IBHOUSWOR 
 
 > 
 
 ROMANES 
 iNiNANffflAlS 
 
 R 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 

SELECTIONS 
 
 PEEVIOUS WOBKS. 
 
 WITH REMARKS ON 
 
 MR. G. J. ROMANES' "MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS," 
 
 AND 
 
 A PSALM OF MONTREAL. 
 
 BY 
 
 SAMUEL BUTLEE. 
 
 ' The course of true science, like that of true love, never did run smooth." 
 PROFESSOR TYNDALL, Pall Mall Gazette, Oct. 30, 1883. 
 
 Op. 7. 
 
 LONDON 
 LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO. 
 
 AND NEW YORK : 15 EAST 16 th STREET. 
 1890. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 F DELAYED these pages some weeks in order to give 
 Mr. Eomanes an opportunity of explaining his 
 statement that Canon Kingsley wrote about instinct 
 and inherited memory in Nature, Jan. I 8, 1867.* I 
 wrote to the Athenceum (Jan. 26, 1884) and pointed 
 out that Nature did not begin to appear till nearly 
 three years after the date given by Mr. Eomanes, and 
 that there was nothing from Canon Kingsley on the 
 subject of instinct and inherited memory in any number 
 of Nature up to the date of Canon Kingsley's death. 
 I also asked for the correct reference. 
 
 This Mr. Eomanes has not thought it incumbent 
 upon him to give. I am told I ought not to have ex- 
 pected him to give it, inasmuch as it is no longer usual 
 for men of any but the lowest scientific standing to 
 correct their misstatements when they are brought to 
 book. Science is made for Fellows of the Eoyal Society, 
 and for no one else, not Fellows of the Eoyal Society 
 for science ; and if the having achieved a certain position 
 should still involve being obliged to be as scrupulous 
 and accurate as other people, what is the good of the 
 position ? This view of the matter is practical, but I 
 
 * See page 234 of this book. 
 
 M3GS206 
 
iv PREFACE. 
 
 regret that Mr. Eomanes should have taken it, for his 
 having done so has prevented my being able to tell the 
 reader what Canon Kingsley said about memory and 
 instinct, and this he might have been glad to know. 
 
 I suspect, however, that what Canon Kingsley said 
 was after all not very important. If it had been, Mr. 
 Eomanes would have probably told us what it was 
 in his own book. I should think it possible that Mr. 
 Eomanes not finding Canon Kingsley's words impor- 
 tant enough to be quoted, or even referred to correctly, 
 or never having seen them himself and not knowing 
 exactly what they were, yet being anxious to give 
 every one, and more particularly Canon Kingsley, his 
 due felt that this was an occasion on which he 
 might fairly take advantage of his position and say at 
 large whatever he was in the humour for saying at 
 the moment. 
 
 I should not have thought this possible if I had not 
 ere now had reason to set Mr. Eomanes down as one 
 who was not likely to be squeamish about trifles. 
 Nevertheless, on this present occasion I certainly did 
 think that he had only made a slip such as we all 
 make sometimes, and such as he would gladly take 
 the earliest opportunity to correct. As it is, I do not 
 know what to think, except that D.C.L.'s and F.RS.'s 
 seem to be made of much the same frail materials as 
 we ordinary mortals are. 
 
 As regards the extracts from my previous books 
 given in this volume, I should say that I have revised 
 and corrected the original text throughout, and intro- 
 
PREFACE. v 
 
 duced a sentence or two here and there, but have no- 
 where made any important alteration. I regret greatly 
 that want of space has prevented me from being able 
 to give the chapters from Life and Habit on "The 
 Abeyance of Memory," and " What we should expect 
 to find if Differentiations of Structure and Instinct are 
 mainly due to Memory ; " it is in these chapters that an 
 explanation of many phenomena is given, of which, so 
 far as I know, no explanation of any kind had been 
 previously attempted, and in which phenomena having 
 apparently so little connection as the sterility of hybrids, 
 the principle underlying longevity, the resumption of 
 feral characteristics, the sterility of many animals under 
 confinement, are not only made intelligible but are 
 shown to be all part and parcel of the same story 
 all being explicable as soon as Memory is made the 
 main factor of heredity. 
 
 Feb. 16, 1884. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM EREWHON 
 
 Current Opinions ....... i 
 
 An Erewhonian Trial 10 
 
 Malcontents 16 
 
 The Musical Banks 21 
 
 Birth Formulse ....... 34 
 
 The World of the -Unborn 41 
 
 FROM THE FAIR HAVEN. 
 
 Chapter I. of the Memoir of the late John Pickard 
 
 Owen 48 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT 
 
 On certain Acquired Habits 68 
 
 Conscious and Unconscious Knowers The Law and 
 
 Grace 74 
 
 Application of foregoing Chapters to certain Habits 
 acquired after Birth which are commonly con- 
 sidered Instinctive 91 
 
 Personal Identity 105 
 
 Instinct or Inherited Memory . . . . . 116 
 Concluding Kemarks 125 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW 
 
 Impotence of Paley's Conclusion The Teleology of 
 
 the Evolutionist 131 
 
 Failure of the first Evolutionists to see their Position 
 
 as Teleological 138 
 
 The Teleological Evolution of Organism . . . 146 
 
viii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Buff on Memoir 160 
 
 Buffon's Method The Ironical Character of his 
 
 Work 164 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY 
 
 Recapitulation and Statement of an Objection . 181 
 
 On Cycles . 193 
 
 Refutation Memory at once a Promoter and Dis- 
 turber of Uniformity of Action and Structure . 199 
 Conclusion 212 
 
 REMARKS ON ROMANES' MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS 
 The same continued ...... 
 
 The same concluded 243 
 
 SELECTIONS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES 
 
 Dalpe, Prato, Rossura, Calonico .... 262 
 
 Piora . . . 275 
 
 S. Michele arid Mt. Pirchiriano .... 282 
 
 Considerations on the Decline of Italian Art . . 290 
 
 Sanctuaries of Oropa and Graglia .... 304 
 
 A PSALM OF MONTREAL . . . . . . . 324 
 
SELECTIONS FROM EBEWHON. 
 
 CURRENT OPINIONS. 
 
 (CHAPTER x. OF EKEWHON.) 
 THIS is what I gathered. That in that country if a 
 
 f 'iT /? S - int iU health ' r Catches ^ <*** 
 >r fails bodily in any way 'before he is seventy year 
 
 old, he is tried before a jury of his countrymen and 
 if convicted is held up to public scorn and sentenced 
 more or less severely as the case may be. There are 
 subdivisions of illnesses into crimes and misdemean- 
 ours as with offences amongst ourselves-a man beincr 
 punished very heavily for serious illness, while failure 
 eyes or hearing in one over sixty-five who has had 
 good health hitherto is dealt with by fine only or im- 
 prisonment in default of payment. 
 
 But if a man forges a cheque, sets his house on fire 
 
 robs with violence from the person, or does any other 
 
 such things as are criminal in our own country he is 
 
 tther taken to a hospital and most carefully tended at 
 
 the public expense, or if he is in good circumstances 
 
 he lets it be known to all his friends that he is sufferin 
 
 from a severe fit of immorality, just as we do when we 
 
 are ill, and they come and visit him with great solici- 
 
 tude, and inquire with interest how it all came about, 
 
 * The first edition of Erewhon was published in the spring of 1872. 
 
 A 
 
2 SELECTIONS FROM EREWHON. 
 
 what symptoms first showed themselves, and so forth, 
 questions which he will answer with perfect unre- 
 serve; for bad conduct, though considered no less deplor- 
 able than illness with ourselves, and as unquestionably 
 indicating something wrong with the individual who 
 misbehaves, is nevertheless held to be the result of 
 either pre-natal or post-natal misfortune. I should 
 add that under certain circumstances poverty and ill 
 luck are also considered criminal. 
 
 Accordingly, there exists a class of men trained in 
 soul-craft, whom they call straighteners, as nearly as I 
 can translate a word which literally means " one who 
 bendeth back the crooked." These men practise much 
 as medical men in England, and receive a quasi- 
 surreptitious fee on every visit. They are treated with 
 the same unreserve and obeyed just as readily as our 
 own doctors that is to say, on the whole sufficiently 
 because people know that it is their interest to get 
 well as soon as they can, and that they will not be 
 scouted as they would be if their bodies were cut of 
 order, even though they may have to undergo a very 
 painful course of treatment. 
 
 When I say that they will not be scouted, I do not 
 mean that an Erewhonian offender will suffer no social 
 inconvenience. Eriends will fall away from him 
 because of his being less pleasant company, just as we 
 ourselves are disclined to make companions of those 
 who are either poor or poorly. No one with a due 
 sense of self-respect will place himself on an equality 
 in the matter of affection with those who are less lucky 
 than himself in birth, health, money, good looks, 
 capacity, or anything else. Indeed, that dislike and 
 even disgust should be felt by the fortunate for the 
 unfortunate, or at any rate for those who have been 
 
CURRENT OPINIONS 
 
 a bank, for instance, till he has fully recovered 
 it does prevent them from even thinkinTof tr ea t 
 mg criminals with that contemptuous tone S 
 would seem to say,." I, if I were yoU) rfj/^ 
 better man than you are," a tone which is held quite 
 reasonable in regard to physical ailment 
 
 Hence, though they conceal ill health by every kind 
 
 cunning, they are quite open about even the m"t 
 flagrant mental diseases, should they happen to exis 
 winch to do the people justice is not oftfn. LdeS' 
 there are some who, so to speak, are spiritual valetudi- 
 
 inans, and who make themselves exceedingly ridicu- 
 lous by their nervous supposition that they are wicked 
 wMe they are very tolerable people all the time.' 
 This however is exceptional; and on the whole they 
 use much the same reserve or unreserve about the state 
 
 1 their moral welfare as we do about our health 
 
 It has followed that all the ordinary greeting 
 
 among ourselves, such as, How do you do? and the 
 
 like, are considered signs of gross ill-breedin<r- nor 
 
 the politer classes tolerate even such a common 
 
 complimentary remark as telling a man that he was 
 
 looking well. They salute each other with "I hope 
 
 you are good this morning;" or "I hope 'you have 
 
 recovered from the snappishness from which you were 
 
 iermg when I last saw you;" and if the person 
 
4 SELECTIONS FROM EREWHON. 
 
 saluted has not been good, or is still snappish, he 
 says so, and is condoled with accordingly. Nay, the 
 straighteners have gone so far as to give names from 
 the hypothetical language (as taught at the Colleges of 
 Unreason) to all known forms of mental indisposition, 
 and have classified them according to a system of 
 their own, which, though I could not understand it, 
 seemed to work well in practice, for they are always 
 able to tell a man what is the matter with him as 
 soon as they have heard his story, and their familiarity 
 with the long names assures him that they thoroughly 
 understand his case. 
 
 We in England rarely shrink from telling our doctor 
 what is the matter with us merely through the fear 
 that he will hurt us. We let him do his worst upon 
 us, and stand it without a murmur, because we are 
 not scouted for being ill, and because we know the 
 doctor is doing his best to cure us, and can judge of 
 our case better than we can ; but we should conceal 
 all illness if we were treated as the Erewhonians are 
 when they have anything the matter with them ; we 
 should do as we do with our moral and intellectual 
 diseases, we should feign health with the most con- 
 summate art, till we were found out, and should hate 
 a single flogging given by way of mere punishment 
 more than the amputation of a limb, if it were kindly 
 and courteously performed from a wish to help us out 
 of our difficulty, and with the full consciousness on 
 the part of the doctor that it was only by an accident 
 of constitution that he was not in the like plight him- 
 self. So the Erewhonians take a Hogging once a week, 
 and a diet of bread and water for two or three months 
 together, whenever their straightener recommends it. 
 
CURRENT OPINIONS. 5 
 
 I do not suppose that even my host, on having 
 swindled a confiding widow out of the whole of her 
 property, was put to more actual suffering than a man 
 will readily undergo at the hands of an English doctor. 
 And yet he must have had a very bad time of it 
 The sounds I heard were sufficient to show that his 
 pain was exquisite, but he never shrank from under- 
 going it. He was quite sure that it did him good ; 
 and I think he was right. I cannot believe that that 
 man will ever embezzle money again. He may but 
 it will be a long time before he does so. 
 
 During my confinement in prison, and on my journey, 
 I had discovered much of the above ; but it still seemed 
 new and strange, and I was in constant fear of com- 
 mitting some rudeness from my inability to look at 
 things from the same stand-point as my neighbours ; 
 but after a few weeks' stay with the Nosnibors I got 
 to understand things better, especially on having heard 
 all about my host's illness, of which he told me fully 
 and repeatedly. 
 
 It seemed he had been on the Stock Exchange of 
 the city for many years and had amassed enormous 
 wealth, without exceeding the limits of what was 
 generally considered justifiable or at any rate per- 
 missible dealing ; but at length on several occasions 
 he had become aware of a desire to make money by 
 fraudulent representations, and had actually dealt with 
 two or three sums in a way which had made him 
 rather uncomfortable. He had unfortunately made 
 light of it and pooh-poohed the ailment, until circum- 
 stances eventually presented themselves which enabled 
 him to cheat upon a very considerable scale ; he told 
 me what they were, and they were about as bad as 
 anything could be, but I need not detail them ; he 
 
6 SELECTIONS FROM EREWHON. 
 
 seized the opportunity, and became aware when it was 
 too late that he must be seriously out of order. He 
 had neglected himself too long. 
 
 He drove home at once, broke the news to his wife 
 and daughters as gently as he could, and sent off for 
 one of the most celebrated straighteners of the king- 
 dom to a consultation with the family practitioner, for 
 the case was plainly serious. On the arrival of the 
 straightener he told his story, and expressed his fear 
 that his morals must be permanently impaired. 
 
 The eminent man reassured him with a few cheer- 
 ing words, and then proceeded to make a more care- 
 ful diagnosis of the case. He inquired concerning 
 Mr. Nosnibor's parents had their moral health been 
 good ? He was answered that there had not been any- 
 thing seriously amiss with them, but that his maternal 
 grandfather, whom he was supposed to resemble some- 
 what in person, had been a consummate scoundrel and 
 had ended his days in a hospital, while a brother 
 of his father's, after having led a most flagitious life 
 for many years, had been at last cured by a philo- 
 sopher of a new school, which as far as I could 
 understand it bore much the same relation to the old 
 as homoeopathy to allopathy. The straightener shook 
 his head at this, and laughingly replied that the cure 
 must have been due to nature. After a few more 
 questions he wrote a prescription and departed. 
 
 I saw the prescription. It ordered a fine to the 
 State of double the money embezzled; no food but 
 bread and milk for six months, and a severe flogging 
 once a month for twelve. He had received his eleventh 
 flogging on the day of my arrival. I saw him later 
 on the same afternoon, and he was still twinged ; but 
 even though he had been minded to do so (which he 
 
CURRENT OPINIONS. 7 
 
 showed no sign of being), there would have been no 
 escape from following out the straightener's prescrip- 
 tion, for the so-called sanitary laws of Erewhon are 
 very rigorous, and unless the straightener was satisfied 
 that his orders had been obeyed, the patient would 
 have been taken to a hospital (as the poor are), and 
 would have been much worse off. Such at least is 
 the law, but it is never necessary to enforce it. 
 
 On a subsequent occasion I was present at an inter- 
 view between Mr. Nosnibor and the family straightener, 
 who was considered competent to watch the comple- 
 tion of the cure. I was struck with the delicacy with 
 which he avoided even the remotest semblance of 
 inquiry after the physical well-being of his patient, 
 though there was a certain yellowness about my host's 
 eyes which argued a bilious habit of body. To have 
 taken notice of this would have been a gross breach of 
 professional etiquette. I am told that a straightener 
 sometimes thinks it right to glance at the possibility 
 of some slight physical disorder if he finds it important 
 in order to assist him in his diagnosis ; but the answers 
 which he gets are generally untrue or evasive, and he 
 forms his own conclusions upon the matter as well as 
 he can. 
 
 Sensible men have been known to say that the 
 straightener should in strict confidence be told of every 
 physical ailment that is likely to bear upon the case ; 
 but people are naturally shy of doing this, for they do 
 not like lowering themselves in the opinion of the 
 straightener, and his ignorance of medical science is 
 supreme. I heard of one lady however who had the 
 hardihood to confess that a furious outbreak of ill- 
 humour and extravagant fancies for which she was 
 seeking advice was possibly the result of indisposition. 
 
8 SELECTIONS FROM EREWHON. 
 
 " You should resist that," said the straightener, in a 
 kind, but grave voice ; " we can do nothing for the 
 bodies of our patients ; such matters are beyond our 
 province, and I desire that I may hear no further 
 particulars." The lady burst into tears, promised 
 faithfully that she would never be unwell again, and 
 kept her word. 
 
 To return however to Mr. Nosnibor. As the after- 
 noon wore on many carriages drove up with callers to 
 inquire how he had stood his flogging. It had been 
 very severe, but the kind inquiries upon every side 
 gave him great pleasure, and he assured me that he 
 felt almost tempted to do wrong again by the solicitude 
 with which his friends had treated him during his 
 recovery : in this I need hardly say that he was not 
 serious. 
 
 During the remainder of my stay in the country 
 Mr. Nosnibor was constantly attentive to his business, 
 and largely increased his already great possessions ; 
 but I never heard a whisper to the effect of his having 
 been indisposed a second time, or made money by 
 other than the most strictly honourable means. I did 
 hear afterwards in confidence that there had been 
 reason to believe that his health had been not a little 
 affected by the straightener's treatment, but his friends 
 did not choose to be over curious upon the subject, and 
 on his return to his affairs it was by common consent 
 passed over as hardly criminal in one who was other- 
 wise so much afflicted. For they regard bodily ail- 
 ments as the more venial in proportion as they have 
 been produced by causes independent of the constitution. 
 Thus if a person ruin his health by excessive indul- 
 gence at the table, or by drinking, they count it to be 
 almost a part of the mental disease which brought it 
 
CURRENT OPINIONS. 9 
 
 about, and so it goes for little, but they have no mercy 
 on such illnesses as fevers or catarrhs or lung diseases, 
 which to us appear to be beyond the control of the 
 individual. They are only more lenient towards the 
 diseases of the young such as measles, which they 
 think to be like sowing one's wild oats and look over 
 them as pardonable indiscretions if they have not been 
 too serious, and if they are atoned for by complete 
 subsequent recovery. 
 
AN EREWHONIAN TRIAL. 
 (CHAPTER xi. OF EREWHON.) 
 
 SHALL best convey to the reader an idea of the 
 -*- entire perversion of thought which exists among 
 this extraordinary people, by describing the public trial 
 of a man who was accused of pulmonary consumption 
 an offence which was punished with death until quite 
 recently. The trial did not take place till I had been 
 some months in the country, and I am deviating from 
 chronological order in giving an account of it here; 
 but I had perhaps better do so in order to exhaust this 
 subject before proceeding with others. 
 
 The prisoner was placed in the dock, and the jury 
 were sworn much as in Europe ; almost all our own 
 modes of procedure were reproduced, even to the re- 
 quiring the prisoner to plead guilty or not guity. He 
 pleaded not guilty and the case proceeded. The 
 evidence for the prosecution was very strong, but I 
 must do the court the justice to observe that the trial 
 was absolutely impartial. Counsel for the prisoner 
 was allowed to urge everything that could be said in 
 his defence. 
 
 The line taken was that the prisoner was simulating 
 consumption in order to defraud an insurance company, 
 from which he was about to buy an annuity, and that 
 he hoped thus to obtain it on more advantageous terms. 
 
AN EREWHONIAN TRIAL. u 
 
 If this could have been shown to be the case he would 
 have escaped criminal prosecution, and been sent to a 
 hospital as for moral ailment. The view however was 
 one which could not be reasonably sustained, in spite 
 of all the ingenuity and eloquence of one of the most 
 celebrated advocates of the country. The case was 
 only too clear, for the prisoner was almost at the point 
 of death, and it was astonishing that he had not been 
 tried and convicted long previously. His coughing 
 was incessant during the whole trial, and it was all that 
 the two jailers in charge of him could do to keep him 
 on his legs until it was over. 
 
 The summing up of the judge was admirable. He 
 dwelt upon every point that could be construed in 
 favour of the prisoner, but as he proceeded it became 
 clear that the evidence was too convincing to admit of 
 doubt, and there was but one opinion in the court as 
 to the impending verdict when the jury retired from 
 the box. They were absent for about ten minutes, and 
 on their return the foreman pronounced the prisoner 
 guilty. There was a faint murmur of applause but it 
 was instantly repressed. The judge then proceeded to 
 pronounce sentence in words which I can never forget, 
 and which I copied out into a note-book next day from 
 the report that was published in the leading newspaper. 
 I must condense it somewhat, and nothing which I 
 could say would give more than a faint idea of the 
 solemn, not to say majestic, severity with which it was 
 delivered. The sentence was as follows : 
 
 " Prisoner at the bar, you have been accused of the 
 great crime of labouring under pulmonary consump- 
 tion, and after an impartial trial before a jury of your 
 countrymen, you have been found guilty. Against 
 the justice of the verdict I can say nothing: the 
 
12 SELECTIONS FROM EREWHON. 
 
 evidence against you was conclusive, and it only re- 
 mains for me to pass such a sentence upon you, as 
 shall satisfy the ends of the law. That sentence must 
 be a very severe one. It pains me much to see one 
 who is yet so young, and whose prospects in life were 
 otherwise so excellent, brought to this distressing con- 
 dition by a constitution which I can only regard as 
 radically vicious ; but yours is no case for compassion : 
 this is not your first offence : you have led a career 
 of crime, and have only profited by the leniency shown 
 you upon past occasions, to offend yet more seriously 
 against the laws and institutions of your country. You 
 were convicted of aggravated bronchitis last year : and 
 I find that though you are now only twenty-three years 
 old, you have been imprisoned on no less than fourteen 
 occasions for illnesses of a more or less hateful char- 
 acter ; in fact, it is not too much to say that you have 
 spent the greater part of your life in a jail. 
 
 " It is all very well for you to say that you came of 
 unhealthy parents, and had a severe accident in your 
 childhood which permanently undermined your con- 
 stitution ; excuses such as these are the ordinary re- 
 fuge of the criminal ; but they cannot for one moment 
 be listened to by the ear of justice. I am not here to 
 enter upon curious metaphysical questions as to the 
 origin of this or that questions to which there would 
 be no end were their introduction once tolerated, and 
 which would result in throwing the only guilt on the 
 primordial cell, or perhaps even on the elementary gases. 
 There is no question of how you came to be wicked, 
 but only this namely, are you wicked or not ? This 
 has been decided in the affirmative, neither can I hesi- 
 tate for a single moment to say that it has been decided 
 justly. You are a bad and dangerous person, and stand 
 
AN EREWHONIAN TRIAL. 13 
 
 branded in the eyes of your fellow-countrymen with 
 one of the most heinous known offences. 
 
 " It is not my business to justify the law : the law 
 may in some cases have its inevitable hardships, and 
 I may feel regret at times that I have not the option 
 of passing a less severe sentence than I am compelled 
 to do. But yours is no such case ; on the contrary, 
 had not the capital punishment for consumption been 
 abolished, I should certainly inflict it now. 
 
 " It is intolerable that an example of such terrible 
 enormity should be allowed to go at large unpunished. 
 Your presence in the society of respectable people 
 would lead the less able-bodied to think more lightly 
 of all forms of illness ; neither can it be permitted 
 that you should have the chance of corrupting unborn 
 beings who might hereafter pester you. The unborn 
 must not be allowed to come near you : and this not 
 so much for their protection (for they are our natural 
 enemies), as for our own ; for since they will not be 
 utterly gainsaid, it must be seen to that they shall be 
 quartered upon those who are least likely to corrupt 
 them. 
 
 " But independently of this consideration, and inde- 
 pendently of the physical guilt which attaches itself to 
 a crime so great as yours, there is yet another reason 
 why we should be unable to show you mercy, even if 
 we are inclined to do so. I refer to the existence of 
 a class of men who lie hidden among us, and who are 
 called physicians. Were the severity of the law or 
 the current feeling of the country to be relaxed never 
 so slightly, these abandoned persons, who are now 
 compelled to practise secretly, and who can be con- 
 sulted only at the greatest risk, would become frequent 
 visitors in every household ; their organisation and 
 
14 SELECTIONS FROM ERE WHO N. 
 
 their intimate acquaintance with all family secrets 
 would give them a power, both social and political, 
 which nothing could resist. The head of the house- 
 hold would become subordinate to the family doctor, 
 who would interfere between man and wife, between 
 master and servant, until the doctors should be the 
 only depositaries of power in the nation, and have all 
 that we hold precious at their mercy. A time of 
 universal dephysicalisation would ensue ; medicine- 
 vendors of all kinds would abound in our streets and 
 advertise in all our newspapers. There is one remedy 
 for this, and one only. It is that which the laws of 
 this country have long received and acted upon, and 
 consists in the sternest repression of all diseases what- 
 soever, as soon as their existence is made manifest to 
 the eye of the law. Would that that eye were far 
 more piercing than it is. 
 
 " But I will enlarge no further upon things that are 
 themselves so obvious. You may say that it is not 
 your fault. The answer is ready enough at hand, and 
 it amounts to this that if you had been born of 
 healthy and well-to-do parents, and been well taken 
 care of when you were a child, you would never have 
 offended against the laws of your country, nor found 
 yourself in your present disgraceful position. If you 
 tell me that you had no hand in your parentage and 
 . education, and that it is therefore unjust to lay these 
 things to your charge, I answer that whether your 
 being in a consumption is your fault or no, it is a fault 
 in you, and it is my duty to see that against such faults 
 as this the commonwealth shall be protected. You 
 may say that it is your misfortune to be criminal ; I 
 answer that it is your crime to be unfortunate. 
 
 " I do not hesitate therefore to sentence you to im- 
 
AN EREWHONIAN TRIAL. 15 
 
 prisonment, with hard labour, for the rest of your 
 miserable existence. During that period I would 
 earnestly entreat you to repent of these wrongs you 
 have done already, and to entirely reform the constitu- 
 tion of your whole body. I entertain but little hope 
 that you will pay attention to my advice ; you are 
 already far too abandoned. Did it rest with myself, 
 I should add nothing in mitigation of the sentence 
 which I have passed, but it is the merciful provision of 
 the law that even the most hardened criminal shall be 
 allowed some one of the three official remedies, which 
 is to be prescribed at the time of his conviction. I 
 shall therefore order that you receive two tablespoon- 
 fuls of castor-oil daily, until the pleasure of the court 
 be further known." 
 
 When the sentence was concluded, the prisoner 
 acknowledged in a few scarcely audible words that 
 he was justly punished, and that he had had a fair 
 trial. He was then removed to the prison from which 
 he was never to return. There was a second attempt 
 at applause when the judge had finished speaking, but 
 as before it was at once repressed ; and though the 
 feeling of the court was strongly against the prisoner, 
 there was no show of any violence against him, if one 
 may except a little hooting from the bystanders when 
 he was being removed in the prisoners' van. Indeed, 
 nothing struck me more during my whole sojourn in 
 the country, than the general respect for law and order. 
 
16 
 
 MALCONTENTS. 
 
 (PART OF CHAPTER XIL OF EREWHON.) 
 
 ~ WEITE with great diffidence, but it seems to me 
 -*- that there is no unfairness in punishing people 
 for their misfortunes, or rewarding them for their 
 sheer good luck : it is the normal condition of human 
 life that this should be done, and no right-minded 
 person will complain at being subjected to the common 
 treatment. There is no alternative open to us. It 
 is idle to say that men are not responsible for their 
 misfortunes. What is responsibility ? Surely to be 
 responsible means to be liable to have to give an 
 answer should it be demanded, and all things which 
 live are responsible for their lives and actions should 
 society see fit to question them through the mouth of 
 its authorised agent. 
 
 What is the offence of a lamb that we should rear 
 it, and tend it, and lull it into security, for the express 
 purpose of killing it ? Its offence is the misfortune 
 of being something which society wants to eat, and 
 which cannot defend itself. This is ample. Who 
 shall limit the right of society except society itself ? 
 And what consideration for the individual is tolerable 
 unless society be the gainer thereby ? Wherefore 
 should a man be so richly rewarded for having been 
 son to a millionaire, were it not clearly provable that 
 
MALCONTENTS. 17 
 
 the common welfare is thus better furthered ? We 
 cannot seriously detract from a man's merit in having 
 been the son of a rich father without imperilling our 
 own tenure of things which we do not wish to jeopard- 
 ise ; if this were otherwise we should not let him keep 
 his money for a single hour ; we would have it our- 
 selves at once. For property is robbery, but then we 
 are all robbers or would-be robbers together, and 
 have found it expedient to organise our thieving, as 
 we have found it to organise our lust and our revenge. 
 Property, marriage, the law ; as the bed to the river, 
 so rule and convention to the instinct. 
 
 But to return. Even in England a man on board 
 a ship with yellow fever is held responsible for his 
 mischance, no matter what his being kept in quaran- 
 tine may cost him. He may catch the fever and die ; 
 we cannot help it ; he must take his chance as other 
 people do ; but surely it would be desperate unkind- 
 ness to add contumely to our self-protection, unless, 
 indeed, we believe that contumely is one of our best 
 means of self-protection. Again, take the case of 
 maniacs. We say that they are irresponsible for their 
 actions, but we take good care, or ought to take good 
 care, that they shall answer to us for their insanity, 
 and we imprison them in what we call an asylum 
 (that modern sanctuary !) if we do not like their 
 answers. This is a strange kind of irresponsibility. 
 What we ought to say is that we can afford to be 
 satisfied with a less satisfactory answer from a lunatic 
 than from one who is not mad, because lunacy is less 
 infectious than crime. 
 
 We kill a serpent if we go in danger by it, simply 
 for being such and such a serpent in such and such a 
 place; but we never say that the serpent has only 
 
 B 
 
1 8 SELECTJONS FROM EREWHON. 
 
 itself to blame for not having been a harmless crea- 
 ture. Its crime is that of being the thing which it 
 is : but this is a capital offence, and we are right in 
 killing it out of the way, unless we think it more 
 dangerous to do so than to let it escape ; nevertheless 
 we pity the creature, even though we kill it. 
 
 But in the case of him whose trial I have described 
 above, it was impossible that any one in the court 
 should not have known that it was but by an accident 
 of birth and circumstances that he was not himself 
 also in a consumption ; and yet none thought that it 
 disgraced them to hear the judge give vent to the 
 most cruel truisms about him. The judge himself 
 was a kind and thoughtful person. He was a man of 
 magnificent and benign presence. He was evidently 
 of an iron constitution, and his face wore an expression 
 of the maturest wisdom and experience; yet for all 
 this, old and learned as he was, he could not see things 
 which one would have thought would have been 
 apparent even to a child. He could not emancipate 
 himself from., nay, it did not even occur to him to feel, 
 the bondage of the ideas in which he had been born 
 and bred. So was it with the jury and bystanders ; 
 and most wonderful of all so was it even with the 
 prisoner. Throughout he seemed fully impressed with 
 the notion that he was being dealt with justly : he 
 saw nothing wanton in his being told by the judge 
 that he was to be punished, not so much as a neces- 
 sary protection to society (although this was not 
 entirely lost sight of), as because he had not been 
 better born and bred than he was. But this led me 
 to hope that he suffered less than he would have done 
 if he had seen the matter in the same light that I did. 
 And, after all, justice is relative. 
 
MALCONTENTS. 19 
 
 I may here mention that only a few years before my 
 arrival in the country, the treatment of all convicted in- 
 valids had been much more barbarous than now ; for no 
 physical remedy was provided, and prisoners were put 
 to the severest labour in all sorts of weather, so that 
 most of them soon succumbed to the extreme hard- 
 ships which they suffered; this was supposed to be 
 beneficial in some ways, inasmuch as it put the country 
 to less expense for the maintenance of its criminal 
 class; but the growth of luxury had induced a relaxa- 
 tion of the old severity, and a sensitive age would no 
 longer tolerate what appeared to be an excess of rigour, 
 even towards the most guilty ; moreover, it was found 
 that juries were less willing to convict, and justice was 
 often cheated because there was no alternative between 
 virtually condemning a man to death and letting him 
 go free ; it was also held that the country paid in re- 
 committals for its overseverity ; for those who had been 
 imprisoned even for trifling ailments were often perma- 
 nently disabled by their imprisonment ; and when a 
 man has been once convicted, it was probable he would 
 never afterwards be long off the hands of the country. 
 
 These evils had long been apparent and recognised ; 
 yet people were too indolent, and too indifferent to 
 suffering not their own, to bestir themselves about 
 putting an end to them, until at last a benevolent 
 reformer devoted his whole life to effecting the necessary 
 changes. He divided illnesses into three classes those 
 affecting the head, the trunk, and the lower limbs 
 and obtained an enactment that all diseases of 
 the head, whether internal or external, should be treated 
 with laudanum, those of the body with castor-oil, 
 and those of the lower limbs with an embrocation 
 of strong sulphuric acid and water. It may be said 
 
20 SELECTIONS FROM EREWHON. 
 
 that the classification was not sufficiently careful, and 
 that the remedies were ill chosen ; but it is a hard 
 thing to initiate any reform, and it was necessary to 
 familiarise the public mind with the principle, by 
 inserting the thin end of the wedge first: it is not 
 therefore to be wondered at that among so practical a 
 people there should still be some room for improvement. 
 The mass of the nation are well pleased with existing 
 arrangements, and believe that their treatment of 
 criminals leaves little or nothing to be desired ; but 
 there is an energetic minority who hold what are con- 
 sidered to be extreme opinions, and who are not at all 
 disposed to rest contented until the principle lately 
 admitted has been carried further. 
 
THE MUSICAL BANKS. 
 (CHAPTER xiv. OF EREWHON.) 
 
 AN my return to the drawing-room, I found the ladies 
 V were just putting away their work and preparing 
 to go out. I asked them where they were going. They 
 answered with a certain air of reserve that they were 
 going to the bank to get some money. 
 
 Now I had already collected that the mercantile 
 affairs of the Erewhonians were conducted on a totally 
 different system from our own ; I had however gathered 
 little hitherto, except that they had two distinct 
 commercial systems, of which the one appealed more 
 strongly to the imagination than anything to which we 
 are accustomed in Europe, inasmuch as the banks con- 
 ducted upon this system were decorated in the most 
 profuse fashion, and all mercantile transactions were ac- 
 companied with music, so that they were called musical 
 banks though the music was hideous to a European ear. 
 
 As for the system itself I never understood it, 
 neither can I do so now : they have a code in connec- 
 tion with it, which I have no doubt they themselves 
 understand, but no foreigner can hope to do so. One 
 rule runs into and against another as in a most 
 complicated grammar, or as in Chinese pronunciation, 
 wherein I am told the slightest change in accentuation 
 or tone of voice alters the meaning of a whole sentence. 
 
22 SELECTIONS FROM EREWHON. 
 
 Whatever is incoherent in my description must be 
 referred to the fact of my never having attained to a 
 full comprehension of the subject. 
 
 So far however as I could collect anything certain, 
 they appeared to have two entirely distinct currencies, 
 each under the control of its own banks and mer- 
 cantile codes. The one of them (the one with the 
 musical banks) was supposed to be the system, and to 
 give out the currency in which all monetary trans- 
 actions should be carried on. As far as I could see, 
 all who wished to be considered respectable, did keep 
 a certain amount of this currency at these banks ; 
 nevertheless, if there is one thing of which I am more 
 sure than another it is that the amount so kept was 
 but a very small part of their possessions. I think 
 they took the money, put it into the bank, and then 
 drew it out again, repeating the process day by day, 
 and keeping a certain amount of currency for this 
 purpose and no other, while they paid the expenses 
 of the bank with the other coinage. I am sure the 
 managers and cashiers of the musical banks were not 
 paid in their own currency. Mr. Nosnibor used to go 
 to these musical banks, or rather to the great mother 
 bank of the city, sometimes but not very often. He 
 was a pillar of one of the other kind of banks, though 
 he held some minor office also in these. The ladies 
 generally went alone ; as indeed was the case in most 
 families, except on some few great annual occasions. 
 
 I had long wanted to know more of this strange 
 system, and had the greatest desire to accompany my 
 hostess and her daughters. I had seen them go out 
 almost every morning since my arrival, and had 
 noticed that they carried their purses in their hands, 
 not exactly ostentatiously, yet just so as that those 
 
THE MUSICAL BANKS. 23 
 
 who met them should see whither they were going. I 
 had never yet been asked to go with them myself. 
 
 It is not easy to convey a person's manner by words, 
 and I can hardly give any idea of the peculiar feeling 
 which came upon me whenever I saw the ladies 
 in the hall, with their purses in their hands, and on 
 the point of starting for the bank. There was a some- 
 thing of regret, a something as though they would 
 wish to take me with them, but did not like to ask me, 
 and yet as though I were hardly to ask to be taken. 
 I was determined however to bring matters to an issue 
 with my hostess about my going with them, and after 
 a little parleying and many inquiries as to whether 
 I was perfectly sure that I myself wished to go, it was 
 decided that I might do so. 
 
 We passed through several streets of more or less 
 considerable houses, and at last turning round a corner 
 we came upon a large piazza, at the end of which 
 was a magnificent building, of a strange but noble 
 architecture and of great antiquity. It did not open 
 directly on to the piazza, there being a screen, through 
 which was an archway, between the piazza and the 
 actual precincts of the bank. On passing under the 
 archway we found ourselves upon a green sward, 
 round which there ran an arcade or cloister, while in 
 front of us uprose the majestic towers of the bank 
 and its venerable front, which was divided into three 
 deep recesses and adorned with all sorts of marbles 
 and many sculptures. On either side there were beau- 
 tiful old trees wherein the birds were busy by the 
 hundred, and a number of quaint but substantial 
 houses of singularly comfortable appearance; they were 
 situated in the midst of orchards and gardens, and 
 gave me an impression of great peace and plenty. 
 
24 SELECTIONS FROM EREWHON. 
 
 Indeed it had been no error to say that this building 
 was one which appealed to the imagination ; it did 
 more it carried both imagination and judgment by 
 storm. It was an epic in stone and marble ; neither 
 had I ever seen anything in the least comparable to 
 it. I was completely charmed and melted. I felt 
 more conscious of the existence of a remote past. One 
 knows of this always, but the knowledge is never so 
 living as in the actual presence of some witness to the 
 life of bygone ages. I felt how short a space of human 
 life was the period of our own existence. I was more 
 impressed with my own littleness, and much more in- 
 clinable to believe that the people whose sense of the 
 fitness of things was equal to the upraising of so serene 
 a handiwork, were hardly likely to be wrong in the 
 conclusions they might come to upon any subject. My 
 feeling certainly was that the currency of this bank 
 must be the right one. 
 
 We crossed the sward and entered the building. If 
 the outside had been impressive the inside was even 
 more so. It was very lofty and divided into several 
 parts by walls which rested upon massive pillars ; the 
 windows were filled with glass, on which had been 
 painted the principal commercial incidents of the 
 bank for many ages. In a remote part of the build- 
 ing there were men and boys singing ; this was the 
 only disturbing feature, for as the gamut was still 
 unknown, there was no music in the country which 
 could be agreeable to a European ear. The singers 
 seemed to have derived their inspirations from the 
 songs of birds and the wailing of the wind, which last 
 they tried to imitate in melancholy cadences which 
 at times degenerated into a howl. To my thinking the 
 noise* was hideous, but it produced a great effect upon 
 
THE MUSICAL BANKS. 25 
 
 my companions, who professed themselves much moved. 
 As soon as the singing was over the ladies requested 
 me to stay where I was, while they went inside the 
 place from which it had seemed to come. 
 
 During their absence certain reflections forced them- 
 selves upon me. 
 
 In the first place, it struck me as strange that the 
 building should be so nearly empty; I was almost 
 alone, and the few besides myself had been led by 
 curiosity, and had no intention of doing business with 
 the bank. But there might be more inside. I stole 
 up to the curtain, and ventured to draw the extreme 
 edge of it on one side. No, there was hardly any one 
 there. I saw a large number of cashiers, all at their 
 desks ready to pay cheques, and one or two who 
 seemed to be the managing partners. I also saw my 
 hostess and her daughters and two or three other 
 ladies; also three or four old women and the boys 
 from one of the neighbouring Colleges of Unreason ; 
 but there was no one else. This did not look as 
 though the bank was doing a very large business ; and 
 yet I had always been told that every one in the city 
 dealt with this establishment. 
 
 I cannot describe all that took place in these inner 
 precincts, for a sinister-looking person in a black 
 gown came and made unpleasant gestures at me for 
 peeping. I happened to have in my pocket one of the 
 musical bank pieces, which had been given me by 
 Mrs. ISTosnibor, so I tried to tip him with it; but 
 having seen what it was, he became so angry that it 
 was all I could do to pacify him. When he was gone 
 I ventured to take a second look, and saw Zulora in 
 the very act of giving a piece of paper which looked 
 like a cheque to one of the cashiers. He did not 
 
26 SELECTIONS FROM ERE WHO N. 
 
 examine it, but putting his hand into an antique 
 coffer hard by, he pulled out a quantity of dull-looking 
 metal pieces apparently at random, and handed them, 
 over without counting them ; neither did Zulora count 
 them, but put them into her purse and departed. It 
 seemed a very singular proceeding, but I supposed that 
 they knew their own business best, at any rate Zulora 
 seemed quite satisfied, thanked him for the money, and 
 began making towards the curtain : on this I let it 
 drop and retreated to a reasonable distance. 
 
 Mrs. ISTosnibor and her daughters soon joined me. 
 For some few minutes we all kept silence, but at last I 
 ventured to remark that the bank was not so busy to- 
 day as it probably often was. On this Mrs. Nosnibor 
 said that it was indeed melancholy to see what little 
 heed people paid to the most precious of all institutions. 
 I could say nothing in reply, but I have ever been of 
 opinion that the greater part of mankind do approxi- 
 mately know where they get that which does them 
 good. Mrs. Nosnibor went on to say that I must not 
 imagine there was any want of confidence in the bank 
 because I had seen so few people there ; the heart of 
 the country was thoroughly devoted to these establish- 
 ments, and any sign of their being in danger would 
 bring in support from the most unexpected quarters. 
 It was only because people knew them to be so very 
 safe, that in some cases (as she lamented to say in Mr. 
 Nosnibor's) they felt that their support was unnecessary. 
 Moreover these institutions never departed from the 
 safest and most approved banking principles. Thus 
 they never allowed interest on deposit, a thing now fre- 
 quently done by certain bubble companies, which by 
 doing an illegitimate trade had drawn many customers 
 away; and even the shareholders were fewer than 
 
THE MUSICAL BANKS. 27 
 
 formerly, owing to the innovations of these unscrupu- 
 lous persons. 
 
 It came out by and by that the musical banks paid 
 little or no dividend, but divided their profits by way 
 of bonus on the original shares once in every three 
 hundred and fifty years; and as it was now only two 
 hundred years since there had been one of these dis- 
 tributions, people felt that they could not hope for 
 another in their own time and preferred investments 
 whereby they got some more tangible return ; all which, 
 she said, was very melancholy to think of. 
 
 Having made these last admissions, she returned to 
 her original statement, namely, that every one in the 
 country really supported the bank. As to the fewness 
 of the people, and the absence of the able-bodied, she 
 pointed out to me with some justice that this was 
 exactly what we ought to expect. The men who were 
 most conversant about the stability of human institu- 
 tions, such as the lawyers, men of science, doctors, 
 statesmen, painters, and the like, were just those who 
 were most likely to be misled by their own fancied 
 accomplishments, and to be made unduly suspicious by 
 their licentious desire for greater present return, which 
 was at the root of nine-tenths of the opposition, by 
 their vanity, which would prompt them to affect 
 superiority to the prejudices of the vulgar, and by the 
 stings of their own conscience, which was constantly 
 upbraiding them in the most cruel manner on account 
 of their bodies, which were generally diseased ; let a 
 person's intellect be never so sound, unless his body 
 were in absolute health, he could form no judgment 
 worth having on matters of this kind. The body was 
 everything: it need not perhaps be such a strong body 
 (she said this because she saw I was thinking of the 
 
28 SELECTIONS FROM EREWHON. 
 
 old and infirm-looking folks whom I had seen in the 
 bank), but it must be in perfect health ; in this case, 
 the less active strength it had the more free would be 
 the working of the intellect, and therefore the sounder 
 the conclusion. The people, then, whom I had seen at 
 the bank were in reality the very ones whose opinions 
 were most worth having ; they declared its advantages 
 to be incalculable, and even professed to consider the im- 
 mediate return to be far larger than they were entitled 
 to ; and so she ran on, nor did she leave off till we 
 had got back to the house. 
 
 She might say what she pleased, but her manner 
 was not one that carried much conviction ; and later 
 on I saw signs of general indifference to these banks 
 that were not to be mistaken. Their supporters often 
 denied it, but the denial was generally so couched as 
 to add another proof of its existence. In commercial 
 panics, and in times of general distress, the people as 
 a mass did not so much as even think of turning to 
 these banks. A few individuals might do so, some 
 from habit and early training, some from hope of gain, 
 but few from a genuine belief that the money was 
 good ; the masses turned instinctively to the other 
 currency. In a conversation with one of the musical 
 bank managers I ventured to hint this as plainly as 
 politeness would allow. He said that it had been more 
 or less true till lately ; but that now they had put 
 fresh stained glass windows into all the banks in the 
 country, and repaired the buildings, and enlarged the 
 organs, and taken to talking nicely to the people in 
 the streets, and to remembering the ages of their 
 children and giving them things when they were ill, 
 so that all would henceforth go smoothly. 
 
THE MUSICAL BANKS. 29 
 
 "But haven't you done anything to the money 
 itself ? " said I timidly. 
 
 To this day I do not know exactly what the bank- 
 manager said, but it came to this in the end that I 
 had better not meddle with things that I did not 
 understand. 
 
 On reviewing the whole matter, I can be certain of 
 this much only, that the money given out at the 
 musical banks is not the current coin of the realm. 
 It is not the money with which the people do as a 
 general rule buy their bread, meat, and clothing. It 
 is like it ; some coins very like it ; and it is not 
 counterfeit. It is not, take it all round, a spurious 
 article made of base metal in imitation of the money 
 which is in daily use; but it is a distinct coinage 
 which, though I do not suppose it ever actually 
 superseded the ordinary gold, silver, and copper, was 
 probably issued by authority, and was intended to 
 supplant those metals. Some of the pieces were really 
 of exquisite beauty ; and some were, I do verily be- 
 lieve, nothing but the ordinary currency, only that 
 there was another head and name in place of that of 
 the commonwealth. And here was one of the great 
 marvels ; for those who were most strongly in favour 
 of this coinage maintained, and even grew more 
 excited if they were opposed here than on any other 
 matter, that the very self-same coin with the head of 
 the commonwealth upon it was of little if any value, 
 while it became exceedingly precious if stamped with 
 the other image. 
 
 Some of the coins were plainly bad ; of these last 
 there were not many ; still there were enough for them 
 to be not uncommon. These were entirely composed 
 of alloy ; they would bend easily, would melt away to 
 
3 o SELECTIONS FROM ERE WHO N. 
 
 nothing with a little heat, and were quite unsuited for 
 a currency. Yet there were few of the wealthier 
 classes who did not maintain that even these coins 
 were genuine good money, though they were chary of 
 taking them. Every one knew this, so they were 
 seldom offered ; but all thought it incumbent upon 
 them to retain a good many in their possession, and 
 to let them be seen from time to time in their hands 
 and purses. Of course people knew their real value 
 exceedingly well ; but few, if any, dared to say what 
 that value was ; or if they did, it would be only in 
 certain companies or in writing in the newspapers 
 anonymously. Strange ! there was hardly any insinua- 
 tion against this coinage which they would not tolerate 
 and even applaud in their daily papers; and yet, if 
 the same thing were said without ambiguity to their 
 faces nominative case verb and accusative being all 
 in their right places, and doubt impossible they 
 would consider themselves very seriously and justly 
 outraged, and accuse the speaker of being unwell. 
 
 I never could understand, neither can I do so now, 
 why a single currency should not suffice them ; it 
 would seem to me as though all their dealings would 
 have been thus greatly simplified ; but I was met with 
 a look of horror if ever I dared to hint at it Even 
 those who to my certain knowledge kept only just 
 enough money at the musical banks to swear by, 
 would call the other banks (where their securities 
 really lay) cold, deadening, paralsying, and the like. 
 I noticed another thing moreover which struck me 
 greatly. I was taken to the opening of one of these 
 banks in a neighbouring town, and saw a large as- 
 semblage of cashiers and managers. I sat opposite 
 them and scanned their faces attentively. They did 
 
THE MUSICAL BANKS. 3I 
 
 not please me ; they lacked, with a few exceptions, the 
 true Erewhonian frankness ; and an equal number from 
 any other class would have looked happier and better 
 men. When I met them in the streets they did not 
 seem like other people, but had, as a general rule, a 
 cramped expression upon their faces which pained and 
 depressed me. 
 
 Those who came from the country were better ; they 
 seemed to have lived less as a separate class, and to 
 be freer and healthier ; but in spite of my seeing not 
 a few whose looks were benign and noble, I could not 
 help asking myself concerning the greater number of 
 those whom I met, whether Erewhon would be a better 
 country if their expression were to be transferred to the 
 people in general. I answered myself emphatically, no. 
 A man's expression is his sacrament ; it is the outward 
 and visible sign of his inward and spiritual grace, or 
 want of grace ; and as I looked at the majority of these 
 men, I could not help feeling that there must be a 
 something in their lives which had stunted their 
 natural development, and that they would have been 
 more healthily-minded in any other profession. 
 
 I was always sorry for them, for in nine cases out 
 of ten they were well-meaning persons ; they were in 
 the main very poorly paid ; their constitutions were 
 as a rule above suspicion ; and there were recorded 
 numberless instances of their self-sacrifice and gene- 
 rosity ; but they had had the misfortune to have been 
 betrayed into a false position at an age for the most 
 part when their judgment was not matured, and after 
 having been kept in studied ignorance of the real diffi- 
 culties of the system. But this did not make their 
 position the less a false one, and its bad effects upon 
 themselves were unmistakable. 
 
32 SELECTIONS FROM EREWHON. 
 
 Few people would speak quite openly and freely 
 before them, which struck me as a very bad sign. 
 When they were in the room every one would talk as 
 though all currency save that of the musical banks 
 should be abolished ; and yet they knew perfectly well 
 that even the cashiers themselves hardly used the 
 musical bank money more than other people. It was 
 expected of them that they should appear to do so, but 
 this was all. The less thoughtful of them did not seem 
 particularly unhappy, but many were plainly sick at 
 heart, though perhaps they hardly knew it, and would 
 not have owned to being so. Some few were opponents 
 of the whole system; but these were liable to be dis- 
 missed from their employment at any moment, and 
 this rendered them very careful, for a man who had 
 once been cashier at a musical bank was out of the 
 field for other employment, and was generally unfitted 
 for it by reason of that course of treatment which was 
 commonly called his education. In fact it was a career 
 from which retreat was virtually impossible, and into 
 which young men were generally induced to enter 
 before they could be reasonably expected, considering 
 their training, to have formed any opinions of their own. 
 Tew indeed were those who had the courage to insist 
 on seeing both sides of the question before they com- 
 mitted themselves to either. One would have thought 
 that this was an elementary principle, one of the 
 first things that an honourable man would teach his 
 boy to do ; but in practice it was not so. 
 
 I even saw cases in which parents bought the right 
 of presenting to the office of cashier at one of these 
 banks, with the fixed determination that some one of 
 their sons (perhaps a mere child) should fill it. There 
 was the lad himself growing up with every promise 
 
THE MUSICAL BANKS. 33 
 
 of becoming a good and honourable man but utterly 
 without warning concerning the iron shoe which his 
 natural protector was providing for him. Who could 
 say that the whole thing would not end in a life-long 
 lie, and vain chafing to escape ? 
 
 I confess that there were few things in Erewhon 
 which shocked me more than this. 
 
( 34 ) 
 
 BIRTH FORMULAE. 
 (CHAPTER xvn. OF EREWHON.) 
 
 I HEARD what follows not from Arowhena, but from 
 Mr. Nosnibor and some of the gentlemen who occa- 
 sionally dined at the house : they told me that the 
 Erewhonians believe in pre-existence ; and not only 
 this (of which I will write more fully in the next 
 chapter), but they believe that it is of their own free 
 act and deed in a previous state that people come to 
 be born into this world at all. 
 
 They hold that the unborn are perpetually plaguing 
 and tormenting the married (and sometimes even the 
 unmarried) of both sexes, fluttering about them inces- 
 santly, and giving them no peace either of mind or body 
 until they have consented to take them under their 
 protection. If this were not so this is at least what 
 they urge it would be a monstrous freedom for one 
 man to take with another, to say that he should under- 
 go the chances and changes of this mortal life without 
 any option in the matter. No man would have any 
 right to get married at all, inasmuch as he can never 
 tell what misery his doing so may entail forcibly upon 
 his children who cannot be unhappy as long as they 
 remain unborn. They feel this so strongly that they are 
 resolved to shift the blame on to other shoulders ; they 
 have therefore invented a long mythology as to the 
 world in which the unborn people live, what they do, 
 
BIRTH FORMULA. 
 
 35 
 
 and the arts and machinations to which they have 
 recourse in order to get themselves into our own world. 
 
 I cannot think they seriously believe in this my- 
 thology concerning pre-existence ; they do and they do 
 not ; they do not know themselves what they believe ; 
 all they know is that it is a disease not to believe as 
 they do. The only thing of which they are quite sure 
 is that it is the pestering of the unborn, which causes 
 them to be brought into this world, and that they 
 would not be here if they would only let peaceable 
 people alone. 
 
 It would be hard to disprove this position, and they 
 might have a good case if they would only leave it 
 as it stands. But this they will not do ; they must 
 have assurance doubly sure ; they must have the writ- 
 ten word of the child itself as soon as it is born, giving 
 the parents indemnity from all responsibility on the 
 score of its birth, and asserting its own pre-existence. 
 They have therefore devised something which they call 
 a birth formula a document which varies in words 
 according to the caution of parents, but is much the 
 same practically in all cases ; for it has been the 
 business of the Erewhoiiian lawyers during many ages 
 to exercise their skill in perfecting it and providing 
 for every contingency. 
 
 These formulae are printed on common paper at 
 a moderate cost for the poor; but the rich have 
 them written on parchment and handsomely bound, 
 so that the getting up of a person's birth formula is a 
 test of his social position. They commence by setting 
 forth, That whereas A. B. was a member of the king- 
 dom of the unborn, where he was well provided for in 
 every way, and had no cause of discontent, &c. &c., 
 he did of his own wanton restlessness conceive a desire 
 
36 SELECTIONS FROM EREWHON. 
 
 to enter into this present world ; that thereon having 
 taken the necessary steps as set forth in laws of the 
 unborn kingdom, he set himself with malice aforethought 
 to plague and pester two unfortunate people who had 
 never wronged him, and who were quite contented 
 until he conceived this base design against their 
 peace ; for which wrong he now humbly entreats 
 their pardon. He acknowledges that he is respon- 
 sible for all physical blemishes and deficiencies which 
 may render him answerable to the laws of his country ; 
 that his parents have nothing whatever to do with 
 any of these things ; and that they have a right to 
 kill him at once if they be so minded, though he 
 entreats them to show their marvellous goodness and 
 clemency towards him by sparing his life. If they will 
 do this he promises to be their most abject creature 
 during his earlier years, and indeed unto his life's end, 
 unless they should see fit in their abundant generosity 
 to remit some portion of his service hereafter. And 
 so the formula continues, going sometimes into very 
 minute details, according to the fancies of family 
 lawyers, who will not make it any shorter than they 
 can help. 
 
 The deed being thus prepared, on the third or 
 fourth day after the birth of the child, or as they 
 call it, the " final importunity," the friends gather 
 together, and there is a feast held, where they are 
 all very melancholy as a general rule, I believe 
 quite truly so and make presents to the father and 
 mother of the child in order to console them for the 
 injury which has just been done them by the unborn. 
 By and by the child himself is brought down by his 
 nurse, and the company begin to rail upon him, up- 
 braiding him for his impertinence and asking him 
 
BIRTH FORMULA. 37 
 
 what amends he proposes to make for the wrong that 
 he has committed, and how he can look for care and 
 nourishment from those who have perhaps already 
 been injured by the unborn on some ten or twelve 
 occasions ; for they say of people with large families, 
 that they have suffered terrible injuries from the 
 unborn; till at last, when this has been carried far 
 enough, some one suggests the formula, which is 
 brought forth and solemnly read to the child by the 
 family straightener. This gentleman is always invited 
 on these occasions, for the very fact of intrusion into 
 a peaceful family shows a depravity on the part of the 
 child which requires his professional services. 
 
 On being teased by the reading and tweaked by 
 the nurse, the child will commonly fall a-crying, 
 which is reckoned a good sign as showing a conscious- 
 ness of guilt. He is thereon asked, Does he assent to 
 the formula ? on which, as he still continues crying 
 and can obviously make no answer, some one of the 
 friends comes forward and undertakes to sign the docu- 
 ment on his behalf, feeling sure (so he says) that the 
 child would do it if he only knew how, and that he 
 will release the present signer from his engagement on 
 arriving at maturity. The friend then inscribes the 
 signature of the child at the foot of the parchment, 
 which is held to bind the child as much as though he 
 had signed it himself. Even this, however, does not 
 fully content them, for they feel a little uneasy until 
 they have got the child's own signature after all. So 
 when he is about fourteen these good people partly 
 bribe him by promises of greater liberty and good 
 things, and partly intimidate him through their great 
 power of making themselves passively unpleasant to 
 him, so that though there is a show of freedom made, 
 
38 SELECTIONS FROM EREWHON*. 
 
 there is really none, and partly they use the offices of 
 the teachers in the Colleges of Unreason, till at last, 
 in one way or another, they take very good care that he 
 shall sign the paper by which he professes to have 
 been a free agent in coming into the world, and to 
 take all the responsibility of having done so on to his 
 own shoulders. And yet, though this document is in 
 theory the most important which any one can sign in 
 his whole life, they will have him commit himself to it 
 at an age when neither they nor the law will for many 
 a year allow any one else to bind him to the smallest 
 obligation, no matter how righteously he may owe it, 
 because they hold him too young to know what he is 
 about. 
 
 I thought this seemed rather hard, and not of a 
 piece with the many admirable institutions existing 
 among them. I once ventured to say a part of what I 
 thought about it to one of the Professors of Unreason. 
 I asked him whether he did not think it would do serious 
 harm to a lad's principles, and weaken his sense of the 
 sanctity of his word, and of truth generally, that he 
 should be led into entering upon an engagement which 
 it was so plainly impossible he should keep even for a 
 single day with tolerable integrity whether, in fact, 
 the teachers who so led him, or who taught anything 
 as a certainty of which they were themselves uncertain, 
 were not earning their living by impairing the truth- 
 sense of their pupils. The professor, who was a delight- 
 ful person, seemed surprised at the view I took, and 
 gave me to understand, perhaps justly enough, that I 
 ought not to make so much fuss about a trifle. No 
 one, he said, expected that the boy either would or 
 could do all that he undertook ; but the world was full 
 of compromises ; and there was hardly any engagement 
 
BIRTH FORMULA. 39 
 
 which, would bear being interpreted literally. Human 
 language was too gross a vehicle of thought thought 
 being incapable of absolute translation. He added, that 
 as there can be no translation from one language into 
 another which shall not scant the meaning somewhat, 
 or enlarge upon it, so there is no language which can 
 render thought without a jarring and a harshness some- 
 where and so forth ; all of which seemed to come to 
 this in the end, that it was the custom of the country, 
 and that the Erewhonians were a conservative people ; 
 that the boy would have to begin compromising sooner 
 or later, and this was part of his education in the art. 
 It was perhaps to be regretted that compromise should 
 be as necessary as it was ; still it was necessary, and 
 the sooner the boy got to understand it the better for 
 himself. But they never tell this to the boy. 
 
 From the book of their mythology about the unborn 
 I made the extracts which will form the following 
 chapter. 
 
THE WORLD OF THE UNBORN. 
 
 (PAET OF CHAPTER XVIII. OF EKEWHON.) 
 
 Erewhonians say it was by chance only that 
 - the earth and stars and all the heavenly worlds 
 began to roll from east to west, and not from west to 
 east, and in like manner they say it is by chance that 
 man is drawn through life with his face to the past 
 instead of to the future. For the future is there as 
 much as the past, only that we may not see it. Is it 
 not in the loins of the past, and must not the past 
 alter before the future can do so ? 
 
 They have a fable that there was a race of men 
 tried upon the earth once, who knew the future better 
 than the past, but that they died in a twelvemonth 
 from the misery which their knowledge caused them. 
 They say that if any were to be born too prescient 
 now, he would die miserably, before he had time to 
 transmit so peace-destroying a faculty to descendants. 
 
