August 23, 1895.] 



SCIENCE. 



221 



up the child's nervous substance in fixed 

 forms that he would have less or possibly 

 no unstable substance left to learn anything 

 with. So, in fact, it is with the animals in 

 which instinct is largely developed ; thej' 

 have no power to learn anything new, just 

 because their nervous systems are not in 

 the mobile condition represented bj' high 

 consciousness. They have instinct and 

 little else. ISTow, I think the Preformist can 

 account for instinct also, but that is beside 

 the point ; what I wish to say now is that, 

 if Epigenesis were true, we should all be, 

 to the extent to which both parents do the 

 same acts (as, for example, speech) in the 

 condition of the creatures who do only cer- 

 tain things and do them by instinct. I 

 should like to ask of the Neo-Lamarckian : 

 What is it that is peculiar about the strain 

 of heredity of certain creatures that they 

 should be so remarkably endowed with in- 

 stincts? Must he not say in some form 

 that the nervous substance of these crea- 

 tures has been ' set ' in the creatures' an- 

 cestors? But the question of instinct is 

 touched upon under the next point. 



2. (6 of Cope's table.) " Habitual move- 

 ments are derived from conscious ex- 

 perience." This may mean movements 

 habitual to the individual or to the species 

 in question. If it refers to the individual 

 it may be true on either doctrine, provided 

 we once get the child started on the move- 

 ment — the point discussed under the pre- 

 ceding head. If, on the other hand, hab- 

 itual movements mean race movements, we 

 raise the question of race habits, best typi- 

 fied in instinct. . I agree with Mr. Cope that 

 most race habits are due to conscious func- 

 tion in the first place ; and making that 

 our supposition, again we ask : Can one 

 who believes it still be a Preformist? I 

 should again say that .he could. The prob- 

 lem set to the Preformist would not in this 

 case difiier from that which he has to solve 

 in accounting for development generally : 



it would not be altered by the postulate 

 that consciousness is present in the indi- 

 vidual. He can say that consciousness is a 

 variation, and what the individual does by 

 it is ' preformed ' in this variation. And 

 then what later generations do through 

 theii- consciousness is all preformed in the 

 variations which they constitute on the 

 earlier variations. In other words, I do 

 not see that the case is made any harder 

 for the Preformist by our postulate that 

 consciousness with its nervous correlate is 

 a real agent. And I think we may go 

 further and say that the case is easier for 

 him when we take into account the phenom- 

 ena of Social Heredity. In children, 

 for example, there are variations in their 

 mobility, plasticity, etc.; in short, in the 

 ease of operation of Social Heredity as 

 seen in the acquisition of particular func- 

 tions. Children are notoriously different 

 in their aptitudes for acquiring speech, for 

 example; some learn faster, better, and more. 

 Let us say that this is true in animal com- 

 munities generally ; then these most plastic 

 individuals will be preserved to do the ad- 

 vantageous things for which their variations 

 show them to be the most fit. And the 

 next generation will show an emphasis of 

 just this direction in its variations. So the 

 fact of Social Heredity — the fact of acute 

 use of consciousness in ontogeny — becomes 

 an element in phylogeny, also, even on the 

 Preformist theory. 



Besides, when we remember that the 

 permanence of a habit learned by one indi- 

 vidual is largely conditioned by the learn- 

 ing of the same habits of others (notably 

 of the opposite sex) in the same environ- 

 ment, we see that an enormous premium 

 must have been put on variations of a social 

 kind — those which brought different indi- 

 viduals into some kind of joint action or 

 cooperation. Wherever this appeared, not 

 only would habits be maintained, but new 

 variations, having all the force of double he- 



