Essays on Life 



them. In daily life people let fairly normal 

 circumstances come and go without much 

 heed as matters of course. If they have been 

 lucky they make a note of it and try to repeat 

 their success. If they have been unfortunate 

 but have recovered rapidly they soon forget 

 it ; if they have suffered long and deeply they 

 grizzle over it and are scared and scarred by 

 it for a long time. The question is one of 

 cognisance or non-cognisance on the part of 

 the new germs, of the more profound impres- 

 sions made on them while they were one with 

 their parents, between the occasion of their last 

 preceding development, and the new course on 

 which they are about to enter. Those who 

 accept the theory put forward independently 

 by Professor Hering of Prague (whose work 

 on this subject is translated in my book, 

 "Unconscious Memory") 1 and by myself in 

 " Life and Habit," 2 believe in cognizance, as 

 do Lamarckians generally. Weismannites, 

 and with them the orthodoxy of English 

 science, find non-cognisance more acceptable. 

 If the Heringian view is accepted, that 

 heredity is only a mode of memory, and an 



^Longmans, 1890. 2 Longmans, 1890. 



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