 Strange fate for man ! He must perish if he get 
 that, which he must perish if he strive not after. 
 If he strive not after it he is no better than the 
 brutes, if he get it he is more miserable than the 
 devils. 
 
 Having waded through many chapters like the 
 above, I came at last to the unborn themselves, and 
 found that they were held to be souls pure and simple, 
 having no actual bodies, but living in a sort of gaseous 
 
THE WORLD OF THE UNBORN. 41 
 
 yet more or less anthropomorphic existence, like that of 
 a ghost; they have thus neither flesh nor blood nor 
 warmth. Nevertheless they are supposed to have local 
 habitations and cities wherein they dwell, though these 
 are as unsubstantial as their inhabitants; they are 
 even thought to eat and drink some thin ambrosial 
 sustenance, and generally to be capable of doing what- 
 ever mankind can do, only after a visionary ghostly 
 fashion, as in a dream. On the other hand, as long as 
 they remain where they are they never die the only 
 form of death in the unborn world being the leaving 
 it for our own. They are believed to be extremely 
 numerous, far more so than mankind. They arrive 
 from unknown planets, full grown, in large batches at 
 a time ; but they can only leave the unborn world by 
 taking the steps necessary for their arrival here 
 which is, in fact, by suicide. 
 
 They ought to be a happy people, for they have no 
 extremes of good or ill fortune ; never marrying, but 
 living in a state much like that fabled by the poets as 
 the primitive condition of mankind. In spite of this, 
 however, they are incessantly complaining ; they know 
 that we in this world have bodies, and indeed they 
 know everything else about us, for they move among 
 us whithersoever they will, and can read our thoughts, 
 as well as survey our actions at pleasure. One would 
 think that this should be enough for them ; and indeed 
 most of them are alive to the desperate risk which 
 they w 7 ill run by indulging themselves in that body 
 with " sensible warm motion " which they so much 
 desire ; nevertheless, there are some to whom the ennui 
 of a disembodied existence is so intolerable that they 
 will venture anything for a change ; so they resolve 
 to quit. The conditions which they must accept are 
 
42 SELECTIONS FROM EREWHON. 
 
 so uncertain, that none but the most foolish of the un- 
 born will consent to take them ; and it is from these 
 and these only that our own ranks are recruited. 
 
 When they have finally made up their minds to 
 leave, they must go before the magistrate of the 
 nearest town and sign an affidavit of their desire to 
 quit their then existence. On their having done this, 
 the magistrate reads them the conditions which they 
 must accept, and which are so long that I can only 
 extract some of the principal points, which are mainly 
 the following : 
 
 First, they must take a potion which will destroy 
 their memory and sense of identity; they must go 
 into the world helpless, and without a will of their 
 own ; they must draw lots for their dispositions before 
 they go, and take it, such as it is, for better or worse 
 neither are they to be allowed any choice in the matter 
 of the body which they so much desire ; they are simply 
 allotted by chance, and without appeal, to two people 
 whom it is their business to find and pester until they 
 adopt them. Who these are to be, whether rich or 
 poor, kind or unkind, healthy or diseased, there is no 
 knowing ; they have, in fact, to entrust themselves for 
 many years to the care of those for whose good con- 
 stitution and good sense they have no sort of guarantee. 
 
 It is curious to read the lectures which the wiser 
 heads give to those who are meditating a change. 
 They talk with them as we talk with a spendthrift, 
 and with about as much success. 
 
 " To be born," they say, " is a felony it is a capi- 
 tal crime, for which sentence may be executed at any 
 moment after the commission of the offence. You 
 may perhaps happen to live for some seventy or eighty 
 years, but what is that, in comparison with the eter- 
 
THE WORLD OF THE UNBORN. 43 
 
 nity which you now enjoy ? And even though the 
 sentence were commuted, and you were allowed to 
 live for ever, you would in time become so terribly 
 weary of life that execution would be the greatest 
 mercy to you. Consider the infinite risk ; to be bom 
 of wicked parents and trained in vice ! to be born of 
 silly parents, and trained to unrealities ! of parents 
 who regard you as a sort of chattel or property, belong- 
 ing more to them than to yourself ! Again, you 
 may draw utterly unsympathetic parents, who will 
 never be able to understand you, and who will thwart 
 you as long as they can to the utmost of their power 
 (as a hen when she has hatched a duckling), and then 
 call you ungrateful because you do not love them, or 
 parents who may look upon you as a thing to be cowed 
 while it is still young, lest it should give them trouble 
 hereafter by having wishes and feelings of its own. 
 
 " In later life, when you have been finally allowed 
 to pass muster as a full member of the world, you 
 will yourself become liable to the pesterings of the 
 unborn and a very happy life you may be led in 
 consequence ! For we solicit so strongly that a few 
 only nor these the best can refuse us ; and yet not 
 to refuse is much the same as going into partnership 
 with half a dozen different people about whom one 
 can know absolutely nothing beforehand not even 
 whether one is going into partnership with men or 
 women, nor with how many of either. Delude not 
 yourself with thinking that you will be wiser than 
 your parents. You may be an age in advance of 
 them, but unless you are one of the great ones (and 
 if you are one of the great ones, woe betide you), you 
 will still be an age behind your children. 
 
 "Imagine what it must be to have an unborn 
 
44 SELECTIONS FROM EREWHON. 
 
 quartered upon you, who is of a different temperament 
 to your own ; nay, half a dozen such, who will not love 
 you though you may tell them that you have stinted 
 yourself in a thousand ways to provide for their well- 
 being, who will forget all that self-sacrifice of which 
 you are yourself so conscious, and of whom you may 
 never be sure that they are not bearing a grudge 
 against you for errors of judgment into which you may 
 have fallen, but which you had hoped had been long 
 since atoned for. Ingratitude such as this is not un- 
 common, yet fancy what it must be to bear ! It is hard 
 upon the duckling to have been hatched by a hen, but 
 is it not also hard upon the hen to have hatched the 
 duckling ? 
 
 " Consider it again, we pray you, not for our sake 
 but for your own. Your initial character you must 
 draw by lot ; but whatever it is, it can only come to 
 a tolerably successful development after long training ; 
 remember that over that training you will have no 
 control. It is possible, and even probable, that what- 
 ever you may get in after life which is of real pleasure 
 and service to you, will have to be won in spite of, 
 rather than by the help of, those whom you are now 
 about to pester, and that you will only win your 
 freedom after years of a painful struggle, in which it 
 will be hard to say whether you have suffered most 
 injury, or inflicted it. 
 
 " Eemember also, that if you go into the world you 
 will have free will; that you will be obliged to have 
 it, that there is no escaping it, that you will be fettered 
 to it during your whole life, and must on every occasion 
 do that which on the whole seems best to you at any 
 given time, no matter whether you are right or wrong 
 in choosing it. Your mind will be a balance for con- 
 
THE WORLD OF THE UNBORN. 
 
 45 
 
 siderations, and your action will go with the heavier 
 scale. How it shall fall will depend upon the kind of 
 scales which you may have drawn at birth, the bias 
 which they will have obtained by use, and the weight 
 of the immediate considerations. If the scales were 
 good to start with, and if they have not been out- 
 rageously tampered with in childhood, and if the com- 
 binations into which you enter are average ones, you 
 may come off well ; but there are too many " ifs " in 
 this, and with . the failure of any one of them your 
 misery is assured. Eeflect on this, and remember that 
 should the ill come upon you, you will have yourself to 
 thank, for it is your own choice to be born, and there 
 is no compulsion in the matter. 
 
 " Not that we deny the existence of pleasures among 
 mankind ; there is a certain show of sundry phases of 
 contentment which may even amount to very consider- 
 able happiness ; but mark how they are distributed over 
 a man's life, belonging, all the keenest of them, to the 
 fore part, and few indeed to the after. Can there be 
 any pleasure worth purchasing with the miseries of a 
 decrepit age ? If you are good, strong, and handsome, 
 you have a fine fortune indeed at twenty, but how 
 much of it will be left at sixty ? For you must live 
 on your capital ; there is no investing your powers so 
 that you may get a small annuity of life for ever : you 
 must eat up your principal bit by bit and be tortured 
 by seeing it grow continually smaller and smaller, even 
 though you happen to escape being rudely robbed of it 
 by crime or casualty. Eemember, too, that there never 
 yet was a man of forty who would not come back into 
 the world of the unborn if he could do so with decency 
 and honour. Being in the world, he will as a general 
 rule stay till he is forced to go ; but do you think that 
 
46 SELECTIONS FROM EREWHON. 
 
 he would consent to be bom again, and re-live his life, 
 if he had the offer of doing so ? Do not think it. 
 If he could so alter the past as that he should never 
 have come into being at all, do you not think that he 
 would do it very gladly ? What was it that one of 
 their own poets meant, if it was not this, when he cried 
 out upon the day in which he was born, and the night 
 in which it was said there is a man child conceived ? 
 ' For now/ he says, c I should have lain still and been 
 quiet, I should have slept ; then had I been at rest 
 with kings and counsellors of the earth, which built 
 desolate places for themselves ; or with princes that 
 had gold, who filled their houses with silver ; or as an 
 hidden untimely birth, I had not been; as infants 
 which never saw light. There the wicked cease from 
 troubling, and the weary are at rest/ Be very sure 
 that the guilt of being born carries this punishment at 
 times to all men ; but how can they ask for pity, or 
 complain of any mischief that may befall them, having 
 entered open-eyed into the snare ? 
 
 " One word more and we have done. If any faint 
 remembrance, as of a dream, flit in some puzzled mo- 
 ment across your brain, and you shall feel that the 
 potion which is to be given you shall not have done 
 its work, and the memory of this existence which you 
 are leaving endeavours vainly to return ; we say in 
 such a moment, when you clutch at the dream but it 
 eludes your grasp, and you watch it, as Orpheus 
 watched Eurydice, gliding back again into the twi- 
 light kingdom, fly fly if you can remember the 
 advice to the haven of your present and immediate 
 duty, taking shelter incessantly in the work which 
 you have in hand. This much you may perhaps recall ; 
 and this, if you will imprint it deeply upon your every 
 
THE WORLD OF THE UNBORN. 47 
 
 faculty, will be most likely to bring you safely and 
 honourably home through the trials that are before 
 you." * 
 
 This is the fashion in which they reason with those 
 who would be for leaving them, but it is seldom that 
 they do much good, for none but the unquiet and 
 unreasonable ever think of being born, and those who 
 are foolish enough to think of it are generally foolish 
 enough to do it. Finding therefore that they can do 
 no more, the friends follow weeping to the courthouse 
 of the chief magistrate, where the one who wishes to 
 be born declares solemnly and openly that he accepts 
 the conditions attached to his decision. On this he is 
 presented with the potion, which immediately destroys 
 his memory and sense of identity, and dissipates the 
 thin gaseous tenement which he has inhabited : he 
 becomes a bare vital principle, not to be perceived 
 by human senses, nor appreciated by any chemical test. 
 He has but one instinct, which is that he is to go to 
 such and such a place, where he will find two persons 
 whom he is to importune till they consent to undertake 
 him ; but whether he is to find these persons among the 
 race of Chowbok or the Erewhonians themselves is not 
 for him to choose. 
 
 * The myth above alluded to exists in Erewhon with changed names 
 and considerable modifications. I have taken the liberty of referring 
 to the story as familiar to ourselves. 
 
SELECTIONS FEOM THE FAIE HAVEN, 
 
 MEMOIR OF THE LATE JOHN PICKARD . 
 OWEN. 
 
 (CHAPTER i. OF THE FAIR HAVEN. *) 
 
 fTlHE subject of this memoir, and author of the work 
 J- which follows it, was born in Goodge Street, 
 Tottenham Court Eoad, London, on the 5th of Feb- 
 ruary 1832. He was my elder brother by about 
 eighteen months. Our father and mother had once 
 been rich, but through a succession of unavoidable 
 misfortunes they were left with but a slender income 
 when my brother and myself were about three and 
 four years old. My father died some five or six years 
 afterwards, and we only recollected him as a singularly 
 gentle and humorous playmate who doted upon us 
 both and never spoke unkindly. 
 
 The charm of such a recollection can never be dis- 
 pelled ; both my brother and myself returned his love 
 with interest, and cherished his memory with the most 
 affectionate regret, from the day on which he left us 
 till the time came that the one of us was again to see 
 him face to face. So sweet and winning was his 
 nature that his slightest wish was our law and 
 whenever we pleased him, no matter how little, he 
 never failed to thank us as though we had done him 
 
 * The first edition of the Fair Haven was published April 1873. 
 
JOHN PICKARD OWEN. 49 
 
 a service which we should have had a perfect right to 
 withhold. How proud were we upon any of these 
 occasions, and how we courted the opportunity of 
 being thanked ! He did indeed well know the art 
 of becoming idolised by his children, and dearly did 
 he prize the results of his own proficiency ; yet truly 
 there was no art about it; all arose spontaneously 
 from the well-spring of a sympathetic nature which 
 was quick to feel as others felt, whether old or young, 
 rich or poor, wise or foolish. On one point alone did 
 he neglect us I refer to our religious education. On 
 all other matters he was the kindest and most careful 
 teacher in the world. Love and gratitude be to his 
 memory ! 
 
 My mother loved us no less ardently than my 
 father, but she was of a quicker temper, and less 
 adept at conciliating affection. She must have been 
 exceedingly handsome when she was young, and was 
 still comely when we first remembered her ; she was 
 also highly accomplished, but she felt my father's loss 
 of fortune more keenly than my father himself, and 
 it preyed upon her mind, though rather for our sake 
 than for her own. Had we not known my father we 
 should have loved her better than any one in the 
 world, but affection goes by comparison, and my father 
 spoiled us for any one but himself; indeed, in after 
 life, I remember my mother's telling me, with many 
 tears, how jealous she had often been of the love we 
 bore him, and how mean she had thought it of him to 
 entrust all scolding or repression to her, so that he 
 might have more than his due share of our affection. 
 Not that I believe my father did this consciously ; still, 
 he so greatly hated scolding that I dare say we might often 
 have got off scot-free when we really deserved reproof 
 
50 SELECTIONS FROM THE FAIR HAVEN. 
 
 had not my mother undertaken the onus of scolding 
 us herself. We therefore naturally feared her more 
 than my father, and fearing more we loved less. For 
 as love casteth out fear, so fear love. 
 
 This must have been hard to bear, and my mother 
 scarcely knew the way to bear it. She tried to up- 
 braid us, in little ways, into loving her as much as my 
 father ; the more she tried this, the less we could suc- 
 ceed in doing it; and so on and so on in a fashion 
 which need not be detailed. Not but what we really 
 loved her deeply, while her affection for us was insur- 
 passable; still we loved her less than we loved my 
 father, and this was the grievance. 
 
 My father entrusted our religious education entirely 
 to my mother. He was himself, I am assured, of a 
 deeply religious turn of mind, and a thoroughly con- 
 sistent member of the Church of England ; but he con- 
 ceived, and perhaps rightly, that it is the mother who 
 should first teach her children to lift their hands in 
 prayer, and impart to them a knowledge of the One in 
 whom we live and move and have our being. My 
 mother accepted the task gladly, for in spite of a cer- 
 tain narrowness of view the natural but deplorable 
 result of her earlier surroundings she was one of the 
 most truly pious women whom I have ever known ; 
 unfortunately for herself and us she had been trained 
 in the lowest school of Evangelical literalism a school 
 which in after life both my brother and myself came 
 to regard as the main obstacle to the complete over- 
 throw of unbelief ; we therefore looked upon it with 
 something stronger than aversion, and for my own part 
 I still deem it perhaps the most insidious enemy which 
 the cause of Christ has ever encountered. But of this 
 more hereafter. 
 
JOHN PICKARD OWEN. 51 
 
 My mother, as I said, threw her whole soul into the 
 work of our religious education. Whatever she be- 
 lieved she believed literally, and, if I may say so, with 
 a harshness of realisation which left little scope for 
 imagination or mystery. Her ideas concerning heaven 
 and her solutions of life's enigmas were clear and simple, 
 but they could only be reconciled with certain obvious 
 facts such as the omnipotence and all-goodness of 
 God by leaving many things absolutely out of sight. 
 And this my mother succeeded effectually in doing. 
 She never doubted that her opinions comprised the 
 truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth ; she 
 therefore made haste to sow the good seed in our 
 tender minds, and so far succeeded that when my 
 brother was four years old he could repeat the Apostles' 
 Creed, the general confession, and the Lord's Prayer 
 without a blunder. My mother made herself believe 
 that he delighted in them ; but, alas ! it was far other- 
 wise ; for strange as it may appear concerning one 
 whose later life was a continual prayer, in childhood 
 he detested nothing so much as being made to pray, 
 and to learn his catechism. In this I am sorry to say 
 we were both heartily of a mind. As for Sunday the 
 less said the better. 
 
 I have already hinted (but as a warning to other 
 parents had better, perhaps, express myself more plainly) 
 that this aversion was probably the result of my mother's 
 undue eagerness to reap an artificial fruit of lip-service, 
 which could have little meaning to the heart of one so 
 young. I believe that the severe check which the 
 natural growth of faith experienced in my brother's 
 case was due almost entirely to this cause, and to the 
 school of literalism in which he had been trained ; but, 
 however this may be, we both of us hated being made 
 
52 SELECTIONS FROM THE FAIR HAVEN. 
 
 to say our prayers. Morning and evening it was our 
 one bugbear, and we would avoid it, as indeed children 
 generally will, by every artifice which we could em- 
 ploy. 
 
 Thus we were in the habit of feigning to be asleep 
 shortly before prayer time, and would gratefully hear 
 my father tell my mother that it was a shame to wake 
 us ; whereon he would carry us up to bed in a state 
 apparently of the profoundest slumber when we were 
 really wide awake and in great fear of detection. For 
 we knew how to pretend to be asleep, but we did not 
 know how we ought to wake again ; there was nothing 
 for it therefore when we were once committed, but to 
 go on sleeping till we were fairly undressed and put to 
 bed, and could wake up safely in the dark. But de- 
 ceit is never long successful, and we were at last igno- 
 miniously exposed. 
 
 It happened one evening that my mother suspected 
 my brother John, and tried to open his little hands 
 which were lying clasped in front of him. Now my 
 brother was as yet very crude and inconsistent in his 
 theories concerning sleep, and had no conception what 
 a real sleeper would do under these circumstances. 
 Fear deprived him of his powers of reflection, and he 
 thus unfortunately concluded that because sleepers, so 
 far as he had observed them, were always motionless, 
 therefore they must be rigid and incapable of motion ; 
 and indeed that any movement, under any circum- 
 stances (for from his earliest childhood he liked to 
 carry his theories to their legitimate conclusion), would 
 be physically impossible for one who was really sleep- 
 ing ; forgetful, oh ! unhappy one, of the flexibility of 
 his own body on being carried up stairs, and, more un- 
 happy still, ignorant of the art of waking. He there- 
 
JOHN PICKARD OWEN. 53 
 
 fore clenched his fingers harder and harder as he felt 
 my mother trying to unfold them, while his head hung 
 listless, and his eyes were closed as though he were 
 sleeping sweetly. It is needless to detail the agony of 
 shame that followed. My mother begged my father 
 to box his ears, which my father flatly refused to do. 
 Then she boxed them herself, and there followed a 
 scene, and a day or two of disgrace for both of us. 
 
 Shortly after this there happened another misad- 
 venture. A lady came to stay with my mother, and 
 was to sleep in a bed that had been brought into our 
 nursery, for my father's fortunes had already failed, 
 and we were living in a humble way. We were still 
 but four and five years old, so the arrangement was 
 not unnatural, and it was assumed that we should be 
 asleep before the lady went to bed, and be down stairs 
 before she would get up in the morning. But the 
 arrival of this lady and her being put to sleep in the 
 nursery were great events to us in those days, and 
 being particularly wanted to go to sleep, we of course 
 sat up in bed talking and keeping ourselves awake till 
 she should come up stairs. Perhaps we had fancied 
 that she would give us something, but if so we were 
 disappointed. However, whether this was the case or 
 not, we were wide awake when our visitor came to bed, 
 and having no particular object to gain, we made no 
 pretence of sleeping. The lady kissed us both, told 
 us to lie still and go to sleep like good children, and 
 then began doing her hair. 
 
 I remember this was the occasion on which my 
 brother discovered a good many things in connection 
 with the fair sex which had hitherto been beyond his 
 ken; more especially that the mass of petticoats and 
 clothes which envelop the female form were not, as he 
 
54 SELECTIONS FROM THE FAIR HAVEN. 
 
 expressed it to me, " all solid woman, " but that women 
 were not in reality more substantially built than men, 
 and had legs as much as he had a fact which he had 
 never yet realised. On this he for a long time 
 considered them as impostors, who had wronged him 
 by leading him to suppose that they had far more 
 " body in them " (so he said) than he now found they 
 had. 
 
 This was a sort of thing which he regarded with 
 stern moral reprobation. If he had been old enough 
 to have a solicitor I believe he would have put the 
 matter into his hands, as well as certain other things 
 which had lately troubled him. For but recently my 
 mother had bought a fowl, and he had seen it plucked, 
 and the inside taken out ; his irritation had been 
 extreme on discovering that fowls were not all solid 
 flesh, but that their insides and these formed, as it 
 appeared to him, an enormous percentage of the bird 
 were perfectly useless. He was now beginning to 
 understand that sheep and cows were also hollow as 
 far as good meat was concerned ; the flesh they had 
 was only a mouthful in comparison with what they 
 ought to have considering their apparent bulk ; insig- 
 nificant, mere skin and bone covering a cavern. What 
 right had they, or anything else, to assert themselves 
 as so big, and prove so empty ? And now this dis- 
 covery of woman's falsehood was quite too much for 
 him. The world itself was hollow, made up of shams 
 and delusions, full of sound and fury signifying 
 nothing. 
 
 Truly a prosaic young gentleman enough. Every- 
 thing with him was to be exactly in all its parts what 
 it appeared on the face of it, and everything was to 
 go on doing exactly what it had been doing hitherto. 
 
PICKARD OWEN. 55 
 
 If a thing looked solid, it was to be very solid; if 
 hollow, very hollow ; nothing was to be half and half, 
 and nothing was to change unless he had himself 
 already become accustomed to its times and manners 
 of changing ; there were to be no exceptions and no 
 contradictions ; all things were to be perfectly con- 
 sistent, and all premisses to be carried with extremest 
 rigour to their legitimate conclusions. Heaven was to 
 be very neat (for he was always tidy himself), and 
 free from sudden shocks to the nervous system, such 
 as those caused by dogs barking at him, or cows driven 
 in the streets. God was to resemble my father, and 
 the Holy Spirit to bear some sort of indistinct analogy 
 to my mother. 
 
 Such were the ideal theories of his childhood 
 unconsciously formed, but very firmly believed in. As 
 he grew up he made such modifications as were forced 
 upon Mm by enlarged perceptions, but every modifi- 
 cation was an effort to him, in spite of a continual 
 and successful resistance to what he recognised as his 
 initial mental defect. 
 
 I may perhaps be allowed to say here, in reference 
 to a remark in the preceding paragraph, that both my 
 brother and myself used to notice it as an almost 
 invariable rule that children's earliest ideas of God 
 are modelled upon the character of their father if 
 they have one. Should the father be kind, considerate, 
 full of the warmest love, fond of showing it, and 
 reserved only about his displeasure, the child, having 
 learned to look upon God as his Heavenly Father 
 through the Lord's Prayer and our Church Services, 
 will feel towards God as he does towards his own 
 father ; this conception will stick to a man for years 
 and years after he has attained manhood probably it 
 
56 SELECTIONS FROM THE FAIR HAVEN. 
 
 will never leave him. On the other hand, if a man 
 has found his earthly father harsh and uncongenial, 
 his conception of his Heavenly Parent will be painful. 
 He will begin by seeing God as an exaggerated like- 
 ness of his father. He will therefore shrink from 
 Him. The rottenness of still-born love in the heart of 
 a child poisons the blood of the soul, and hence, later, 
 crime. 
 
 To return, however, to the lady. When she had 
 put on her night-gown, she knelt down by her bed-side 
 and, to our consternation, began to say her prayers. 
 This was a cruel blow to both of us ; we had always 
 been under the impression that grown-up people were 
 not made to say their prayers, and the idea of any 
 one saying them of his or her own accord had never 
 occurred to us as possible. Of course the lady would 
 not say her prayers if she were not obliged ; and yet 
 she did say them ; therefore she must be obliged to 
 say them; therefore w r e should be obliged to say them, 
 and this was a great disappointment. Awe-struck and 
 open-mouthed we listened while the lady prayed aloud 
 and with a good deal of pathos for many virtues and 
 blessings which I do not now remember, and finally 
 for my father and mother and for both of us shortly 
 afterwards she rose, blew out the light and got into 
 bed. Every word that she said had confirmed our 
 worst apprehensions ; it was just what we had been 
 taught to say ourselves. 
 
 Next morning we compared notes and drew some 
 painful inferences ; but in the course of the day our 
 spirits rallied. We agreed that there were many 
 mysteries in connection with life and things which it 
 was high time to unravel, and that an opportunity was 
 now afforded us which might not readily occur again. 
 
JOHN PICKARD OWEN. 57 
 
 All we had to do was to be true to ourselves and equal 
 to the occasion. We laid our plans with great astute- 
 ness. We would be fast asleep when the lady came 
 up to bed, but our heads should be turned in the 
 direction of her bed, and covered with clothes, all but 
 a single peep-hole. My brother, as the eldest, had 
 clearly a right to be nearest the lady, but I could see 
 sufficiently, and could depend on his reporting faithfully 
 whatever should escape me. 
 
 There was no chance of her giving us anything 
 if she had meant to do so she would have done it 
 sooner; she might, indeed, consider the moment of 
 her departure as the most auspicious for this purpose, 
 but then she was not going yet, and the interval was 
 at our own disposal. We spent the afternoon in trying 
 to learn to snore, but we were not certain about it, and 
 in the end concluded that as snoring was not de rigueur 
 we had better dispense with it. 
 
 We were put to bed ; the light was taken away ; 
 we were told to go to sleep, and promised faithfully 
 that we would do so ; the tongue indeed swore, but 
 the mind was unsworn. It was agreed that we should 
 keep pinching one another to prevent our going to 
 sleep. We did so at frequent intervals; at last our 
 patience was rewarded with the heavy creak, as of a 
 stout elderly lady labouring up the stairs, and presently 
 our victim entered. 
 
 To cut a long story short, the lady on satisfying 
 herself that we were asleep, never said her prayers 
 at all ; during the remainder of her visit whenever 
 she found us awake she always said them, but when 
 she thought we were asleep, she never prayed. I 
 should perhaps say that we had the matter out with 
 her before she left, and that the consequences were 
 
58 SELECTIONS FROM THE FAIR HAVEN. 
 
 unpleasant for all parties ; they added to the troubles 
 in which we were already involved as to our prayers, 
 and were indirectly among the earliest causes which 
 led my brother to look with scepticism upon religion. 
 
 For awhile, however, all went on as though nothing 
 had happened. An effect of distrust, indeed, remained 
 after the cause had been forgotten, but my brother was 
 still too young to oppose anything that my mother 
 told him, and to all outward appearance he grew in 
 grace no less rapidly than in stature. 
 
 For years we led a quiet and eventless life, broken 
 only by the one great sorrow of our father's death. 
 Shortly after this we were sent to a day school in 
 Bloomsbury. We were neither of us very happy 
 there, but my brother, who always took kindly to 
 his books, picked up a fair knowledge of Latin and 
 Greek ; he also learned to draw, and to exercise him- 
 self a little in English composition. When I was 
 about fourteen my mother capitalised a part of her 
 income and started me off to America, where she had 
 friends who could give me a helping hand; by their 
 kindness I was enabled, after an absence of twenty 
 years, to return with a handsome income, but not, alas ! 
 before the death of my mother. 
 
 Up to the time of my departure my mother con- 
 tinued to read the Bible with us and explain it. She 
 had become enamoured of those millenarian opinions 
 which laid hold of so many some twenty- five or thirty 
 years ago. The Apocalypse was perhaps her favourite 
 book in the Bible, and she was imbued with a con- 
 viction that all the many and varied horrors with which 
 it teems were upon the eve of their accomplishment. 
 The year eighteen hundred and forty-eight was to be 
 (as indeed it was) a time of general bloodshed and con- 
 
JOHN PICKARD OWEN. 59 
 
 fusion, while in eighteen hundred and sixty-six, should 
 it please God to spare her, her eyes would be gladdened 
 by the visible descent of the Son of Man with a shout, 
 with the voice of the Archangel, with the trump of 
 God, and the dead in Christ should rise first ; then 
 she, as one of them that were alive, would be caught 
 up with other saints into the air, and would possibly 
 receive while rising some distinguishing token of con- 
 fidence and approbation which should fall with due 
 impressiveness upon the surrounding multitude ; then 
 would come the consummation of all things, and she 
 would be ever with the Lord. She died peaceably in 
 her bed before she could know that a commercial panic 
 was the nearest approach to the fulfilment of prophecy 
 which the year eighteen hundred and sixty-six brought 
 forth. 
 
 These opinions of my mother's injured her naturally 
 healthy and vigorous mind by leading her to indulge 
 in all manner of dreamy and fanciful interpretations 
 of Scripture, which any but the most narrow literalist 
 would feel at once to be untenable. Thus several 
 times she expressed to us her conviction that my 
 brother and myself were to be the two witnesses men- 
 tioned in the eleventh chapter of the Book of Bevela- 
 tion, and dilated upon the gratification she should ex- 
 perience upon finding that we had indeed been reserved 
 for a position of such distinction. We were as yet 
 mere children, and naturally took all for granted that 
 our mother told us ; we therefore made a careful exam- 
 ination of the passage which threw light upon our future. 
 On finding that the prospect was gloomy and full of 
 bloodshed we protested against the honours which were 
 intended for us, more especially when we reflected that 
 the mother of the two witnesses was not menaced iu 
 
6o SELECTIONS FROM THE FAIR HAVEN. 
 
 Scripture with any particular discomfort. If we were 
 to be martyrs, my mother ought to wish to be a martyr 
 too, whereas nothing was farther from her intention. 
 Her notion clearly was that we were to be massacred 
 somewhere in the streets of London, in consequence of 
 the anti- Christian machinations of the Pope ; that after 
 lying about unburied for three days and a half we were 
 to come to life again ; and finally, that we should con- 
 spicuously ascend to heaven, in front, perhaps, of the 
 Foundling Hospital. 
 
 She was not herself indeed to share either our martyr- 
 dom or our glorification, but was to survive us many 
 years on earth, living in an odour of great sanctity 
 and reflected splendour, as the central and most august 
 figure in a select society. She would perhaps be able 
 indirectly, through her sons' influence with the Almighty, 
 to have a voice in most of the arrangements both of 
 this world and of the next. If all this were to come 
 true (and things seemed very like it), those friends 
 who ha 1 neglected us in our adversity would not find 
 it too easy to be restored to favour, however greatly 
 they might desire it that is to say, they would not 
 have found it too easy in the case of one less mag- 
 nanimous and spiritually-minded than herself. My 
 mother said but little of the above directly, but the 
 fragments which occasionally escaped her were pregnant, 
 and on looking back it is easy to perceive that she must 
 have been building one of the most stupendous aerial 
 fabrics that have ever been reared. 
 
 I have given the above in its more amusing aspect, 
 and am half afraid that I may appear to be making a 
 jest of weakness on the part of one of the most de- 
 votedly unselfish mothers who have ever existed. But 
 one can love while smiling, and the very wildness of 
 
JOHN PICKARD OWEN. 61 
 
 my mother's dream serves to show how entirely her 
 whole soul was occupied with the things which are 
 above. To her, religion was all in all ; the earth was 
 but a place of pilgrimage only so far important as it 
 was a possible road to heaven. She impressed this 
 upon both of us by every word and action instant in 
 season and out of season, so that she might but fill us 
 more deeply with a sense of the things belonging to 
 our peace. 
 
 But the inevitable consequences happened ; my 
 mother had aimed too high and had overshot her mark. 
 The influence indeed of her guileless and unworldly 
 nature remained impressed upon my brother even 
 during the time of his extremest unbelief (perhaps his 
 ultimate safety is in the main referable to this cause, 
 and to the happy memories of my father, which had 
 predisposed him to love God), but my mother had 
 insisted on the most minute verbal accuracy of every 
 part of the Bible ; she had also dwelt upon the duty 
 of independent research, and on the necessity of 
 giving up everything rather than assent to things which 
 our conscience did not assent to. No one could have 
 more effectually taught us to try to think the truth, 
 and we had taken her at her word because our hearts 
 told us that she was right. But she required three 
 incompatible things. When my brother grew older he 
 came to feel that independent and unflinching examina- 
 tion, with a determination to abide by the results, 
 would lead him to reject the point which to my mother 
 was more important than any other I mean the 
 absolute accuracy of the Gospel records. My mother 
 was inexpressibly shocked at hearing my brother doubt 
 the authenticity of the Epistle to the Hebrews ; and 
 then, as it appeared to him, she tried to make him 
 
62 SELECTIONS FROM THE FAIR HAVEN. 
 
 violate the duties of examination and candour which he 
 had learnt too thoroughly to unlearn. Thereon came 
 pain and an estrangement which was none the less pro- 
 found for being mutually concealed. It seemed to my 
 mother that he would not give up the wilfulness of his 
 own opinions for her and for his Eedeemer's sake. To 
 him it seemed that he was ready to give up not only 
 his mother but Christ Himself for Christ's sake. 
 
 This estrangement was the gradual work of some 
 five or six years, during which my brother was between 
 eleven and seventeen years old. At seventeen, I am 
 told that he was remarkably well informed and clever. 
 His manners were, like my father's, singularly genial, 
 and his appearance very prepossessing. He had as yet 
 no doubt concerning the soundness of any fundamental 
 Christian doctrine, but his mind was already too active 
 to allow of his being contented with my mother's child- 
 like faith. There were points on which he did not 
 indeed doubt, but which it would none the less be 
 interesting to consider ; such for example as the per- 
 fectibility of the regenerate Christian, and the meaning 
 of the mysterious central chapters of the Epistle to the 
 Eomans. He was engaged in these researches though 
 still only a boy, when an event occurred which gave the 
 first real shock to his faith. 
 
 He was accustomed to teach in a school for the 
 poorest children every Sunday afternoon, a task for 
 which his patience and good temper well fitted him. 
 On one occasion, however, while he was explaining 
 the effect of baptism to one of his favourite pupils, he 
 discovered to his great surprise that the boy had never 
 been baptized. He pushed his inquiries further, and 
 found that out of the fifteen boys in his class only five 
 had been baptized, and, not only so, but that no differ- 
 
JOHN PICKARD OWEN. 63 
 
 ence in disposition or conduct could be discovered be- 
 tween the regenerate boys and the unregenerate. The 
 good and bad boys were distributed in proportions equal 
 to the respective numbers of the baptized and unbap- 
 tized. In spite of a certain impetuosity of natural 
 character, he was also of a matter-of-fact and experi- 
 mental turn of mind ; he therefore went through the 
 whole school, which numbered about a hundred boys, 
 and found out who had been baptized and who had 
 not. The same results appeared. The majority had 
 not been baptized ; yet the good and bad dispositions 
 were so distributed as to preclude all possibility of 
 maintaining that the baptized boys were better than 
 the unbaptized. 
 
 The reader may smile at the idea of any one's faith 
 being troubled by a fact of which the explanation is so 
 obvious, but as a matter of fact my brother was seri- 
 ously and painfully shocked. The teacher to whom he 
 applied for a solution of the difficulty was not a man 
 of any real power, and reported my brother to the 
 rector for having disturbed the school by his inquiries. 
 The rector was old and self-opinionated ; the difficulty, 
 indeed, was plainly as new to him as it had been to 
 my brother, but instead of saying so at once, and 
 referring to any recognised theological authority, he 
 tried to put him off with words which seemed intended 
 to silence him rather than to satisfy him ; finally he 
 lost his temper, and my brother fell under suspicion of 
 unorthodoxy. 
 
 This kind of treatment did not answer with my 
 brother. He alludes to it resentfully in the introduc- 
 tory chapter of his book. He became suspicious that 
 a preconceived opinion was being defended at the ex- 
 pense of honest scrutiny, and was thus driven upon 
 
64 SELECTIONS FROM THE FAIR HAVEN. 
 
 his own unaided investigation. The result may be 
 guessed : he began to go astray, and strayed further 
 and further. The children of God, he reasoned, the 
 members of Christ and inheritors of the kingdom of 
 heaven, were no more spiritually minded than the 
 children of the world and the devil. Was then the 
 grace of God a gift which left no trace whatever upon 
 those who were possessed of it ? A thing the presence 
 or absence of which might be ascertained by consulting 
 the parish registry, but was not discernible in conduct ? 
 The grace of man was more clearly perceptible than 
 this. Assuredly there must be a screw loose some- 
 where, which, for aught he knew, might be jeopardising 
 the salvation of all Christendom. Where then was 
 this loose screw to be found ? 
 
 He concluded after some months of reflection that 
 the mischief was caused by the system of sponsors and 
 by infant baptism. ' He, therefore, to my mother's 
 inexpressible grief, joined the Baptists, and was im- 
 mersed in a pond near Dorking. With the Baptists he 
 remained quiet about three months, and then began to 
 quarrel with his instructors as to their doctrine of pre- 
 destination. Shortly afterwards he came accidentally 
 upon a fascinating stranger who was no less struck 
 with my brother than my brother with him, and this 
 gentleman, who turned out to be a Eoman Catholic 
 missionary, landed him in the Church of Eome, where 
 he felt sure that he had now found rest for his soul. 
 But here, too, he was mistaken ; after about two years 
 he rebelled against the stifling of all free inquiry ; on 
 this rebellion the flood-gates of scepticism were opened, 
 and he was soon battling with unbelief. He then fell 
 in with one who was a pure Deist, and was shorn of 
 every shred of dogma which he had ever held, except 
 
JOHN PICKARD OWEN. 65 
 
 a belief in the personality and providence of the 
 Creator. 
 
 On reviewing his letters written to me about this 
 time, I am painfully struck with the manner in which 
 they show that all these pitiable vagaries were to be 
 traced to a single cause a cause which still exists to 
 the misleading of hundreds of thousands, and which, I 
 fear, seems likely to continue in full force for many a 
 year to come I mean, to a false system of training 
 which teaches people to regard Christianity as a thing 
 one and indivisible, to be accepted entirely in the 
 strictest reading of the letter, or to be rejected as 
 absolutely untrue. The fact is, that all permanent 
 truth is as one of those coal measures, a seam of which 
 lies near the surface, and even crops up above the 
 ground, but which is generally of an inferior quality 
 and soon worked out ; beneath it there comes a labour 
 of sand and clay, and then at last the true seam of 
 precious quality, and in virtually inexhaustible supply. 
 The truth which is on the surface is rarely the whole 
 truth. It is seldom until this has been worked out 
 and done with as in the case of the apparent flatness 
 of the earth that unchangeable truth is discovered. 
 It is the glory of the Lord to conceal a matter : it is 
 the glory of the king to find it out. If my brother, 
 from whom I have taken the above illustration, had 
 had some judicious and wide-minded friend, to correct 
 and supplement the mainly admirable principles which 
 had been instilled into him by my mother, he would 
 have been saved years of spiritual wandering ; but, as 
 it was, he fell in with one after another, each in his 
 own way as literal and unspiritual as the other each 
 impressed with one aspect of religious truth, and with 
 one only. In the end he became perhaps the widest- 
 
 E 
 
 one ( 
 
66 SELECTIONS FROM THE FAIR HAVEN. 
 
 minded and most original thinker whom I have ever 
 met ; but no one from his early manhood could have 
 augured this result ; on the contrary, he showed every 
 sign of being likely to develop into one of those who 
 can never see more than one side of 'a question at a 
 time, in spite of their seeing that side with singular 
 clearness of mental vision. In after life, he often met 
 with mere lads who seemed to him to be years and 
 years in advance of what he had been at their age, and 
 would say, smiling, " With a great sum obtained I 
 this freedom ; but thou wast free-born." 
 
 Yet when one comes to think of it, a late develop- 
 ment and laborious growth are generally more fruitful 
 than those which are over early luxuriant. Drawing 
 an illustration from the art of painting, with which he 
 was well acquainted, my brother used to say that all 
 the greatest painters had begun with a hard and 
 precise manner, from which they had only broken after 
 several years of effort ; and that in like manner all 
 the early schools were founded upon definiteness of 
 outline to the exclusion of truth of effect. This may 
 be true ; but in my brother's case there was something 
 even more unpromising than this ; there was a com- 
 monness, so to speak, of mental execution, from which 
 no one could have foreseen his after-emancipation. 
 Yet in the course of time he was indeed emancipated 
 to the very uttermost, while his bonds will, I firmly 
 trust, be found to have been of inestimable service to 
 the whole human race. 
 
 For although it was so many years before he was 
 enabled to see the Christian scheme as a whole, or 
 even to conceive the idea that there was any whole 
 at all, other than each one of the stages of opinion 
 through which he was at the time passing ; yet when 
 
JOHN PICKARD OWEN. 67 
 
 the idea was at length presented to him by one whom 
 I must not name, the discarded fragments of his faith 
 assumed shape, and formed themselves into a con- 
 sistently organised scheme. Then became apparent 
 the value of his knowledge of the details of so many 
 different sides of Christian verity. Buried in the 
 details, he had hitherto ignored the fact that they 
 were only the unessential developments of certain 
 component parts. Awakening to the perception of 
 the whole after an intimate acquaintance with the 
 details, he was able to realise the position and 
 meaning of all that he had hitherto experienced in a 
 way which has been vouchsafed to few, if any others. 
 
 Thus he became truly a broad Churchman. Not 
 broad in the ordinary and ill-considered use of the 
 term (for the broad Churchman is as little able to 
 sympathise with Romanists, extreme High Church- 
 men and Dissenters, as these are with himself he 
 is only one of a sect which is called by the name 
 of broad, though it is no broader than its own base), 
 but in the true sense of being able to believe in the 
 naturalness, legitimacy, and truth qiid Christianity 
 even of those doctrines which seem to stand most 
 widely and irreconcilably asunder. 
 
SELECTIONS FKOM LIFE AND HABIT, 
 
 ON CERTAIN ACQUIRED HABITS. 
 (FROM CHAPTER i. OF LIFE AND HABIT.*) 
 
 TT will be our business in the following chapters to 
 -*- consider whether the unconsciousness, or quasi- 
 unconsciousness, with which we perform certain ac- 
 quired actions, throws any light upon Embryology and 
 inherited instincts, and otherwise to follow the train 
 of thought which the class of actions above mentioned 
 may suggest. More especially I propose to consider 
 them in so far as they bear upon the origin of species 
 and the continuation of life by successive generations, 
 whether in the animal or vegetable kingdoms. 
 
 Taking then, the art of playing the piano as an 
 example of the kind of action we are in search of, we 
 observe that a practised player will perform very diffi- 
 cult pieces apparently without effort, often, indeed, 
 while thinking and talking of something quite other 
 than his music ; yet he will play accurately and, pos- 
 sibly, with much expression. If he has been playing 
 a fugue, say in four parts, he will have kept each part 
 well distinct, in such a manner as to prove that his 
 mind was not prevented, by its other occupations, 
 from consciously or unconsciously following four dis- 
 tinct trains of musical thought at the same time, nor 
 
 * The first edition of Life and Habit was published in December, 1877. 
 
ON CERTAIN ACQUIRED HABITS. 69 
 
 from making his fingers act in exactly the required 
 manner as regards each note of each part. 
 
 It commonly happens that in the course of four or 
 five minutes a player may have struck four or five 
 thousand notes. If we take into consideration the 
 rests, dotted notes, accidentals, variations of time, &c., 
 we shall find his attention must have been exercised 
 on many more occasions than when he was actually 
 striking notes : so that it may not be too much to 
 say that the attention of a first-rate player has been 
 exercised to an infinitesiinally small extent but 
 still truly exercised on as many as ten thousand 
 occasions within the space of five minutes, for no note 
 can be struck nor point attended to without a certain 
 amount of attention, no matter how rapidly or uncon- 
 sciously given. 
 
 Moreover, each act of attention has been followed 
 by an act of volition, and each act of volition by a 
 muscular action, which is composed of many minor 
 actions ; some so small that we can no more follow 
 them than the player himself can perceive them ; 
 nevertheless, it may have been perfectly plain that the 
 player was not attending to what he was doing, but 
 was listening to conversation on some other subject, 
 not to say joining in it himself. If he has been play- 
 ing the violin, he may have done all the above, and 
 may also have been walking about. Herr Joachim 
 would unquestionably be able to do all that has here 
 been described. 
 
 So complete may be the player's unconsciousness 
 of the attention he is giving, and the brain power he 
 is exerting, that we may find it difficult to awaken 
 his attention to any particular part of his performance 
 without putting him out. Indeed we cannot do so. 
 
70 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 We observe that he finds it hardly less difficult to 
 compass a voluntary consciousness of what he has 
 once learnt so thoroughly that it has passed, so to 
 speak, into the domain of unconsciousness, than he 
 found it to learn the note or passage in the first 
 instance. The effort after a second consciousness of 
 detail baffles him compels him to turn to his music 
 or play slowly. In fact it seems as though he knows 
 the piece too well to be able to know that he knows 
 it, and is only conscious of knowing those passages 
 which he does not know so thoroughly. 
 
 At the end of his performance, his power of re- 
 collecting appears to be no less annihilated than was 
 his consciousness of attention and volition. Tor of 
 the thousands of acts requiring the exercise of both 
 the one and the other, which he has done during the 
 five minutes, we will say, of his performance, he will 
 remember hardly one when it is over. If he calls to 
 mind anything beyond the main fact that he has 
 played such and such a piece, it will probably be 
 some passage which he has found more difficult than 
 the others, and with the like of which he has not been 
 so long familiar. All the rest he will forget as com- 
 pletely as the breath which he has drawn while 
 playing. 
 
 He finds it difficult to remember even the difficulties 
 he experienced in learning to play. A few may have 
 so impressed him that they remain with him, but the 
 greater part will have escaped him as completely as the 
 remembrance of what he ate, or how he put on his 
 clothes, this day ten years ago ; nevertheless, it is 
 plain he does in reality remember more than he re- 
 members remembering, for he avoids mistakes which 
 he made at one time, and his performance proves that 
 
ON CERTAIN ACQUIRED HABITS. 71 
 
 all the notes are in his memory, though if called upon 
 to play such and such a bar at random from the 
 middle of the piece, and neither more nor less, he will 
 probably say that he cannot remember it unless he 
 begins from the beginning of the phrase which leads 
 to it. 
 
 In spite, however, of the performer's present pro- 
 ficiency, our experience of the manner in which pro- 
 ficiency is usually acquired warrants us in assuming 
 that there must have been a time when what is now 
 so easy as to be done without conscious effort of the 
 brain was only done by means of brain work which 
 was very keenly perceived, even to fatigue and positive 
 distress. Even now, if the player is playing something 
 the like of which he has not met before, we observe he 
 pauses and becomes immediately conscious of attention. 
 
 We draw the inference, therefore, as regards piano- 
 forte or violin playing, that the more the familiarity or 
 knowledge of the art, the less is there consciousness of 
 such knowledge ; even so far as that there should be 
 almost as much difficulty in awakening consciousness 
 which has become, so to speak, latent, a consciousness 
 of that which is known too well to admit of recognised 
 self-analysis while the knowledge is being exercised 
 as in creating a consciousness of that which is not yet 
 well enough known to be properly designated as known 
 at all. On the other hand, we observe that the less 
 the familiarity or knowledge, the greater the conscious- 
 ness of whatever knowledge there is. 
 
 To sum up, then, briefly. It would appear as 
 though perfect knowledge and perfect ignorance were 
 extremes which meet and become indistinguishable 
 from one another ; so also perfect volition and perfect 
 
72 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 absence of volition, perfect memory and perfect forget- 
 fulness ; for we are unconscious of knowing, willing, 
 or remembering, either from not yet having known or 
 willed, or from knowing and willing so well and so 
 intensely as to be no longer conscious of either. 
 Conscious knowledge and volition are of attention ; 
 attention is of suspense ; suspense is of doubt ; doubt 
 is of uncertainty ; uncertainty is of ignorance ; so that 
 the mere fact of conscious knowing or willing implies 
 the presence of more or less novelty and doubt. 
 
 It would also appear as a general principle on a 
 superficial view of the foregoing instances (and the 
 reader may readily supply himself with others which 
 are perhaps more to the purpose), that unconscious 
 knowledge and unconscious volition are never acquired 
 otherwise than as the result of experience, familiarity, 
 or habit; so that whenever we observe a person able 
 to do any complicated action unconsciously, we may 
 assume both that he must have done it very often 
 before he could acquire so great proficiency, and also 
 that there must have been a time when he did not 
 know how to do it at all. 
 
 We may assume that there was a time when he 
 was yet so nearly on the point of neither knowing nor 
 willing perfectly, that he was quite alive to whatever 
 knowledge or volition he could exert; going further 
 back, we shall find him still more keenly alive to a 
 less perfect knowledge ; earlier still, we find him well 
 aware that he does not know nor will correctly, but 
 trying hard to do both the one and the other; and so 
 on, back and back, till both difficulty and consciousness 
 become little more than " a sound of going," as it were, 
 in the brain, a flitting to and fro of something barely 
 recognisable as the desire to will or know at all much 
 
ON CERTAIN ACQUIRED HABITS. 73 
 
 less as the desire to know or will definitely this or 
 that. Finally they retreat beyond our ken into the 
 repose the inorganic kingdom -of as yet unawakened 
 interest. 
 
 In either case the repose of perfect ignorance or 
 of perfect knowledge disturbance is troublesome. 
 When first starting on an Atlantic steamer, our rest is 
 hindered by the screw ; after a short time, it is hindered 
 if the screw stops. A uniform impression is practically 
 no impression. One cannot either learn or unlearn 
 without pains or pain. 
 
( 74 ) 
 
 CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS KNOWERS 
 -THE LAW AND GRACE. 
 
 (FROM CHAPTER n. OF LIFE AND HABIT.) 
 
 it is that we know best what we are least 
 ^ conscious of knowing, or at any rate least able to 
 prove ; as, for example, our own existence, or that there 
 is a country England. If any one asks us for proof on 
 matters of this sort, we have none ready, and are justly 
 annoyed at being called to consider what we regard 
 as settled questions. Again, there is hardly anything 
 which so much affects our actions as the centre of the 
 earth (unless, perhaps, it be that still hotter and more 
 unprofitable spot the centre of the universe), for we 
 are incessantly trying to get as near it as circum- 
 stances will allow, or to avoid getting nearer than is for 
 the time being convenient. Walking, running, standing, 
 sitting, lying, waking, or sleeping, from birth till death 
 it is a paramount object with us ; even after death 
 if it be not fanciful to say so it is one of the few 
 things of which what is left of us can still feel the in- 
 fluence; yet what can engross less of our attention 
 than this dark and distant spot so many thousands of 
 miles away ? 
 
 The air we breathe, so long as it is neither too hot 
 nor cold, nor rough, nor full of smoke that is to say, 
 so long as it is in that state with which we are best 
 
CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS KNOWERS. 75 
 
 acquainted seldom enters into our thoughts ; yet there 
 is hardly anything with which we are more incessantly 
 occupied night and day. 
 
 Indeed, it is not too much to say that we have no 
 really profound knowledge upon any subject no know- 
 ledge on the strength of which we are ready to act at 
 moments unhesitatingly without either preparation or 
 after-thought till we have left off feeling conscious of 
 the possession of such knowledge, and of the grounds 
 on which it rests. A lesson thoroughly learned must 
 be like the air which feels so light, though press- 
 ing so heavily against us, because every pore of our 
 skin is saturated, so to speak, with it on all sides 
 equally. This perfection of knowledge sometimes ex- 
 tends to positive disbelief in the thing known, so that 
 the most thorough knower shall believe himself alto- 
 gether ignorant. No thief, for example, is such an 
 utter thief so good a thief as the kleptomaniac. 
 Until he has become a kleptomaniac, and can steal a 
 horse as it were by a reflex action, he is still but half 
 a thief, with many un thievish notions still clinging to 
 him. Yet the kleptomaniac is probably unaware that 
 he can steal at all, much less that he can steal so well 
 He would be shocked if he were to know the truth. 
 So again, no man is a great hypocrite until he has left 
 off knowing that he is a hypocrite. The great hypo- 
 crites of the world are almost invariably under the 
 impression that they are among the very few really 
 honest people to be found ; and, as we must all have 
 observed, it is rare to find any one strongly under this 
 impression without ourselves having good reason to 
 differ from him. 
 
 Again, it has been often and very truly said that it 
 is not the conscious and self-styled sceptic, as Shelley, 
 
76 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 for example, who is the true unbeliever. Such a man 
 as Shelley will, as indeed his life abundantly proves, 
 have more in common than not with the true unself- 
 conscious believer. Gallio again, whose indifference to 
 religious animosities has won him the cheapest immor- 
 tality which, so far as I can remember, was ever yet 
 won, was probably, if the truth were known, a person 
 of the sincerest piety. It is the unconscious un- 
 believer who is the true infidel, however greatly he 
 would be surprised to know the truth. Mr. Spurgeon 
 was reported as having asked God to remove Lord 
 Beaconsfield from office " as soon as possible" There 
 lurks a more profound distrust of God's power in these 
 words than in almost any open denial of His existence. 
 
 In like manner, the most perfect humour and irony 
 is generally quite unconscious. Examples of both are 
 frequently given by men whom the world considers as 
 deficient in humour; it is more probably true that 
 these persons are unconscious of their own delightful 
 power through the very mastery and perfection with 
 which they hold it. There is a play, for instance, of 
 genuine fun in some of the more serious scientific and 
 theological journals which for some time past we have 
 looked for in vain in " ." 
 
 The following extract, from a journal which I will 
 not advertise, may serve as an example : 
 
 " Lycurgus, when they had abandoned to his revenge 
 him who had put out his eyes, took him home, and 
 the punishment he inflicted upon him was sedulous in- 
 structions to virtue." Yet this truly comic paper does 
 not probably know that it is comic, any more than 
 the kleptomaniac knows that he steals, or than John 
 Milton knew he was a humorist when he wrote a 
 hymn upon the circumcision, and spent his honey- 
 
CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS KNOWERS. 77 
 
 moon in composing a treatise on divorce. No more 
 again did Goethe know how exquisitely humorous he 
 was when he wrote, in his Wilhelm Meister, that a 
 beautiful tear glistened in Theresa's right eye, and then 
 went on to explain that it glistened in her right eye 
 and not in her left, because she had had a wart on 
 her left which had been removed and successfully. 
 Goethe probably wrote this without a chuckle ; he 
 believed what a good many people who have never 
 read Wilhelm Meister believe still, namely, that it was 
 a work full of pathos of fine and tender feeling ; yet 
 a less consummate humorist must have felt that there 
 was scarcely a paragraph in it from first to last the 
 chief merit of which did not lie in its absurdity. 
 
 But enough has perhaps been said. As the fish in 
 the sea, or the bird in the air, so unreasoningly and 
 inarticulately safe must a man feel before he can be 
 said to know. It is only those who are ignorant and 
 uncultivated who can know anything at all in a proper 
 sense of the words. Cultivation will breed in any 
 man a certainty of the uncertainty even of his most 
 assured convictions. It is perhaps fortunate for our 
 comfort that we can none of us be cultivated upon 
 very many subjects, so that considerable scope for 
 assurance will still remain to us; but however this 
 may be, we certainly observe it as a fact that those 
 are the greatest men who are most uncertain in spite 
 of certainty, and at the same time most certain in 
 spite of uncertainty, and who are thus best able to feel 
 that there is nothing in such complete harmony with 
 itself as a flat contradiction in terms. For nature 
 hates that any principle should breed, so to speak, 
 hermaphroditically, but will give to each an help meet 
 for it which shall cross it and be the undoing of it ; as 
 
78 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 in the case of descent with modification, of which the 
 essence is that every offspring resembles its parents, 
 and yet, at the same time, that no offspring resembles 
 its parents. But for the slightly irritating stimulant 
 of this perpetual crossing, we should pass our lives un- 
 consciously as though in slumber. 
 
 Until we have got to understand that though black 
 is not white, yet it may be whiter than white itself 
 (and any painter will readily paint that which shall 
 show obviously as black, yet it shall be whiter than 
 that which shall show no less obviously as white), we 
 may be good logicians, but we are still poor reasoners. 
 Knowledge is in an inchoate state as long as it is 
 capable of logical treatment; it must be transmuted 
 into that sense or instinct which rises altogether above 
 the sphere in which words can have being at all, other- 
 wise it is not yet incarnate. For sense is to knowledge 
 what conscience is to reasoning about right and wrong ; 
 the reasoning must be so rapid as to defy conscious 
 reference to first principles, arid even at times to be 
 apparently subversive of them altogether, or the action 
 will halt. It must become automatic before we are 
 safe with it. While we are fumbling for the grounds 
 of our conviction, our conviction is prone to fall, as 
 Peter for lack of faith sinking into the waves of Galilee ; 
 so that the very power to prove at all is an fc priori 
 argument against the truth or at any rate the prac- 
 tical importance to the vast majority of mankind of 
 all that is supported by demonstration. For the power 
 to prove implies a sense of the need of proof, and 
 things which the majority of mankind find practically 
 important are in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred 
 above proof. The need of proof becomes as obsolete in 
 the case of assured knowledge, as the practice of forti- 
 
CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS KNOWERS. 79 
 
 fying towns in the middle of an old and long-settled 
 country. Who builds defences for that which is im- 
 pregnable or little likely to be assailed ? The answer 
 is ready, that unless the defences had been built in 
 former times it would be impossible to do without them 
 now ; but this does not touch the argument, which is 
 not that demonstration is unwise but that as long as a 
 demonstration is still felt necessary, and therefore kept 
 ready to hand, the subject of such demonstration is not 
 yet securely known. Qui s'excuse, s accuse ; and unless 
 a matter can hold its own without the brag and self- 
 assertion of continual demonstration, it is still more or 
 less of a parvenu, which we shall not lose much by 
 neglecting till it has less occasion to blow its own 
 trumpet. The only alternative is that it is an error in 
 process of detection, for if evidence concerning any 
 opinion has long been deemed superfluous, and ever 
 after this comes to be again felt necessary, we know 
 that the opinion is doomed. 
 
 If there is any truth in the above, it follows that 
 our conception of the words " science " and " scientific " 
 must undergo some modification. Not that we should 
 speak slightingly of science, but that we should recog- 
 nise more than we do, that there are two distinct classes 
 of scientific people, corresponding not inaptly with the 
 two main parties into which the political world is 
 divided. The one class is deeply versed in those 
 sciences which have already become the common pro- 
 perty of mankind ; enjoying, enforcing, perpetuating, 
 and engraining still more deeply into the mind of man 
 acquisitions already approved by common experience, 
 but somewhat careless about extension of empire, or 
 at any rate disinclined, for the most part, to active 
 effort on their own part for the sake of such extension 
 
8o SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 neither progressive, in fact, nor aggressive but 
 quiet, peaceable people, who wish to live and let live, 
 as their fathers before them ; while the other class is 
 chiefly intent upon pushing forward the boundaries of 
 science, and is comparatively indifferent to what is 
 known already save in so far as necessary for purposes 
 of extension. These last are called pioneers of science, 
 and to them alone is the title " scientific " commonly 
 accorded ; but pioneers, important to an army as 
 they are, are still not the army itself, which can get 
 on better without the pioneers than the pioneers with- 
 out the army. Surely the class which knows thoroughly 
 well what it knows, and which adjudicates upon the 
 value of the discoveries made by the pioneers surely 
 this class has as good a right or better to be called 
 scientific than the pioneers themselves. 
 
 These two classes above described blend into one 
 another with every shade of gradation. Some are ad- 
 mirably proficient in the well-known sciences that is 
 to say, they have good health, good looks, good temper, 
 common sense, and energy, and they hold all these good 
 things in such perfection as to be altogether without 
 introspection to be not under the law, but so entirely 
 under grace that every one who sees them likes them. 
 But such may, and perhaps more commonly will, have 
 very little inclination to extend the boundaries of human 
 knowledge ; their aim is in another direction altogether. 
 Of the pioneers, on the other hand, some are agreeable 
 people, well versed in the older sciences, though still 
 more eminent as pioneers, while others, whose services 
 in this last capacity have been of inestimable value, 
 are noticeably ignorant of the sciences which have 
 already become current with the larger part of man- 
 kind in other words, they are ugly, rude, and disagree- 
 
CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS KNOWERS. 81 
 
 able people, very progressive, it may be, but very 
 aggressive to boot. 
 
