BUTLER'S LAMARCKISM 337 



Lamarck insisted. " According to Lamarck, genera and 

 species have been evolved, in the main, by exactly the same 

 process as that by which human inventions and civilisations 

 are now progressing ; and this involves that intelligence, 

 ingenuity, heroism, and all the elements of romance, should 

 have had the main share in the development of every herb 

 and living creature around us" (Life and Habit, p. 253). 

 Variations are indubitably the raw material of evolution 

 " The question is as to the origin and character of these 

 variations. We say they mainly originate in a creature 

 through a sense of its needs, and vary through the varying 

 surroundings which will cause those needs to vary, and 

 through the opening-up of new desires in many creatures, 

 as the consequence of the gratification of old ones ; they 

 depend greatly on differences of individual capacity and 

 temperament ; they are communicated, and in the course 

 of time transmitted, as what we call hereditary habits or 

 structures, though these are only, in truth, intense and 

 epitomised memories of how certain creatures liked to deal 

 with protoplasm " (p. 267). 



Butler's theory then is essentially a bold and enlightened 

 Lamarckism, completed and rounded off by the conception 

 that heredity too is a psychological process, of the same 

 nature as memory. 



In seeking to establish a close analogy between memory 

 and heredity Butler starts out from the fact of common 

 experience, that actions which on their first performance 

 require the conscious exercise of will and intelligence, 

 and are then carried out with difficulty and hesitation, 

 gradually through long-continued practice come to be 

 performed easily and automatically, without the conscious 

 exercise of intelligence or will. 



He tries to show that this is a general law that 

 knowledge and will become intense and perfect only when 

 through long-continued exercise they become automatic 

 and unconscious and he applies this conception to the 

 elucidation of development. 



Developmental processes, especially the early ones (of 

 Roux's first stage) are automatic and unconscious, and yet 

 imply the possession by the embryo of a wonderfully perfect 



