198 EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW. 



seeing. He does not trouble himself about the origin 

 of life; as for the perceptions and reasoning faculties 

 of animals and plants, it is enough for him that 

 animals and plants do things which we say involve 

 sensation and consciousness when we do them our- 

 selves or see others do them. If, then, plants and 

 animals appear as if they felt and understood, let the 

 matter rest there, and let us say they feel and under- 

 stand being guided by the common use of language, 

 rather than by any theories concerning brain and 

 nervous system. If^ any young writer happens to be 

 in want of a subject, I beg to suggest that he may 

 find his opportunity in a 'Philosophy of the Super- 

 ficial.' 



Though Dr. Darwin was more deeply impressed than 

 Buffon with the oneness of personality between parents 

 and offspring, so that these latter are not " new " crea- 

 tures, but " elongations of the parents," and hence " may 

 retain some of the habits of the parent system," he did 

 not go on to infer definitely all that he might easily 

 have inferred from such a pregnant premiss. He did not 

 refer the repetition by offspring, of actions which their 

 parents have done for many generations, but which 

 they can never have seen those parents do, to the 

 memory (in the strict sense of the word) of their 

 having done those actions when they were in the per- 

 sons of their parents ; which memory, though dormant 

 until awakened by the presence of associated ideas, 

 becomes promptly kindled into activity when a suffi- 

 cient number of these ideas are reproduced. 



This, I gather, is the theory put forward by Profes- 

 sor Hering, of whose work, however, I know no more 