 The main difference between these two classes lies 
 in the fact that the knowledge of the one, so far as it 
 is new, is known consciously, while that of the other 
 is unconscious, consisting of sense and instinct rather 
 than of recognised knowledge. So long as a man has 
 these, and of the same kind as the more powerful body 
 of his fellow-countrymen, he is a man of science though 
 he can hardly read or write. As my great namesake 
 said so well, " He knows what's what, and that's as 
 high as metaphysic wit can fly." As is usual in cases 
 of great proficiency, these true and thorough knowers 
 do not know that , they are scientific, and can seldom 
 give a reason for the faith that is in them. They be- 
 lieve themselves to be ignorant, uncultured men, nor 
 can even the professors whom they sometimes outwit 
 in their own professorial domain perceive that they 
 have been outwitted by men of superior scientific 
 attainments to their own. The following passage from 
 Dr. Carpenter's " Mesmerism, Spiritualism," &c., may 
 serve as an illustration : 
 
 " It is well known that persons who are conversant 
 with the geological structure of a district are often 
 able to indicate with considerable certainty in what 
 spot and at what depth water will be found ; and men 
 of less scientific knowledge, but of considerable practical 
 experience " (so that in Dr. Carpenter's mind there 
 seems to be some sort of contrast or difference in kind 
 between the knowledge which is derived from obser- 
 vation of facts and scientific knowledge) " frequently 
 arrive at a true conclusion upon this point without 
 being able to assign reasons for their opinions." 
 
 " Exactly the same may be said in regard to the 
 
 p 
 
82 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 mineral structure of a mining district ; the course of a 
 metallic vein being often correctly indicated by the 
 shrewd guess of an observant workman, when the 
 scientific reasoning of the mining engineer altogether 
 fails." 
 
 Precisely. Here we have exactly the kind of thing 
 v we are in search of: the man who has observed and 
 observed till the facts are so thoroughly in his head 
 that through familiarity he has lost sight both of them 
 and of the processes whereby he deduced his conclu- 
 sions from them is apparently not considered scientific, 
 though he knows how to solve the problem before him ; 
 the mining engineer, on the other hand, who reasons 
 scientifically that is to say, with a knowledge of his 
 own knowledge is found not to know, and to fail in 
 discovering the mineral. 
 
 " It is an experience we are continually encounter- 
 ing in other walks of life," continues Dr. Carpenter, 
 " that particular persons are guided some apparently 
 by an original and others by an acquired intuition 
 to conclusions for which they can give no adequate 
 reason, but which subsequent events prove to have 
 been correct." And this, I take it, implies what I have 
 been above insisting on, namely, that on becoming in- 
 tense, knowledge seems also to become unaware of the 
 grounds on which it rests, or that it has or requires 
 grounds at all, or indeed even exists. The only issue 
 between myself and Dr. Carpenter would appear to be 
 that Dr. Carpenter, himself an acknowledged leader in 
 the scientific world, restricts the term "scientific " to the 
 people who know that they know, but are beaten by 
 those who are not so conscious of their own knowledge ; 
 while I say that the term " scientific " should be applied 
 (only that they would not like it) to the nice sensible 
 
CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS KNOWERS. 83 
 
 people who know what's what rather than to the pro- 
 fessorial classes. 
 
 And this is easily understood when we remember 
 that the pioneer cannot hope to acquire any of the 
 new sciences in a single lifetime so perfectly as to 
 become unaware of his own knowledge. As a general 
 rule, we observe him to be still in a state of active 
 consciousness concerning whatever particular science 
 he is extending, and as long as he is in this state 
 he cannot know utterly. It is, as I have already so 
 often insisted, those who do not know that they know 
 so much who have the firmest grip of their knowledge : 
 the best class, for example, of our English youth, who 
 live much in the open air, and, as Lord Beaconsfield 
 finely said, never read. These are the people who 
 know best those things which are best worth knowing 
 that is to say, they are the most truly scientific. 
 
 Unfortunately, the apparatus necessary for this kind 
 of science is so costly as to be within the reach of few, 
 involving, as it does, an experience in the use of it for 
 some preceding generations. Even those who are 
 born with the means within their reach must take no 
 less pains, and exercise no less self-control, before they 
 can attain the perfect unconscious use of them, than 
 would go to the making of a James Watt or a Stephen- 
 son ; it is vain, therefore, to hope that this best kind 
 of science can ever be put within the reach of the 
 many ; nevertheless it may be safely said that all the 
 other and more generally recognised kinds of science 
 are valueless except in so far as they minister to this 
 the highest kind. They have no raison d'etre unless 
 they tend to do away with the necessity for work, and to 
 diffuse good health, and that good sense which is above 
 self-consciousness. They are to be encouraged because 
 
84 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 they have rendered the most fortunate kind of modern 
 European possible, and because they tend to make 
 possible a still more fortunate kind than any now 
 existing. But the man who devotes himself to science 
 canriot with the rarest, if any, exceptions belong 
 to this most fortunate class himself. He occupies a 
 lower place, both scientifically and morally, for it is 
 not possible but that his drudgery should somewhat 
 soil him both in mind and health of body, or, if this 
 be denied, surely it must let him and hinder him in 
 running the race for unconsciousness. We do not feel 
 that it increases the glory of a king or great nobleman 
 that he should excel in what is commonly called 
 science. Certainly he should not go further than 
 Prince Eupert's drops. Nor should he excel in music, 
 art, literature, or theology all which things are more 
 or less parts of science. He should be above them 
 all, save in so far as he can without effort reap renown 
 from the labours of others. It is a Idche in him that 
 he should write music or books, or paint pictures at 
 all ; but if he must do so, his work should be at best 
 contemptible. Much as we must condemn Marcus 
 Aurelius, we condemn James I. even more severely. 
 
 It is a pity there should exist so general a confusion 
 of thought upon this subject, for it may be asserted 
 without fear of contradiction that there is hardly any 
 form of immorality now rife which produces more dis- 
 astrous effects upon those who give themselves up to it, 
 and upon society in general, than the so-called science 
 of those who know that they know too well to be able 
 to know truly. With very clever people the people 
 who know that they know it is much as with the 
 members of the early Corinthian Church, to whom St. 
 Paul wrote, that if they looked their numbers over, 
 
CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS KNOWERS. 85 
 
 they would not find many wise, nor powerful, nor well- 
 born people among them. Dog-fanciers tell us that 
 performing dogs never carry their tails ; such dogs have 
 eaten of the tree of knowledge, and are convinced of 
 sin accordingly they know that they know things, in 
 respect of which, therefore, they are no longer under 
 grace, but under the law, and they have yet so much 
 grace left as to be ashamed. So with the human 
 clever dog ; he may speak with the tongues of men 
 and angels, but so long as he knows that he knows, his 
 tail will droop. 
 
 More especially does this hold in the case of those 
 who are born to wealth and of old family. We must 
 all feel that a rich young nobleman with a taste for 
 science and principles is rarely a pleasant object. We 
 do not understand the rich young man in the Bible 
 who wanted to inherit eternal life, unless, indeed, he 
 merely wanted to know whether there was not some 
 way by which he could avoid dying, and even so he is 
 hardly worth considering. Principles are like logic, 
 which never yet made a good reasoner of a bad one, 
 but might still be occasionally useful if they did not 
 invariably contradict each other whenever there is any 
 temptation to appeal to them. They are like fire, good 
 servants but bad masters. As many people or more 
 have been wrecked on principle as from want of 
 principle. They are, as their name implies, of an 
 elementary character, suitable for beginners only, and 
 he who has so little mastered them as to have occasion 
 to refer to them consciously, is out of place in the 
 society of well-educated people. The truly scientific 
 invariably hate him, and, for the most part, the more 
 profoundly in proportion to the unconsciousness with 
 which they do so. 
 
86 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 If the reader hesitates, let him go down into the 
 streets and look in the shop-windows at the photo- 
 graphs of eminent men, whether literary, artistic, or 
 scientific, and note the work which the consciousness 
 of knowledge has wrought on nine out of every ten of 
 them ; then let him go to the masterpieces of Greek 
 and Italian art, the truest preachers of the truest gospel 
 of grace ; let him look at the Venus of Milo, the Dis- 
 cobolus, the St. George of Donatello. If it had pleased 
 these people to wish to study, there was no lack of 
 brains to do it with; but imagine "what a deal of 
 scorn" would "look beautiful in the contempt and 
 anger " of the Venus of Milo's lip if it were suggested 
 to her that she should learn to read. Which, think 
 you, knows most, the Theseus, or any modern professor 
 taken at random ? True, learning must have a great 
 share in the advancement of beauty, inasmuch as 
 beauty is but knowledge perfected and incarnate but 
 with the pioneers it is sic vos non vobis; the grace is 
 not for them, but for those who come after. Science is 
 like offences. It must needs come, but woe unto that 
 man through whom it comes ; for there cannot be much 
 beauty where there is consciousness of knowledge, and 
 while knowledge is still new it must in the nature of 
 things involve much consciousness. 
 
 It is not knowledge, then, that is incompatible with 
 beauty ; there cannot be too much knowledge, but it 
 must have passed through many people who it is to 
 be feared must be both ugly and disagreeable, before 
 beauty or grace will have anything to say to it ; it 
 must be so diffused throughout a man's whole being 
 that he shall not be aware of it, or he will bear him- 
 self under it constrainedly as one under the law, and 
 not as one under grace. 
 
CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS KNOWERS. 87 
 
 And grace is best, for where grace is, love is not dis- 
 tant. Grace ! the old Pagan ideal whose charm even 
 unlovely Paul could not withstand, but, as the legend 
 tells us, his soul fainted within him, his heart misgave 
 him, and, standing alone on the seashore at dusk, he 
 " troubled deaf heaven with his bootless cries," his thin 
 voice pleading for grace after the flesh. 
 
 The waves came in one after another, the sea-gulls 
 cried together after their kind, the wind rustled among 
 the dried canes upon the sandbanks, and there came a 
 voice from heaven saying, " Let My grace be sufficient 
 for thee." Whereon, failing of the thing itself, he 
 stole the word and strove to crush its meaning to the 
 measure of his own limitations. But the true grace, 
 with her groves and high places, and troops of young 
 men and maidens crowned with flowers, and singing of 
 love and youth and wine the true grace he drove out 
 into the wilderness high up, it may be, into Piora, 
 and into such-like places. Happy they who harboured 
 her in her ill report. 
 
 It is common to hear men wonder what new faith 
 will be adopted by mankind if disbelief in the Christian 
 religion should become general. They seem to expect 
 that some new theological or quasi-theological system 
 will arise, which, mutatis mutandis, shall be Christianity 
 over again. It is a frequent reproach against those who 
 maintain that the supernatural element of Christianity 
 is without foundation, that they bring forward no such 
 system of their own. They pull down but cannot 
 build. We sometimes hear even those who have come 
 to the same conclusions as the destroyers say, that 
 having nothing new to set up, they will not attack the 
 old. But how can people set up a new superstition, 
 knowing it to be a superstition ? Without faith in 
 
88 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 their own platform, a faith as intense as that mani- 
 fested by the early Christians, how can they preach ? 
 A new superstition will come, but it is in the very 
 essence of things that its apostles should have no sus- 
 picion of its real nature ; that they should no more 
 recognise the common element between the new and the 
 old than the early Christians recognised it between 
 their faith and Paganism. If they did, they would be 
 paralysed. Others say that the new fabric may be seen 
 rising on every side, and that the coming religion is 
 science. Certainly its apostles preach it without mis- 
 giving, but it is not on that account less possible that 
 it may prove only to be the coming superstition like 
 Christianity, true to its true votaries, and, like Chris- 
 tianity, false to those who follow it introspectively. 
 
 It may well be we shall find we have escaped from 
 one set of taskmasters to fall into the hands of others 
 far more ruthless. The tyranny of the Church is light 
 in comparison with that which future generations may 
 have to undergo at the hands of the doctrinaires. The 
 Church did uphold a grace of some sort as the sum- 
 mum bonum, in comparison with which all so-called 
 earthly knowledge knowledge, that is to say, which 
 had not passed through so many people as to have 
 become living and incarnate was unimportant. Do 
 what we may, we are still drawn to the unspoken 
 teaching of her less introspective ages with a force 
 which no falsehood could command. Her buildings, 
 her music, her architecture, touch us as none other on 
 the whole can do ; when she speaks there are many of 
 us who think that she denies the deeper truths of her 
 own profounder mind, and unfortunately her tendency 
 is now towards more rather than less introspection. 
 The more she gives way to this the more she becomes 
 
CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS KNOWERS. 89 
 
 conscious of knowing the less she will know. But 
 still her ideal is in grace. 
 
 The so-called man of science, on the other hand, 
 seems now generally inclined to make light of all know- 
 ledge, save of the pioneer character. His ideal is in 
 self-conscious knowledge. Let us have no more Lo, 
 here, with the professor ; he very rarely knows what 
 he says he knows ; no sooner has he misled the world 
 for a sufficient time with a great flourish of trumpets 
 than he is toppled over by one more plausible than 
 himself. He is but medicine-man, augur, priest, in its 
 latest development ; useful it may be, but requiring to 
 be well watched by those who value freedom. Wait 
 till he has become more powerful, and note the vagaries 
 which his conceit of knowledge will indulge in. The 
 Church did not persecute while she was still weak. Of 
 course every system has had, and will have, its heroes, 
 but, as we all very well know, the heroism of the 
 hero is but remotely due to system ; it is due not to 
 arguments, nor reasoning, nor to any consciously recog- 
 nised perceptions, but to those deeper sciences which 
 lie far beyond the reach of self- analysis, and for the 
 study of which there is but one schooling to have had 
 good forefathers for many generations. 
 
 Above all things let no unwary reader do me the 
 injustice of believing in me. In that I write at all I 
 am among the damned. If he must believe in any- 
 thing, let him believe in the music of Handel, the 
 painting of Giovanni Bellini, and in the thirteenth 
 chapter of St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians. 
 
 But to return. Whenever we find people knowing 
 that they know this or that, w r e have the same story 
 over and over again. They do not yet know it per- 
 fectly. 
 
90 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 We come, therefore, to the conclusion that our know- 
 ledge and reasonings thereupon, only become perfect, 
 assured, unhesitating, when they have become auto- 
 matic, and are thus exercised without further con- 
 scious effort of the mind, much in the same way as we 
 cannot walk nor read nor write perfectly till we can 
 do so automatically. 
 
APPLICATION OF FOREGOING CHAPTERS TO 
 CERTAIN HABITS ACQUIRED AFTER BIRTH 
 WHICH ARE COMMONLY CONSIDERED IN- 
 STINCTIVE. 
 
 (CHAPTER in. OF LIFE AND HABIT.) 
 
 WHAT is true of knowing is also true of willing. 
 The more intensely we will, the less is our will 
 deliberate and capable of being recognised as will at all. 
 So that it is common to hear men declare under certain 
 circumstances that they had no will, but were forced 
 into their own action under stress of passion or tempta- 
 tion. But in the more ordinary actions of life, we 
 observe, as in walking or breathing, that we do not 
 will anything utterly and without remnant of hesita- 
 tion, till we have lost sight of the fact that we are 
 exercising our will 
 
 The question, therefore, is forced upon us, how far 
 this principle extends, and whether there may not be 
 unheeded examples of its operation which, if we con- 
 sider them, will land us in rather unexpected conclu- 
 sions. If it be granted that consciousness of knowledge 
 and of volition vanishes when the knowledge and the 
 volition have become intense and perfect, may it not 
 be possible that many actions which we do without 
 knowing how we do them, and without any conscious 
 exercise of the will actions which we certainly could 
 
92 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 not do if we tried to do them, nor refrain from doing 
 if for any reason we wished to do so are done so 
 easily and so unconsciously owing to excess of know- 
 ledge or experience rather than deficiency, we having 
 done them too often, knowing how to do them too 
 well, and having too little hesitation as to the method 
 of procedure, to be capable of following our own action, 
 without the derangement of such action altogether ; or, 
 in other cases, because we have so long settled the 
 question that we have stowed away the whole appar- 
 atus with which we work in corners of our system 
 which we cannot now conveniently reach ? 
 
 It may be interesting to see whether we can find 
 any class or classes of actions which link actions which 
 for some time after birth we could not do at all, and in 
 which our proficiency has reached the stage of uncon- 
 scious performance obviously through repeated effort 
 and failure, and through this only, with actions which 
 we could do as soon as we were born, and concerning 
 which it would at first sight appear absurd to say that 
 they can have been acquired by any process in the 
 least analogous to what we commonly call experience, 
 inasmuch as the creature itself which does them has 
 only just begun to exist, and cannot, therefore, in the 
 very nature of things, have had experience. 
 
 Can we see that actions, for the acquisition of which 
 experience is such an obvious necessity, that whenever 
 we see the acquisition we assume the experience, 
 gradate away imperceptibly into actions which seem, 
 according to all reasonable analogy, to necessitate 
 experience of which, however, the time and place are 
 so obscure, that they are not now commonly supposed 
 to have any connection with bond fide experience at all. 
 
 Eating and drinking appear to be such actions. The 
 
APPLICATION OF FOREGOING CHAPTERS. 93 
 
 new-born child cannot eat, and cannot drink, but he 
 can swallow as soon as he is born ; and swallowing 
 appears (as we may remark in passing) to have been 
 an earlier faculty of animal life than that of eating 
 with teeth. The ease and unconsciousness with which 
 we eat and drink is clearly attributable to practice ; 
 but a very little practice seems to go a long way a 
 suspiciously small amount of practice as though 
 somewhere or at some other time there must have been 
 more practice than we can account for. We can very 
 readily stop eating or drinking, and can follow our own 
 action without difficulty in either process ; but as re- 
 gards swallowing, which is the earlier habit, we have 
 less power of self-analysis and control : when we have 
 once committed ourselves beyond a certain point to 
 swallowing, we must finish doing so, that is to say, 
 our control over the operation ceases. Also, a still 
 smaller experience seems necessary for the acquisition 
 of the power to swallow than appeared necessary in 
 the case of eating ; and if we get into a difficulty we 
 choke, and are more at a loss how to become intro- 
 spective than we are about eating and drinking. 
 
 Why should a baby be able to swallow which one 
 would have said was the more complicated process of 
 the two with so much less practice than it takes him 
 to learn to eat ? How comes it that he exhibits in 
 the case of the more difficult operation all the pheno- 
 mena which ordinarily accompany a more complete 
 mastery and longer practice ? Analogy points in the 
 direction of thinking that the necessary experience 
 cannot have been wanting, and that, too, not in such 
 a quibbling sort as when people talk about inherited 
 habit or the experience of the race, which, without 
 explanation, is to plain-speaking persons very much the 
 
94 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT.' 
 
 same, in regard to the individual, as no experience at 
 all, but bond fide in the child's own person. 
 
 Breathing, again, is an action acquired after birth, 
 generally with some little hesitation and difficulty, but 
 still acquired in a time seldom longer, as I am informed, 
 than ten minutes or a quarter of an hour. For an art 
 which has to be acquired at all, there seems here, as 
 in the case of eating, to be a disproportion between, on 
 the one hand, the intricacy of the process performed, 
 and on the other, the shortness of the time taken to 
 acquire the practice, and the ease and unconsciousness 
 with which its exercise is continued from the moment 
 of acquisition. 
 
 We observe that in later life much less difficult and 
 intricate operations than breathing require much longer 
 practice before they can be mastered to the extent of 
 unconscious performance. We observe also that the 
 phenomena attendant on the learning by an infant to 
 breathe are extremely like those attendant upon the 
 repetition of some performance by one who has done it 
 very often before, but who requires just a little prompt- 
 ing to set him off, on getting which, the whole familiar 
 routine presents itself before him, and he repeats his 
 task by rote. Surely then we are justified in suspect- 
 ing that there must have been more bond fide personal 
 recollection and experience, with more effort and failure 
 on the part of the infant itself, than meet the eye. 
 
 It should be noticed, also that our control over 
 breathing is very limited. We can hold our breath a 
 little, or breathe a little faster for a short time, but we 
 cannot do this for long, and after having gone without 
 air for a certain time we must breathe. 
 
 Seeing and hearing require some practice before their 
 free use is mastered, but not very much. They are so 
 
APPLICATION OF FOREGOING CHAPTERS. 95 
 
 far within our control that we can see more by looking 
 harder, and hear more by listening attentively but 
 they are beyond our control in so far as that we must 
 see and hear the greater part of what presents itself to 
 us as near, and at the same time unfamiliar, unless we 
 turn away or shut our eyes, or stop our ears by a 
 mechanical process ; and when we do this it is a sign 
 that we have already involuntarily seen or heard more 
 than we wished. The familiar, whether sight or sound, 
 very commonly escapes us. 
 
 Take again the processes of digestion, the action of 
 the heart, and the oxygenisation of the blood pro- 
 cesses of extreme intricacy, done almost entirely un- 
 consciously, and quite beyond the control of our volition. 
 
 Is it possible that our unconsciousness concerning 
 our own performance of all these processes arises from 
 over-experience ? 
 
 Is there anything in digestion or the oxygenisation 
 of the blood different in kind to the rapid unconscious 
 action of a man playing a difficult piece of music on 
 the piano ? There may be in degree, but as a man 
 who sits down to play what he well knows, plays on 
 when once started, almost, as we say, mechanically, so, 
 having eaten his dinner, he digests it as a matter of 
 course, unless it has been in some way unfamiliar to 
 him or he to it, owing to some derangement or occur- 
 rence with which he is unfamiliar, and under which 
 therefore he is at a loss how to comport himself, as a 
 player would be at a loss how to play with gloves on, 
 or with gout in his fingers, or if set to play music up- 
 side down. 
 
 Can we show that all the acquired actions of child- 
 hood and after-life, which we now do unconsciously, 
 or without conscious exercise of the will, are familiar 
 
96 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 acts acts which we have already done a very great 
 number of times ? 
 
 Can we also show that there are no acquired actions 
 which we can perform in this automatic manner which 
 were not at one time difficult, requiring attention, and 
 liable to repeated failure, our volition failing to com- 
 mand obedience from the members which should carry 
 its purposes into execution ? 
 
 If so, analogy will point in the direction of thinking 
 that other acts which we do even more unconsciously 
 may only escape our power of self-examination and 
 control because they are even more familiar because 
 we have done them oftener ; and we may imagine that 
 if there were a microscope which could show us the 
 minutest atoms of consciousness and volition, we should 
 find that even the apparently most automatic actions 
 were yet done in due course, upon a balance of consi- 
 derations, and under the deliberate exercise of the will. 
 
 We should also incline to think that even such an 
 action as the oxygenisation of its blood by an infant 
 of ten minutes' old, can only be done so well and so 
 unconsciously, after repeated failures on the part of the 
 infant itself. 
 
 True, as has been already implied, we do not imme- 
 diately see when the baby could have made the 
 necessary mistakes and acquired that infinite practice 
 without which it could never go through such complex 
 processes satisfactorily ; we have therefore invented the 
 word " heredity," and consider it as accounting for the 
 phenomena ; but a little reflection will show that though 
 this word may be a very good way of stating the difficulty, 
 it does nothing whatever towards removing it.^ 
 
 * See page 228 of this book, " Remarks on Mr. Romanes' ' Mental 
 Evolution in Animals.' " 
 
APPLICATION OF FOREGOING CHAPTERS. 97 
 
 Why should heredity enable a creature to dispense 
 with the experience which we see to be necessary in 
 all other cases before difficult operations can be per- 
 formed successfully ? 
 
 What is this talk that is made about the experience 
 of the race, as though the experience of one man could 
 profit another who knows nothing about him? If a 
 man eats his dinner, it nourishes him and not his neigh- 
 bour ; if he learns a difficult art, it is he that can do it 
 and not his neighbour. Yet, practically, we see that 
 the vicarious experience, which seems so contrary to 
 our common observation, does nevertheless appear to 
 hold good in the case of creatures and their descend- 
 ants. Is there, then, any way of bringing these appar- 
 ently conflicting phenomena under the operation of one 
 law ? Is there any way of showing that this experience 
 of the race, of which so much is said without the least 
 attempt to show in what way it may or does become 
 the experience of the individual, is in sober seriousness 
 the experience of one single being only, repeating in a 
 great many different ways certain performances with 
 which it has become exceedingly familiar ? 
 
 It comes to this that we must either suppose the 
 conditions of experience to differ during the earlier 
 stages of life from those which we observe them to be- 
 come during the heyday of any existence and this 
 would appear very gratuitous, tolerable only as a 
 suggestion because the beginnings of life are so obscure, 
 that in such twilight we may do pretty much whatever 
 we please without fear of being found out or that 
 we must suppose continuity of life and sameness be- 
 tween living beings, whether plants or animals, and 
 their descendants, to be far closer than we have hither- 
 to believed; so that the experience of one person is 
 
 G 
 
98 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 not enjoyed by his successor, so much as that the 
 successor is bond fide an elongation of the life of his 
 progenitors, imbued with their memories, profiting by 
 their experiences which are, in fact, his own until 
 he leaves their bodies and only unconscious of the 
 extent of these memories and experiences owing to 
 their vastness and already infinite repetition. 
 
 Certainly it presents itself to us as a singular coin- 
 cidence 
 
 I. That we are most conscious of, and have most con- 
 trol over, such habits as speech, the upright position, 
 the arts and sciences which are acquisitions peculiar 
 to the human race, always acquired after birth, and not 
 common to ourselves and any ancestor who had not 
 become entirely human. 
 
 II. That we are less conscious of, and have less control 
 over, the use of teeth, swallowing, breathing, seeing 
 and hearing which were acquisitions of our prehuman 
 ancestry, and for which we had provided ourselves 
 with all the necessary apparatus before we saw light, 
 but which are still, geologically speaking, recent, or 
 comparatively recent. 
 
 III. That we are most unconscious of, and have least 
 control over, our digestion, which we have in common 
 even with our invertebrate ancestry, and which is a 
 habit of extreme antiquity. 
 
 There is something too like method in this for it 
 to be taken as the result of mere chance chance again 
 being but another illustration of Nature's love of a 
 contradiction in terms ; for everything is chance, and 
 nothing is chance. And you may take it that all is 
 chance or nothing chance, according as you please, but 
 you must not have half chance and half not chance 
 which, however, in practice is just what you must have. 
 
APPLICATION OF FOREGOING CHAPTERS. 99 
 
 Does it not seem as though the older and more 
 confirmed the habit, the more unquestioning the act 
 of volition, till, in the case of the oldest habits, the 
 practice of succeeding existences has so formulated the 
 procedure, that, on being once committed to such and 
 such a line beyond a certain point, the subsequent 
 course is so clear as to be open to no further doubt, and 
 admit of no alternative, till the very power of question- 
 ing is gone, and even the consciousness of volition ? 
 And this too upon matters which, in earlier stages of a 
 man's existence, admitted of passionate argument and 
 anxious deliberation whether to resolve them thus or 
 thus, with heroic hazard and experiment, which on 
 the losing side proved to be vice, and on the winning 
 virtue. For there was passionate argument once what 
 shape a man's teeth should be, nor can the colour 
 of his hair be considered as even yet settled, or likely 
 to be settled for a very long time. 
 
 It is one against legion when a creature tries to 
 differ from his own past selves. He must yield or 
 die if he wants to differ widely, so as to lack natural 
 instincts, such as hunger or thirst, or not to gratify 
 them. It is more righteous in a man that he should 
 " eat strange food," and that his cheek should " so 
 much as lank not," than that he should starve if the 
 strange food be at his command. His past selves are 
 living in unruly hordes within him at this moment and 
 overmastering him. " Do this, this, this, which we too 
 have done, and found our profit in it," cry the souls of 
 his forefathers within him. Faint are the far ones, 
 coming and going as the sound of bells wafted on to a 
 high mountain; loud and clear are the near ones, 
 urgent as an alarm of fire. "Withhold," cry some. 
 "Go on boldly," cry others. "Me, me, me, revert 
 
ioo SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 liitherward, my descendant," shouts one as it were from 
 some high vantage-ground over the heads of the 
 clamorous multitude. " Nay, but me, me, me," echoes 
 another; and our former selves fight within us and 
 wrangle for our possession. Have we not here what 
 is commonly called an internal tumult, when dead 
 pleasures and pains tug within us hither and thither ? 
 Then may the battle be decided by what people are 
 pleased to call our own experience. Our own indeed ! 
 What is our own save by mere courtesy of speech ? 
 A matter of fashion. Sanction sanctifieth and fashion 
 fashioneth. And so with death the most inexorable 
 of all conventions. 
 
 However this may be, we may assume it as an axiom 
 with regard to actions acquired after birth, that we 
 never do them automatically save as the result of long 
 practice, and after having thus acquired perfect mastery 
 over the action in question. 
 
 But given the practice or experience, and the in- 
 tricacy of the process to be performed appears to matter 
 very little. There is hardly anything conceivable as 
 being done by man, which a certain amount of familia- 
 rity will not enable him to do, unintrospectively, and 
 without conscious effort. '' The most complex and diffi- 
 cult movements," writes Mr. Darwin, " can in time be 
 performed without the least effort or consciousness." 
 All the main business of life is done thus unconsciously 
 or semi-unconsciously. Tor what is the main business 
 of life ? We work that we may eat and digest, rather 
 than eat and digest that we may work ; this, at any 
 rate, is the normal state of things ; the more important 
 business then is that which is carried on unconsciously. 
 So again, the action of the brain, which goes on prior 
 to our realising the idea in which it results, is not per- 
 
APPLICATION OF FOREGOING CHAPTERS. 101 
 
 ceived by the individual. So also all the deeper springs 
 of action and conviction. The residuum with which 
 we fret and worry ourselves is a mere matter of detail, 
 as the higgling and haggling of the market, which is 
 not over the bulk of the price, but over the last half- 
 penny. 
 
 Shall we say, then, that a baby of a day old sucks 
 (which involves the whole principle of the purnp, and 
 hence a profound practical knowledge of the laws of 
 pneumatics and hydrostatics), digests, oxygenises its 
 blood (millions of years before Sir Humphry Davy dis- 
 covered oxygen), sees and hears all most difficult and 
 complicated operations, involving an unconscious know- 
 ledge of the facts concerning optics and acoustics, 
 compared with which the conscious discoveries of 
 Newton sink into utter insignificance ? Shall we say 
 that a baby can do all these things at once, doing them 
 so well and so regularly, without being even able to direct 
 its attention to them, and without mistake, and at the 
 same time not know how to do them, and never have 
 done them before ? 
 
 Such an assertion would be a contradiction to the 
 whole experience of mankind. Surely the onus pro- 
 landi must rest with him who makes it. 
 
 A man may make a lucky hit now and again by 
 what is called a fluke, but even this must be only a 
 little in advance of his other performances of the same 
 kind. He may multiply seven by eight by a fluke 
 after a little study of the multiplication table, but he 
 will not be able to extract the cube root of 49 1 3 by 
 a fluke, without long training in arithmetic, any more 
 than an agricultural labourer would be able to operate 
 successfully for cataract. If, then, a grown man cannot 
 perform so simple an operation as that, we will say, for 
 
102 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 cataract, unless he have been long trained in other 
 similar operations, and until he has done what comes 
 to the same thing many times over, with what show of 
 reason can we maintain that one who is so far less 
 capable than a grown man, can perform such vastly 
 more difficult operations, without knowing how to do 
 them, and without ever having done them before ? There 
 is no sign of " fluke " about the circulation of a baby's 
 blood. There may perhaps be some little hesitation 
 about its earliest breathing, but this, as a general rule, 
 soon passes over, both breathing and circulation, within 
 an hour after birth, being as regular and easy as at any 
 time during life. Is it reasonable, then, to say that 
 the baby does these things without knowing how to do 
 them, and without ever having done them before, and 
 continues to do them by a series of lifelong flukes ? 
 
 It would be well if those who feel inclined to hazard 
 such an assertion would find some other instances of 
 intricate processes gone through by people who know 
 nothing about them, and who never had any practice 
 therein. What is to know how to do a thing ? Surely 
 to do it. What is proof that we know how to do a 
 thing ? Surely the fact that we can do it. A man 
 shows that he knows how to throw the boomerang by 
 throwing the boomerang. No amount of talking or 
 writing can get over this ; ipso facto, that a baby 
 breathes and makes its blood circulate, it knows how to 
 do so ; and the fact that it does not know its own 
 knowledge is only proof of the perfection of that know- 
 ledge, and of the vast number of past occasions on 
 which it must have been exercised already. As has 
 been said already, it is less obvious when the baby 
 could have gained its experience, so as to be able so 
 readily to remember exactly what to do ; but it is more 
 
APPLICATION OF FOREGOING CHAPTERS. 103 
 
 easy to suppose that the necessary occasions cannot have 
 been wanting, than that the power which we observe should 
 have been obtained without practice and memory. 
 
 If we saw any self-consciousness on the baby's part 
 about its breathing or circulation, we might suspect 
 that it had had less experience, or had profited less by 
 its experience, than its neighbours exactly in the same 
 manner as we suspect a deficiency of any quality which 
 we see a man inclined to parade. We all become in- 
 trospective when we find that we do not know our 
 business, and whenever we are introspective we may 
 generally suspect that we are on the verge of unpro- 
 ficiency. Unfortunately, in the case of sickly children 
 we observe that they sometimes do become conscious 
 of their breathing and circulation, just as in later life 
 we become conscious that we have a liver or a diges- 
 tion. In that case there is always something wrong. 
 The baby that becomes aware of its breathing does not 
 know how to breathe and will suffer for his ignorance 
 and incapacity, exactly in the same way as he will 
 suffer in later life for ignorance and incapacity in any 
 other respect in which his peers are commonly knowing 
 and capable. In the case of inability to breathe, the 
 punishment is corporal, breathing being a matter of 
 fashion, so old and long settled that nature can admit 
 of no departure from the established custom, and the 
 procedure in case of failure is as much formulated as 
 the fashion itself. In the case of the circulation, the 
 whole performance has become one so utterly of rote, 
 that the mere discovery that we could do it at all was 
 considered one of the highest flights of human genius. 
 
 It has been said a day will come when the Polar 
 ice shall have accumulated, till it forms vast continents 
 many thousands of feet above the level of the sea, all of 
 
io 4 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 solid ice. The weight of this mass will, it is believed, 
 cause the world to topple over on its axis, so that the 
 earth will be upset as an ant-heap overturned by 
 a ploughshare. In that day the icebergs will come 
 crunching against our proudest cities, razing them from 
 off the face of the earth as though they were made 
 of rotten blotting-paper. There is no respect now of 
 Handel nor of Shakespeare ; the works of Eembrandt 
 and Bellini fossilise at the bottom of the sea. Grace, 
 beauty, and wit, all that is precious in music, literature, 
 and art all gone. In the morning there was Europe. 
 In the evening there are no more populous cities nor 
 busy hum of men, but a sea of jagged ice, a lurid sun- 
 set, and the doom of many ages. Then shall a scared 
 remnant escape in places, and settle upon the changed 
 continent when the waters have subsided a simple 
 people, busy hunting shellfish on the drying ocean 
 beds, and with little time for introspection ; yet they 
 can read and write and sum, for by that time these 
 accomplishments will have become universal, and will 
 be acquired as easily as we now learn to talk ; but 
 they do so as a matter of course, and without self- 
 consciousness. Also they make the simpler kinds of 
 machinery too easily to be able to follow their own 
 operations the manner of their own apprenticeship 
 being to them as a buried city. May we not imagine 
 that, after the lapse of another ten thousand years or 
 so, some one of them may again become cursed with 
 lust of introspection, and a second Harvey may astonish 
 the world by discovering that it can read and write, 
 and that steam-engines do not grow, but are made ? 
 It may be safely prophesied that he will die a martyr, 
 and be honoured in the fourth generation. 
 
PERSONAL IDENTITY. 
 (CHAPTER v. OF LIFE AND HABIT.) 
 
 " O TKANGE difficulties have been raised by some," 
 says Bishop Butler, " concerning personal iden- 
 tity, or the sameness of living agents as implied in 
 the notion of our existing now and hereafter, or indeed 
 in any two consecutive moments." But in truth it is 
 not easy to see the strangeness of the difficulty, if the 
 words either "personal" or "identity" are used in 
 any strictness. 
 
 Personality is one of those ideas with which we are 
 so familiar that we have lost sight of the foundations 
 upon which it rests. We regard our personality as a 
 simple definite whole ; as a plain, palpable, individual 
 thing, which can be seen going about the streets or 
 sitting indoors at home ; as something which lasts us 
 our lifetime, and about the confines of which no doubt 
 can exist in the minds of reasonable people. But in 
 truth this " we," which looks so simple and definite, is 
 a nebulous and indefinable aggregation of many com- 
 ponent parts which war not a little among themselves, 
 our perception of our existence at all being perhaps 
 due to this very clash of warfare, as our sense of sound 
 and light is due to the jarring of vibrations. Moreover, 
 as the component parts of our identity change from 
 moment to moment, our "personality becomes a thing 
 
io6 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT- 
 
 dependent upon time present, which has no logical 
 existence, but lives only upon the sufferance of times 
 past and future, slipping out of our hands into the domain 
 of one or other of these two claimants the moment we 
 try to apprehend it. And not only is our personality 
 as fleeting as the present moment, but the parts which 
 compose it blend some of them so imperceptibly into, 
 and are so inextricably linked on to, outside things 
 which clearly form no part of our personality, that 
 when we try to bring ourselves to book and determine 
 wherein we consist, or to draw a line as to where we 
 begin or end, we find ourselves baffled. There is 
 nothing but fusion and confusion. 
 
 Putting theology on one side, and dealing only with 
 the common sense of mankind, our body is certainly 
 part of our personality. With the destruction of our 
 bodies, our personality, as far as we can follow it, comes 
 to a full stop ; and with every modification of them it 
 is correspondingly modified. But what are the limits 
 of our bodies ? They are composed of parts, some of 
 them so unessential as to be hardly included in person- 
 ality at all, and to be separable from ourselves with- 
 out perceptible effect, as hair, nails, and daily waste of 
 tissue. Again, other parts are very important, as our 
 hands, feet, arms, legs, &c., but still are no essential 
 parts of our " self " or " soul," which continues to exist, 
 though in a modified condition, in spite of their ampu- 
 tation. Other parts, as the brain, heart, and blood, are 
 so essential that they cannot be dispensed with, yet it 
 is impossible to say that personality consists in any 
 one of them. 
 
 Each one of these component members of our per- 
 sonality is continually dying and being born again, 
 supported in this process by the food we eat, the water 
 
PERSONAL IDENTITY. 107 
 
 we drink, and the air we breathe ; which three things 
 link us on, and fetter us down, to the organic and 
 inorganic world about us. For our meat and drink, 
 though no part of our personality before we eat and 
 drink, cannot, after we have done so, be separated 
 entirely from us without the destruction of our person- 
 ality altogether, so far as we can follow it ; and who 
 shall say at what precise moment our food has or has 
 not become part of ourselves ? A famished man eats 
 food ; after a short time his whole personality is so 
 palpably affected that we know the food to have entered 
 into him and taken, as it were, possession of him ; but 
 who can say at what precise moment it did so ? Thus 
 we find that we melt away into outside things and are 
 rooted into them as plants into the soil in which they 
 grow, nor can any man say he consists absolutely in 
 this or that, nor define himself so certainly as to include 
 neither more not less than himself; many undoubted 
 parts of his personality being more separable from it, 
 and changing it less when so separated, both to his 
 own senses and those of other people, than other parts 
 which are strictly speaking no parts at all. 
 
 A man's clothes, for example, as they lie on a chair 
 at night are no part of him, but when he wears them 
 they would appear to be so, as being a kind of food 
 which warms him and hatches him, and the loss of 
 which may kill him of cold. If this be denied, and a 
 man's clothes be considered as no part of his self, never- 
 theless they, with his money, and it may perhaps be 
 added his religious opinions, stamp a man's indivi- 
 duality as strongly as any natural feature can stamp 
 it. Change in style of dress, gain or loss of money, 
 make a man feel and appear more changed than having 
 his chin shaved or his nails cut. In fact, as soon as 
 
io8 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 we leave common parlance on one side, and try for a 
 scientific definition of personality, we find that there 
 is none possible, any more than there can be a demon- 
 stration of the fact that we exist at all a demonstration 
 for which, as for that of a personal God, many have 
 hunted but which none have found. The only solid 
 foundation is, as in the case of the earth's crust, pretty 
 near the surface of things ; the deeper we try to go, 
 the damper, darker, and altogether more uncongenial 
 we find it. There is no quagmire of superstition into 
 which we may not be easily lured if we once cut our- 
 selves adrift from those superficial aspects of things, in 
 which alone our nature permits us to be comforted. 
 
 Common parlance, however, settles the difficulty 
 readily enough (as indeed it settles most others if they 
 show signs of awkwardness) by the simple process of 
 ignoring it : we decline, and very properly, to go into 
 the question of where personality begins and ends, but 
 assume it to be known by every one, and throw the 
 onus of not knowing it upon the over-curious, who had 
 better think as their neighbours do, right or wrong, or 
 there is no knowing into what villany they may not 
 presently fall. 
 
 Assuming, then, that every one knows what is 
 meant by the word " person " (and such superstitious 
 bases as this are the foundations upon which all action, 
 whether of man, beast, or plant, is constructed and 
 rendered possible ; for even the corn in the fields 
 grows upon a superstitious basis as to its own existence, 
 and only turns the earth and moisture into wheat 
 through the conceit of its own ability to do so, with- 
 out which faith it were powerless ; and the lichen 
 only grows upon the grariite rock by first saying to 
 itself, " I think I can do it ; " so that it would not be able 
 
PERSONAL IDENTITY. 109 
 
 to grow unless it thought it could grow, and would not 
 think it could grow unless it found itself able to grow, 
 and thus spends its life arguing most virtuously in a 
 most vicious circle basing action upon hypothesis, 
 which hypothesis is in turn based upon action) assum- 
 ing that we know what is meant by the word " person," 
 we say that we are one and the same person from birth 
 till death, so that whatever is done by or happens to 
 any one between birth and death, is said to happen to 
 or be done by one individual. This in practice is found 
 sufficient for the law courts and the purposes of daily 
 life, which, being full of hurry and the pressure of 
 business, can only tolerate compromise, or conventional 
 rendering of intricate phenomena. When facts of 
 extreme complexity have to be daily and hourly dealt 
 with by people whose time is money, they must be 
 simplified, and treated much as a painter treats them, 
 drawing them in squarely, seizing the more important 
 features, and neglecting all that does not assert itself 
 as too essential to be passed over hence the slang and 
 cant words of every profession, and indeed all language ; 
 for language at best is but a kind of " patter/' the only 
 way, it is true, in many cases, of expressing our ideas 
 to one another, but still a very bad way, and not for 
 one moment comparable to the unspoken speech which 
 we may sometimes have recourse to. The metaphors 
 and famous de parler to which even in the plainest 
 speech we are perpetually recurring (as, for example, 
 in this last two lines, " plain," " perpetually," and " re- 
 curring," are all words based on metaphor, and hence 
 more or less liable to mislead) often deceive us, as 
 though there were nothing more than what we see and 
 say, and as though words, instead of being, as they are, 
 the creatures of our convenience, had some claim to be 
 
i io SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 the actual ideas themselves concerning which we are 
 conversing. 
 
 This is so well expressed in a letter I have recently 
 received from a friend, now in New Zealand, and 
 certainly not intended by him for publication, that I 
 shall venture to quote the passage, but should say that 
 I do so without his knowledge or permission which I 
 should not be able to receive before this book must be 
 completed. 
 
 " Words, words, words/' he writes, " are the stum- 
 bling-blocks in the way of truth. Until you think of 
 things as they are, and not of the words that misre- 
 present them, you cannot think rightly. Words pro- 
 duce the appearance of hard and fast lines where there 
 are none. Words divide ; thus we call this a man, 
 that an ape, that a monkey, while they are all only 
 differentiations of the same thing. To think of a thing 
 they must be got rid of: they are the clothes that 
 thoughts wear only the clothes. I say this over and 
 over again, for there is nothing of more importance. 
 Other men's words will stop you at the beginning of 
 an investigation. A man may play with words all his 
 life, arranging them and rearranging them like dominoes. 
 If I could think to you without words you would under- 
 stand me better." 
 
 If such remarks as the above hold good at all, they 
 do .so with the words "personal identity." The least 
 reflection will show that personal identity in any sort 
 of strictness is an impossibility. The expression is one 
 of the many ways in which we are obliged to scamp 
 our thoughts through pressure of other business which 
 pays us better. For surely all reasonable people will 
 feel that an infant an hour before birth, when in the 
 eye of the law he has no existence, and could not be 
 
PERSONAL IDENTITY. in 
 
 called a peer for another sixty minutes, though his 
 father were a peer, and already dead, surely such an 
 embryo is more personally identical with the baby 
 into which he develops within an hour's time than the 
 born baby is so with itself (if the expression may be 
 pardoned), one, twenty, or it may be eighty years after 
 birth. There is more sameness of matter ; there are 
 fewer differences of any kind perceptible by a third 
 person ; there is more sense of continuity on the 
 part of the person himself, and far more of all that 
 goes to make up our sense of sameness of personality 
 between an embryo an hour before birth and the child 
 on being born, than there is between the child just 
 born and the man of twenty. Yet there is no hesita- 
 tion about admitting sameness of personality between 
 these two last. 
 
 On the other hand, if that hazy contradiction in 
 terms, " personal identity," be once allowed to retreat 
 behind the threshold of the womb, it has eluded us 
 once for all. What is true of one hour before birth is 
 true of two, and so on till we get back to the impreg- 
 nate ovum, which may fairly claim to have been per- 
 sonally identical with the man of eighty into which it 
 ultimately developed, in spite of the fact that there is 
 no particle of same matter nor sense of continuity 
 between them, nor recognised community of instinct, 
 nor indeed of anything which on a primd facie view 
 of the matter goes to the making up of that which we 
 call identity. 
 
 There is far more of all these things common to the 
 impregnate ovum and the ovum immediately before 
 impregnation, or again between the impregnate ovum, 
 and both the ovum before impregnation and the 
 spermatozoon which impregnated it. Nor, if we admit 
 
112 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 personal identity between the ovum and the octogena- 
 rian, is there any sufficient reason why we should not 
 admit it between the impregnate ovum and the two 
 factors of which it is composed, which two factors are 
 but offshoots from two distinct personalities, of which 
 they are as much part as the apple is of the apple-tree ; 
 so that an impregnate ovum cannot without a violation 
 of first principles be debarred from claiming personal 
 identity with both its parents, and hence, by an easy 
 chain of reasoning, with each of the impregnate ova 
 from which its parents were developed. 
 
 So that each ovum when impregnate should be con- 
 sidered not as descended from its ancestors, but as 
 being a continuation of the personality of every ovum 
 in the chain of its ancestry, every which ovum it 
 actually is as truly as the octogenarian is the same 
 identity with the ovum from which he has been de- 
 veloped. The two cases stand or fall together. 
 
 This process cannot stop short of the primordial cell, 
 which again will probably turn out to be but a brief 
 resting-place. We therefore prove each one of us to 
 be actually the primordial cell which never died nor 
 dies, but has differentiated itself into the life of the 
 world, all living beings whatever, being one with it, 
 and members one of another. 
 
 To look at the matter for a moment in another light, 
 it will be admitted that if the primordial cell had been 
 killed before leaving issue, all its possible descendants 
 would have been killed at one and the same time. It 
 is hard to see how this single fact does not establish 
 at the point, as it were, of a logical bayonet, an identity 
 between any creature and all others that are descended 
 from it. 
 
! 
 
 PERSONAL IDENTITY. 113 
 
 The fencing (for it does not deserve the name of 
 serious disputation) with which Bishop Butler meets 
 his opponents is rendered possible by the laxness with 
 which the words " identical " and " identity " are ordi- 
 narily used. Bishop Butler would not seriously deny 
 that personality undergoes great changes between in- 
 fancy and old age, and hence that it must undergo some 
 change from moment to moment. So universally is 
 this recognised, that it is common to hear it said of 
 such and such a man that he is not at all the person 
 he was, or of such and such another that he is twice 
 the man lie used to be expressions than which none 
 nearer the truth can well be found. On the other hand, 
 those whom Bishop Butler is intending to confute 
 would be the first to admit that, though there are many 
 changes between infancy and old age, yet they come 
 about in any one individual under such circumstances 
 as we are all agreed in considering as the factors of 
 personal identity rather than as hindrances thereto 
 that is to say that there has been no entire and perma- 
 nent death on the part of the individual between any 
 two phases of his existence, and that any one phase 
 has had a lasting though perhaps imperceptible effect 
 upon all succeeding ones. So that no one ever seriously 
 argued in the manner supposed by Bishop Butler, unless 
 with modifications and saving clauses, to which it does 
 not suit his purpose to call attention. 
 
 No doubt it would be more strictly accurate to say 
 " you are the now phase of the person I met last night," 
 or " you are the being which has been evolved from the 
 being I met last night," than " you are the person I 
 met last night." But life is too short for the peri- 
 phrases which would crowd upon us from every 
 
 H 
 
ii 4 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 quarter, if we did not set our face against all that is 
 under the surface of things, unless, that is to say, the 
 going beneath the surface is, for some special chance 
 of profit, excusable or capable of extenuation. 
 
 Take again the case of some weeping trees, whose 
 boughs spring up into fresh trees when they have 
 reached the ground, who shall say at what time they 
 cease to be members of the parent tree ? In the case 
 of cuttings from plants it is easy to elude the difficulty 
 by making a parade of the sharp and sudden act of 
 separation from the parent stock, but this is only a 
 piece of mental sleight of hand ; the cutting remains 
 as much part of its parent plant as though it had never 
 been severed from it ; it goes on profiting by the ex- 
 perience which it had before it was cut off, as much as 
 though it had never been cut off at all. This will be 
 more readily seen in the case of worms which have 
 been cut in half. Let a worm be cut in half, and the 
 two halves will become fresh worms ; which of them is 
 the original worm ? Surely both. Perhaps no simpler 
 case than this could readily be found of the manner in 
 which personality eludes us, the moment we try to in- 
 vestigate its real nature. There are few ideas which 
 on first consideration appear so simple, and none which 
 becomes more utterly incapable of limitation or defini- 
 tion as soon as it is examined closely. 
 
 It has gone the way of species. It is now generally 
 held that species blend or have blended into one an- 
 other ; so that any possibility of arrangement and appa- 
 rent subdivision into definite groups, is due to the sup- 
 pression by death both of individuals and whole genera, 
 which, had they been now existing, would have linked all 
 living beings by a series of gradations so subtle that 
 
PERSONAL IDENTITY. 115 
 
 little classification could have been attempted. What we 
 have failed to see is that the individual is as much linked 
 onto other individuals as the species is linked on to other 
 species. How it is that the one great personality of 
 life as a whole, should have split itself up into so many 
 centres of thought and action, each one of which is 
 wholly, or at any rate nearly unconscious of its con- 
 nection with the other members, instead of having 
 grown up into a huge polyp, or as it were coral reef 
 or compound animal over the whole world, which 
 should be conscious but of its own one single existence ; 
 how it is that the daily waste of this creature should 
 be carried on by the conscious death of its individual 
 members, instead of by the unconscious waste of tissue 
 which goes on in the bodies of each individual (if in- 
 deed the tissue which we waste daily in our own bodies 
 is so unconscious of its birth and death as we suppose); 
 how, again, that the daily repair of this huge creature 
 life should have become decentralised, and be carried 
 on by conscious reproduction on the part of its com- 
 ponent items, instead of by the unconscious nutrition 
 of the whole from a single centre, as the nutrition of 
 our own bodies would appear (though perhaps falsely) 
 to be carried on ; these are matters upon which I dare 
 not speculate here, but on which some reflections may 
 follow in subsequent chapters. 
 
INSTINCT AS INHERITED MEMORY. 
 (CHAPTER XL OF LIFE AND HABIT.) 
 
 OBVIOUSLY the memory of a habit or experience 
 will not commonly be transmitted to offspring in 
 that perfection which is called " instinct/' till the habit 
 or experience has been repeated in several generations 
 with more or less uniformity ; for otherwise the im- 
 pression made will not be strong enough to endure 
 through the busy and difficult task of reproduction. 
 This of course involves that the habit shall have at- 
 tained, as it were, equilibrium with the creature's sense 
 of its own needs, so that it shall have long seemed the 
 best course possible, leaving upon the whole and under 
 ordinary circumstances little further to be desired, and 
 hence that it should have been little varied during 
 many generations, We should expect that it would 
 be transmitted in a more or less partial, varying, im- 
 perfect, and intelligent condition before equilibrium 
 had been attained ; it would, however, continually tend 
 towards equilibrium. 
 
 When this stage has been reached, as regards any 
 habit, the creature will cease trying to improve ; on 
 which the repetition of the habit will become stable, 
 and hence capable of more unerring transmission but 
 at the same time improvement will cease ; the habit 
 will become fixed, and be perhaps transmitted at 
 
INSTINCT AS INHERITED MEMORY. 117 
 
 an earlier and earlier age, till it has reached that date 
 of manifestation which shall be found most agreeable 
 to the other habits of the creature. It will also be 
 manifested, as a matter of course, without further con- 
 sciousness or reflection, for people cannot be always 
 opening up settled questions ; if they thought a matter 
 all over yesterday they cannot think it all over again 
 to-day, what they thought then they will think now, 
 and will act upon their opinion ; and this, too, even in 
 spite sometimes of misgiving, that if they were to think 
 still further they could find a still better course. It is 
 not, therefore, to be expected that " instinct " should 
 show signs of that hesitating and tentative action which 
 results from knowledge that is still so imperfect as to 
 be actively self-conscious ; nor yet that it should grow 
 or vary perceptibly unless under such changed con- 
 ditions as shall baffle memory, and present the alterna- 
 tive of either invention that is to say, variation or 
 death. 
 
 But every instinct must have passed through the 
 laboriously intelligent stages through which human 
 civilisations and mechanical inventions are now passing ; 
 and he who would study the origin of an instinct with 
 its development, partial transmission, further growth, 
 further transmission, approach to more unreflecting 
 stability, and finally, its perfection as an unerring and 
 unerringly transmitted instinct, must look to laws, cus- 
 toms, and machinery as his best instructors. Customs 
 and machines are instincts and organs now in process 
 of development ; they will assuredly one day reach the 
 unconscious state of equilibrium which we observe in 
 the structures and instincts of bees and ants, and an 
 approach to which may be found among some savage 
 nations. We may reflect, however, not without plea- 
 
ii8 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 sure, that this condition the true millennium is still 
 distant. Nevertheless the ants and bees seem happy ; 
 perhaps more happy than when so many social ques- 
 tions were in as hot discussion among them as other 
 and not dissimilar ones will one day be amongst our- 
 selves. 
 
 And this, as will be apparent, opens up the whole 
 question of the stability of species, which we cannot 
 follow further here, than to say, that according to the 
 balance of testimony, many plants and animals do 
 appear to have reached a phase of being from which 
 they are hard to move that is to say, they will die 
 sooner than be at the pains of altering their habits 
 true martyrs to their convictions. Such races refuse to 
 see changes in their surroundings as long as they can, 
 but when compelled to recognise them, they throw up 
 the game because they cannot and will not, or will not 
 and cannot, invent. 
 
 This is perfectly intelligible, for a race is nothing 
 but a long-lived individual, and like any individual, or 
 tribe of men whom we have yet observed, will have its 
 special capacities and its special limitations, though, as 
 in the case of the individual, so also with the race, it 
 is exceedingly hard to say what those limitations are, 
 and why, having been able to go so far, it should go 
 no further. Every man and every race is capable of 
 education up to a certain point, but not to the extent 
 of being made from a sow's ear into a silk purse. The 
 proximate cause of the limitation seems to lie in the 
 absence of the wish to go further ; the presence or ab- 
 sence of the wish will depend upon the nature and 
 surroundings of the individual, which is simply a way 
 of saying that one can get no further, but that as the 
 song (with a slight alteration) says : 
 
INSTINCT AS INHERITED MEMORY. 119 
 
 *' Some breeds do, and some breeds don't, 
 Some breeds will, but this breed won't : 
 I tried very often to see if it would, 
 But it said it really couldn't, and I don't think it could." 
 
 M. Eibot in his work on Heredity * writes (p. 1 4) : 
 " The duckling hatched by the hen makes straight for 
 water." In what conceivable way can we account for 
 this, except on the supposition that the duckling knows 
 perfectly well what it can and what it cannot do with 
 water, owing to its recollection of what it did when it 
 was still one individuality with its parents, and hence, 
 when it was a duckling before ? 
 
 " The squirrel, before it knows anything of winter, 
 lays up a store of nuts. A bird when hatched in a cage 
 will, when given its freedom, build for itself a nest like 
 that of its parents, out of the same materials, and of 
 the same shape." 
 
 If this is not due to memory, " even an imperfect " 
 explanation of what else it can be due to, " would," to 
 quote from Mr. Darwin, " be satisfactory." 
 
 " Intelligence gropes about, tries this way and that, 
 misses its object, commits mistakes, and corrects them." 
 
 Yes. Because intelligence is of consciousness, and 
 consciousness is of attention, and attention is of uncer- 
 tainty, and uncertainty is of ignorance or want of con- 
 sciousness. Intelligence is not yet thoroughly up to 
 - its business. 
 
 " Instinct advances with a mechanical certainty, 
 hence comes its unconscious character. It knows no- 
 thing either of ends, or of the means of attaining them : 
 it implies no comparison, judgment, or choice." 
 
 This is assumption. What is certain is that instinct 
 does not betray signs of self-consciousness as to its own 
 
 * Kegan Paul, 1875. 
 
120 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 knowledge. It has dismissed reference to first prin- 
 ciples, and is no longer under the law, but under the 
 grace of a settled conviction. 
 
 " All seems directed by thought." 
 Yes ; because all has been in earlier existences 
 directed by thought. 
 
 " Without ever arriving at thought." 
 Because it has got past thought, and though " directed 
 by thought " originally, is now travelling in exactly the 
 . opposite direction. It is not likely to reach thought 
 again, till people get to know worse and worse how to 
 do things, the oftener they practise them. 
 
 " And if this phenomenon appear strange, it must 
 be observed that, analogous states occur in ourselves. 
 All that we do from habit walking, writing, or practis- 
 ing a mechanical act, for instance all these and many 
 other very complex acts are performed without conscious- 
 ness. 
 
 " Instinct appears stationary. It does not, like 
 intelligence, seem to grow and decay, to gain and to 
 lose. It does not improve." 
 
 Naturally. For improvement can only as a general 
 rule be looked for along the line of latest development, 
 that is to say, in matters concerning which the creature 
 is being still consciously exercised. Older questions 
 are settled, and the solution must be accepted as final, 
 for the question of living at all would be reduced to an 
 absurdity, if everything decided upon one day was to 
 be undecided again the next ; as with painting or 
 music, so with life and politics, let every man be fully 
 persuaded in his own mind, for decision with wrong 
 will be commonly a better policy than indecision I 
 had almost added with right ; and a firm purpose with 
 risk will be better than an infirm one with temporary 
 
INSTINCT AS INHERITED MEMORY. 121 
 
 exemption from disaster. Every race has made its 
 great blunders, to which it has nevertheless adhered, 
 inasmuch as the corresponding modification of other 
 structures and instincts was found preferable to the 
 revolution which would be caused by a radical change 
 of structure, with consequent havoc among a legion of 
 vested interests. Eudimentary organs are, as has been 
 often said, the survivals of these interests the signs 
 of their peaceful and gradual extinction as living faiths; 
 they are also instances of the difficulty of breaking 
 through any cant or trick which we have long practised, 
 and which is not sufficiently troublesome to make it a 
 serious object with us to cure ourselves of the habit. 
 
 " If it does not remain perfectly invariable, at least 
 it only varies within very narrow limits ; and though 
 this question has been warmly debated in our day 
 and is yet unsettled, we may yet say that in instinct 
 immutability is the law, variation the exception." 
 
 This is quite as it should be. Genius will occasion- 
 ally rise a little above convention, but with an old 
 convention immutability will be the rule. 
 
 " Such," continues M. Eibot, " are the admitted 
 characters of instinct." 
 
 Yes ; but are they not also the admitted characters 
 of habitual actions that are due to memory ? 
 
 M. Eibot says a little further on : " Originally man 
 had considerable trouble in taming the animals which 
 are now domesticated ; and his work would have been 
 in vain had not heredity " (memory) " come to his aid. 
 It may be said that after man has modified a wild 
 animal to his will, there goes on in its progeny a silent 
 conflict between two heredities " (memories), " the one 
 tending to fix the acquired modifications and the other 
 
122 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 to preserve the primitive instincts. The latter often 
 get the mastery, and only after several generations is 
 training sure of victory. But we may see that in 
 either case heredity " (memory) " always asserts its 
 rights." 
 
 How marvellously is the above passage elucidated 
 and made to fit in with the results of our recognised 
 experience, by the simple substitution of the word 
 " memory " for heredity. 
 
