory does not complete a true circle, but is, as it
+were, a spiral slightly divergent therefrom.  It is no longer a perfectly
+circulating decimal.  Where, on the other hand, there is no memory of a
+like present, where, in fact, the memory is not, so to speak, spiral,
+there is no accumulation of improvement.  The effect of any variation is
+not transmitted, and is not thus pregnant of still further change.
+
+As regards the second of the two classes of actions above referred
+to--those, namely which are not recurrent or habitual, _and at no point
+of which is there a memory of a past present like the one which is
+present now_--there will have been no accumulation of strong and well-
+knit memory as regards the action as a whole, but action, if taken at
+all, will be taken upon disjointed fragments of individual actions (our
+own and those of other people) pieced together with a result more or less
+satisfactory according to circumstances.
+
+But it does not follow that the action of two people who have had
+tolerably similar antecedents and are placed in tolerably similar
+circumstances should be more unlike each other in this second case than
+in the first.  On the contrary, nothing is more common than to observe
+the same kind of people making the same kind of mistake when placed for
+the first time in the same kind of new circumstances.  I did not say that
+there would be no sameness of action without memory of a like present.
+There may be sameness of action proceeding from a memory, conscious or
+unconscious, of like antecedents, and _a presence only of like presents
+without recollection of the same_.
+
+The sameness of action of like persons placed under like circumstances
+for the first time, resembles the sameness of action of inorganic matter
+under the same combinations.  Let us for a moment suppose what we call
+non-living substances to be capable of remembering their antecedents, and
+that the changes they undergo are the expressions of their recollections.
+Then I admit, of course, that there is not memory in any cream, we will
+say, that is about to be churned of the cream of the preceding week, but
+the common absence of such memory from each week's cream is an element of
+sameness between the two.  And though no cream can remember having been
+churned before, yet all cream in all time has had nearly identical
+antecedents, and has therefore nearly the same memories and nearly the
+same proclivities.  Thus, in fact, the cream of one week is as truly the
+same as the cream of another; week from the same cow, pasture, &c., as
+anything is ever the same with anything; for the having been subjected to
+like antecedents engenders the closest similarity that we can conceive
+of, if the substances were like to start with.  Same is as same does.
+
+The manifest absence of any connecting memory (or memory of like
+presents) from certain of the phenomena of heredity, such as, for
+example, the diseases of old age, is now seen to be no valid reason for
+saying that such other and far more numerous and important phenomena as
+those of embryonic development are not phenomena of memory.  Growth and
+the diseases of old age do indeed, at first sight, appear to stand on the
+same footing.  The question, however, whether certain results are due to
+memory or no must be settled not by showing that two combinations,
+neither of which can remember the other (as between each other), may yet
+generate like results, and therefore, considering the memory theory
+disposed of for all other cases, but by the evidence we may be able to
+adduce in any particular case that the second agent has actually
+remembered the conduct of the first.  Such evidence must show firstly
+that the second agent cannot be supposed able to do what it is plain he
+can do, except under the guidance of memory or experience, and secondly,
+that the second agent has had every opportunity of remembering.  When the
+first of these tests fails, similarity of action on the part of two
+agents need not be connected with memory of a like present as well as of
+like antecedents; when both fail, similarity of action should be referred
+to memory of like antecedents only.
+
+Returning to a parenthesis a few pages back, in which I said that
+consciousness of memory would be less or greater according to the greater
+or fewer number of times that the act had been repeated, it may be
+observed as a corollary to this, that the less consciousness of memory
+the greater the uniformity of action, and _vice versa_.  For the less
+consciousness involves the memory's being more perfect, through a larger
+number (generally) of repetitions of the act that is remembered; there is
+therefore a less proportionate difference in respect of the number of
+recollections of this particular act between the most recent actor and
+the most recent but one.  This is why very old civilisations, as those of
+many insects, and the greater number of now living organisms, appear to
+the eye not to change at all.
+
+For example, if an action has been performed only ten times, we will say
+by A, B, C, &c, who are similar in all respects, except that A acts
+without recollection, B with recollection of A's action, C with
+recollection of both B's and A's, while J remembers the course taken by
+A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, and I--the possession of a memory by B will
+indeed so change his action, as compared with A's, that it may well be
+hardly recognisable.  We saw this in our example of the clerk who asked
+the policeman the way to the eating-house on one day, but did not ask him
+the next, because he remembered; but C's action will not be so different
+from B's as B's from A's, for though C will act with a memory of two
+occasions on which the action has been performed, while B recollects only
+the original performance by A, yet B and C both act with the guidance of
+a memory and experience of some kind, while A acted without any.  Thus
+the clerk referred to in Chapter X. will act on the third day much as he
+acted on the second--that is to say, he will see the policeman at the
+corner of the street, but will not question him.
+
+When the action is repeated by J for the tenth time, the difference
+between J's repetition of it and I's will be due solely to the difference
+between a recollection of nine past performances by J against only eight
+by I, and this is so much proportionately less than the difference
+between a recollection of two performances and of only one, that a less
+modification of action should be expected.  At the same time
+consciousness concerning an action repeated for the tenth time should be
+less acute than on the first repetition.  Memory, therefore, though
+tending to disturb similarity of action less and less continually, must
+always cause some disturbance.  At the same time the possession of a
+memory on the successive repetitions of an action after the first, and,
+perhaps, the first two or three, during which the recollection may be
+supposed still imperfect, will tend to ensure uniformity, for it will be
+one of the elements of sameness in the agents--they both acting by the
+light of experience and memory.
+
+During the embryonic stages and in childhood we are almost entirely under
+the guidance of a practised and powerful memory of circumstances which
+have been often repeated, not only in detail and piecemeal, but as a
+whole, and under many slightly varying conditions; thus the performance
+has become well averaged and matured in its arrangements, so as to meet
+all ordinary emergencies.  We therefore act with great unconsciousness
+and vary our performances little.  Babies are much more alike than
+persons of middle age.
+
+Up to the average age at which our ancestors have had children during
+many generations, we are still guided in great measure by memory; but the
+variations in external circumstances begin to make themselves perceptible
+in our characters.  In middle life we live more and more continually upon
+the piecing together of details of memory drawn from our personal
+experience, that is to say, upon the memory of our own antecedents; and
+this resembles the kind of memory we hypothetically attached to cream a
+little time ago.  It is not surprising, then, that a son who has
+inherited his father's tastes and constitution, and who lives much as his
+father had done, should make the same mistakes as his father did when he
+reaches his father's age--we will say of seventy--though he cannot
+possibly remember his father's having made the mistakes.  It were to be
+wished we could, for then we might know better how to avoid gout, cancer,
+or what not.  And it is to be noticed that the developments of old age
+are generally things we should be glad enough to avoid if we knew how to
+do so.
+
+
+
+CONCLUSION.  (CHAPTER XIII. OF UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY.)
+
+
+If we observed the resemblance between successive generations to be as
+close as that between distilled water and distilled water through all
+time, and if we observed that perfect unchangeableness in the action of
+living beings which we see in what we call chemical and mechanical
+combinations, we might indeed suspect that memory had as little place
+among the causes of their action as it can have in anything, and that
+each repetition, whether of a habit or the practice of art, or of an
+embryonic process in successive generations, was as original as the
+"Origin of Species" itself, for all that memory had to do with it.  I
+submit, however, that in the case of the reproductive forms of life we
+see just so much variety, in spite of uniformity, as is consistent with a
+repetition involving not only a nearly perfect similarity in the agents
+and their circumstances, but also the little departure therefrom that is
+inevitably involved in the supposition that a memory of like presents as
+well as of like antecedents (as distinguished from a memory of like
+antecedents only) has played a part in their development--a cyclical
+memory, if the expression may be pardoned.
+
+There is life infinitely lower and more minute than any which our most
+powerful microscopes reveal to us, but let us leave this upon one side
+and begin with the amoeba.  Let us suppose that this "structureless"
+morsel of protoplasm is, for all its "structurelessness," composed of an
+infinite number of living molecules, each one of them with hopes and
+fears of its own, and all dwelling together like Tekke Turcomans, of whom
+we read that they live for plunder only, and that each man of them is
+entirely independent, acknowledging no constituted authority, but that
+some among them exercise a tacit and undefined influence over the others.
+Let us suppose these molecules capable of memory, both in their capacity
+as individuals and as societies, and able to transmit their memories to
+their descendants from the traditions of the dimmest past to the
+experiences of their own lifetime.  Some of these societies will remain
+simple, as having had no history, but to the greater number unfamiliar,
+and therefore striking, incidents will from time to time occur, which,
+when they do not disturb memory so greatly as to kill, will leave their
+impression upon it.  The body or society will remember these incidents
+and be modified by them in its conduct, and therefore more or less in its
+internal arrangements, which will tend inevitably to specialisation.  This
+memory of the most striking events of varied lifetimes I maintain, with
+Professor Hering, to be the differentiating cause, which, accumulated in
+countless generations, has led up from the amoeba to man.  If there had
+been no such memory, the amoeba of one generation would have exactly
+resembled the amoeba of the preceding, and a perfect cycle would have
+been established; the modifying effects of an additional memory in each
+generation have made the cycle into a spiral, and into a spiral whose
+eccentricities, in the outset hardly perceptible, is becoming greater and
+greater with increasing longevity and more complex social and mechanical
+inventions.
+
+We say that the chicken grows the horny tip to its beak with which it
+ultimately pecks its way out of its shell, because it remembers having
+grown it before, and the use it made of it.  We say that it made it on
+the same principles as a man makes a spade or a hammer, that is to say,
+as the joint result both of desire and experience.  When I say
+experience, I mean, experience not only of what will be wanted, but also
+of the details of all the means that must be taken in order to effect
+this.  Memory, therefore, is supposed to guide the chicken not only in
+respect of the main design, but in respect also of every atomic action,
+so to speak, which goes to make up the execution of this design.  It is
+not only the suggestion of a plan which is due to memory, but, as
+Professor Hering has so well said, it is the binding power of memory
+which alone renders any consolidation or coherence of action possible,
+inasmuch as without this no action could have parts subordinate one to
+another, yet bearing upon a common end; no part of an action, great or
+small, could have reference to any other part, much less to a combination
+of all the parts; nothing, in fact, but ultimate atoms of actions could
+ever happen--these bearing the same relation to such an action, we will
+say, as a railway journey from London to Edinburgh as a single molecule
+of hydrogen to a gallon of water.
+
+If asked how it is that the chicken shows no sign of consciousness
+concerning this design, nor yet of the steps it is taking to carry it
+out, we reply that such unconsciousness is usual in all cases where an
+action, and the design which prompts it, have been repeated exceedingly
+often.  If, again, we are asked how we account for the regularity with
+which each step is taken in its due order, we answer that this too is
+characteristic of actions that are done habitually--they being very
+rarely misplaced in respect of any part.
+
+When I wrote Life and Habit, I had arrived at the conclusion that memory
+was the most essential characteristic of life, and went so far as to say,
+"Life is that property of matter whereby it can remember--matter which
+can remember is living."  I should perhaps have written, "Life is the
+being possessed of a memory--the life of a thing at any moment is the
+memories which at that moment it retains;" and I would modify the words
+that immediately follow, namely, "Matter which cannot remember is dead;"
+for they imply that there is such a thing as matter which cannot remember
+anything at all, and this on fuller consideration I do not believe to be
+the case; I can conceive of no matter which is not able to remember a
+little, and which is not living in respect of what it can remember.  I do
+not see how action of any kind (chemical as much as vital) is conceivable
+without the supposition that every atom retains a memory of certain
+antecedents.  I cannot, however, at this point, enter upon the reasons
+which have compelled me to join the many who are now adopting this
+conclusion.  Whether these would be deemed sufficient or no, at any rate
+we cannot believe that a system of self-reproducing associations should
+develop from the simplicity of the amoeba to the complexity of the human
+body without the presence of that memory which can alone account at once
+for the resemblances and the differences between successive generations,
+for the arising and the accumulation of divergences--for the tendency to
+differ and the tendency not to differ.
+
+At parting, therefore, I would recommend the reader to see every atom in
+the universe as living and able to feel and to remember, but in a humble
+way.  He must have life eternal, as well as matter eternal; and the life
+and the matter must be joined together inseparably as body and soul to
+one another.  Thus he will see God everywhere, not as those who repeat
+phrases conventionally, but as people who would have their words taken
+according to their most natural and legitimate meaning; and he will feel
+that the main difference between him and many of those who oppose him
+lies in the fact that whereas both he and they use the same language, his
+opponents only half mean what they say, while he means it entirely.
+
+The attempt to get a higher form of a life from a lower one is in
+accordance with our observation and experience.  It is therefore proper
+to be believed.  The attempt to get it from that which has absolutely no
+life is like trying to get something out of nothing.  The millionth part
+of a farthing put out to interest at ten per cent. will in five hundred
+years become over a million pounds, and so long as we have any millionth
+of a millionth of the farthing to start with, our getting as many million
+pounds as we have a fancy for is only a question of time, but without the
+initial millionth of a millionth of a millionth part, we shall get no
+increment whatever.  A little leaven will leaven the whole lump, but
+there must be _some_ leaven.
+
+We should endeavour to see the so-called inorganic as living, in respect
+of the qualities it has in common with the organic, rather than the
+organic as non-living in respect of the qualities it has in common with
+the inorganic.  True, it would be hard to place one's self on the same
+moral platform as a stone, but this is not necessary; it is enough that
+we should feel the stone to have a moral platform of its own, though that
+platform embraces little more than a profound respect for the laws of
+gravitation, chemical affinity, &c.  As for the difficulty of conceiving
+a body as living that has not got a reproductive system--we should
+remember that neuter insects are living but are believed to have no
+reproductive system.  Again, we should bear in mind that mere
+assimilation involves all the essentials of reproduction, and that both
+air and water possess this power in a very high degree.  The essence of a
+reproductive system, then, is found low down in the scheme of nature.
+
+At present our leading men of science are in this difficulty; on the one
+hand their experiments and their theories alike teach them that
+spontaneous generation ought not to be accepted; on the other, they must
+have an origin for the life of the living forms, which, by their own
+theory, have been evolved, and they can at present get this origin in no
+other way than by _Deus ex machina_ method, which they reject as
+unproved, or spontaneous generation of living from non-living matter,
+which is no less foreign to their experience.  As a general rule, they
+prefer the latter alternative.  So Professor Tyndall, in his celebrated
+article (_Nineteenth Century_, November 1878), wrote:--
+
+"The theory of evolution in its complete form involves the assumption
+that at some period or other of the earth's history there occurred what
+would be now called 'spontaneous generation.'" {217}  And so Professor
+Huxley--
+
+   "It is argued that a belief in abiogenesis is a necessary corollary
+   from the doctrine of Evolution.  This may be" [which I submit is
+   equivalent here to "is"] "true of the occurrence of abiogenesis at
+   some time." {218}
+
+Professor Huxley goes on to say that however this may be, abiogenesis (or
+spontaneous generation) is not respectable and will not do at all now.
+There may have been one case once; this may be winked at, but it must not
+occur again.  "It is enough," he writes, "that a single particle of
+living protoplasm should once have appeared on the globe as the result of
+no matter what agency.  In the eyes of a consistent [!] evolutionist any
+further [!] independent formation of protoplasm would be sheer waste"--and
+the sooner the Almighty gets to understand that He must not make that
+single act of special creation into a precedent the better for Him.
+
+Professor Huxley, in fact, excuses the single case of spontaneous
+generation which he appears to admit, because however illegitimate, it
+was still "only a very little one," and came off a long time ago in a
+foreign country.  For my own part I think it will prove in the end more
+convenient if we say that there is a low kind of livingness in every atom
+of matter, and adopt Life eternal as no less inevitable a conclusion than
+matter eternal.
+
+It should not be doubted that wherever there is vibration or motion there
+is life and memory, and that there is vibration and motion at all times
+in all things.  The reader who takes the above position will find that he
+can explain the entry of what he calls death among what he calls the
+living, whereas he could by no means introduce life into his system if he
+started without it.  Death is deducible; life is not deducible.  Death is
+a change of memories; it is not the destruction of all memory.  It is as
+the liquidation of one company each member of which will presently join a
+new one, and retain a trifle even of the old cancelled memory, by way of
+greater aptitude for working in concert with other molecules.  This is
+why animals feed on grass and on each other, and cannot proselytise or
+convert the rude ground before it has been tutored in the first
+principles of the higher kinds of association.
+
+Again, I would recommend the reader to beware of believing anything in
+this book unless he either likes it, or feels angry at being told it.  If
+required belief in this or that makes a man angry, I suppose he should,
+as a general rule, swallow it whole then and there upon the spot,
+otherwise he may take it or leave it as he likes.
+
+I have not gone far for my facts, nor yet far from them; all on which I
+rest are as open to the reader as to me.  If I have sometimes used hard
+terms, the probability is that I have not understood them, but have done
+so by a slip, as one who has caught a bad habit from the company he has
+been lately keeping.  They should be skipped.
+
+Do not let the reader be too much cast down by the bad language with
+which professional scientists obscure the issue, nor by their seeming to
+make it their business to fog us under the pretext of removing our
+difficulties.  It is not the ratcatcher's interest to catch all the rats;
+and, as Handel observed so sensibly, "Every professional gentleman must
+do his best for to live."  The art of some of our philosophers, however,
+is sufficiently transparent, and consists too often in saying "organism
+which . . . must be classified among fishes," {220a} instead of "fish"
+and then proclaiming that they have "an ineradicable tendency to try to
+make things clear." {220b}
+
+If another example is required, here is the following from an article
+than which I have seen few with which I more completely agree, or which
+have given me greater pleasure.  If our men of science would take to
+writing in this way, we should be glad enough to follow them.  The
+passage I refer to runs thus:--
+
+   "Professor Huxley speaks of a 'verbal fog by which the question at
+   issue may be hidden;' is there no verbal fog in the statement that
+   _the aetiology of crayfishes resolves itself into a gradual evolution
+   in the course of the mesozoic and subsequent epochs of the world's
+   history of these animals from a primitive astacomorphous form_?  Would
+   it be fog or light that would envelop the history of man if we say
+   that the existence of man was explained by the hypothesis of his
+   gradual evolution from a primitive anthropomorphous form?  I should
+   call this fog, not light." {220c}
+
+Especially let him mistrust those who are holding forth about protoplasm,
+and maintaining that this is the only living substance.  Protoplasm may
+be, and perhaps is, the _most_ living part of an organism, as the most
+capable of retaining vibrations, of a certain character, but this is the
+utmost that can be claimed for it.  I have noticed, however, that
+protoplasm has not been buoyant lately in the scientific market.
+
+Having mentioned protoplasm, I may ask the reader to note the breakdown
+of that school of philosophy which divided the _ego_ from the _non ego_.
+The protoplasmists, on the one hand, are whittling away at _ego_, till
+they have reduced it to a little jelly in certain parts of the body, and
+they will whittle away this too presently, if they go on as they are
+doing now.
+
+Others, again, are so unifying the _ego_ and the _non ego_, that with
+them there will soon be as little of the _non ego_ left as there is of
+the _ego_ with their opponents.  Both, however, are so far agreed as that
+we know not where to draw the line between the two, and this renders
+nugatory any system which is founded upon a distinction between them.
+
+The truth is, that all classification whatever, when we examine its
+_raison d'etre_ closely, is found to be arbitrary--to depend on our sense
+of our own convenience, and not on any inherent distinction in the nature
+of the things themselves.  Strictly speaking, there is only one thing and
+one action.  The universe, or God, and the action of the universe as a
+whole.
+
+Lastly, I may predict with some certainty that before long we shall find
+the original Darwinism of Dr. Erasmus Darwin (with an infusion of
+Professor Hering into the bargain) generally accepted instead of the neo-
+Darwinism of to-day, and that the variations whose accumulation results
+in species will be recognised as due to the wants and endeavours of the
+living forms in which they appear, instead of being ascribed to chance,
+or, in other words, to unknown causes, as by Mr. Charles Darwin's system.
+We shall have some idyllic young naturalists bringing up Dr. Erasmus
+Darwin's note on _Trapa natans_ {221} and Lamarck's kindred passage on
+the descent of _Ranunculus hederaceus_ from _Ranunculus aquatilis_ {222a}
+as fresh discoveries, and be told with much happy simplicity, that those
+animals and plants which have felt the need of such a structure have
+developed it, while those which have not wanted it have gone without it.
+Thus it will be declared, every leaf we see around us, every structure of
+the minutest insect, will bear witness to the truth of the "great guess"
+of the greatest of naturalists concerning the memory of living matter.
+{222b}
+
+I dare say the public will not object to this, and am very sure that none
+of the admirers of Mr. Charles Darwin or Mr. Wallace will protest against
+it; but it may be as well to point out that this was not the view of the
+matter taken by Mr. Wallace in 1858 when he and Mr. Darwin first came
+forward as preachers of natural selection.  At that time Mr. Wallace saw
+clearly enough the difference between the theory of "natural selection"
+and that of Lamarck.  He wrote:--
+
+   "The hypothesis of Lamarck--that progressive changes in species have
+   been produced by the attempts of animals to increase the development
+   of their own organs and thus modify their structure and habits--has
+   been repeatedly and easily refuted by all writers on the subject of
+   varieties and species, . . . but the view here developed renders such
+   a hypothesis quite unnecessary . . .  The powerful retractile talons
+   of the falcon and the cat tribes have not been produced or increased
+   by the volition of those animals, . . . neither did the giraffe
+   acquire its long neck by desiring to reach the foliage of the more
+   lofty shrubs, and constantly stretching its neck for this purpose, but
+   because any varieties which occurred among its antitypes with a longer
+   neck than usual _at once secured a fresh range of pasture over the
+   same ground as their short-necked companions_, _and on the first
+   scarcity of food were thereby enabled to outlive them_" (italics in
+   original). {223a}
+
+This is absolutely the neo-Darwin doctrine, and a denial of the mainly
+fortuitous character of the variations in animal and vegetable forms cuts
+at its root.  That Mr. Wallace, after years of reflection, still adhered
+to this view, is proved by his heading a reprint of the paragraph just
+quoted from {223b} with the words "Lamarck's hypothesis very different
+from that now advanced;" nor do any of his more recent works show that he
+has modified his opinion.  It should be noted that Mr. Wallace does not
+call his work Contributions to the Theory of Evolution, but to that of
+Natural Selection.
