BIOLOGICAL WRITINGS OF SAMUEL BUTLLR 35 



tion, Butler gave what was in many respects a more detailed 

 view of the coincidences of these different phenomena of organic 

 reproduction than did Hering. With much that is untenable, 

 Butler's writings present many a brilliant idea; yet, on the 

 whole, they are rather a retrogression than an advance upon 

 Hering. Evidently they failed to exercise any marked influence 

 upon the literature of the day." 



This judgment needs a little examination. Butler claimed 

 that his Life and Habit was an advance on Hering in its dealing 

 with questions of hybridity and of longevity, puberty and 

 sterility. 



Since Semon's extended treatment of the phenomena of 

 crosses might also be regarded as the rewriting of the corre- 

 sponding section of Life and Habit in the " Mneme " terminology, 

 we may infer that this view of the question was one of Butler's 

 " brilliant ideas." That Butler did not commit himself to such 

 a formal explanation of memory as Hering with his wave hypo- 

 thesis should certainly be counted as a distinct " advance upon 

 Hering," for Semon also avoids any attempt at an explanation 

 of " Mneme." I think, however, we may gather the real meaning 

 of Semon's strictures from the following passages : 



" I refrain here from a discussion of the development of this 

 theory of Lamarck's by those neo-Lamarckians who would 

 ascribe to the individual elementary organism an equipment 

 of complex psychical powers — so to say, anthropomorphic per- 

 ception and volitions. Their treatment is no longer directed 

 by the scientific principle of referring complex phenomena to 

 simpler laws, of deducing even human intellect and will from 

 simpler elements. On the contrary, they follow that most 

 abhorrent method of taking the most complex and unresolved 

 as a datum and employing it as an explanation. The adoption 

 of such a method, as formerly by Samuel Butler, and recently 

 by Pauly, I regard as a big and dangerous step backward " 

 (2nd ed. pp. 285-6, note). 



Thus Butler's alleged retrogressions belong to the same order 

 of thinking that we have seen shared by Driesch, Baldwin and 

 Jennings, and most explicitly avowed, as we shall see, by Francis 

 Darwin. Semon makes one rather candid admission : " The 

 impossibility of interpreting the phenomena of physiological 

 stimulation by those of direct reaction, and the undeception of 

 those who had put faith in this being possible, have led many 

 on the backward path of vitalism^ Semon assuredly will never 