 I cannot refrain from bringing forward a few more 
 instances of what I think must be considered by every 
 reader as hereditary memory. Sydney Smith writes : 
 
 " Sir James Hall hatched some chickens in an oven. 
 Within a few minutes after the shell was broken, a 
 spider was turned loose before this very youthful 
 brood ; the destroyer of flies had hardly proceeded 
 more than a few inches, before he was descried by one 
 of these oven-born chickens, and, at one peck of his 
 bill, immediately devoured. This certainly was not 
 imitation. A female goat very near delivery died ; 
 Galen cut out the young kid, and placed before it a 
 bundle of hay, a bunch of fruit, and a pan of milk ; 
 the young kid smelt to them all very attentively, and 
 then began to lap the milk. This was not imitation. 
 And what is commonly and rightly called instinct, 
 cannot be explained away under the notion of its 
 being imitation." (Lecture xvii. on Moral Philo- 
 sophy.) 
 
 It cannot, indeed, be explained away under the notion 
 of its being imitation, but I think it may well be so 
 under that of its being memory. 
 
 Again, a little further on in the same lecture as 
 that above quoted from, we find : 
 
INSTINCT AS INHERITED MEMORY. 123 
 
 " Ants and beavers lay up magazines. Where do 
 they get their knowledge that it will not be so easy 
 to collect food in rainy weather as it is in summer ? 
 Men and women know these things, because their 
 grandpapas and grandmammas have told them so. 
 Aiits hatched from the egg artificially, or birds hatched 
 in this manner, have all this knowledge by intuition, 
 without the smallest communication with any of their 
 relations. Now observe what the solitary wasp does ; 
 she digs several holes in the sand, in each of which 
 she deposits an egg, though she certainly knows not (?) 
 that an animal is deposited in that egg, and still less 
 that this animal must be nourished with other animals. 
 She collects a few green flies, rolls them up neatly in 
 several parcels (like Bologna sausages), and stuffs one 
 parcel into each hole where an egg is deposited. When 
 the wasp worm is hatched, it finds a store of provision 
 ready made ; and what is most curious, the quantity 
 allotted to each is exactly sufficient to support it, till 
 it attains the period of wasphood, and can provide for 
 itself. This instinct of the parent wasp is the more 
 remarkable as it does not feed upon flesh itself. Here 
 the little creature has never seen its parent ; for by the 
 time it is born, the parent is always eaten by sparrows ; 
 and yet, without the slightest education, or previous 
 experience, it does everything that the parent did before 
 it. Now the objectors to the doctrine of instinct may 
 say what they please, but young tailors have no intui- 
 tive method of making pantaloons ; a new-born mer- 
 cer cannot measure diaper ; nature teaches a cook's 
 daughter nothing about sippets. All these things re- 
 quire with us seven years' apprenticeship ; but insects 
 are like Moliere's persons of quality they know every- 
 thing (as Moliere says) without having learnt any- 
 
I2 4 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 thing. ' Les gens de qualite savent tout, sans avoir 
 rien appris.' " 
 
 How completely all difficulty vanishes from the 
 facts so pleasantly told in this passage when we bear in 
 mind the true nature of personal identity, the ordinary 
 working of memory, and the vanishing tendency of con- 
 sciousness concerning what we know exceedingly well. 
 
 My last instance I take from M. Eibot, who writes: 
 " Gratiolet, in his Anatomic Compare du Systeme Ner- 
 veux, states that an old piece of wolfs skin, with the 
 hair all worn away, when set before a little dog, threw 
 the animal into convulsions of fear by the slight scent 
 attaching to it. The dog had never seen a wolf, and 
 we can only explain this alarm by the hereditary trans- 
 mission of certain sentiments, coupled with a certain 
 perception of the sense of smell." (" Heredity," p. 43.) 
 
 I should prefer to say " we can only explain the 
 alarm by supposing that the smell of the wolfs skin " 
 the sense of smell being, as we all know, more 
 powerful to recall the ideas that have been associated 
 with it than any other sense " brought up the ideas 
 with which it had been associated in the dog's mind 
 during many previous existences " he on smelling the 
 wolfs skin remembering all about wolves perfectly 
 well. 
 
( 125 ) 
 
 CONCLUDING REMARKS. 
 (FROM CHAPTER xv. OF LIFE AND HABIT.) 
 
 HEBE, then, I leave my case, though well aware that 
 I have crossed the threshold only of my subject. 
 My work is of a tentative character, put before the 
 public as a sketch or design for a, possibly, further 
 endeavour, in which I hope to derive assistance from 
 the criticisms which this present volume may elicit.* 
 Such as it is, however, for the present I must leave it. 
 
 We have seen that we cannot do anything thoroughly 
 till we can do it unconsciously, and that we cannot do 
 anything unconsciously till we can do it thoroughly ; 
 this at first seems illogical ; but logic and consistency 
 are luxuries for the gods, and the lower animals, only. 
 Thus a boy cannot really know how to swim till he can 
 swim, but he cannot swim till he knows how to swim. 
 Conscious effort is but the process of rubbing off the 
 rough corners from these two contradictory statements, 
 till they eventually fit into one another so closely that 
 it is impossible to disjoin them. 
 
 Whenever we see any creature able to go through 
 any complicated and difficult process with little or no 
 effort whether it be a bird building her nest, or a 
 
 * It is now (January 1884) more than six years since Life and Habit 
 was published, but I have come across nothing which makes me wish 
 to alter it to any material extent. 
 
126 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 hen's egg making itself into a chicken, or an ovum 
 turning itself into a baby we may conclude that the 
 creature has done the same thing on a very great 
 number of past occasions. 
 
 We found the phenomena exhibited by heredity to 
 be so like those of memory, and to be so inexplicable 
 on any other supposition than that they were modes of 
 memory, that it was easier to suppose them due to 
 memory in spite of the fact that we cannot remember 
 having recollected, than to believe that because we 
 cannot so remember, therefore the phenomena cannot 
 be due to memory. 
 
 We were thus led to consider "personal identity/' 
 in order to see whether there was sufficient reason for 
 denying that the experience, which we must have 
 clearly gained somewhere, was gained by us when we 
 were in the persons of our forefathers ; we found, not 
 without surprise, that unless we admitted that it might 
 be so gained, in so far as that we once actually were 
 our remotest ancestor, we must change our ideas cofa- 
 cerning personality altogether. 
 
 We therefore assumed that the phenomena of here- 
 dity, whether as regards instinct or structure, were due 
 to memory of past experiences, accumulated and fused 
 till they had become automatic, or quasi automatic, 
 much in the same way as after a long life 
 
 . . . " Old experience doth attain 
 To something like prophetic strain." 
 
 After dealing with certain phenomena of memory, 
 but more especially with its abeyance and revival, we 
 inquired what the principal corresponding phenomena 
 of life and species should be, on the hypothesis that 
 they were mainly due to memory. 
 
 I think I may say that we found the hypothesis fit 
 
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 127 
 
 in with actual facts in a sufficiently satisfactory manner. 
 We found not a few matters, as, for example, the 
 sterility of hybrids, the principle underlying longevity, 
 the phenomena of old age, and puberty as generally 
 near the end of development, explain themselves with 
 more completeness than I have yet heard of their being 
 explained on any other hypothesis. Most indeed of 
 these phenomena have been left hitherto without even 
 an attempt at an explanation. 
 
 We considered the most important difficulty in the 
 way of instinct as hereditary habit, namely, the struc- 
 ture and instincts of neuter insects ; these are very 
 unlike those of their parents, and cannot, apparently, 
 be transmitted to offspring by individuals of the pre- 
 vious generation, in whom such structure and instincts 
 1 appeared, inasmuch as these creatures are sterile. I 
 do not say that the difficulty is wholly removed, 
 inasmuch as some obscurity must be admitted to remain 
 as to the manner in which the structure of the larva 
 is aborted ; this obscurity is likely to remain till we 
 know more of the early history of civilisation among 
 bees than I can find that we know at present; but I 
 believe the difficulty was reduced to such proportions 
 as to make it little likely to be felt in comparison with 
 that of attributing instinct to any other cause than 
 inherited habit, or memory on the part of offspring, of 
 habits contracted in the persons of its ancestors."* 
 
 * It must be remembered that the late Mr. C. Darwin expressly 
 denied that instinct and inherited habit are generally to be con- 
 nected. See Mr. Darwin's "Origin of Species," end of chapter viii., 
 where he expresses his surprise that no one has hitherto adduced the 
 instincts of neuter insects "against the well-known doctrine of in- 
 herited habit as advanced by Lamarck." 
 
 Mr. Romanes, in his " Mental Evolution in Animals " (November, 
 1883), refers to this passage of Mr. Darwin's, and endorses it with 
 approbation (p. 297). 
 
128 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 We then inquired what was the great principle un- 
 derlying variation, and answered, with Lamarck, that it 
 must be " sense of need ; " and though not without being 
 haunted by suspicion of a vicious circle, and also well 
 aware that we were not much nearer the origin of life 
 than when we started, we still concluded that here 
 was the truest origin of species, and hence of genera ; 
 and that the accumulation of variations, which in time 
 amounted to specific and generic differences, was due 
 to intelligence and memory on the part of the creature 
 varying, rather than to the operation of what Mr. Dar- 
 win has called " natural selection." At the same time 
 we admitted that the course of nature is very much 
 as Mr. Darwin has represented it, in this respect, 
 in so far as that there is a struggle for existence, 
 and that the weaker must go to the wall. But we 
 denied that this part of the course of nature would 
 lead to much, if any, accumulation of variation, 
 unless the variation was directed mainly by intelli- 
 gent sense of need, with continued personality and 
 memory. 
 
 We conclude, therefore, that the small, apparently 
 structureless, impregnate ovum from which we have each 
 one of us sprung, has a potential recollection of all that 
 has happened to each one of its ancestors prior to the 
 period at which any such ancestor has issued from 
 the bodies of its progenitors provided, that is to 
 say, a sufficiently deep, or sufficiently often-repeated, 
 impression has been made to admit of its being re- 
 membered at all. 
 
 Each step of normal development will lead the im- 
 pregnate ovum up to, and remind it of, its next ordinary 
 course of action, in the same way as we, when we recite 
 a well-known passage, are led up to each successive 
 
CONCLUDING REMARKS. 129 
 
 sentence by the sentence which has immediately pre- 
 ceded it. 
 
 And for this reason, namely, that as it takes two 
 people " to tell " a thing a speaker and a comprehend- 
 ing listener, without which last, though much may have 
 been said, there has been nothing told so also it takes 
 two people, as it were, to " remember" a thing the 
 creature remembering, and the surroundings of the 
 creature at the time it last remembered. Hence, though 
 the ovum immediately after impregnation is instinct 
 with all the memories of both parents, not one of these 
 memories can normally become active till both the 
 ovum itself, and its surroundings, are sufficiently like 
 what they respectively were, when the occurrence now 
 to be remembered last took place. The memory will 
 then immediately return, and the creature will do as it 
 did on the last occasion that it was in like case as now. 
 This ensures that similarity of order shall be preservedin 
 all the stages of development in successive generations. 
 
 Life then is the being possessed of memory. We 
 are all the same stuff to start with ; plants and animals 
 only differ from one another because they remember 
 different things ; they grow up in the shapes they bear 
 because these shapes are the embodiments of their 
 ideas concerning their own past history ; they are forms 
 of faith or faiths of form whichever the reader chooses. 
 
 Hence the term " Natural History," as applied to 
 the different plants and animals around us. For surely 
 the study of natural history means only the study of 
 plants and animals themselves, which, at the moment 
 of using the words " Natural History," we assume to be 
 the most important part of nature. 
 
 A living creature well supported by a mass of healthy 
 ancestral memory is a young and growing creature, free 
 
130 SELECTIONS FROM LIFE AND HABIT. 
 
 from ache or pain, and thoroughly acquainted with its 
 business so far, but with much yet to be reminded of. 
 A creature which finds itself and its surroundings not 
 so unlike those of its parents about the time of their 
 begetting it, as to be compelled to recognise that it 
 never yet was in any such position, is a creature in the 
 heyday of life. A creature which begins to be aware 
 of itself is one which is beginning to recognise that the 
 situation is a new one. 
 
 It is the young and fair, then, who are the truly old 
 and truly experienced ; it is they who alone have a 
 trustworthy memory to guide them ; they alone know 
 things as they are, and it is from them that, as we 
 grow older, we must study if we would still cling to 
 truth. The whole charm of youth lies in its advantage 
 over age in respect of experience, and where this has 
 for some reason failed, or been misapplied, the charm is 
 broken. When we say that we are getting old, we should 
 say rather that we are getting new or young, and are 
 suffering from inexperience, which drives us into doing 
 things which we do not understand, and lands us, even- 
 tually, in the utter impotence of death. The kingdom 
 of heaven is the kingdom of little children. 
 
SELECTIONS 
 FROM EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW/ 
 
 IMPOTENCE OF PALEY'S CONCLUSION. THE 
 TELEOLOGY OF THE EVOLUTIONIST. 
 
 (FROM CHAPTER in. OF EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW.) 
 
 TF we conceive of ourselves as looking simultaneously 
 -* upon a real foot, and upon an admirably constructed 
 artificial one, placed by the side of it, the idea of design, 
 and design by an intelligent living being with a body 
 and soul (without which, the use of the word design 
 is delusive), will present itself strongly to our minds 
 in connection both with the true foot and with the 
 model ; but we find another idea asserting itself with 
 even greater strength, namely, that the design of the 
 true foot is infinitely more intricate, and yet is carried 
 into execution in far more masterly manner than that 
 of the model. We not only feel that there is a wider 
 difference between the ability, time, and care which 
 have been lavished on the real foot and upon the 
 model, than there is between the skill and the time 
 taken to produce Westminster Abbey, and that be- 
 stowed upon a gingerbread cake stuck with sugar plums 
 so as to represent it, but also that these two objects 
 must have been manufactured on different principles. 
 We do not for a moment doubt that the real foot was 
 designed, but we are so astonished at the dexterity of 
 
 * Evolution, Old and New, was published in May, 1879. 
 
I 3 2 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 
 
 the designer that we are at a loss for some time to 
 think who could have designed it, where he can live, 
 in what manner he studied, for how long, and by what 
 processes he carried out his design, when matured, into 
 actual practice. Until recently it was thought that 
 there was no answer to many of these questions, more 
 especially to those which bear upon the mode of manu- 
 facture. For the last hundred years, however, the 
 importance of a study has been recognised which does 
 actually reveal to us in no small degree the processes 
 by which the human foot is manufactured, so that in 
 our endeavour to lay our hands upon the points of 
 difference between the kind of design with which the 
 foot itself is designed, and the design of the model, 
 we turn naturally to the guidance of those who have 
 made this study their specialty ; and a very wide differ- 
 ence does this study, embryology, at once reveal to us. 
 Writing of the successive changes through which 
 each embryo is forced to pass, the late Mr. G. H. Lewes 
 says that "none of these phases have any adaptation 
 to the future state of the animal, but are in positive 
 contradiction to it or are simply purposeless ; whereas 
 all show stamped on them the unmistakable characters 
 of ancestral adaptation, and the progressions of organic 
 evolution. What does the fact imply ? There is not 
 a single known example of a complex organism which 
 is not developed out of simpler forms. Before it can 
 attain the complex structure which distinguishes it, 
 there must be an evolution of forms similar to those 
 which distinguish the structure of organisms lower in 
 the series. On the hypothesis of a plan which pre- 
 arranged the organic world, nothing could be more 
 unworthy of a supreme intelligence than this inability 
 to construct an organism at once, without making several 
 
TELEOLOGY OF THE EVOLUTIONIST. 133 
 
 previous tentative efforts, undoing to-day what was so 
 carefully done yesterday, and repeating for centuries the 
 same tentatives in the same succession. Do not let us 
 blink this consideration. There is a traditional phrase 
 much in vogue among the anthropomorphists, which 
 arose naturally enough from a tendency to take human 
 methods as an explanation of the Divine a phrase 
 which becomes a sort of argument ' The Great Archi- 
 tect.' But if we are to admit the human point of view, 
 a glance at the facts of embryology must produce very 
 uncomfortable reflections. For what should we say 
 to an architect who was unable, or being able was 
 obstinately unwilling, to erect a palace except by first 
 using his materials in the shape of a hut, then pulling 
 them down and rebuilding them as a cottage, then 
 adding story to story and room to room, not with any 
 reference to the ultimate purposes of the palace, but 
 wholly with reference to the way in which houses were 
 constructed in ancient times ? What should we say 
 to the architect who could not form a museum out of 
 bricks and mortar, but was forced to begin as if going 
 to construct a mansion, and after proceeding some way 
 in this direction, altered his plan into a palace, and 
 that again into a museum ? Yet this is the sort of 
 succession on which organisms are constructed. The 
 fact has long been familiar ; how has it been reconciled 
 with infinite wisdom ? ' Let the following passage 
 answer for a thousand : * The embryo is nothing like 
 the miniature of the adult. For a long while the body 
 in its entirety and in its details, presents the strangest 
 of spectacles. Day by day and hour by hour, tin* 
 aspect of the scene changes, and this instability is ex- 
 hibited by the most essential parts no less than by the 
 accessory parts. One would say that nature feels her 
 
134 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 
 
 way, and only reaches the goal after many times miss- 
 ing the path ' (on dirait que la nature tatonne et ne 
 conduit son ceuvre a bon fin, qu'apres s'etre souvent 
 trompe'e)." * 
 
 The above passage does not, I think, affect the evi- 
 dence for design which we adduced in the preceding 
 chapter.t However strange the process of manufacture 
 may appear, when the work comes to be turned out 
 the design is too manifest to be doubted. 
 
 If the reader were to come upon some lawyer's deed 
 which dealt with matters of such unspeakable intricacy 
 that it baffled his imagination to conceive how it could 
 ever have been drafted, and if in spite of this he were 
 to find the intricacy of the provisions to be made, ex- 
 ceeded only by the ease and simplicity with which the 
 deed providing for them was found to work in practice ; 
 and after this, if he were to discover that the deed, by 
 whomsoever drawn, had nevertheless been drafted upon 
 principles which at first seemed very foreign to any 
 according to which he was in the habit of drafting 
 deeds himself, as for example, that the draftsman had 
 begun to draft a will as a marriage settlement, and so 
 forth yet an observer would not, I take it, do either 
 of two things. He would not in the face of the result 
 deny the design, making himself judge rather of the 
 method of procedure than of the achievement. Nor 
 yet after insisting in the manner of Paley, on the 
 wonderful proofs of intention and on the exquisite pro- 
 visions which were to be found in every syllable thus 
 leading us up to the highest pitch of expectation 
 
 * Quatrefages, "Metamorphoses de I'Homme et des Animaux," 1862, 
 p. 42 ; G. H. Lewes, "Physical Basis of Mind," 1877, p. 83. 
 
 t I have been unable, through want of space, to give this chapter 
 here. 
 
TELEOLOGY OF THE EVOLUTIONIST. 135 
 
 would he present us with such an impotent conclusion 
 as that the designer, though a living person and a true 
 designer, was yet immaterial and intangible, a some- 
 thing, in fact, which proves to be a nothing ; an omni- 
 scient and omnipotent vacuum. 
 
 Our observer would feel he need not have been at 
 such pains to establish his design if this was to be the 
 upshot of his reasoning. He would therefore admit the 
 design, and by consequence the designer, but would 
 probably ask a little time for reflection before he 
 ventured to say who, or what, or where the designer 
 was. Then gaining some insight into the manner in 
 which the deed had been drawn, he would conclude 
 that the draftsman was a specialist who had had long 
 practice in this particular kind of work, but who now 
 worked almost as it might be said automatically and 
 without consciousness, and found it difficult to depart 
 from a habitual method of procedure. 
 
 We turn, then, on Paley, and say to him : " We 
 have admitted your design and your designer. Where 
 is he ? Show him to us. If you cannot show him to 
 us as flesh and blood, show him as flesh and sap ; show 
 him as a living cell ; show him as protoplasm. Lower 
 than this we should not fairly go ; it is not in the bond 
 or nexus of our ideas that something utterly inanimate 
 and inorganic should scheme, design, contrive, and 
 elaborate structures which can make mistakes : it may 
 elaborate low unerring things, like crystals, but it can- 
 not elaborate those which have the power to err. 
 Nevertheless, we will commit such abuse with our 
 understandings as to waive this point, and we will ask 
 you to show him to us as air which, if it cannot be seen 
 yet can be felt, weighed, handled, transferred from 
 place to place, be judged by its effects, and so forth ; or 
 
136 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 
 
 if this may not be, give us half a grain of hydrogen, 
 diffused through all space and invested with some of 
 the minor attributes of matter ; or if you cannot do 
 this, give us an imponderable like electricity, or even 
 the higher mathematics, but give us something or throw 
 off the mask and tell us fairly out that it is your paid 
 profession to hoodwink us on this matter if you can, 
 and that you are but doing your best to earn an 
 honest living." 
 
 We may fancy Paley as turning the tables upon us 
 and as saying ; " But you too have admitted a designer 
 you too then must mean a designer with a body and 
 soul, who must be somewhere to be found in space, and 
 who must live in time. Where is this your designer ? 
 Can you show him more than I can ? Can you lay 
 your finger on him and demonstrate him so that a child 
 shall see him and know him, and find what was hereto- 
 fore an isolated idea concerning him, combine itself 
 instantaneously with the idea of the designer, we will 
 say, of the human foot, so that no power on earth shall 
 henceforth tear those two ideas asunder ? Surely if 
 you cannot do this, you too are trifling with words, and 
 abusing your own mind and that of your reader. 
 Where, then, is your designer of man ? Who made 
 him ? And where, again, is your designer of beasts 
 and birds, of fishes and of plants ? " 
 
 Our answer is simple enough ; it is that we can and 
 do point to a living tangible person with flesh, blood, 
 eyes, nose, ears, organs, senses, dimensions, who did of 
 his own cunning after infinite proof of every kind of 
 hazard and experiment scheme out and fashion each 
 organ of the human body. This is the person whom 
 we claim as the designer and artificer of that body, and 
 he is the one of all others the best fitted for the task 
 
TELEOLOGY OF THE EVOLUTIONIST. 137 
 
 by his antecedents, and his practical knowledge of the 
 requirements of the case for he is man himself. 
 
 Not man, the individual of any given generation, 
 but man in the entirety of his existence from the 
 dawn of life onwards to the present moment. In 
 like manner we say that the designer of all organisms 
 is so incorporate with the organisms themselves so 
 lives, moves, and has its being in those organisms, and 
 is so one with them they in it, and it in them that 
 it is more consistent with reason and the common use 
 of words to see the designer of each living form in the 
 living form itself, than to look for its designer in some 
 other place or person. 
 
 Thus we have a third alternative presented to us. 
 
 Mr. Charles Darwin and his followers deny design, 
 as having any appreciable share in the formation of 
 organism at all. 
 
 Paley and the theologians insist on design, but upon 
 a designer outside the universe and the organism. 
 
 The third opinion is that suggested in the first instance 
 and carried out to a very high degree of development 
 by Buffon. It was improved, and indeed, made almost 
 perfect by Dr. Erasmus Darwin, but too much neg- 
 lected by him after he had put it forward. It was bor- 
 rowed, as I think we may say with some confidence, 
 from Dr. Darwin by Lamarck, and was followed up by 
 him ardently thenceforth, during the remainder of his 
 life, though somewhat less perfectly comprehended by 
 him than it had been by Dr. Darwin. It is that the 
 design which has designed organisms, has resided within, 
 and been embodied in, the organisms themselves. 
 
FAILURE OF THE FIRST EVOLUTIONISTS TO SEE 
 THEIR POSITION AS TELEOLOGICAL. 
 
 (CHAPTER iv. OF EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW.) 
 
 IT follows from the doctrine of Dr. Erasmus Darwin 
 and Lamarck, if not from that of Buff on himself, 
 that the majority of organs are as purposive to the 
 evolutionist as to the theologian, and far more intel- 
 ligibly so. Circumstances, however, prevented these 
 writers from acknowledging this fact to the world, and 
 perhaps even to themselves. Their crux was, as it still 
 is to so many evolutionists, the presence of rudimentary 
 organs, and the processes of embryological development. 
 They would not admit that rudimentary and therefore 
 useless organs were designed by a Creator to take their 
 place once and for ever as part of a scheme whose main 
 idea was, that every animal structure was to serve some 
 useful end in connection with its possessor. 
 
 This was the doctrine of final causes as then com- 
 monly held ; in the face of rudimentary organs it was 
 absurd. BufTon was above all things else a plain matter 
 of fact thinker, who refused to go far beyond the obvious. 
 Like all other profound writers, he was, if I may say 
 so, profoundly superficial. He felt that the aim of 
 research does not consist in the knowing this or that, 
 but in the easing of the desire to know or understand 
 more completely in the peace of mind which passeth 
 all understanding. His was the perfection of a healthy 
 
CRUX OF THE EARLY EVOLUTIONISTS. 139 
 
 mental organism by which over effort is felt to be as 
 vicious and contemptible as indolence. He knew this 
 too well to know the grounds of his knowledge, but we 
 smaller people who know it less completely, can see 
 that such felicitous instinctive tempering together of 
 the two great contradictory principles, love of effort 
 and love of ease, has underlain every healthy step of 
 all healthy growth, whether of vegetable or animal, from 
 the earliest conceivable time to the present moment. 
 Nothing is worth looking at which is seen either too 
 obviously or with too much difficulty. Nothing is 
 worth doing or well done which is not done fairly 
 easily, and some little deficiency of effort is more par- 
 donable than any very perceptible excess, for virtue 
 has ever erred on the side of self-indulgence rather 
 than of asceticism. 
 
 According to Buffon, then as also according to 
 Dr. Darwin, who was just such another practical and 
 genial thinker, and who was distinctly a pupil of 
 Buffon, though a most intelligent and original one 
 if an organ after a reasonable amount of inspection 
 appeared to be useless, it was to be called useless 
 without more ado, and theories were to be ordered out 
 of court if they were troublesome. In like manner, if 
 animals breed freely inter se before our eyes, as for 
 example the horse and ass, the fact was to be noted, 
 but no animals were to be classed as capable of inter- 
 breeding until they had asserted their right to such 
 classification by breeding with tolerable certainty. If, 
 again, an animal looked as if it felt, that is to say, if it 
 moved about pretty quickly or made a noise, it must be 
 held to feel; if it did neither of these things it did not 
 look as if it felt, and therefore it must be said not to 
 feel. De non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem e#t 
 
140 EVOLUTION, 'OLD AND NEW. 
 
 lex was one of the chief axioms of their philosophy ; no 
 writers have had a greater horror of mystery or of ideas 
 that have not become so mastered as to be, or to have 
 been, superficial. Lamarck was one of those men of 
 whom I believe it has been said that they have brain 
 upon the brain. He had his theory that an animal 
 could not feel unless it had a nervous system, and at 
 least a spinal marrow and that it could not think at 
 all without a brain all his facts, therefore, have to be 
 made to square with this. With Buffon and Dr. Darwin 
 we feel safe that however wrong they may sometimes 
 be, their conclusions have always been arrived at on 
 that fairly superficial view of things in which, as I have 
 elsewhere said, our nature alone permits us to be com- 
 forted. 
 
 To these writers, then, the doctrine of final causes for 
 rudimentary organs was a piece of mystification and an 
 absurdity ; no less fatal to any such doctrine were the 
 processes of embryological development. It was plain 
 that the commonly received teleology must be given 
 up ; but the idea of design or purpose was so associated 
 in their minds with theological design that they avoided 
 it altogether. They seem to have forgotten that an 
 internal purpose is as much purpose as an external 
 one ; hence, unfortunately, though their whole theory 
 of development is intensely purposive, it is the fact 
 rather than the name of teleology which has hitherto 
 been insisted upon, even by the greatest writers on 
 evolution the name having been most persistently 
 denied even by those who were most insisting on the 
 thing itself. 
 
 It is easy to understand the difficulty felt by the 
 fathers of evolution when we remember how much had 
 to be seen before the facts could lie well before them. 
 

 CRUX OF THE EARLY EVOLUTIONISTS. 141 
 
 It was necessary to attain, firstly, to a perception of 
 the unity of person between parents and offspring in 
 successive generations ; secondly, it must be seen that 
 an organism's memory (within the limitations to which 
 all memory is subject) goes back for generations beyond 
 its birth, to the first beginnings in fact, of which we 
 know anythiog whatever ; thirdly, the latency of that 
 memory, as of memory generally, till the associated 
 ideas are reproduced, must be brought to bear upon 
 the facts of heredity ; and lastly, the unconsciousness 
 with which habitual actions come to be performed, 
 must be assigned as the explanation of the unconscious- 
 ness with which we grow and discharge most of our 
 natural functions. 
 
 Buffon was too busy with the fact that animals 
 descended with modification at all, to go beyond the 
 development and illustration of this great truth. I 
 doubt whether he ever saw more than the first, and 
 that dimly, of the four considerations above stated. 
 
 Dr. Darwin was the first to point out the first two 
 considerations ; he did so with some clearness, but can 
 hardly be said to have understood their full importance : 
 the two latter ideas do not appear to have occurred to 
 him. 
 
 Lamarck had little if any perception of any one of 
 the four. When, however, they are firmly seized and 
 brought into their due bearings one upon another, the 
 facts of heredity become as simple as those of a man 
 making a tobacco pipe, and rudimentary organs are 
 seen to be essentially of the same character as the little 
 rudimentary protuberance at the bottom of the pipe to 
 which I referred in ' Erewhon.' * 
 
 These organs are now no longer useful, but they 
 
 * Page 210, firs-t edition. 
 
142 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 
 
 once were so, and were therefore once purposive, though 
 not so now. They are the expressions of a bygone use- 
 fulness ; sayings, as it were, about which there was at 
 one time infinite wrangling, as to wjiat both the mean- 
 ing and the expression should best be, so that they then 
 had living significance in the mouths of those who 
 used them, though they have become such mere shib- 
 boleths and cant formulae to ourselves that we think 
 no more of their meaning than we do of Julius Caesar 
 in the month of July. They continue to be reproduced 
 through the force of habit, and through indisposition to 
 get out of any familiar groove of action until it becomes 
 too unpleasant for us to remain in it any longer. It 
 has long been felt that embryology and rudimentary 
 structures indicated community of descent. Dr. Darwin 
 and Lamarck insisted on this, as have all subsequent 
 writers on evolution ; but the explanation why and 
 how the structures come to be repeated namely, that 
 they are simply examples of the force of habit can 
 only be perceived intelligently by those who admit such 
 unity between parents and offspring as that the self- 
 development of the latter can be properly called 
 habitual (as being a repetition of an act by one and 
 the same individual), and can only be fully sympa- 
 thised with by those who recognise that if habit be 
 admitted as the key to the fact at all, the unconscious 
 manner in which the habit comes to be repeated is only 
 of a piece with all our other observations concerning 
 habit. For the fuller development of the foregoing, I 
 must refer the reader to my work " Life and Habit." 
 
 The purposiveness, which even Dr. Darwin (and 
 Lamarck still less) seems never to have quite recog- 
 nised in spite of their having insisted so much on what 
 amounts to the same thing, now comes into full view. 
 
CRUX OF THE EARLY EVOLUTIONISTS. 143 
 
 It is seen that the organs external to the body, and 
 those internal to it, are the second as much as the first, 
 things which we have made for our own convenience, 
 and with a prevision that we shall have need of them ; 
 the main difference between the manufacture of these 
 two classes of organs being, that we have made the one 
 kind so often that we can no longer follow the processes 
 whereby we make them, while the others are new 
 things which we must make introspectively or not at 
 all, and which are not yet so incorporate with our 
 vitality as that we should think they grow instead of 
 being manufactured. The manufacture of the tool, and 
 the manufacture of the living organ prove therefore to 
 be but two species of the same genus, which, though 
 widely differentiated, have descended as it were from 
 one common filament of desire and inventive faculty. 
 The greater or less complexity of the organs goes for 
 very little. It is only a question of the amount of 
 intelligence and voluntary self-adaptation which we 
 must admit, and this must be settled rather by an 
 appeal to what we find in organism, and observe con- 
 cerning it, than by what we may have imagined & 
 priori. 
 
 Given a small speck of jelly with some power of 
 slightly varying its actions in accordance with slightly 
 varying circumstances and desires given such a jelly- 
 speck with a power of assimilating other matter, and 
 thus of reproducing itself, given also that it should be 
 possessed of a memory and a reproductive system, and 
 we can show how the whole animal world can have 
 descended it may be from an amceba without inter- 
 ference from without, and how every organ in every 
 creature is designed at first roughly and tentatively 
 but finally fashioned with the most consummate 
 
I 4 4 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 
 
 perfection, by the creature which has had need of that 
 organ, which best knew what it wanted, and was never 
 satisfied till it had got that which was the best suited 
 to its varying circumstances in their entirety. We can 
 even show how, if it becomes worth the Ethiopian's 
 while to try and change his skin, or the leopard's to 
 change his spots, they can assuredly change them 
 within a not unreasonable time and adapt their cover- 
 ing to their own will and convenience, and to that of 
 none other ; thus what is commonly conceived of as 
 direct creation by God is moved back to a time and 
 space inconceivable in their remoteness, while the aim 
 and design so obvious in nature are shown to be still 
 at work around us, growing ever busier and busier, and 
 advancing from day to day both in knowledge and 
 power. 
 
 It was reserved for Mr. Charles Darwin and for 
 those who have too rashly followed him to deny pur- 
 pose as having had any share in the development of 
 animal and vegetable organs ; to see no evidence of 
 design in those wonderful provisions which have been 
 the marvel and delight of observers in all ages. The 
 one who has drawn our attention more than perhaps 
 any other living writer to those very marvels of co- 
 adaptation, is the foremost to maintain that they are 
 the result not of desire and design, either within the 
 creature or without it, but of blind chance, working 
 no whither, and due but to the accumulation of innum- 
 erable lucky accidents. 
 
 " There are men," writes Professor Tyndal in the 
 
 Nineteenth Century for last November,"* " and by no 
 
 means the minority, who, however wealthy in regard 
 
 to facts, can never rise into the region of principles ; 
 
 * 1878. 
 
CRUX OF THE EARLY EVOLUTIONISTS. 145 
 
 and they are sometimes intolerant of tliose that can. 
 They are formed to plod meritoriously on in the lower 
 levels of thought ; unpossessed of the pinions necessary 
 to reach the heights, they cannot realise the mental 
 act the act of inspiration it might well be called 
 by which a man of genius, after long pondering and 
 proving, reaches a theoretic conception which unravels 
 and illuminates the tangle of centuries of observation 
 and experiment. There are minds, it may be said in 
 passing, who, at the present moment, stand in this 
 relation to Mr. Darwin." 
 
 The more rhapsodical parts of the above must go 
 for what they are worth, but I should be sorry to think 
 that what remains conveyed a censure which might 
 fall justly on myself. As I read the earlier part of 
 the passage I confess that I imagined the conclusion 
 was going to be very different from what it proved to 
 be. Fresh from the study of the older men and also 
 of Mr. Darwin himself, I failed to see that Mr. Darwin 
 had " unravelled and illuminated " a tangled skein, but 
 believed him, on the contrary, to have tangled and 
 obscured what his predecessors had made in great part, 
 if not wholly, plain. With the older writers, I had 
 felt as though in the hands of men who wished to 
 understand themselves and to make their reader under- 
 stand them with the smallest possible exertion. The 
 older men, if not in full daylight, at any rate saw in 
 what quarter of the sky the dawn was breaking, and 
 were looking steadily towards it. It is not they who 
 have put their hands over their own eyes and ours, 
 and who are crying out that there is no light, but 
 chance and blindness everywhere. 
 
146 
 
 THE TELEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION OF 
 ORGANISM. 
 
 (CHAPTER v. OF EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW.) 
 
 I HAVE stated the foregoing in what I take to be an 
 extreme logical development, in order that the 
 reader -may more easily perceive the consequences of 
 those premises which I am endeavouring to re-establish. 
 But it must not be supposed that an animal or plant 
 has ever conceived the idea of some organ widely dif- 
 ferent from any it was yet possessed of, and has set 
 itself to design it in detail and grow towards it. 
 
 The small jelly-speck, which we call the amoeba, 
 has no organs save what it can extemporise as occasion 
 arises. If it wants to get at anything, it thrusts out 
 part of its jelly, which thus serves it as an arm or 
 hand: when the arm has served its purpose, it is 
 absorbed into the rest of the jelly, and has now to do 
 the duty of a stomach by helping to wrap up what 
 it has just purveyed. The small round jelly-speck 
 spreads itself out and envelops its food, so that the 
 whole creature is now a stomach, and nothing but a 
 stomach. Having digested its food, it again becomes 
 a jelly-speck, and is again ready to turn part of itself 
 into hand or foot as its next convenience may dictate. 
 It is not to be believed that such a creature as this, 
 which is probably just sensitive to light and nothing 
 more, should be able to form any conception of an eye 
 
 A 
 

 TELEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION OF ORGANISM. 147 
 
 and set itself to work to grow one, any more than it 
 is believable that he who first observed the magnify- 
 ing power of a dew-drop, or even he who first con- 
 structed a rude lens, should have had any idea in his 
 mind of Lord Rosse's telescope with all its parts and 
 appliances-. Nothing could be well conceived more 
 foreign to experience and common sense. Animals 
 and plants have travelled to their present forms as a 
 man has travelled to any one of his own most compli- 
 cated inventions. Slowly, step by step, through many 
 blunders and mischances which have worked together 
 for good to those that have persevered in elasticity. 
 They have travelled as man has travelled, with but 
 little perception of a want till there was also some per- 
 ception of a power, and with but little perception of a 
 power till there was a dim sense of want ; want stimu- 
 lating power,' and power stimulating want ; and both 
 so based upon each other that no one can say which 
 is the true foundation, but rather that they must be 
 both baseless and, as it were, meteoric in mid air. 
 They have seen very little ahead of a present power or 
 need, and have been then most moral, when most 
 inclined to pierce a little into futurity, but also when 
 most obstinately declining to pierce too far, and busy 
 mainly with the present. They have been so far 
 blindfolded that they could see but for a few steps in 
 front of them, yet so far free to see that those steps 
 were taken with aim and definitely, and not in the 
 dark. 
 
 " Plus il a su," says Buffon, speaking of man, " plus 
 il a pu, mais aussi moins il a fait, moins il a su/ 
 This holds good wherever life holds good. Wherevei 
 there is life there is a moral government of rewards 
 and punishments understood by the amoeba neither 
 
148 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 
 
 better nor worse than by man. The history of organic 
 development is the history of a moral struggle. 
 
 As for the origin of a creature able to feel want and 
 power and as to what want and power spring from, 
 we know nothing as yet, nor does it seem worth while 
 to go into this question until an understanding has been 
 come to as to whether the interaction of want and 
 power in some low form or forms of life which could 
 assimilate matter, reproduce themselves, vary their 
 actions, and be capable of remembering, will or will not 
 suffice to explain the development of the varied organs 
 and desires which we see in the higher vertebrates and 
 man. When this question has been settled, then it' 
 will be time to push our inquiries farther back, 
 
 But given such a low form of life as here postulated, 
 and there is no force in Paley's pretended objection to 
 the Darwinism of his time. 
 
 " Give our philosopher/' he says, " appetencies ; give 
 him a portion of living irritable matter (a nerve or the 
 clipping of a nerve) to work upon ; give also to his in- 
 cipient or progressive forms the power of propagating 
 their like in every stage of their alteration ; and if he 
 is to be believed, he could replenish the world with all 
 the vegetable and animal productions which we now 
 see in it."~* 
 
 After meeting this theory with answers which need 
 not detain us, he continues : 
 
 " The senses of animals appear to me quite incapable 
 of receiving the explanation of their origin which this 
 theory affords. Including under the word ' sense ' the 
 organ and the perception, we have no account of either. 
 How will our philosopher get at vision or make an eye ? 
 Or, suppose the eye formed, would the perception 
 
 * "Nat. Theol." ch. xxiii. 
 

 TELEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION OF ORGANISM. 149 
 
 follow ? The same of the other senses. And this ob- 
 jection holds its force, ascribe what you will to the hand 
 of time, to the power of habit, to changes too slow to 
 be observed by man, or brought within any comparison 
 which he is able to make of past things with the present. 
 Concede what you please to these arbitrary and unat- 
 tested superstitions, how will they help you ? Here is 
 no inception. No laws, no course, no powers of nature 
 which prevail at present, nor any analogous to these 
 would give commencement to a new sense ; and it is in 
 vain to inquire how that might proceed which would 
 never begin" 
 
 In answer to this, let us suppose that some inhabi- 
 tants of another world were to see a modern philoso- 
 pher so using a microscope that they should believe it 
 to be a part of the philosopher's own person, which he 
 could cut off from and join again to himself at pleasure, 
 and suppose there were a controversy as to how this 
 microscope had originated, and that one party main- 
 tained the man had made it little by little because he 
 wanted it, while the other declared this to be absurd 
 and impossible ; I ask, would this latter party be justi- 
 fied in arguing that microscopes could never have been 
 perfected by degrees through the preservation of and ac- 
 cumulation of small successive improvements inasmuch 
 as men could not have begun to want to use microscopes 
 until they had had a microscope which should show 
 them that such an instrument would be useful to them, 
 and that hence there is nothing to account for the 
 beginning of microscopes, which might indeed make 
 some progress when once originated, but which could 
 never originate? 
 
 It might be pointed out to such a reasoner, firstly, 
 that as regards any acquired power the various stages 
 
150 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 
 
 in the acquisition of which he might be supposed able 
 to remember, he would find that logic notwithstanding, 
 the wish did originate the power, and yet was originated 
 by it, both coming up gradually out of something which 
 was not recognisable as either power or wish, and 
 advancing through vain beating of the air, to a vague 
 effort, and from this to definite effort with failure, and 
 from this to definite effort with success, and from this 
 to success with little consciousness of effort, and from 
 this to success with such complete absence of effort that 
 he now acts unconsciously and without power of intro- 
 spection, and that, do what he will, he can rarely or 
 never draw a sharp dividing line whereat anything 
 shall be said to begin, though none less certain that 
 there has been a continuity in discontinuity, and a dis- 
 continuity in continuity between it and certain other 
 past things ; moreover, that his opponents postulated 
 so much beginning of the microscope as that there 
 should be a dew-drop, even as our evolutionists start 
 with a sense of touch, of which sense all the others are 
 modifications, so that not one of them, but is resolvable 
 into touch by more or less easy stages ; and secondly, 
 that the question is one of fact and of the more evident 
 deductions therefrom, and should not be carried back 
 to those remote beginnings where the nature of the 
 facts is so purely a matter of conjecture and inference. 
 No plant or animal, then, according to our view, 
 would be able to conceive more than a very slight im- 
 provement on its organisation at a given time, so clearly 
 as to make the efforts towards it that would result in 
 growth of the required modification ; nor would these 
 efforts be made with any far-sighted perception of what 
 next and next and after, but only of what next ; while 
 many of the happiest thoughts would come like all other 
 
I 
 
 TELEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION OF ORGANISM. 151 
 
 happy thoughts thoughtlessly ; by a chain of reason- 
 ing too swift and subtle for conscious analysis by the 
 individual. Some of these modifications would be 
 noticeable, but the majority would involve no more 
 noticeable difference that can be detected between the 
 length of the shortest day, and that of the shortest but 
 one. 
 
 Thus a bird whose toes were not webbed, but who 
 had under force of circumstances little by little in the 
 course of many generations learned to swim, either from 
 having lived near a lake, and having learnt the art 
 owing to its fishing habits, or from wading about in 
 shallow pools by the sea- side at low water and finding 
 itself sometimes a little out of its depth and just 
 managing to scramble over the intermediate yard or so 
 between it and safety such a bird did not probably 
 conceive the idea of swimming on the water and set 
 itself to learn to do so, and then conceive the idea of 
 webbed feet and set itself to get webbed feet. The 
 bird found itself in some small difficulty, out of which 
 it either saw, or at any rate found that it could ex- 
 tricate itself by striking out vigorously with its feet 
 and extending its toes as far as ever it could ; it thus 
 began to learn the art of swimming and conceived the 
 idea of swimming synchronously, or nearly so ; or per- 
 haps wishing to get over a yard or two of deep water, 
 and trying to do so without being at the trouble of 
 rising to fly, it would splash and struggle its way over 
 the water, and thus practically swim, though without 
 much perception of what it had been doing. Finding 
 that no harm had come to it, the bird would do the 
 same again and again ; it would thus presently lose 
 fear, and would be able to act more calmly ; then it 
 would begin to find out that it could swim a little, and 
 
152 -EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 
 
 if its food lay much in the water so that it would be of 
 great advantage to it to be able to alight and rest 
 without being forced to return to land, it would begin 
 to make a practice of swimming. It would now dis- 
 cover that it could swim the more easily according as 
 its feet presented a more extended surface to the water; 
 it would therefore keep its toes extended wherever it 
 swam, and as far as in it lay, would make the most 
 of whatever skin was already at the base of its toes. 
 After many generations it would become web-footed, if 
 doing as above described should have been found con- 
 tinuously convenient, so that the bird should have con- 
 tinuously used the skin about its toes as much as 
 possible in this direction. 
 
 For there is a margin in every organic structure 
 (and perhaps more than we imagine in things inor- 
 ganic also), which will admit of references, as it were, 
 side notes, and glosses upon the original text. It is on 
 this margin that we may err or wander the greatness 
 of a mistake depending rather upon the extent of the 
 departure from the original text, than on the direction 
 that the departure takes. A little error on the bad side 
 is more pardonable, and less likely to hurt the organ- 
 ism than a too great departure upon the right one. 
 This is a fundamental proposition in any true system 
 of ethics, the question what is too much or too sudden 
 being decided by much the same higgling as settles 
 the price of butter in a country market, and being as 
 invisible as the link which connects the last moment 
 of desire with the first of power and performance, and 
 with the material result achieved. 
 
 It is on this margin that the fulcrum is to be found, 
 whereby we obtain the little purchase over our struc- 
 ture, that enables us to achieve great results if we use 
 
TELEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION OF ORGANISM. 153 
 
 it steadily, with judgment, and with neither too little 
 effort nor too much. It is by employing this that those 
 who have a fancy to move their ears or toes without 
 moving other organs learn to do so. There is a man 
 at the Agricultural Hall now * playing the violin with 
 his toes, and playing it, as I am told, sufficiently well. 
 The eye of the sailor, the wrist of the conjuror, the 
 toe of the professional medium, are all found capable 
 of development to an astonishing degree, even in a 
 single lifetime ; but in every case success has been 
 attained by the simple process of making the best 
 of whatever power a man has had at any given time, 
 and by being on the look-out to take advantage of 
 accident, and even of misfortune. If a man would 
 learn to paint, he must not theorise concerning art, nor 
 think much what he would do beforehand, but he must 
 do something whatever under the circumstances will 
 come handiest and easiest to him; and he must do 
 that something as well as he can. This will presently 
 open the door for something else, and a way will show 
 itself which no conceivable amount of searching would 
 have discovered, but which yet could never have been 
 discovered by sitting still and taking no pains at all. 
 "Dans ranimal," says Buffon, "il y a moins de juge- 
 ment que de sentiment." t 
 
 It may appear as though this were blowing hot and 
 cold with the same breath, inasmuch as I am insisting 
 that important modifications of structure have been 
 always purposive ; and at the same time am denying 
 that the creature modified has had any far-seeing pur- 
 pose in the greater part of all those actions which 
 have at length modified both structure and instinct. 
 Thus I say that a bird learns to swim without having 
 
 * 1878. f " Oiseaux," vol. i. p. 5. 
 
154 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 
 
 any purpose of learning to swim before it set itself to 
 make those movements which have resulted in its 
 being able to do so. At the same time I maintain 
 that it has only learned to swim by trying to swim, 
 and this involves the very purpose which I have just 
 denied. The reconciliation of these two apparently 
 irreconcilable contentions must be found in the con- 
 sideration that the bird was not the less trying to 
 swim, merely because it did not know the name we 
 have chosen to give to the art which it was trying 
 to master, nor yet how great were the resources of that 
 art. A person, who knew all about swimming, if from 
 some bank he could watch our supposed bird's first 
 attempt to scramble over a short space of deep water, 
 would at once declare that the bird was trying to 
 swim if not actually swimming. Provided then that 
 there is a very little perception of, and prescience con- 
 cerning, the means whereby the next desired end may 
 be attained, it matters not how little in advance that 
 end may be of present desire or faculties ; it is still 
 reached through purpose, and must be called purposive. 
 Again, no matter how many of these small steps be 
 taken, nor how absolute was the want of purpose or 
 prescience concerning any but the one being actually 
 taken at any given moment, this does not bar the 
 result from having been arrived at through design and 
 purpose. If each one of the small steps is purposive 
 the result is purposive, though there was never purpose 
 extended over more than one, two, or perhaps at most 
 three steps at a time. 
 
 Returning to the art of painting for an example, are 
 we to say that the proficiency which such a student as 
 was supposed above will certainly attain, is not due to 
 design, merely because it was not until he had already 
 
TELEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION OF ORGANISM. 155 
 
 become three parts excellent that he knew the full pur- 
 port of all that he had been doing ? When he began 
 he had but vague notions of what he would do. He 
 had a wish to learn to represent nature, but the line 
 into which he has settled down has probably proved 
 very different from that which he proposed to himself 
 originally. Because he has taken advantage of his 
 accidents, is it, therefore, one whit the less true that 
 his success is the result of his desires and his design ? 
 The Times pointed out some time ago that the theory 
 which now associates meteors and comets in the most 
 unmistakable manner, was suggested by one accident, 
 and confirmed by another. But the writer added well 
 that " such accidents happen only to the zealous student 
 of nature's secrets/' In the same way the bird that is 
 taking to the habit of swimming, and of making the 
 most of whatever skin it already has between its toes, 
 will have doubtless to thank accidents for no small 
 part of its progress ; but they will be such accidents as 
 could never have happened to or been taken advantage 
 of by any creature which was not zealously trying to 
 make the most of itself and between such accidents 
 as this, and design, the line is hard to draw ; for if we 
 go deep enough we shall find that most of our design 
 resolves itself into as it were a shaking of the bag to 
 see what will come out that will suit our purpose, and 
 yet at the same time that most of our shaking of the 
 bag resolves itself into a design that the bag shall con- 
 tain only such and such things, or thereabouts. 
 
 Again, the fact that animals are no longer conscious 
 of design and purpose in much that they do, but act 
 unreflectingly, and as we sometimes say concerning 
 ourselves " automatically " or " mechanically " that 
 they have no idea whatever of the steps, whereby they 
 
156 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 
 
 have travelled to their present state, and show no sign 
 of doubt about what must have been at one time the 
 subject of all manner of doubts, difficulties, and discus- 
 sions that whatever sign of reflection they now exhibit 
 is to be found only in case of some novel feature or diffi- 
 culty presenting itself ; these facts do not bar that the 
 results achieved should be attributed to an inception 
 in reason, design and purpose, no matter how rapidly 
 and as we call it instinctively, the creatures may now 
 act. 
 
 For if we look closely at such an invention as the 
 steam engine in its latest and most complicated develop- 
 ments, about which there can be no dispute but that 
 they are achievements of reason, purpose and design, 
 we shall find them present us with examples of all 
 those features the presence of which in the handiwork 
 of animals is too often held to bar reason and purpose 
 from having had any share therein. 
 
 Assuredly such men as the Marquis of Worcester and 
 Captain Savery had very imperfect ideas as to the up- 
 shot of their own action. The simplest steam engine 
 now in use in England is probably a marvel of ingenuity 
 as compared with the highest development which ap- 
 peared possible to these two great men, while our 
 newest and most highly complicated engines would 
 seem to them more like living beings than machines. 
 Many, again, of the steps leading to the present deve- 
 lopment have been due to action which had but little 
 heed of the steam engine, being the inventions of 
 attendants whose desire was to save themselves the 
 trouble of turning this or that cock, and who were in- 
 different to any other end than their own immediate 
 convenience. No step in fact along the whole route 
 was ever taken with much perception of what would 
 
TELEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION OF ORGANISM. 157 
 
 be the next step after the one being taken at any given 
 moment. 
 
 Nor do we find that an engine made after any old 
 and well-known pattern is now made with much more 
 consciousnesss of design than we can suppose a bird's 
 nest to be built with. The greater number of the parts 
 of any such engine, are made by the gross as it were 
 like screw and nuts, which are turned out by machinery 
 and in respect of which the labour of design is now no 
 more felt than is the design of him who first invented 
 the wheel. It is only when circumstances require any 
 modification in the article to be manufactured that 
 thought and design will come into play again ; but I 
 take it few will deny that if circumstances compel a 
 bird either to give up a nest three-parts built altogether, 
 or to make some trifling deviation from its ordinary 
 practice, it will in nine cases out of ten make such 
 deviation as shall show that it had thought the matter 
 over, and had on the whole concluded to take such and 
 such a course, that is to say, that it had reasoned and 
 had acted with such purpose as its reason had dictated. 
 
 And I imagine that this is the utmost that any one 
 can claim even for man's own boasted powers. Set the 
 man who has been accustomed to make engines of one 
 type, to make engines of another type without any 
 intermediate course of training or instruction, and he 
 will make no better figure with his engines than a 
 thrush would do if commanded by her mate to make 
 a nest like a blackbird. It is vain then to contend 
 that the ease and certainty with which an action is 
 performed, even though it may have now become 
 matter of such fixed habit that it cannot be suddenly 
 and seriously modified without rendering the whole 
 performance abortive, is any argument against that 
 
158 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 
 
 action having been an achivement of design and reason 
 in respect of each one of the steps that have led to it; 
 and if in respect of each one of the steps then as re- 
 gards the entire action; for we see our own most 
 reasoned actions become no less easy, unerring, auto- 
 matic, and unconscious, than the actions which we call 
 instinctive when they have been repeated a sufficient 
 number of times. 
 
 If the foregoing be granted, and it be admitted that 
 the unconsciousness and seeming automatism with which 
 any action may be performed is no bar to its having a 
 foundation in memory, reason, and at one time con- 
 sciously recognised effort and this I believe to be the 
 chief addition which I have ventured to make to the 
 theory of Buffon and Dr. Erasmus Darwin then the 
 wideness of the difference between the Darwinism of 
 eighty years ago and the Darwinism of to-day becomes 
 immediately apparent, and it also becomes apparent, 
 how important and interesting is the issue which is 
 raised between them. 
 
 According to the older Darwinism the lungs are just 
 as purposive as the corkscrew. They, no less than the 
 corkscrew, are a piece of mechanism designed and 
 gradually improved upon and perfected by an intelli- 
 gent creature for the gratification of its own needs. 
 True there are many important differences between 
 mechanism which is part of the body, and mechanism 
 which is no such part, but the differences are such as 
 do not affect the fact that in each case the result, 
 whether, for example, lungs or corkscrew, is due to 
 desire, invention, and design. 
 
 And now I will ask one more question, which may 
 seem, perhaps, to have but little importance, but which 
 
TELEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION OF ORGANISM. 159 
 
 I find personally interesting. I have been told by a 
 reviewer, of whom upon the whole I have little reason 
 to complain, that the theory I put forward in " Life 
 and Habit," and which I am now again insisting on, is 
 pessimism pure and simple. I have a very vague 
 idea what pessimism means, but I should be sorry to 
 believe that I am a pessimist. Which, I would ask, is 
 the pessimist ? He who sees love of beauty, design, 
 steadfastness of purpose, intelligence, courage, and 
 every quality to which success has assigned the name 
 of " worth " as having drawn the pattern of every leaf 
 and organ now and in all past time, or he who sees 
 nothing in the world of nature but a chapter of acci- 
 dents and of forces interacting blindly ? 
 
B UFFON MEMOIR. 
 (CHAPTER viu. OF EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW.) 
 
 B UFFON", says M. Flourens, was born at Montbar, on 
 the 7th of September 1707; he died in Paris, 
 at the Jardin du Eoi, on the i6th of April 1788, aged 
 8 1 years. More than fifty of these years, as he used 
 himself to say, he had passed at his writing-desk. His 
 father was a councillor of the parliament of Burgundy. 
 His mother was celebrated for her wit, and Buffon 
 cherished her memory. 
 
 He studied at Dijon with much Mat, and shortly 
 after leaving became accidentally acquainted with the 
 Duke of Kingston, a young Englishman of his own age, 
 who was travelling abroad with a tutor. The three 
 travelled together in France and Italy, and Buffon then 
 passed some months in England. 
 
 Eeturning to France, he translated Hales's Vegetable 
 Statics and Newton's Treatise on Fluxions. He refers 
 to several English writers on natural history in the 
 course of his work, but I see he repeated spells the 
 English name Willoughby, " Willulghby." He was 
 appointed superintendent of the Jardin du Eoi in 1739, 
 and from thenceforth devoted himself to science. 
 
 In 1 7 5 2 Buffon married Mdlle de Saint Belin, whose 
 beauty and charm of manner were extolled by all her 
 contemporaries. One son was born to him, who entered 
 the army, became a colonel, and I grieve to say, was 
 
BUFFO N MEMOIR. 161 
 
 guillotined at the age of twenty-nine, a few days only 
 before the extinction of the Eeign of Terror. 
 
 Of this youth, who inherited the personal comeliness 
 and ability of his father, little is recorded except the 
 following story. Having fallen into the water and 
 been nearly drowned when he was about twelve years 
 old, he was afterwards accused of having been afraid : 
 " I was so little afraid," he answered, " that though I 
 had been offered the hundred years which my grandfather 
 lived, I would have died then and there, if I could 
 have added one year to the life of my father ; " then 
 thinking for a minute, a flush suffused his face and he 
 added, "but I should petition for one quarter of an 
 hour in which to exult over the thought of what I was 
 about to do/' 
 
 On the scaffold he showed much composure, smil- 
 ing half proudly, half reproachfully, yet wholly kindly 
 upon the crowd in front of him. " Citoyens," he said, 
 " Je me nomme Buffon," and laid his head upon the 
 block. 
 
 The noblest outcome of the old and decaying order, 
 overwhelmed in the most hateful birth frenzy of the 
 new. So in those cataclysms and revolutions which 
 take place in our own bodies during their development, 
 when we seem studying in order to become fishes and 
 suddenly make, as it were, different arrangements and 
 resolve on becoming men so, doubtless, many good 
 cells must go, and their united death cry comes up, it 
 may be, in the pain which an infant feels on teething. 
 
 But to return. The man who could be father of 
 such a son, and who could retain that son's affection, 
 as it is well known that Buffon retained it, may not 
 perhaps always be strictly accurate, but it will be as 
 well to pay attention to whatever he may think fit to 
 
1 62 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 
 
 tell us. These are the only people whom it is worth 
 while to look to and study from. 
 
 " Glory," said Buffon, after speaking of the hours 
 during which he had laboured, " glory comes always 
 after labour if she can cmrf she generally can" But 
 in his case she could not well help herself. " He was 
 conspicuous," says M. Flourens, " for elevation and force 
 of character, for a love of greatness and true magni- 
 ficence in all he did. His great wealth, his handsome 
 person, and graceful manners seemed in correspondence 
 with the splendour of his genius, so that of all the 
 gifts which Fortune has in it her power to bestow she 
 had denied him nothing." 
 
 Many of his epigrammatic sayings have passed into 
 proverbs : for example, that " genius is but a supreme 
 capacity for taking pains." Another and still more 
 celebrated passage shall be given in its entirety and 
 with its original setting. 
 
 " Style," says Buffon, " is the only passport to pos- 
 terity. It is not range of information, nor mastery of 
 some little known branch of science, nor yet novelty 
 of matter that will ensure immortality. Works that 
 can claim all this will yet die if they are conversant 
 about trivial objects only, or written without taste, 
 genius, and true nobility of mind ; for range of infor- 
 mation, knowledge of details, novelty of discovery are 
 of a volatile essence and fly off readily into other hands 
 that know better how to treat them. The matter is 
 foreign to the man, and is not of him ; the manner is 
 the man himself."^ 
 
 " Le style, c'est 1'homme meme." Elsewhere he tells 
 us what true style is, but I quote from memory and 
 cannot be sure of the passage. " Le style," he says 
 
 * "Discours de Reception a 1' Academic 
 
BUFFO N MEMOIR. 163 
 
 " est comme le bonheur ; il vient de la douceur de 
 Mme." 
 
 Is it possible not to think of the following ? 
 " But whether there be prophecies they shall fail ; 
 whether there be tongues they shall cease; whether 
 there be knowledge it shall vanish away .... and 
 now abideth faith, hope and charity, these three ; but 
 the greatest of these is charity/' * 
 
 * I Cor. xiii. 8, 13. 
 
BUFFON'S METHOD THE IRONICAL 
 CHARACTER OF HIS WORK. 
 
 (CHAPTER ix. OF EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW.) 
 
