“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.