"The great development of mantle in the acephalous molluscs has rendered eyes, and even a head, entirely useless to them. These organs, though belonging to the type of the organism, and by rights included in it, have had to disappear and become annihilated owing to continued default of use.
. . . . . . . . . . .
"Many insects which, by the analogy of their order and even genus, should have wings, have nevertheless lost them more or less completely through disuse. A number of coleoptera, orthoptera, hymenoptera, and hemiptera give us examples, the habits of these animals never leading them to use their wings."[375]
I will here bring this present volume to a conclusion, hoping, however, to return to the same subject shortly, but to that part of it which bears upon longevity and the phenomena of old age. In 'Life and Habit' I pointed out that if differentiations of structure and instinct are considered as due to the different desires under different circumstances of an organism, which must be regarded as a single creature, though its development has extended over millions of years, and which is guided mainly by habit and memory until some disturbing cause compels invention—then the longevity of each generation or stage of this organism should depend upon the lateness of the average age of reproduction in each generation; so that an organism (using the word in its usual signification) which did not upon the average begin to reproduce itself till it was twenty, should be longer lived than one that on the average begins to reproduce itself at a year old. I also maintained that the phenomena of old age should be referred to failure of memory on the part of the organism, which in the embryonic stages, infancy, youth, and early manhood, leans upon the memory of what it did when it was in the persons of its ancestors; in middle life, carries its action onward by means of the impetus, already received, and by the force of habit; and in old age becomes puzzled, having no experience of any past existence at seventy-five, we will say, to guide it, and therefore forgetting itself more and more completely till it dies. I hope to extend this, and to bring forward arguments in support of it in a future work.
Of the importance of the theory put forward in 'Life and Habit'—I am daily more and more convinced. Unless we admit oneness of personality between parents and offspring, memory of the often repeated facts of past existences, the latency of that memory until it is rekindled by the presence of the associated ideas, or of a sufficient number of them, and the far-reaching consequences of the unconsciousness which results from habitual action, evolution does not greatly add to our knowledge as to how we shall live here to the best advantage. Add these considerations, and its value as a guide becomes immediately apparent; a new light is poured upon a hundred problems of the greatest delicacy and difficulty. Not the least interesting of these is the gradual extension of human longevity—an extension, however, which cannot be effected till many many generations as yet unborn have come and gone. There is nothing, however, to prevent man's becoming as long lived as the oak if he will persevere for many generations in the steps which can alone lead to this result. Another interesting achievement which should be more quickly attainable, though still not in our own time, is the earlier maturity of those animals whose rapid maturity is an advantage to us, but whose longevity is not to our purpose.
The question—Evolution or Direct Creation of all species?—has been settled in favour of Evolution. A hardly less interesting and important battle has now to be fought over the question whether we are to accept the evolution of the founders of the theory—with the adjuncts hinted at by Dr. Darwin and Mr. Matthew, and insisted on, so far as I can gather, by Professor Hering and myself—or the evolution of Mr. Darwin, which denies the purposiveness or teleology inherent in evolution as first propounded. I am assured that such of my readers as I can persuade to prefer the old evolution to the new will have but little reason to regret their preference.
P.S.—As these sheets leave my hands, my attention is called to a review of Professor Haeckel's 'Evolution of Man,' by Mr. A. E. Wallace, in the 'Academy' for April 12, 1879. "Professor Haeckel maintains," says Mr. Wallace, "that the struggle for existence in nature evolves new forms without design, just as the will of man produces new varieties in cultivation with design." I maintain in preference with the older evolutionists, that in consequence of change in the conditions of their existence, organisms design new forms for themselves, and carry those designs out in additions to, and modifications of, their own bodies.