 TDUFFON'S idea of a method amounts almost to the 
 -*-* denial of the possibility of method at all. " The 
 true method," he writes, " is the complete description 
 and exact history of each particular object/' * and later 
 on he asks, "is it not more simple, more natural and 
 more true to call an ass an ass, and a cat a cat, than to 
 say, without knowing why, that an ass is a horse, and 
 a cat a lynx ? " t 
 
 He admits such divisions as between animals and 
 vegetables, or between vegetables and minerals, but 
 that done, he rejects all others that can be founded on 
 the nature of things themselves. He concludes that 
 one who could see living forms as a whole and without 
 preconceived opinions, would classify animals according 
 to the relations in which he found himself standing 
 towards them : 
 
 " Those which he finds most necessary and useful to 
 him will occupy the first rank ; thus he will give the 
 precedence among the lower animals to the dog and 
 the horse ; he will next concern himself with those 
 which without being domesticated, nevertheless occupy 
 the same country and climate as himself, as for example 
 
 * Tom. i. p. 24, 1749. t Tom. i. p. 40, 1749. 
 
IRONICAL CHARACTER OF BUFFON'S WORK. 165 
 
 stags, hares, and all wild animals ; nor will it be till after 
 he has familiarised himself with all these that curiosity 
 will lead him to inquire what inhabitants there may be 
 in foreign climates, such as elephants, dromedaries, &c. 
 The same will hold good for fishes, birds, insects, shells, 
 and for all nature's other prcductions ; he will study 
 them in proportion to the profit which he can draw 
 from them; he will consider them in that order in 
 which they enter into his daily life ; he will arrange 
 them in his head according to this order, which is in 
 fact that in which he has become acquainted with them, 
 and in which it concerns him to think about them, 
 This order the most natural of all is the one which 
 I have thought it well to follow in this volume. My 
 classification has no more mystery in it than the reader 
 has just seen ... it is preferable to the most pro- 
 found and ingenious that can be conceived, for there is 
 none of all the classifications which ever have been 
 made or ever can be, which has not more of an arbitrary 
 character than this has. Take it for all in all," he 
 concludes, " it is more easy, more agreeable, and more 
 useful, to consider things in their relation to ourselves 
 than from any other standpoint." " 
 
 " Has it not a better effect not only in a treatise on 
 natural history, but in a picture or any work of art to 
 arrange objects in the order and place in which they are 
 commonly found, than to force them into association in 
 virtue of some theory of our own ? Is it not better to 
 let the dog which has toes, come after the horse which 
 has a single hoof, in the same way as we see him follow 
 the horse in daily life, than to follow up the horse by 
 the zebra, an animal which is little known to us, and 
 
 * Vol. L p. 34, 1749- 
 
166 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 
 
 which has no other connection with the horse than the 
 fact that it has a single hoof ? " 
 
 Can we suppose that Buffon really saw no more con- 
 nection than this ? The writer whom we shall pre- 
 sently find t declining to admit any essential difference 
 between the skeletons of man and of the horse, can 
 here see no resemblance between the zebra and the 
 horse, except that they each have a single hoof. Is 
 he to be taken at his word ? 
 
 It is perhaps necessary to tell the reader that Buffon 
 carried the foregoing scheme into practice as nearly as 
 he could in the first fifteen volumes of his Natural 
 History. He begins with man and then goes on to 
 the horse, the ass, the cow, sheep, goat, pig, dog, &c. 
 One would be glad to know whether he found it always 
 more easy to know in what order of familiarity this or 
 that animal would stand to the majority of his readers 
 than other classifiers have found it to know whether 
 an individual more resembles one species or another ; 
 probably he never gave the matter a thought after he 
 had gone through the first dozen most familiar animals, 
 but settled generally down into a classification which 
 becomes more and more specific as when he treats of 
 the apes and monkeys till he reaches the birds, when 
 he openly abandons his original idea, in deference, as 
 he says, to the opinion of " le peuple des naturalistes." 
 
 Perhaps the key to this piece of apparent extra- 
 vagance is to be found in the word " mysterieuse." if 
 Buffon wished to raise a standing protest against 
 mystery mongering. Or perhaps more probably, he 
 wished at once to turn to animals under domestication, 
 so as to insist early on the main object of his work the 
 plasticity of animal forms. 
 
 * Tom. i. p. 36. f See p. 173. t Tom. i. p. 33. 
 
IRONICAL CHARACTER OF BUFFON'S WORK. 167 
 
 I am inclined to think that a vein of irony pervades 
 the whole or much the greater part of Buffbn's work, 
 and that he intended to convey one meaning to one set 
 of readers, and another to another ; indeed, it is often 
 impossible to believe that he is not writing between his 
 lines for the discerning, what the Tindiscerning were not 
 intended to see. It must be remembered that his 
 Natural History has two sides, a scientific and a 
 popular one. May we not imagine that Buffon would 
 be unwilling to debar himself from speaking to those 
 who could understand him, and yet would wish like 
 Handel and Shakespeare to address the many, as well 
 as the few ? But the only manner in which these 
 seemingly irreconcilable ends could be attained, would 
 be by the use of language which should be self-adjusting 
 to the capacity of the reader. So keen an observer can 
 hardly have been blind to the signs of the times which 
 were already close at hand. Free-thinker though he 
 was, he was also a powerful member of the aristocracy, 
 and little likely to demean himself for so he would 
 doubtless hold it by playing the part of Voltaire or 
 Eousseau. He would help those who could see to 
 see still further, but he would not dazzle eyes that 
 were yet imperfect with a light brighter than they 
 could stand. He would therefore impose upon people, 
 as much as he thought was for their good ; but, on the 
 other hand, he would not allow inferior men to mys- 
 tify them. 
 
 "In the private character of Buffon," says Sir 
 William Jardine in a characteristic passage, " we regret 
 there is not much to praise ; his disposition was kind 
 and benevolent, and he was generally beloved by his 
 inferiors, followers, and dependants, which were numerous 
 over his extensive property ; he was strictly honourable, 
 
1 68 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 
 
 and was an affectionate parent. In early youth he had 
 entered into the pleasures and dissipations of life, and 
 licentious habits seem to have been retained to the end. 
 Eut the great blemish in such a mind was his declared 
 infidelity ; it presents one of those exceptions among 
 the persons who have been devoted to the study of 
 nature ; and it is not easy to imagine a mind apparently 
 with such powers, scarcely acknowledging a Creator, 
 and when noticed, only by an arraignment for what 
 appeared wanting or defective in His great works. So 
 openly, indeed, was the freedom of his religious opinions 
 expressed, that the indignation of the Sorbonne was 
 provoked. He had to enter into an explanation which 
 he in some way rendered satisfactory ; and while he after- 
 wards attended to the outward ordinances of religion, 
 he considered them as a system of faith for the multitude, 
 and regarded those most impolitic who most opposed 
 them." * 
 
 This is partly correct and partly not. Buffon was a 
 free-thinker, and as I have sufficiently explained, a 
 decided opponent of the doctrine that rudimentary and 
 therefore useless organs were designed by a Creator in 
 order to serve some useful end throughout all time to 
 the creature in which they are found. 
 
 He was not, surely, to hide the magnificent con- 
 ceptions which he had been the first to grasp, from 
 those who were worthy to receive them ; on the other 
 hand he would not tell the uninstructed what they 
 would interpret as a licence to do whatever they pleased, 
 inasmuch as there was no God. What he did was to 
 point so irresistibly in the right direction, that a reader 
 of any intelligence should be in no doubt as to the 
 road he ought to take, and then to contradict himself 
 
 * The Naturalist's Library, vol. ii. p. 23. Edinburgh, 1843. 
 
IRONICAL CHARACTER OF BUFFON'S WORK. 169 
 
 so flatly as to reassure those who would be shocked by 
 a truth for which they were not yet ready. If I am 
 right in the view which I have taken of Buffon's work, 
 it is not easy to see how he could have formed a finer 
 scheme, nor have carried it out more finely. 
 
 I should, however, warn the reader to be on his 
 guard against accepting my view too hastily. So far 
 as I know I stand alone in taking it. Neither Dr. 
 Darwin, nor Flourens, nor Isidore Geoffroy, nor Mr. 
 Cnarles Darwin see any subrisive humour in Buffon's 
 pages ; but it must be remembered that Flourens was 
 a strong opponent of mutability, and probably paid but 
 little heed to what Buffon said on this question; Isidore 
 Geoffroy is not a safe guide, few men indeed less so. 
 Mr. Charles Darwin seems to have adopted the one 
 half of Isidore Geoffroy's conclusions without verifying 
 either; and Dr. Erasmus Darwin, who has no small 
 share of a very pleasant conscious humour, yet some- 
 times rises to such heights of unconscious humour, that 
 Buffon's puny labour may well have been invisible to 
 him. Dr. Darwin wrote a great deal of poetry, some 
 of which was about the common pump. Miss Seward 
 tells us, that he " illustrated this familiar object with a 
 picture of Maternal Beauty administering sustenance 
 to her infant." Buffon could not have done anything 
 like this. 
 
 Buffon never, then, " arraigned the Creator for what 
 was wanting or defective in His works ; " on the con- 
 trary, whenever he was led up by an irresistible chain 
 of reasoning to conclusions which should make men 
 recast their ideas concerning the Deity, he invariably 
 retreats under cover of an appeal to revelation. Natu- 
 rally enough, the Sorbonne objected to an artifice which 
 even Buffon could not conceal completely. They did 
 
lyo EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 
 
 not like being undermined ; like Buffon himself, they 
 preferred imposing upon the people, to seeing others 
 do so. Buffon made his peace with the Sorbonne 
 immediately, and, perhaps, from that time forward, 
 contradicted himself a little more impudently than 
 heretofore. 
 
 It is probably for the reasons above suggested that 
 Buffon did not propound a connected scheme of evolu- 
 tion or descent with modification, but scattered his 
 theory in fragments up and down his work in the pre- 
 fatory remarks with which he introduces the more 
 striking animals or classes of animals. He never 
 wastes evolutionary matter in the preface to an unin- 
 teresting animal ; and the more interesting the animal, 
 the more evolution will there be commonly found. 
 When he comes to describe the animal more famil- 
 iarly and he generally begins a fresh chapter or half 
 chapter when he does so he writes no more about 
 evolution, but gives an admirable description, which no 
 one can fail to enjoy, and which I cannot think is nearly 
 so inaccurate as is commonly supposed. These de- 
 scriptions are the parts which Buffon intended for the 
 general reader, expecting, doubtless, and desiring that 
 such a reader should skip the dry parts he had been 
 addressing to the more studious. It is true the de- 
 scriptions are written ad captandum, as are all great 
 works, but they succeed in captivating, having been 
 composed with all the pains a man of genius and of 
 great perseverance could bestow upon them. If I am 
 not mistaken, he looked to these parts of his work to 
 keep the whole alive till the time should come when 
 the philosophical side of his writings should be under- 
 stood and appreciated. 
 
 Thus the goat breeds with the sheep, and may there- 
 
IRONICAL CHARACTER OF BUFFON'S WORK. 171 
 
 fore serve as the text for a dissertation on hybridism, 
 which is accordingly given in the preface to this 
 animal. The presence of rudimentary organs under a 
 pig's hoof suggests an attack upon the doctrine of final 
 causes in so far as it is pretended that every part of 
 every animal or plant was specially designed with a 
 view to the wants of the animal or plant itself, once 
 and forever throughout all time. The dog with his 
 great variety of breeds gives an opportunity for an 
 article on the formation of breeds and sub-breeds by 
 man's artificial selection. The cat is not honoured 
 with any philosophical reflection, and comes in for 
 nothing but abuse. The hare suggests the rabbit, and 
 the rabbit is a rapid breeder, although the hare is an 
 unusually slow one ; but this is near enough, so the 
 hare shall serve us for the theme of a discourse on 
 the geometrical ratio of increase and the balance of 
 power which may be observed in nature. When we 
 come to the carnivora, additional reflections follow 
 upon the necessity for death, and even for violent 
 death; this leads to the question whether the crea- 
 tures that are killed suffer pain ; here, then, will be the 
 proper place for considering the sensations of animals 
 generally. 
 
 Perhaps the most pregnant passage concerning evo- 
 lution is to be found in the preface to the ass, which 
 is so near the beginning of the work as to be only the 
 second animal of which Buffon treats after having de- 
 scribed man himself. It points strongly in the direc- 
 tion of his having believed all animal forms to have 
 been descended from one single common ancestral 
 type. Buffon did not probably choose to take his very 
 first opportunity in order to insist upon matter that 
 should point in this direction ; but the considerations 
 
172 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 
 
 were too important to be deferred long, and are accord- 
 ingly put forward under cover of the ass, his second 
 animal. 
 
 When we consider the force with which Buffon's 
 conclusion is led up to ; the obviousness of the con- 
 clusion itself when the premises are once admitted ; 
 the impossibility that such a conclusion should be 
 again lost sight of if the reasonableness of its being 
 drawn had been once admitted ; the position in his 
 scheme which is assigned to it by its propounder ; 
 the persistency with which he demonstrates during 
 forty years thereafter that the premises, which he has 
 declared should establish the conclusion in question, 
 are indisputable ; when we consider, too, that we 
 are dealing with a man of unquestionable genius, and 
 that the times and circumstances of his life were such 
 as would go far to explain reserve and irony is it, I 
 would ask, reasonable to suppose that Buffon did not, in 
 his own mind, and from the first, draw the inference to 
 which he leads his reader, merely because from time to 
 time he tells the reader, with a shrug of the shoulders, 
 that he draws no inferences opposed to the Book of 
 Genesis ? Is it not more likely that Buffon intended his 
 reader to draw his inferences for himself, and perhaps 
 to value them all the more highly on that account ? 
 The passage to which I am alluding is as follows : 
 " If from the boundless variety which animated 
 nature presents to us, we choose the body of some 
 animal or even that of man himself to serve as a model 
 with which to compare the bodies of other organised 
 beings, we shall find that though all these Beings have 
 an individuality of their own, and are distinguished 
 from one another by differences of which the gradations 
 are infinitely subtle, there exists at the same time a 
 
IRONICAL CHARACTER OF BUFFON'S WORK. 173 
 
 primitive and general design which we can follow for 
 a long way, and the departures from which (dfytndra- 
 tions) are far more gentle than those from mere out- 
 ward resemblance. For not to mention organs of 
 digestion, circulation, and generation, which are com- 
 mon to all animals, and without which the animal 
 would cease to be an animal, and could neither con- 
 tinue to exist nor reproduce itself there is none the 
 less even in those very parts which constitute the main 
 difference in outward appearance, a striking resemblance 
 which carries with it irresistibly the idea of a single 
 pattern after which all would appear to have been 
 conceived. The horse, for example what can at first 
 sight seem more unlike mankind ? Yet when we com- 
 pare man and horse point by point and detail by detail, 
 is not our wonder excited rather by the points of 
 resemblance than of difference that are to be found 
 between them ? Take the skeleton of a man ; bend 
 forward the bones in the region of the pelvis, shorten 
 the thigh bones, and those of the leg and arm, lengthen 
 those of the feet and hands, run the joints together, 
 lengthen the jaws, and shorten the frontal bone, finally, 
 lengthen the spine, and the skeleton will now be that 
 of a man no longer, but will have become that of a 
 horse for it is easy to imagine that in lengthening 
 the spine and the jaws we shall at the same time have 
 increased the number of the vertebrae, ribs, and teeth. 
 It is but in the number of these bones, which may be 
 considered accessory, and by the lengthening, shortening, 
 or mode of attachment of others, that the skeleton of 
 the horse differs from that of the human body. . . . 
 We find ribs in man, in all the quadrupeds, in birds, 
 in fishes, and we may find traces of them as far down 
 as the turtle, in which they seem still to be sketched 
 
174 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 
 
 out by means of furrows that are to be found beneath 
 the shell. Let it be remembered that the foot of the 
 horse, which seems so different from a man's hand, is, 
 nevertheless, as M. Daubenton has pointed out, com- 
 posed of the same bones, and that we have at the end 
 of each of our fingers a nail corresponding to the hoof 
 of a horse's foot. Judge, then, whether this hidden 
 resemblance is not more marvellous than any out- 
 ward differences whether this constancy to a single 
 plan of structure which we may follow from man to 
 the quadrupeds, from the quadrupeds to the cetacea, 
 from the cetacea to birds, from birds to reptiles, from 
 reptiles to fishes in which all such essential parts as 
 heart, intestines, spine are invariably found whether, 
 I say, this does not seem to indicate that the Creator 
 when He made them would use but a single main idea, 
 though at the same time varying it in every conceivable 
 way, so that man might admire equally the magnificence 
 of the execution and the simplicity of the design."* . 
 
 " If we regard the matter thus, not only the ass and 
 the horse, but even man himself, the apes, the quad- 
 rupeds, and all animals might be regarded but as forming 
 members of one and the same family. But are we to 
 conclude that within this vast family which the Creator 
 has called into existence out of nothing, there are 
 other and smaller families, projected as it were by 
 Nature, and brought forth by her in the natural course 
 of events and after a long time, of which some contain 
 but two members, as the ass and the horse, others many 
 members, as the weasel, martin, stoat, ferret, &c., and 
 that on the same principle there are families of vege- 
 tables, containing ten, twenty, or thirty plants, as the 
 case may be ? If such families had any real existence 
 
 * Tom. iv. p. 381, 1753. 
 
IRONICAL CHARACTER OF BUFFON'S WORK. 175 
 
 they could have been formed only by crossing, by the 
 accumulation of successive variations (variation succes- 
 sive), and by degeneration from an original type; but 
 if we once admit that there are families of plants and 
 animals, so that the ass may be of the family of the 
 horse, and that the one may only differ from the other 
 through degeneration from a common ancestor, we 
 might be driven to admit that the ape is of the family 
 of man, that he is but a degenerate man, and that he 
 and man have had a common ancestor, even as the ass 
 and horse have had. It would follow then that every 
 family, whether animal or vegetable, had sprung from a 
 single stock, which after a succession of generations had 
 become higher in the case of some of its descendants 
 and lower in that of others." 
 
 What inference could be more aptly drawn ? But it 
 was not one which Buffon was going to put before the 
 general public. He had said enough for the discerning, 
 and continues with what is intended to make the con- 
 clusions they should draw even plainer to them, while 
 it conceals them still more carefully from the general 
 reader. 
 
 " The naturalists who are so ready to establish fami- 
 lies among animals and vegetables, do not seem to have 
 sufficiently considered the consequences which should 
 follow from their premises, for these would limit direct 
 creation to as small a number of forms as any one 
 might think fit (reduisoient le produit immediat de la 
 creation, &un nombre d'individus aussi petit que Ton 
 voudroit). For if it were once shown that we had right 
 grounds for establishing these families ; if the point were 
 once gained that among animals and vegetables there had 
 been, I do not say several species, but even a single one, 
 which had been produced in the course of direct descent 
 
176 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 
 
 from another species ; if for example it could be once 
 shown that the ass was but a degeneration from the horse 
 then there is no further limit to be set to the power of 
 nature, and we should not be wrong in supposing that 
 with sufficient time she could have evolved all other 
 organised forms from one primordial type (et I'on 
 n'auroit pas tort de supposer, que d'un seul etre elle a 
 su tirer avec le temps tons les autres etres organise '<)." 
 
 Buffon now felt that he had sailed as near the wind 
 as was desirable. His next sentence is as follows : 
 
 " But no ! It is certain from revelation that all 
 animals have alike been favoured with the grace of an 
 act of direct creation, and that the first pair of every 
 species issued full formed from the hands of the 
 Creator." ^ 
 
 This might be taken as bond fide, if it had been 
 written by Bonnet, but it is impossible to accept it 
 from Buffon. It is only those who judge him at second 
 hand, or by isolated passages, who can hold that he 
 failed to see the consequences of his own premises. 
 No one could have seen more clearly, nor have said 
 more lucidly, what should suffice to show a sympathetic 
 reader the conclusion he ought to come to. Even 
 when ironical, his irony is not the ill-natured irony of 
 one who is merely amusing himself at other people's 
 expense, but the serious and legitimate irony of one 
 who must either limit the circle of those to whom he 
 appeals, or must know how to make the same language 
 appeal differently to the different capacities of his 
 readers, and who trusts to the good sense of the dis- 
 cerning to understand the difficulty of his position 
 and make due allowance for it. 
 
 The compromise which he thought fit to put before 
 
 * Tom. iv. p. 383, 1753 (this was the first volume on the lower animals). 
 
IRONICAL CHARACTER OF BUFFO ATS WORK. 177 
 
 the public was that " Each species has a type of which 
 the principal features are engraved in indelible and eter- 
 nally permanent characters, while all accessory touches 
 vary." * It would be satisfactory to know where an 
 accessory touch is supposed to begin and end. 
 
 And again : 
 
 " The essential characteristics of every animal have 
 been conserved without alteration in their most impor- 
 tant parts. . . . The individuals of each genus still 
 represent the same forms as they did in the earliest 
 ages, especially in the case of the larger animals " (so 
 that the generic forms even of the larger animals prove 
 not to be the same, but only " especially " the same as 
 in the earliest ages), t 
 
 This transparently illogical position is maintained 
 ostensibly from first to last, much in the same spirit 
 as in the two foregoing passages, written at intervals 
 of thirteen years. But they are to be read by the 
 light of the earlier one placed as a lantern to the 
 wary upon the threshold of his work in 1753 to the 
 effect that a single, well-substantiated case of degene- 
 ration would make it conceivable that all living beings 
 were descended from but one common ancestor. If 
 after having led up to this by a remorseless logic, a 
 man is found five-and-twenty years later still sub- 
 stantiating cases of degeneration, as he has been sub- 
 stantiating them unceasingly in thirty quartos during 
 the whole interval, there should be little question how 
 seriously we are to take him when he wishes us to 
 stop short of the conclusions he has told us we ought to 
 draw from the premises that he has made it the busi- 
 ness of his life to establish especially when we know 
 that he has a Sorbonne to keep a sharp eye upon him. 
 
 * Tom. xiii. p. 1765. t Sup. toin. v. p. 27, 1778. 
 
 M 
 
178 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 
 
 I believe that if the reader will bear in mind the 
 twofold, serious and ironical, character of Buffon's work 
 he will understand it, and feel an admiration for it 
 which will grow continually greater and greater the 
 more he studies it, otherwise he will miss the whole 
 point. 
 
 Buffon on one of the early pages of his first volume 
 protested against the introduction of either "plaisanterie" 
 or " Equivoque " (p. 25) into a serious work. But I have 
 observed that there is an unconscious irony in most 
 disclaimers of this nature. When a writer begins by 
 saying that he has " an ineradicable tendency to make 
 things clear," we may infer that we are going to be 
 puzzled ; so when he shows that he is haunted by a 
 sense of the impropriety of allowing humour to intrude 
 into his work, we may hope to be amused as well as 
 interested. As showing how far the objection to 
 humour which he expressed upon his twenty-fifth page 
 succeeded in carrying him safely over his twenty-sixth 
 and twenty-seventh, I will quote the following, which 
 begins on page twenty-six : 
 
 " Aldrovandus is the most learned and laborious of 
 all naturalists ; after sixty years of work he has left 
 an immense number of volumes behind him, which 
 have been printed at various times, the greater number 
 of them after his death. It would be possible to reduce 
 them to a tenth part if we could rid them of all useless 
 and foreign matter, and of a prolixity which I find 
 almost overwhelming ; were this only done, his books 
 should be regarded as among the best we have on the 
 subject of natural history in its entirety. The plan of 
 his work is good, his classification distinguished for its 
 good sense, his dividing lines well marked, his descrip- 
 tions sufficiently accurate monotonous it is true, but 
 
IRONICAL CHARACTER OF BUFFON'S WORK. 179 
 
 painstaking ; the historical part of his work is less 
 good ; it is often confused and fabulous, and the author 
 shows too manifestly the credulous tendencies of his 
 mind. 
 
 " While going over his work, I have been struck 
 with that defect, or rather excess, which we find in 
 almost all the books of a hundred or a couple of hun- 
 dred years ago, and which prevails still among the 
 Germans I mean with that quantity of useless erudi- 
 tion with which they intentionally swell out their 
 works, and the result of which is that their subject is 
 overlaid with a mass of extraneous matter on which 
 they enlarge with great complacency, but with no 
 consideration whatever for their readers. They seem, 
 in fact, to have forgotten what they have to say in 
 their endeavour to tell us what has been said by other 
 people. 
 
 " I picture to myself a man like Aldrovandus, after 
 he has once conceived the design of writing a complete 
 natural history. I see him in his library reading, one 
 after the other, ancients, moderns, philosophers, theo- 
 logians, jurisconsults, historians, travellers, poets, and 
 reading with no other end than with that of catch- 
 ing at all words and phrases which can be forced from 
 far or near into some kind of relation with his subject. 
 I see him copying all these passages, or getting them 
 copied for him, and arranging them in alphabetical order. 
 He fills many portfolios with all manner of notes, often 
 taken without either discrimination or research, and 
 at last sets himself to write with a resolve that not one 
 of all these notes shall remain unused. The result is 
 that when he comes to his account of the cow or of the 
 hen, he will tell us all that has ever yet been said about 
 cows or hens ; all that the ancients ever thought about 
 
i8o EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 
 
 them ; all that has ever been imagined concerning their 
 virtues, characters, and courage ; every purpose to 
 which they have ever yet been put; every story of 
 every old woman that he can lay hold of ; all the 
 miracles which certain religions have ascribed to them ; 
 all the superstitions they have given rise to ; all the 
 metaphors and allegories which poets have drawn from 
 them ; the attributes that have been assigned to them ; 
 the representations that have been made of them in 
 hieroglyphics and armorial bearings, in a word all the 
 histories and all fables in which there was ever yet any 
 mention either of a cow or hen. How much natural 
 history is likely to be found in such a lumber-room ? 
 and how is one to lay one's hand upon the little that 
 there may actually be ? " * 
 
 It is hoped that the reader will see Buffon, much as 
 Buffon saw the learned Aldrovandus. He should see 
 him going into his library, &c., and quietly chuckling 
 to himself as he wrote such a passage as the one in 
 which we lately found him saying that the larger 
 animals had "especially" the same generic forms as 
 they had always had. And the reader should probably 
 see Daubenton chuckling also. 
 
 * Tom. i. p. 28, 1749. 
 
EXTRACTS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY. 
 
 RECAPITULATION AND STATEMENT OF AN 
 OBJECTION. 
 
 (CHAPTER x. OF UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY.*) 
 
 THE true theory of unconscious action is that of Pro- 
 fessor Hering, from whose lecturet it is no strained 
 conclusion to gather that he holds the action of all 
 living beings, from the moment of conception to that 
 of fullest development, to be founded in volition and 
 design, though these have been so long lost sight of 
 that the work is now carried on, as it were, depart- 
 mentally and in due course according to an official 
 routine which can hardly be departed from. 
 
 This involves the older " Darwinism " and the theory 
 of Lamarck, according to which the modification of liv- 
 ing forms has been effected mainly through the needs 
 of the living forms themselves, which vary with vary- 
 ing conditions the survival of the fittest (which, as 
 I see Mr. H. B. Baildon has just said, " sometimes 
 comes to mean merely the survival of the survivors "J) 
 
 * Unconscious Memory was published December, 1 880. 
 
 j- See Unconscious Memory, chap. vi. 
 
 The Spirit of Nature, p. 39. J. A. Churchill & Co. 1880. 
 
182 SELECTIONS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY. 
 
 being taken as a matter of course. According to this 
 view of evolution, there is a remarkable analogy be- 
 tween the development of living organs, or tools, and 
 that of those organs or tools external to the body which 
 has been so rapid during the last few thousand years. 
 
 Animals and plants, according to Professor Hering, 
 are guided throughout their development, and preserve 
 the due order in each step they take, through memory 
 of the course they took on past occasions when in the 
 persons of their ancestors. I am afraid I have already 
 too often said that if this memory remains for long 
 periods together latent and without effect, it is because 
 the vibrations of the molecular substance of the body 
 which are its supposed explanation are during these 
 periods too feeble to generate action, until they are 
 augmented in force through an accession of similar 
 vibrations issuing from exterior objects ; or, in other 
 words, until recollection is stimulated by a return of 
 the associated ideas. On this the internal agitation 
 becomes so much enhanced, that equilibrium is visibly 
 disturbed, and the action ensues which is proper to the 
 vibrations, of the particular substance under the parti- 
 cular conditions. This, at least, is what I suppose 
 Professor Hering to intend. 
 
 Leaving the explanation of memory on one side, and 
 confining ourselves to the fact of memory only, a cater- 
 pillar on being just hatched is supposed, according to 
 this theory, to lose its memory of the time it was in 
 the egg, and to be stimulated by an intense but uncon- 
 scious recollection of the action taken by its ancestors 
 when they were first hatched. It is guided in the 
 course it takes by the experience it can thus command. 
 Each step it takes recalls a new recollection, and thus 
 it goes through a development as a performer performs 
 
STATEMENT OF AN OBJECTION. 183 
 
 a piece of music, each bar leading his recollection to 
 the bar that should next follow. 
 
 In Life and Habit will be found examples of the 
 manner in which this view solves a number of diffi- 
 culties for the explanation of which the leading men 
 of science express themselves at a loss. The follow- 
 ing from Professor Huxley's recent work upon the 
 crayfish may serve for an example. Professor Huxley 
 writes : 
 
 "It is a widely received notion that the energies of living 
 matter have a tendency to decline and finally disappear, and 
 that the death of the body as a whole is a necessary correlate 
 of its life. That all living beings sooner or later perish needs 
 no demonstration, but it would be difficult to find satisfactory 
 grounds for the belief that they needs must do so. The ana- 
 logy of a machine, that sooner or later must be brought to a 
 standstill by the wear and tear of its parts, does not hold, in- 
 asmuch as the animal mechanism is continually renewed and 
 repaired ; and though it is true that individual components 
 of the body are constantly dying, yet their places are taken 
 by vigorous successors. A city remains notwithstanding the 
 constant death-rate of its inhabitants ; and such an organism 
 as a crayfish is only a corporate unity, made up of innumer- 
 able partially independent individualities." Tlie Crayfish, 
 p. 127. 
 
 Surely the theory which I have indicated above 
 makes the reason plain why no organism can perma- 
 nently outlive its experience of past lives. The death 
 of such a body corporate as the crayfish is due to the 
 social condition becoming more complex than there is 
 memory of past experience to deal with. Hence 
 social disruption, insubordination, and decay. The 
 crayfish dies as a state dies, and all states that we 
 have heard of die sooner or later. There are some 
 
184 SELECTIONS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY. 
 
 savages who have not yet arrived at the conception 
 that death is the necessary end of all living beings, and 
 who consider even the gentlest death from old age as 
 violent and abnormal; so Professor Huxley seems to 
 find a difficulty in seeing that though a city commonly 
 outlives many generations of its citizens, yet cities and 
 states are in the end no less mortal than individuals. 
 " The city," he says, " remains/' Yes, but not for ever. 
 When Professor Huxley can find a city that will last 
 for ever, he may wonder that a crayfish does not last 
 for ever. 
 
 I have already here and elsewhere said all that I 
 can yet bring forward in support of Professor Hering's 
 theory ; it now remains for me to meet the most 
 troublesome objection to it that I have been able to 
 think of an objection which I had before me when I 
 wrote Life and Habit, but which then as now I 
 believe to be unsound. Seeing, however, that a plaus- 
 ible case can be made out for it, I will state it and 
 refute it here. When I say refute it, I do not mean 
 that I shall have done with it for it is plain that it 
 opens up a vaster question in the relations between 
 the so-called organic and inorganic worlds but that I 
 will refute the supposition that it any way militates 
 against Professor Hering's theory. 
 
 " Why," it may be asked, " should we go out of our 
 way to invent unconscious memory the existence of 
 which must at the best remain an inference 5 ^ when 
 the observed fact that like antecedents are invariably 
 followed by like consequents should be sufficient for 
 our purpose ? Why should the fact that a given kind 
 
 * I have put these words into the mouth of my supposed objector, 
 and shall put others like them, because they are characteristic ; but 
 nothing can become so well known as to escape being an inference. 
 
STATEMENT OF AN OBJECTION. 185 
 
 of chrysalis in a given condition will always become 
 a butterfly within a certain time be connected with 
 memory when it is not pretended that memory has any- 
 thing to do with the invariableness with which oxygen 
 and hydrogen when mixed in certain proportions make 
 water ? " 
 
 We assume confidently that if a drop of water were 
 decomposed into its component parts, and if these were 
 brought together again, and again decomposed and 
 again brought together any number of times over, the 
 results would be invariably the same, whether de- 
 composition or combination, yet no one will refer the 
 invariableness of the action during each repetition, to 
 recollection by the gaseous molecules of the course 
 taken when the process was last repeated. On the 
 contrary, we are assured that molecules in some distant 
 part of the world which had never entered into such 
 and such a known combination themselves, nor held 
 concert with other molecules that had been so combined, 
 and which, therefore, could have had no experience 
 and no memory, would none the less act upon one 
 another in that one way in which other like combin- 
 ations of atoms have acted under like circumstances, 
 as readily as though they had been combined and 
 separated and recombined again a hundred or a 
 hundred thousand times. It is this assumption, tacitly 
 made by every man, beast, and plant in the universe, 
 throughout all time and in every action of their lives, 
 that has made any improvement in action possible for 
 it is this which lies at the root of the power to profit 
 by experience. I do not exactly know why we make 
 this assumption, and I cannot find out that any one 
 else knows much better than myself, but I do not re- 
 commend any one to dispute it. 
 
186 SELECTIONS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY. 
 
 As we admit of no doubt concerning the main 
 result, so we do not suppose an alternative to lie 
 before any atom of any molecule at any moment 
 during the process of combination. This process is, in 
 all probability, an exceedingly complicated one, involv- 
 ing a multitude of actions and subordinate processes, 
 which follow one upon the other, and each one of which 
 has a beginning, a middle, and an end, though they all 
 come to pass in what appears to be an instant of time. 
 Yet at no point do we conceive of any atom as swerving 
 ever such a little to right or left of a determined 
 course, but invest each one of them with so much of 
 the divine attributes as that with it there shall be no 
 variableness neither shadow of turning. 
 
 We attribute this regularity of action to what we 
 call the necessity of things, as determined by the 
 nature of the atoms and the circumstances in which 
 they are placed. We say that only one proximate 
 result can ever arise from any given combination. If, 
 then, so great uniformity of action as nothing can 
 exceed is manifested by atoms to which no one will 
 impute memory, why this desire for memory, as though 
 it were the only way of accounting for regularity of 
 action in living beings ? Sameness of action may be 
 seen abundantly where there is no room for anything 
 that we can consistently call memory. In these cases 
 we say that it is due to sameness of substance in same 
 circumstances. 
 
 The most cursory reflection upon our actions will 
 show us that it is no more possible for living action to 
 have more than one set of proximate consequents at 
 any given time than for oxygen and hydrogen when 
 mixed in the proportions proper for the formation of 
 water. Why then not recognise this fact, and ascribe 
 
STATEMENT OF AN OBJECTION. 187 
 
 repeated similarity of living action to the reproduction 
 of the necessary antecedents, with no more sense of 
 connection between the steps in the action, or memory 
 of similar action taken before, than we suppose on the 
 part of oxygen and hydrogen molecules between the 
 several occasions on which they may have been dis- 
 united and reunited ? 
 
 A boy catches the measles not because he remembers 
 having caught them in the persons of his father and 
 mother, but because he is a fit soil for a certain kind 
 of seed to grow upon. In like manner he should be said 
 to grow his nose because he is a fit combination for a 
 
 nose to spring from. Dr. X 's father died of angina 
 
 pectoris at the age of forty-nine ; so did Dr. X . 
 
 Can it be pretended that Dr. X remembered hav- 
 ing died of angina pectoris at the age of forty-nine when 
 in the person of his father, and accordingly, when he 
 came to be forty-nine years old himself, died also ? 
 For this to hold, Dr. X 's father must have begot- 
 ten him after he was dead ; for the son could not re- 
 member the father's death before it happened. 
 
 As for the diseases of old age, so very commonly in- 
 herited, they are developed for the most part not only 
 long after the average age of reproduction, but at a time 
 when no appreciable amount of memory of any previous 
 existence can remain ; for a man will not have many 
 male ancestors who become parents at over sixty years 
 old, nor female ancestors who did so at over forty. By 
 our own showing, therefore, recollection can have no- 
 thing to do with the matter. Yet who can doubt that 
 gout is due to inheritance as much as eyes and noses ? 
 In what respects do the two things differ so that we 
 should refer the inheritance of eyes and noses to me- 
 mory, while denying any connection between memory 
 
i88 SELECTIONS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY. 
 
 and gout ? We may have a ghost of a pretence for 
 saying that a man grows a nose by rote, or even that 
 he catches the measles or whooping-cough by rote ; but 
 do we mean to say that he develops the gout by rote in 
 his old age if he comes of a gouty family ? If, then, 
 rote and red-tape have nothing to do with the one, why 
 should they with the other ? 
 
 Eemember also the cases in which aged females de- 
 velop male characteristics. Here are growths, often of 
 not inconsiderable extent, which make their appearance 
 during the decay of the body, and grow with greater 
 and greater vigour in the extreme of old age, and even 
 for days after death itself. It can hardly be doubted 
 that an especial tendency to develop these characteristics 
 runs as an inheritance in certain families ; here then is 
 perhaps the best case that can be found of a develop- 
 ment strictly inherited, but having clearly nothing 
 whatever to do with memory. Why should not all 
 development stand upon the same footing ? 
 
 A friend who had been arguing with me for some 
 time as above, concluded with the following words : 
 
 " If you cannot be content with the similar action 
 of similar substances (living or non-living) under simi- 
 lar circumstances if you cannot accept this as an 
 ultimate fact, but consider it necessary to connect re- 
 petition of similar action with memory before you can 
 rest in it and be thankful be consistent, and introduce 
 this memory which you find so necessary into the inor- 
 ganic world also. Either say that a chrysalis becomes 
 a butterfly because it is the thing that it is, and, being 
 that kind of thing, must act in such and such a man- 
 ner and in such a manner only, so that the act of one 
 generation has no more to do with the act of the next 
 than the fact of cream being churned into butter in a 
 
STATEMENT OF AN OBJECTION. 189 
 
 dairy one day has to do with other cream being churn- 
 able into butter in the following week either say this 
 or else develop some mental condition which I have 
 no doubt you will be very well able to do if you feel 
 the want of it in which you can make out a case for 
 saying that oxygen and hydrogen on being brought to- 
 gether, and cream on being churned, are in some way 
 acquainted with, and mindful of, action taken by other 
 cream, and other oxygen and hydrogen on past occa- 
 sions." 
 
 I felt inclined to reply that my friend need not twit 
 me with being able to develop a mental organism if I 
 felt the need of it, for his own ingenious attack on my 
 position, and indeed every action of his life, was but an 
 example of this omnipresent principle. 
 
 When he was gone, however, I thought over what 
 he had been saying. I endeavoured to see how far I 
 could get on without volition and memory, and reasoned 
 as follows : A repetition of like antecedents will be 
 certainly followed by a repetition of like consequents, 
 whether the agents be men and women or chemical 
 substances. " If there be two cowards perfectly simi- 
 lar in every respect, and if they be subjected in a per- 
 fectly similar way to two terrifying agents, which are 
 themselves perfectly similar, there are few who will not 
 expect a perfect similarity in the running away, even 
 though ten thousand years intervene between the 
 original combination and its repetition." ^ Here cer- 
 tainly there is no coming into play of memory, more 
 than in the pan of cream on two successive churning 
 days, yet the action is similar. 
 
 A clerk in an office has an hour in the middle of the 
 day for dinner. About half-past twelve he begins to 
 
 * Erewhon, chap, xxiii. 
 
igo SELECTIONS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY. 
 
 feel hungry ; at one he takes down his hat and leaves 
 the office. He does not yet know the neighbourhood, 
 and on getting down into the street asks a policeman 
 at the corner which is the best eating-house within easy 
 distance. The policeman tells him of three houses, one 
 of which is a little farther off than the other two, but 
 is cheaper. Money being a greater object to him than 
 time, the clerk decides on going to the cheaper house. 
 He goes, is satisfied, and returns. 
 
 Next day he wants his dinner at the same hour, and 
 it will be said remembering his satisfaction of yes- 
 terday, will go to the same place as before. But what 
 has his memory to do with it ? Suppose him to have 
 forgotten all the circumstances of the preceding day 
 from the moment of his beginning to feel hungry on- 
 ward, though in other respects sound in mind and body, 
 and unchanged generally. At half-past twelve he 
 would begin to be hungry ; but his beginning to be 
 hungry cannot be connected with his remembering hav- 
 ing begun to be hungry yesterday. He would begin 
 to be hungry just as much whether he remembered or 
 no. At one o'clock he again takes down his hat and 
 leaves the office, not because he remembers having done 
 so yesterday, but because he wants his hat to go out 
 with. Being again in the street, and again ignorant 
 of the neighbourhood (for he remembers nothing of 
 yesterday), he sees the same policeman at the corner 
 of the street, and asks him the same question as before ; 
 the policeman gives him the same answer, and money 
 being still an object to him, the cheapest eating-house 
 is again selected ; he goes there, finds the same menu, 
 makes the same choice for the same reasons, eats, is 
 satisfied, and returns. 
 
 What similarity of action can be greater than this, 
 
STATEMENT OF AN OBJECTION. 191 
 
 and at the same time more incontrovertible ? But it 
 has nothing to do with memory ; on the contrary, it is 
 just because the clerk has no memory that his action 
 of the second day so exactly resembles that of the first. 
 As long as he has no power of recollecting, he will day 
 after day repeat the same actions in exactly the same 
 way, until some external circumstances, such as his 
 being sent away, modify the situation. Till this or 
 some other modification occurs, he will day after day 
 go down into the street without knowing where to go ; 
 day after day he will see the same policeman at the 
 corner of the same street, and (for we may as well sup- 
 pose that the policeman has no memory too) he will 
 ask and be answered, and ask and be answered, till he 
 and the policeman die of old age. This similarity of 
 action is plainly due to that whatever it is which 
 ensures that like persons or things when placed in like 
 circumstances shall behave in a like manner. 
 
 Allow the clerk ever such a little memory, and the 
 similarity of action will disappear ; for the fact of re- 
 membering what happened to him on the first day he 
 went out in search of dinner will be a modification in 
 him in regard to his then condition when he next goes 
 out to get his dinner. He had no such memory on the 
 first day, and he has upon the second. Some modifi- 
 cation of action must ensue upon this modification of 
 the actor, and this is immediately observable. He wants 
 his dinner, indeed, goes down into the street, and sees 
 the policeman as yesterday, but he does not ask the 
 policeman ; he remembers what the policeman told him 
 and what he did, and therefore goes straight to the eat- 
 ing-house without wasting time : nor does he dine off 
 the same dish two days running, for he remembers what 
 he had yesterday and likes variety. If, then, similarity 
 
192 SELECTIONS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY. 
 
 of action is rather hindered than promoted by memory, 
 why introduce it into such cases as the repetition of the 
 embryonic processes by successive generations ? The 
 embryos of a well-fixed breed, such as the goose, are 
 almost as much alike as water is to water, and by con- 
 sequence one goose comes to be almost as like another 
 as water to water. Why should it not be supposed to 
 become so upon the same grounds namely, that it is 
 made of the same stuffs, and put together in like pro- 
 portions in the same manner ? 
 
( 193 ) 
 
 ON CYCLES. 
 (CHAPTER XL OF UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY.) 
 
 THE one faith on which all normal living beings con- 
 sciously or unconsciously act, is that like antece- 
 dents will be followed by like consequents. This is the 
 one true and catholic faith, undemonstrable, but except a 
 living being believe which, without doubt it shall perish 
 everlastingly. In the assurance of this all action is taken. 
 
 But if this fundamental article is admitted, it follows 
 that if ever a complete cycle were formed, so that the 
 whole universe of one instant were to repeat itself 
 absolutely in a subsequent one, no matter after what 
 interval of time, then the course of the events between 
 these two moments would go on repeating itself for 
 ever and ever afterwards in due order, down to the 
 minutest detail, in an endless series of cycles like a 
 circulating decimal. For the universe comprises every- 
 thing; there could therefore be no disturbance from 
 without. Once a cycle, always a cycle. 
 
 Let us suppose the earth of given weight, moving with 
 given momentum in a given path, and under given 
 conditions in every respect, to find itself at any one time 
 conditioned in all these respects as it was conditioned 
 at some past moment ; then it must move exactly in 
 the same path as the one it took when at the beginning 
 of the cycle it has just completed, and must therefore 
 in the course of time fulfil a second cycle, and therefore 
 
 N 
 
194 SELECTIONS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY. 
 
 a third, and so on for ever and ever, with no more 
 chance of escape than a circulating decimal has, if 
 the circumstances have been reproduced with perfect 
 accuracy as to draw it into such a whirlpool. 
 
 We see something very like this actually happen in 
 the yearly revolutions of the planets round the sun. 
 But the relations between, we will say, the earth and 
 the sun are not reproduced absolutely. These relations 
 deal only with a small part of the universe, and even 
 in this small part the relation of the parts inter se has 
 never yet been reproduced with the perfection of 
 accuracy necessary for our argument. They are liable, 
 moreover, to disturbance from events which may or may 
 not actually occur (as, for example, our being struck by 
 a comet, or the sun's coming within a certain distance of 
 another sun), but of which, if they do occur, no one can 
 foresee the effects. Nevertheless the conditions have 
 been so nearly repeated that there is no appreciable differ- 
 ence in the relations between the earth and sun on one 
 New Year's Day and on another, nor is there reason for 
 expecting such change within any reasonable time. 
 
 If there is to be an eternal series of cycles involv- 
 ing the whole universe, it is plain that not one single 
 atom must be excluded. Exclude a single molecule of 
 hydrogen from the ring, or vary the relative positions 
 of two molecules only, and the charm is broken; an 
 element of disturbance has been introduced, of which 
 the utmost that can be said is that it may not pre- 
 vent the ensuing of a long series of very nearly perfect 
 cycles before similarity in recurrence is destroyed, but 
 which must inevitably prevent absolute identity of repe- 
 tition. The movement of the series becomes no longer 
 a cycle, but spiral, and convergent or divergent at a 
 greater or less rate according to circumstances. 
 
ON CYCLES. 195 
 
 We cannot conceive of all the atoms in the universe 
 standing twice over in absolutely the same relation 
 each one of them to every other. There are too many 
 of them, and they are too much mixed ; but, as has 
 been just said, in the planets and their satellites we 
 do see large groups of atoms whose movements recur 
 with some approach to precision. The same holds 
 good also with certain comets and with the sun himself. 
 The result is that our days and nights and seasons 
 follow one another with nearly perfect regularity from 
 year to year, and have done so for as long time as we 
 know anything for certain. A vast preponderance of all 
 the action that takes place around us is cyclical action. 
 
 Within the great cycle of the planetary revolution 
 of our own earth, and as a consequence thereof, we 
 have the minor cycle of the seasons ; these generate 
 atmospheric cycles. Water is evaporated from the 
 ocean and conveyed to mountain-ranges, where it is 
 cooled, and whence it returns again to the sea. This 
 cycle of events is being repeated again and again with 
 little appreciable variation. The tides, and winds in 
 certain latitudes, go round and round the world with 
 what amounts to continuous regularity. There are 
 storms of wind and rain called cyclones. In the case 
 of these, the cycle is not very complete, the movement, 
 therefore, is spiral, and the tendency to recur is com- 
 paratively soon lost. It is a common saying that 
 history repeats itself, so that anarchy will lead to des- 
 potism and despotism to anarchy ; every nation can 
 point to instances of men's minds having gone round 
 and round so nearly in a perfect cycle that many 
 revolutions have occurred before the cessation of a 
 tendency to recur. Lastly, in the generation of plants 
 and animals we have, perhaps, the most striking and 
 
196 SELECTIONS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY. 
 
 common example of the inevitable tendency of all action 
 to repeat itself when it has once proximately done so. 
 Let only one living being have once succeeded in pro- 
 ducing a being like itself, and thus have returned, so 
 to speak, upon itself, and a series of generations must 
 follow of necessity, unless some matter interfere which 
 had no part in the original combination, and, as it may 
 happen, kill the first reproductive creature or all its 
 descendants within a few generations. If no such 
 mishap occurs as this, and if the recurrence 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 periodically recurring substance we 
 will say A be able to recur or reproduce itself, not 
 once only, but many times over, as A 1 , A 2 , &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 cir- 
 cumstances 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 differentiations of animal 
 and vegetable life as we actually see follow as matters 
 of course. A 1 and A 2 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 
 
ON CYCLES. 197 
 
 more essentially in begetting a creature like them- 
 selves than in begetting one like A ; for the essence 
 of A's act was not the reproduction of A, but the re- 
 production 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 
 established, it is repeated many millions of times in an 
 individual of average health and longevity. Remember 
 also that it is this periodicity this inevitable tendency 
 of all atoms in combination to repeat any combination 
 which they have once repeated, unless forcibly prevented 
 from doing so which alone renders nine-tenths of 
 our mechanical inventions of practical use to us. There 
 is not 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 regular 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 circum- 
 stances 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 
 
198 SELECTIONS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY. 
 
 Jupiter and Saturn revolve 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 ? * 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 en- 
 sured just as well without it as with it, and when at 
 the best it is considered as existing under circumstances 
 which it baffles us to conceive, inasmuch as it is sup- 
 posed to be exercised without any conscious recollec- 
 tion ? Surely a memory which is exercised without 
 any consciousness of recollecting is only a periphrasis 
 for the absence of any memory at all. f 
 
 * It must be remembered that this passage is put as if in the mouth 
 of an objector. 
 
 f Mr. Herbert Spencer denies that there can be memory without a 
 " tolerably deliberate succession of psychical states." * So that prac- 
 tically he denies that there can be any such thing as "unconscious 
 memory." Nevertheless a few pages later 011 he says that " conscious 
 memory passes into unconscious or organic memory." f It is plain, 
 therefore, that he could after all find no expression better suited for 
 his purpose. 
 
 Mr. Romanes is, I think, right in setting aside Mr. Spencer's limita- 
 tion of memory to conscious memory. He writes, " Because I have so 
 often seen the sun shine that my memory of it as shining has become 
 automatic, I see no reason why my memory of this fact, simply on 
 account of its perfection, should be called no memory." 
 * Principles of Psychology, I., 447. 
 t Ibid. p. 452. 
 I Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 130. 
 
( 199 ) 
 
 REFUTATION MEMORY AT ONCE A PROMOTER 
 AND A DISTURBER OF UNIFORMITY OF ACTION 
 AND STRUCTURE. 
 
 (CHAPTER xn. OF UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY.) 
 
 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 developments, 
 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 deve- 
 lopment generally is due to memory. 
 
 This is the main part of the objection; the rest 
 resolves itself into an assertion that there is no evi- 
 dence in support of instinct and embryonic develop- 
 ment being due to memory, and a contention that the 
 necessity of each particular moment in each particular 
 case is sufficient to account for the facts without the 
 introduction of memory. 
 
 I will deal with these two last points briefly first. 
 As regards the evidence in support of the theory that 
 instinct and growth are due to a rapid unconscious 
 memory of past experiences and developments in the 
 persons of the ancestors of the living form in which 
 they appear, I must refer my readers to Life and 
 Habit, and to the translation of Professor Hering's 
 lecture given in Chapter VI. of Unconscious Memory. 
 
200 SELECTIONS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY. 
 
 I will only repeat here that a chrysalis, we will say, 
 is as much one and the same person with the chrysalis 
 of its preceding generation, as this last is one and the 
 same person with the egg or caterpillar from which it 
 sprang. You cannot deny personal identity between 
 two successive generations without sooner or later deny- 
 ing it during the successive stages in the single life of 
 what we call one individual ; nor can you admit per- 
 sonal identity through the stages of a long and varied 
 life (embryonic and post-natal) without admitting it to 
 endure through an endless series of generations. 
 
 The personal identity of successive generations being 
 admitted, the possibility of the second of two genera- 
 tions remembering what happened to it in the first is 
 obvious. The a priori objection, therefore, is removed, 
 and the question becomes one of fact does the off- 
 spring act as if it remembered ? 
 
 The answer to this question is not only that it does 
 so act, but that it is not possible to account for either 
 its development or its early instinctive actions upon 
 any other hypothesis than that of its remembering, and 
 remembering exceedingly well. 
 
 The only alternative is to declare with Von Hart- 
 mann that a living being may display a vast and varied 
 information concerning all manner of details, and be 
 able to perform most intricate operations, independently 
 of experience and practice. Once admit knowledge 
 independent of experience, and farewell to sober sense 
 and reason from that moment. 
 
 Firstly, then, we show that offspring has had every 
 facility for remembering ; secondly, that it shows every 
 appearance of having remembered ; thirdly, that no 
 other hypothesis except memory can be brought forward, 
 so as to account for the phenomena of instinct and 
 
REFUTATION. 201 
 
 heredity generally, which is not easily reducible to an 
 absurdity. Beyond this we do not care to go, and 
 must allow those to differ from us who require further 
 evidence. 
 
 As regards the argument that the necessity of each 
 moment will account for likeness of result, without 
 there being any need for introducing memory, I admit 
 that likeness of consequents is due to likeness of ante- 
 cedents, and I grant this will hold as good with em- 
 bryos as with oxygen and hydrogen gas ; what will 
 cover the one will cover the other, for the writs of the 
 laws common to all matter run within the womb as 
 freely as elsewhere ; but admitting that there are 
 combinations into which living beings enter with a 
 faculty called memory which has its effects upon their 
 conduct, and admitting that such combinations are from 
 time to time repeated (as we observe in the case of a 
 practised performer playing a piece of music which he 
 has committed to memory), then I maintain that 
 though, indeed, the likeness of one performance to its 
 immediate predecessor is due to likeness of the com- 
 binations immediately preceding the two performances, 
 yet memory plays so important a part in both these 
 combinations as to make it a distinguishing feature in 
 them, and therefore proper to be insisted upon. We 
 do not, for example, say that Herr Joachim played 
 such and such a sonata without the music, because he 
 was such and such an arrangement of matter in such 
 and such circumstances, resembling those under which 
 he played without music on some past occasion. This 
 goes without saying ; we say only that he played the 
 music by heart or by memory, as he had often played 
 it before. 
 
 To the objector that a caterpillar becomes a chry- 
 
202 SELECTIONS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY. 
 
 sails not because it remembers and takes the action 
 taken by its fathers and mothers in due course before 
 it, but because when matter is in such a physical and 
 mental state as to be called caterpillar, it must perforce 
 assume presently such another physical and mental 
 state as to be called chrysalis, and that therefore there 
 is no memory in the case to this objector I rejoin 
 that the offspring caterpillar would not have become so 
 like the parent as to make the next or chrysalis stage 
 a matter of necessity, unless both parent and offspring 
 had been influenced by something that we usually call 
 -memory. For it is this very possession of a common 
 memory which has guided the offspring into the path 
 taken by, and hence to a virtually same condition 
 with, the parent, and which guided the parent in its 
 turn to a state virtually identical with a correspond- 
 ing state in the existence of its own parent. To 
 memory, therefore, the most prominent place in the 
 transaction is assigned rightly. 
 
 To deny that will guided by memory has anything 
 to do with the development of embryos seems like 
 denying that a desire to obstruct has anything to do 
 with the recent conduct of certain members in the 
 House of Commons. What should we think of one 
 who said that the action of these gentlemen had no- 
 thing to do with a desire to embarrass the Government, 
 but was simply the necessary outcome of the chemical 
 and mechanical forces at work, which being such and 
 such, the action which we see is inevitable, and has 
 therefore nothing to do with wilful obstruction ? We 
 should answer that there was doubtless a great deal of 
 chemical and mechanical action in the matter; per- 
 haps, for aught we knew or cared, it was all chemical 
 and mechanical ; but if so, then a desire to obstruct 
 
REFUTATION. 203 
 
 parliamentary business is involved in certain kinds of 
 chemical and mechanical action, and that the kinds in- 
 volving this had preceded the recent proceedings of the 
 members in question. If asked to prove this, we can 
 get no further than that such action as has been taken 
 has never been seen except as following after and in 
 consequence of a desire to obstruct ; that this is our 
 nomenclature, and that we can no more be expected to 
 change it than to change our mother tongue at the 
 bidding of a foreigner. 
 
 A little reflection will convince the reader that he 
 will be unable to deny will and memory to the embryo 
 without at the same time denying their existence 
 everywhere, and maintaining that they have no place 
 in the acquisition of a habit, nor indeed in any human 
 action. He will feel that the actions, and the relation 
 of one action to another which he observes in embryos 
 is such as is never seen except in association with and 
 as a consequence of will and memory. He will there- 
 fore say that it is due to will and memory. To say 
 that these are the necessary outcome of certain ante- 
 cedents is not to destroy them : granted that they are 
 a man does not cease to be a man when we reflect 
 that he has had a father and mother, neither do will 
 and memory cease to be will and memory on the ground 
 that they cannot come causeless. They are manifest 
 minute by minute to the perception of all people who 
 can keep out of lunatic asylums, and this tribunal, 
 though not infallible, is nevertheless our ultimate court 
 of appeal the final arbitrator in all disputed cases. 
 
 We must remember that there is no action, however 
 original or peculiar, which is not in respect of far the 
 greater number of its details founded upon memory. 
 If a desperate man blows his brains out an action 
 which he can do once in a lifetime only, and which 
 
204 SELECTIONS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY. 
 
 none of his ancestors can have done before leaving off- 
 spring still nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths 
 of the movements necessary to achieve his end consist 
 of habitual movements movements, that is to say, 
 which were once difficult, but which have been prac- 
 tised and practised by the help of memory until they 
 are now performed automatically. We can no more 
 have an action than a creative effort of the imagination 
 cut off from memory. Ideas and actions seem almost 
 to resemble matter and force in respect of the impossi- 
 bility of originating or destroying them ; nearly all that 
 are, are memories of other ideas and actions, transmitted 
 but not created, disappearing but not perishing. 
 
 It appears, then, that when in Chapter X. we sup- 
 posed the clerk who wanted his dinner to forget on a 
 second day the action he had taken the day before, we 
 still, without perhaps perceiving it, supposed him to be 
 guided by memory in all the details of his action, such 
 as his taking down his hat and going out into the 
 street. We could not, indeed, deprive him of all 
 memory without absolutely paralysing his action. 
 
 Nevertheless new ideas, new faiths, and new actions 
 do in the course , of time come about, the living 
 expressions of which we may see in the new forms of 
 life which from time to time have arisen and are still 
 arising, and in the increase of our own knowledge and 
 mechanical inventions. But it is only a very little 
 new that is added at a time, and that little is generally 
 due to the desire to attain an end which cannot be 
 attained by any of the means for which there exists a 
 perceived precedent in the memory. When this is the 
 case, either the memory is further ransacked for any 
 forgotten shreds of details a combination of which may 
 serve the desired purpose ; or action is taken in the 
 
REFUTATION. 205 
 
 dark, which sometimes succeeds and becomes a fertile 
 source of further combinations ; or we are brought to a 
 dead stop. All action is random in respect of any of 
 the minute actions which compose it that are not done 
 in consequence of memory, real or supposed. So that 
 random, or action taken in the dark, or illusion, lies at 
 the very root of progress. 
 
 I will now consider the objection that the pheno- 
 mena of instinct and embryonic development ought not 
 to be ascribed to memory, inasmuch as certain other 
 phenomena of heredity, such as gout, cannot be ascribed 
 to it. 
 
 Those who object in this way forget that our actions 
 fall into two main classes : those which we have often 
 repeated before by means of a regular series of sub- 
 ordinate actions beginning and ending at a certain 
 tolerably well-defined point as when Herr Joachim 
 plays a sonata in public, or when we dress or undress 
 ourselves ; and actions the details of which are indeed 
 guided by memory, but which in their general scope 
 and purpose are new as when we are being married, 
 or presented at court.. 
 
 At each point in any action of the first of the two 
 kinds above referred to there is a memory (conscious 
 or unconscious according to the less or greater number of 
 times the action has been repeated), not only of the steps 
 in the present and previous performances which have 
 led up to the particular point that may be selected, 
 but also of the particular point itself; there is therefore, 
 at each point in a habitual performance, a memory at 
 once of like antecedents and of a like present. 
 
 If the memory, whether of the antecedent or the 
 present, were absolutely perfect ; that is to say, if the 
 vibrations in the nervous system (or, if the reader likes 
 
2o6 SELECTIONS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY. 
 
 it better, if the molecular change in the particular nerves 
 affected for molecular change is only a change in the 
 character of the vibrations going on within the mole- 
 cules it is nothing else than this) if the vibrations 
 in the particular nerves affected by any occurrence con- 
 tinued on each fresh repetition of the occurrence in 
 their full original strength and without having been in- 
 terfered with by any other vibrations ; and if, again, 
 the new waves running into the faint old ones from 
 exterior objects and restoring the lapsed molecular state 
 of the nerves to a pristine condition were absolutely 
 identical in character on each repetition of the occur- 
 rence with the waves that ran in upon the last occasion, 
 then there would be no change in the action, and no 
 modification or improvement could take place. For 
 though indeed the latest performance would always 
 have one memory more than the latest but one to guide 
 it, yet the memories being identical, it would not matter 
 how many or how few they were. 
 
