Unconscious Memory

ubject of evolution at the time the "Or

those under whose eyes the change was taking place, nor have I seen any contemporary explanation of the reasons which led to the apparently sudden overthrow of a belief which had seemed hitherto to be deeply rooted in the minds of almost all men. As a parallel to this, though in respect of the rapid spread of an opin

acceptance of the theory of evolution. There is no living philosopher who has anything like Mr. Darwin's popularity with Englishmen generally; and not only this, but his power of fascination extends all over Europe, and indeed in every country in which civilisation has obtained footing: not among the illiterate masses, though these are rapidly following the suit of the educated classes, but a

he Royal Institution, and am told that he described Mr. Darwin's candour as something actually "terrible" (I give Professor Huxley's own word, as reported by one who heard it); and on openin

was given to the science of biology by the imaginative insight of that greatest of living

rther afield, in February 1879 the Germans devoted an entire number of one of their scientific periodicals [3] to the celebration of Mr. Darwin's seventiet

e it to Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace that the public mind has been brought to accept evolution, the admiration now generally felt for the "Origin of Species" will appear as unaccountable to our descendants some fifty or eighty years hence as the enthusiasm of our grandfathers for the poetry of Dr. Erasmus Darwin does to ourselves; and as one who has yielded t

t it resembled "Life and Habit," wrote back that it gave my own ideas almost in my own words. As far as the ideas are concerned this is certainly the case, and considering that Professor Hering wrote between seven and eight years before I did, I think it due to him, and to my readers as well as to myself, to explain the steps which led me to my conclusions, and, while putting Professor Hering's lecture before them, to show cause for thinking that I arrived at an almost ide

the theory of descent with modification"; this is especially the case in the recapitulation chapter of the work. I failed to see how important it was that these two theories-if indeed "natural selection" can be called

n," whichever came first, as though the one meant much the same as the other. I observe that most of the leading writers on the subject are still unable to

siderable number of individuals at the same time. We did not know that the theory of evolution was one that had been quietly but steadily gaining ground during the last hundred years. Buffon we knew by name, but he sounded too like "buffoon" for any good to come from him. We had heard also of Lamarck, and held him to be a kind of French Lord Monboddo; but we knew nothing of his doctrine save through the caricatures promulgated by his opponents, or the misrepresentations of those who had another

uch backbone, but according to which the progress of one generation is always liable to be cancelled and obliterated by that of the next. We did not know that the new theory in a quiet way professed to tell us less than the old had done, and declared that it could throw little if any light upon the matter which the earlier writers had endeavoured to illuminate as the central point in their system. We took it for granted that more light must be being

perhaps nothing more prepossessed us in Mr. Darwin's favour than the air of candour that was omnipresent throughout his work. The prominence given to the arguments of opponents completely carried us away; it was this which threw us off our guard. It never occurred to us that there might be other and more dangerous opponents who were not brought forward. Mr. Darwin did not tell us what his grandfather and Lamarck would have had to say to this o

armour. They attacked him where he was strongest; and above all, they were, as a general rule, stamped with a disingenuousness which at that time we believed to be peculiar to theological writers and alien to the spirit of science. Seeing, therefore, that the men of science ranged themselves more and more decidedly on Mr. Darwin's side,

r the most important, edition of the "Origin of Species" came out as a kind of literary Melchised

been called by one of our greatest philosophers. On my return home, it occurred to me, in 1837, that something might be made out on this question by patiently accumulating and reflecting upon all sorts of facts which could possibly have any bearing on it. After five years' work I allowed myself to speculate on the subject, and drew u

written anything worthy of our attention, or indeed if there had been any earlier writers at all, Mr. Darwin would have been the first to tell us about them, and to award them

cal way of hinting that Mr. Darwin did not read his grandfather's books closely; but I hardly think that Dr. Krause looked at the matter in this light, for he goes on to say that "almost every single work of the younger Darwin may be paralleled by at least a chapter in the works of his ancestor

n the facts that bore upon it, it should have occurred to us in our turn, that when people betray a return of consciousness upon such matters as this, they are on the confines of that state in which other and not less elementary matters will not "occur to" them. The introduction

y a misrepresentation, which was silently expunged in later editions of the "Origin of Species." In his later editions (I believe first in his third, when 6000 copies had been already sold), Mr. Darwin did indeed introduce a few pages in which he gave what he designated as a "brief but imperfect sketch" of the progress of opinion on the origin of species prior to the appearance of his own work; but the general impression which a book conveys to, and leaves upon, the public is conveyed by the first edition-the one which is alone, w

tion results in specific and generic differences are referable to something which will ensure their appearing in a certain definite direction, or in certain definite

sor Tyndall, [10a] that "evolution" is "Mr. Darwin's theory." In his article on evolution in the latest edition of the "Encyclop?dia Britannica," I find only a veiled perception of the point wherein Mr. Darwin is at variance with his precursors. Professor Huxley evidently knows little of these writers beyond their names; if he had known more, it is impossible he should h

at time residing eighteen miles from the nearest human habitation, and three days' journey on horseback from a bookseller's shop, I became one of Mr. Darwin's many enthusiastic admirers, and wrote a philosophical dialogue (the most offensive form, ex