+
+Mr. Darwin, with characteristic caution, only commits himself to saying
+that Mr. Wallace has arrived at _almost_ (italics mine) the same general
+conclusions as he, Mr. Darwin, has done; {223c} but he still, as in 1859,
+declares that it would be "a serious error to suppose that the greater
+number of instincts have been acquired by habit in one generation and
+then transmitted by inheritance to succeeding generations," {223d} and he
+still comprehensively condemns the "well-known doctrine of inherited
+habit, as advanced by Lamarck." {224}
+
+As for the statement in the passage quoted from Mr. Wallace, to the
+effect that Lamarck's hypothesis "has been repeatedly and easily refuted
+by all writers on the subject of varieties and species," it is a very
+surprising one.  I have searched Evolution literature in vain for any
+refutation of the Erasmus Darwinian system (for this is what Lamarck's
+hypothesis really is), which need make the defenders of that system at
+all uneasy.  The best attempt at an answer to Erasmus Darwin that has yet
+been made is Paley's Natural Theology, which was throughout obviously
+written to meet Buffon and the Zoonomia.  It is the manner of theologians
+to say that such and such an objection "has been refuted over and over
+again," without at the same time telling us when and where; it is to be
+regretted that Mr. Wallace has here taken a leaf out of the theologians'
+book.  His statement is one which will not pass muster with those whom
+public opinion is sure in the end to follow.
+
+Did Mr. Herbert Spencer, for example, "repeatedly and easily refute"
+Lamarck's hypothesis in his brilliant article in the _Leader_, March 20,
+1852?  On the contrary, that article is expressly directed against those
+"who cavalierly reject the hypothesis of Lamarck and his followers."  This
+article was written six years before the words last quoted from Mr.
+Wallace; how absolutely, however, does the word "cavalierly" apply to
+them!
+
+Does Isidore Geoffrey, again, bear Mr. Wallace's assertion out better?  In
+1859--that is to say but a short time after Mr. Wallace had written--he
+wrote as follows:--
+
+   "Such was the language which Lamarck heard during his protracted old
+   age, saddened alike by the weight of years and blindness; this was
+   what people did not hesitate to utter over his grave yet barely
+   closed, and what indeed they are still saying--commonly too without
+   any knowledge of what Lamarck maintained, but merely repeating at
+   secondhand bad caricatures of his teaching.
+
+   "When will the time come when we may see Lamarck's theory
+   discussed--and, I may as well at once say, refuted in some important
+   points {225a}--with at any rate the respect due to one of the most
+   illustrious masters of our science?  And when will this theory, the
+   hardihood of which has been greatly exaggerated, become freed from the
+   interpretations and commentaries by the false light of which so many
+   naturalists have followed their opinion concerning it?  If its author
+   is to be condemned, let it be, at any rate, not before he has been
+   heard." {225b}
+
+In 1873 M. Martin published his edition of Lamarck's _Philosophic
+Zoologique_.  He was still able to say, with, I believe, perfect truth,
+that Lamarck's theory has "never yet had the honour of being discussed
+seriously." {225c}
+
+Professor Huxley in his article on Evolution is no less cavalier than Mr.
+Wallace.  He writes: {225d}--
+
+   "Lamarck introduced the conception of the action of an animal on
+   itself as a factor in producing modification."
+
+Lamarck did nothing of the kind.  It was Buffon and Dr. Darwin who
+introduced this, but more especially Dr. Darwin.  The accuracy of
+Professor Huxley's statements about the history and literature of
+evolution is like the direct interference of the Deity--it vanishes
+whenever and wherever I have occasion to test it.
+
+"But _a little consideration showed_" (italics mine) "that though Lamarck
+had seized what, as far as it goes, is a true cause of modification, it
+is a cause the actual effects of which are wholly inadequate to account
+for any considerable modification in animals, and which can have no
+influence whatever in the vegetable world," &c.
+
+I should be very glad to come across some of the "little consideration"
+which will show this.  I have searched for it far and wide, and have
+never been able to find it.
+
+I think Professor Huxley has been exercising some of his ineradicable
+tendency to try to make things clear in the article on Evolution, already
+so often quoted from.  We find him (p. 750) pooh-poohing Lamarck, yet on
+the next page he says, "How far 'natural selection' suffices for the
+production of species remains to be seen."  And this when "natural
+selection" was already so nearly of age!  Why, to those who know how to
+read between a philosopher's lines the sentence comes to very nearly the
+same as a declaration that the writer has no great opinion of "natural
+selection."  Professor Huxley continues, "Few can doubt that, if not the
+whole cause, it is a very important factor in that operation."  A
+philosopher's words should be weighed carefully, and when Professor
+Huxley says, "few can doubt," we must remember that he may be including
+himself among the few whom he considers to have the power of doubting on
+this matter.  He does not say "few will," but "few can" doubt, as though
+it were only the enlightened who would have the power of doing so.
+Certainly "nature"--for that is what "natural selection" comes to--is
+rather an important factor in the operation, but we do not gain much by
+being told so.  If however, Professor Huxley neither believes in the
+origin of species, through sense of need on the part of animals
+themselves, nor yet in "natural selection," we should be glad to know
+what he does believe in.
+
+The battle is one of greater importance than appears at first sight.  It
+is a battle between teleology and non-teleology, between the
+purposiveness and the non-purposiveness of the organs in animal and
+vegetable bodies.  According to Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, and Paley,
+organs are purposive; according to Mr. Darwin and his followers, they are
+not purposive.  But the main arguments against the system of Dr. Erasmus
+Darwin are arguments which, so far as they have any weight, tell against
+evolution generally.  Now that these have been disposed of, and the
+prejudice against evolution has been overcome, it will be seen that there
+is nothing to be said against the system of Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck
+which does not tell with far greater force against that of Mr. Charles
+Darwin and Mr. Wallace.
+
+
+
+
+REMARKS ON MR. ROMANES' MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. {228a}
+
+
+I have said on page 96 of this book that the word "heredity" may be a
+very good way of stating the difficulty which meets us when we observe
+the reappearance of like characteristics, whether of body or mind, in
+successive generations, but that it does nothing whatever towards
+removing it.
+
+It is here that Mr. Herbert Spencer, the late Mr. G. H. Lewes, and Mr.
+Romanes fail.  Mr. Herbert Spencer does indeed go so far in one place as
+to call instinct "organised memory," {228b} and Mr. G. H. Lewes
+attributes many instincts to what he calls the "lapsing of intelligence."
+{228c}  So does Mr. Herbert Spencer, {228d} whom Mr. Romanes should have
+known that Mr. Lewis was following.  Mr. Romanes, in his recent work,
+Mental Evolution in Animals (November, 1883), endorses this, and
+frequently uses such expressions as "the lifetime of the species," {228e}
+"hereditary experience," {228f} and "hereditary memory and instinct,"
+{228g} but none of these writers (and indeed no writer that I know of
+except Professor Hering of Prague, for a translation of whose address on
+this subject I must refer the reader to my book Unconscious Memory) has
+shown a comprehension of the fact that these expressions are unexplained
+so long as "heredity," whereby they explain them, is unexplained; and
+none of them sees the importance of emphasizing Memory, and making it as
+it were the keystone of the system.
+
+Mr. Spencer may very well call instinct "organised memory" if he means
+that offspring can remember--within the limitations to which all memory
+is subject--what happened to it while it was yet in the person or persons
+of its parent or parents; but if he does not mean this, his use of the
+word "memory," his talk about "the experience of the race," and other
+expressions of kindred nature, are delusive.  If he does mean this, it is
+a pity he has nowhere said so.
+
+Professor Hering does mean this, and makes it clear that he does so.  He
+does not catch the ball and let it slip through his fingers again, but
+holds it firmly.  "It is to memory," he says, "that we owe almost all
+that we have or are; our ideas and conceptions are its work; our every
+thought and movement are derived from this source.  Memory connects the
+countless phenomena of our existence into a single whole, and as our
+bodies would be scattered into the dust of their component atoms if they
+were not held together by the cohesion of matter, so our consciousness
+would be broken up into as many moments as we had lived seconds, but for
+the binding and unifying force of Memory." {229}  And he proceeds to show
+that Memory persists between generations exactly as it does between the
+various stages in the life of the individual.  If I could find any such
+passage as the one I have just quoted, in Mr. Herbert Spencer's, Mr.
+Lewes's, or Mr. Romanes' works, I should be only too glad to quote it,
+but I know of nothing comparable to it for definiteness of idea,
+thoroughness and consistency.
+
+No reader indeed can rise from a perusal of Mr. Herbert Spencer's, or Mr.
+G. H. Lewes', work with an adequate--if indeed with any--impression that
+the phenomena of heredity are in fact phenomena of memory; that heredity,
+whether as regards body or mind, is only possible because each generation
+is linked on to and made one with its predecessor by the possession of a
+common and abiding memory, in as far as bodily existence was common--that
+is to say, until the substance of the one left the substance of the
+other; and that this memory is exactly of the same general character as
+that which enables us to remember what we did half an hour ago--strong
+under the same circumstances as those under which this familiar kind of
+memory is strong, and weak under those under which it is weak.  Mr.
+Spencer and Mr. Lewes have even less conception of the connection between
+heredity and memory than Dr. Erasmus Darwin had at the close of the last
+century. {230}
+
+Mr. Lewes' position was briefly this.  He denied that there could be any
+knowledge independent of experience, but he could not help seeing that
+young animals come into the world furnished with many organs which they
+use with great dexterity at a very early age.  This looks as if they are
+acting on knowledge acquired independently of experience.  "No," says Mr.
+Lewes, "not so.  They are born with the organs--I cannot tell how or why,
+but heredity explains all that, and having once got the organs, the
+objects that come into contact with them in daily life naturally produce
+the same effect as on the parents, just as oxygen coming into contact
+with the right quantity of hydrogen will make water; hence even the first
+time the offspring come into contact with any given object they act as
+their parents did."  The idea of the young having got their experience in
+a past generation does not seem to have even crossed his mind.
+
+"What marvel is there," he asks, "that constant conditions acting upon
+structures which are similar should produce similar results?  It is in
+this sense that the paradox of Leibnitz is true, and we can be said 'to
+acquire an innate idea;' only the idea is not acquired independently of
+experience, but through the process of experience similar to that which
+originally produced it." {231a}
+
+The impression left upon me is that he is all at sea for want of the clue
+with which Professor Hering would have furnished him, and that had that
+clue been presented to him a dozen years or so earlier than it was he
+would have adopted it.
+
+As regards Mr. Romanes the case is different.  His recent work, Mental
+Evolution in Animals, {231b} shows that he is well aware of the direction
+which modern opinion is taking, and in several places he so writes as to
+warrant me in claiming his authority in support of the views which I have
+been insisting on for several years past.
+
+Thus Mr. Romanes says that the analogies between the memory with which we
+are familiar in daily life and hereditary memory "are so numerous and
+precise" as to justify us in considering them to be of essentially the
+same kind. {232a}
+
+Again he says that although the memory of milk shown by new-born infants
+is "at all events in large part hereditary, it is none the less memory"
+of a certain kind. {232b}
+
+Two lines lower down he writes of "hereditary memory or instinct,"
+thereby implying that instinct is "hereditary memory."  "It makes no
+essential difference," he says, "whether the past sensation was actually
+experienced by the individual itself, or bequeathed it, so to speak, by
+its ancestors. {232c}  For it makes no essential difference whether the
+nervous changes . . . were occasioned during the lifetime of the
+individual or during that of the species, and afterwards impressed by
+heredity on the individual."
+
+Lower down on the same page he writes:--
+
+   "As showing how close is the connection between hereditary memory and
+   instinct," &c.
+
+And on the following page:--
+
+   "And this shows how closely the phenomena of hereditary memory are
+   related to those of individual memory: at this stage . . . it is
+   practically impossible to disentangle the effects of hereditary memory
+   from those of the individual."
+
+Again:--
+
+   "Another point which we have here to consider is the part which
+   heredity has played in forming the perceptive faculty of the
+   individual prior to its own experience.  We have already seen that
+   heredity plays an important part in forming memory of ancestral
+   experiences, and thus it is that many animals come into the world with
+   their power of perception already largely developed. . . .  The wealth
+   of ready-formed information, and therefore of ready-made powers of
+   perception, with which many newly-born or newly-hatched animals are
+   provided, is so great and so precise that it scarcely requires to be
+   supplemented by the subsequent experience of the individual." {233a}
+
+Again:--
+
+   "Instincts probably owe their origin and development to one or other
+   of two principles.
+
+   "I.  The first mode of origin consists in natural selection or
+   survival of the fittest, continuously preserving actions, &c. &c. . .
+   .
+
+   "II.  The second mode of origin is as follows:--By the effects of
+   habit in successive generations, actions which were originally
+   intelligent become as it were stereotyped into permanent instincts.
+   Just as in the lifetime of the individual adjustive actions which were
+   originally intelligent may by frequent repetition become automatic, so
+   in the lifetime of species actions originally intelligent may by
+   frequent repetition and heredity so write their effects on the nervous
+   system that the latter is prepared, even before individual experience,
+   to perform adjustive actions mechanically which in previous
+   generations were performed intelligently.  This mode of origin of
+   instincts has been appropriately called (by Lewes--see Problems of
+   Life and Mind {233b}) the 'lapsing of intelligence.'" {233c}
+
+Later on:--
+
+   "That 'practice makes perfect' is a matter, as I have previously said,
+   of daily observation.  Whether we regard a juggler, a pianist, or a
+   billiard-player, a child learning his lesson or an actor his part by
+   frequently repeating it, or a thousand other illustrations of the same
+   process, we see at once that there is truth in the cynical definition
+   of a man as a 'bundle of habits.'  And the same of course is true of
+   animals." {234a}
+
+From this Mr. Romanes goes on to show "that automatic actions and
+conscious habits may be inherited," {234b} and in the course of doing
+this contends that "instincts may be lost by disuse, and conversely that
+they may be acquired as instincts by the hereditary transmission of
+ancestral experience." {234c}
+
+On another page Mr. Romanes says:--
+
+   "Let us now turn to the second of these two assumptions, viz., that
+   some at least among migratory birds must possess, by inheritance
+   alone, a very precise knowledge of the particular direction to be
+   pursued.  It is without question an astonishing fact that a young
+   cuckoo should be prompted to leave its foster parents at a particular
+   season of the year, and without any guide to show the course
+   previously taken by its own parents, but this is a fact which must be
+   met by any theory of instinct which aims at being complete.  Now upon
+   our own theory it can only be met by taking it to be due to inherited
+   memory." {234d}
+
+Mr. Romanes says in a note that this theory was first advanced by Canon
+Kingsley in _Nature_, January 18, 1867, a piece of information which I
+learn for the first time; otherwise, as I need hardly say, I should have
+called attention to it in my own books on evolution.  _Nature_ did not
+begin to appear till the end of 1869, and I can find no communication
+from Canon Kingsley bearing upon hereditary memory in any number of
+_Nature_ prior to the date of Canon Kingsley's death; but no doubt Mr.
+Romanes has only made a slip in his reference.  Mr. Romanes also says
+that the theory connecting instinct with inherited memory "has since been
+independently 'suggested' by many writers."
+
+A little lower Mr. Romanes says: "Of what kind, then, is the inherited
+memory on which the young cuckoo (if not also other migratory birds)
+depends?  We can only answer, of the same kind, whatever this may be, as
+that upon which the old bird depends." {235}
+
+I have given above most of the more marked passages which I have been
+able to find in Mr. Romanes' book which attribute instinct to memory, and
+which admit that there is no fundamental difference between the kind of
+memory with which we are all familiar and hereditary memory as
+transmitted from one generation to another.  But throughout his work
+there are passages which suggest, though less obviously, the same
+inference.
+
+The passages I have quoted show that Mr. Romanes is upholding the same
+opinions as Professor Hering's and my own, but their effect and tendency
+is more plain here than in Mr. Romanes' own book, where they are overlaid
+by nearly 400 long pages of matter which is not always easy of
+comprehension.
+
+The late Mr. Darwin himself, indeed--whose mantle seems to have fallen
+more especially and particularly on Mr. Romanes--could not contradict
+himself more hopelessly than Mr. Romanes often does.  Indeed in one of
+the very passages I have quoted in order to show that Mr. Romanes accepts
+the phenomena of heredity as phenomena of memory, he speaks of "heredity
+as playing an important part _in forming memory_ of ancestral
+experiences;" so that whereas I want him to say that the phenomena of
+heredity are due to memory, he will have it that the memory is due to the
+heredity, {236a} which seems to me absurd.
+
+Over and over again Mr. Romanes insists that it is heredity which does
+this or that.  Thus it is "_heredity with natural selection which adapt_
+the anatomical plan of the ganglia." {236b}  It is heredity which
+impresses nervous changes on the individual. {236c}  "In the lifetime of
+species actions originally intelligent may by frequent repetition _and
+heredity_," &c. {236d}; but he nowhere tells us what heredity is any more
+than Messrs. Herbert Spencer, Darwin, and Lewes have done.  This,
+however, is, exactly what Professor Hering, whom I have unwittingly
+followed, does.  He resolves all phenomena of heredity, whether in
+respect of body or mind, into phenomena of memory.  He says in effect, "A
+man grows his body as he does, and a bird makes her nest as she does,
+because both man and bird remember having grown body and made nest as
+they now do, or very nearly so, on innumerable past occasions."  He thus
+reduces life from an equation of say 100 unknown quantities to one of 99
+only by showing that heredity and memory, two of the original 100 unknown
+quantities, are in reality part of one and the same thing.
+
+That he is right Mr. Romanes seems to me to admit, though in a very
+unsatisfactory way.
+
+
+
+
+REMARKS ON MR. ROMANES' MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS--(_continued_).
+
+
+I will give examples of my meaning.  Mr. Romanes says on an early page,
+"The most fundamental principle of mental operation is that of memory,
+for this is the _conditio sine qua non_ of all mental life" (page 35).
+
+I do not understand Mr. Romanes to hold that there is any living being
+which has no mind at all, and I do understand him to admit that
+development of body and mind are closely interdependent.
+
+If then, "the most fundamental principle" of mind is memory, it follows
+that memory enters also as a fundamental principle into development of
+body.  For mind and body are so closely connected that nothing can enter
+largely into the one without correspondingly affecting the other.
+
+On a later page, indeed, Mr. Romanes speaks point-blank of the new-born
+child as "_embodying_ the results of a great mass of _hereditary
+experience_" (p. 77), so that what he is driving at can be collected by
+those who take trouble, but is not seen until we call up from our own
+knowledge matter whose relevancy does not appear on the face of it, and
+until we connect passages many pages asunder, the first of which may
+easily be forgotten before we reach the second.  There can be no doubt,
+however, that Mr. Romanes does in reality, like Professor Hering and
+myself, regard development, whether of mind or body, as due to memory,
+for it is nonsense indeed to talk about "hereditary experience" or
+"hereditary memory" if anything else is intended.
+
+I have said above that on page 113 of his recent work Mr. Romanes
+declares the analogies between the memory with which we are familiar in
+daily life, and hereditary memory, to be "so numerous and precise" as to
+justify us in considering them as of one and the same kind.
+
+This is certainly his meaning, but, with the exception of the words
+within inverted commas, it is not his language.  His own words are
+these:--
+
+   "Profound, however, as our ignorance unquestionably is concerning the
+   physical substratum of memory, I think we are at least justified in
+   regarding this substratum as the same both in ganglionic or organic,
+   and in conscious or psychological memory, seeing that the analogies
+   between them are so numerous and precise.  Consciousness is but an
+   adjunct which arises when the physical processes, owing to infrequency
+   of repetition, complexity of operation, or other causes, involve what
+   I have before called ganglionic friction."
+
+I submit that I have correctly translated Mr. Romanes' meaning, and also
+that we have a right to complain of his not saying what he has to say in
+words which will involve less "ganglionic friction" on the part of the
+reader.
+
+Another example may be found on p. 43 of Mr. Romanes' book.  "Lastly," he
+writes, "just as innumerable special mechanisms of muscular
+co-ordinations are found to be inherited, innumerable special
+associations of ideas are found to be the same, and in one case as in the
+other the strength of the organically imposed connection is found to bear
+a direct proportion to the frequency with which in the history of the
+species it has occurred."
+
+Mr. Romanes is here intending what the reader will find insisted on on p.
+98 of the present volume; but how difficult he has made what could have
+been said intelligibly enough, if there had been nothing but the reader's
+comfort to be considered.  Unfortunately that seems to have been by no
+means the only thing of which Mr. Romanes was thinking, or why, after
+implying and even saying over and over again that instinct is inherited
+habit due to inherited memory, should he turn sharply round on p. 297 and
+praise Mr. Darwin for trying to snuff out "the well-known doctrine of
+inherited habit as advanced by Lamarck"?  The answer is not far to seek.
+It is because Mr. Romanes did not merely want to tell us all about
+instinct, but wanted also, if I may use a homely metaphor, to hunt with
+the hounds and run with the hare at one and the same time.
+
+I remember saying that if the late Mr. Darwin "had told us what the
+earlier evolutionists said, why they said it, wherein he differed from
+them, and in what way he proposed to set them straight, he would have
+taken a course at once more agreeable with usual practice, and more
+likely to remove misconception from his own mind and from those of his
+readers." {239}  This I have no doubt was one of the passages which made
+Mr. Romanes so angry with me.  I can find no better words to apply to Mr.
+Romanes himself.  He knows perfectly well what others have written about
+the connection between heredity and memory, and he knows no less well
+that so far as he is intelligible at all he is taking the same view that
+they have taken.  If he had begun by saying what they had said and had
+then improved on it, I for one should have been only too glad to be
+improved upon.
+
+Mr. Romanes has spoiled his book just because this plain old-fashioned
+method of procedure was not good enough for him.  One-half the obscurity
+which makes his meaning so hard to apprehend is due to exactly the same
+cause as that which has ruined so much of the late Mr. Darwin's work--I
+mean to a desire to appear to be differing altogether from others with
+whom he knew himself after all to be in substantial agreement.  He
+adopts, but (probably quite unconsciously) in his anxiety to avoid
+appearing to adopt, he obscures what he is adopting.