 On any repetition, however, the circumstances, exter- 
 nal or internal, or both, never are absolutely identical : 
 there is some slight variation in each individual case, 
 and some part of this variation is remembered, with 
 approbation or disapprobation as the case may be. 
 
 The fact, therefore, that on each repetition of the 
 action there is one memory more than on the last but 
 one, and that this memory is slightly different from its 
 predecessor, is seen to be an inherent and, ex hypothesi, 
 necessarily disturbing factor in all habitual action 
 and the life of an organism should, as has been suffi- 
 ciently insisted on, be regarded as the habitual action of 
 a single individual, namely, of the organism itself, and 
 of its ancestors. This is the key to accumulation 
 of improvement, whether in the arts which we assidu- 
 
REFUTATION. 207 
 
 ously practise during our single life, or in the structures 
 and instincts of successive generations. The memory 
 does not complete a true circle, but is, as it were, a 
 spiral slightly divergent therefrom, It is no longer a 
 perfectly circulating decimal. Where, on the other 
 hand, there is no memory of a like present, where, in 
 fact, the memory is not, so to speak, spiral, there is no 
 accumulation of improvement. The effect of any vari- 
 ation is not transmitted, and is not thus pregnant of 
 still further change. 
 
 As regards the second of the two classes of actions 
 above referred to those, namely which are not recur- 
 rent or habitual, and at no point of which is there a me- 
 mory of a past present like the one which is present now 
 there will have been no accumulation of strong and 
 well-knit memory as regards the action as a whole, but 
 action, if taken at all, will be taken upon disjointed 
 fragments of individual actions (our own and those of 
 other people) pieced together with a result more or less 
 satisfactory according to circumstances. 
 
 But it does not follow that the action of two people 
 who have had tolerably similar antecedents and are 
 placed in tolerably similar circumstances should be 
 more unlike each other in this second case than in the 
 first. On the contrary, nothing is more common than to 
 observe the same kind of people making the same kind 
 of mistake when placed for the first time in the same 
 kind of new circumstances. I did not say that there 
 would be no sameness of action without memory of a 
 like present. There may be sameness of action pro- 
 ceeding from a memory, conscious or unconscious, of 
 like antecedents, and a presence only of like presents 
 without recollection of the same. 
 
 The sameness of action of like persons placed under 
 
208 SELECTIONS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY. 
 
 like circumstances for the first time, resembles the 
 sameness of action of inorganic matter under the same 
 combinations. Let us for a moment suppose what we 
 call non-living substances to be capable of remember- 
 ing their antecedents, and that the changes they undergo 
 are the expressions of their recollections. Then I admit, 
 of course, that there is not memory in any cream, we 
 will say, that is about to be churned of the cream of 
 the preceding week, but the common absence of such 
 memory from each week's cr"eam is an element of same- 
 ness between the two. And thou*gh no cream can re- 
 member having been churned before, yet all cream in 
 all time has had nearly identical antecedents, and has 
 therefore nearly the same memories and nearly the 
 same proclivities. Thus, in fact, the cream of one 
 week is as truly the same as the cream of another 
 week from the same cow, pasture, &c., as anything is 
 ever the same with anything ; for the having been 
 subjected to like antecedents engenders the closest 
 similarity that we can conceive of, if the substances 
 were like to start with. Same is as same does. 
 
 The manifest absence of any connecting memory (or 
 memory of like presents) from certain of the pheno- 
 mena of heredity, such as, for example, the diseases of 
 old age, is now seen to be no valid reason for saying 
 that such other and far more numerous and important 
 phenomena as those of embryonic development are not 
 phenomena of memory. Growth and the diseases of 
 old age do indeed, at first sight, appear to stand on the 
 same footing. The question, however, whether certain 
 results are due to memory or no must be settled not by 
 showing that two combinations, neither of which can 
 remember the other (as between each other), may yet 
 generate like results, and therefore, considering the 
 
REFUTATION. 209 
 
 memory theory disposed of for all other cases, but by the 
 evidence we may be able to adduce in any particular case 
 that the second agent has actually remembered the con- 
 duct of the first. Such evidence must show firstly that 
 the second agent cannot be supposed able to do what it 
 is plain he can do, except under the guidance of me- 
 mory or experience, and secondly, that the second agent 
 has had every opportunity of remembering. When the 
 first of these tests fails, similarity of action on the part 
 of two agents need not be connected with memory of 
 a like present as well as of like antecedents ; when 
 both fail, similarity of action should be referred to 
 memory of like antecedents only. 
 
 Eeturning to a parenthesis a few pages back, in 
 which I said that consciousness of memory would be 
 less or greater according to the greater or fewer number 
 of times that the act had been repeated, it may be 
 observed as a corollary to this, that the less conscious- 
 ness of memory the greater the uniformity of action, 
 and vice versd. For the less consciousness involves 
 the memory's being more perfect, through a larger num- 
 ber (generally) of repetitions of the act that is remem- 
 bered ; there is therefore a less proportionate difference 
 in respect of the number of recollections of this particular 
 act between the most recent actor and the most recent 
 but one. This is why very old civilisations, as those 
 of many insects, and the greater number of now living 
 organisms, appear to the eye not to change at all. 
 
 For example, if an action has been performed only 
 ten times, we will say by A, B, C, &c., who are similar in 
 all respects, except that A acts without recollection, B 
 with recollection of A's action, C with recollection of 
 both B's and A's, while J remembers the course taken 
 by A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, and I the possession of a 
 
 o 
 
210 SELECTIONS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY. 
 
 memory by B will indeed so change his action, as com- 
 pared with A's, that it may well be hardly recognisable. 
 We saw this in our example of the clerk who asked 
 the policeman the way to the eating-house on one day, 
 but did not ask him the next, because he remembered ; 
 but C's action will not be so different from B's as B's 
 from A's, for though C will act with a memory of two 
 occasions on which the action has been performed, 
 while B recollects only the original performance by A, 
 yet B and C both act with the guidance of a memory 
 and experience of some kind, while A .acted without 
 any. Thus the clerk referred to in Chapter X. will 
 act on the third day much as he acted on the second 
 that is to say, he will see the policeman at the 
 corner of the street, but will not question him. 
 
 When the action is repeated by J for the tenth time, 
 the difference between J's repetition of it and I's will 
 be due solely to the difference between a recollection 
 of nine past performances by J against only eight by 
 I, and this is so much proportionately less than the 
 difference between a recollection of two performances 
 and of only one, that a less modification of action 
 should be expected. At the same time consciousness 
 concerning an action repeated for the tenth time 
 should be less acute than on the first repetition. 
 Memory, therefore, though tending to disturb similarity 
 of action less and less continually, must always cause 
 some disturbance. At the same time the possession of 
 a memory on the successive repetitions of an action 
 after the first, and, perhaps, the first two or three, 
 during which the recollection may be supposed still 
 imperfect, will tend to ensure uniformity, for it will be 
 one of the elements of sameness in the agents they 
 both acting by the light of experience and memory. 
 
REFUTATION. 211 
 
 During the embryonic stages and in childhood we 
 are almost entirely under the guidance of a practised 
 and powerful memory of circumstances which have 
 been often repeated, not only in detail and piecemeal, 
 but as a whole, and under many slightly varying con- 
 ditions ; thus the performance has become well averaged 
 and matured in its arrangements, so as to meet all ordi- 
 nary emergencies. We therefore act with great uncon- 
 sciousness and vary our performances little. Babies are 
 much more alike than persons of middle age. 
 
 Up to the average age at which our ancestors have 
 had children during many generations, we are still 
 guided in great measure by memory; but the varia- 
 tions in external circumstances begin to make them- 
 selves perceptible in our characters. In middle life we 
 live more and more continually upon the piecing to- 
 gether of details of memory drawn from our personal 
 experience, that is to say, upon the memory of our own 
 antecedents ; and this resembles the kind of memory 
 we hypothetically attached to cream a little time ago. 
 It is not surprising, then, that a son who has inherited 
 his father's tastes and constitution, and who lives much 
 as his father had done, should make the same mistakes 
 as his father did when he reaches his father's age 
 we will say of seventy though he cannot possibly 
 remember his father's having made the mistakes. It 
 were to be wished we could, for then we might know 
 better how to avoid gout, cancer, or what not. And it 
 is to be noticed that the developments of old age are 
 generally things we should be glad enough to avoid if 
 we knew how to do so. 
 
( 212 ) 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 (CHAPTER xm. OF UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY.) 
 
 IF we observed the resemblance between successive 
 generations to be as close as that between distilled 
 water and distilled water through all time, and if we 
 observed that perfect unchangeableness in the action of 
 living beings which we see in what we call chemical 
 and mechanical combinations, we might indeed suspect 
 that memory had as little place among the causes of 
 their action as it can have in anything, and that each 
 repetition, whether of a habit or the practice of art, or 
 of an embryonic process in successive generations, was 
 as original as the " Origin of Species " itself, for all that 
 memory had to do with it. I submit, however, that in 
 the case of the reproductive forms of life we see just 
 so much variety, in spite of uniformity, as is consistent 
 with a, repetition involving not only a nearly perfect 
 similarity in the agents and their circumstances, but 
 also the little departure therefrom that is inevitably 
 involved in the supposition that a memory of like 
 presents as well as of like antecedents (as distinguished 
 from a memory of like antecedents only) has played a 
 part in their development a cyclical memory, if the 
 expression may be pardoned. 
 
 There is life infinitely lower and more minute than 
 any which our most powerful microscopes reveal to us, 
 
CONCLUSION. 213 
 
 but let us leave this upon one side and begin with the 
 amoeba. Let us suppose that this " structureless " 
 morsel of protoplasm is, for all its " structurelessness," 
 composed of an infinite number of living molecules, 
 each one of them with hopes and fears of its own, and 
 all dwelling together like Tekke Turcomans, of whom 
 we read that they live for plunder only, and that each 
 man of them is entirely independent, acknowledging 
 no constituted authority, but that some among them 
 exercise a tacit and undefined influence over the others. 
 Let us suppose these molecules capable of memory, 
 both in their capacity as individuals and as societies, 
 and able to transmit their memories to their descen- 
 dants from the traditions of the dimmest past to the 
 experiences of their own lifetime. Some of these 
 societies will remain simple, as having had no history, 
 but to the greater number unfamiliar, and therefore 
 striking, incidents will from time to time occur, which, 
 when they do not disturb memory so greatly as to kill, 
 will leave their impression upon it. The body or 
 society will remember these incidents and be modified 
 by them in its conduct, and therefore more or less in 
 its internal arrangements, which will tend inevitably 
 to specialisation. This memory of the most striking 
 events of varied lifetimes I maintain, with Professor 
 Hering, to be the differentiating cause, which, accumu- 
 lated in countless generations, has led up from the 
 amoeba to man. If there had been no such memory, 
 the amoeba of one generation would have exactly re- 
 sembled the amoeba of the preceding, and a perfect 
 cycle would have been established ; the modifying 
 effects of an additional memory in each generation have 
 made the cycle into a spiral, and into a spiral whose 
 eccentricities, in the outset hardly perceptible, is becom- 
 
214 SELECTIONS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY. 
 
 ing greater and greater with increasing longevity and 
 more complex social and mechanical inventions. 
 
 We say that the chicken grows the horny tip to its 
 beak with which it ultimately pecks its way out of its 
 shell, because it remembers having grown it before, 
 and the use it made of it. We say that it made it 
 on the same principles as a man makes a spade or a 
 hammer, that is to say, as the joint result both of 
 desire and experience. When I say experience, I 
 mean, experience not only of what will be wanted, but 
 also of the details of all the means that must be taken 
 in order to effect this. Memory, therefore, is supposed 
 to guide the chicken not only in respect of the main 
 design, but in respect also of every atomic action, so 
 to speak, which goes to make up the execution of this 
 design. It is not only the suggestion of a plan which 
 is due to memory, but, as Professor Hering has so well 
 said, it is the binding power of memory which alone 
 renders any consolidation or coherence of action possible, 
 inasmuch as without this no action could have parts 
 subordinate one to another, yet bearing upon a common 
 end ; no part of an action, great or small, could have 
 reference to any other part, much less to a combination 
 of all the parts ; nothing, in fact, but ultimate atoms 
 of actions could ever happen these bearing the same 
 relation to such an action, we will say, as a railway 
 journey from London to Edinburgh as a single mole- 
 cule of hydrogen to a gallon of water. 
 
 If asked how it is that the chicken shows no sign 
 of consciousness concerning this design, nor yet of the 
 steps it is taking to carry it out, we reply that such 
 unconsciousness is usual in all cases where an action, 
 and the design which prompts it, have been repeated 
 exceedingly often. If, again, we are asked how we 
 
CONCLUSION. 215 
 
 account for the regularity with which each step is 
 taken in its due order, we answer that this too is 
 characteristic of actions that are done habitually 
 they being very rarely misplaced in respect of any 
 part. 
 
 When I wrote Life and Habit, I had arrived at 
 the conclusion that memory was the most essential 
 characteristic of life, and went so far as to say, " Life 
 is that property of matter whereby it can remember 
 matter which can remember is living," I should 
 perhaps have written, " Life is the being possessed of 
 a memory the life of a thing at any moment is the 
 memories which at that moment it retains ; " and I 
 would modify the words that immediately follow, 
 namely, " Matter which cannot remember is dead ; " 
 for they imply that there is such a thing as matter 
 which cannot remember anything at all, and this on 
 fuller consideration I do not believe to be the case ; I 
 can conceive of no matter which is not able to re- 
 member a little, and which is not living in respect of 
 what it can remember. I do not see how action of 
 any kind (chemical as much as vital) is conceivable 
 without the supposition that every atom retains a 
 memory of certain antecedents. I cannot, however, 
 at this point, enter upon the reasons which have com- 
 pelled me to join the many who are now adopting this 
 conclusion. Whether these would be deemed sufficient 
 or no, at any rate we cannot believe that a system of 
 self-reproducing associations should develop from the 
 simplicity of the amoeba to the complexity of the 
 human body without the presence of that memory 
 which can alone account at once for the resemblances 
 and the differences between successive generations, 
 for the arising and the accumulation of divergences 
 
216 SELECTIONS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY. 
 
 for the tendency to differ and the tendency not to 
 differ. 
 
 At parting, therefore, I would recommend the reader 
 to see every atom in the universe as living and able 
 to feel and to remember, but in a humble way. He 
 must have life eternal, as well as matter eternal ; and 
 the life and the matter must be joined together in- 
 separably as body and soul to one another. Thus he 
 will see God everywhere, not as those who repeat 
 phrases conventionally, but as people who would have 
 their words taken according to their most natural and 
 legitimate meaning ; and he will feel that the main 
 difference between him and many of those who oppose 
 him lies in the fact that whereas both he and they use 
 the same language, his opponents only half mean what 
 they say, while he means it entirely. 
 
 The attempt to get a higher form of a life from a 
 lower one is in accordance with our observation and 
 experience. It is therefore proper to be believed. 
 The attempt to get it from that which has absolutely 
 no life is like trying to get something out of nothing. 
 The millionth part of a farthing put out to interest at 
 ten per cent, will in five hundred years become over a 
 million pounds, and so long as we have any millionth 
 of a millionth of the farthing to start with, our getting 
 as many million pounds as we have a fancy for is only 
 a question of time, but without the initial millionth of 
 a millionth of a millionth part, we shall get no incre- 
 ment whatever. A little leaven will leaven the whole 
 lump, but there must be some leaven. 
 
 We should endeavour to see the so-called inorganic 
 as living, in respect of the qualities it has in common 
 with the organic, rather than the organic as non-living 
 in respect of the qualities it has in common with the 
 
CONCLUSION. 217 
 
 inorganic. True, it would be hard to place one's self 
 on the same moral platform as a stone, but this is not 
 necessary ; it is enough that we should feel the stone 
 to have a moral platform of its own, though that plat- 
 form embraces little more than a profound respect for 
 the laws of gravitation, chemical affinity, &c. As for 
 the difficulty of conceiving a body as living that has 
 not got a reproductive system we should remember 
 that neuter insects are living but are believed to have 
 no reproductive system. Again, we should bear in 
 mind that mere assimilation involves all the essentials 
 of reproduction, and that both air and water possess 
 this power in a very high degree. The essence of a 
 reproductive system, then, is found low down in the 
 scheme of nature. 
 
 At present our leading men of science are in this 
 difficulty ; on the one hand their experiments and 
 their theories alike teach them that spontaneous gene- 
 ration ought not to be accepted ; on the other, they 
 must have an origin for the life of the living forms, 
 which, by their own theory, have been evolved, and 
 they can at present get this origin in no other way 
 than by Deus ex machind method, which they reject as 
 unproved, or spontaneous generation of living from 
 non-living matter, which is no less foreign to their 
 experience. As a general rule, they prefer the latter 
 alternative. So Professor Tyndall, in his celebrated 
 article (Nineteenth Century, November 1878), wrote : 
 
 " The theory of evolution in its complete form 
 involves the assumption that at some period or other 
 of the earth's history there occurred what would be now 
 called ' spontaneous generation.' " And so Professor 
 Huxley - 
 
 * Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1878, p. 826. 
 
218 SELECTIONS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY. 
 
 " It is argued that a belief in abiogenesis is a 
 necessary corollary from the doctrine of Evolution. 
 This may be" [which I submit is equivalent here to 
 "is"] "true of the occurrence of abiogenesis at some 
 time. " * 
 
 Professor Huxley goes on to say that however this 
 may be, abiogenesis (or spontaneous generation) is not 
 respectable and will not do at all now. There may 
 have been one case once ; this may be winked at, but 
 it must not occur again. " It is enough," he writes, 
 " that a single particle of living protoplasm should once 
 have appeared on the globe as the result of no matter 
 what agency. In the eyes of a consistent [!] evolu- 
 tionist any further [!] independent formation of 
 protoplasm would be sheer waste " and the sooner 
 the Almighty gets to understand that He must not make 
 that single act of special creation into a precedent 
 the better for Him. 
 
 Professor Huxley, in fact, excuses the single case of 
 spontaneous generation which he appears to admit, 
 because however illegitimate, it was still " only a very 
 little one," and came off a long time ago in a foreign 
 country. For my own part I think it will prove in 
 the end more convenient if we say that there is a low 
 kind of livingness in every atom of matter, and adopt 
 Life eternal as no less inevitable a conclusion than 
 matter eternal. 
 
 It should not be doubted that wherever there is 
 vibration or motion there is life and memory, and that 
 there is vibration and motion at all times in all things. 
 
 The reader who takes the above position will find 
 that he can explain the entry of what he calls death 
 among what he calls the living, whereas he could by 
 
 * Encyclopedia Britannica, Art. Biology, Qth ed., Vol. 3, p. 689. 
 
CONCLUSION. 219 
 
 no means introduce life into his system if he started 
 without it. Death is deducible ; life is not deducible. 
 Death is a change of memories ; it is not the destruc- 
 tion of all memory. It is as the liquidation of one 
 company each member of which will presently join a 
 new one, and retain a trifle even of the old cancelled 
 memory, by way of greater aptitude for working in 
 concert with other molecules. This is why animals 
 feed on grass and on each other, and cannot proselytise 
 or convert the rude ground before it has been tutored 
 in the first principles of the higher kinds of associa- 
 tion. 
 
 Again, I would recommend the reader to beware of 
 believing anything in this book unless he either likes 
 it, or feels angry at being told it. If required belief 
 in this or that makes a man angry, I suppose he should, 
 as a general rule, swallow it whole then and there upon 
 the spot, otherwise he may take it or leave it as he 
 likes. 
 
 I have not gone far for my facts, nor yet far from 
 them ; all on which I rest are as open to the reader as 
 to me. If I have sometimes used hard terms, the pro- 
 bability is that I have not understood them, but have 
 done so by a slip, as one who has caught a bad habit 
 from the company he has been lately keeping. They 
 should be skipped. 
 
 Do not let the reader be too much cast down by the 
 bad language with which professional scientists obscure 
 the issue, nor by their seeming to make it their business 
 to fog us under the pretext of removing our difficulties. 
 It is not the ratcatcher's interest to catch all the rats ; 
 and, as Handel observed so sensibly, "Every profes- 
 sional gentleman must do his best for to live." The 
 art of some of our philosophers, however, is sufficiently 
 
220 SELECTIONS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY. 
 
 transparent, and consists too often in saying " organism 
 which ... must be classified among fishes," * instead 
 of " fish " and then proclaiming that they have " an 
 ineradicable tendency to try to make things clear." t 
 
 If another example is required, here is the following 
 from an article than which I have seen few with which 
 I more completely agree, or which have given me 
 greater pleasure. If our men of science would take 
 to writing in this way, we should be glad enough to 
 follow them. The passage I refer to runs thus : 
 
 " Professor Huxley speaks of a ' verbal fog by which the 
 question at issue may be hidden ; ' is there no verbal fog in 
 the statement that the (Etiology of crayfishes resolves itself into 
 a gradual evolution in the course of the mesozoic and subse- 
 quent epochs of the worlds history of these animals from a 
 primitive astacomorphous form ? Would it be fog or light 
 that would envelop the history of man if we say that the 
 existence of man was explained by the hypothesis of his 
 gradual evolution from a primitive anthropomorphous form ? 
 I should call this fog, not light." J 
 
 Especially let him mistrust those who are holding 
 forth about protoplasm, and maintaining that this is 
 the only living substance. Protoplasm may be, and 
 perhaps is, the most living part of an organism, as the 
 most capable of retaining vibrations, of a certain char- 
 acter, but this is the utmost that can be claimed for it. 
 I have noticed, however, that protoplasm has not been 
 buoyant lately in the scientific market. 
 
 Having mentioned protoplasm, I may ask the reader 
 to note the breakdown of that school of philosophy 
 
 * Professor Huxley, Encyel. Brit., 9th ed., Art. Evolution, p. 750. 
 t " Hume," by Professor Huxley, p. 45. 
 
 " The Philosophy of Crayfishes," by the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop 
 of Carlisle. Nineteenth Century for October 1880, p. 636. 
 
CONCLUSION. 221 
 
 which divided the ego from the non ego. The proto- 
 plasmists, on the one hand, are whittling away at ego, 
 till they have reduced it to a little jelly in certain parts 
 of the body, and they will whittle away this too pre- 
 sently, if they go on as they are doing now. 
 
 Others, again, are so unifying the ego and the non 
 ego, that with them there will soon be as little of the 
 non ego left as there is of the ego with their opponents. 
 Both, however, are so far agreed as that we know not 
 where to draw the line between the two, and this 
 renders nugatory any system which is founded upon a 
 distinction between them. 
 
 The truth is, that all classification whatever, when 
 we examine its raison d'etre closely, is found to be 
 arbitrary to depend on our sense of our own con- 
 venience, and not on any inherent distinction in the 
 nature of the things themselves. Strictly speaking, 
 there is only one thing and one action. The uni- 
 verse, or God, and the action of the universe as a 
 whole. 
 
 Lastly, I may predict with some certainty that before 
 long we shall find the original Darwinism of Dr. 
 Erasmus Darwin (with an infusion of Professor Hering 
 into the bargain) generally accepted instead of the neo- 
 Darwinism of to-day, and that the variations whose 
 accumulation results in species will be recognised as 
 due to the wants and endeavours of the living forms 
 in which they appear, instead of being ascribed to 
 chance, or, in other words, to unknown causes, as by 
 Mr. Charles Darwin's system. We shall have some 
 idyllic young naturalists bringing up Dr. Erasmus Dar- 
 win's note on Trapa natans* and Lamarck's kindred 
 passage on the descent of Ranunculus hederaceus from 
 
 * Les Amours des Plantes, p. 360. Paris, 1800. 
 
222 SELECTIONS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY. 
 
 Ranunculus aquatilis * as fresh discoveries, and be told 
 with much happy simplicity, that those animals and 
 plants which have felt the need of such a structure 
 have developed it, while those which have not wanted 
 it have gone without it. Thus it will be declared, 
 every leaf we see around us, every structure of the 
 minutest insect, will bear witness to the truth of the 
 " great guess " of the greatest of naturalists concerning 
 the memory of living matter. f 
 
 I dare say the public will not object to this, and am 
 very sure that none of the admirers of Mr. Charles 
 Darwin or Mr. Wallace will protest against it ; but it 
 may be as well to point out that this was not the view 
 of the matter taken by Mr. Wallace in 1858 when he 
 and Mr. Darwin first came forward as preachers of 
 natural selection. At that time Mr. Wallace saw 
 clearly enough the difference between the theory of 
 "natural selection" and that of Lamarck. He 
 wrote : 
 
 " The hypothesis of Lamarck that progressive changes 
 in species have been produced by the attempts of animals to 
 increase the development of their own organs and thus modify 
 their structure and habits has been repeatedly and easily 
 refuted by all writers on the subject of varieties and species, 
 . . . but the view here developed renders such a hypothesis 
 quite unnecessary . . . The powerful retractile talons of the 
 falcon and the cat tribes have not been produced or in- 
 creased by the volition of those animals, . . . neither did the 
 giraffe acquire its long neck by desiring to reach the foliage 
 of the more lofty shrubs, and constantly stretching its neck 
 
 * Philosophie Zoologique, torn. i. p. 231. Ed. M. Martin. Paris, 
 
 1873- 
 
 t Those who read the three following chapters will see that these 
 words, written in 1880, have come out near the truth in 1884. 
 
CONCLUSION. 223 
 
 for this purpose, but because any varieties which occurred 
 among its antitypes with a longer neck than usual at once 
 secured a fresh range of pasture over the same ground as their 
 short-necked companions, and on the first scarcity of food were 
 thereby enabled to outlive them" (italics in original).* 
 
 This is absolutely the neo-Darwin doctrine, and a 
 denial of the mainly fortuitous character of the varia- 
 tions in animal and vegetable forms cuts at its root. 
 That Mr. Wallace, after years of reflection, still adhered 
 to this view, is proved by his heading a reprint of the 
 paragraph just quoted from t with the words " Lamarck's 
 hypothesis very different from that now advanced ; " 
 nor do any of his more recent works show that he has 
 modified his opinion. It should be noted that Mr. 
 Wallace does not call his work Contributions to the 
 Theory of Evolution, but to that of Natural Selec- 
 tion. 
 
 Mr. Darwin, with characteristic caution, only com- 
 mits himself to saying that Mr. Wallace has arrived at 
 almost (italics mine) the same general conclusions as he, 
 Mr. Darwin, has done;| but he still, as in 1859, de- 
 clares that it would be " a serious error to suppose that 
 the greater number of instincts have been acquired by 
 habit in one generation and then transmitted by in- 
 heritance to succeeding generations/' and he still 
 
 * Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society. Williams & 
 Norgate,i858, p. 61. 
 
 t Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, 2d ed., 1871, 
 p. 41. 
 
 % Origin of Species, p. I, ed. 1872. 
 
 Origin of Species, 6th ed., p. 206. I ought in fairness to Mr 
 Darwin to say that he does not hold the error to be quite as serious as 
 he once did. It is now " a serious error" only ; in 1859 it was " 
 most serious error." Origin of Species, 1st ed., p. 209. 
 
224 SELECTIONS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY. 
 
 comprehensively condemns the " well-known doctrine 
 of inherited habit, as advanced by Lamarck." ^ 
 
 As for the statement in the passage quoted from 
 Mr. Wallace, to the effect that Lamarck's hypothesis 
 " has been repeatedly and easily refuted by all writers 
 on the subject of varieties and species," it is a very 
 surprising one. I have searched Evolution literature 
 in vain for any refutation of the Erasmus Darwinian 
 system (for this is what Lamarck's hypothesis really 
 is), which need make the defenders of that system at 
 all uneasy. The best attempt at an answer to Erasmus 
 Darwin that has yet been made is Paley's Natural 
 Theology, which was throughout obviously written to 
 meet Buff on and the Zoonomia. It is the manner 
 of theologians to say that such and such an objection 
 " has been refuted over and over again," without at the 
 same time telling us when and where ; it is to be re- 
 gretted that Mr. Wallace has here taken a leaf out of 
 the theologians' book. His statement is one which will 
 not pass muster with those whom public opinion is sure 
 in the end to follow. 
 
 Did Mr. Herbert Spencer, for example, " repeatedly 
 and easily refute" Lamarck's hypothesis in his brilliant 
 article in the Leader, March 20, 1852 ? On the con- 
 trary, that article is expressly directed against those 
 " who cavalierly reject the hypothesis of Lamarck and 
 his followers." This article was written six years before 
 the words last quoted from Mr. Wallace ; how absolutely, 
 however, does the word " cavalierly" apply to them ! 
 
 Does Isidore Geoffrey, again, bear Mr. Wallace's 
 assertion out better ? In 1859 that is to say but 
 a short time after Mr. Wallace had written he wrote 
 as follows : 
 
 * Origin of Species, 1st ed., p. 242 ; 6th ed., p. 233. 
 
CONCLUSION. 225 
 
 " Such was the language which Lamarck heard during his 
 protracted old age, saddened alike by the weight of years and 
 blindness ; this was what people did not hesitate to utter 
 over his grave yet barely closed, and what indeed they are 
 still saying commonly too without any knowledge of what 
 Lamarck maintained, but merely repeating at secondhand 
 bad caricatures of his teaching. 
 
 " When will the time come when we may see Lamarck's 
 theory discussed and, I may as well at once say, refuted 
 in some important points * with at any rate the respect due 
 to one of the most illustrious masters of our science ? And 
 when will this theory, the hardihood of which has been 
 greatly exaggerated, become freed from the interpretations 
 and commentaries by the false light of which so many natu- 
 ralists have followed their opinion concerning it? If its 
 author is to be condemned, let it be, at any rate, not before 
 he has been heard." t 
 
 In 1873 M. Martin published his edition of 
 Lamarck's Philosophie Zoologique. He was still able 
 to say, with, I. believe, perfect truth, that Lamarck's 
 theory has " never yet had the honour of being 
 discussed seriously." J 
 
 Professor Huxley in his article on Evolution is no 
 less cavalier than Mr. Wallace. He writes : 
 
 " Lamarck introduced the conception of the action of an 
 animal on itself as a factor in producing modification." 
 
 Lamarck did nothing of the kind. It was Buffon 
 and Dr. Darwin who introduced this, but more 
 especially Dr. Darwin. The accuracy of Professor 
 
 * I never could find what these particular points were, 
 f Isidore Geoffrey, Hist. Nat. Gen., torn. ii. p. 407, 1859. 
 J M. Martin's edition of the Philosophie Zoologique (Paris, 1873), 
 Introduction, p. vi. 
 
 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Qth ed., p. 750. 
 
 P 
 
226 SELECTIONS FROM UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY. 
 
 Huxley's statements about the history and literature 
 of evolution is like the direct interference of the 
 Deity it vanishes whenever and wherever I have 
 occasion to test it. 
 
 " But a little consideration showed " (italics mine) " that 
 though Lamarck had seized what, as far as it goes, is a true 
 cause of modification, it is a cause the actual effects of which 
 are wholly inadequate to account for any considerable modi- 
 fication in animals, and which can have no influence whatever 
 in the vegetable world," &c. 
 
 I should be very glad to come across some of the 
 "little consideration" which will show this. I have 
 searched for it far and wide, and have never been able 
 to find it. 
 
 I think Professor Huxley has been exercising some 
 of his ineradicable tendency to try to make things 
 clear in the article on Evolution, already so often 
 quoted from. We find him (p. 750) pooh-poohing 
 Lamarck, yet on the next page he says, " How far ' na- 
 tural selection ' suffices for the production of species 
 remains to be seen." And this when " natural selec- 
 tion " was already so nearly of age ! Why, to those 
 who know how to read between a philosopher's lines 
 the sentence comes to very nearly the same as a de- 
 claration that the writer has no great opinion of " na- 
 tural selection." Professor Huxley continues, " Few can 
 doubt that, if not the whole cause, it is a very impor- 
 tant factor in that operation." A philosopher's words 
 should be weighed carefully, and when Professor 
 Huxley says, " few can doubt," we must remember 
 that he may be including himself among the few 
 whom he considers to have the power of doubting on 
 this matter. He does not say "few will," but "few 
 
CONCLUSION. 227 
 
 can " doubt, as though it were only the enlightened 
 who would have the power of doing so. Certainly 
 " nature " for that is what " natural selection " comes 
 to is rather an important factor in the operation, but 
 we do not gain much by being told so. If however, 
 Professor Huxley neither believes in the origin of 
 species, through sense of need on the part of animals 
 themselves, nor yet in " natural selection," we should 
 be glad to know what he does believe in. 
 
 The battle is one of greater importance than appears 
 at first sight. It is a battle between teleology and 
 non-teleology, between the purposiveness and the non- 
 purposiveness of the organs in animal and vegetable 
 bodies. According to Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, and 
 Paley, organs are purposive ; according to Mr. Darwin 
 and his followers, they are not purposive. But the main 
 arguments against the system of Dr. Erasmus Darwin 
 are arguments which, so far as they have any weight, 
 tell against evolution generally. Now that these have 
 been disposed of, and the prejudice against evolution 
 has been overcome, it will be seen that there is nothing 
 to be said against the system of Erasmus Darwin and 
 Lamarck which does not tell with far greater force 
 against that of Mr. Charles Darwin and Mr. Wallace. 
 
( 228 ) 
 
 REMARKS ON MR. ROMANES' MENTAL 
 EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS* 
 
 T HAVE said on page 96 of this book that the 
 -*- word " heredity " may be a very good way of stat- 
 ing the difficulty which meets us when we observe the 
 reappearance of like characteristics, whether of body or 
 mind, in successive generations, but that it does nothing 
 whatever towards removing it. 
 
 It is here that Mr. Herbert Spencer, the late Mr. 
 G. H. Lewes, and Mr. Eomanes fail. Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer does indeed go so far in, one place as to call 
 instinct "organised memory," t and Mr. G. H. Lewes 
 attributes many instincts to what he calls the " lapsing 
 of intelligence/' J So does Mr. Herbert Spencer, whom 
 Mr. Romanes should have known that Mr. Lewis 
 was following. Mr. Eomanes, in his recent work, 
 Mental Evolution in Animals (November, 1883), en- 
 dorses this, and frequently uses such expressions as- 
 " the lifetime of the species," || " hereditary experience," IF 
 and " hereditary memory and instinct," * * but none of 
 these writers (and indeed no writer that I know of 
 except Professor Hering of Prague, for a translation of 
 whose address on this subject I must refer the reader 
 
 * Kegan Paul & Co., 1883. 
 
 t Principles of Psychology, Vol. I. p. 445. Ibid. I. 456. 
 
 Problems of Life and Mind, first series, Vol. I., 3rd ed. 1874, p. 141, 
 and Problem I. 21. 
 
 I! P. 33- IT P. 77- ** P. US- 
 
MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 229 
 
 to my book Unconscious Memory) has shown a com- 
 prehension of the fact that these expressions are unex- 
 plained so long as "heredity," whereby they explain 
 them, is unexplained ; and none of them sees the 
 importance of emphasizing Memory, and making it 
 as it were the keystone of the system. 
 
 Mr. Spencer may very well call instinct " organised 
 memory" if he means that offspring canremember with- 
 in the limitations to which all memory is subject what 
 happened to it while it was yet in the person or per- 
 sons of its parent or parents ; but if he does not mean 
 this, his use of the word " memory," his talk about 
 " the experience of the race," and other expressions of 
 kindred nature, are delusive. If he does mean this, it 
 is a pity he has nowhere said so. 
 
 Professor Hering does mean this, and makes it clear 
 that he does so. He does not catch the ball and let 
 it slip through his fingers again, but holds it firmly. 
 " It is to memory," he says, " that we owe almost all 
 that we have or are ; our ideas and conceptions are its 
 work ; our every thought and movement are derived 
 from this source. Memory connects the countless 
 phenomena of our existence into a single whole, and 
 as our bodies would be scattered into the dust of their 
 component atoms if they were not held together by the 
 cohesion of matter, so our consciousness would be 
 broken up into as many moments as we had lived 
 seconds, but for the binding and unifying force of 
 Memory." * And he proceeds to show that Memory 
 persists between generations exactly as it does between 
 the various stages in the life of the individual. If I 
 could find any such passage as the one I have just 
 
 * Translation of Professor Hering's address on "Memory as an 
 Organised Function of Matter," Unconscious Memory, p. 116. 
 
230 REMARKS ON MR. ROMANES' 
 
 quoted, in Mr. Herbert Spencer's, Mr. Lewes's, or Mr. 
 Komanes' works, I should be only too glad to quote it, 
 but I know of nothing comparable to it for defmiteness 
 of idea, thoroughness and consistency. 
 
 No reader indeed can rise from a perusal of Mr. 
 Herbert Spencer's, or Mr. G. H. Lewes', work with 
 an adequate if indeed with any impression that 
 the phenomena of heredity are in fact phenomena of 
 memory ; that heredity, whether as regards body or 
 mind, is only possible because each generation is linked 
 on to and made one with its predecessor by the pos- 
 session of a common and abiding memory, in as far as 
 bodily existence was common that is to say, until the 
 substance of the one left the substance of the other ; 
 and that this memory is exactly of the same general 
 character as that which enables us to remember what 
 we did half an hour ago strong under the same cir- 
 cumstances as those under which this familiar kind of 
 memory is strong, and weak under those under which 
 it is weak. Mr. Spencer and Mr. Lewes have even less 
 conception of the connection between heredity and 
 memory than Dr. Erasmus Darwin had at the close of 
 the last century.* 
 
 Mr. Lewes' position was briefly this. He denied 
 that there could be any knowledge independent of 
 experience, but he could not help seeing that young 
 animals come into the world furnished with many 
 organs which they use with great dexterity at a very 
 early age. This looks as if they are acting on know- 
 ledge acquired independently of experience. "No," 
 says Mr. Lewes, " not so. They are born with the 
 organs I cannot tell how or why, but heredity explains 
 all that, anl having once got the organs, the objects 
 
 * See Zoonomia, Vol. I. p. 484. 
 
MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 231 
 
 that come into contact with them in daily life naturally 
 produce the same effect as on the parents, just as oxygen 
 coming into contact with the right quantity of hydrogen 
 will make water ; hence even the first time the offspring 
 come into contact with any given object they act as 
 their parents did." The idea of the young having got 
 their experience in a past generation does not seem to 
 have even crossed his mind. 
 
 "What marvel is there," he asks, "that constant 
 conditions acting upon structures which are similar 
 should produce similar results ? It is in this sense 
 that the paradox of Leibnitz is true, and we can be said 
 ' to acquire an innate idea ; ' only the idea is not ac- 
 quired independently of experience, but through the 
 process of experience similar to that which originally 
 produced it."* 
 
 The impression left upon me is that he is all at sea 
 for want of the clue with which Professor Hering would 
 have furnished him, and that had that clue been pre- 
 sented to him a dozen years or so earlier than it was 
 he would have adopted it. 
 
 As regards Mr. Eomanes the case is different. His 
 recent work, Mental Evolution in Animals, t shows 
 that he is well aware of the direction which modern 
 opinion is taking, and in several places he so writes as 
 to warrant me in claiming his authority in support of 
 the views which I have been insisting on for several 
 years past. 
 
 Thus Mr. Eomanes says that the analogies between 
 the memory with which we are familiar in daily life 
 and hereditary memory "are so numerous and pre- 
 
 * Problems of Life and Mind, I. pp. 239, 240 : 1874. 
 f Kegan Paul. November, 1883. 
 
232 REMARKS ON MR. ROMANES' 
 
 cise " as to justify us in considering them to be of 
 essentially the same kind** 
 
 Again he says that although the memory of milk 
 shown by newborn infants is " at all events in large 
 part hereditary, it is none the less memory " of a cer- 
 tain kind, t 
 
 Two lines lower down he writes of " hereditary 
 memory or instinct/' thereby implying that instinct is 
 " hereditary memory." " It makes no essential differ- 
 ence," he says, " whether the past sensation was 
 actually experienced by the individual itself, or be- 
 queathed it, so to speak, by its ancestors. J For it makes 
 no essential difference whether the nervous changes 
 . . . were occasioned during the lifetime of the indi- 
 vidual or during that of the species, and afterwards 
 impressed by heredity on the individual." 
 
 Lower down on the same page he writes : 
 
 "As showing how close is the connection between 
 hereditary memory and instinct," &c. 
 
 And on the following page : 
 
 " And this shows how closely the phenomena of 
 hereditary memory are related to those of individual 
 memory : at this stage . . . it is practically impossible 
 to disentangle the effects of hereditary memory from 
 those of the individual." 
 
 Again : 
 
 " Another point which we have here to consider is 
 the part which heredity has played in forming the 
 perceptive faculty of the individual prior to its own 
 experience. We have already seen that heredity plays 
 an important part in forming memory of ancestral 
 experiences, and thus it is that many animals come 
 
 * Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 113. t Ibid. p. 115. 
 
 J Ibid. p. 1 1 6. Kegan Paul. Nov. 1883. 
 
MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 233 
 
 into the world with their power of perception already 
 largely developed. . . . The wealth of ready-formed 
 information, and therefore of ready-made powers of 
 perception, with which many newly-born or newly- 
 hatched animals are provided, is so great and so pre- 
 cise that it scarcely requires to be supplemented by 
 the subsequent experience of the individual.""" 
 
 Again : 
 
 " Instincts probably owe their origin and development 
 to one or other of two principles. 
 
 " I. The first mode of origin consists in natural 
 selection or survival of the fittest, continuously pre- 
 serving actions, &c. &c. . . . 
 
 " II. The second mode of origin is as follows: By 
 the effects of habit in successive generations, actions 
 which were originally intelligent become as it were 
 stereotyped into permanent instincts. Just as in the 
 lifetime of the individual adjustive actions which were 
 originally intelligent may by frequent repetition become 
 automatic, so in the lifetime of species actions origin- 
 ally intelligent may by frequent repetition and heredity 
 so write their effects on the nervous system that the 
 latter is prepared, even before individual experience, to 
 perform adjustive actions mechanically which in pre- 
 vious generations were performed intelligently. This 
 mode of origin of instincts has been appropriately 
 called (by Lewes see Problems of Life and Mind t) 
 the ' lapsing of intelligence.' " J 
 
 Later on : 
 
 " That ' practice makes perfect ' is a matter, as I 
 have previously said, of daily observation. Whether 
 
 * Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 131. Kegan Paul. Nov. 1883. 
 
 f Vol. L, 3rd ed. 1874, p. 141, and Problem I. 21. 
 
 Mental Evolution in Animals, pp. 177, 178. Nov. 1883. 
 
234 REMARKS ON MR. ROMANES' 
 
 we regard a juggler, a pianist, or a billiard-player, a 
 child learning his lesson or an actor his part by fre- 
 quently repeating it, or a thousand other illustrations of 
 the same process, we see at once that there is truth in 
 the cynical definition of a man as a ' bundle of habits/ 
 And the same of course is true of animals." ~* 
 
 From this Mr. Eomanes goes on to show " that 
 automatic actions and conscious habits may be in- 
 herited," t and in the course of doing this contends that 
 "instincts may be lost by disuse, and conversely that they 
 may be acquired as instincts by the hereditary trans- 
 mission of ancestral experience." J 
 
 On another page Mr. Eomanes says : 
 
 " Let us now turn to the second of these two assump- 
 tions, viz., that some at least among migratory birds 
 must possess, by inheritance alone, a very precise know- 
 ledge of the particular direction to be pursued. It is 
 without question an astonishing fact that a young 
 cuckoo should be prompted to leave its foster parents 
 at a particular season of the year, and without any 
 guide to show the course previously taken by its own 
 parents, but this is a fact which must be met by any 
 theory of instinct which aims at being complete. Now 
 upon our own theory it can only be met by taking it 
 to be due to inherited memory." 
 
 Mr. Eomanes says in a note that this theory was 
 first advanced by Canon Kingsley in Nature, January 
 1 8, 1 867, a piece of information which I learn for the 
 first time ; otherwise, as I need hardly say, I should 
 have called attention to it in my own books on evolu- 
 tion. Nature did not begin to appear till the end 
 of 1869, and I can find no communication from Canon 
 
 * Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 193. f Ibid. p. 195. 
 
 I Ibid. p. 296. Nov. 1883. Ibid. p. 192. Nov. 1883. 
 
MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 235 
 
 Kingsley bearing upon hereditary memory in any 
 number of Nature prior to the date of Canon Kingsley's 
 death ; but no doubt Mr. Eomanes has only made a slip 
 in his reference. Mr. Eornanes also says that the 
 theory connecting instinct with inherited memory 
 " has since been independently ' suggested ' by many 
 writers." 
 
 A little lower Mr. Eomanes says : " Of what kind, 
 then, is the inherited memory on which the young 
 cuckoo (if not also other migratory birds) depends ? 
 We can only answer, of the same kind, whatever this 
 may be, as that upon which the old bird depends." * 
 
 I have given above most of the more marked pas- 
 sages which I have been able to find in Mr. Eomanes' 
 book which attribute instinct to memory, and which 
 admit that there is no fundamental difference between 
 the kind of memory with which we are all familiar 
 and hereditary memory as transmitted from one gene- 
 ration to another. But throughout his work there are 
 passages which suggest, though less obviously, the same 
 inference. 
 
 The passages I have quoted show that Mr. Eomanes 
 is upholding the same opinions as Professor Bering's 
 and my own, but their effect and tendency is more 
 plain here than in Mr. Eomanes' own book, where 
 they are overlaid by nearly 400 long pages of matter 
 which is not always easy of comprehension. 
 
 The late Mr. Darwin himself, indeed whose mantle 
 seems to have fallen more especially and particularly on 
 Mr. Eomanes could not contradict himself more hope- 
 lessly than Mr. Eomanes often does. Indeed in one of 
 the very passages I have quoted in order to show that 
 Mr. Eomanes accepts the phenomena of heredity as 
 
 * Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 296. Nov. 1883. 
 
236 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 
 
 phenomena of memory, he speaks of " heredity as 
 playing an important part in forming memory of ances- 
 tral experiences ; " so that whereas I want him to say 
 that the phenomena of heredity are due to memory, he 
 will have it that the memory is due to the heredity,^ 
 which seems to me absurd. 
 
 Over and over again Mr. Eomanes insists that it is 
 heredity which does this or that. Thus it is " heredity 
 with natural selection which adapt the anatomical plan 
 of the ganglia."t It is heredity which impresses nervous 
 changes on the individual.^ " In the lifetime of species 
 actions originally intelligent may by frequent repeti- 
 tion and heredity" &c. ; but he nowhere tells us what 
 heredity is any more than Messrs. Herbert Spencer, 
 Darwin, and Lewes have done. This, however, is 
 exactly what Professor Hering, whom I have unwit- 
 tingly followed, does. He resolves all phenomena of 
 heredity, whether in respect of body or mind, into 
 phenomena of memory. He says in effect, " A man 
 grows his body as he does, and a bird makes her nest 
 as she does, because both man and bird remember having 
 grown body and made nest as they now do, or very 
 nearly so, on innumerable past occasions." He thus 
 reduces life from an equation of say 100 unknown 
 quantities to one of 99 only by showing that heredity 
 and memory, two of the original I oo unknown quan- 
 tities, are in reality part of one and the same thing. 
 
 That he is right Mr. Eomanes seems to me to 
 admit, though in a very unsatisfactory way. 
 
 * See page 228. 
 
 t Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 33. Nov. 1883. 
 t Ibid. p. 1 1 6. Ibid. p. 178. 
 
237 
 
 REMARKS ON MR. ROMANES' MENTAL 
 EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS (continued). 
 
 I WILL give examples of my meaning. 
 Mr. Eomanes says on. an early page, " The most 
 fundamental principle of mental operation is that of 
 memory, for this is the conditio sine qud non of all 
 mental life" (page 35). 
 
 I do not understand Mr. Eomanes to hold that there 
 is any living being which has no mind at. all, and I do 
 understand him to admit that development of body 
 and mind are closely interdependent. 
 
 If then, " the most fundamental principle " of mind 
 is memory, it follows that memory enters also as a 
 fundamental principle into development of body. For 
 mind and body are so closely connected that nothing 
 can enter largely into the one without correspondingly 
 affecting the other. 
 
 On a later page, indeed, Mr. Eomanes speaks point- 
 blank of the new-born child as " embodying the results 
 of a great mass of hereditary experience" (p. 77), so 
 that what he is driving at can be collected by those 
 who take trouble, but is not seen until we call up from 
 our own knowledge matter whose relevancy does not 
 appear on the face of it, and until we connect passages 
 many pages asunder, the first of which may easily be 
 forgotten before we reach the second. There can be 
 no doubt, however, that Mr. Eomanes does in reality, 
 
238 REMARKS ON MR. ROMANES' 
 
 like Professor Hering and myself, regard develop- 
 ment, whether of mind or body, as due to memory, 
 for it is nonsense indeed to talk about " hereditary 
 experience " or " hereditary memory " if anything else 
 is intended. 
 
 I have said above that on page 113 of his recent 
 work Mr. Eomanes declares the analogies between the 
 memory with which we are familiar in daily life, and 
 hereditary memory, to be " so numerous and precise " 
 as to justify us in considering them as of one and the 
 same kind. 
 
 This is certainly his meaning, but, with the excep- 
 tion of the words within inverted commas, it is not 
 his language. His own words are these : 
 
 " Profound, however, as our ignorance unquestionably 
 is concerning the physical substratum of memory, I 
 think we are at least justified in regarding this sub- 
 stratum as the same both in ganglionic or organic, and 
 in conscious or psychological memory, seeing that the 
 analogies between them are so numerous and precise. 
 Consciousness is but an adjunct which arises when 
 the physical processes, owing to infrequency of repeti- 
 tion, complexity of operation, or other causes, involve 
 what I have before called ganglionic friction." 
 
 I submit that I have correctly translated Mr. 
 Eomanes' meaning, arid also that we have a right to 
 complain of his not saying what he has to say in words 
 which will involve less "ganglionic friction" on the 
 part of the reader. 
 
 Another example may be found on p. 43 of Mr. 
 Romanes' book. " Lastly," he writes, " just as innu- 
 merable special mechanisms of muscular co-ordinations 
 are found to be inherited, innumerable special associa- 
 tions of ideas are found to be the same, and in one 
 
MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 239 
 
 case as in the other the strength of the organically im- 
 posed connection is found to bear a direct proportion 
 to the frequency with which in the history of the 
 species it has occurred." 
 
 Mr. Eomanes is here intending what the reader will 
 find insisted on on p. 98 of the present volume; but 
 how difficult he has made what could have been said 
 intelligibly enough, if there had been nothing but the 
 reader's comfort to be considered. Unfortunately that 
 seems to have been by no means the only thing of 
 which Mr. Eomanes was thinking, or why, after im- 
 plying and even saying over and over again that in- 
 stinct is inherited habit due to inherited memory, 
 should he turn sharply round on p. 297 and praise 
 Mr. Darwin for trying to snuff out " the well-known 
 doctrine of inherited habit as advanced by Lamarck " ? 
 The answer is not far to seek. It is because Mr. Eo- 
 manes did not merely want to tell us all about instinct, 
 but wanted also, if I may use a homely metaphor, to 
 hunt with the hounds arid run with the hare at one 
 and the same time. 
 
 I remember saying that if the late Mr. Darwin " had 
 told us what the earlier evolutionists said, why they 
 said it, wherein he differed from them, and in what 
 way he proposed to set them straight, he would have 
 taken a course at once more agreeable with usual 
 practice, and more likely to remove misconception from 
 his own mind and from those of his readers."^ This I 
 have no doubt was one of the passages which made 
 Mr. Eomanes so angry with me. I can find no better 
 words to apply to Mr. Eomanes himself. He knows 
 perfectly well what others have written about the con- 
 nection between heredity and memory, and he knows 
 
 * Evolution, Old and New, pp. 357, 358. 
 
240 REMARKS ON MR. ROMANES' 
 
 no less well that so far as he is intelligible at all he is 
 taking the same view that they have taken. If he had 
 begun by saying what they had said and had then im- 
 proved on it, I for one should have been only too glad to 
 be improved upon. 
 
 Mr. Eomanes has spoiled his book just because this 
 plain old-fashioned method of procedure was not good 
 enough for him. One-half the obscurity which makes 
 his meaning so hard to apprehend is due to exactly the 
 same cause as that which has ruined so much of the 
 late Mr. Darwin's work I mean to a desire to appear 
 to be differing altogether from others with whom he 
 knew himself after all to be in substantial agreement. 
 He adopts, but (probably quite unconsciously) in his 
 anxiety to avoid appearing to adopt, he obscures what 
 he is adopting. 
 
 Here, for example, is Mr. Eomanes' definition of 
 instinct : 
 
 " Instinct is reflex action into which there is imported 
 the element of consciousness. The term is therefore 
 a generic one, comprising all those faculties of mind 
 which are concerned in conscious and adaptive action, 
 antecedent to individual experience, without necessary 
 knowledge of the relation between means employed and 
 ends attained, but similarly performed under similar and 
 frequently recurring circumstances by all the individuals 
 of the same species."* 
 
 If Mr, Eomanes would have been content to build 
 frankly upon Professor Hering's foundation, the sound- 
 ness of which he has elsewhere abundantly admitted, 
 he might have said 
 
 " Instinct is knowledge or habit acquired in past 
 generations the new generation remembering what 
 
 * Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 159. Kegan Paul & Co., 1883. 
 
MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 241 
 
 happened to it before it parted company with the old." 
 Then he might have added as a rider 
 
 " If a habit is acquired as a new one, during any 
 given lifetime, it is not an instinct. If having been 
 acquired in one lifetime it is transmitted to offspring, 
 it is an instinct in the offspring though it was not an 
 instinct in the parent. If the habit is transmitted 
 partially, it must be considered as partly instinctive 
 and partly acquired." 
 
 This is easy ; it tells people how they may test any 
 action so as to know what they ought to call it; it leaves 
 well alone by avoiding all such debatable matters as 
 reflex action, consciousness, intelligence, purpose, know- 
 ledge of purpose, &c. ; it both introduces the feature 
 of inheritance which is the one mainly distinguishing 
 instinctive from so-called intelligent actions, and shows 
 the manner in which these last pass into the first, that 
 is to say, by way of memory and habitual repetition ; 
 finally it points the fact that the new generation is 
 not to be looked upon as a new thing, but (as Dr. 
 Erasmus Darwin long since said *) as " a branch or 
 elongation " of the one immediately preceding it. 
 
 But then to have said this would have made it too 
 plain that Mr. Eomanes was following some one else. 
 Mr. Eomanes should remember that no one would 
 mind how much he took if he would only take it well. 
 But this is what those who take without due acknow- 
 ledgment never do. 
 
 In Mr. Darwin's case it is hardly possible to ex- 
 aggerate the waste of time, money, and trouble that has 
 been caused by his not having been content to appear 
 as descending with modification like other people from 
 those who went before him. It will take years to get 
 
 * Zoonomia, Vol. I. p. 484. 
 
242 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 
 
 the evolution theory out of the mess in which Mr. 
 Darwin has left it. He was heir to a discredited truth ; 
 he left behind him an accredited fallacy. Mr. Romanes, 
 if he is not stopped in time, will get the theory con- 
 necting heredity and memory into just such another 
 muddle as Mr. Darwin has got Evolution, for surely the 
 writer who can talk about " heredity being able to ivork 
 up the faculty of homing into the instinct of migration," * 
 or of " the principle of (natural) selection combining 
 with that of lapsing intelligence to the formation of a 
 joint result,"! is little likely to depart from the usual 
 methods of scientific procedure with advantage either 
 to himself or any one else. Fortunately Mr. Romanes 
 is not Mr. Darwin, and though he has certainly got 
 Mr. Darwin's mantle, and got it very much too, it will 
 not on Mr. Romanes' shoulders hide a good deal that 
 people were not going to observe too closely while 
 Mr. Darwin wore it. 
 
 * Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 297. Kegan Paul & Co., 1883. 
 t Ibid. p. 201. 
 
243 
 
 REMARKS ON MR. ROMANES 1 MENTAL 
 EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS (concluded). 
 
 T GATHER that in the end the late Mr. Darwin 
 -*- himself admitted the soundness of the view which 
 the reader will have found insisted upon in the extracts 
 from my earlier books given in this volume. Mr. 
 Eonianes quotes a letter written by Mr. Darwin in 
 the last year of his life, in which he speaks of an 
 intelligent action gradually becoming "instinctive, i.e., 
 memory transmitted from one generation to another." ~* 
 
 Briefly, the stages of Mr. Darwin's opinion upon the 
 subject of hereditary memory are as follows : 
 
 1859. "It would be the most serious error to suppose 
 that the greater number of instincts have been acquired 
 by habit in one generation and transmitted by inhe- 
 ritance to succeeding generations." t And this more 
 especially applies to the instincts of many ants. 
 
 1876. "It would be a serious error to suppose " &c., 
 as before. J 
 
 1 8 8 1 . "We should remember what a mass of inherited 
 knowledge is crowded into the minute brain of a worker 
 ant." 
 
 1 88 1 or 1882. Speaking of a given habitual action 
 
 * Mental Evolution in Animals, p. 301. November, 1883. 
 
 t Origin of Species, Ed. I. p. 209. 
 
 t Ibid., Ed. VI. 1876, p. 206. 
 
 Formation of Vegetable Mould, &c. , p. 98. 
 
244 REMARKS ON MR. ROMANES' 
 
 Mr. Darwin writes : " It does not seem to me at all 
 incredible that this action [and why this more than 
 any other habitual action ?] should then become in- 
 stinctive : " i.e., memory transmitted from one generation 
 to another.^ 
 
 And yet in 1 8 3 9 or thereabouts, Mr. Darwin had 
 pretty nearly grasped the conception from which until 
 the last year or two of his life he so fatally strayed ; 
 for in his contribution to the volumes giving an account 
 of the voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, he wrote : 
 "Nature by making habit omnipotent and its effects 
 hereditary, has fitted the Fuegian for the climate and 
 productions of his country" (p. 237). 
 
 What is the secret of the long departure from the 
 simple common-sense view of the matter which he 
 took when he was a young man ? I imagine simply 
 what I have referred to in the preceding chapter, 
 over-anxiety to appear to be differing from his grand- 
 father, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck. 
 
 I believe I may say that Mr. Darwin before he died 
 not only admitted the connection between memory and 
 heredity, but came also to see that he must readmit 
 that design in organism which he had so many years 
 opposed. For in the preface to Hermann Miiller's 
 Fertilisation of Flowers, t which bears a date only a 
 very few weeks prior to Mr. Darwin's death, I find him 
 saying : " Design in nature has for a long time deeply 
 interested many men, and though the subject must now 
 be looked at from a somewhat different point of view 
 from what was formerly the case, it is not on that 
 account rendered less interesting." This is mused 
 
 * Quoted by Mr. Romanes as written in the last year of Mr. Dar- 
 win's life. 
 
 t Macmillan, 1883. 
 
MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 245 
 
 forth as a general gnome, and may mean anything 
 or nothing : the writer of the letterpress under the 
 hieroglyph in Old Moore's Almanac could not be more 
 guarded; but I think I know what it does mean. 
 
 I cannot of course be sure ; Mr. Darwin did not 
 probably intend that I should ; but I assume with 
 confidence that whether there is design in organism or 
 no, there is at any rate design in this passage of Mr. 
 Darwin's. This, we may be sure, is not a fortuitous 
 variation ; and moreover it is introduced i'or some reason 
 which made Mr. Darwin think it worth while to go 
 out of his way to introduce it. It has no fitness in its 
 connection with Hermann Miiller's book, for what little 
 Hermann Miiller says about teleology at all is to con- 
 demn it ; why then should Mr. Darwin muse here of 
 all places in the world about the interest attaching 
 to design in organism ? Neither has the passage any 
 connection with the rest of the preface. There is not 
 another word about design, and even here Mr. Darwin 
 seems mainly anxious to face both ways, and pat design 
 as it were on the head while not committing himself 
 to any proposition which could be disputed. 
 
 The explanation is sufficiently obvious. Mr. Darwin 
 wanted to hedge. He saw that the design which his 
 works had been mainly instrumental in pitchforking 
 out of organisms no less manifestly designed than a 
 burglar's jemmy is designed, had nevertheless found its 
 way back again, and that though, as I insisted in 
 Evolution, Old and New, and Unconscious Memory, it 
 must now be placed within the organism instead of out- 
 side it, as " was formerly the case,'* it was not on that 
 account any the less design, as well as interesting. 
 
