Then he said: “Did you not hear me, two minutes ago, whistling ‘Eagles were not so Swift’?”
I had not noticed his doing so, and it was so long since I had played that chorus myself that I doubt whether I should have consciously recognised it. That I did recognise it unconsciously is tolerably clear from my having gone on with “In Sweetest Harmony,” which is the air that follows it.
Association
If you say “Hallelujah” to a cat, it will excite no fixed set of fibres in connection with any other set and the cat will exhibit none of the phenomena of consciousness. But if you say “Me-e-at,” the cat will be there in a moment, for the due connection between the sets of fibres has been established.
Language
The reason why words recall ideas is that the word has been artificially introduced among the associated ideas, and the presence of one idea recalls the others.
V
Vibrations
Contributions to Evolution
To me it seems that my contributions to the theory of evolution have been mainly these:
1. The identification of heredity and memory and the corollaries relating to sports, the reversion to remote ancestors, the phenomena of old age, the causes of the sterility of hybrids and the principles underlying longevity—all of which follow as a matter of course. This was Life and Habit. [1877.]