Translation from Hering 85 



innate, yet the fact of their taking form so easily and 

 certainly from out of the chaos of his sensations, is due 

 not to his own labour, but to that of the brain substance of 

 the thousands of thousands of generations from whom he 

 is descended. Theories concerning the development of 

 individual consciousness which deny heredity or the power 

 of transmission, and insist upon an entirely fresh start for 

 every human soul, as though the infinite number of genera- 

 tions that have gone before us might as well have never 

 lived for all the effect they have had upon ourselves, — 

 such theories will contradict the facts of our daily ex- 

 perience at every touch and turn. 



The brain processes and phenomena of consciousness 

 which ennoble man in the eyes of his fellows have had a 

 less ancient history than those connected with his physical 

 needs. Hunger and the reproductive instinct affected 

 the oldest and simplest forms of the organic world. It is 

 in respect of these instincts, therefore, and of the means 

 to gratify them, that the memory of organised substance 

 is strongest — the impulses and instincts that arise hence 

 having still paramount power over the minds of men. 

 The spiritual life has been superadded slowly ; its most 

 splendid outcome belongs to the latest epoch in the history 

 of organised matter, nor has any very great length of time 

 elapsed since the nervous system was first crowned with the 

 glory of a large and well-developed brain. 



Oral tradition and written history have been called the 

 memory of man, and this is not without its truth. But 

 there is another and a living memory in the innate re- 

 productive power of brain substance, and without tliis 

 both writings and oral tradition would be without signifi- 

 cance to posterity. The most sublime ideas, though never 



from without. INIan is agitated by more and more varied vibrations ; 

 these, interfering, as to some extent they must, with one another, 

 are weaker, and therefore require more accession from without 

 before they can set the mechanical adjustments of the body in 

 motion." 