+
+Here, for example, is Mr. Romanes' definition of instinct:--
+
+   "Instinct is reflex action into which there is imported the element of
+   consciousness.  The term is therefore a generic one, comprising all
+   those faculties of mind which are concerned in conscious and adaptive
+   action, antecedent to individual experience, without necessary
+   knowledge of the relation between means employed and ends attained,
+   but similarly performed under similar and frequently recurring
+   circumstances by all the individuals of the same species." {240}
+
+If Mr, Romanes would have been content to build frankly upon Professor
+Hering's foundation, the soundness of which he has elsewhere abundantly
+admitted, he might have said--
+
+"Instinct is knowledge or habit acquired in past generations--the new
+generation remembering what happened to it before it parted company with
+the old."  Then he might have added as a rider--
+
+"If a habit is acquired as a new one, during any given lifetime, it is
+not an instinct.  If having been acquired in one lifetime it is
+transmitted to offspring, it is an instinct in the offspring though it
+was not an instinct in the parent.  If the habit is transmitted
+partially, it must be considered as partly instinctive and partly
+acquired."
+
+This is easy; it tells people how they may test any action so as to know
+what they ought to call it; it leaves well alone by avoiding all such
+debatable matters as reflex action, consciousness, intelligence, purpose,
+knowledge of purpose, &c.; it both introduces the feature of inheritance
+which is the one mainly distinguishing instinctive from so-called
+intelligent actions, and shows the manner in which these last pass into
+the first, that is to say, by way of memory and habitual repetition;
+finally it points the fact that the new generation is not to be looked
+upon as a new thing, but (as Dr. Erasmus Darwin long since said {241}) as
+"a branch or elongation" of the one immediately preceding it.
+
+But then to have said this would have made it too plain that Mr. Romanes
+was following some one else.  Mr. Romanes should remember that no one
+would mind how much he took if he would only take it well.  But this is
+what those who take without due acknowledgment never do.
+
+In Mr. Darwin's case it is hardly possible to exaggerate the waste of
+time, money, and trouble that has been caused by his not having been
+content to appear as descending with modification like other people from
+those who went before him.  It will take years to get the evolution
+theory out of the mess in which Mr. Darwin has left it.  He was heir to a
+discredited truth; he left behind him an accredited fallacy.  Mr.
+Romanes, if he is not stopped in time, will get the theory connecting
+heredity and memory into just such another muddle as Mr. Darwin has got
+Evolution, for surely the writer who can talk about "_heredity being able
+to work up_ the faculty of homing into the instinct of migration," {242a}
+or of "the principle of (natural) selection combining with that of
+lapsing intelligence to the formation of a joint result," {242b} is
+little likely to depart from the usual methods of scientific procedure
+with advantage either to himself or any one else.  Fortunately Mr.
+Romanes is not Mr. Darwin, and though he has certainly got Mr. Darwin's
+mantle, and got it very much too, it will not on Mr. Romanes' shoulders
+hide a good deal that people were not going to observe too closely while
+Mr. Darwin wore it.
+
+
+
+
+REMARKS ON MR. ROMANES' MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS--(_concluded_).
+
+
+I gather that in the end the late Mr. Darwin himself admitted the
+soundness of the view which the reader will have found insisted upon in
+the extracts from my earlier books given in this volume.  Mr. Romanes
+quotes a letter written by Mr. Darwin in the last year of his life, in
+which he speaks of an intelligent action gradually becoming
+"_instinctive_, _i.e._, _memory transmitted from one generation to
+another_." {243a}
+
+Briefly, the stages of Mr. Darwin's opinion upon the subject of
+hereditary memory are as follows:--
+
+1859.  "It would be _the most serious error_ to suppose that the greater
+number of instincts have been acquired by habit in one generation and
+transmitted by inheritance to succeeding generations." {243b}  And this
+more especially applies to the instincts of many ants.
+
+1876.  "It would be _a serious error_ to suppose" &c., as before. {243c}
+
+1881.  "We should remember _what a mass of inherited knowledge_ is
+crowded into the minute brain of a worker ant." {243d}
+
+1881 or 1882.  Speaking of a given habitual action Mr. Darwin writes:--"It
+does not seem to me at all incredible that this action [and why this more
+than any other habitual action?] should then become instinctive:" _i.e._,
+_memory transmitted from one generation to another_. {244a}
+
+And yet in 1839 or thereabouts, Mr. Darwin had pretty nearly grasped the
+conception from which until the last year or two of his life he so
+fatally strayed; for in his contribution to the volumes giving an account
+of the voyages of the _Adventure_ and _Beagle_, he wrote: "Nature by
+making habit omnipotent and its effects hereditary, has fitted the
+Fuegian for the climate and productions of his country" (p. 237).
+
+What is the secret of the long departure from the simple common-sense
+view of the matter which he took when he was a young man?  I imagine
+simply what I have referred to in the preceding chapter,--over-anxiety to
+appear to be differing from his grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and
+Lamarck.
+
+I believe I may say that Mr. Darwin before he died not only admitted the
+connection between memory and heredity, but came also to see that he must
+readmit that design in organism which he had so many years opposed.  For
+in the preface to Hermann Muller's Fertilisation of Flowers, {244b} which
+bears a date only a very few weeks prior to Mr. Darwin's death, I find
+him saying:--"Design in nature has for a long time deeply interested many
+men, and though the subject must now be looked at from a somewhat
+different point of view from what was formerly the case, it is not on
+that account rendered less interesting."  This is mused forth as a
+general gnome, and may mean anything or nothing: the writer of the
+letterpress under the hieroglyph in Old Moore's Almanac could not be more
+guarded; but I think I know what it does mean.
+
+I cannot of course be sure; Mr. Darwin did not probably intend that I
+should; but I assume with confidence that whether there is design in
+organism or no, there is at any rate design in this passage of Mr.
+Darwin's.  This, we may be sure, is not a fortuitous variation; and
+moreover it is introduced for some reason which made Mr. Darwin think it
+worth while to go out of his way to introduce it.  It has no fitness in
+its connection with Hermann Muller's book, for what little Hermann Muller
+says about teleology at all is to condemn it; why then should Mr. Darwin
+muse here of all places in the world about the interest attaching to
+design in organism?  Neither has the passage any connection with the rest
+of the preface.  There is not another word about design, and even here
+Mr. Darwin seems mainly anxious to face both ways, and pat design as it
+were on the head while not committing himself to any proposition which
+could be disputed.
+
+The explanation is sufficiently obvious.  Mr. Darwin wanted to hedge.  He
+saw that the design which his works had been mainly instrumental in
+pitchforking out of organisms no less manifestly designed than a
+burglar's jemmy is designed, had nevertheless found its way back again,
+and that though, as I insisted in Evolution, Old and New, and Unconscious
+Memory, it must now be placed within the organism instead of outside it,
+as "was formerly the case," it was not on that account any the
+less--design, as well as interesting.
+
+I should like to have seen Mr. Darwin say this more explicitly.  Indeed I
+should have liked to have seen Mr. Darwin say anything at all about the
+meaning of which there could be no mistake, and without contradicting
+himself elsewhere; but this was not Mr. Darwin's manner.
+
+In passing I will give another example of Mr. Darwin's manner when he did
+not quite dare even to hedge.  It is to be found in the preface which he
+wrote to Professor Weismann's Studies in the Theory of Descent, published
+in 1882.
+
+"Several distinguished naturalists," says Mr. Darwin, "maintain with much
+confidence that organic beings tend to vary and to rise in the scale,
+independently of the conditions to which they and their progenitors have
+been exposed; whilst others maintain that all variation is due to such
+exposure, though the manner in which the environment acts is as yet quite
+unknown.  At the present time there is hardly any question in biology of
+more importance than this of the nature and causes of variability, and
+the reader will find in the present work an able discussion on the whole
+subject which will probably lead him to pause before he admits the
+existence of an innate tendency to perfectibility"--or towards, _being
+able to be perfected_.
+
+I could find no able discussion upon the whole subject in Professor
+Weismann's book.  There was a little something here and there, but not
+much.
+
+Mr Herbert Spencer has not in his more recent works said anything which
+enables me to appeal to his authority.
+
+I imagine that if he had got hold of the idea that heredity was only a
+mode of memory before 1870, when he published the second edition of his
+Principles of Psychology, he would have gladly adopted it, for he seems
+continually groping after it, and aware of it as near him, though he is
+never able to grasp it.  He probably failed to grasp it because Lamarck
+had failed.  He could not adopt it in his edition of 1880, for this is
+evidently printed from stereos taken from the 1870 edition, and no
+considerable alteration was therefore possible.
+
+The late Mr. G. H. Lewes did not get hold of the memory theory, probably
+because neither Mr. Spencer nor any of the well-known German philosophers
+had done so.  Mr. Romanes, as I think I have shown, actually has adopted
+it, but he does not say where he got it from.  I suppose from reading
+Canon Kingsley in _Nature_ some years before _Nature_ began to exist, or
+(for has not the mantle of Mr. Darwin fallen upon him?) he has thought it
+all out independently; but however Mr. Romanes may have reached his
+conclusion, he must have done so comparatively recently, for when he
+reviewed my book, Unconscious Memory, {247} he scoffed at the very theory
+which he is now adopting.
+
+Of the view that "there is thus a race memory, as there is an individual
+memory, and that the expression of the former constitutes the phenomena
+of heredity"--for it is thus Mr. Romanes with fair accuracy describes the
+theory I was supporting--he wrote:
+
+"Now this view, in which Mr. Butler was anticipated by Prof. Hering, is
+interesting if advanced merely as an illustration; but to imagine that it
+maintains any truth of profound significance, or that it can possibly be
+fraught with any benefit to science, is simply absurd.  The most cursory
+thought is enough to show," &c. &c.
+
+"We can understand," he continued, "in some measure how an alteration in
+brain structure when once made should be permanent, . . . but we cannot
+understand how this alteration is transmitted to progeny through
+structures so unlike the brain as are the products of the generative
+glands.  And we merely stultify ourselves if we suppose that the problem
+is brought any nearer to a solution by asserting that a future individual
+while still in the germ has already participated, say in the cerebral
+alterations of its parents," &c.  Mr. Romanes could find no measure of
+abuse strong enough for me,--as any reader may see who feels curious
+enough to turn to Mr. Romanes' article in _Nature_ already referred to.
+
+As for Evolution, Old and New, he said I had written it "in the hope of
+gaining some notoriety by deserving and perhaps receiving a contemptuous
+refutation from" Mr. Darwin. {248a}  In my reply to Mr. Romanes I said,
+"I will not characterise this accusation in the terms which it merits."
+{248b}  Mr. Romanes, in the following number of _Nature_, withdrew his
+accusation and immediately added, "I was induced to advance it because it
+seemed the only rational motive that could have led to the publication of
+such a book."  Again I will not characterise such a withdrawal in the
+terms it merits, but I may say in passing that if Mr. Romanes thinks the
+motive he assigned to me "a rational one," his view of what is rational
+and mine differ.  It does not commend itself as "rational" to me, that a
+man should spend a good deal of money and two or three years of work in
+the hope of deserving a contemptuous refutation from any one--not even
+from Mr. Darwin.  But then Mr. Romanes has written such a lot about
+reason and intelligence.
+
+The reply to Evolution, Old and New, which I actually did get from Mr.
+Darwin, was one which I do not see advertised among Mr. Darwin's other
+works now, and which I venture to say never will be advertised among them
+again--not at least until it has been altered.  I have seen no reason to
+leave off advertising Evolution, Old and New, and Unconscious Memory.
+
+I have never that I know of seen Mr. Romanes, but am told that he is
+still young.  I can find no publication of his indexed in the British
+Museum Catalogue earlier than 1874, and then it was only about Christian
+Prayer.  Mr. Romanes was good enough to advise me to turn painter or
+homoeopathist; {249} as he has introduced the subject, and considering
+how many years I am his senior, I might be justified (if it could be any
+pleasure to me to do so) in suggesting to him too what I should imagine
+most likely to tend to his advancement in life; but there are examples so
+bad that even those who have no wish to be any better than their
+neighbours may yet decline to follow them, and I think Mr. Romanes' is
+one of these.  I will not therefore find him a profession.
+
+But leaving this matter on one side, the point I wish to insist on is
+that Mr. Romanes is saying almost in my own words what less than three
+years ago he was very angry with me for saying.  I do not think that
+under these circumstances much explanation is necessary as to the reasons
+which have led Mr. Romanes to fight so shy of any reference to Life and
+Habit, Evolution, Old and New, and Unconscious Memory--works in which, if
+I may venture to say so, the theory connecting the phenomena of heredity
+with memory has been not only "suggested," but so far established that
+even Mr. Romanes has been led to think the matter over independently and
+to arrive at the same general conclusion as myself.
+
+Curiously enough, Mr. Grant Allen too has come to much the same
+conclusions as myself, after having attacked me, though not so fiercely,
+as Mr. Romanes has done.  In 1879 he said in the _Examiner_ (May 17) that
+the teleological view put forward in Evolution, Old and New, was "just
+the sort of mystical nonsense from which" he "had hoped Mr. Darwin had
+for ever saved us."  And so in the _Academy_ on the same day he said that
+no "one-sided argument" (referring to Evolution, Old and New) could ever
+deprive Mr. Darwin of the "place which he had eternally won in the
+history of human thought by his magnificent achievement."
+
+A few years, and Mr. Allen entertains a very different opinion of Mr.
+Darwin's magnificent achievement.
+
+"There are only two conceivable ways," he writes, "in which any increment
+of brain power can ever have arisen in any individual.  The one is the
+Darwinian way, by 'spontaneous variation,' that is to say by variation
+due to minute physical circumstances affecting the individual in the
+germ.  The other is the Spencerian way, by functional increment, that is
+to say by the effect of increased use and constant exposure to varying
+circumstances during conscious life." {250}
+
+Mr. Allen must know very well, or if he does not he has no excuse at any
+rate for not knowing, that the theory according to which increase of
+brain power or any other bodily or mental power is due to use, is no more
+Mr. Spencer's than the theory of gravitation is, except in so far as that
+Mr. Spencer has adopted it.  It is the theory which every one except Mr.
+Allen associates with Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, but more especially
+(and on the whole I suppose justly) with Lamarck.
+
+"I venture to think," continues Mr. Allen, "that the first way [Mr.
+Darwin's], if we look it clearly in the face, will be seen to be
+_practically unthinkable_; and that we have therefore no alternative but
+to accept the second."
+
+These writers go round so quickly and so completely that there is no
+keeping pace with them.  "As to Materialism," he writes presently,
+"surely it is more profoundly materialistic to suppose that mere physical
+causes operating on the germ can determine minute physical and material
+changes in the brain, which will in turn make the individuality what it
+is to be, than to suppose _that all brains are what they are in virtue of
+antecedent function_.  The one creed makes the man depend mainly upon the
+accidents of molecular physics in a colliding germ cell and sperm cell;
+_the other makes him depend mainly upon the doings and gains of his
+ancestors as modified and altered by himself_."
+
+Here is a sentence taken almost at random from the body of the article:--
+
+   "We are always seeing something which adds to our total stock of
+   memories; we are always learning and doing something new.  The vast
+   majority of these experiences are similar in kind to those already
+   passed through by our ancestors: they add nothing to the inheritance
+   of the race. . . . Though they leave physical traces on the
+   individual, they do not so far affect the underlying organisation of
+   the brain as to make the development of after-brains somewhat
+   different from previous ones.  But there are certain functional
+   activities which do tend so to alter the development of after-brains;
+   certain novel or sustained activities which apparently result in the
+   production of new correlated brain elements or brain connections
+   hereditarily transmissible as increased potentialities of similar
+   activity in the offspring."
+
+Of Natural Selection Mr. Allen writes much, as Professor Mivart and
+others have been writing for many years past.
+
+"It seems to me," he says, "easy to understand how survival of the
+fittest may result in progress starting from such functionally produced
+gains, but impossible to understand how it could result in progress if it
+had to start in mere accidental structural increments due to spontaneous
+variation alone." {252a}
+
+Mr. Allen may say this now, but until lately he has been among the first
+to scold any one else who said so.
+
+And this is how the article concludes:--
+
+"The first hypothesis (Mr Darwin's) is one that throws no light upon any
+of the facts.  The second hypothesis (which Mr. Allen is pleased to call
+Mr. Herbert Spencer's) is one that explains them all with transparent
+lucidity." {252b}
+
+So that Mr. Darwin, according to Mr. Allen, is clean out of it.  Truly
+when Mr. Allen makes stepping-stones of his dead selves, he jumps upon
+them to some tune.  But then Mr. Darwin is dead now.  I have not heard of
+his having given Mr. Allen any manuscripts as he gave Mr. Romanes.  I
+hope Mr. Herbert Spencer will not give him any.  If I was Mr. Spencer and
+found my admirers crowning me with Lamarck's laurels, I think I should
+have something to say to them.
+
+What are we to think of a writer who declares that the theory that
+specific and generic changes are due to use and disuse "explains _all the
+facts_ with transparent lucidity"?
+
+Lamarck's hypothesis is no doubt a great help and a great step toward
+Professor Hering's; it makes a known cause underlie variations, and thus
+is free from those fatal objections which Professor Mivart and others
+have brought against the theory of Messrs. Darwin and Wallace; but how
+does the theory that use develops an organism explain why offspring
+repeat the organism at all?  How does the Lamarckian hypothesis explain
+the sterility of hybrids, for example?  The sterility of hybrids has been
+always considered one of the great _cruces_ in connection with any theory
+of Evolution.  How again does it explain reversion to long-lost
+characters and the resumption of feral characteristics? the phenomena of
+old age? the principle that underlies longevity? the reason why the
+reproductive system is generally the last to arrive at maturity, and why
+few further developments take place in any organism after this has been
+fully developed? the sterility of many animals under captivity? the
+development in both males and females, under certain circumstances, of
+the characteristics of the opposite sex? the latency of memory? the
+unconsciousness with which we develop, and with which instinctive actions
+are performed?  How does any theory advanced either by Lamarck, Mr.
+Herbert Spencer, or Mr. Darwin explain, or indeed throw light upon these
+facts until supplemented with the explanation given of them in Life and
+Habit--for which I must refer the reader to that work itself?
+
+People may say what they like about "the experience of the race," {254a}
+"the registration of experiences continued for numberless generations,"
+{254b} "infinity of experiences," {254c} "lapsed intelligence," &c., but
+until they make Memory, in the most uncompromising sense of the word, the
+key to all the phenomena of Heredity, they will get little help to the
+better understanding of the difficulties above adverted to.  Add this to
+the theory of Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck, and the points which I
+have above alluded to receive a good deal of "lucidity."
+
+But to return to Mr. Romanes: however much he and Mr. Allen may differ
+about the merits of Mr. Darwin, they were at any rate not long since
+cordially agreed in vilipending my unhappy self, and are now saying very
+much what I have been saying for some years past.  I do not deny that
+they are capable witnesses.  They will generally see a thing when a
+certain number of other people have come to do so.  I submit that, no
+matter how grudgingly they give their evidence, the tendency of that
+evidence is sufficiently clear to show that the opinions put forward in
+Life and Habit, Evolution, Old and New, and Unconscious Memory, deserve
+the attention of the reader.
+
+I may perhaps deal with Mr. Romanes' recent work more fully in the sequel
+to Life and Habit on which I am now engaged.  For the present it is
+enough to say that if he does not mean what Professor Hering and, _longo
+intervallo_, myself do, he should not talk about habit or experience as
+between successive generations, and that if he does mean what we do--which
+I suppose he does--he should have said so much more clearly and
+consistently than he has.
+
+
+
+POSTSCRIPT.
+
+
+This afternoon (March 7, 1884), the copies of this book being ready for
+issue, I see Mr. Romanes' letter to the _Athenaeum_ of this day, and get
+this postscript pasted into the book after binding.
+
+Mr. Romanes corrects his reference to the passage in which he says that
+Canon Kingsley first advanced the theory that instinct is inherited
+memory ("M. E. in Animals," p. 296).  Canon Kingsley's words are to be
+found in _Fraser_, June, 1867, and are as follows:--
+
+   "Yon wood-wren has had enough to make him sad, if only he recollects
+   it, and if he can recollect his road from Morocco hither he maybe
+   recollects likewise what happened on the road: the long weary journey
+   up the Portuguese coast, and through the gap between the Pyrenees and
+   the Jaysquivel, and up the Landes of Bordeaux, and through Brittany,
+   flitting by night and hiding and feeding as he could by day; and how
+   his mates flew against the lighthouses and were killed by hundreds,
+   and how he essayed the British Channel and was blown back, shrivelled
+   up by bitter blasts; and how he felt, nevertheless, that 'that was
+   water he must cross,' he knew not why; but something told him that his
+   mother had done it before him, and he was flesh of her flesh, life of
+   her life, and had inherited her instinct (as we call hereditary memory
+   in order to avoid the trouble of finding out what it is and how it
+   comes).  A duty was laid on him to go back to the place where he was
+   bred, and now it is done, and he is weary and sad and lonely, &c. &c.
+
+This is a very interesting passage, and I am glad to quote it; but it
+hardly amounts to advancing the theory that instinct is inherited memory.
+Observing Mr. Romanes' words closely, I see he only says that Canon
+Kingsley was the first to advance the theory "that many hundred miles of
+landscape scenery" can "constitute an object of inherited memory;" but as
+he proceeds to say that "_this_" has since "been independently suggested
+by several writers," it is plain he intends to convey the idea that Canon
+Kingsley advanced the theory that instinct generally is inherited memory,
+which indeed his words do; but it is hardly credible that he should have
+left them where he did if he had realized their importance.
+
+Mr. Romanes proceeds to inform me personally that the reference to
+"Nature" in his proof "originally indicated another writer who had
+independently advanced the same theory as that of Canon Kingsley."  After
+this I have a right to ask him to tell me who the writer is, and where I
+shall find what he said.  I ask this, and at my earliest opportunity will
+do my best to give this writer, too, the credit he doubtless deserves.
