PHILOSOPHY OF DR. ERASMUS DARWIN. 203 



fact, with which his system was incompatible, yet he 

 maintained that system with philosophic sturdiness, 

 though experience brought confutation from a thousand 



sources." * 



As commonly happens in such disputes, both were 

 right and both were wrong. The lady was right in 

 refusing to refer instinct to imitation, and the Doctor 

 was right in maintaining reason and instinct to be but 

 different degrees of perfection of the same mental pro- 

 cesses. Had he substituted " memory " for " imitation," 

 and asked the lady to define " sameness " or " personal 

 identity," he would have soon secured his victory. 



The main fact, compared with which all else is a 

 matter of detail, is the admission that instinct is only 

 reason become habitual. This admission involves, con- 

 sciously or unconsciously, the admission of all the 

 principles contended for in ' Life and Habit ' ; principles 

 which, if admitted, make the facts of heredity in- 

 telligible by showing that they are of the same cha- 

 racter as other facts which we call intelligible, but 

 denial of which makes nonsense of half the terms in 

 common use concerning it. For the view that instinct 

 is habitual reason involves sameness of personality 

 and memory as common to parents and offspring ; it in- 

 volves also the latency of that memory till rekindled by 

 the return of a sufficient number of its associated ideas, 

 and points the unconsciousness with which habitual 

 actions are performed. These principles being grasped, 

 the infertility inter se of widely distant species, the 

 commonly observed sterility of hybrids, the sterility of 

 * Miss Seward's ' Memoirs,' &c., p. 491. 