 I should like to have seen Mr. Darwin say this more 
 explicitly. Indeed I should have liked to have seen 
 
246 REMARKS ON MR. ROMANES 1 
 
 Mr. Darwin say anything at all about the meaning of 
 which there could be no mistake, and without contra- 
 dicting himself elsewhere; but this was not Mr. Darwin's 
 manner. 
 
 In passing I will give another example of Mr. 
 Darwin's manner when he did not quite dare even to 
 hedge. It is to be found in the preface which he 
 wrote to Professor Weismann's Studies in the Theory 
 of Descent, published in 1882. 
 
 " Several distinguished naturalists," says Mr. Darwin, 
 "maintain with much confidence that organic beings 
 tend to vary and to rise in the scale, independently of 
 the conditions to which they and their progenitors have 
 been exposed ; whilst others maintain that all variation 
 is due to such exposure, though the manner in which 
 the environment acts is as yet quite unknown. At the 
 present time there is hardly any question in biology of 
 more importance than this of the nature and causes of 
 variability, and the reader will find in the present work 
 an able discussion on the whole subject which will 
 probably lead him to pause before he admits the ex- 
 istence of an innate tendency to perfectibility " or 
 towards being able to be perfected. 
 
 I could find no able discussion upon the whole subject 
 in Professor Weismann's book. There was a little some- 
 thing here and there, but not much. 
 
 Mr Herbert Spencer has not in his more recent 
 works said anything which enables me to appeal to 
 his authority. 
 
 I imagine that if he had got hold of the idea that 
 heredity was only a mode of memory before 1870, 
 when he published the second edition of his Principles 
 of Psychology, he would have gladly adopted it, for he 
 seems continually groping after it, and aware of it as 
 
MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 247 
 
 near him, though he is never able to grasp it. He 
 probably failed to grasp it because Lamarck had failed. 
 He could not adopt it in his edition of 1880, for this 
 is evidently printed from stereos taken from the 1870 
 edition, and no considerable alteration was therefore 
 possible. 
 
 The late Mr. G. H. Lewes did not get hold of the 
 memory theory, probably because neither Mr. Spencer 
 nor any of the well-known German philosophers had 
 done so. Mr. Eomanes, as I think I have shown, 
 actually has adopted it, but he does not say where he 
 got it from. I suppose from reading Canon Kings- 
 ley in Nature some years before Nature began to exist, 
 or (for has not the mantle of Mr. Darwin i'allen upon 
 him ?) he has thought it all out independently ; but 
 however Mr. Eomanes may have reached his conclu- 
 sion, he must have done so comparatively recently, for 
 when he reviewed my book, Unconscious Memory, ~' c 
 he scoffed at the very theory which he is now 
 adopting. 
 
 Of the view that " there is thus a race memory, as 
 there is an individual memory, and that the expression 
 of the former constitutes the phenomena of heredity " 
 for it is thus Mr. Eomanes with fair accuracy describes 
 the theory I was supporting he wrote : 
 
 " N"ow this view, in which Mr. Butler was anticipated 
 by Prof. Hering, is 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 simply absurd. 
 The most cursory thought is enough to show," &c. &c. 
 
 " We can understand," he continued, " in some mea- 
 sure how an alteration in brain structure when once 
 
 * Nature, Jan. 27, 1881. 
 
248 REMARKS ON MR. ROMANES' 
 
 made should be permanent, . . . but we cannot under- 
 stand how this alteration is transmitted to progeny 
 through structures so unlike the brain as are the pro- 
 ducts of the generative glands. And we merely stultify 
 ourselves if we suppose that the problem is brought 
 any nearer to a solution by asserting that a future indi- 
 vidual while still in the germ has already participated, 
 say in the cerebral alterations of its parents," &c. Mr. 
 Eomanes could find no measure of abuse strong enough 
 for me, as any reader may see who feels curious 
 enough to turn to Mr. Romanes' article in Nature 
 already referred to. 
 
 As for Evolution, Old and New, he said I had 
 written it "in the hope of gaining some notoriety by 
 deserving and perhaps receiving a contemptuous refu- 
 tation from " Mr. Darwin.* In my reply to Mr. Eo- 
 manes I said, " I will not characterise this accusation 
 in the terms which it merits."t Mr. Eomanes, in the 
 following number of Nature, withdrew his accusation 
 and immediately added, " I was induced to advance it 
 because it seemed the only rational motive that could 
 have led to the publication of such a book." Again I 
 will not characterise such a withdrawal in the terms 
 it merits, but I may say in passing that if Mr. Eomanes 
 thinks the motive be assigned to me " a rational one," 
 his view of what is rational and mine differ. It does 
 not commend itself as " rational " to me, that a man 
 should spend a good deal of money and two or three 
 years of work in the hope of deserving a contemp- 
 tuous refutation from any one not even from Mr. 
 Darwin. But then Mr. Eomanes has written such a 
 lot about reason and intelligence. 
 
 The reply to Evolution, Old and New, which I actu- 
 
 * Nature, Jan. 27, 1881. t Ibid., Feb. 3, 1881. 
 
MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 249 
 
 ally did get from Mr. Darwin, was one which I do not 
 see advertised among Mr. Darwin's other works now, 
 and which I venture to say never will be advertised 
 among them again not at least until it has been altered. 
 I have seen no reason to leave off advertising Evolu- 
 tion, Old and New, and Unconscious Memory. 
 
 I have never that I know of seen Mr. Eomanes, but 
 am told that he is still young. I can find no publica- 
 tion of his indexed in the British Museum Catalogue 
 earlier than 1874, and then it was only about Chris- 
 tian Prayer. Mr. Eomanes was good enough to advise 
 me to turn painter or homoeopathist ; * as he has intro- 
 duced the subject, and considering how many years I 
 am his senior, I might be justified (if it could be any 
 pleasure to me to do so) in suggesting to him too what 
 I should imagine most likely to tend to his advance- 
 ment in life ; but there are examples so bad that even 
 those who have no wish to be any better than their 
 neighbours may yet decline to follow them, and I think 
 Mr. Komanes' is one of these. I will not therefore 
 find him a profession. 
 
 But leaving this matter on one side, the point I wish 
 to insist on is that Mr. Eomanes is saying almost in my 
 own words what less than three years ago he was very 
 angry with me for saying. I do not think that under 
 these circumstances much explanation is necessary as to 
 the reasons which have led Mr. Eomanes to fight so shy 
 of any reference to Life and Habit, Evolution, Old and 
 New, and Unconscious Memory works in which, if I 
 may venture to say so, the theory connecting the pheno- 
 mena of heredity with memory has been not only 
 " suggested," but so far established that even Mr. Eo- 
 manes has been led to think the matter over inde- 
 
 * Nature, Jan. 27, 1881. 
 
250 REMARKS ON MR. ROMANES' 
 
 pendently and to arrive at the same general conclusion 
 as myself. 
 
 Curiously enough, Mr. Grant Allen too has come to 
 much the same conclusions as myself, after having 
 attacked me, though not so fiercely, as Mr. Eomanes 
 has done. In 1879 he said in the Examiner (May 17) 
 that the teleological view put forward in Evolution, 
 Old and New, was " just the sort of mystical nonsense 
 from which " he " had hoped Mr. Darwin had for ever 
 saved us." And so in the Academy on the same day he 
 said that no "one-sided argument" (referring to Evolu- 
 tion, Old and New) could ever deprive Mr. Darwin of 
 the " place which he had eternally won in the history 
 of human thought by his magnificent achievement." 
 
 A few years, and Mr. Allen entertains a very 
 different opinion of Mr. Darwin's magnificent achieve- 
 ment. 
 
 " There are only two conceivable ways," he writes, 
 " in which any increment of brain power can ever have 
 arisen in any individual. The one is the Darwinian 
 way, by 'spontaneous variation/ that is to say by 
 variation due to minute physical circumstances affecting 
 the individual in the germ. The other is the Spencerian 
 way, by functional increment, that is to say by the effect 
 of increased use and constant exposure to varying 
 circumstances during conscious life." ^ 
 
 Mr. Allen must know very well, or if he does not 
 he has no excuse at any rate for not knowing, that the 
 theory according to which increase of brain power or 
 any other bodily or mental power is due to use, is no 
 more Mr. Spencer's than the theory of gravitation is, 
 except in so far as that Mr. Spencer has adopted it. 
 It is the theory which every one except Mr. Allen 
 
 * Mind, October, 1883. 
 
MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 251 
 
 associates with Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, but 
 more especially (and on the whole I suppose justly) 
 with Lamarck. 
 
 "I venture to think," continues Mr. Allen, "that 
 the first way [Mr. Darwin's], if we look it clearly in the 
 face, will be seen to be practically unthinkable ; and 
 that we have therefore no alternative but to accept 
 the second." 
 
 These writers go round so quickly and so completely 
 that there is no keeping pace with them. " As to 
 Materialism," he writes presently, " surely it is more 
 profoundly materialistic to suppose that mere physical 
 causes operating on the germ can determine minute 
 physical and material changes in the brain, which will 
 in turn make the individuality what it is to be, than 
 to suppose that all brains are what they are in virtue of 
 antecedent function. The one creed makes the man 
 depend mainly upon the accidents of molecular physics 
 in a colliding germ cell and sperm cell; the other 
 makes him depend mainly upon the doings and gains of 
 his ancestors as modified and altered by himself!' 
 
 Here is a sentence taken almost at random from the 
 body of the article : 
 
 " We are always seeing something which adds to 
 our total stock of memories ; we are always learning 
 and doing something new. The vast majority of these 
 experiences are similar in kind to those already passed 
 through by our ancestors : they add nothing to the 
 inheritance of the race. . . . Though they leave physical 
 traces on the individual, they do not so far affect the 
 underlying organisation of the brain as to make the 
 development of after-brains somewhat different from 
 previous ones. But there are certain functional acti- 
 vities which do tend so to alter the development of 
 
252 REMARKS ON MR. ROMANES' 
 
 after-brains ; certain novel or sustained activities which 
 apparently result in the production of new correlated 
 brain elements or brain connections hereditarily trans- 
 missible as increased potentialities of similar activity 
 in the offspring." 
 
 Of Natural Selection Mr. Allen writes much, as Pro- 
 fessor Mivart and others have been writing for many 
 years past. 
 
 " It seems to me," he says, " easy to understand how 
 survival of the fittest may result in progress starting 
 from such functionally produced gains, but impossible to 
 understand how it could result in progress if it had to 
 start in mere accidental structural increments due to 
 spontaneous variation alone." * 
 
 Mr. Allen may say this now, but until lately he has 
 been among the first to scold any one else who said so. 
 
 And this is how the article concludes : 
 
 "The first hypothesis (Mr Darwin's) is one that throws 
 no light upon any of the facts. The second hypothesis 
 (which Mr. Allen is pleased to call Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer's) is one that explains them all with trans- 
 parent lucidity." t 
 
 So that Mr. Darwin, according to Mr. Allen, is clean 
 out of it. Truly when Mr. Allen makes stepping- 
 stones of his dead selves, he jumps upon them to some 
 tune. But then Mr. Darwin is dead now. I have 
 not heard of his having given Mr. Allen any manu- 
 scripts as he gave Mr. Eomanes. I hope Mr. Herbert 
 Spencer will not give him any. If I was Mr. Spencer 
 and found my admirers crowning me with Lamarck's 
 laurels, I think I should have something to say to 
 them. 
 
 * Mind for October 1883, p. 498. 
 t Ibid., p. 505, October 1883. 
 
MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 253 
 
 What are we to think of a writer who declares that 
 the theory that specific and generic changes are due to 
 use and disuse " explains all the facts with transparent 
 lucidity"? 
 
 Lamarck's hypothesis is no doubt a great help and 
 a great step toward Professor Bering's ; it makes a 
 known cause underlie variations, and thus is free from 
 those fatal objections which Professor Mivart and 
 others have brought against the theory of Messrs. Dar- 
 win and Wallace ; but how does the theory that use 
 develops an organism explain why offspring repeat 
 the organism at all ? How does the Lamarckian hypo- 
 thesis explain the sterility of hybrids, for example ? 
 The sterility of hybrids has been always considered one 
 of the great cruces in connection with any theory of 
 Evolution. How again does it explain reversion to 
 long-lost characters and the resumption of feral charac- 
 teristics ? the phenomena of old age ? the principle that 
 underlies longevity ? the reason why the reproductive 
 system is generally the last to arrive at maturity, and 
 why few further developments take place in any 
 organism after this has been fully developed ? the 
 sterility of many animals under captivity ? the develop- 
 ment in both males and females, under certain circum- 
 stances, of the characteristics of the opposite sex ? the 
 latency of memory ? the unconsciousness with which 
 we develop, and with which instinctive actions are 
 performed ? How does any theory advanced either 
 by Lamarck, Mr. Herbert Spencer, or Mr. Darwin ex- 
 plain, or indeed throw light upon these facts until sup- 
 plemented with the explanation given of them in Life 
 and Habit for which I must refer the reader to that 
 work itself? 
 
 People may say what they like about " the experi- 
 
254 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN ANIMALS. 
 
 ence of the race," * " the registration of experiences 
 continued for numberless generations/' f " infinity of 
 experiences," J " lapsed intelligence," &c., but until 
 they make Memory, in the most uncompromising 
 sense of the word, the key to all the phenomena of 
 Heredity, they will get little help to the better under- 
 standing of the difficulties above adverted to. Add 
 this to the theory of Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and 
 Lamarck, and the points which I have above alluded 
 to receive a good deal of " lucidity." 
 
 But to return to Mr. Eomanes : however much he 
 and Mr. Allen may differ about the merits of Mr. 
 Darwin, they were at any rate not long since cordially 
 agreed in vilipending my unhappy self, and are now 
 saying very much what I have been saying for some 
 years past. I do not deny that they are capable wit- 
 nesses. They will generally see a thing when a certain 
 number of other people have come to do so. I submit 
 that, no matter how grudgingly they give their evidence, 
 the tendency of that evidence is sufficiently clear to 
 show that the opinions put forward in Life and Habit, 
 Evolution, Old and New, and Unconscious Memory, 
 deserve the attention of the reader. 
 
 I may perhaps deal with Mr. Eomanes' recent work 
 more fully in the sequel to Life and Habit on which I 
 am now engaged. For the present it is enough to say 
 that if he does not mean what Professor Hering and, 
 longo intervallo, myself do, he should not talk about 
 habit or experience as between successive generations, 
 and that if he does mean what we do which I suppose 
 he does he should have said so much more clearly 
 and consistently than he has. 
 
 * Principles of Psychology, I. 422. 
 t Ibid. I. 424. + Ibid. I. 424. 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 THIS afternoon (March 7, 1884), the copies of this 
 book being ready for issue, I see Mr. Romanes* 
 letter to the Athenoeum of this day, and get this post- 
 script pasted into the book after binding. 
 
 Mr. Eomanes corrects his reference to the passage 
 in which he says that Canon Kingsley first advanced 
 the theory that instinct is inherited memory (" M. E. 
 in Animals," p. 296). Canon Kingsley 's words are 
 to be found in Fraser, June, 1867, and are as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 " Yon wood-wren has had enough to make him sad, if only he 
 recollects it; and if lie 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 
 
254^ POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 that instinct is inherited memory. Observing Mr. 
 Eomanes' 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 " con- 
 stitute an object of inherited memory ;" but as he pro- 
 ceeds 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. Eomanes proceeds to inform me personally that 
 the reference to " Nature" in his proof " originally indi- 
 cated 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 f since then I have always 
 spoken of the theory as Professor Bering's. 
 
 Mr. Eomanes says that " the theory in question 
 forms the backbone of all the previous literature 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 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. Eomanes 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. Eomanes 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 conspicu- 
 ously Mr. Eomanes himself did not understand them 
 to be meaning what he now discovers that they meant. 
 When Mr. Eomanes attacked me in Nature, Janu- 
 ary 27, 1 88 1, 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. 
 
254^ POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 Eomanes wrote the words just quoted, lie 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 develop- 
 ments 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. Eomanes' own, that men were writing 
 at me, or borrowing from me, but with the two excep- 
 tions 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. Eomanes 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. Eomanes 
 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. 2 1 62 1 8 of the 
 present volume. 
 
255 
 
 EXTRACTS FROM "ALPS AND SANCTUARIES OF 
 PIEDMONT AND THE CANTON T1CINO." 
 
 DALPE, PKATO, EOSSUKA. 
 (FROM CHAPTER in. OF ALPS AND SANCTUARIES.*) 
 
 HHALKING of legs, as I went through the main street 
 -! of Dalpe an old lady of about sixty-five stopped 
 me, and told me that while gathering her winter store 
 of firewood she had had the misfortune to hurt her leg. 
 I was very sorry, but I failed to satisfy her ; the more 
 I sympathised in general terms, the more I felt that 
 something further was expected of me. I went on 
 trying to do the civil thing, when the old lady cut me 
 short by saying it would be much better if I were to 
 see the leg at once ; so she showed it me in the street, 
 and there, sure enough, close to the groin there was a 
 swelling. Again I said how sorry I was, and added 
 that perhaps she ought to show it to a medical man. 
 "But aren't you a medical man?'* said she in an 
 alarmed manner. " Certainly not, ma'am," replied I. 
 "Then why did you let me show you my leg?" said 
 she indignantly, and pulling her clothes down, the poor 
 old woman began to hobble off; presently two others 
 joined her, and I heard hearty peals of laughter as she 
 
 * The first edition of Alps and Sanctuaries was published Dec. 1882. 
 
256 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 recounted her story. A stranger visiting these out-of- 
 the-way villages is almost certain to be mistaken for a 
 doctor. What business, they say to themselves, can 
 any one else have there, and who in his senses would 
 dream of visiting them for pleasure ? This old lady 
 had rushed to the usual conclusion, and had been try- 
 ing to get a little advice gratis. 
 
 The little objects looking like sentry-boxes that go 
 all round Prato Church contain rough modern frescoes 
 representing, if I remember rightly, the events atten- 
 dant upon the crucifixion. These are on a small scale 
 what the chapels on the sacred mountain of Varallo 
 are on a large one. Small single oratories are scat- 
 tered about all over the Canton Ticino, and indeed 
 everywhere in North Italy, by the road-side, at all 
 halting-places, and especially at the crest of any more 
 marked ascent, where the tired wayfarer, probably 
 heavy laden, might be inclined to say a naughty word 
 or two if not checked. The people like them, and 
 miss them when they come to England. They some- 
 times do what the lower animals do in confinement 
 when precluded from habits they are accustomed to, 
 and put up with strange makeshifts by way of sub- 
 stitute. I once saw a poor Ticinese woman kneeling in 
 prayer before a dentist's show-case in the Hampstead 
 Eoad ; she doubtless mistook the teeth for the relics 
 of some saint. I am afraid she was a little like a hen 
 sitting upon a chalk egg, but she seemed quite con- 
 tented. 
 
 Which of us, indeed, does not sit contentedly enough 
 upon chalk eggs at times ? And what would life be 
 but for the power to do so ? We do not sufficiently 
 realise the part which illusion has played in our 
 
DALPE, PRATO, ROSSURA. 257 
 
 development. One of the prime requisites for evolu- 
 tion is a certain power for adaptation to varying 
 circumstances, that is to say, of plasticity, bodily and 
 mental. But the power of adaptation is mainly de- 
 pendent on the power of thinking certain new things 
 sufficiently like certain others to which we have been 
 accustomed for us not to be too much incommoded by 
 the change upon the power, in fact, of mistaking the 
 new for the old. The power of fusing ideas (and 
 through ideas, structures) depends upon the power of 
 confusing them ; the power to confuse ideas that are not 
 very unlike, and that are presented to us in immediate 
 sequence, is mainly due to the fact of the impetus, so 
 to speak, which the mind has upon it. It is this 
 which bars association from sticking to the letter of its 
 bond ; for we are in a hurry to jump to a conclusion 
 on the first show of plausible pretext, and cut associa- 
 tion's statement of claim short by taking it as read 
 before we have got through half of it. We " get it 
 into our notes, in fact," as Mr. Justice Stareleigh did 
 in Pickwick, and having got it once in, we are not 
 going to get it out again. This breeds fusion and 
 confusion, and from this there come new developments. 
 So powerful is the impetus which the mind has 
 continually upon it that we always, I believe, make 
 an effort to see every new object as a repetition of 
 the object last before us. Objects are so varied and 
 present themselves so rapidly, that as a general rule 
 we renounce this effort too promptly to notice it, but 
 it is always there, and as I have just said, it is because 
 of it that we are able to mistake, and hence to evolve 
 new mental and bodily developments. Where the 
 effort is successful, there is illusion ; where nearly 
 successful but not quite, there is a shock and a sense 
 
 R 
 
258 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 of being puzzled more or less, as the case may be ; 
 where 'it so obviously impossible as not to be pursued, 
 there is no perception of the effort at all. 
 
 Mr. Locke has been greatly praised for his essay 
 upon human understanding. An essay on human mis- 
 understanding should be no less interesting and impor- 
 tant. Illusion to a small extent is one of the main 
 causes, if indeed it is not the main cause, of progress, 
 but it must be upon a small scale. All abortive 
 speculation, whether commercial or philosophical, is 
 based upon it, and much as we may abuse such specu- 
 lation, we are, all of us, its debtors. 
 
 I know few things more touching in their way than 
 the porch of Eossura Church : it is dated early in the 
 last century, and is absolutely without ornament ; the 
 flight of steps inside it lead up to the level of the floor 
 of the church. One lovely summer Sunday morning 
 passing the church betimes, I saw the people kneeling 
 upon these steps, the church within being crammed. 
 In the darker light of the porch, they told out against 
 the sky that showed through the open arch beyond 
 them ; far away the eye rested on the mountains deep 
 blue, save where the snow still lingered. I never saw 
 anything more beautiful and these forsooth are the 
 people whom so many of us think to better by distribut- 
 ing tracts about Protestantism among them ! 
 
 I liked the porch almost best under an aspect which 
 it no longer presents. One summer an opening was 
 made in the west wall, which was afterwards closed 
 because the wind blew through it too much and made 
 the church too cold. While it was open, one could 
 sit on the church steps and look down through it on 
 to the bottom of the Ticino valley ; and through the 
 
DALPE, PRATO, ROSSURA. 259 
 
 windows one could see the slopes about Dalpe and 
 Cornone. Between the two windows there is a picture 
 of austere old S. Carlo Borromeo with his hands joined 
 in prayer. 
 
 It was at Eossura that I made the acquaintance of 
 a word which I have since found very largely used 
 throughout North Italy. It is pronounced "chow" 
 pure and simple, but is written, if written at all, " ciau " 
 or " ciao," the " a " being kept very broad. I believe 
 the word is derived from " schiavo," a slave, which 
 became corrupted into "schiao," and "ciao." It is 
 used with two meanings, both of which, however, are 
 deducible from the word slave. In its first and more 
 common use it is simply a salute, either on greeting or 
 taking leave, and means, "I am your very obedient 
 servant." Thus, if one has been talking to a small 
 child, its mother will tell it to say " chow " before it 
 goes away, and will then nod her head and say " chow " 
 herself. The other use is a kind of pious expletive, 
 intending " I must endure it," " I am the slave of a 
 higher power." It was in this sense I first heard it 
 at Eossura. A woman was washing at a fountain 
 while I was eating my lunch. She said she had lost 
 her daughter in Paris a few weeks earlier. " She was 
 a beautiful woman," said the bereaved mother, " but 
 chow. She had great talents chow. I had her edu- 
 cated by the nuns of Bellinzona chow. Her knowledge 
 of geography was consummate chow, chow," &c. Here 
 "chow" means "pazienza," "I have done and said all that 
 I can, and must now bear it as best I may." 
 
 I tried to comfort her, but could do nothing, till at 
 last it occurred to me to say " chow " too. I did so, 
 and was astonished at the soothing effect it had upon 
 her. How subtle are the laws that govern consolation ! 
 
260 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 I suppose they must ultimately be connected with re- 
 production the consoling idea being a kind of small 
 cross which re-generates or re-creates the sufferer. It 
 is important, therefore, that the new ideas with which 
 the old are to be crossed should differ from these last 
 sufficiently to divert the attention, and yet not so much 
 as to cause a painful shock. 
 
 There should be a little shock, or there will be no 
 variation in the new ideas that are generated, but they 
 will resemble those that preceded them, and grief will 
 be continued ; there must not be too great a shock or 
 there will be no illusion no confusion and fusion be- 
 tween the new set of ideas and the old, and in conse- 
 quence there will be no result at all, or, if any, an 
 increase in mental discord. We know very little, 
 however, upon this subject, and are continually shown 
 to be at fault by finding an unexpectedly small cross 
 produce a wide diversion of the mental images, while 
 in other cases a wide one will produce hardly any re- 
 sult. Sometimes again, a cross which we should have 
 said was much too wide will have an excellent effect. 
 I did not anticipate, for example, that my saying 
 " chow " would have done much for the poor woman 
 who had lost her daughter : the cross did not seem 
 wide enough : she was already, as I thought, saturated 
 with " chow." I can only account for the effect my 
 application of it produced by supposing the word to 
 have derived some element of strangeness and novelty 
 as coming from a foreigner just as land which will 
 give a poor crop, if planted with sets from potatoes that 
 have been grown for three or four years on this same 
 soil, will yet yield excellently if similar sets be brought 
 from twenty miles off. For the potato, so far as I 
 have studied it, is a good-tempered, frivolous plant, 
 
DALPE, PRATO, ROSSURA. 261 
 
 easily amused and easily bored, and one, moreover, 
 which if bored, yawns horribly. 
 
 I may say in passing that the tempers of plants 
 have not been sufficiently studied ; and what little 
 opinion we have formed about their dispositions is for 
 the most part ill formed. The sulkiest tree that I 
 know is the silver beech. It never forgives a scratch. 
 There is a tree in Kensington gardens a little off the 
 west side of the Serpentine with names cut upon it as 
 long ago as 1717 and 1736, which the tree is as little 
 able to forgive and forget as though the injury had been 
 done not ten years since. And the tree is not an 
 aged tree either. 
 
( 262 ) 
 
 CALONICO. 
 
 (FROM CHAPTER v. OF ALPS AND SANCTUARIES.) 
 
 inventions increase in geometrical ratio. They 
 are like living beings, each one of which may 
 become parent of a dozen others some good and some 
 ne'er-do-weels ; but they differ from animals and vege- 
 tables inasmuch as they not only increase in a geo- 
 metrical ratio, but the period of their gestation decreases 
 in geometrical ratio also. Take this matter of Alpine 
 roads for example. For how many millions of years 
 was there no approach to a road over the St. Gothard, 
 save the untutored watercourses of the Ticino and 
 the Beuss, and the track of the bouquetin or the 
 chamois ? For how many more ages after this was 
 there not a mere shepherd's or huntsman's path by the 
 river-side without so much as a log thrown over so 
 as to form a rude bridge ? No one would probably 
 have ever thought of making a bridge out of his own 
 unaided imagination, more than any monkey that we 
 know of has done so. But an avalanche or a flood 
 once swept a pine into position and left it there ; on 
 this a genius, who was doubtless thought to be doing 
 something very infamous, ventured to make use of 
 it. Another time a pine was found nearly across the 
 stream, but not quite ; and not quite, again, in the 
 place where it was wanted. A second genius, to the 
 horror of his fellow-tribesmen who declared that this 
 
CALONICO. 263 
 
 time the world really would come to an end shifted 
 the pine a few feet so as to bring it across the stream 
 and into the place where it was wanted. This man 
 was the inventor of bridges his family repudiated 
 him, and he came to a bad end. From this to cutting- 
 down the pine and bringing it from some distance is 
 an easy step. To avoid detail, let us come to the old 
 Eoman horse-road over the Alps. The time between 
 the shepherd's path and the Eoman road is probably 
 short in comparison with that between the mere chamois 
 track and the first thing that can be called a path of 
 men. From the Eoman we go on to the mediaeval 
 road with more frequent stone bridges, and from the 
 mediaeval to the Napoleonic carriage-road. 
 
 The close of the last century and the first quarter 
 of this present one was the great era for the making 
 of carriage-roads. Fifty years have hardly passed, and 
 here we are already in the age of tunnelling arid rail- 
 roads. The first period, from the chamois track to the 
 foot road, was one of millions of years ; the second, 
 from the first foot road to the Eoman military way, 
 was one of many thousands; the third, from the 
 Eoman to the mediaeval, was perhaps a thousand ; 
 from the mediaeval to the Napoleonic, five hundred ; 
 from the Napoleonic to the railroad, fifty. What will 
 come next we know not, but it should come within 
 twenty years, and will probably have something to do 
 with electricity. 
 
 It follows by an easy process of reasoning that after 
 another couple of hundred years or so, great sweeping 
 changes should be made several times in an hour, or 
 indeed in a second, or fraction of a second, till they 
 pass unnoticed as the revolutions we undergo in the 
 embryonic stages, or are felt simply as vibrations. 
 
264 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 This would undoubtedly be the case but for the exist- 
 ence of a friction which interferes between theory and 
 practice. This friction is caused partly by the distur- 
 bance of vested interests which every invention in- 
 volves, and which will be found intolerable when men 
 become millionaires and paupers alternately once a fort- 
 night living one week in a palace and the next in a 
 workhouse, and having perpetually to be sold up, and 
 then to buy a new house and refurnish, &c. so that 
 artificial means for stopping inventions will be adopted ; 
 and partly by the fact that though all inventions breed 
 in geometrical ratio, yet some multiply more rapidly 
 than others, and the backwardness of one art will impede 
 the forwardness of another. At any rate, so far as I 
 can see, the present is about the only comfortable time 
 for a man to live in, that either ever has been or ever 
 will be. The past was too slow, and the future will 
 be much too fast. 
 
 The fact is (but it is so obvious that I am ashamed 
 to say anything about it) that science is rapidly re- 
 ducing time and space to a very undifferentiated con- 
 dition. Take lamb : we can get lamb all the year 
 round. This is perpetual spring ; but perpetual spring 
 is no spring at all ; it is not a season ; there are no 
 more seasons, and being no seasons, there is no time. 
 Take rhubarb, again. Ehubarb to the philosopher is 
 the beginning of autumn, if indeed the philosopher 
 can see anything as the beginning of anything. If 
 any one asks why, I suppose the philosopher would 
 say that rhubarb is the beginning of the fruit season, 
 which is clearly autumnal, according to our present 
 classification. From rhubarb to the green gooseberry 
 the step is so small as to require no bridging with 
 one's eyes shut, and plenty of cream and sugar, they 
 
CALONICO. 265 
 
 are almost indistinguishable but the gooseberry is 
 quite an autumnal fruit, and only a little earlier than 
 apples and plums, which last are almost winter ; clearly, 
 therefore, for scientific purposes rhubarb is autumnal. 
 
 As soon as we can find gradations, or a sufficient 
 number of uniting links between two things, they 
 become united or made one thing, and any classifica- 
 tion of them must be illusory. Classification is only 
 possible where there is a shock given to the senses by 
 reason of a perceived difference, which, if it is con- 
 siderable, can be expressed in words. When the world 
 was younger and less experienced, people were shocked 
 at what appeared great differences between living forms ; 
 but species, whether of animals or plants, are now seen 
 to be so united, either inferentially or by actual find- 
 ing of the links, that all classification is felt to be 
 arbitrary. The seasons are like species they were at 
 one time thought to be clearly marked, and capable of 
 being classified with some approach to satisfaction. 
 It is now seen that they blend either in the present 
 or the past insensibly into one another, much as 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer shows us that geology and 
 astronomy blend into one another, ~* and cannot be 
 classified except by cutting Gordian knots in a way 
 which none but plain sensible people can tolerate. 
 Strictly speaking, there is only one place, one time, 
 one action, and one individual or thing; of this thing 
 or individual each one of us is a part. It is perplexing, 
 but it is philosophy ; and modern philosophy, like 
 modern music, is nothing if it is not perplexing. 
 
 A simple verification of the autumnal character of 
 rhubarb may, at first sight, appear to be found in 
 Covent Garden Market, where we can actually see 
 
 * Princ. of Psych., ed. 3, Vol. L, p. 136, 1880. 
 
266 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 the rhubarb towards the end of October. But this 
 way of looking at the matter argues a fatal ineptitude 
 for the pursuit of true philosophy. It would be " the 
 most serious error " to regard the rhubarb that will 
 appear in Covent Garden Market next October as 
 belonging to the autumn then supposed to be current. 
 Practically, no doubt, it does so, but theoretically it 
 must be considered as the first-fruits of the autumn 
 (if any) of the following year, which begins before the 
 preceding summer (or, perhaps, more strictly, the pre- 
 ceding summer but one and hence, but any number), 
 has well ended. Whether this, however, is so or no, 
 the rhubarb can be seen in Covent Garden, and I am 
 afraid it must be admitted that to the philosophically 
 minded there lurks within it a theory of evolution, and 
 even Pantheism, as surely as Theism was lurking in 
 Bishop Berkeley's tar-water. 
 
 To return, however, to Calonico. The curato was 
 very kind to me. We had long talks together. I 
 could see it pained him that I was not a Catholic. 
 He could never quite get over this, but he was very 
 good and tolerant, He was anxious to be assured that 
 I was not one of those English who went about dis- 
 tributing tracts, and trying to convert people. This of 
 course was the last thing I should have wished to do ; 
 and when I told him so, he viewed me with sorrow but 
 henceforth without alarm. 
 
 All the time I was with him I felt how much I 
 wished I could be a Catholic in Catholic countries, 
 and a Protestant in Protestant ones. Surely there 
 are some things which like politics are too serious to 
 be taken quite seriously. Surtout point de zele is not 
 the saying of a cynic, but the conclusion of a sensible 
 man ; and the more deep our feeling is about any 
 
CALONICO. 267 
 
 matter, the more occasion have we to be on our guard 
 against zele in this particular respect. There is but 
 one step from the " earnest " to the " intense." When 
 St. Paul told us to be all things to all men he let in 
 the thin end of the wedge, nor did he mark it to say 
 how far it was to be driven. 
 
 I have Italian friends whom I greatly value, and 
 who tell me they think I flirt just a trifle too much 
 with " il partito nero" when I am in Italy, for they 
 know that in the main I think as they do. " These 
 people," they say, " make themselves very agreeable 
 to you, and show you their smooth side ; we, who see 
 more of them, know their rough one. Knuckle under 
 to them, and they will perhaps condescend to patron- 
 ise you ; have any individuality of your own, and they 
 know neither scruple nor remorse in their attempts 
 to get you out of their way. ' II prete' they say, with 
 a significant look, ' e sempre prete! For the future 
 let us have professors and men of science instead of 
 priests." 
 
 I smile to myself at this last, and reply, that I am 
 a foreigner come among them for recreation, and anxious 
 to keep clear of their internal discords. I do not wish 
 to cut myself off from one side of their national cha- 
 racter a side which, in some respects, is no less in- 
 teresting than the one with which I suppose I am on 
 the whole more sympathetic. If I were an Italian, I 
 should feel bound to take a side ; as it is, I wish to 
 leave all quarrelling behind me, having as much of 
 that in England as suffices to keep me in good health 
 and temper. 
 
 In old times people gave their spiritual and intel- 
 lectual sop to Nemesis. Even when most positive, 
 they admitted a percentage of doubt. Mr. Tennyson 
 
268 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 has said well, "There lives more doubt" I quote 
 from memory " in honest faith, believe me, than in 
 half the " systems of philosophy, or words to that effect. 
 The victor had a slave at his ear during his triumph ; 
 the slaves during the Eoman Saturnalia, dressed in 
 their masters' clothes, sat at meat with them, told them 
 of their faults, and blacked their faces for them. They 
 made their masters wait upon them. In the ages of 
 faith, an ass dressed in sacerdotal robes was gravely 
 conducted to the cathedral choir at a certain season, 
 and mass was said before him, and hymns chanted 
 discordantly. The elder D'Israeli, from whom I am 
 quoting, writes : " On other occasions, they put burnt 
 old shoes to fume in the censors : ran about the church 
 leaping, singing, dancing, and playing at dice upon the 
 altar, while a 'boy bishop or pope of fools burlesqued 
 the divine service ; " and later on he says : " So late 
 as 1645, a pupil of Gassendi, writing to his master 
 what he himself witnessed at Aix on the Feast of Inno- 
 cents, says ' I have seen in some monasteries in this 
 province extravagances solemnised which pagans would 
 not have practised. Neither the clergy nor the guar- 
 dians indeed go to the choir on this day, but all is given 
 up to the lay brethren, the cabbage- cutters, errand-boys, 
 cooks, scullions, and gardeners ; in a word, all the 
 menials fill their places in the church, and insist that 
 they perform the offices proper for the day. They 
 dress themselves with all the sacerdotal ornaments, 
 but torn to rags, or wear them inside out : they hold 
 in their hands the books reversed or sideways, which 
 they pretend to read with large spectacles without 
 glasses, and to which they fix the rinds of scooped 
 oranges . . . ! particularly while dangling the censers 
 they keep shaking them in derision, and letting the 
 
CALONICO. 269 
 
 ashes fly about their heads and faces, one against the 
 other. In this equipage they neither sing hymns nor 
 psalms nor masses, but mumble a certain gibberish as 
 shrill and squeaking as a herd of pigs whipped on to 
 market. The nonsense verses they chant are singularly 
 barbarous : 
 
 " ' Hsec est clara dies, clararum clara clierum, 
 Haec est festa dies festarum festa dierum. 7 " * 
 
 Faith was far more assured in the times when the 
 spiritual saturnalia were allowed than now. The 
 irreverence which was not dangerous then, is now 
 intolerable. It is a bad sign for a man's peace in his 
 own convictions when he cannot stand turning the 
 canvas of his life occasionally upside down, or reversing 
 it in a mirror, as painters do with their pictures that 
 they may judge the better concerning them. I would 
 persuade all Jews, Mohammedans, Comtists, and free- 
 thinkers to turn high Anglicans, or better still, down- 
 right Catholics for a week in every year, and I would 
 send people like Mr. Gladstone to attend Mr. Brad- 
 laugh's lectures in the forenoon, and the Grecian 
 pantomime in the evening, two or three times every 
 winter. I should perhaps tell them that the Grecian 
 pantomime has nothing to do with Greek plays. They 
 little know how much more keenly they would relish 
 their normal opinions during the rest of the year for 
 the little spiritual outing which I would prescribe for 
 them, which, after all, is but another phase of the wise 
 saying " Surtout point de zele" St. Paul attempted 
 an obviously hopeless task (as the Church of Rome 
 very well understands) when he tried to put down 
 seasonarianism. People must and will go to church to 
 
 * Curiosities of Literature, Lond. 1866, Koutledge & Co., p. 272. 
 
270 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 be a little better, to the theatre to be a little naughtier, 
 to the Boyal Institution to be a little more scientific, 
 than they are in actual life. It is only by pulsations 
 of goodness, naughtiness, and whatever else we affect 
 that we can get on at all. I grant that when in his 
 office, a man should be exact and precise, but our 
 holidays are our garden, and too much precision here 
 is a mistake. 
 
 Surely truces, without even an arriere pensee of 
 difference of opinion, between those who are compelled 
 to take widely different sides during the greater part 
 of their lives, must be of infinite service to those who 
 can enter on them. There are few merely spiritual 
 pleasures comparable to that derived from the tem- 
 porary laying down of a quarrel, even though we may 
 know that it must be renewed shortly. It is a great 
 grief to me that there is no place where I can go 
 among Mr. Darwin, Professors Huxley, Tyndal, and 
 Eay Lankester, Miss Buckley, Mr. Eomanes, Mr. Grant 
 Allen and others whom I cannot call to mind at this 
 moment, as I can go among the Italian priests. I 
 remember in one monastery (but this was not in the 
 Canton Ticino) the novice taught me how to make 
 sacramental wafers, and I played him Handel on the 
 organ as well as I could. I told him that Handel 
 was a Catholic; he said he could tell that by his 
 music at once. There is no chance of getting among 
 our scientists in this way. 
 
 Some friends say I was telling a lie when I told the 
 novice Handel was a Catholic, and ought not to have 
 done so. I make it a rule to swallow a few gnats 
 a day, lest I should come to strain at them, and so bolt 
 camels ; but the whole question of lying is difficult. 
 What is " lying " ? Turning for moral guidance to 
 
CALONICO. 271 
 
 my cousins the lower animals, whose unsophisticated 
 nature proclaims what God has taught them with 
 a directness we may sometimes study, I find the 
 plover lying when she lures us from her young ones 
 under the fiction of a broken wing. Is God angry, 
 think you, with this pretty deviation from the letter 
 of strict accuracy ? or was it not He who whispered to 
 her to tell the falsehood to tell it with a circumstance, 
 without conscientious scruple, not once only, but to 
 make a practice of it so as to be a plausible, habitual, 
 and professional liar for some six weeks or so in the 
 year? I imagine so. When I was young I used to 
 read in good books that it was God who taught the 
 bird to make her nest, and if so He probably taught 
 each species the other domestic arrangements best 
 suited to it. Or did the nest-building information 
 come from God, and was there an evil one among the 
 birds also who taught them at any rate to steer clear 
 of priggishness ? 
 
 Think of the spider again an ugly creature, but I 
 suppose God likes it. What a mean and odious lie 
 is that web which naturalists extol as such a marvel 
 of ingenuity ! 
 
 Once on a summer afternoon in a far country I met 
 one of those orchids who make it their business to 
 imitate a fly with their petals. This lie they dispose 
 so cunningly that real flies, thinking the honey is 
 being already plundered, pass them without molesting 
 them. Watching intently and keeping very still, me- 
 thought I heard this orchid speaking to the offspring 
 which she felt within her, though I saw them not. 
 " My children," she exclaimed, " I must soon leave 
 you; think upon the fly, my loved ones, for this is 
 truth ; cling to this great thought in your passage 
 
272 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 through life, for it is the one thing needful ; once lose 
 sight of it and you are lost ! " Over and over again 
 she sang this burden in a small still voice, and so I 
 left her. Then straightway I came upon some butter- 
 flies whose profession it was to pretend to believe in 
 all manner of vital truths which in their inner practice 
 they rejected ; thus, asserting themselves to be certain 
 other and hateful butterflies which no bird will eat by 
 reason of their abominable smell, these cunning ones 
 conceal their own sweetness, and live long in the land 
 and see good days. No : lying is so deeply rooted in 
 nature that we may expel it with a fork, and yet it 
 will always come back again: it is like the poor, we 
 must have it always with us. We must all eat a peck 
 of moral dirt before we die. 
 
 All depends upon who it is that is lying. One 
 man may steal a horse when another may not look 
 over a hedge. The good man who tells no lies wit- 
 tingly to himself and is never unkindly, may lie and 
 lie and lie whenever he chooses to other people, and 
 he will not be false to any man : his lies become truths 
 as they pass into the hearers' ear. If a man deceives 
 himself and is unkind, the truth is not in him ; it turns 
 to falsehood while yet in his mouth, like the quails in 
 the Wilderness of Sinai. How this is so or why, I 
 know not, but that the Lord hath mercy on whom He 
 will have mercy and whom He willeth He hardeneth. 
 
 My Italian friends are doubtless in the main right 
 about the priests, but there are many exceptions, as 
 they themselves gladly admit. For my own part I 
 have found the curato in the small subalpine villages 
 of North Italy to be more often than not a kindly 
 excellent man to whom I am attracted by sympathies 
 deeper than any mere superficial differences of opinion 
 
CALONICO. 273 
 
 can counteract. With monks, however, as a general 
 rule, I am less able to get on : nevertheless I have 
 received much courtesy at the hands of some. 
 
 My young friend the novice was delightful only it 
 was so sad to think of the future that is before him. 
 He wanted to know all about England, and when I 
 told him it was an island, clasped his hands and said, 
 " Oh che Providenza ! " He told me how the other 
 young men of his own age plagued him as he trudged 
 his rounds high up among the most distant hamlets 
 begging alms for the poor. " Be a good fellow," they 
 would say to him, " drop all this nonsense and come 
 back to us, and we will never plague you again." Then 
 he would turn upon them and put their words from 
 him. Of course my sympathies were with the other 
 young men rather than with him, but it was impossible 
 not to be sorry for the manner in which he had been 
 humbugged from the day of his birth, till he was now 
 incapable of seeing things from any other standpoint 
 than that of authority. 
 
 What he said to me about knowing that Handel 
 was a Catholic by his music, put me in mind of what 
 another good Catholic once said to me about a picture. 
 He was a Frenchman and very nice, but a ddvot, and 
 anxious to convert me. He paid a few days' visit to 
 London, so I showed him the National Gallery. While 
 there I pointed out to him Sebastian del Piombo's 
 picture of the raising of Lazarus as one of the supposed 
 masterpieces of our collection. He had the proper 
 orthodox fit of admiration over it, and then we went 
 through the other rooms. After a while we found 
 ourselves before West's picture of " Christ healing the 
 Sick." My French friend did not, I suppose, examine 
 it very carefully, at any rate he believed he was again 
 
 s 
 
274 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 before the raising of Lazarus by Sebastian del Piombo ; 
 he paused before it, and had his fit of admiration over 
 again : then turning to ine he said, " Ah ! you would 
 understand this picture better if you were a Catholic." 
 I did not tell him of his mistake. 
 
275 
 
 PIORA* 
 (FROM CHAPTER vi. OF ALPS AND SANCTUARIES.) 
 
 AN excursion which may be very well made from 
 Faido is to the Yal Piora, which I have already 
 more than once mentioned. There is a large hotel 
 here which has been opened some years, but has not 
 hitherto proved the success which it was hoped it would 
 be. I have stayed there two or three times and found 
 it very comfortable ; doubtless, now that Signor Lom- 
 bardi of the Hotel Prosa has taken it, it will become 
 a more popular place of resort. 
 
 I took a trap from Faido to Ambri, and thence 
 walked over to Quinto ; here the path begins to ascend, 
 and after an hour Eonco is reached. There is a house 
 at Eonco where refreshments and excellent Faido beer 
 can- be had. The old lady who keeps the house would 
 make a perfect Fate ; I saw her sitting at her window 
 spinning, and looking down over the Ticino valley as 
 though it were the world and she were spinning its 
 destiny. She had a somewhat stern expression, thin 
 lips, iron-grey eyes, and an aquiline nose ; her scanty 
 locks straggled from under the handkerchief which 
 she wore round her head. Her employment and the 
 wistful far-away look she cast upon the expanse below 
 made a very fine ensemble. " She would have afforded," 
 
 * See p. 87 of this vol. 
 
276 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 as Sir Walter Scott says, " a study for a Eembrandt, 
 had that celebrated painter existed at the period/' * 
 but she must have been a smart-looking, handsome 
 girl once. 
 
 She brightened up in conversation. I talked about 
 Piora, which I already knew, and the Lago Tom, the 
 highest of the three lakes. She said she knew the 
 Lago Tom. I said laughingly, " Oh, I have no doubt 
 you do. We've had many a good day at the Lago 
 Tom, I know." She looked down at once. 
 
 In spite of her nearly eighty years she was active 
 as a woman of forty, and altogether she was a very 
 grand old lady. Her house is scrupulously clean. 
 While I watched her spinning, I thought of what 
 must so often occur to summer visitors. I mean what 
 sort of a look-out the old woman must have in winter, 
 when the wind roars and whistles, and the snow drives 
 down the valley with a fury of which we in England 
 can have little conception. What a place to see a 
 snowstorm from ! and what a place from which to 
 survey the landscape next morning after the storm is 
 over and the air is calm and brilliant. There are such 
 mornings : I saw one once, but I was at the bottom 
 of the valley and not high up, as at Eonco. Eonco 
 would take a little sun even in midwinter, but at the 
 bottom of the valley there is no sun for weeks and 
 weeks together; all is in deep shadow below, though 
 the upper hill-sides may be seen to have the sun upon 
 them. I walked once on a frosty winter's morning 
 from Airolo to Giornico, and can call to mind nothing 
 in its way more beautiful: everything was locked in 
 frost there was not a waterwheel but was sheeted 
 and coated with ice : the road was hard as granite 
 
 * Ivanhoe, chap, xxiii., near the beginning. 
 
PIORA. 277 
 
 all was quiet, and seen as through a dark but incredibly 
 transparent medium. Near Piotta I met the whole 
 village dragging a large tree; there were many men 
 and women dragging at it, but they had to pull hard, 
 and they were silent ; as I passed them I thought 
 what comely, well-begotten people they were. Then, 
 looking up, there was a sky, cloudless and of the deep- 
 est blue, against which the snow-clad mountains stood 
 out splendidly. No one will regret a walk in these 
 valleys during the depth of winter. But I should have 
 liked to have looked down from the sun into the sun- 
 lessness, as the old Fate, woman at Eonco can do when 
 she sits in winter at her window ; or again, I should 
 like to see how things would look from this same 
 window on a leaden morning in midwinter after snow 
 has fallen heavily and the sky is murky and much 
 darker than the earth. "When the storm is at its 
 height, the snow must search and search and search 
 even through the double windows with which the houses 
 are protected. It must rest upon the frames of the 
 pictures of saints, and of the sisters " grab," and of the 
 last hours of Count Ugolino, which adorn the walls of 
 the parlour. No wonder there is a S. Maria della 
 Neve^ " St. Mary of the Snow ; " but I do wonder 
 that she has not been painted. 
 
 I said this to an Italian once, and he said the reason 
 was probably this that St. Mary of the Snow was not 
 developed till long after Italian art had begun to decline. 
 I suppose in another hundred years or so we shall have 
 a St. Maria delle Ferrovie a St. Mary of the Railways. 
 
 From Eonco the path keeps level and then descends 
 a little so as to cross the stream that comes down from 
 Piora. This is near the village of Altanca, the church 
 of which looks remarkably well from here. Then there 
 
278 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 is an hour and a half's rapid ascent, and at last all on 
 a sudden one finds oneself on the Lago Eitom, close to 
 the hotel. 
 
 The lake is about a mile, or a mile and a half, long, 
 and half a mile broad. It is 6000 feet above the sea, 
 very deep at the lower end, and does not freeze where 
 the stream issues from it, so that the magnificent trout 
 with which it abounds can get air and live through the 
 winter. In many other lakes, as, for example, the Lago 
 di Tremorgio, they cannot do this, and hence perish, 
 though the lakes have been repeatedly stocked. The 
 trout in the Lago Eitom are said to be the finest in 
 the world, and certainly I know none so fine myself. 
 They grow to be as large as moderate-sized salmon, 
 and have a deep-red flesh, very firm and full of flavour. 
 I had two cutlets off one for breakfast, and should have 
 said they were salmon unless I had known otherwise. 
 In winter, when the lake is frozen over, the people bring 
 their hay from the farther Lake of Cadagna in sledges 
 across the Lake Eitom. Here, again, winter must be 
 worth seeing, but on a rough snowy day Piora must be 
 an awful place. There are a few stunted pines near 
 the hotel, but the hillsides are for the most part bare 
 and green. Piora in fact is a fine breezy open upland 
 valley of singular beauty, and with a sweet atmosphere 
 of cow about it ; it is rich in rhododendrons and all 
 manner of Alpine flowers, just a trifle bleak, but as 
 bracing as the Engadine itself. 
 
 The first night I was ever in Piora there was a brilliant 
 moon, and the unruffled surface of the lake took the 
 reflection of the mountains. I could see the cattle a 
 mile off, and hear the tinkling of their bells which danced 
 multitudinously before the ear as fire-flies come and go 
 before the eyes ; for all through a fine summer's night 
 
PIORA. 279 
 
 the cattle will feed as though it were day. A little 
 above the lake I came upon a man in a cave before a 
 furnace, burning lime, and he sat looking into the fire 
 with his back to the moonlight. He was a quiet moody 
 man, and I am afraid I bored him, for I could get hardly 
 anything out of him but " Oh altro " polite but not 
 communicative. So after a while I left him with his 
 face burnished as with gold from the fire, and his back 
 silver with the moonbeams ; behind him were the pas- 
 tires and the reflections in the lake and the mountains 
 and the distant ringing of the cowbells. 
 
 Then I wandered on till I came to the chapel of S. 
 Carlo ; and in a few minutes found myself on the Lago 
 di Cadagna. Here I heard that there were people, 
 and the people were not so much asleep as the simple 
 peasantry of these upland valleys are expected to be by 
 nine o'clock in the evening. For now was the time 
 when they had moved up from Eonco, Altanca, and 
 other villages in some numbers to cut the hay, and were 
 living for a fortnight or three weeks in the chalets upon 
 the Lago di Cadagna. As I have said, there is a chapel, 
 but I doubt whether it is attended during this season 
 with the regularity with which the parish churches of 
 Ronco, Altanca, &c., are attended during the rest of the 
 year. The young people, I am sure, like these annual 
 visits to the high places, and will be hardly weaned 
 from them. Happily the hay will be always there, and 
 will have to be cut by some one, and the old people will 
 send the young ones. 
 
 As I was thinking of these things, I found myself 
 going off into a doze, and thought the burnished man 
 from the furnace came up and sat beside me, and laid 
 his hand upon my shoulder. Then I saw the green 
 slopes that rise all round the lake were much higher 
 
280 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 than I had thought ; they went up thousands of feet, 
 and there were pine forests upon them, while two large 
 glaciers came down in streams that ended in a precipice 
 of ice, falling sheer into the lake. The edges of the 
 mountains against the sky were rugged and full of 
 clefts, through which I saw thick clouds of dust being 
 blown by the wind as though from the other side of 
 the mountains. 
 
 And as I looked, I saw that this was not dust, but 
 people coming in crowds from the other side, but so 
 small as to be visible at first only as dust. And the 
 people became musicians, and the mountainous amphi- 
 theatre a huge orchestra, and the glaciers were two 
 noble armies of women-singers in white robes, ranged 
 tier above tier behind each other, and the pines became 
 orchestral players, while the thick dust-like cloud of 
 chorus-singers kept pouring in through the clefts in 
 the precipices in inconceivable numbers. When I 
 turned my telescope upon them I saw they were 
 crowded up to the extreme edge of the mountains, so 
 that I could see underneath the soles of their boots 
 as their legs dangled in the air. In the midst of all, 
 a precipice that rose from out of the glaciers shaped 
 itself suddenly into an organ, and there was one whose 
 face I well knew sitting at the keyboard, smiling and 
 pluming himself like a bird as he thundered forth a 
 giant fugue by way of overture. I heard the great 
 pedal notes in the bass stalk majestically up and down, 
 as the rays of the Aurora that go about upon the 
 face of the heavens off the coast of Labrador. Then 
 presently the people rose and sang the chorus " Venus 
 Laughing from the Skies ;" but ere the sound had well 
 died away, I awoke, and all was changed ; a light fleecy 
 cloud had filled the whole basin, but I still thought I 
 
PIORA. 281 
 
 heard a sound of music, and a scampering-off of great 
 crowds from the part where the precipices should be. 
 After that I heard no more but a little singing from 
 the chalets, and turned homewards. When I got to 
 the chapel of S. Carlo, I was in the moonlight again, 
 and when near the hotel, I passed the man at the 
 mouth of the furnace with the moon still gleaming 
 upon his back, and the fire upon his face, and he was 
 very grave and quiet. 
 
( 282 ) 
 
 S. MICHELE AND MONTE PIRCHIRIANO. 
 (EXTEACTS FROM CHAPTERS vn. AND x. OF ALPS AND 
 
 SANCTUARIES.) 
 
 THE history of the sanctuary of S. Michele is briefly 
 as follows : 
 
 At the close of the tenth century, when Otho III. 
 was Emperor of Germany, a certain Hugh de Mont- 
 boissier, a noble of Auvergne, commonly called " Hugh 
 the Unsewn " (lo sdruscito\ was commanded by the 
 Pope to found a monastery in expiation of some grave 
 offence. He chose for his site the summit of the 
 Monte Pirchiriano in the valley of Susa, being attracted 
 partly by the fame of a church already built there by 
 a recluse of Eavenna, Giovanni Yincenzo by name, 
 and partly by the striking nature of the situation. 
 Hugh de Montboissier, when returning from Borne to 
 Erance with Isengarde his wife, would, as a matter of 
 course, pass through the valley of Susa. The two 
 perhaps when stopping to dine at S. Ambrogio would 
 look up and observe the church founded by Giovannia 
 Vincenzo : they had got to build a monastery some- 
 where ; it would very likely, therefore, occur to them 
 that they could not perpetuate their names better than 
 by choosing this site, which was on a much-travelled 
 road, and on which a fine building would show to 
 advantage. If my view is correct, we have here an 
 
S. MICHELE AND MONTE PIRCHIRIANO. 283 
 
 illustration of a fact which is continually observable 
 namely, that all things which come to much, whether 
 they be books, buildings, pictures, music, or living 
 beings, are begotten of others of their own kind. It 
 is always the most successful, like Handel and Shake- 
 speare, who owe most to their forerunners, in spite of 
 the modifications with which their works descend. 
 
 Giovanni Yincenzo had built his church about the 
 year 987. It is maintained by some that he had been 
 bishop of Eavenna, but Clareta gives sufficient reason 
 for thinking otherwise. In the " Cronaca Clusina " it 
 is said that he had for some years previously lived as 
 a recluse on the Monte Caprasio, to the north of the 
 present Monte Pirchiriano ; but that one night he 
 had a vision, in which he saw the summit of Monte 
 Pirchiriano enveloped in heaven-descended flames, 
 and on this founded a church there, and dedicated it 
 to S. Michael. This is the origin of the name Pir- 
 chiriano, which means Trvp /cvpiavos, or the Lord's fire. 
 
 Avogadro is among those who make Giovanni 
 Bishop, or rather Archbishop, of Eavenna, and gives 
 the following account of the circumstances which led 
 to his resigning his diocese and going to live at the 
 top of the inhospitable Monte Caprasio. It seems 
 there had been a confirmation at Eavenna, during 
 which he had accidentally forgotten to confirm the 
 child of a certain widow. The child, being in weakly 
 health, died before Giovanni could repair his oversight, 
 and this preyed upon his mind. In answer, however, 
 to his earnest prayers, it pleased the Almighty to give 
 him power to raise the dead child to life again ; this 
 he did, and having immediately performed the rite of 
 confirmation, restored the boy to his overjoyed mother. 
 He now became so much revered that he began to be 
 
284 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 alarmed lest pride should obtain dominion over him ; 
 he felt, therefore, that his only course was to resign 
 his diocese, and go and live the life of a recluse on the 
 top of some high mountain. It is said that he suffered 
 agonies of doubt as to whether it was not selfish of him 
 to take such care of his own eternal welfare, at the ex- 
 pense of that of his flock, whom no successor could so 
 well guide and guard from evil ; but in the end he 
 took a reasonable view of the matter, and concluded 
 that his first duty was to secure his own spiritual posi- 
 tion. Nothing short of the top of a very uncomfort- 
 able mountain could do this, so he at once resigned his 
 bishopric and chose Monte Caprasio as on the whole 
 the most comfortable uncomfortable mountain he could 
 find. 
 
 The latter part of the story will seem strange to 
 Englishmen. "We can hardly fancy the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury or York resigning his diocese and settling 
 down quietly on the top of Scafell or Cader Idris to 
 secure his eternal welfare. They would hardly do so 
 even on the top of Primrose Hill. But nine hundred 
 years ago human nature was not the same as now-a- 
 days. 
 
 Comparing our own clergy with the best North 
 Italian and Ticinese priests, I should say there was 
 little to choose between them. The latter are in a 
 logically stronger position, and this gives them greater 
 courage in their opinions ; the former have the ad- 
 vantage in respect of money, and the more varied 
 knowledge of the world which money will command. 
 "When I say Catholics have logically the advantage 
 over Protestants, I mean that starting from premises 
 which both sides admit, a merely logical Protestant 
 
S, MICHELE AND MONTE PIRCHIRIANO. 285 
 
 will find himself driven to the Church of Rome. Most 
 men as they grow older will, I think, feel this, and they 
 will see in it the explanation of the comparatively 
 narrow area over which the Eeformation extended, and 
 of the gain which Catholicism has made of late years 
 here in England. On the other hand, reasonable 
 people will look with distrust upon too much reason. 
 The foundations of action lie deeper than reason can 
 reach. 'They rest on faith for there is no absolutely 
 certain incontrovertible premise which can be laid by 
 man, any more than there is any investment for money 
 or security in the daily affairs of life which is absolutely 
 unimpeachable. The Funds are not absolutely safe ; 
 a volcano might break out under the Bank of England. 
 A railway journey is not absolutely safe ; one person 
 at least in several millions gets killed. We invest 
 our money upon faith, mainly. We choose our doctor 
 upon faith, for how little independent judgment can we 
 form concerning his capacity ? We choose schools for 
 our children chiefly upon , faith. The most important 
 things a man has are his body, his soul, and his money. 
 It is generally better for him to commit these interests 
 to the care of others of whom he can know little, rather 
 than be his own medical man, or invest his money on 
 his own judgment; and this is nothing else than 
 making a faith which lies deeper than reason can reach, 
 the basis of our action in those respects which touch 
 us most nearly. 
 
