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within a few generations. If no such mishap occurs as this, and if the re-
currence 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 periodi-
cally 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 differen-
tiations 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 es-
tablished, it is repeated many millions of times in an individual of aver-
age health and longevity. Remember also that it is this periodicity - this
inevitable tendency of all atoms in combination to repeat any combina-
tion which they have once repeated, unless forcibly prevented from do-
ing so - which alone renders nine-tenths of our mechanical inventions of
practical use to us. There is no 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 regu-
lar 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 cir-
cumstances 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 re-
volve 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?
{160} 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 un-
der circumstances which it baffles us to conceive, inasmuch as it is sup-
posed 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.
CHAPTER XII
Refutation - Memory at once a promoter and a disturber of uniformity of
action and structure.
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 de-
velopments, 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. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]