+
+I have never professed to be the originator of the theory connecting
+heredity with memory.  I knew I knew so little that I was in great
+trepidation when I wrote all the earlier chapters of "Life and Habit."  I
+put them paradoxically, because I did not dare to put them otherwise.  As
+the book went on, I saw I was on firm ground, and the paradox was
+dropped.  When I found what Professor Hering had done, I put him forward
+as best I could at once.  I then learned German, and translated him,
+giving his words in full in "Unconscious Memory;" since then I have
+always spoken of the theory as Professor Hering's.
+
+Mr. Romanes says that "the theory in question forms the backbone of all
+the previous literature on instinct by the above-named writers (not to
+mention their numerous followers) and is by all of them elaborately
+stated as clearly as any theory can be stated in words."  Few except Mr.
+Romanes will say this.  I grant it ought to have formed the backbone "of
+all previous literature on instinct by the above-named writers," but when
+I wrote "Life and Habit" it was not understood to form it.  If it had
+been, I should not have found it necessary to come before the public this
+fourth time during the last seven years to insist upon it.  Of course the
+theory is not new--it was in the air and bound to come; but when it came,
+it came through Professor Hering of Prague, and not through those who,
+great as are the services they have rendered, still did not render this
+particular one of making memory the keystone of their system.  Mr.
+Romanes now says: "Why, of course, that's what they were meaning all the
+time."  Perhaps they were, but they did not say so, and
+others--conspicuously Mr. Romanes himself--did not understand them to be
+meaning what he now discovers that they meant.  When Mr. Romanes attacked
+me in _Nature_, January 27, 1881, he said I had "been anticipated by
+Professor Hering," but he evidently did not understand that any one else
+had anticipated me; and far from holding, as he now does, that "the
+theory in question forms the backbone of all the previous" writers on
+instinct, and "is by all of them elaborately stated as clearly as any
+theory can be stated in words," he said (in a passage already quoted)
+that it was "interesting, if advanced merely as an illustration, but to
+imagine that it maintains any truth of profound significance, or that it
+can possibly be fraught with any benefit to science, is absurd."
+Considering how recently Mr. Romanes wrote the words just quoted, he has
+soon forgotten them.
+
+I do not, as I have said already, and never did, claim to have originated
+the theory I put forward in "Life and Habit."  I thought it out
+independently, but I knew it must have occurred to many, and had probably
+been worked out by many, before myself.  My claim is to have brought it
+perhaps into fuller light, and to have dwelt on its importance, bearings,
+and developments with some persistence, and to have done so without much
+recognition or encouragement, till lately.  Of men of science, Mr. A. R.
+Wallace and Professor Mivart gave me encouragement, but no one else has
+done so.  I sometimes saw, as in the Duke of Argyll's case, and in Mr.
+Romanes' own, that men were writing at me, or borrowing from me, but with
+the two exceptions already made, and that also of the Bishop of Carlisle,
+not one of the literary and scientific notables of the day so much as
+mentioned my name while making use of my work.
+
+A few words more, and I will bring these remarks to a close, Mr. Romanes
+says I represent "the phenomena of memory as occurring throughout the
+inorganic world."  This implies that I attribute all the phenomena of
+memory as we see them in animals to such things as stones and gases.  Mr.
+Romanes knows very well that I have never said anything which could
+warrant his attempting to put the absurdity into my mouth which he here
+tries to do.  The reader who wishes to see what I do maintain upon this
+subject will find it on pp. 216-218 of the present volume.
+
+
+
+
+EXTRACTS FROM "ALPS AND SANCTUARIES OP PIEDMONT AND THE CANTON TICINO."
+
+
+DALPE, PRATO, ROSSURA.  (FROM CHAPTER III. OF ALPS AND SANCTUARIES.)
+{255}
+
+
+Talking of legs, as I went through the main street of Dalpe an old lady
+of about sixty-five stopped me, and told me that while gathering her
+winter store of firewood she had had the misfortune to hurt her leg.  I
+was very sorry, but I failed to satisfy her; the more I sympathised in
+general terms, the more I felt that something further was expected of me.
+I went on trying to do the civil thing, when the old lady cut me short by
+saying it would be much better if I were to see the leg at once; so she
+showed it me in the street, and there, sure enough, close to the groin
+there was a swelling.  Again I said how sorry I was, and added that
+perhaps she ought to show it to a medical man.  "But aren't _you_ a
+medical man?" said she in an alarmed manner.  "Certainly not, ma'am,"
+replied I.  "Then why did you let me show you my leg?" said she
+indignantly, and pulling her clothes down, the poor old woman began to
+hobble off; presently two others joined her, and I heard hearty peals of
+laughter as she recounted her story.  A stranger visiting these out-of-
+the-way villages is almost certain to be mistaken for a doctor.  What
+business, they say to themselves, can any one else have there, and who in
+his senses would dream of visiting them for pleasure?  This old lady had
+rushed to the usual conclusion, and had been trying to get a little
+advice gratis.
+
+* * * * *
+
+The little objects looking like sentry-boxes that go all round Prato
+Church contain rough modern frescoes representing, if I remember rightly,
+the events attendant upon the crucifixion.  These are on a small scale
+what the chapels on the sacred mountain of Varallo are on a large one.
+Small single oratories are scattered about all over the Canton Ticino,
+and indeed everywhere in North Italy, by the road-side, at all halting-
+places, and especially at the crest of any more marked ascent, where the
+tired wayfarer, probably heavy laden, might be inclined to say a naughty
+word or two if not checked.  The people like them, and miss them when
+they come to England.  They sometimes do what the lower animals do in
+confinement when precluded from habits they are accustomed to, and put up
+with strange makeshifts by way of substitute.  I once saw a poor Ticinese
+woman kneeling in prayer before a dentist's show-case in the Hampstead
+Road; she doubtless mistook the teeth for the relics of some saint.  I am
+afraid she was a little like a hen sitting upon a chalk egg, but she
+seemed quite contented.
+
+Which of us, indeed, does not sit contentedly enough upon chalk eggs at
+times?  And what would life be but for the power to do so?  We do not
+sufficiently realise the part which illusion has played in our
+development.  One of the prime requisites for evolution is a certain
+power for adaptation to varying circumstances, that is to say, of
+plasticity, bodily and mental.  But the power of adaptation is mainly
+dependent on the power of thinking certain new things sufficiently like
+certain others to which we have been accustomed for us not to be too much
+incommoded by the change--upon the power, in fact, of mistaking the new
+for the old.  The power of fusing ideas (and through ideas, structures)
+depends upon the power of _con_fusing them; the power to confuse ideas
+that are not very unlike, and that are presented to us in immediate
+sequence, is mainly due to the fact of the impetus, so to speak, which
+the mind has upon it.  It is this which bars association from sticking to
+the letter of its bond; for we are in a hurry to jump to a conclusion on
+the first show of plausible pretext, and cut association's statement of
+claim short by taking it as read before we have got through half of it.
+We "get it into our notes, in fact," as Mr. Justice Stareleigh did in
+Pickwick, and having got it once in, we are not going to get it out
+again.  This breeds fusion and confusion, and from this there come new
+developments.
+
+So powerful is the impetus which the mind has continually upon it that we
+always, I believe, make an effort to see every new object as a repetition
+of the object last before us.  Objects are so varied and present
+themselves so rapidly, that as a general rule we renounce this effort too
+promptly to notice it, but it is always there, and as I have just said,
+it is because of it that we are able to mistake, and hence to evolve new
+mental and bodily developments.  Where the effort is successful, there is
+illusion; where nearly successful but not quite, there is a shock and a
+sense of being puzzled--more or less, as the case may be; where it so
+obviously impossible as not to be pursued, there is no perception of the
+effort at all.
+
+Mr. Locke has been greatly praised for his essay upon human
+understanding.  An essay on human misunderstanding should be no less
+interesting and important.  Illusion to a small extent is one of the main
+causes, if indeed it is not the main cause, of progress, but it must be
+upon a small scale.  All abortive speculation, whether commercial or
+philosophical, is based upon it, and much as we may abuse such
+speculation, we are, all of us, its debtors.
+
+* * * * *
+
+I know few things more touching in their way than the porch of Rossura
+Church: it is dated early in the last century, and is absolutely without
+ornament; the flight of steps inside it lead up to the level of the floor
+of the church.  One lovely summer Sunday morning passing the church
+betimes, I saw the people kneeling upon these steps, the church within
+being crammed.  In the darker light of the porch, they told out against
+the sky that showed through the open arch beyond them; far away the eye
+rested on the mountains--deep blue, save where the snow still lingered.  I
+never saw anything more beautiful--and these forsooth are the people whom
+so many of us think to better by distributing tracts about Protestantism
+among them!
+
+I liked the porch almost best under an aspect which it no longer
+presents.  One summer an opening was made in the west wall, which was
+afterwards closed because the wind blew through it too much and made the
+church too cold.  While it was open, one could sit on the church steps
+and look down through it on to the bottom of the Ticino valley; and
+through the windows one could see the slopes about Dalpe and Cornone.
+Between the two windows there is a picture of austere old S. Carlo
+Borromeo with his hands joined in prayer.
+
+It was at Rossura that I made the acquaintance of a word which I have
+since found very largely used throughout North Italy.  It is pronounced
+"chow" pure and simple, but is written, if written at all, "ciau" or
+"ciao," the "a" being kept very broad.  I believe the word is derived
+from "schiavo," a slave, which became corrupted into "schiao," and
+"ciao."  It is used with two meanings, both of which, however, are
+deducible from the word slave.  In its first and more common use it is
+simply a salute, either on greeting or taking leave, and means, "I am
+your very obedient servant."  Thus, if one has been talking to a small
+child, its mother will tell it to say "chow" before it goes away, and
+will then nod her head and say "chow" herself.  The other use is a kind
+of pious expletive, intending "I must endure it," "I am the slave of a
+higher power."  It was in this sense I first heard it at Rossura.  A
+woman was washing at a fountain while I was eating my lunch.  She said
+she had lost her daughter in Paris a few weeks earlier.  "She was a
+beautiful woman," said the bereaved mother, "but--chow.  She had great
+talents--chow.  I had her educated by the nuns of Bellinzona--chow.  Her
+knowledge of geography was consummate--chow, chow," &c.  Here "chow"
+means "pazienza," "I have done and said all that I can, and must now bear
+it as best I may."
+
+I tried to comfort her, but could do nothing, till at last it occurred to
+me to say "chow" too.  I did so, and was astonished at the soothing
+effect it had upon her.  How subtle are the laws that govern consolation!
+I suppose they must ultimately be connected with reproduction--the
+consoling idea being a kind of small cross which _re-generates_ or _re-
+creates_ the sufferer.  It is important, therefore, that the new ideas
+with which the old are to be crossed should differ from these last
+sufficiently to divert the attention, and yet not so much as to cause a
+painful shock.
+
+There should be a little shock, or there will be no variation in the new
+ideas that are generated, but they will resemble those that preceded
+them, and grief will be continued; there must not be too great a shock or
+there will be no illusion--no confusion and fusion between the new set of
+ideas and the old, and in consequence there will be no result at all, or,
+if any, an increase in mental discord.  We know very little, however,
+upon this subject, and are continually shown to be at fault by finding an
+unexpectedly small cross produce a wide diversion of the mental images,
+while in other cases a wide one will produce hardly any result.  Sometimes
+again, a cross which we should have said was much too wide will have an
+excellent effect.  I did not anticipate, for example, that my saying
+"chow" would have done much for the poor woman who had lost her daughter:
+the cross did not seem wide enough: she was already, as I thought,
+saturated with "chow."  I can only account for the effect my application
+of it produced by supposing the word to have derived some element of
+strangeness and novelty as coming from a foreigner--just as land which
+will give a poor crop, if planted with sets from potatoes that have been
+grown for three or four years on this same soil, will yet yield
+excellently if similar sets be brought from twenty miles off.  For the
+potato, so far as I have studied it, is a good-tempered, frivolous plant,
+easily amused and easily bored, and one, moreover, which if bored, yawns
+horribly.
+
+I may say in passing that the tempers of plants have not been
+sufficiently studied; and what little opinion we have formed about their
+dispositions is for the most part ill formed.  The sulkiest tree that I
+know is the silver beech.  It never forgives a scratch.--There is a tree
+in Kensington gardens a little off the west side of the Serpentine with
+names cut upon it as long ago as 1717 and 1736, which the tree is as
+little able to forgive and forget as though the injury had been done not
+ten years since.  And the tree is not an aged tree either.
+
+
+
+CALONICO.  (FROM CHAPTER V. OF ALPS AND SANCTUARIES.)
+
+
+Our inventions increase in geometrical ratio.  They are like living
+beings, each one of which may become parent of a dozen others--some good
+and some ne'er-do-weels; but they differ from animals and vegetables
+inasmuch as they not only increase in a geometrical ratio, but the period
+of their gestation decreases in geometrical ratio also.  Take this matter
+of Alpine roads for example.  For how many millions of years was there no
+approach to a road over the St. Gothard, save the untutored watercourses
+of the Ticino and the Reuss, and the track of the bouquetin or the
+chamois?  For how many more ages after this was there not a mere
+shepherd's or huntsman's path by the river-side--without so much as a log
+thrown over so as to form a rude bridge?  No one would probably have ever
+thought of making a bridge out of his own unaided imagination, more than
+any monkey that we know of has done so.  But an avalanche or a flood once
+swept a pine into position and left it there; on this a genius, who was
+doubtless thought to be doing something very infamous, ventured to make
+use of it.  Another time a pine was found nearly across the stream, but
+not quite; and not quite, again, in the place where it was wanted.  A
+second genius, to the horror of his fellow-tribesmen--who declared that
+this time the world really would come to an end--shifted the pine a few
+feet so as to bring it across the stream and into the place where it was
+wanted.  This man was the inventor of bridges--his family repudiated him,
+and he came to a bad end.  From this to cutting down the pine and
+bringing it from some distance is an easy step.  To avoid detail, let us
+come to the old Roman horse-road over the Alps.  The time between the
+shepherd's path and the Roman road is probably short in comparison with
+that between the mere chamois track and the first thing that can be
+called a path of men.  From the Roman we go on to the mediaeval road with
+more frequent stone bridges, and from the mediaeval to the Napoleonic
+carriage-road.
+
+The close of the last century and the first quarter of this present one
+was the great era for the making of carriage-roads.  Fifty years have
+hardly passed, and here we are already in the age of tunnelling and
+railroads.  The first period, from the chamois track to the foot road,
+was one of millions of years; the second, from the first foot road to the
+Roman military way, was one of many thousands; the third, from the Roman
+to the mediaeval, was perhaps a thousand; from the mediaeval to the
+Napoleonic, five hundred; from the Napoleonic to the railroad, fifty.
+What will come next we know not, but it should come within twenty years,
+and will probably have something to do with electricity.
+
+It follows by an easy process of reasoning that after another couple of
+hundred years or so, great sweeping changes should be made several times
+in an hour, or indeed in a second, or fraction of a second, till they
+pass unnoticed as the revolutions we undergo in the embryonic stages, or
+are felt simply as vibrations.  This would undoubtedly be the case but
+for the existence of a friction which interferes between theory and
+practice.  This friction is caused partly by the disturbance of vested
+interests which every invention involves, and which will be found
+intolerable when men become millionaires and paupers alternately once a
+fortnight--living one week in a palace and the next in a workhouse, and
+having perpetually to be sold up, and then to buy a new house and
+refurnish, &c.--so that artificial means for stopping inventions will be
+adopted; and partly by the fact that though all inventions breed in
+geometrical ratio, yet some multiply more rapidly than others, and the
+backwardness of one art will impede the forwardness of another.  At any
+rate, so far as I can see, the present is about the only comfortable time
+for a man to live in, that either ever has been or ever will be.  The
+past was too slow, and the future will be much too fast.
+
+The fact is (but it is so obvious that I am ashamed to say anything about
+it) that science is rapidly reducing time and space to a very
+undifferentiated condition.  Take lamb: we can get lamb all the year
+round.  This is perpetual spring; but perpetual spring is no spring at
+all; it is not a season; there are no more seasons, and being no seasons,
+there is no time.  Take rhubarb, again.  Rhubarb to the philosopher is
+the beginning of autumn, if indeed the philosopher can see anything as
+the beginning of anything.  If any one asks why, I suppose the
+philosopher would say that rhubarb is the beginning of the fruit season,
+which is clearly autumnal, according to our present classification.  From
+rhubarb to the green gooseberry the step is so small as to require no
+bridging--with one's eyes shut, and plenty of cream and sugar, they are
+almost indistinguishable--but the gooseberry is quite an autumnal fruit,
+and only a little earlier than apples and plums, which last are almost
+winter; clearly, therefore, for scientific purposes rhubarb is autumnal.
+
+As soon as we can find gradations, or a sufficient number of uniting
+links between two things, they become united or made one thing, and any
+classification of them must be illusory.  Classification is only possible
+where there is a shock given to the senses by reason of a perceived
+difference, which, if it is considerable, can be expressed in words.  When
+the world was younger and less experienced, people were shocked at what
+appeared great differences between living forms; but species, whether of
+animals or plants, are now seen to be so united, either inferentially or
+by actual finding of the links, that all classification is felt to be
+arbitrary.  The seasons are like species--they were at one time thought
+to be clearly marked, and capable of being classified with some approach
+to satisfaction.  It is now seen that they blend either in the present or
+the past insensibly into one another, much as Mr. Herbert Spencer shows
+us that geology and astronomy blend into one another, {265} and cannot be
+classified except by cutting Gordian knots in a way which none but plain
+sensible people can tolerate.  Strictly speaking, there is only one
+place, one time, one action, and one individual or thing; of this thing
+or individual each one of us is a part.  It is perplexing, but it is
+philosophy; and modern philosophy, like modern music, is nothing if it is
+not perplexing.
+
+A simple verification of the autumnal character of rhubarb may, at first
+sight, appear to be found in Covent Garden Market, where we can actually
+see the rhubarb towards the end of October.  But this way of looking at
+the matter argues a fatal ineptitude for the pursuit of true philosophy.
+It would be "the most serious error" to regard the rhubarb that will
+appear in Covent Garden Market next October as belonging to the autumn
+then supposed to be current.  Practically, no doubt, it does so, but
+theoretically it must be considered as the first-fruits of the autumn (if
+any) of the following year, which begins before the preceding summer (or,
+perhaps, more strictly, the preceding summer but one--and hence, but any
+number), has well ended.  Whether this, however, is so or no, the rhubarb
+can be seen in Covent Garden, and I am afraid it must be admitted that to
+the philosophically minded there lurks within it a theory of evolution,
+and even Pantheism, as surely as Theism was lurking in Bishop Berkeley's
+tar-water.
+
+To return, however, to Calonico.  The _curato_ was very kind to me.  We
+had long talks together.  I could see it pained him that I was not a
+Catholic.  He could never quite get over this, but he was very good and
+tolerant.  He was anxious to be assured that I was not one of those
+English who went about distributing tracts, and trying to convert people.
+This of course was the last thing I should have wished to do; and when I
+told him so, he viewed me with sorrow but henceforth without alarm.
+
+All the time I was with him I felt how much I wished I could be a
+Catholic in Catholic countries, and a Protestant in Protestant ones.
+Surely there are some things which like politics are too serious to be
+taken quite seriously.  _Surtout point de zele_ is not the saying of a
+cynic, but the conclusion of a sensible man; and the more deep our
+feeling is about any matter, the more occasion have we to be on our guard
+against _zele_ in this particular respect.  There is but one step from
+the "earnest" to the "intense."  When St. Paul told us to be all things
+to all men he let in the thin end of the wedge, nor did he mark it to say
+how far it was to be driven.
+
+I have Italian friends whom I greatly value, and who tell me they think I
+flirt just a trifle too much with "_il partito nero_," when I am in
+Italy, for they know that in the main I think as they do.  "These
+people," they say, "make themselves very agreeable to you, and show you
+their smooth side; we, who see more of them, know their rough one.
+Knuckle under to them, and they will perhaps condescend to patronise you;
+have any individuality of your own, and they know neither scruple nor
+remorse in their attempts to get you out of their way.  '_Il prete_' they
+say, with a significant look, '_e sempre prete_.'  For the future let us
+have professors and men of science instead of priests."
+
+I smile to myself at this last, and reply, that I am a foreigner come
+among them for recreation, and anxious to keep clear of their internal
+discords.  I do not wish to cut myself off from one side of their
+national character--a side which, in some respects, is no less
+interesting than the one with which I suppose I am on the whole more
+sympathetic.  If I were an Italian, I should feel bound to take a side;
+as it is, I wish to leave all quarrelling behind me, having as much of
+that in England as suffices to keep me in good health and temper.
+
+In old times people gave their spiritual and intellectual sop to Nemesis.
+Even when most positive, they admitted a percentage of doubt.  Mr.
+Tennyson has said well, "There lives more doubt"--I quote from memory--"in
+honest faith, believe me, than in half the" systems of philosophy, or
+words to that effect.  The victor had a slave at his ear during his
+triumph; the slaves during the Roman Saturnalia, dressed in their
+masters' clothes, sat at meat with them, told them of their faults, and
+blacked their faces for them.  They made their masters wait upon them.  In
+the ages of faith, an ass dressed in sacerdotal robes was gravely
+conducted to the cathedral choir at a certain season, and mass was said
+before him, and hymns chanted discordantly.  The elder D'Israeli, from
+whom I am quoting, writes: "On other occasions, they put burnt old shoes
+to fume in the censors: ran about the church leaping, singing, dancing,
+and playing at dice upon the altar, while a _boy bishop_ or _pope of
+fools_ burlesqued the divine service;" and later on he says: "So late as
+1645, a pupil of Gassendi, writing to his master what he himself
+witnessed at Aix on the Feast of Innocents, says--'I have seen in some
+monasteries in this province extravagances solemnised which pagans would
+not have practised.  Neither the clergy nor the guardians indeed go to
+the choir on this day, but all is given up to the lay brethren, the
+cabbage-cutters, errand boys, cooks, scullions, and gardeners; in a word,
+all the menials fill their places in the church, and insist that they
+perform the offices proper for the day.  They dress themselves with all
+the sacerdotal ornaments, but torn to rags, or wear them inside out: they
+hold in their hands the books reversed or sideways, which they pretend to
+read with large spectacles without glasses, and to which they fix the
+rinds of scooped oranges . . . ! particularly while dangling the censers
+they keep shaking them in derision, and letting the ashes fly about their
+heads and faces, one against the other.  In this equipage they neither
+sing hymns nor psalms nor masses, but mumble a certain gibberish as
+shrill and squeaking as a herd of pigs whipped on to market.  The
+nonsense verses they chant are singularly barbarous:--
+
+   "'Haec est clara dies, clararum clara dierum,
+   Haec est festa dies festarum festa dierum.'" {269}
+
+Faith was far more assured in the times when the spiritual saturnalia
+were allowed than now.  The irreverence which was not dangerous then, is
+now intolerable.  It is a bad sign for a man's peace in his own
+convictions when he cannot stand turning the canvas of his life
+occasionally upside down, or reversing it in a mirror, as painters do
+with their pictures that they may judge the better concerning them.  I
+would persuade all Jews, Mohammedans, Comtists, and freethinkers to turn
+high Anglicans, or better still, downright Catholics for a week in every
+year, and I would send people like Mr. Gladstone to attend Mr.
