46 DARWINIANISM. 



them to new ways of procuring their food. And that is 

 the difference between the two theorists which has been 

 already signalised, " the central idea," namely, " modi- 

 fication," which to Charles depended, in the first in- 

 stance, simply on casual individual variation. Still, it was 

 the same problem that occupied the thought of Erasmus. 

 He asked whether so and so was useful, not to us, but to 

 the organism itself ? What favoured its wellbeing 

 could it have been acquired " by an internal impulse and 

 gradual improvement " ? It was only Lamarck, however, 

 that would have agreed to that question, and not 

 Charles. That, plainly, assumes a movement from 

 within ; whereas to Charles the critical movement was 

 only from without. To that he was, so to speak, committed ; 

 life for him was to be submitted to physical law, just as 

 whatever was in space was to be submitted to the single 

 physical law of gravitation. That, even as so put, \\as 

 the one sole enterprise of Charles Darwin. It is the 

 look within, or the look without, that differentiates here 

 the two men, grandfather and grandson. They exchange 

 these their attitudes, however, in regard to instinct. In- 

 stinct to Erasmus is due to imitation from without, while to 

 Charles it is beyond all doubt an inherited habit from 

 within. Both opinions in that regard, plainly, admit of 

 much question and discussion ; not in place at present. 



It is a fixed belief of Erasmus, however, that, in this 

 connection, animals learn before birth certain modes of 

 ordinary actions which appear instinctive, as swimming, 

 walking, even swallowing. So, he would seem to 

 intimate, the foetus, in order to relieve the " tedium or 

 irksomeness of a continued posture," attains to stretching, 

 yawning, etc. ! Through touch, this same foetus, he 

 thinks, may have gained "some ideas of its own figure, or 

 of that of the uterus, and of the tenacity of the fluid 

 that surrounds it ! " Imitation as such, nevertheless, is 