 On the other hand, as good a case could be made out 
 for placing reason as the foundation, inasmuch as it 
 would be easy to show that a faith, to be worth any- 
 thing, must be a reasonable one one, that is to say, 
 which is based upon reason. The fact is that faith and 
 reason are like function and organ, desire and power, or 
 
286 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 demand and supply ; it is impossible to say which comes 
 first : they come up hand in hand, and are so small when 
 we can first descry them, that it is impossible to say which 
 we first caught sight of. All we can now see is that each 
 has a tendency continually to outstrip the other by a little, 
 but by a very little only. Strictly they are not two 
 things, but two aspects of one thing ; for convenience' 
 sake, however, we classify them separately. 
 
 It follows, therefore but whether it follows or no, 
 it is certainly true that neither faith alone nor reason 
 alone is a sufficient guide : a man's safety lies neither 
 in faith nor reason, but in temper in the power of 
 fusing faith and reason, even when they appear most 
 mutually destructive. 
 
 That we all feel temper to be the first thing is plain 
 from the fact that when we see two men quarrelling we 
 seldom even try to weigh their arguments we look 
 instinctively at the tone or spirit or temper which the 
 two display and give our verdict accordingly. 
 
 A man of temper will be certain in spite of uncer- 
 tainty, and at the same time uncertain in spite of cer- 
 tainty; reasonable in spite of his resting mainly upon 
 faith rather than reason, and full of faith even when 
 appealing most strongly to reason. If it is asked, In 
 what should a man have faith ? To what faith should 
 he turn when reason has led him to a conclusion which 
 he distrusts ? the answer is, To the current feeling 
 among those whom he most looks up to looking upon 
 himself with suspicion if he is either among the fore- 
 most or the laggers. In the rough, homely common 
 sense of the community to which we belong we have as 
 firm ground as can be got. This, though not absolutely 
 infallible, is secure enough for practical purposes. 
 
 As I have said, Catholic priests have rather a fascina- 
 
S. MICHELE AND MONTE PIRCHIRIANO. 287 
 
 tion for me when they are not Englishmen. I should 
 say that the best North Italian priests are more openly 
 tolerant than our English clergy generally are. I re- 
 member picking up one who was walking along a road, 
 and giving him a lift in my trap. Of course we fell 
 to talking, and it came out that I was a member of 
 the Church of England. " Ebbene, Caro Signore," said 
 he when we shook hands at parting ; " mi rincresce 
 che lei non crede come io, ma in questi tempi non 
 possiamo avere tutti i medesimi principii."* 
 
 The one thing, he said, which shocked him with 
 the English, was the manner in which they went 
 about distributing tracts upon the Continent. I said 
 no one could deplore the practice more profoundly 
 than myself, but that there were stupid and conceited 
 people in every country, who would insist upon thrust- 
 ing their opinions upon people who did not want them. 
 He replied that the Italians travelled not a little in 
 England, but that he was sure not one of them would 
 dream of offering Catholic tracts to people, for example, 
 in the streets of London. Certainly I have never seen 
 an Italian to be guilty of such rudeness. It seems to 
 me that it is not only toleration that is a duty ; we 
 ought to go beyond this now; we should conform, 
 when we are among a sufficient number of those who 
 would not understand our refusal to do so ; any other 
 course is to attach too much importance at once to our 
 own opinions and to those of our opponents. By all 
 means let a man stand by his convictions when the 
 occasion requires, but let him reserve his strength, 
 unless it is imperatively called for. Do not let him 
 
 * " Well, my dear sir, I am sorry you do not think as I do, but in 
 these days we cannot all of us start with the same principles." 
 
288 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 exaggerate trifles, and let him remember that everything 
 is a trifle in comparison with the not giving offence to 
 a large number of kindly, simple-minded people. Evolu- 
 tion, as we all know, is the great doctrine of modern 
 times ; the very essence of evolution consists in the not 
 shocking anything too violently, but enabling it to mis- 
 take a new action for an old one, without "making 
 believe " too much. 
 
 One day when I was eating my lunch near a fountain, 
 there came up a moody, meditative hen, crooning plain- 
 tively, after her wont. I threw her a crumb of bread 
 while she was still a good way off, and then threw 
 more, getting her to come a little closer and a little 
 closer each time ; at last she actually took a piece from 
 my hand. She did not quite like it, but she did it. 
 " A very little at a time," this is the evolution principle ; 
 and if we wish those who differ from us to understand 
 us, it is the only method to proceed upon. I have 
 sometimes thought that some of my friends among the 
 priests have been treating me as I treated the medita- 
 tive hen. But what of that ? They will not kill and 
 eat me, nor take my eggs. Whatever, therefore, pro- 
 motes a more friendly feeling between us must be pure 
 
 Sometimes priests say things, as a matter of course, 
 which would, make 'any English clergyman's hair stand 
 on end. At one town there is a remarkable fourteenth- 
 century bridge, commonly known as "The Devil's 
 Bridge." I was sketching near this when a jolly old 
 priest with a red nose came up and began a conversa- 
 tion with me. He was evidently a popular character,: 
 for every one who passed greeted him. He told me 
 that the devil did not really build the bridge. I said 
 
S. MICHELE AND MONTE PIRCHIRIANO. 289 
 
 I presumed not, for he was not in the habit of spending 
 his time so well. 
 
 " I wish he had built it," said my friend ; " for then 
 perhaps he would build us some more." 
 
 " Or we might even get a church out of him," said 
 I, a little slyly. 
 
 " Ha, ha, ha ! we will convert him, and make a 
 good Christian of him in the end." 
 
 When will our Protestantism, or Kationalism, or 
 whatever it may be, sit as lightly upon ourselves ? 
 
 Another time I had the following dialogue with an 
 old Piedmontese priest who lived in a castle which I 
 asked permission to go over : 
 
 " Vous etes Anglais, monsieur ? " said he in French. 
 
 "Oui, monsieur." 
 
 " Vous etes Catholique ? " 
 
 " Monsieur, je suis de la religion de mes ancetres." 
 
 " Pardon, monsieur, vos ancetres etaient Catholiques 
 jusqu'au temps de Henri Huit." 
 
 " Mais il y a trois cents ans depuis le temps de 
 Henri Huit." 
 
 " Eh bien ; chacun a ses convictions ; vous ne parlez 
 pas contre la religion ? " 
 
 " Jamais, jamais, monsieur, j'ai un respect enorme 
 pour Teglise Catholique." 
 
 "Monsieur, faites comme chez vous; allez ou vous 
 voulez ; vous trouverez toutes les portes ouvertes. 
 Amusez vous bien." 
 
( 290 ) 
 
 CONSIDERATIONS ON THE DECLINE OF 
 ITALIAN ART. 
 
 (FROM CHAPTER xm. OF ALPS AND SANCTUARIES.) 
 
 THOSE who know the Italians will see no sign of 
 decay about them. They are the quickest- witted 
 people in the world, and at the same time have much 
 more of the old Eoman steadiness than they are gene- 
 rally credited with. Not only is there no sign of 
 degeneration, but, as regards practical matters, there is 
 every sign of health and vigorous development. The 
 North Italians are more like Englishmen, both in body 
 and mind, than any other people whom I know ; I am 
 continually meeting Italians whom I should take for 
 Englishmen if I did not know their nationality. They 
 have all our strong points, but they have more grace 
 and elasticity of mind than we have. 
 
 Priggishness is the sin which doth most easily beset 
 middle-class, and so-called educated Englishmen ; we 
 call it purity and culture, but it does not much matter 
 what we call it. It is the almost inevitable outcome 
 of a university education, and will last as long as Oxford 
 and Cambridge do, but not much longer. 
 
 Lord Beaconsfield sent Lothair to Oxford ; it is with 
 great pleasure that I see he did not send Endymion. 
 My friend Jones called my attention to this, and we 
 noted that the growth observable throughout Lord 
 Beaconsfield's life was continued to the end, He was 
 
ON THE DECLINE OF ITALIAN ART. 291 
 
 one of those who, no matter how long he lived, would 
 have been always growing : this is what makes his later 
 novels so much better than those of Thackeray or 
 Dickens. There was something of the child about him 
 to the last. Earnestness was his greatest danger, but 
 if he did not quite overcome it (as who indeed can ? 
 It is the last enemy that shall be subdued), he man- 
 aged to veil it with a fair amount of success. As for 
 Endymion, of course if Lord Beaconsfield had thought 
 Oxford would be good for him, he could, as Jones 
 pointed out to me, just as well have killed Mr. Ferrars 
 a year or two later. We feel satisfied, therefore, that 
 Endymion's exclusion from a university was carefully 
 considered, and are glad. 
 
 I will not say that priggishness is absolutely un- 
 known among the North Italians ; sometimes one comes 
 upon a young Italian who wants to learn German, but 
 not often. Priggism, or whatever the substantive is, 
 is as essentially a Teutonic vice as holiness is a Semitic 
 characteristic; and if an Italian happens to be a 
 prig, he will, like Tacitus, invariably show a hanker- 
 ing after German institutions. The idea, however, 
 that the Italians were ever a finer people than they 
 are now, will not pass muster with those who knew 
 them. 
 
 At the same time, there can be no doubt that modern 
 Italian art is in many respects as bad as it was once 
 good. I will confine myself to painting only. The 
 modern Italian painters, with very few exceptions, paint 
 as badly as we do, or even worse, and their motives are 
 as poor as is their painting. At an exhibition of modern 
 Italian pictures, I generally feel that there is hardly a 
 picture on the walls but is a sham that is to say, 
 painted not from love of this particular subject and an 
 
292 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 irresistible desire to paint it, but from a wish to paint 
 an academy picture, and win money or applause. 
 
 The last rays of the sunset of genuine art are to be 
 found in the votive pictures at Locarno or Oropa, and 
 in many a wayside chapel. In these, religious art still 
 lingers as a living language, however rudely spoken. 
 In these alone is the story told, not as in the Latin and 
 Greek verses of the scholar, who thinks he has suc- 
 ceeded best when he has most concealed his natural 
 manner of expressing himself, but by one who knows 
 what he wants to say, and says it in his mother-tongue, 
 shortly, and without caring whether or not his words 
 are in accordance with academic rules. I regret to see 
 photography being introduced for votive purposes, and 
 also to detect in some places a disposition on the part 
 of the authorities to be a little ashamed of these pictures 
 and to place them rather out of sight. 
 
 The question is, how has the falling-off in Italian 
 painting been caused ? And by doing what may we 
 again get Bellinis and Andrea Mantegnas as in old 
 time ? The fault does not lie in any want of raw 
 material : nor yet does it lie in want of taking pains. 
 The modern Italian painter frets himself to the full as 
 much as his predecessor did if the truth were known, 
 probably a great deal more. I am sure Titian did not 
 take much pains after he was more than about twenty 
 years old. It does not lie in want of schooling or art 
 education. For the last three hundred years, ever since 
 the Caraccis opened their academy at Bologna, there 
 has been no lack of art education in Italy. Curiously 
 enough, the date of the opening of the Bolognese 
 Academy coincides as nearly as may be with the com- 
 plete decadence of Italian painting. The academic 
 system trains boys to study other people's works rather 
 
ON THE DECLINE OF ITALIAN ART. 293 
 
 than nature, and, as Leonardo da Vinci so well says, it 
 makes them nature's grandchildren and not her children. 
 This I believe is at any rate half the secret of the whole 
 matter. 
 
 If half-a-dozen young Italians could be got together 
 with a taste for drawing ; if they had power to add to 
 their number ; if they were allowed to see paintings 
 and drawings done up to the year A.D. 1510, and 
 votive pictures and the comic papers; if they were 
 left with no other assistance than this, absolutely free 
 to please themselves, and could be persuaded not to 
 try and please any one else, I believe that in fifty 
 years we should have all that was ever done repeated 
 with fresh naivete*, and as much more delightfully 
 than even by the best old masters, as these are more 
 delightful than anything we know of in classic painting. 
 The young plants keep growing up abundantly every 
 day look at Bastianini, dead not ten years since 
 but they are browsed down by the academies. I 
 remember there came out a book many years ago with 
 the title, "What becomes of all the clever little 
 children ? "' I never saw the book, but the title is 
 pertinent. 
 
 Any man who can write, can draw to a not incon- 
 siderable extent. Look at the Bayeux tapestry ; yet 
 Matilda probably never had a drawing lesson in her 
 life. See how well prisoner after prisoner in the 
 Tower of London has cut out this or that in the stone 
 of his prison wall, without, in all probability, having 
 ever tried his hand at drawing before. Look at my 
 friend Jones, who has several illustrations in this book."" 
 The first year he went abroad with me he could hardly 
 draw at all. He was no year away from England more 
 
 * For these I must refer the reader to Alps and Sanctuaries itself. 
 
tZ94 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 than three weeks. How did he learn ? On the old 
 principle, if I am not mistaken. The old principle 
 was for a man to be doing something which he was 
 pretty strongly bent on doing, and to get a much 
 younger one to help him. The younger paid nothing 
 for instruction, but the elder took the work, as long as 
 the relation of master and pupil existed between them. 
 I, then, was making illustrations for this book, and got 
 Jones to help me. I let him see what I was doing, 
 and derive an idea of the sort of thing I wanted, and 
 then left him alone beyond giving him the same kind 
 of small criticism that I expected from himself but I 
 appropriated his work. That is the way to teach, and 
 the result was that in an incredibly short time Jones 
 could draw. The taking the work is a sine qud non. 
 If I had not been going to have his work, Jones, in 
 spite of all his quickness, would probably have been 
 rather slower in learning to draw. Being paid in 
 money is nothing like so good. 
 
 This is the system of apprenticeship versus the aca- 
 demic system. The academic system consists in giving 
 people the rules for doing things. The apprenticeship 
 system consists in letting them do it, with just a trifle 
 of supervision. " For all a rhetorician's rules," says 
 my great namesake, "teach nothing but, to name his 
 tools ; " and academic rules generally are much the 
 same as the rhetorician's. Some men can pass through 
 academies unscathed, but they are very few, and in the 
 main the academic influence is a baleful one, whether 
 exerted in a university or a school. While young men 
 at universities are being prepared for their entry into 
 life, their rivals have already entered it. The most 
 university and examination ridden people in the world 
 are the Chinese, and they are the least progressive. 
 
ON THE DECLINE OF ITALIAN ART. 295 
 
 Men should learn to draw as they learn convey- 
 ancing: they should go into a painter's studio and 
 paint on his pictures. I am told that half the con- 
 veyances in the country are drawn by pupils ; there 
 is no more mystery about painting than about convey- 
 ancing not half in fact, I should think, so much. 
 One may ask, How can the beginner paint, or draw 
 conveyances, till he has learnt how to do so ? The 
 answer is, How can he learn, without at any rate 
 trying to do ? It is the old story, organ and function, 
 power and desire, demand and supply, faith and reason, 
 etc., the most virtuous action and interaction in the 
 most vicious circle conceivable. If the beginner likes 
 his subject, he will try : if he tries, he will soon succeed 
 in doing something which shall open a door. It does 
 not matter what a man does ; so long as he does it 
 with the attention which affection engenders, he will 
 come to see his way to something else. After long 
 waiting he will certainly find one door open, and go 
 through it. He will say to himself that he can never 
 find another. He has found this, more by luck than 
 cunning, but now he is done. Yet by and by he will 
 see that there is one more small unimportant door 
 which he had overlooked, and he proceeds through this 
 too. If he remains now for a long while and sees no 
 other, do not let him fret ; doors are like the kingdom 
 of heaven, they come not by observation, least of all 
 do they come by forcing : let him just go on doing 
 what comes nearest, but doing it attentively, and a 
 great wide door will one day spring into existence 
 where there had been no sign of one but a little time 
 previously. Only let him be always doing something, 
 and let him cross himself now and again, for belief in 
 the wondrous efficacy of crosses and crossing is the 
 
296 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 corner-stone of the creed of the evolutionists. Then 
 after years but not probably till after a great many 
 doors will open up all around, so many and so wide 
 that the difficulty will not be to find a door, but rather 
 to obtain the means of even hurriedly surveying a 
 portion of those that stand invitingly open. 
 
 I know that just as good a case can be made out 
 for the other side. It may be said as truly that unless 
 a student is incessantly on the watch for doors he will 
 never see them, and that unless he is incessantly press- 
 ing forward to the kingdom of heaven he will never 
 find it so that the kingdom does come by observation. 
 It is with this as with everything else there must be 
 a harmonious fusing of two principles which are in flat 
 contradiction to one another. 
 
 The question of whether it is better to abide quiet 
 and take advantage of opportunities that come, or to 
 go farther afield in search of them, is one of the oldest 
 which living beings have had to deal with. It was on 
 this that the first great schism or heresy arose in what 
 was heretofore the catholic faith of protoplasm. The 
 schism still lasts, and has resulted in two great sects 
 animals and plants. The opinion that it is better 
 to go in search of prey is formulated in animals; the 
 other that it is better on the whole to stay at home 
 and profit by what comes in plants. Some inter- 
 mediate forms still record to us the long struggle dur- 
 ing which the schism was not yet complete. 
 
 If I may be pardoned for pursuing this digression 
 further, I would say that it is the plants and not we 
 who are the heretics. There can be no question about 
 this ; we are perfectly justified, therefore, in devouring 
 them. Ours is the original and orthodox belief, for 
 protoplasm is much more animal than vegetable ; it is 
 
ON THE DECLINE OF ITALIAN ART. 297 
 
 much more true to say that plants have descended from 
 animals than animals from plants. Nevertheless, like 
 many other heretics, plants have thriven very fairly 
 well. There are a great many of them, and as regards 
 beauty, if not wit of a limited kind indeed, but still 
 wit it is hard to say that the animal kingdom has 
 the advantage. The views of plants are sadly narrow ; 
 all dissenters are narrow-minded ; but within their own 
 bounds they know the details of their business suffi- 
 ciently well as well as though they kept the most 
 nicely-balanced system of accounts to show them their 
 position. They are eaten, it is true ; to eat them is 
 our intolerant and bigoted way of trying to convert 
 them : eating is only a violent mode of proselytising 
 or converting ; and we do convert them to good 
 animal substance, of our own way of thinking. If we 
 have had no trouble with them, we say they have 
 " agreed " with us ; if we have been unable to make 
 them see things from our points of view, we say they 
 " disagree " with us, and avoid being on more than 
 distant terms with them for the future. If we have 
 helped ourselves to too much, we say we have got more 
 than we can " manage." But then, animals are eaten 
 too. They convert one another, almost as much as 
 they convert plants. And an animal is no sooner dead 
 than a plant will convert it back again. It is obvious, 
 however, that no schism could have been so long success- 
 ful, without having a good deal to say for itself. 
 
 Neither party has been quite consistent. Who ever 
 is or can be ? Every extreme every opinion carried 
 to its logical end will prove to be an absurdity. 
 Plants throw out roots and boughs and leaves : this is 
 a kind of locomotion ; and as Dr. Erasmus Darwin 
 long since pointed out, they do sometimes approach 
 
298 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 nearly to what may be called travelling ; a man of con- 
 sistent character will never look at a bough, a root, 
 or a tendril without regarding it as a melancholy and 
 unprincipled compromise. On the other hand, many 
 animals are sessile, and some singularly successful 
 genera, as spiders, are in the main liers-in-wait. It 
 may appear, however, on the whole, like reopening a 
 settled question to uphold the principle of being busy 
 and attentive over a small area, rather than going to 
 and fro over a larger one, for a mammal like man, 
 but I think most readers will be with me in thinking 
 that, at any rate as regards art and literature, it is he 
 who does his small immediate work most carefully who 
 will find doors open most certainly to him, that will 
 conduct him into the richest chambers. 
 
 Many years ago, in JSTew Zealand, I used sometimes 
 to accompany a dray and team of bullocks who would 
 have to be turned loose at night that they might feed. 
 There were no hedges or fences then, so sometimes I 
 could not find my team in the morning, and had no 
 clue to the direction in which they had gone. At first 
 I used to try and throw my soul into the bullocks' 
 souls, so as to divine if possible what they would be 
 likely to have done, and would then ride off ten miles 
 in the wrong direction. People used in those days to 
 lose their bullocks sometimes for a week or fortnight 
 when they perhaps were all the time hiding in a 
 gully hard by the place where they were turned out. 
 After some time I changed my tactics. On losing my 
 bullocks I would go to the nearest accommodation 
 house, and stand drinks. Some one would ere long, as 
 a general rule, turn up who had seen the bullocks. This 
 case does not go quite on all fours with what I have 
 been saying above, inasmuch as I was not very indus- 
 
ON THE DECLINE OF ITALIAN ART. 299 
 
 trious in my limited area ; but the standing drinks and 
 inquiring was being as industrious as the circumstances 
 would allow. 
 
 To return, universities and academies are an obstacle 
 to the finding of doors in later life ; partly because they 
 push their young men too fast through doorways that 
 the universities have provided, and so discourage the 
 habit of being on the look-out for others ; and partly 
 because they do not take pains enough to make sure 
 that their doors are bond fide ones. If, to change the 
 metaphor, an academy has taken a bad shilling, it is 
 seldom very scrupulous about trying to pass it on. It 
 will stick to it that the shilling is a good one as long 
 as the police will let it. I was very happy at Cam- 
 bridge ; when I left it I thought I never again could 
 be so happy anywhere else ; I shall ever retain a most 
 kindly recollection both of Cambridge and of the 
 school where I passed my boyhood ; but I feel, as I 
 think most others must in middle life, that I have 
 spent as much of my maturer years in unlearning as 
 in learning. 
 
 The proper course is for a boy to begin the prac- 
 tical business of life many years earlier than he now 
 commonly does. He should begin at the very bottom 
 of a profession ; if possible of one which his family 
 has pursued before him for the professions will as- 
 suredly one day become hereditary. The ideal railway 
 director will have begun at fourteen as a railway porter. 
 He need not be a porter for more than a week or ten 
 days, any more than he need have been a tadpole more 
 than a short time ; but he should take a turn in prac- 
 tice, though briefly, at each of the lower branches in 
 the profession. The painter should do just the same. 
 He should begin by setting his employer's palette and 
 
300 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 cleaning his brushes. As for the good side of univer- 
 sities, the proper preservative of this is to be found in 
 the club. 
 
 If, then, we are to have a renaissance of art, there 
 must be a complete standing aloof from the academic 
 system. That system has had time enough. Where 
 and who are its men ? Can it point to one painter 
 who can hold his own with the men of, say, from 
 1450 to 1550? Academies will bring out men who 
 can paint hair very like hair, and eyes very like eyes, 
 but this is not enough. This is grammar and deport- 
 ment; we want wit and a kindly nature, and these 
 cannot be got from academies. As far as mere technique 
 is concerned, almost every one now can paint as well 
 as is in the least desirable. The same mutatis mutandis 
 holds good with writing as with painting. We want 
 less word-painting and fine phrases, and more observa- 
 tion at first-hand. Let us have a periodical illustrated 
 by people who cannot draw, and written by people 
 who cannot write (perhaps, however, after all, we have 
 some), but who look and think for themselves, and ex- 
 press themselves just as they please, and this we 
 certainly have not. Every contributor should be at 
 once turned out if he or she is generally believed to 
 have tried to do something which he or she did not 
 care about trying to do, and anything should be 
 admitted which is the outcome of a genuine liking. 
 People are always good company when they are doing 
 what they really enjoy. A cat is good company when 
 it is purring, or a dog when it is wagging its tail. 
 
 The sketching- clubs up and down the country might 
 form the nucleus of such a society, provided all pro- 
 fessional men were rigorously excluded. As for the 
 old masters, the better plan would be never even to 
 
ON THE DECLINE OF ITALIAN ART. 301 
 
 look at one of them, and to consign Eaffaelle, along 
 with Plato, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, Dante, Goethe, 
 and two others, neither of them Englishmen, to limbo, 
 as the Seven Humbugs of Christendom. 
 
 While we are about it, let us leave off talking about 
 " art for art's sake." Who is art, that it should have 
 a sake? A work of art should be produced for the 
 pleasure it gives the producer, and the pleasure he 
 thinks it will give to a few of whom he is fond ; but 
 neither money nor people whom he does not know 
 personally should be thought of. Of course such a 
 society as I have proposed would not remain incorrupt 
 long. "Everything that grows, holds in perfection 
 but a little moment." The members would try to 
 imitate professional men in spite of their rules, or, if 
 they escaped this and after a while got to paint well, 
 they would become dogmatic, and a rebellion against 
 their authority would be as necessary ere long as it 
 was against that of their predecessors : but the balance 
 on the whole would be to the good. 
 
 Professional men should be excluded, if for no other 
 reason yet for this, that they know too much for the 
 beginner to be en rapport with them. It is the beginner 
 who can help the beginner, as it is the child who is 
 the most instructive companion for another child. The 
 begirlner can understand the beginner, but the cross 
 between him and the proficient performer is too wide 
 for fertility. It savours of impatience, and is in flat 
 contradiction to the first principles of biology. It 
 does a beginner positive harm to look at the master^ 
 pieces of the great executionists, such as Rembrandt 
 or Turner. 
 
 If one is climbing a very high mountain which will 
 
302 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 tax all one's strength, nothing fatigues so much as 
 casting upward glances to the top ; nothing encourages 
 so much as casting downward glances. The top seems 
 never to draw nearer ; the parts that we have passed 
 retreat rapidly. Let a water-colour student go and see 
 the drawing by Turner in the basement of our National 
 Gallery, dated 1787. This is the sort of thing for him, 
 not to copy, but to look at for a minute or two now 
 and again. It will show him nothing about painting, 
 but it may serve to teach him not to overtax his 
 strength, and will prove to him that the greatest 
 masters in painting, as in everything else, begin by 
 doing work which is no way superior to that of their 
 neighbours. A collection of the earliest known works 
 of the greatest men would be much more useful to the 
 student than any number of their maturer works, for 
 it would show him that he need not worry himself 
 because his work does not look clever, or as silly people 
 say, " show power/' 
 
 The secrets of success are affection for the pursuit 
 chosen, a flat refusal to be hurried or to pass anything 
 as understood which is not understood, and an obstinacy 
 of character which shall make the student's friends find 
 it less trouble to let him have his own way than to 
 bend him into theirs. Our schools and academies or 
 universities are covertly but essentially radical insti- 
 tutions, and abhorrent to the genius of Conservatism. 
 Their sin is the true radical sin of being in too great a 
 hurry, and the natural result has followed, they waste 
 f far more time than they save. But it must be 
 remembered that this proposition like every other 
 wants tempering with a slight infusion of its direct 
 opposite. 
 
 I said in an early part of this book that the best 
 
ON THE DECLINE OF ITALIAN ART. 303 
 
 test to know whether or no one likes a picture is to 
 ask oneself whether one would like to look at it if one 
 was quite sure one was alone. The best test for a 
 painter as to whether he likes painting his picture is 
 to ask himself whether he should like to paint it if he 
 was quite sure that no one except himself, and the few 
 of whom he was very fond, would ever see it. If he 
 can answer this question in the affirmative, he is all 
 right ; if he cannot, he is all wrong. 
 
 I must reserve other remarks upon this subject for 
 another occasion. 
 
( 304 ) 
 
 SANCTUARIES OF OROPA AND GRAGLIA. 
 (FROM CHAPTERS xv. AND xvi. OF ALPS AND 
 
 SANCTUARIES.) 
 
 r pHE morning after our arrival at Biella, we took the 
 JL daily diligence for Oropa, leaving Biella at eight 
 o'clock. Before we were clear of the town we could 
 see the long line of the hospice, and the chapels dotted 
 about near it, high up in a valley at some distance off ; 
 presently we were shown another fine building some 
 eight or nine miles away, which we were told was the 
 sanctuary of Graglia. About this time the pictures 
 and statuettes of the Madonna began to change their 
 hue and to become black for the sacred image of 
 Oropa being black, all the Madonnas in her immediate 
 neighbourhood are of the same complexion. Under- 
 neath some of them is written, " Nigra sum sed sum 
 formosa," which, as a rule, was more true as regards 
 the 'first epithet than the second. 
 
 It was not market-day, but streams of people were 
 coming to the town. Many of them were pilgrims 
 returning from the sanctuary, but more were bringing 
 the produce of their farms or the work of their hands 
 for sale. We had to face a steady stream of chairs, 
 which were coming to town in baskets upon women's 
 heads. Each basket contained twelve chairs, though 
 whether it is correct to say that the basket contained 
 
SANCTUARIES OF OROPA AND GRAGLIA. 305 
 
 the chairs when the chairs were all, so to say, froth 
 running over the top of the basket is a point I can- 
 not settle. Certainly we had never seen anything like 
 so many chairs before, and felt almost as though we 
 had surprised nature in the laboratory wherefrom she 
 turns out the chair-supply of the world. The road 
 continued through a succession of villages almost run- 
 ning into one another for a long way after Biella was 
 passed, but everywhere we noticed the same air of 
 busy thriving industry which we had seen in Biella 
 itself. We noted also that a preponderance of the 
 people had light hair, while that of the children was 
 frequently nearly white, as though the infusion of 
 German blood was here stronger even than usual. 
 Though so thickly peopled, the country was of great 
 beauty. Near at hand were the most exquisite pastures 
 close shaven after their second mowing, gay with 
 autumnal crocuses, and shaded with stately chestnuts ; 
 beyond were rugged mountains, in a combe on one of 
 which we saw Oropa itself now gradually nearing ; 
 behind, and below, many villages, with vineyards and 
 terraces cultivated to the highest perfection; farther 
 on, Biella already distant, and beyond this a " big 
 stare," as an American might say, over the plains of 
 Lombardy from Turin to Milan, with the Apennines 
 from Genoa to Bologna hemming the horizon. On the 
 road immediately before us, we still faced the same 
 steady stream of chairs flowing ever Biella- ward. 
 
 After a couple of hours the houses became more 
 rare; we got above the sources of the chair-stream; 
 bits of rough rock began to jut out from the pasture ; 
 here and there the rhododendron began to shew itself 
 by the roadside ; the chestnuts left off along a line as 
 level as though cut with a knife ; stone-roofed cascine 
 
 u 
 
306 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 began to abound, with goats and cattle feeding near 
 them ; the booths of the religious trinket-mongers in- 
 creased ; the blind, halt, and maimed became more im- 
 portunate, and the foot-passengers were more entirely 
 composed of those whose object was, or had been, a 
 visit to the sanctuary itself. The numbers of these 
 pilgrims generally in their Sunday's best, and often 
 comprising the greater part of a family were so great, 
 though there was no special festa, as to testify to the 
 popularity of the institution. They generally walked 
 barefoot, and carried their shoes and stockings ; their 
 baggage consisted of a few spare clothes, a little food, 
 and a pot or pan or two to cook with. Many of them 
 looked very tired, and had evidently tramped from long 
 distances indeed, we saw costumes belonging to valleys 
 which could not be less than two or three days distant. 
 They were almost invariably quiet, respectable, and 
 decently clad, sometimes a little merry, but never noisy, 
 and none of them tipsy. As we travelled along the 
 road, we must have fallen in with several hundreds of 
 these pilgrims coming and going ; nor is this likely to 
 be an extravagant estimate, seeing that the hospice can 
 make up more than five thousand beds. By eleven we 
 were at the sanctuary itself. 
 
 Fancy a quiet upland valley, the floor of which is 
 about the same height as the top of Snowdon, shut in 
 by lofty mountains upon three sides, while on the 
 fourth the eye wanders at will over the plains below. 
 Fancy finding a level space in such a valley watered 
 by a beautiful mountain stream, and nearly filled by a 
 pile of collegiate buildings, not less important than 
 those, we will say, of Trinity College, Cambridge. True, 
 Oropa is not in the least like Trinity, except that one 
 of its courts is large, grassy, has a chapel and a foun- 
 
SANCTUARIES OF OROPA AND GRAGLIA. 307 
 
 tain in it, and rooms all round it; but I do not know 
 how better to give a rough description of Oropa than 
 by comparing it with one of our largest English colleges. 
 The buildings consist of two main courts. The first 
 comprises a couple of modern wings, connected by the 
 magnificent facade of what is now the second or inner 
 court. This facade dates from about the middle of the 
 seventeenth century ; its lowest storey is formed by an 
 open colonnade, and the whole stands upon a raised 
 terrace from which a noble flight of steps descends 
 into the outer court. 
 
 Ascending the steps and passing under the colon- 
 nade, we find ourselves in the second or inner court, 
 which is a complete quadrangle, and is, so at least we 
 were told, of rather older date than the facade. This is 
 the quadrangle which gives its collegiate character to 
 Oropa. It is surrounded by cloisters on three sides, 
 on to which the rooms in which the pilgrims are 
 lodged open those at least that are on the ground- 
 floor, but there are three storeys. The chapel, which 
 was dedicated in the year 1 600, juts out into the court 
 upon the north-east side. On the north-west and 
 south-west sides are entrances through which one may 
 pass to the open country. The grass at the time of 
 our visit was for the most part covered with sheets 
 spread out to dry. They looked very nice, and, dried 
 on such grass, and in such an air, they must be de- 
 licious to sleep on. There is, indeed, rather an appear- 
 ance as though it were a perpetual washing-day at 
 Oropa, but this is not to be wondered at considering 
 the numbers of comers and goers ; besides, people in 
 Italy do not make so much fuss about trifles as we do. 
 If they want to wash their sheets and dry them, they 
 do not send them to Ealing, but lay them out in the 
 
308 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 first place that comes handy, and nobody's bones are 
 broken. 
 
 On the east side of the main block of buildings there 
 is a grassy slope adorned with chapels that contain 
 figures illustrating scenes in the history of the Virgin. 
 These figures are of terra-cotta, for the most part life- 
 size, and painted up to nature. In some cases, if I 
 remember rightly, they have hemp or flax for hair, as 
 at Varallo, and throughout realism is aimed at as far 
 as possible, not only in the figures, but in the acces- 
 sories. We have very little of the same kind in Eng- 
 land. In the Tower of London there is an effigy of 
 Queen Elizabeth going to the city to give thanks for 
 the defeat of the Spanish Armada. This looks as if it 
 might have been the work of some one of the Yalsesian 
 sculptors. There are also the figures that strike the 
 quarters of Sir John Bennett's city clock in Cheapside. 
 The automatic movements of these last-named figures 
 would have struck the originators of the Varallo chapels 
 with envy. They aimed at realism so closely that they 
 would assuredly have had recourse to clockwork in 
 some one or two of their chapels ; I cannot doubt, 
 for example, that they would have eagerly welcomed 
 the idea of making the cock crow to Peter by a cuckoo- 
 clock arrangement, if it had been presented to them. 
 This opens up the whole question of realism versus con- 
 ventionalism in art a subject much too large to be 
 treated here. 
 
 As I have said, the founders of these Italian chapels 
 aimed at realism. Each chapel was intended as an 
 illustration, and the desire was to bring the whole 
 scene more vividly before the faithful by combining 
 the picture, the statue, and the effect of a scene upon 
 the stage in a single work of art. The attempt would 
 
SANCTUARIES OF OROPA AND GRAGLIA. 309 
 
 be an ambitious one though made once only in a 
 neighbourhood, but in most of the places in North 
 Italy where anything of the kind has been done, the 
 people have not been content with a single illustration ; 
 it has been their scheme to take a mountain as though 
 it had been a book or wall and cover it with illustra- 
 tions. In some cases as at Orta, whose Sacro Monte 
 is perhaps the most beautiful of all as regards the site 
 itself the failure is complete, but in some of the 
 chapels at Varese and in many of those at Varallo, 
 great works have been produced which have not yet 
 attracted as much attention as they deserve. It may 
 be doubted, indeed, whether there is a more remarkable 
 work of art in North Italy than the crucifixion chapel 
 at Varallo, where the twenty-five statues, as well as 
 the frescoes behind them, are (with the exception of 
 the figure of Christ, which has been removed) by 
 Gaudenzio Ferrari. It is to be wished that some one 
 of these chapels both chapel and sculptures were 
 reproduced at South Kensington. 
 
 Varallo, which is undoubtedly the most interesting 
 sanctuary in North Italy, has forty-four of these illus- 
 trative chapels ; Varese, fifteen ; Orta, eighteen ; and 
 Oropa, seventeen. No one is allowed to enter them, 
 except when repairs are needed ; but when these are 
 going on, as is constantly the case, it is curious to 
 look through the grating into the somewhat darkened 
 interior, and to see a living figure or two among the 
 statues ; a little motion on the part of a single figure 
 seems to communicate itself to the rest and make them 
 all more animated. If the living figure does not move 
 much, it is easy at first to mistake it for a terra-cotta 
 one. At Orta, some years since, looking one evening 
 into a chapel when the light was fading, I was suprised 
 
310 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 to see a saint whom I had not seen before ; he had 
 no glory except what shone from a very red nose ; he 
 was smoking a short pipe, and was painting the Virgin 
 Mary's face. The touch was a finishing one, put on 
 with deliberation, slowly, so that it was two or three 
 seconds before I discovered that the interloper was no 
 saint. 
 
 The figures in the chapels at Oropa are not as good 
 as the best of those at Varallo, but some of them are 
 very nice notwithstanding. We liked the seventh 
 chapel the best the one which illustrates the sojourn 
 of the Virgin Mary in the Temple. It contains forty- 
 four figures, and represents the Virgin on the point of 
 completing her education as head girl at a high-toned 
 academy for young gentlewomen. All the young 
 ladies are at work making mitres for the bishop, or 
 working slippers in Berlin wool for the new curate, 
 but the Virgin sits on a dais above the others on the 
 same platform with the venerable lady-principal, who 
 is having passages read out to her from some standard 
 Hebrew writer. The statues are the work of a local 
 sculptor, named Aureggio, who lived at the end of the 
 seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth century. 
 
 The highest chapel must be a couple of hundred 
 feet above the main buildings, and from near it there 
 is an excellent bird's-eye view of the sanctuary and 
 the small plain behind ; descending on to this last, we 
 entered the quadrangle from the north-west side, and 
 visited the chapel in which the sacred image of the 
 Madonna is contained. We did not see the image itself, 
 which is only exposed to public view on great occasions. 
 It is believed to have been carved by St. Luke the 
 Evangelist. It is said that at one time there was 
 actually an inscription on the image in Greek characters, 
 
SANCTUARIES OF OROPA AND GRAGLIA. 311 
 
 of which the translation is, "Eusebius. A token of 
 respect and affection from his sincere friend, Luke ; " 
 but this being written in chalk or pencil only, has 
 been worn off, and is known by tradition only. I must 
 ask the reader to content himself with the following 
 account of it which I take from Marocco's work upon 
 Oropa : 
 
 " That this statue of the Virgin is indeed by St. 
 Luke is attested by St. Eusebius, a man of eminent 
 piety, and no less enlightened than truthful, and the 
 store which he set by it is proved by his shrinking 
 from no discomforts in his carriage of it from a distant 
 country, and by his anxiety to put it in a place of 
 great security. His desire, indeed, was to keep it in 
 the spot which was most near and dear to him, so 
 that he might extract from it the higher incitement 
 to devotion, and more sensible comfort in the midst 
 of his austerities and apostolic labours. 
 
 " This truth is further confirmed by the quality of 
 the wood from which the statue is carved, which is 
 commonly believed to be cedar; by the Eastern 
 character of the work ; by the resemblance both of 
 the lineament and the colour to those of other statues 
 by St. Luke ; by the tradition of the neighbourhood, 
 which extends in an unbroken and well-assured line to 
 the time of St. Eusebius himself ; by the miracles that 
 have been worked here by its presence, and elsewhere 
 by its invocation, or even by indirect contact with it ; 
 by the miracles, lastly, which are inherent in the image 
 itself,""" and which endure to this day, such as is its im- 
 munity from all worm and from the decay which would 
 
 * " Dalle meraviglie finalmente che sono inerenti al simulacro stesso." 
 Cenni storico artistic! intorno al santuario di Oropa. (Prof. Maurizio, 
 Marocco. Turin, Milan, 1866, p. 329.) 
 
312 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 naturally have occurred in it through time and damp 
 more especially in the feet, through the rubbing of 
 religious objects against them. 
 
 " The authenticity of this image is so certainly and 
 clearly established, that all supposition to the contrary 
 becomes inexplicable and absurd. Such, for example, 
 is a hypothesis that it should not be attributed to the 
 Evangelist, but to another Luke, also called ' Saint,' 
 and a Florentine by birth. This painter lived in the 
 eleventh century that is to say, about seven centuries 
 after the image of Oropa had been known and vene- 
 rated ! This is indeed an anachronism. 
 
 " Other difficulties drawn either from the ancient 
 discipline of the Church or from St. Luke the Evan- 
 gelist's profession, which was that of a physician, vanish 
 at once when it is borne in mind firstly, that the cult 
 of holy images, and especially of that of the most 
 blessed Virgin, is of extreme antiquity in the Church, 
 and of apostolic origin, as is proved by ecclesiastical 
 writers and monuments found in the catacombs which 
 date as far back as the first century (see among other 
 authorities, Mcolas, La Vergine vivente nella Chiesa, 
 lib. iii. cap. iii. 2) ; secondly, that as the medical pro- 
 fession does not exclude that of artists, St. Luke may 
 have been both artist and physician ; that he did 
 actually handle both the brush and the scalpel is 
 established by respectable and very old traditions, to 
 say nothing of other arguments which can be found in 
 impartial and learned writers upon such matters." 
 
 I will only give one more extract. It runs : 
 
 "In 1855 a celebrated Eoman portrait-painter, after 
 having carefully inspected the image of the Virgin 
 
SANCTUARIES OF OROPA AND GRAGLIA. 313 
 
 Mary at Oropa, declared it to be certainly a work of 
 the first century of our era." ^ 
 
 I once saw a common cheap china copy of this 
 Madonna announced as to be given away with two 
 pounds of tea, in a shop near Hatton Garden. 
 
 The church in which the sacred image is kept is 
 interesting from the pilgrims who at all times frequent 
 it, and from the collection of votive pictures which 
 adorn its walls. Except the votive pictures and the 
 pilgrims the church contains little of interest, and I 
 will pass on to the constitution and objects of the 
 establishment. 
 
 The objects are I. Gratuitous lodging to all comers 
 for a space of from three to nine days as the rector may 
 think fit. 2. A school. 3. Help to the sick and poor. 
 It is governed by a president and six members, who 
 form a committee. Four members are chosen by the 
 communal council, and two by the cathedral chapter 
 of Biella. At the hospice itself there reside a director, 
 with his assistant, a surveyor to keep the fabric in re- 
 pair, a rector or dean with six priests, called cappellani, 
 and a medical man. " The government of the laundry," 
 so runs the statute on this head, " and analogous do- . 
 mestic services are entrusted to a competent number 
 of ladies of sound constitution and good conduct, who 
 live together in the hospice under the direction of an 
 inspectress, and are called daughters of Oropa." 
 
 The bye-laws of the establishment are conceived in 
 a kindly, genial spirit, which in great measure accounts 
 for its unmistakable popularity. We understood that 
 the poorer visitors, as a general rule, avail themselves 
 of the gratuitous lodging, without making any present 
 when they leave, but in spite of this it is quite clear 
 
 * Marocco, p. 331. 
 
314 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 that they are wanted to come, and come they accord- 
 ingly do. It is sometimes difficult to lay one's hands 
 upon the exact passages which convey an impression, 
 but as we read the bye-laws which are posted up in 
 the cloisters, we found ourselves continually smiling 
 at the manner in which almost anything that looked 
 like a prohibition could be removed with the consent 
 of the director. There is no rule whatever about 
 visitors attending the church ; all that is required of 
 them is that they do not interfere with those who do. 
 They must not play games of chance, or noisy games ; 
 they must not make much noise of any sort after ten 
 o'clock at night (which corresponds about with mid- 
 night in England). They should not draw upon the 
 walls of their rooms, nor cut the furniture. They 
 should also keep their rooms clean, and not cook in 
 those that are more expensively furnished. This is 
 about all that they must not do, except fee the servants, 
 which is most especially and particularly forbidden. 
 If any one infringes these rules, he is to be admonished, 
 and in case of grave infraction or continued misde- 
 meanor he may be expelled and not readmitted. 
 
 Visitors who are lodged in the better-furnished 
 apartments can be waited upon if they apply at the 
 office ; the charge is twopence for cleaning a room, 
 making the bed, bringing water, &c. If there is more 
 than one bed in a room, a penny must be paid for 
 every bed over the first. Boots can be cleaned for a 
 penny, shoes for a halfpenny. For carrying wood, &c., 
 either a halfpenny or a penny will be exacted accord- 
 ing to the time taken. Payment for these services 
 must not be made to the servant, but at the office. 
 
 The gates close at ten o'clock at night, and open at 
 sunrise, " but if any visitor wishes to make Alpine 
 
SANCTUARIES OF OROPA AND GRAGLIA. 315 
 
 excursions, or has any other sufficient reason, he should 
 let the director know." Families occupying many 
 rooms must when the hospice is very crowded, and 
 when they have had due notice manage to pack 
 themselves into a smaller compass. No one can have 
 rooms kept for him. It is to be strictly " first come, 
 first served." No one must sublet his room. Visitors 
 must not go away without giving up the key of their 
 room. Candles and wood may be bought at a fixed 
 price. 
 
 Any one wishing to give anything to the support of 
 the hospice must do so only to the director, the official 
 who appoints the apartments, the dean or the cappel- 
 lani, or to the inspectress of the daughters of Oropa, 
 but they must have a receipt for even the smallest 
 sum ; alms-boxes, however, are placed here and there 
 into which the smaller offerings may be dropped (we 
 imagine this means anything under a franc). 
 
 The poor will be fed as well as housed for three 
 days gratuitously provided their health does not re- 
 quire a longer stay ; but they must not beg on the 
 premises of the hospice ; professional beggars will be 
 at once handed over to the mendicity society in Biella, 
 or even perhaps to prison. The poor for whom a 
 hydropathic course is recommended, can have it under 
 the regulations made by the committee that is to say, 
 if there is a vacant place. 
 
 There are trattorie and cafes at the hospice, where 
 refreshments may be obtained both good and cheap. 
 Meat is to be sold there at the prices current in Biella ; 
 bread at two centimes the chilogramma more, to pay 
 for the cost of carriage. 
 
 Such are the bye-laws of this remarkable institution. 
 
 Few except the very rich are so under- worked that 
 
3i5 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 two or three days of change and rest are not at times 
 a boon to them, while the mere knowledge that there 
 is a place where repose can be had cheaply and plea- 
 santly is itself a source of strength. Here, so long as 
 the visitor wishes to be merely housed, no questions 
 are asked ; no one is refused admittance, except for 
 some obviously sufficient reason ; it is like getting a 
 reading ticket for the British Museum, there is prac- 
 tically but one test that is to say, desire on the part 
 of the visitor the coming proves the desire, and this 
 suffices. A family, we will say, has just gathered its 
 first harvest ; the heat on the plains is intense, and 
 the malaria from the rice-grounds little less than pes- 
 tilential ; what, then, can be nicer than to lock up the 
 house and go for three days to the bracing mountain 
 air of Oropa ? So at daybreak off they all start trudg- 
 ing, it may be, their thirty or forty miles, and reach- 
 ing Oropa by nightfall. If there is a weakly one among 
 them, some arrangement is sure to be practicable 
 whereby he or she can be helped to follow more 
 leisurely, and can remain longer at the hospice. Once 
 arrived, they generally, it is true, go the round of the 
 chapels, and make some slight show of pilgrimage, but 
 the main part of their time is spent in doing absolutely 
 nothing. It is sufficient amusement to them to sit on 
 the steps, or lie about under the shadow of the trees, 
 and neither say anything nor do anything, but simply 
 breathe, and look at the sky and at each other. We 
 saw scores of such people just resting instinctively in 
 a kind of blissful waking dream. Others saunter along 
 the walks which have been cut in the woods that sur- 
 round the hospice, or if they have been pent up in a 
 town and have a fancy for climbing, there are moun- 
 tain excursions, for the making of which the hospice 
 
SANCTUARIES OF OROPA AND GRAGLIA. 317 
 
 affords excellent headquarters, and which are looked 
 upon with every favour by the authorities. 
 
 It must be remembered also that the accommodation 
 provided at Oropa is much better than what the people 
 are, for the mo3t part, accustomed to in their own 
 homes, and the beds are softer, more often beaten up, 
 and cleaner than those they have left behind them. 
 Besides, they have sheets and beautifully clean sheets. 
 Those who know the sort of place in which an Italian 
 peasant is commonly content to sleep, will understand 
 how much he must enjoy a really clean and comfortable 
 led, especially when he has not got to pay for it. Sleep, 
 in the circumstances of comfort which most readers 
 will be accustomed to, is a more expensive thing than 
 is commonly supposed. If we sleep eight hours in a 
 London hotel we shall have to pay from 4d. to 6d. an 
 hour, or from id. to i-^d. for every fifteen minutes we 
 lie in bed ; nor is it reasonable to believe that the 
 charge is excessive when we consider the vast amount 
 of competition which exists. There is many a man 
 the expenses of whose daily meat, drink, and clothing 
 are less than what an accountant would show us we, 
 many of us, lay out nightly upon our sleep. The cost 
 of really comfortable sleep-necessaries cannot, of course, 
 be nearly so great at Oropa as in a London hotel, but 
 they are enough to put them beyond the reach of the 
 peasant under ordinary circumstances, and he relishes 
 them all the more when he can get them. 
 
 But why, it may be asked, should the peasant have 
 these things if he cannot afford to pay for them ; and 
 why should he not pay for them if he can afford to do 
 so ? If such places as Oropa were common, would not 
 lazy vagabonds spend their lives in going the rounds of 
 them, &c., &c. ? Doubtless if there were many Oropas, 
 
3i8 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 they would do more harm than good, but there are 
 some things which answer perfectly well as rarities or 
 on a small scale, out of which all the virtue would 
 depart if they were common or on a larger one ; and 
 certainly the impression left upon our minds by Oropa 
 was that its effects were excellent. 
 
 Granted the sound rule to be that a man should 
 pay for what he has, or go without it ; in practice, 
 however, it is found impossible to carry this rule out 
 strictly. Why does the nation give A. B., for instance, 
 and all comers a large, comfortable, well- ventilated, 
 warm room to sit in, with chair, table, reading-desk, 
 &c., all more commodious than what he may have at 
 home, without making him pay a sixpence for it 
 directly from year's end to year's end ? The three or 
 nine days' visit to Oropa is a trifle in comparison with 
 what we can all of us obtain in London if we care 
 about it enough to take a very small amount of trouble. 
 True, one cannot sleep in the reading-room of the 
 British Museum not all night, at least but by day 
 one can make a home of it for years together except 
 during cleaning times, and then it is hard if one can- 
 riot get into the National Gallery or South Kensington, 
 and be warm, quiet, and entertained without paying 
 for it. 
 
 It will be said that it is for the national interest 
 that people should have access to treasuries of art or 
 knowledge, and therefore it is worth the nation's while 
 to pay for placing the means of doing so at their dis- 
 posal ; granted, but is not a good bed one of the great 
 ends of knowledge, whereto it must work, if it is to be 
 accounted knowledge at all? andit is not worth a nation's 
 while that her children should now and again have prac- 
 tical experience of a higher state of things than the one 
 
SANCTUARIES OF OROPA AND GRAGLIA. 319 
 
 they are accustomed to, and a few days' rest and change 
 of scene and air, even though she may from time to 
 time have to pay something in order to enable them to 
 do so ? There can be few books which do an averagely- 
 educated Englishman so much good, as the glimpse of 
 comfort which he gets by sleeping in a good bed in a 
 well-appointed room does to an Italian peasant ; such 
 a glimpse gives him an idea of higher potentialities in 
 connection with himself, and nerves him to exertions 
 which he would not otherwise make. On the whole, 
 therefore, we concluded that if the British Museum 
 reading-room was in good economy, Oropa was so also ; 
 at any rate, it seemed to be making a large number of 
 very nice people quietly happy and it is hard to say 
 more than this in favour of any place or institution. 
 
 The idea of any sudden change is as repulsive to 
 us as it will be to the greater number of my readers ; 
 but if asked whether we thought our English univer- 
 sities would do most good in their present condition 
 as places of so-called education, or if they were turned 
 into Oropas, and all the educational part of the story 
 totally suppressed, we inclined to think they would be 
 more popular and more useful in this latter capacity. 
 We thought also that Oxford and Cambridge were 
 just the places, and contained all the appliances and 
 endowments almost ready made for constituting two 
 splendid and truly imperial cities of recreation uni- 
 versities in deed as well as in name. Nevertheless 
 we should not venture to propose any further actual 
 reform during the present generation than to carry the 
 principle which is already admitted as regards the 
 M.A. a degree a trifle further, and to make the B.A. 
 degree a mere matter of lapse of time and fees leaving 
 the little go, and whatever corresponds to it at Oxford, 
 
320 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 as the final examination. This would be enough for 
 the present. 
 
 There is another sanctuary about three hours' walk 
 over the mountain behind Oropa, at Andorno, and 
 dedicated to St. John. We were prevented by the 
 weather from visiting it, but understand that its objects 
 arer much the same as those of the institution I have 
 just described. I will now proceed to the third sanctu- 
 ary for which the neighbourhood of Biella is renowned. 
 
 At Graglia I was shown all over the rooms in which 
 strangers are lodged, and found them not only comfort- 
 able but luxurious decidedly more so than those of 
 Oropa ; there was the same cleanliness everywhere 
 which I had noticed in the restaurant. As one stands 
 at the windows or on the balconies and looks down 
 to the tops of the chestnuts, and over these to the 
 plains, one feels almost as if one could fly out of the 
 window like a bird ; for the slope of the hills is so 
 rapid that one has a sense of being already suspended 
 in mid-air. 
 
 I thought I observed a desire to attract English 
 visitors in the pictures which I saw in the bedrooms. 
 Thus there was " A view of the Black-lead Mine in 
 Cumberland," a coloured English print of the end of 
 the last century or the beginning of this, after, I think, 
 Loutherbourg, and in several rooms there were English 
 engravings after Martin. The English will not, I 
 thing, regret if they yield to these attractions. They 
 will find the air cool, shady walks, good food, and 
 reasonable prices. Their rooms will not be charged 
 for, but they will do well to give the same as they 
 would have paid at a hotel. I saw in one room one 
 of those flippant, frivolous, Lorenzo de' Medici match- 
 
SANCTUARIES OF OROPA AND GRAGLIA. 321 
 
 boxes on which there was a gaudily-coloured nymph 
 in high-heeled boots and tights, smoking a cigarette. 
 Feeling that I was in a sanctuary, I was a little sur- 
 prised that such a matchbox should have been tolerated. 
 I suppose it had been left behind by some guest. I 
 should myself select a matchbox with the Nativity 
 or the Flight into Egypt upon it, if I were going to 
 stay a week or so at Graglia. I do not think I can 
 have looked surprised or scandalised, but the worthy 
 official who was with me could just see that there was 
 something on my mind. " Do you want a match ? " 
 said he, immediately reaching me the box. I helped 
 myself, and the matter dropped. 
 
 There were many fewer people at Graglia than at 
 Oropa, and they were richer. I did not see any poor 
 about, but I may have been there during a slack time. 
 An impression was left upon me, though I cannot say 
 whether it was well or ill founded, as though there 
 were a tacit understanding between the establishments 
 at Oropa and Graglia that the one was to adapt itself 
 to the poorer, and the other to the richer classes of 
 society ; and this not from any sordid motive, but from 
 a recognition of the fact that any great amount of 
 intermixture between the poor and the rich is not 
 found satisfactory to either one or the other. Any wide 
 difference in fortune does practically amount to a 
 specific difference, which renders the members of either 
 species more or less suspicious of those of the other, 
 and seldom fertile inter se. The well-to-do working- 
 man can help his poorer friends better than we can. If 
 an educated man has money to spare, he will apply it 
 better in helping poor educated people than those who 
 are more strictly called the poor. As long as the world 
 is progressing, wide class distinctions are inevitable ; 
 
322 EXTRACTS FROM ALPS AND SANCTUARIES. 
 
 their discontinuance will be a sign that equilibrium has 
 been reached. Then human civilisation will become 
 as stationary as that of ants and bees. Some may say 
 it will be very sad when this is so ; others, that it will 
 be a good thing ; in truth, it is good either way, for 
 progress and equilibrium have each of them advantages 
 and disadvantages which make it impossible to assign 
 superiority to either ; but in both cases the good 
 greatly overbalances the evil; for in both the great 
 majority will be fairly well contented, and would hate 
 to live under any other system. 
 
 Equilibrium, if it is ever reached, will be attained 
 very slowly, and the importance of any change in a 
 system depends entirely upon the rate at which it is 
 made. No amount of change shocks or, in other 
 words, is important if it is made sufficiently slowly, 
 while hardly any change is too small to shock if it 
 is made suddenly. We may go down a ladder of ten 
 thousand feet in height if we do so step by step, while 
 a sudden fall of six or seven feet may kill us. The 
 importance, therefore, does not lie in the change, but 
 in the abruptness of its introduction. Nothing is abso- 
 lutely important or absolutely unimportant ; absolutely 
 good, or absolutely bad. 
 
 This is not what we like to contemplate. The 
 instinct of those whose religion and culture are on the 
 surface only is to conceive that they have found, or 
 can find, an absolute and eternal standard, about which 
 they can be as earnest as they choose. They would 
 have even the pains of hell eternal if they could. If 
 there had been any means discoverable by which they 
 could torment themselves beyond endurance, we may 
 be sure they would long since have found it out ; but 
 fortunately there is a stronger power which bars them 
 
SANCTUARIES OF OROPA AND GRAGLIA. 323 
 
 inexorably from their desire, and which has ensured 
 that intolerable pain shall last only for a very little 
 while. For either the circumstances or the sufferer 
 will change after no long time. If the circumstances 
 are intolerable, the sufferer dies : if they are not in- 
 tolerable, he becomes accustomed to them, and will 
 cease to feel them grievously. No matter what the 
 burden, there always has been, and always must be, a 
 way for us also to escape. 
 
A PSALM OF MONTREAL. 
 
 [The City of Montreal is one of the most rising and, in many respects, 
 most agreeable on the American continent, but its inhabitants are as 
 yet too busy with commerce to care greatly about the masterpieces 
 of old Greek Art. A cast of one of these masterpieces the finest 
 of the several statues of Discoboli, or Quoit-throwers was found by 
 the present writer in the Montreal Museum of Natural History ; it 
 was, however, banished from public view, to a room where were all 
 manner of skins, plants, snakes, insects, &c., and in the middle of these, 
 an old man, stuffing an owl. The dialogue perhaps true, perhaps 
 imaginary, perhaps a little of one and a little of the other between 
 the writer and this old man gave rise to the lines that follow.] 
 
 STOWED away in a Montreal lumber-room, 
 The Discobolus standeth, and turneth his face to the wall ; 
 Dusty, cobweb-covered, maimed, and set at naught, 
 Beauty crieth in an attic, and no man regardeth. 
 
 God ! O Montreal ! 
 
 Beautiful by night and day, beautiful in summer and winter, 
 Whole or maimed, always and alike beautiful, 
 He preacheth gospel of grace to the skins of owls, 
 And to one who seasoneth the skins of Canadian owls. 
 
 God ! Montreal ! 
 
 When I saw him, I was wroth, and I said, " Discobolus ! 
 Beautiful Discobolus, a Prince both among gods and men, 
 What doest thou here, how earnest thou here, Discobolus, 
 Preaching gospel in vain to the skins of owls 1 " 
 
 God ! Montreal ! 
 
A PSALM OF MONTREAL. 325 
 
 And I turned to the man of skins, and said unto him, " Oh ! 
 
 thou man of skins, 
 Wherefore hast thou done thus, to shame the beauty of the 
 
 Discobolus ? " 
 
 But the Lord had hardened the heart of the man of skins, 
 And he answered, " My brother-in-law is haberdasher to Mr. 
 
 Spurgeon." O God ! Montreal ! 
 
 " The Discobolus is put here because he is vulgar, 
 
 He hath neither vest nor pants with which to cover his 
 
 limbs ; 
 
 I, sir, am a person of most respectable connections, 
 My brother-in-law is haberdasher to Mr. Spurgeon." 
 
 God ! Montreal ! 
 
 Then I said, " brother-in law to Mr. Spurgeon's haber- 
 dasher ! 
 
 Who seasonest also the skins of Canadian owls, 
 
 Thou callest < trousers' * pants/ whereas I call them 
 'trousers/ 
 
 Therefore thou art in hell-fire, and may the Lord pity thee ! 
 
 God ! Montreal ! 
 
 " Preferrest thou the gospel of Montreal to the gospel of 
 Hellas, 
 
 The gospel of thy connection with Mr. Spurgeon's haber- 
 dashery to the gospel of the Discobolus 1 " 
 
 Yet none the less blasphemed he beauty, saying, " The 
 Discobolus hath no gospel, 
 
 But my brother-in-law is haberdasher to Mr. Spurgeon." 
 
 God ! Montreal ! 
 
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 A WORK OF SATIRE AND IMAGINATION. 
 
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