+Bradlaugh's lectures in the forenoon, and the Grecian pantomime in the
+evening, two or three times every winter.  I should perhaps tell them
+that the Grecian pantomime has nothing to do with Greek plays.  They
+little know how much more keenly they would relish their normal opinions
+during the rest of the year for the little spiritual outing which I would
+prescribe for them, which, after all, is but another phase of the wise
+saying--"_Surtout point de zele_."  St. Paul attempted an obviously
+hopeless task (as the Church of Rome very well understands) when he tried
+to put down seasonarianism.  People must and will go to church to be a
+little better, to the theatre to be a little naughtier, to the Royal
+Institution to be a little more scientific, than they are in actual life.
+It is only by pulsations of goodness, naughtiness, and whatever else we
+affect that we can get on at all.  I grant that when in his office, a man
+should be exact and precise, but our holidays are our garden, and too
+much precision here is a mistake.
+
+Surely truces, without even an _arriere pensee_ of difference of opinion,
+between those who are compelled to take widely different sides during the
+greater part of their lives, must be of infinite service to those who can
+enter on them.  There are few merely spiritual pleasures comparable to
+that derived from the temporary laying down of a quarrel, even though we
+may know that it must be renewed shortly.  It is a great grief to me that
+there is no place where I can go among Mr. Darwin, Professors Huxley,
+Tyndal, and Ray Lankester, Miss Buckley, Mr. Romanes, Mr. Grant Allen and
+others whom I cannot call to mind at this moment, as I can go among the
+Italian priests.  I remember in one monastery (but this was not in the
+Canton Ticino) the novice taught me how to make sacramental wafers, and I
+played him Handel on the organ as well as I could.  I told him that
+Handel was a Catholic; he said he could tell that by his music at once.
+There is no chance of getting among our scientists in this way.
+
+Some friends say I was telling a lie when I told the novice Handel was a
+Catholic, and ought not to have done so.  I make it a rule to swallow a
+few gnats a day, lest I should come to strain at them, and so bolt
+camels; but the whole question of lying is difficult.  What _is_ "lying"?
+Turning for moral guidance to my cousins the lower animals, whose
+unsophisticated nature proclaims what God has taught them with a
+directness we may sometimes study, I find the plover lying when she lures
+us from her young ones under the fiction of a broken wing.  Is God angry,
+think you, with this pretty deviation from the letter of strict accuracy?
+or was it not He who whispered to her to tell the falsehood--to tell it
+with a circumstance, without conscientious scruple, not once only, but to
+make a practice of it so as to be a plausible, habitual, and professional
+liar for some six weeks or so in the year?  I imagine so.  When I was
+young I used to read in good books that it was God who taught the bird to
+make her nest, and if so He probably taught each species the other
+domestic arrangements best suited to it.  Or did the nest-building
+information come from God, and was there an evil one among the birds also
+who taught them at any rate to steer clear of priggishness?
+
+Think of the spider again--an ugly creature, but I suppose God likes it.
+What a mean and odious lie is that web which naturalists extol as such a
+marvel of ingenuity!
+
+Once on a summer afternoon in a far country I met one of those orchids
+who make it their business to imitate a fly with their petals.  This lie
+they dispose so cunningly that real flies, thinking the honey is being
+already plundered, pass them without molesting them.  Watching intently
+and keeping very still, methought I heard this orchid speaking to the
+offspring which she felt within her, though I saw them not.  "My
+children," she exclaimed, "I must soon leave you; think upon the fly, my
+loved ones, for this is truth; cling to this great thought in your
+passage through life, for it is the one thing needful; once lose sight of
+it and you are lost!"  Over and over again she sang this burden in a
+small still voice, and so I left her.  Then straightway I came upon some
+butterflies whose profession it was to pretend to believe in all manner
+of vital truths which in their inner practice they rejected; thus,
+asserting themselves to be certain other and hateful butterflies which no
+bird will eat by reason of their abominable smell, these cunning ones
+conceal their own sweetness, and live long in the land and see good days.
+No: lying is so deeply rooted in nature that we may expel it with a fork,
+and yet it will always come back again: it is like the poor, we must have
+it always with us.  We must all eat a peck of moral dirt before we die.
+
+All depends upon who it is that is lying.  One man may steal a horse when
+another may not look over a hedge.  The good man who tells no lies
+wittingly to himself and is never unkindly, may lie and lie and lie
+whenever he chooses to other people, and he will not be false to any man:
+his lies become truths as they pass into the hearers' ear.  If a man
+deceives himself and is unkind, the truth is not in him; it turns to
+falsehood while yet in his mouth, like the quails in the Wilderness of
+Sinai.  How this is so or why, I know not, but that the Lord hath mercy
+on whom He will have mercy and whom He willeth He hardeneth.  My Italian
+friends are doubtless in the main right about the priests, but there are
+many exceptions, as they themselves gladly admit.  For my own part I have
+found the _curato_ in the small subalpine villages of North Italy to be
+more often than not a kindly excellent man to whom I am attracted by
+sympathies deeper than any mere superficial differences of opinion can
+counteract.  With monks, however, as a general rule, I am less able to
+get on: nevertheless I have received much courtesy at the hands of some.
+
+My young friend the novice was delightful--only it was so sad to think of
+the future that is before him.  He wanted to know all about England, and
+when I told him it was an island, clasped his hands and said, "Oh che
+Providenza!"  He told me how the other young men of his own age plagued
+him as he trudged his rounds high up among the most distant hamlets
+begging alms for the poor.  "Be a good fellow," they would say to him,
+"drop all this nonsense and come back to us, and we will never plague you
+again."  Then he would turn upon them and put their words from him.  Of
+course my sympathies were with the other young men rather than with him,
+but it was impossible not to be sorry for the manner in which he had been
+humbugged from the day of his birth, till he was now incapable of seeing
+things from any other standpoint than that of authority.
+
+What he said to me about knowing that Handel was a Catholic by his music,
+put me in mind of what another good Catholic once said to me about a
+picture.  He was a Frenchman and very nice, but a _devot_, and anxious to
+convert me.  He paid a few days' visit to London, so I showed him the
+National Gallery.  While there I pointed out to him Sebastian del
+Piombo's picture of the raising of Lazarus as one of the supposed
+masterpieces of our collection.  He had the proper orthodox fit of
+admiration over it, and then we went through the other rooms.  After a
+while we found ourselves before West's picture of "Christ healing the
+Sick."  My French friend did not, I suppose, examine it very carefully,
+at any rate he believed he was again before the raising of Lazarus by
+Sebastian del Piombo; he paused before it, and had his fit of admiration
+over again: then turning to me he said, "Ah! you would understand this
+picture better if you were a Catholic."  I did not tell him of his
+mistake.
+
+
+
+PIORA.  (FROM CHAPTER VI. OF ALPS AND SANCTUARIES.) {275}
+
+
+An excursion which may be very well made from Faido is to the Val Piora,
+which I have already more than once mentioned.  There is a large hotel
+here which has been opened some years, but has not hitherto proved the
+success which it was hoped it would be.  I have stayed there two or three
+times and found it very comfortable; doubtless, now that Signer Lombardi
+of the Hotel Prosa has taken it, it will become a more popular place of
+resort.
+
+I took a trap from Faido to Ambri, and thence walked over to Quinto; here
+the path begins to ascend, and after an hour Ronco is reached.  There is
+a house at Ronco where refreshments and excellent Faido beer can be had.
+The old lady who keeps the house would make a perfect Fate; I saw her
+sitting at her window spinning, and looking down over the Ticino valley
+as though it were the world and she were spinning its destiny.  She had a
+somewhat stern expression, thin lips, iron-grey eyes, and an aquiline
+nose; her scanty locks straggled from under the handkerchief which she
+wore round her head.  Her employment and the wistful far-away look she
+cast upon the expanse below made a very fine _ensemble_.  "She would have
+afforded," as Sir Walter Scott says, "a study for a Rembrandt, had that
+celebrated painter existed at the period," {276} but she must have been a
+smart-looking, handsome girl once.
+
+She brightened up in conversation.  I talked about Piora, which I already
+knew, and the _Lago Tom_, the highest of the three lakes.  She said she
+knew the _Lago Tom_.  I said laughingly, "Oh, I have no doubt you do.
+We've had many a good day at the _Lago Tom_, I know."  She looked down at
+once.
+
+In spite of her nearly eighty years she was active as a woman of forty,
+and altogether she was a very grand old lady.  Her house is scrupulously
+clean.  While I watched her spinning, I thought of what must so often
+occur to summer visitors.  I mean what sort of a look-out the old woman
+must have in winter, when the wind roars and whistles, and the snow
+drives down the valley with a fury of which we in England can have little
+conception.  What a place to see a snowstorm from! and what a place from
+which to survey the landscape next morning after the storm is over and
+the air is calm and brilliant.  There are such mornings: I saw one once,
+but I was at the bottom of the valley and not high up, as at Ronco.  Ronco
+would take a little sun even in midwinter, but at the bottom of the
+valley there is no sun for weeks and weeks together; all is in deep
+shadow below, though the upper hill-sides may be seen to have the sun
+upon them.  I walked once on a frosty winter's morning from Airolo to
+Giornico, and can call to mind nothing in its way more beautiful:
+everything was locked in frost--there was not a watershed but was sheeted
+and coated with ice: the road was hard as granite--all was quiet, and
+seen as through a dark but incredibly transparent medium.  Near Piotta I
+met the whole village dragging a large tree; there were many men and
+women dragging at it, but they had to pull hard, and they were silent; as
+I passed them I thought what comely, well-begotten people they were.
+Then, looking up, there was a sky, cloudless and of the deepest blue,
+against which the snow-clad mountains stood out splendidly.  No one will
+regret a walk in these valleys during the depth of winter.  But I should
+have liked to have looked down from the sun into the sunlessness, as the
+old Fate woman at Ronco can do when she sits in winter at her window; or
+again, I should like to see how things would look from this same window
+on a leaden morning in midwinter after snow has fallen heavily and the
+sky is murky and much darker than the earth.  When the storm is at its
+height, the snow must search and search and search even through the
+double windows with which the houses are protected.  It must rest upon
+the frames of the pictures of saints, and of the sisters "grab," and of
+the last hours of Count Ugolino, which adorn the walls of the parlour.  No
+wonder there is a _S. Maria della Neve_,--a "St. Mary of the Snow;" but I
+do wonder that she has not been painted.
+
+I said this to an Italian once, and he said the reason was probably
+this--that St. Mary of the Snow was not developed till long after Italian
+art had begun to decline.  I suppose in another hundred years or so we
+shall have a _St. Maria delle Ferrovie_--a St. Mary of the Railways.
+
+From Ronco the path keeps level and then descends a little so as to cross
+the stream that comes down from Piora.  This is near the village of
+Altanca, the church of which looks remarkably well from here.  Then there
+is an hour and a half's rapid ascent, and at last all on a sudden one
+finds oneself on the _Lago Ritom_, close to the hotel.
+
+The lake is about a mile, or a mile and a half, long, and half a mile
+broad.  It is 6000 feet above the sea, very deep at the lower end, and
+does not freeze where the stream issues from it, so that the magnificent
+trout with which it abounds can get air and live through the winter.  In
+many other lakes, as, for example, the _Lago di Tremorgio_, they cannot
+do this, and hence perish, though the lakes have been repeatedly stocked.
+The trout in the _Lago Ritom_ are said to be the finest in the world, and
+certainly I know none so fine myself.  They grow to be as large as
+moderate-sized salmon, and have a deep-red flesh, very firm and full of
+flavour.  I had two cutlets off one for breakfast, and should have said
+they were salmon unless I had known otherwise.  In winter, when the lake
+is frozen over, the people bring their hay from the farther Lake of
+Cadagna in sledges across the Lake Ritom.  Here, again, winter must be
+worth seeing, but on a rough snowy day Piora must be an awful place.
+There are a few stunted pines near the hotel, but the hillsides are for
+the most part bare and green.  Piora in fact is a fine breezy open upland
+valley of singular beauty, and with a sweet atmosphere of cow about it;
+it is rich in rhododendrons and all manner of Alpine flowers, just a
+trifle bleak, but as bracing as the Engadine itself.
+
+The first night I was ever in Piora there was a brilliant moon, and the
+unruffled surface of the lake took the reflection of the mountains.  I
+could see the cattle a mile off, and hear the tinkling of their bells
+which danced multitudinously before the ear as fire-flies come and go
+before the eyes; for all through a fine summer's night the cattle will
+feed as though it were day.  A little above the lake I came upon a man in
+a cave before a furnace, burning lime, and he sat looking into the fire
+with his back to the moonlight.  He was a quiet moody man, and I am
+afraid I bored him, for I could get hardly anything out of him but "Oh
+altro"--polite but not communicative.  So after a while I left him with
+his face burnished as with gold from the fire, and his back silver with
+the moonbeams; behind him were the pastures and the reflections in the
+lake and the mountains and the distant ringing of the cowbells.
+
+Then I wandered on till I came to the chapel of S. Carlo; and in a few
+minutes found myself on the _Lugo di Cadagna_.  Here I heard that there
+were people, and the people were not so much asleep as the simple
+peasantry of these upland valleys are expected to be by nine o'clock in
+the evening.  For now was the time when they had moved up from Ronco,
+Altanca, and other villages in some numbers to cut the hay, and were
+living for a fortnight or three weeks in the chalets upon the _Lago di
+Cadagna_.  As I have said, there is a chapel, but I doubt whether it is
+attended during this season with the regularity with which the parish
+churches of Ronco, Altanca, &c., are attended during the rest of the
+year.  The young people, I am sure, like these annual visits to the high
+places, and will be hardly weaned from them.  Happily the hay will be
+always there, and will have to be cut by some one, and the old people
+will send the young ones.
+
+As I was thinking of these things, I found myself going off into a doze,
+and thought the burnished man from the furnace came up and sat beside me,
+and laid his hand upon my shoulder.  Then I saw the green slopes that
+rise all round the lake were much higher than I had thought; they went up
+thousands of feet, and there were pine forests upon them, while two large
+glaciers came down in streams that ended in a precipice of ice, falling
+sheer into the lake.  The edges of the mountains against the sky were
+rugged and full of clefts, through which I saw thick clouds of dust being
+blown by the wind as though from the other side of the mountains.
+
+And as I looked, I saw that this was not dust, but people coming in
+crowds from the other side, but so small as to be visible at first only
+as dust.  And the people became musicians, and the mountainous
+amphitheatre a huge orchestra, and the glaciers were two noble armies of
+women-singers in white robes, ranged tier above tier behind each other,
+and the pines became orchestral players, while the thick dust-like cloud
+of chorus-singers kept pouring in through the clefts in the precipices in
+inconceivable numbers.  When I turned my telescope upon them I saw they
+were crowded up to the extreme edge of the mountains, so that I could see
+underneath the soles of their boots as their legs dangled in the air.  In
+the midst of all, a precipice that rose from out of the glaciers shaped
+itself suddenly into an organ, and there was one whose face I well knew
+sitting at the keyboard, smiling and pluming himself like a bird as he
+thundered forth a giant fugue by way of overture.  I heard the great
+pedal notes in the bass stalk majestically up and down, as the rays of
+the Aurora that go about upon the face of the heavens off the coast of
+Labrador.  Then presently the people rose and sang the chorus "Venus
+Laughing from the Skies;" but ere the sound had well died away, I awoke,
+and all was changed; a light fleecy cloud had filled the whole basin, but
+I still thought I heard a sound of music, and a scampering-off of great
+crowds from the part where the precipices should be.  After that I heard
+no more but a little singing from the chalets, and turned homewards.  When
+I got to the chapel of S. Carlo, I was in the moonlight again, and when
+near the hotel, I passed the man at the mouth of the furnace with the
+moon still gleaming upon his back, and the fire upon his face, and he was
+very grave and quiet.
+
+
+
+S. MICHELE AND MONTE PIRCHIRIANO.  (EXTRACTS FROM CHAPTERS VII. AND X. OF
+ALPS AND SANCTUARIES.)
+
+
+The history of the sanctuary of S. Michele is briefly as follows:--
+
+At the close of the tenth century, when Otho III. was Emperor of Germany,
+a certain Hugh de Montboissier, a noble of Auvergne, commonly called
+"Hugh the Unsewn" (_lo sdruscito_), was commanded by the Pope to found a
+monastery in expiation of some grave offence.  He chose for his site the
+summit of the Monte Pirchiriano in the valley of Susa, being attracted
+partly by the fame of a church already built there by a recluse of
+Ravenna, Giovanni Vincenzo by name, and partly by the striking nature of
+the situation.  Hugh de Montboissier, when returning from Rome to France
+with Isengarde his wife, would, as a matter of course, pass through the
+valley of Susa.  The two--perhaps when stopping to dine at S.
+Ambrogio--would look up and observe the church founded by Giovannia
+Vincenzo: they had got to build a monastery somewhere; it would very
+likely, therefore, occur to them that they could not perpetuate their
+names better than by choosing this site, which was on a much-travelled
+road, and on which a fine building would show to advantage.  If my view
+is correct, we have here an illustration of a fact which is continually
+observable--namely, that all things which come to much, whether they be
+books, buildings, pictures, music, or living beings, are begotten of
+others of their own kind.  It is always the most successful, like Handel
+and Shakespeare, who owe most to their forerunners, in spite of the
+modifications with which their works descend.
+
+Giovanni Vincenzo had built his church about the year 987.  It is
+maintained by some that he had been bishop of Ravenna, but Clareta gives
+sufficient reason for thinking otherwise.  In the "Cronaca Clusina" it is
+said that he had for some years previously lived as a recluse on the
+Monte Caprasio, to the north of the present Monte Pirchiriano; but that
+one night he had a vision, in which he saw the summit of Monte
+Pirchiriano enveloped in heaven-descended flames, and on this founded a
+church there, and dedicated it to S. Michael.  This is the origin of the
+name Pirchiriano, which means [Greek text], or the Lord's fire.
+
+Avogadro is among those who make Giovanni Bishop, or rather Archbishop,
+of Ravenna, and gives the following account of the circumstances which
+led to his resigning his diocese and going to live at the top of the
+inhospitable Monte Caprasio.  It seems there had been a confirmation at
+Ravenna, during which he had accidentally forgotten to confirm the child
+of a certain widow.  The child, being in weakly health, died before
+Giovanni could repair his oversight, and this preyed upon his mind.  In
+answer, however, to his earnest prayers, it pleased the Almighty to give
+him power to raise the dead child to life again; this he did, and having
+immediately performed the rite of confirmation, restored the boy to his
+overjoyed mother.  He now became so much revered that he began to be
+alarmed lest pride should obtain dominion over him; he felt, therefore,
+that his only course was to resign his diocese, and go and live the life
+of a recluse on the top of some high mountain.  It is said that he
+suffered agonies of doubt as to whether it was not selfish of him to take
+such care of his own eternal welfare, at the expense of that of his
+flock, whom no successor could so well guide and guard from evil; but in
+the end he took a reasonable view of the matter, and concluded that his
+first duty was to secure his own spiritual position.  Nothing short of
+the top of a very uncomfortable mountain could do this, so he at once
+resigned his bishopric and chose Monte Caprasio as on the whole the most
+comfortable uncomfortable mountain he could find.
+
+The latter part of the story will seem strange to Englishmen.  We can
+hardly fancy the Archbishop of Canterbury or York resigning his diocese
+and settling down quietly on the top of Scafell or Cader Idris to secure
+his eternal welfare.  They would hardly do so even on the top of Primrose
+Hill.  But nine hundred years ago human nature was not the same as now-a-
+days.
+
+* * * * *
+
+Comparing our own clergy with the best North Italian and Ticinese
+priests, I should say there was little to choose between them.  The
+latter are in a logically stronger position, and this gives them greater
+courage in their opinions; the former have the advantage in respect of
+money, and the more varied knowledge of the world which money will
+command.  When I say Catholics have logically the advantage over
+Protestants, I mean that starting from premises which both sides admit, a
+merely logical Protestant will find himself driven to the Church of Rome.
+Most men as they grow older will, I think, feel this, and they will see
+in it the explanation of the comparatively narrow area over which the
+Reformation extended, and of the gain which Catholicism has made of late
+years here in England.  On the other hand, reasonable people will look
+with distrust upon too much reason.  The foundations of action lie deeper
+than reason can reach.  They rest on faith--for there is no absolutely
+certain incontrovertible premise which can be laid by man, any more than
+there is any investment for money or security in the daily affairs of
+life which is absolutely unimpeachable.  The Funds are not absolutely
+safe; a volcano might break out under the Bank of England.  A railway
+journey is not absolutely safe; one person at least in several millions
+gets killed.  We invest our money upon faith, mainly.  We choose our
+doctor upon faith, for how little independent judgment can we form
+concerning his capacity?  We choose schools for our children chiefly upon
+faith.  The most important things a man has are his body, his soul, and
+his money.  It is generally better for him to commit these interests to
+the care of others of whom he can know little, rather than be his own
+medical man, or invest his money on his own judgment; and this is nothing
+else than making a faith which lies deeper than reason can reach, the
+basis of our action in those respects which touch us most nearly.
