Inherited Memory. 9 



are so perfectly acquired, i.e., have been performed so frequently, 

 that the possessor is quite unconscious of possessing them. 



Habit tends to become automatic ; indeed, a habit can hardly be 

 said to be formed until it is automatic. But habits are the result of 

 experience and repetition, that is, have arisen in the first instance by 

 some reasoning process; and reasoning implies consciousness. Never- 

 theless, the action once thought out, or reasoned upon, requires less 

 conscious effort on a second occasion, and still less on a third, and 

 so on, until the mere occurrence of given conditions is sufficient to 

 ensure immediate response without conscious effort, and the action 

 is performed mechanically or automatically : it is now a true habit. 

 Habit, then, commences in consciousness and ends in unconsciousness. 

 To say, therefore, when we see an action performed without 

 conscious thought, that consciousness has never had part in its 

 production, is as illogical as to say that because we read auto- 

 matically we can never have learned to read. 



The thorough appreciation of this principle is absolutely essential 

 to the argument of this work ; for to inherited memory we attribute 

 not only the formation of habits and instincts, but also the modifica- 

 tion of organs, which leads to the formation of new species. In a 

 word, it is to memory we attribute the possibility of evolution, and 

 by it the struggle for existence is enabled to re-act upon the forms 

 of life, and produce the harmony we see in the organic world. 



Our own investigations had led us very far in this direction ; but 

 we failed to grasp the entire truth until Mr. S. Butler's remarkable 

 work, " Life and Habit," came to our notice. This valuable contri- 

 bution to evolution smoothed away the whole of the difficulties we 

 had experienced, and enabled us to propound the views here set 

 forth with greater clearness than had been anticipated. 



The great difficulty in Mr. Darwin's works is the fact that he 

 starts with variations ready made, without trying, as a rule, to 

 account for them, and then shows that if these varieties are benefi- 

 cial the possessor has a better chance in the great struggle for exist- 

 ence, and the accumulation of such variations will give rise to new 

 species. This is what he means by the title of his work, " The 

 Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection or the Preservation 

 of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life." But this tells us 

 nothing whatever about the origin of species. As Butler puts it, 

 " Suppose that it is an advantage to a horse to have an especially 

 broad and hard hoof: then a horse born with such a hoof will, indeed, 



