MENDELIANS AND BIOMETRICIANS 409 



infinitely more useful than similar ( innate ' characters could pos- 

 sibly be. They render the individual adaptable. I do not think 

 I overstate the case when I insist that, until this truth be grasped, 

 all biological speculation concerning the evolution of the higher 

 animals must be, in great measure, futile. 



674. Very recent biological work has been mainly Mendelian 

 or biometric. Memory has been discussed by neither the one 

 school nor the other. Mendelian experiments could, at most, tell 

 us nothing more than whether the reproduction of memory is or 

 is not alternative, and it would not be easy to devise experiments 

 which would elucidate even that much. They would not indicate 

 the nature of memory. The problem is one for the thinker, not 

 the experimental observer. Biometricians, as we shall see, have 

 worked on the assumption that various characters which seem 

 clearly part of the contents of memory are ' innate ' or instinctive. 

 Indeed, it is probable that, more than any other section of biologists, 

 they have failed to realize the importance of the acquired factor in 

 the human mind. 1 



675. Speaking generally, very recent writers who deal with 

 mental evolution suppose that first reflex action, then instinct, and 

 lastly intelligence and reason were evolved ; other faculties such as 

 imagination, discrimination, and the power of drawing inferences, 

 being variously placed in the general scale. There seems good 

 reason to believe, however, that the true order of the evolution was 

 first reflex action, next instinct, and lastly memory. Imagination, 

 intelligence, reason, and the rest are merely operations which 

 animals perform because their memories have undergone sufficient 

 evolution. Without memory there could be no such faculties ; for 

 they are concerned solely with the contents of memory, associating, 

 comparing, discriminating, adding to them. In a real sense they 

 are themselves part of the contents of memory ; for infants learn 

 to think just as truly as they learn to walk or learn the facts about 

 which they think. The range and quality of the thinking are 

 entirely conditioned, on the one hand, by knowledge, and, on the 

 other, by the power of learning to think ; that is, from first to last 

 by memory. 



1 See 706 et seq. 