+
+On the other hand, as good a case could be made out for placing reason as
+the foundation, inasmuch as it would be easy to show that a faith, to be
+worth anything, must be a reasonable one--one, that is to say, which is
+based upon reason.  The fact is that faith and reason are like function
+and organ, desire and power, or demand and supply; it is impossible to
+say which comes first: they come up hand in hand, and are so small when
+we can first descry them, that it is impossible to say which we first
+caught sight of.  All we can now see is that each has a tendency
+continually to outstrip the other by a little, but by a very little only.
+Strictly they are not two things, but two aspects of one thing; for
+convenience' sake, however, we classify them separately.
+
+It follows, therefore--but whether it follows or no, it is certainly
+true--that neither faith alone nor reason alone is a sufficient guide: a
+man's safety lies neither in faith nor reason, but in temper--in the
+power of fusing faith and reason, even when they appear most mutually
+destructive.
+
+That we all feel temper to be the first thing is plain from the fact that
+when we see two men quarrelling we seldom even try to weigh their
+arguments--we look instinctively at the tone or spirit or temper which
+the two display and give our verdict accordingly.
+
+A man of temper will be certain in spite of uncertainty, and at the same
+time uncertain in spite of certainty; reasonable in spite of his resting
+mainly upon faith rather than reason, and full of faith even when
+appealing most strongly to reason.  If it is asked, In what should a man
+have faith?  To what faith should he turn when reason has led him to a
+conclusion which he distrusts? the answer is, To the current feeling
+among those whom he most looks up to--looking upon himself with suspicion
+if he is either among the foremost or the laggers.  In the rough, homely
+common sense of the community to which we belong we have as firm ground
+as can be got.  This, though not absolutely infallible, is secure enough
+for practical purposes.
+
+As I have said, Catholic priests have rather a fascination for me--when
+they are not Englishmen.  I should say that the best North Italian
+priests are more openly tolerant than our English clergy generally are.  I
+remember picking up one who was walking along a road, and giving him a
+lift in my trap.  Of course we fell to talking, and it came out that I
+was a member of the Church of England.  "Ebbene, Caro Signore," said he
+when we shook hands at parting; "mi rincresce che lei non crede come io,
+ma in questi tempi non possiamo avere tutti i medesimi principii." {287}
+
+* * * * *
+
+The one thing, he said, which shocked him with the English, was the
+manner in which they went about distributing tracts upon the Continent.  I
+said no one could deplore the practice more profoundly than myself, but
+that there were stupid and conceited people in every country, who would
+insist upon thrusting their opinions upon people who did not want them.
+He replied that the Italians travelled not a little in England, but that
+he was sure not one of them would dream of offering Catholic tracts to
+people, for example, in the streets of London.  Certainly I have never
+seen an Italian to be guilty of such rudeness.  It seems to me that it is
+not only toleration that is a duty; we ought to go beyond this now; we
+should conform, when we are among a sufficient number of those who would
+not understand our refusal to do so; any other course is to attach too
+much importance at once to our own opinions and to those of our
+opponents.  By all means let a man stand by his convictions when the
+occasion requires, but let him reserve his strength, unless it is
+imperatively called for.  Do not let him exaggerate trifles, and let him
+remember that everything is a trifle in comparison with the not giving
+offence to a large number of kindly, simple-minded people.  Evolution, as
+we all know, is the great doctrine of modern times; the very essence of
+evolution consists in the not shocking anything too violently, but
+enabling it to mistake a new action for an old one, without "making
+believe" too much.
+
+One day when I was eating my lunch near a fountain, there came up a
+moody, meditative hen, crooning plaintively after her wont.  I threw her
+a crumb of bread while she was still a good way off, and then threw more,
+getting her to come a little closer and a little closer each time; at
+last she actually took a piece from my hand.  She did not quite like it,
+but she did it.  "A very little at a time," this is the evolution
+principle; and if we wish those who differ from us to understand us, it
+is the only method to proceed upon.  I have sometimes thought that some
+of my friends among the priests have been treating me as I treated the
+meditative hen.  But what of that?  They will not kill and eat me, nor
+take my eggs.  Whatever, therefore, promotes a more friendly feeling
+between us must be pure gain.
+
+* * * * *
+
+Sometimes priests say things, as a matter of course, which would make any
+English clergyman's hair stand on end.  At one town there is a remarkable
+fourteenth-century bridge, commonly known as "The Devil's Bridge."  I was
+sketching near this when a jolly old priest with a red nose came up and
+began a conversation with me.  He was evidently a popular character, for
+every one who passed greeted him.  He told me that the devil did not
+really build the bridge.  I said I presumed not, for he was not in the
+habit of spending his time so well.
+
+"I wish he had built it," said my friend; "for then perhaps he would
+build us some more."
+
+"Or we might even get a church out of him," said I, a little slyly.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha! we will convert him, and make a good Christian of him in the
+end."
+
+When will our Protestantism, or Rationalism, or whatever it may be, sit
+as lightly upon ourselves?
+
+Another time I had the following dialogue with an old Piedmontese priest
+who lived in a castle which I asked permission to go over:--
+
+"Vous etes Anglais, monsieur?" said he in French.
+
+"Oui, monsieur."
+
+"Vous etes Catholique?"
+
+"Monsieur, je suis de la religion de mes ancetres."
+
+"Pardon, monsieur, vos ancetres etaient Catholiques jusqu'au temps de
+Henri Huit."
+
+"Mais il y a trois cents ans depuis le temps de Henri Huit."
+
+"Eh bien; chacun a ses convictions; vous ne parlez pas contre la
+religion?"
+
+"Jamais, jamais, monsieur, j'ai un respect enorme pour l'eglise
+Catholique."
+
+"Monsieur, faites comme chez vous; allez ou vous voulez; vous trouverez
+toutes les portes ouvertes.  Amusez vous bien."
+
+
+
+CONSIDERATIONS ON THE DECLINE OF ITALIAN ART.  (FROM CHAPTER XIII. OF
+ALPS AND SANCTUARIES.)
+
+
+Those who know the Italians will see no sign of decay about them.  They
+are the quickest-witted people in the world, and at the same time have
+much more of the old Roman steadiness than they are generally credited
+with.  Not only is there no sign of degeneration, but, as regards
+practical matters, there is every sign of health and vigorous
+development.  The North Italians are more like Englishmen, both in body,
+and mind, than any other people whom I know; I am continually meeting
+Italians whom I should take for Englishmen if I did not know their
+nationality.  They have all our strong points, but they have more grace
+and elasticity of mind than we have.
+
+Priggishness is the sin which doth most easily beset middle-class, and so-
+called educated Englishmen; we call it purity and culture, but it does
+not much matter what we call it.  It is the almost inevitable outcome of
+a university education, and will last as long as Oxford and Cambridge do,
+but not much longer.
+
+Lord Beaconsfield sent Lothair to Oxford; it is with great pleasure that
+I see he did not send Endymion.  My friend Jones called my attention to
+this, and we noted that the growth observable throughout Lord
+Beaconsfield's life was continued to the end.  He was one of those who,
+no matter how long he lived, would have been always growing: this is what
+makes his later novels so much better than those of Thackeray or Dickens.
+There was something of the child about him to the last.  Earnestness was
+his greatest danger, but if he did not quite overcome it (as who indeed
+can?  It is the last enemy that shall be subdued), he managed to veil it
+with a fair amount of success.  As for Endymion, of course if Lord
+Beaconsfield had thought Oxford would be good for him, he could, as Jones
+pointed out to me, just as well have killed Mr. Ferrars a year or two
+later.  We feel satisfied, therefore, that Endymion's exclusion from a
+university was carefully considered, and are glad.
+
+I will not say that priggishness is absolutely unknown among the North
+Italians; sometimes one comes upon a young Italian who wants to learn
+German, but not often.  Priggism, or whatever the substantive is, is as
+essentially a Teutonic vice as holiness is a Semitic characteristic; and
+if an Italian happens to be a prig, he will, like Tacitus, invariably
+show a hankering after German institutions.  The idea, however, that the
+Italians were ever a finer people than they are now, will not pass muster
+with those who knew them.
+
+At the same time, there can be no doubt that modern Italian art is in
+many respects as bad as it was once good.  I will confine myself to
+painting only.  The modern Italian painters, with very few exceptions,
+paint as badly as we do, or even worse, and their motives are as poor as
+is their painting.  At an exhibition of modern Italian pictures, I
+generally feel that there is hardly a picture on the walls but is a
+sham--that is to say, painted not from love of this particular subject
+and an irresistible desire to paint it, but from a wish to paint an
+academy picture, and win money or applause.
+
+The last rays of the sunset of genuine art are to be found in the votive
+pictures at Locarno or Oropa, and in many a wayside chapel.  In these,
+religious art still lingers as a living language, however rudely spoken.
+In these alone is the story told, not as in the Latin and Greek verses of
+the scholar, who thinks he has succeeded best when he has most concealed
+his natural manner of expressing himself, but by one who knows what he
+wants to say, and says it in his mother-tongue, shortly, and without
+caring whether or not his words are in accordance with academic rules.  I
+regret to see photography being introduced for votive purposes, and also
+to detect in some places a disposition on the part of the authorities to
+be a little ashamed of these pictures and to place them rather out of
+sight.
+
+The question is, how has the falling-off in Italian painting been caused?
+And by doing what may we again get Bellinis and Andrea Mantegnas as in
+old time?  The fault does not lie in any want of raw material: nor yet
+does it lie in want of taking pains.  The modern Italian painter frets
+himself to the full as much as his predecessor did--if the truth were
+known, probably a great deal more.  I am sure Titian did not take much
+pains after he was more than about twenty years old.  It does not lie in
+want of schooling or art education.  For the last three hundred years,
+ever since the Caraccis opened their academy at Bologna, there has been
+no lack of art education in Italy.  Curiously enough, the date of the
+opening of the Bolognese Academy coincides as nearly as may be with the
+complete decadence of Italian painting.  The academic system trains boys
+to study other people's works rather than nature, and, as Leonardo da
+Vinci so well says, it makes them nature's grandchildren and not her
+children.  This I believe is at any rate half the secret of the whole
+matter.
+
+If half-a-dozen young Italians could be got together with a taste for
+drawing; if they had power to add to their number; if they were allowed
+to see paintings and drawings done up to the year A.D. 1510, and votive
+pictures and the comic papers; if they were left with no other assistance
+than this, absolutely free to please themselves, and could be persuaded
+not to try and please any one else, I believe that in fifty years we
+should have all that was ever done repeated with fresh naivete, and as
+much more delightfully than even by the best old masters, as these are
+more delightful than anything we know of in classic painting.  The young
+plants keep growing up abundantly every day--look at Bastianini, dead not
+ten years since--but they are browsed down by the academies.  I remember
+there came out a book many years ago with the title, "What becomes of all
+the clever little children?"  I never saw the book, but the title is
+pertinent.
+
+Any man who can write, can draw to a not inconsiderable extent.  Look at
+the Bayeux tapestry; yet Matilda probably never had a drawing lesson in
+her life.  See how well prisoner after prisoner in the Tower of London
+has cut out this or that in the stone of his prison wall, without, in all
+probability, having ever tried his hand at drawing before.  Look at my
+friend Jones, who has several illustrations in this book. {294}  The
+first year he went abroad with me he could hardly draw at all.  He was no
+year away from England more than three weeks.  How did he learn?  On the
+old principle, if I am not mistaken.  The old principle was for a man to
+be doing something which he was pretty strongly bent on doing, and to get
+a much younger one to help him.  The younger paid nothing for
+instruction, but the elder took the work, as long as the relation of
+master and pupil existed between them.  I, then, was mailing
+illustrations for this book, and got Jones to help me.  I let him see
+what I was doing, and derive an idea of the sort of thing I wanted, and
+then left him alone--beyond giving him the same kind of small criticism
+that I expected from himself--but I appropriated his work.  That is the
+way to teach, and the result was that in an incredibly short time Jones
+could draw.  The taking the work is a _sine qua non_.  If I had not been
+going to have his work, Jones, in spite of all his quickness, would
+probably have been rather slower in learning to draw.  Being paid in
+money is nothing like so good.
+
+This is the system of apprenticeship _versus_ the academic system.  The
+academic system consists in giving people the rules for doing things.  The
+apprenticeship system consists in letting them do it, with just a trifle
+of supervision.  "For all a rhetorician's rules," says my great namesake,
+"teach nothing but, to name his tools;" and academic rules generally are
+much the same as the rhetorician's.  Some men can pass through academies
+unscathed, but they are very few, and in the main the academic influence
+is a baleful one, whether exerted in a university or a school.  While
+young men at universities are being prepared for their entry into life,
+their rivals have already entered it.  The most university and
+examination ridden people in the world are the Chinese, and they are the
+least progressive.
+
+Men should learn to draw as they learn conveyancing: they should go into
+a painter's studio and paint on his pictures.  I am told that half the
+conveyances in the country are drawn by pupils; there is no more mystery
+about painting than about conveyancing--not half in fact, I should think,
+so much.  One may ask, How can the beginner paint, or draw conveyances,
+till he has learnt how to do so?  The answer is, How can he learn,
+without at any rate trying to do?  It is the old story, organ and
+function, power and desire, demand and supply, faith and reason, etc.,
+the most virtuous action and interaction in the most vicious circle
+conceivable.  If the beginner likes his subject, he will try: if he
+tries, he will soon succeed in doing something which shall open a door.
+It does not matter what a man does; so long as he does it with the
+attention which affection engenders, he will come to see his way to
+something else.  After long waiting he will certainly find one door open,
+and go through it.  He will say to himself that he can never find
+another.  He has found this, more by luck than cunning, but now he is
+done.  Yet by and by he will see that there is _one_ more small
+unimportant door which he had overlooked, and he proceeds through this
+too.  If he remains now for a long while and sees no other, do not let
+him fret; doors are like the kingdom of heaven, they come not by
+observation, least of all do they come by forcing: let him just go on
+doing what comes nearest, but doing it attentively, and a great wide door
+will one day spring into existence where there had been no sign of one
+but a little time previously.  Only let him be always doing something,
+and let him cross himself now and again, for belief in the wondrous
+efficacy of crosses and crossing is the corner-stone of the creed of the
+evolutionists.  Then after years--but not probably till after a great
+many--doors will open up all around, so many and so wide that the
+difficulty will not be to find a door, but rather to obtain the means of
+even hurriedly surveying a portion of those that stand invitingly open.
+
+I know that just as good a case can be made out for the other side.  It
+may be said as truly that unless a student is incessantly on the watch
+for doors he will never see them, and that unless he is incessantly
+pressing forward to the kingdom of heaven he will never find it--so that
+the kingdom does come by observation.  It is with this as with everything
+else--there must be a harmonious fusing of two principles which are in
+flat contradiction to one another.
+
+The question of whether it is better to abide quiet and take advantage of
+opportunities that come, or to go farther afield in search of them, is
+one of the oldest which living beings have had to deal with.  It was on
+this that the first great schism or heresy arose in what was heretofore
+the catholic faith of protoplasm.  The schism still lasts, and has
+resulted in two great sects--animals and plants.  The opinion that it is
+better to go in search of prey is formulated in animals; the other--that
+it is better on the whole to stay at home and profit by what comes--in
+plants.  Some intermediate forms still record to us the long struggle
+during which the schism was not yet complete.
+
+If I may be pardoned for pursuing this digression further, I would say
+that it is the plants and not we who are the heretics.  There can be no
+question about this; we are perfectly justified, therefore, in devouring
+them.  Ours is the original and orthodox belief, for protoplasm is much
+more animal than vegetable; it is much more true to say that plants have
+descended from animals than animals from plants.  Nevertheless, like many
+other heretics, plants have thriven very fairly well.  There are a great
+many of them, and as regards beauty, if not wit--of a limited kind
+indeed, but still wit--it is hard to say that the animal kingdom has the
+advantage.  The views of plants are sadly narrow; all dissenters are
+narrow-minded; but within their own bounds they know the details of their
+business sufficiently well--as well as though they kept the most nicely-
+balanced system of accounts to show them their position.  They are eaten,
+it is true; to eat them is our intolerant and bigoted way of trying to
+convert them: eating is only a violent mode of proselytising or
+converting; and we do convert them--to good animal substance, of our own
+way of thinking.  If we have had no trouble with them, we say they have
+"agreed" with us; if we have been unable to make them see things from our
+points of view, we say they "disagree" with us, and avoid being on more
+than distant terms with them for the future.  If we have helped ourselves
+to too much, we say we have got more than we can "manage."  But then,
+animals are eaten too.  They convert one another, almost as much as they
+convert plants.  And an animal is no sooner dead than a plant will
+convert it back again.  It is obvious, however, that no schism could have
+been so long successful, without having a good deal to say for itself.
+
+Neither party has been quite consistent.  Who ever is or can be?  Every
+extreme--every opinion carried to its logical end--will prove to be an
+absurdity.  Plants throw out roots and boughs and leaves: this is a kind
+of locomotion; and as Dr. Erasmus Darwin long since pointed out, they do
+sometimes approach nearly to what may be called travelling; a man of
+consistent character will never look at a bough, a root, or a tendril
+without regarding it as a melancholy and unprincipled compromise.  On the
+other hand, many animals are sessile, and some singularly successful
+genera, as spiders, are in the main liers-in-wait.  It may appear,
+however, on the whole, like reopening a settled question to uphold the
+principle of being busy and attentive over a small area, rather than
+going to and fro over a larger one, for a mammal like man, but I think
+most readers will be with me in thinking that, at any rate as regards art
+and literature, it is he who does his small immediate work most carefully
+who will find doors open most certainly to him, that will conduct him
+into the richest chambers.
+
+Many years ago, in New Zealand, I used sometimes to accompany a dray and
+team of bullocks who would have to be turned loose at night that they
+might feed.  There were no hedges or fences then, so sometimes I could
+not find my team in the morning, and had no clue to the direction in
+which they had gone.  At first I used to try and throw my soul into the
+bullocks' souls, so as to divine if possible what they would be likely to
+have done, and would then ride off ten miles in the wrong direction.
+People used in those days to lose their bullocks sometimes for a week or
+fortnight--when they perhaps were all the time hiding in a gully hard by
+the place where they were turned out.  After some time I changed my
+tactics.  On losing my bullocks I would go to the nearest accommodation
+house, and stand drinks.  Some one would ere long, as a general rule,
+turn up who had seen the bullocks.  This case does not go quite on all
+fours with what I have been saying above, inasmuch as I was not very
+industrious in my limited area; but the standing drinks and inquiring was
+being as industrious as the circumstances would allow.
+
+To return, universities and academies are an obstacle to the finding of
+doors in later life; partly because they push their young men too fast
+through doorways that the universities have provided, and so discourage
+the habit of being on the look-out for others; and partly because they do
+not take pains enough to make sure that their doors are _bona fide_ ones.
+If, to change the metaphor, an academy has taken a bad shilling, it is
+seldom very scrupulous about trying to pass it on.  It will stick to it
+that the shilling is a good one as long as the police will let it.  I was
+very happy at Cambridge; when I left it I thought I never again could be
+so happy anywhere else; I shall ever retain a most kindly recollection
+both of Cambridge and of the school where I passed my boyhood; but I
+feel, as I think most others must in middle life, that I have spent as
+much of my maturer years in unlearning as in learning.
+
+The proper course is for a boy to begin the practical business of life
+many years earlier than he now commonly does.  He should begin at the
+very bottom of a profession; if possible of one which his family has
+pursued before him--for the professions will assuredly one day become
+hereditary.  The ideal railway director will have begun at fourteen as a
+railway porter.  He need not be a porter for more than a week or ten
+days, any more than he need have been a tadpole more than a short time;
+but he should take a turn in practice, though briefly, at each of the
+lower branches in the profession.  The painter should do just the same.
+He should begin by setting his employer's palette and cleaning his
+brushes.  As for the good side of universities, the proper preservative
+of this is to be found in the club.
+
+If, then, we are to have a renaissance of art, there must be a complete
+standing aloof from the academic system.  That system has had time
+enough.  Where and who are its men?  Can it point to one painter who can
+hold his own with the men of, say, from 1450 to 1550?  Academies will
+bring out men who can paint hair very like hair, and eyes very like eyes,
+but this is not enough.  This is grammar and deportment; we want wit and
+a kindly nature, and these cannot be got from academies.  As far as mere
+_technique_ is concerned, almost every one now can paint as well as is in
+the least desirable.  The same _mutatis mutandis_ holds good with writing
+as with painting.  We want less word-painting and fine phrases, and more
+observation at first-hand.  Let us have a periodical illustrated by
+people who cannot draw, and written by people who cannot write (perhaps,
+however, after all, we have some), but who look and think for themselves,
+and express themselves just as they please,--and this we certainly have
+not.  Every contributor should be at once turned out if he or she is
+generally believed to have tried to do something which he or she did not
+care about trying to do, and anything should be admitted which is the
+outcome of a genuine liking.  People are always good company when they
+are doing what they really enjoy.  A cat is good company when it is
+purring, or a dog when it is wagging its tail.
+
+The sketching-clubs up and down the country might form the nucleus of
+such a society, provided all professional men were rigorously excluded.
+As for the old masters, the better plan would be never even to look at
+one of them, and to consign Raffaelle, along with Plato, Marcus Aurelius
+Antoninus, Dante, Goethe, and two others, neither of them Englishmen, to
+limbo, as the Seven Humbugs of Christendom.
+
+While we are about it, let us leave off talking about "art for art's
+sake."  Who is art, that it should have a sake?  A work of art should be
+produced for the pleasure it gives the producer, and the pleasure he
+thinks it will give to a few of whom he is fond; but neither money nor
+people whom he does not know personally should be thought of.  Of course
+such a society as I have proposed would not remain incorrupt long.
+"Everything that grows, holds in perfection but a little moment."  The
+members would try to imitate professional men in spite of their rules,
+or, if they escaped this and after a while got to paint well, they would
+become dogmatic, and a rebellion against their authority would be as
+necessary ere long as it was against that of their predecessors: but the
+balance on the whole would be to the good.
+
+Professional men should be excluded, if for no other reason yet for this,
+that they know too much for the beginner to be _en rapport_ with them.  It
+is the beginner who can help the beginner, as it is the child who is the
+most instructive companion for another child.  The beginner can
+understand the beginner, but the cross between him and the proficient
+performer is too wide for fertility.  It savours of impatience, and is in
+flat contradiction to the first principles of biology.  It does a
+beginner positive harm to look at the masterpieces of the great
+executionists, such as Rembrandt or Turner.
+
+If one is climbing a very high mountain which will tax all one's
+strength, nothing fatigues so much as casting upward glances to the top;
+nothing encourages so much as casting downward glances.  The top seems
+never to draw nearer; the parts that we have passed retreat rapidly.  Let
+a water-colour student go and see the drawing by Turner in the basement
+of our National Gallery, dated 1787.  This is the sort of thing for him,
+not to copy, but to look at for a minute or two now and again.  It will
+show him nothing about painting, but it may serve to teach him not to
+overtax his strength, and will prove to him that the greatest masters in
+painting, as in everything else, begin by doing work which is no way
+superior to that of their neighbours.  A collection of the earliest known
+works of the greatest men would be much more useful to the student than
+any number of their maturer works, for it would show him that he need not
+worry himself because his work does not look clever, or as silly people
+say, "show power."
+
+The secrets of success are affection for the pursuit chosen, a flat
+refusal to be hurried or to pass anything as understood which is not
+understood, and an obstinacy of character which shall make the student's
+friends find it less trouble to let him have his own way than to bend him
+into theirs.  Our schools and academies or universities are covertly but
+essentially radical institutions, and abhorrent to the genius of
+Conservatism.  Their sin is the true radical sin of being in too great a
+hurry, and the natural result has followed, they waste far more time than
+they save.  But it must be remembered that this proposition like every
+other wants tempering with a slight infusion of its direct opposite.
+
+I said in an early part of this book that the best test to know whether
+or no one likes a picture is to ask oneself whether one would like to
+look at it if one was quite sure one was alone.  The best test for a
+painter as to whether he likes painting his picture is to ask himself
+whether he should like to paint it if he was quite sure that no one
+except himself, and the few of whom he was very fond, would ever see it.
+If he can answer this question in the affirmative, he is all right; if he
+cannot, he is all wrong.
+
+I must reserve other remarks upon this subject for another occasion.
+
+
+
+SANCTUARIES OF OROPA AND GRAGLIA.  (FROM CHAPTERS XV. AND XVI. OF ALPS
+AND SANCTUARIES.)
+
+
+The morning after our arrival at Biella, we took the daily diligence for
+Oropa, leaving Biella at eight o'clock.  Before we were clear of the town
+we could see the long line of the hospice, and the chapels dotted about
+near it, high up in a valley at some distance off; presently we were
+shown another fine building some eight or nine miles away, which we were
+told was the sanctuary of Graglia.  About this time the pictures and
+statuettes of the Madonna began to change their hue and to become
+black--for the sacred image of Oropa being black, all the Madonnas in her
+immediate neighbourhood are of the same complexion.  Underneath some of
+them is written, "Nigra sum sed sum formosa," which, as a rule, was more
+true as regards the first epithet than the second.
+
+It was not market-day, but streams of people were coming to the town.
+Many of them were pilgrims returning from the sanctuary, but more were
+bringing the produce of their farms or the work of their hands for sale.
+We had to face a steady stream of chairs, which were coming to town in
+baskets upon women's heads.  Each basket contained twelve chairs, though
+whether it is correct to say that the basket contained the chairs--when
+the chairs were all, so to say, froth running over the top of the
+basket--is a point I cannot settle.  Certainly we had never seen anything
+like so many chairs before, and felt almost as though we had surprised
+nature in the laboratory wherefrom she turns out the chair-supply of the
+world.  The road continued through a succession of villages almost
+running into one another for a long way after Biella was passed, but
+everywhere we noticed the same air of busy thriving industry which we had
+seen in Biella itself.  We noted also that a preponderance of the people
+had light hair, while that of the children was frequently nearly white,
+as though the infusion of German blood was here stronger even than usual.
+Though so thickly peopled, the country was of great beauty.  Near at hand
+were the most exquisite pastures close shaven after their second mowing,
+gay with autumnal crocuses, and shaded with stately chestnuts; beyond
+were rugged mountains, in a combe on one of which we saw Oropa itself now
+gradually nearing; behind, and below, many villages, with vineyards and
+terraces cultivated to the highest perfection; farther on, Biella already
+distant, and beyond this a "big stare," as an American might say, over
+the plains of Lombardy from Turin to Milan, with the Apennines from Genoa
+to Bologna hemming the horizon.  On the road immediately before us, we
+still faced the same steady stream of chairs flowing ever Biella-ward.
+
+After a couple of hours the houses became more rare; we got above the
+sources of the chair-stream; bits of rough rock began to jut out from the
+pasture; here and there the rhododendron began to shew itself by the
+roadside; the chestnuts left off along a line as level as though cut with
+a knife; stone-roofed _cascine_ began to abound, with goats and cattle
+feeding near them; the booths of the religious trinket-mongers increased;
+the blind, halt, and maimed became more importunate, and the
+foot-passengers were more entirely composed of those whose object was, or
+had been, a visit to the sanctuary itself.  The numbers of these
+pilgrims--generally in their Sunday's best, and often comprising the
+greater part of a family--were so great, though there was no special
+festa, as to testify to the popularity of the institution.  They
+generally walked barefoot, and carried their shoes and stockings; their
+baggage consisted of a few spare clothes, a little food, and a pot or pan
+or two to cook with.  Many of them looked very tired, and had evidently
+tramped from long distances--indeed, we saw costumes belonging to valleys
+which could not be less than two or three days distant.  They were almost
+invariably quiet, respectable, and decently clad, sometimes a little
+merry, but never noisy, and none of them tipsy.  As we travelled along
+the road, we must have fallen in with several hundreds of these pilgrims
+coming and going; nor is this likely to be an extravagant estimate,
+seeing that the hospice can make up more than five thousand beds.  By
+eleven we were at the sanctuary itself.
+
+Fancy a quiet upland valley, the floor of which is about the same height
+as the top of Snowdon, shut in by lofty mountains upon three sides, while
+on the fourth the eye wanders at will over the plains below.  Fancy
+finding a level space in such a valley watered by a beautiful mountain
+stream, and nearly filled by a pile of collegiate buildings, not less
+important than those, we will say, of Trinity College, Cambridge.  True,
+Oropa is not in the least like Trinity, except that one of its courts is
+large, grassy, has a chapel and a fountain in it, and rooms all round it;
+but I do not know how better to give a rough description of Oropa than by
+comparing it with one of our largest English colleges.
+
+The buildings consist of two main courts.  The first comprises a couple
+of modern wings, connected by the magnificent facade of what is now the
+second or inner court.  This facade dates from about the middle of the
+seventeenth century; its lowest storey is formed by an open colonnade,
+and the whole stands upon a raised terrace from which a noble flight of
+steps descends into the outer court.
+
+Ascending the steps and passing under the colonnade, we find ourselves in
+the second or inner court, which is a complete quadrangle, and is, so at
+least we were told, of rather older date than the facade.  This is the
+quadrangle which gives its collegiate character to Oropa.  It is
+surrounded by cloisters on three sides, on to which the rooms in which
+the pilgrims are lodged open--those at least that are on the
+ground-floor, but there are three storeys.  The chapel, which was
+dedicated in the year 1600, juts out into the court upon the north-east
+side.  On the north-west and south-west sides are entrances through which
+one may pass to the open country.  The grass at the time of our visit was
+for the most part covered with sheets spread out to dry.  They looked
+very nice, and, dried on such grass, and in such an air, they must be
+delicious to sleep on.  There is, indeed, rather an appearance as though
+it were a perpetual washing-day at Oropa, but this is not to be wondered
+at considering the numbers of comers and goers; besides, people in Italy
+do not make so much fuss about trifles as we do.  If they want to wash
+their sheets and dry them, they do not send them to Ealing, but lay them
+out in the first place that comes handy, and nobody's bones are broken.
+
+On the east side of the main block of buildings there is a grassy slope
+adorned with chapels that contain figures illustrating scenes in the
+history of the Virgin.  These figures are of terra-cotta, for the most
+part life-size, and painted up to nature.  In some cases, if I remember
+rightly, they have hemp or flax for hair, as at Varallo, and throughout
+realism is aimed at as far as possible, not only in the figures, but in
+the accessories.  We have very little of the same kind in England.  In
+the Tower of London there is an effigy of Queen Elizabeth going to the
+city to give thanks for the defeat of the Spanish Armada.  This looks as
+if it might have been the work of some one of the Valsesian sculptors.
+There are also the figures that strike the quarters of Sir John Bennett's
+city clock in Cheapside.  The automatic movements of these last-named
+figures would have struck the originators of the Varallo chapels with
+envy.  They aimed at realism so closely that they would assuredly have
+had recourse to clockwork in some one or two of their chapels; I cannot
+doubt, for example, that they would have eagerly welcomed the idea of
+making the cock crow to Peter by a cuckoo-clock arrangement, if it had
+been presented to them.  This opens up the whole question of realism
+_versus_ conventionalism in art--a subject much too large to be treated
+here.
+
+As I have said, the founders of these Italian chapels aimed at realism.
+Each chapel was intended as an illustration, and the desire was to bring
+the whole scene more vividly before the faithful by combining the
+picture, the statue, and the effect of a scene upon the stage in a single
+work of art.  The attempt would be an ambitious one though made once only
+in a neighbourhood, but in most of the places in North Italy where
+anything of the kind has been done, the people have not been content with
+a single illustration; it has been their scheme to take a mountain as
+though it had been a book or wall and cover it with illustrations.  In
+some cases--as at Orta, whose Sacro Monte is perhaps the most beautiful
+of all as regards the site itself--the failure is complete, but in some
+of the chapels at Varese and in many of those at Varallo, great works
+have been produced which have not yet attracted as much attention as they
+deserve.  It may be doubted, indeed, whether there is a more remarkable
+work of art in North Italy than the crucifixion chapel at Varallo, where
+the twenty-five statues, as well as the frescoes behind them, are (with
+the exception of the figure of Christ, which has been removed) by
+Gaudenzio Ferrari.  It is to be wished that some one of these
+chapels--both chapel and sculptures--were reproduced at South Kensington.
+
+Varallo, which is undoubtedly the most interesting sanctuary in North
+Italy, has forty-four of these illustrative chapels; Varese, fifteen;
+Orta, eighteen; and Oropa, seventeen.  No one is allowed to enter them,
+except when repairs are needed; but when these are going on, as is
+constantly the case, it is curious to look through the grating into the
+somewhat darkened interior, and to see a living figure or two among the
+statues; a little motion on the part of a single figure seems to
+communicate itself to the rest and make them all more animated.  If the
+living figure does not move much, it is easy at first to mistake it for a
+terra-cotta one.  At Orta, some years since, looking one evening into a
+chapel when the light was fading, I was surprised to see a saint whom I
+had not seen before; he had no glory except what shone from a very red
+nose; he was smoking a short pipe, and was painting the Virgin Mary's
+face.  The touch was a finishing one, put on with deliberation, slowly,
+so that it was two or three seconds before I discovered that the
+interloper was no saint.
+
+The figures in the chapels at Oropa are not as good as the best of those
+at Varallo, but some of them are very nice notwithstanding.  We liked the
+seventh chapel the best--the one which illustrates the sojourn of the
+Virgin Mary in the Temple.  It contains forty-four figures, and
+represents the Virgin on the point of completing her education as head
+girl at a high-toned academy for young gentlewomen.  All the young ladies
+are at work making mitres for the bishop, or working slippers in Berlin
+wool for the new curate, but the Virgin sits on a dais above the others
+on the same platform with the venerable lady-principal, who is having
+passages read out to her from some standard Hebrew writer.  The statues
+are the work of a local sculptor, named Aureggio, who lived at the end of
+the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century.
+
+The highest chapel must be a couple of hundred feet above the main
+buildings, and from near it there is an excellent bird's-eye view of the
+sanctuary and the small plain behind; descending on to this last, we
+entered the quadrangle from the north-west side, and visited the chapel
+in which the sacred image of the Madonna is contained.  We did not see
+the image itself, which is only exposed to public view on great
+occasions.  It is believed to have been carved by St. Luke the
+Evangelist.  It is said that at one time there was actually an
+inscription on the image in Greek characters, of which the translation
+is, "Eusebius.  A token of respect and affection from his sincere friend,
+Luke;" but this being written in chalk or pencil only, has been worn off,
+and is known by tradition only.  I must ask the reader to content himself
+with the following account of it which I take from Marocco's work upon
+Oropa:--
+
+   "That this statue of the Virgin is indeed by St. Luke is attested by
+   St. Eusebius, a man of eminent piety, and no less enlightened than
+   truthful, and the store which he set by it is proved by his shrinking
+   from no discomforts in his carriage of it from a distant country, and
+   by his anxiety to put it in a place of great security.  His desire,
+   indeed, was to keep it in the spot which was most near and dear to
+   him, so that he might extract from it the higher incitement to
+   devotion, and more sensible comfort in the midst of his austerities
+   and apostolic labours.
+
+   "This truth is further confirmed by the quality of the wood from which
+   the statue is carved, which is commonly believed to be cedar; by the
+   Eastern character of the work; by the resemblance both of the
+   lineament and the colour to those of other statues by St. Luke; by the
+   tradition of the neighbourhood, which extends in an unbroken and well-
+   assured line to the time of St. Eusebius himself; by the miracles that
+   have been worked here by its presence, and elsewhere by its
+   invocation, or even by indirect contact with it; by the miracles,
+   lastly, which are inherent in the image itself, {311} and which endure
+   to this day, such as is its immunity from all worm and from the decay
+   which would naturally have occurred in it through time and damp--more
+   especially in the feet, through the rubbing of religious objects
+   against them.
+
+   * * * * *
+
+   "The authenticity of this image is so certainly and clearly
+   established, that all supposition to the contrary becomes inexplicable
+   and absurd.  Such, for example, is a hypothesis that it should not be
+   attributed to the Evangelist, but to another Luke, also called
+   'Saint,' and a Florentine by birth.  This painter lived in the
+   eleventh century--that is to say, about seven centuries after the
+   image of Oropa had been known and venerated!  This is indeed an
+   anachronism.
+
+   "Other difficulties drawn either from the ancient discipline of the
+   Church or from St. Luke the Evangelist's profession, which was that of
+   a physician, vanish at once when it is borne in mind--firstly, that
+   the cult of holy images, and especially of that of the most blessed
+   Virgin, is of extreme antiquity in the Church, and of apostolic
+   origin, as is proved by ecclesiastical writers and monuments found in
+   the catacombs which date, as far back as the first century (see among
+   other authorities, Nicolas, La Vergine vivente nella Chiesa, lib. iii.
+   cap. iii. section 2); secondly, that as the medical profession does
+   not exclude that of artists, St. Luke may have been both artist and
+   physician; that he did actually handle both the brush and the scalpel
+   is established by respectable and very old traditions, to say nothing
+   of other arguments which can be found in impartial and learned writers
+   upon such matters."
+
+I will only give one more extract.  It runs:--
+
+   "In 1855 a celebrated Roman portrait-painter, after having carefully
+   inspected the image of the Virgin Mary at Oropa, declared it to be
+   certainly a work of the first century of our era." {313}
+
+I once saw a common cheap china copy of this Madonna announced as to be
+given away with two pounds of tea, in a shop near Hatton Garden.
+
+The church in which the sacred image is kept is interesting from the
+pilgrims who at all times frequent it, and from the collection of votive
+pictures which adorn its walls.  Except the votive pictures and the
+pilgrims the church contains little of interest, and I will pass on to
+the constitution and objects of the establishment.
+
+The objects are--1. Gratuitous lodging to all comers for a space of from
+three to nine days as the rector may think fit.  2. A school.  3. Help to
+the sick and poor.  It is governed by a president and six members, who
+form a committee.  Four members are chosen by the communal council, and
+two by the cathedral chapter of Biella.  At the hospice itself there
+reside a director, with his assistant, a surveyor to keep the fabric in
+repair, a rector or dean with six priests, called _cappellani_, and a
+medical man.  "The government of the laundry," so runs the statute on
+this head, "and analogous domestic services are entrusted to a competent
+number of ladies of sound constitution and good conduct, who live
+together in the hospice under the direction of an inspectress, and are
+called daughters of Oropa."
+
+The bye-laws of the establishment are conceived in a kindly, genial
+spirit, which in great measure accounts for its unmistakable popularity.
+We understood that the poorer visitors, as a general rule, avail
+themselves of the gratuitous lodging, without making any present when
+they leave, but in spite of this it is quite clear that they are wanted
+to come, and come they accordingly do.  It is sometimes difficult to lay
+one's hands upon the exact passages which convey an impression, but as we
+read the bye-laws which are posted up in the cloisters, we found
+ourselves continually smiling at the manner in which almost anything that
+looked like a prohibition could be removed with the consent of the
+director.  There is no rule whatever about visitors attending the church;
+all that is required of them is that they do not interfere with those who
+do.  They must not play games of chance, or noisy games; they must not
+make much noise of any sort after ten o'clock at night (which corresponds
+about with midnight in England).  They should not draw upon the walls of
+their rooms, nor cut the furniture.  They should also keep their rooms
+clean, and not cook in those that are more expensively furnished.  This
+is about all that they must not do, except fee the servants, which is
+most especially and particularly forbidden.  If any one infringes these
+rules, he is to be admonished, and in case of grave infraction or
+continued misdemeanor he may be expelled and not readmitted.
+
+Visitors who are lodged in the better-furnished apartments can be waited
+upon if they apply at the office; the charge is twopence for cleaning a
+room, making the bed, bringing water, &c.  If there is more than one bed
+in a room, a penny must be paid for every bed over the first.  Boots can
+be cleaned for a penny, shoes for a halfpenny.  For carrying wood, &c.,
+either a halfpenny or a penny will be exacted according to the time
+taken.  Payment for these services must not be made to the servant, but
+at the office.
+
+The gates close at ten o'clock at night, and open at sunrise, "but if any
+visitor wishes to make Alpine excursions, or has any other sufficient
+reason, he should let the director know."  Families occupying many rooms
+must--when the hospice is very crowded, and when they have had due
+notice--manage to pack themselves into a smaller compass.  No one can
+have rooms kept for him.  It is to be strictly "first come, first
+served."  No one must sublet his room.  Visitors must not go away without
+giving up the key of their room.  Candles and wood may be bought at a
+fixed price.
+
+Any one wishing to give anything to the support of the hospice must do so
+only to the director, the official who appoints the apartments, the dean
+or the cappellani, or to the inspectress of the daughters of Oropa, but
+they must have a receipt for even the smallest sum; alms-boxes, however,
+are placed here and there into which the smaller offerings may be dropped
+(we imagine this means anything under a franc).
+
+The poor will be fed as well as housed for three days
+gratuitously--provided their health does not require a longer stay; but
+they must not beg on the premises of the hospice; professional beggars
+will be at once handed over to the mendicity society in Biella, or even
+perhaps to prison.  The poor for whom a hydropathic course is
+recommended, can have it under the regulations made by the committee--that
+is to say, if there is a vacant place.
+
+There are _trattorie_ and cafes at the hospice, where refreshments may be
+obtained both good and cheap.  Meat is to be sold there at the prices
+current in Biella; bread at two centimes the chilogramma more, to pay for
+the cost of carriage.
+
+Such are the bye-laws of this remarkable institution.
+
+Few except the very rich are so under-worked that two or three days of
+change and rest are not at times a boon to them, while the mere knowledge
+that there is a place where repose can be had cheaply and pleasantly is
+itself a source of strength.  Here, so long as the visitor wishes to be
+merely housed, no questions are asked; no one is refused admittance,
+except for some obviously sufficient reason; it is like getting a reading
+ticket for the British Museum, there is practically but one test--that is
+to say, desire on the part of the visitor--the coming proves the desire,
+and this suffices.  A family, we will say, has just gathered its first
+harvest; the heat on the plains is intense, and the malaria from the rice-
+grounds little less than pestilential; what, then, can be nicer than to
+lock up the house and go for three days to the bracing mountain air of
+Oropa?  So at daybreak off they all start trudging, it may be, their
+thirty or forty miles, and reaching Oropa by nightfall.  If there is a
+weakly one among them, some arrangement is sure to be practicable whereby
+he or she can be helped to follow more leisurely, and can remain longer
+at the hospice.  Once arrived, they generally, it is true, go the round
+of the chapels, and make some slight show of pilgrimage, but the main
+part of their time is spent in doing absolutely nothing.  It is
+sufficient amusement to them to sit on the steps, or lie about under the
+shadow of the trees, and neither say anything nor do anything, but simply
+breathe, and look at the sky and at each other.  We saw scores of such
+people just resting instinctively in a kind of blissful waking dream.
+Others saunter along the walks which have been cut in the woods that
+surround the hospice, or if they have been pent up in a town and have a
+fancy for climbing, there are mountain excursions, for the making of
+which the hospice affords excellent headquarters, and which are looked
+upon with every favour by the authorities.
+
+It must be remembered also that the accommodation provided at Oropa is
+much better than what the people are, for the most part, accustomed to in
+their own homes, and the beds are softer, more often beaten up, and
+cleaner than those they have left behind them.  Besides, they have
+sheets--and beautifully clean sheets.  Those who know the sort of place
+in which an Italian peasant is commonly content to sleep, will understand
+how much he must enjoy a really clean and comfortable bed, especially
+when he has not got to pay for it.  Sleep, in the circumstances of
+comfort which most readers will be accustomed to, is a more expensive
+thing than is commonly supposed.  If we sleep eight hours in a London
+hotel we shall have to pay from 4d. to 6d. an hour, or from 1d. to 1.5d.
+for every fifteen minutes we lie in bed; nor is it reasonable to believe
+that the charge is excessive when we consider the vast amount of
+competition which exists.  There is many a man the expenses of whose
+daily meat, drink, and clothing are less than what an accountant would
+show us we, many of us, lay out nightly upon our sleep.  The cost of
+really comfortable sleep-necessaries cannot, of course, be nearly so
+great at Oropa as in a London hotel, but they are enough to put them
+beyond the reach of the peasant under ordinary circumstances, and he
+relishes them all the more when he can get them.
+
+But why, it may be asked, should the peasant have these things if he
+cannot afford to pay for them; and why should he not pay for them if he
+can afford to do so?  If such places as Oropa were common, would not lazy
+vagabonds spend their lives in going the rounds of them, &c., &c.?
+Doubtless if there were many Oropas, they would do more harm than good,
+but there are some things which answer perfectly well as rarities or on a
+small scale, out of which all the virtue would depart if they were common
+or on a larger one; and certainly the impression left upon our minds by
+Oropa was that its effects were excellent.
+
+Granted the sound rule to be that a man should pay for what he has, or go
+without it; in practice, however, it is found impossible to carry this
+rule out strictly.  Why does the nation give A. B., for instance, and all
+comers a large, comfortable, well-ventilated, warm room to sit in, with
+chair, table, reading-desk, &c., all more commodious than what he may
+have at home, without making him pay a sixpence for it directly from
+year's end to year's end?  The three or nine days' visit to Oropa is a
+trifle in comparison with what we can all of us obtain in London if we
+care about it enough to take a very small amount of trouble.  True, one
+cannot sleep in the reading-room of the British Museum--not all night, at
+least--but by day one can make a home of it for years together except
+during cleaning times, and then it is hard if one cannot get into the
+National Gallery or South Kensington, and be warm, quiet, and entertained
+without paying for it.
+
+It will be said that it is for the national interest that people should
+have access to treasuries of art or knowledge, and therefore it is worth
+the nation's while to pay for placing the means of doing so at their
+disposal; granted, but is not a good bed one of the great ends of
+knowledge, whereto it must work, if it is to be accounted knowledge at
+all? and it is not worth a nation's while that her children should now
+and again have practical experience of a higher state of things than the
+one they are accustomed to, and a few days' rest and change of scene and
+air, even though she may from time to time have to pay something in order
+to enable them to do so?  There can be few books which do an averagely-
+educated Englishman so much good, as the glimpse of comfort which he gets
+by sleeping in a good bed in a well-appointed room does to an Italian
+peasant; such a glimpse gives him an idea of higher potentialities in
+connection with himself, and nerves him to exertions which he would not
+otherwise make.  On the whole, therefore, we concluded that if the
+British Museum reading-room was in good economy, Oropa was so also; at
+any rate, it seemed to be making a large number of very nice people
+quietly happy--and it is hard to say more than this in favour of any
+place or institution.
+
+The idea of any sudden change is as repulsive to us as it will be to the
+greater number of my readers; but if asked whether we thought our English
+universities would do most good in their present condition as places of
+so-called education, or if they were turned into Oropas, and all the
+educational part of the story totally suppressed, we inclined to think
+they would be more popular and more useful in this latter capacity.  We
+thought also that Oxford and Cambridge were just the places, and
+contained all the appliances and endowments almost ready made for
+constituting two splendid and truly imperial cities of
+recreation--universities in deed as well as in name.  Nevertheless we
+should not venture to propose any further actual reform during the
+present generation than to carry the principle which is already admitted
+as regards the M.A. a degree a trifle further, and to make the B.A.
+degree a mere matter of lapse of time and fees--leaving the little go,
+and whatever corresponds to it at Oxford, as the final examination.  This
+would be enough for the present.
+
+There is another sanctuary about three hours' walk over the mountain
+behind Oropa, at Andorno, and dedicated to St. John.  We were prevented
+by the weather from visiting it, but understand that its objects are much
+the same as those of the institution I have just described.  I will now
+proceed to the third sanctuary for which the neighbourhood of Biella is
+renowned.
+
+* * * * *
+
+At Graglia I was shown all over the rooms in which strangers are lodged,
+and found them not only comfortable but luxurious--decidedly more so than
+those of Oropa; there was the same cleanliness everywhere which I had
+noticed in the restaurant.  As one stands at the windows or on the
+balconies and looks down to the tops of the chestnuts, and over these to
+the plains, one feels almost as if one could fly out of the window like a
+bird; for the slope of the hills is so rapid that one has a sense of
+being already suspended in mid-air.
+
+I thought I observed a desire to attract English visitors in the pictures
+which I saw in the bedrooms.  Thus there was "A view of the Black-lead
+Mine in Cumberland," a coloured English print of the end of the last
+century or the beginning of this, after, I think, Loutherbourg, and in
+several rooms there were English engravings after Martin.  The English
+will not, I think, regret if they yield to these attractions.  They will
+find the air cool, shady walks, good food, and reasonable prices.  Their
+rooms will not be charged for, but they will do well to give the same as
+they would have paid at a hotel.  I saw in one room one of those
+flippant, frivolous, Lorenzo de' Medici matchboxes on which there was a
+gaudily-coloured nymph in high-heeled boots and tights, smoking a
+cigarette.  Feeling that I was in a sanctuary, I was a little surprised
+that such a matchbox should have been tolerated.  I suppose it had been
+left behind by some guest.  I should myself select a matchbox with the
+Nativity or the Flight into Egypt upon it, if I were going to stay a week
+or so at Graglia.  I do not think I can have looked surprised or
+scandalised, but the worthy official who was with me could just see that
+there was something on my mind.  "Do you want a match?" said he,
+immediately reaching me the box.  I helped myself, and the matter
+dropped.
+
+There were many fewer people at Graglia than at Oropa, and they were
+richer.  I did not see any poor about, but I may have been there during a
+slack time.  An impression was left upon me, though I cannot say whether
+it was well or ill founded, as though there were a tacit understanding
+between the establishments at Oropa and Graglia that the one was to adapt
+itself to the poorer, and the other to the richer classes of society; and
+this not from any sordid motive, but from a recognition of the fact that
+any great amount of intermixture between the poor and the rich is not
+found satisfactory to either one or the other.  Any wide difference in
+fortune does practically amount to a specific difference, which renders
+the members of either species more or less suspicious of those of the
+other, and seldom fertile _inter se_.  The well-to-do working-man can
+help his poorer friends better than we can.  If an educated man has money
+to spare, he will apply it better in helping poor educated people than
+those who are more strictly called the poor.  As long as the world is
+progressing, wide class distinctions are inevitable; their discontinuance
+will be a sign that equilibrium has been reached.  Then human
+civilisation will become as stationary as that of ants and bees.  Some
+may say it will be very sad when this is so; others, that it will be a
+good thing; in truth, it is good either way, for progress and equilibrium
+have each of them advantages and disadvantages which make it impossible
+to assign superiority to either; but in both cases the good greatly
+overbalances the evil; for in both the great majority will be fairly well
+contented, and would hate to live under any other system.
+
+Equilibrium, if it is ever reached, will be attained very slowly, and the
+importance of any change in a system depends entirely upon the rate at
+which it is made.  No amount of change shocks--or, in other words, is
+important--if it is made sufficiently slowly, while hardly any change is
+too small to shock if it is made suddenly.  We may go down a ladder of
+ten thousand feet in height if we do so step by step, while a sudden fall
+of six or seven feet may kill us.  The importance, therefore, does not
+lie in the change, but in the abruptness of its introduction.  Nothing is
+absolutely important or absolutely unimportant; absolutely good, or
+absolutely bad.
+
+This is not what we like to contemplate.  The instinct of those whose
+religion and culture are on the surface only is to conceive that they
+have found, or can find, an absolute and eternal standard, about which
+they can be as earnest as they choose.  They would have even the pains of
+hell eternal if they could.  If there had been any means discoverable by
+which they could torment themselves beyond endurance, we may be sure they
+would long since have found it out; but fortunately there is a stronger
+power which bars them inexorably from their desire, and which has ensured
+that intolerable pain shall last only for a very little while.  For
+either the circumstances or the sufferer will change after no long time.
+If the circumstances are intolerable, the sufferer dies: if they are not
+intolerable, he becomes accustomed to them, and will cease to feel them
+grievously.  No matter what the burden, there always has been, and always
+must be, a way for us also to escape.
+
+
+
+
+A PSALM OF MONTREAL.
+
+
+[The City of Montreal is one of the most rising and, in many respects,
+most agreeable on the American continent, but its inhabitants are as yet
+too busy with commerce to care greatly about the masterpieces of old
+Greek Art.  A cast of one of these masterpieces--the finest of the
+several statues of Discoboli, or Quoit-throwers--was found by the present
+writer in the Montreal Museum of Natural History; it was, however,
+banished from public view, to a room where were all manner of skins,
+plants, snakes, insects, &c., and in the middle of these, an old man,
+stuffing an owl.  The dialogue--perhaps true, perhaps imaginary, perhaps
+a little of one and a little of the other--between the writer and this
+old man gave rise to the lines that follow.]
+
+Stowed away in a Montreal lumber-room,
+The Discobolus standeth, and turneth his face to the wall;
+Dusty, cobweb-covered, maimed, and set at naught,
+Beauty crieth in an attic, and no man regardeth.
+      O God!  O Montreal!
+
+Beautiful by night and day, beautiful in summer and winter,
+Whole or maimed, always and alike beautiful,--
+He preacheth gospel of grace to the skins of owls,
+And to one who seasoneth the skins of Canadian owls.
+      O God!  O Montreal!
+
+When I saw him, I was wroth, and I said, "O Discobolus!
+Beautiful Discobolus, a Prince both among gods and men,
+What doest thou here, how camest thou here, Discobolus,
+Preaching gospel in vain to the skins of owls?"
+      O God!  O Montreal!
+
+And I turned to the man of skins, and said unto him, "Oh! thou man of
+skins,
+Wherefore hast thou done thus, to shame the beauty of the Discobolus?"
+But the Lord had hardened the heart of the man of skins,
+And he answered, "My brother-in-law is haberdasher to Mr. Spurgeon."
+      O God!  O Montreal!
+
+"The Discobolus is put here because he is vulgar,--
+He hath neither vest nor pants with which to cover his limbs;
+I, sir, am a person of most respectable connections,--
+My brother-in-law is haberdasher to Mr. Spurgeon."
+      O God!  O Montreal!
+
+Then I said, "O brother-in law to Mr. Spurgeon's haberdasher!
+Who seasonest also the skins of Canadian owls,
+Thou callest 'trousers' 'pants,' whereas I call them 'trousers,'
+Therefore thou art in hell-fire, and may the Lord pity thee!
+      O God!  O Montreal!
+
+"Preferrest thou the gospel of Montreal to the gospel of Hellas,
+The gospel of thy connection with Mr. Spurgeon's haberdashery to the
+gospel of the Discobolus?"
+Yet none the less blasphemed he beauty, saying, "The Discobolus hath no
+gospel,--
+But my brother-in-law is haberdasher to Mr. Spurgeon."
+      O God!  O Montreal!
+
+PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO.
+EDINBURGH AND LONDON.
+
+
+
+
+Works by the same Author.
+
+
+Sixth Edition.  Crown 8vo, Cloth, 6s.
+EREWHON; or, OVER THE RANGE.  Op. 1.
+
+A WORK OF SATIRE AND IMAGINATION.
+
+Second Edition.  Demy 8vo, Cloth, 7s. 6d.
+THE FAIR HAVEN.  Op. 2.
+
+A work in Defence of the Miraculous Element in our Lord's Ministry on
+earth, both as against Rationalistic Impugners and certain Orthodox
+Defenders.  Written under the pseudonym of JOHN PICKARD OWEN, with a
+Memoir by his supposed brother, WILLIAM BICKERSTETH OWEN.
+
+Second Edition.  Crown 8vo, Cloth, 7s. 6d.
+LIFE AND HABIT.  Op. 3.
+
+AN ESSAY AFTER A COMPLETER VIEW OF EVOLUTION.
+
+Second Edition, with Appendix and Index.  Crown 8vo, Cloth, 10s. 6d.
+EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW.  Op. 4.
+
+A Comparison of the theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck,
+with that of the late Mr. Charles Darwin, with copious extracts from the
+works of the three first-named writers.
+
+Crown 8vo, Cloth, 7s. 6d.
+UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY.  Op. 5.
+
+A Comparison between the theory of Dr. Ewald Hering, Professor of
+Physiology at the University of Prague, and the "Philosophy of the
+Unconscious" of Dr. Edward Von Hartmann, with translations from both
+these authors, and preliminary chapters bearing on "Life and Habit,"
+"Evolution, Old and New," and Mr. Charles Darwin's edition of Dr.
+Krause's "Erasmus Darwin."
+
+Pott Quarto, Cloth, 21s.
+
+ALPS AND SANCTUARIES OF PIEDMONT AND THE CANTON TICINO.  Op. 6.
+
+Profusely Illustrated by Charles Gogin, H. F. Jones, and the Author.
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+
+{iii}  See page 234 of this book.
+
+{1}  The first edition of Erewhon was published in the spring of 1872.
+
+{47}  The myth above alluded to exists in Erewhon with changed names and
+considerable modifications.  I have taken the liberty of referring to the
+story as familiar to ourselves.
+
+{48}  The first edition of the Fair Haven was published April 1873.
+
+{68}  The first edition of Life and Habit was published in December,
+1877.
+
+{96}  See page 228 of this book, "Remarks on Mr. Romanes' 'Mental
+Evolution in Animals.'"
+
+{119}  Kegan Paul, 1875.
+
+{125}  It is now (January 1884) more than six years since Life and Habit
+was published, but I have come across nothing which makes me wish to
+alter it to any material extent.
+
+{127}  It must be remembered that the late Mr. C. Darwin expressly denied
+that instinct and inherited habit are generally to be connected.--See Mr.
+Darwin's "Origin of Species," end of chapter viii., where he expresses
+his surprise that no one has hitherto adduced the instincts of neuter
+insects "against the well-known doctrine of inherited habit as advanced
+by Lamarck."
+
+Mr. Romanes, in his "Mental Evolution in Animals" (November, 1883),
+refers to this passage of Mr. Darwin's, and endorses it with approbation
+(p. 297).
+
+{131}  Evolution, Old and New, was published in May, 1879.
+
+{134a}  Quatrefages, "Metamorphoses de l'Homme et des Animaux," 1862, p.
+42; G. H. Lewes, "Physical Basis of Mind," 1877, p. 83.
+
+{134b}  I have been unable, through want of space, to give this chapter
+here.
+
+{141}  Page 210, first edition.
+
+{144}  1878.
+
+{148}  "Nat. Theol." ch. xxiii.
+
+{153a}  1878.
+
+{153b}  "Oiseaux," vol. i. p. 5.
+
+{162}  "Discours de Reception a l'Academie Francaise."
+
+{163}  I Cor. xiii. 8, 13.
+
+{164a}  Tom. i. p. 24, 1749.
+
+{164b}  Tom. i. p. 40, 1749.
+
+{165}  Vol. i. p. 34, 1749.
+
+{166a}  Tom. i. p. 36.
+
+{166b}  See p. 173.
+
+{166c}  Tom. i. p. 33.
+
+{168}  The Naturalist's Library, vol. ii. p. 23.  Edinburgh, 1843.
+
+{174}  Tom. iv. p. 381, 1753.
+
+{176}  Tom. iv. p. 383, 1753 (this was the first volume on the lower
+animals).
+
+{177a}  Tom xiii. p. 1765.
+
+{177b}  Sup. tom. v. p. 27, 1778.
+
+{180}  Tom. i. p. 28, 1749.
+
+{181a}  Unconscious Memory was published December, 1880.
+
+{181b}  See Unconscious Memory, chap. vi.
+
+{181c}  The Spirit of Nature, p. 39.  J. A. Churchill & Co.  1880.
+
+{184}  I have put these words into the mouth of my supposed objector, and
+shall put others like them, because they are characteristic; but nothing
+can become so well known as to escape being an inference.
+
+{189}  Erewhon, chap, xxiii.
+
+{198a}  It must be remembered that this passage is put as if in the mouth
+of an objector.
+
+{198b}  Mr. Herbert Spencer denies that there can be memory without a
+"tolerably deliberate succession of psychical states." {198c}  So that
+practically he denies that there can be any such thing as "unconscious
+memory."  Nevertheless a few pages later on he says that "conscious
+memory passes into unconscious or organic memory." {198d}  It is plain,
+therefore, that he could after all find no expression better suited for
+his purpose.
+
+Mr. Romanes is, I think, right in setting aside Mr. Spencer's limitation
+of memory to conscious memory.  He writes, "Because I have so often seen
+the sun shine that my memory of it as shining has become automatic, I see
+no reason why my memory of this fact, simply on account of its
+perfection, should be called no memory." {198e}
+
+{198c}  Principles of Psychology, I., 447.
+
+{198d}  Ibid, p. 452.
+
+{198e}  Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 130
+
+{217}  Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1878, p. 826.
+
+{218}  Encyclopedia Britannica, Art.  Biology, 9th ed., Vol. 3, p. 689.
+
+{220a}  Professor Huxley, Encycl. Brit., 9th ed., Art. Evolution, p. 750.
+
+{220b}  "Hume," by Professor Huxley, p. 45.
+
+{220c}  "The Philosophy of Crayfishes," by the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop
+of Carlisle.  Nineteenth Century for October 1880, p. 636.
+
+{221}  Les Amours des Plantes, p. 360.  Paris, 1800.
+
+{222a}  Philosophie Zoologique, tom. i. p. 231.  Ed. M. Martin.  Paris,
+1873.
+
+{222b}  Those who read the three following chapters will see that these
+words, written in 1880, have come out near the truth in 1884.
+
+{223a}  Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society.  Williams &
+Norgate. 1858, p. 61.
+
+{223b}  Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, 2d ed., 1871,
+p. 41.
+
+{223c}  Origin of Species, p. I, ed. 1872.
+
+{223d}  Origin of Species, 6th ed., p. 206.  I ought in fairness to Mr
+Darwin to say that he does not hold the error to be quite as serious as
+he once did.  It is now "a serious error" only; in 1859 it was "most
+serious error."--_Origin of Species_, 1st ed., p. 209.
+
+{224}  Origin of Species, 1st ed., p. 242; 6th ed., p. 233.
+
+{225a}  I never could find what these particular points were.
+
+{225b}  Isidore Geoffrey, Hist. Nat. Gen., tom. ii. p. 407, 1859.
+
+{225c}  M. Martin's edition of the Philosophie Zoologique (Paris, 1873),
+Introduction, p. vi.
+
+{225d}  Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th ed., p. 750.
+
+{228a}  Kegan Paul & Co., 1883.
+
+{228b}  Principles of Psychology, Vol. I. p. 445.
+
+{228c}  Ibid.  I. 456.
+
+{228d}  Problems of Life and Mind, first series, Vol. I., 3rd ed. 1874,
+p. 141, and Problem I. 21.
+
+{228e}  p. 33.
+
+{228f}  p. 77.
+
+{228g}  p. 115.
+
+{229}  Translation of Professor Hering's address on "Memory as an
+Organised Function of Matter," Unconscious Memory, p. 116.
+
+{230}  See Zoonomia, Vol. I. p. 484.
+
+{231a}  Problems of Life and Mind, I. pp. 239, 240: 1874.
+
+{231b}  Kegan Paul.  November, 1883.
+
+{232a}  Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 113.
+
+{232b}  Ibid. p. 115.
+
+{232c}  Ibid. p. 116.  Kegan Paul.  Nov. 1883.
+
+{233a}  Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 131.  Kegan Paul.  Nov. 1883.
+
+{233b}  Vol. I., 3rd ed. 1874, p. 141, and Problem I. 21.
+
+{233c}  Mental Evolution in Animals, pp. 177, 178.  Nov. 1883.
+
+{234a}  Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 193.
+
+{234b}  Ibid, p. 195.
+
+{234c}  Ibid, p. 296.  Nov. 1883.
+
+{234d}  Ibid. p. 192.  Nov. 1883.
+
+{235}  Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 296.  Nov. 1883.
+
+{236a}  See page 228.
+
+{236b}  Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 33.  Nov. 1883.
+
+{236c}  Ibid, p. 116.
+
+{236d}  Ibid. p. 178.
+
+{239}  Evolution, Old and New, pp. 357, 358.
+
+{240}  Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 159.  Kegan Paul & Co., 1883.
+
+{241}  Zoonomia, Vol. I. p. 484.
+
+{242a}  Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 297.  Kegan Paul & Co., 1883.
+
+{242b}  Ibid. p. 201.
+
+{243a}  Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 301.  November, 1883.
+
+{243b}  Origin of Species, Ed. I. p. 209.
+
+{243c}  Ibid, Ed. VI. 1876, p. 206.
+
+{243d}  Formation of Vegetable Mould, &c., p. 98.
+
+{244a}  Quoted by Mr. Romanes as written in the last year of Mr. Darwin's
+life.
+
+{244b}  Macmillan, 1883.
+
+{247}  Nature, Jan. 27, 1881.
+
+{248a}  Nature, Jan. 27, 1881.
+
+{248b}  Ibid., Feb. 3, 1881.
+
+{249}  Nature, Jan. 27, 1881.
+
+{250}  Mind, October, 1883.
+
+{252a}  _Mind_ for October 1883, p. 498.
+
+{252b}  Ibid, p. 505, October 1883.
+
+{254a}  Principles of Psychology, I. 422.
+
+{254b}  Ibid.  I. 424.
+
+{254c}  Ibid.  I. 424.
+
+{255}  The first edition of Alps and Sanctuaries was published Dec. 1882.
+
+{265}  Princ. of Psych., ed. 3, Vol. I., p. 136, 1880.
+
+{269}  Curiosities of Literature, Lond. 1866, Routledge & Co., p. 272.
+
+{275}  See p. 87 of this vol.
+
+{276}  Ivanhoe, chap xxiii., near the beginning.
+
+{287}  "Well, my dear sir, I am sorry you do not think as I do, but in
+these days we cannot all of us start with the same principles."
+
+{294}  For these I must refer the reader to Alps and Sanctuaries itself.
+
+{311}  "Dalle meraviglie finalmente che sono inerenti al simulacro
+stesso."--Cenni storico artistici intorno al santuario di Oropa.  (Prof.
+Maurizio, Marocco.  Turin, Milan, 1866, p. 329.)
+
+{313}  Marocco, p. 331.
+
+
+
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