2 LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



upon it that knowledge of the conditions under which 

 an organism lives throws upon the organism itself. 

 I shall, therefore, begin this new work with a few 

 remarks about its predecessors. 



I am aware that what I may say on this head is 

 likely to prove more interesting to future students of 

 the literature of descent than to my immediate public, 

 but any book that desires to see cut a literary three- 

 score years and ten must offer something to future 

 generations as well as to its own. It is a condition 

 of its survival that it shall do this, and herein lies 

 one of an author's chief difficulties. If books only 

 lived as long as men and women, we should know 

 better how to grow them; as matters stand, however, 

 the author lives for one or two generations, whom he 

 comes in the end to understand fairly well, while the 

 book, if reasonable pains have been taken with it, 

 should live more or less usefully for a dozen. About 

 the greater number of these generations the author is 

 in the dark ; but come what may, some of them are 

 sure to have arrived at conclusions diametrically 

 opposed to our own upon every subject connected 

 with art, science, philosophy, and religion ; it is plain, 

 therefore, that if posterity is to be pleased, it can only 

 be at the cost of repelling some present readers. Un- 

 willing as I am to do this, I still hold it the lesser of 

 two evils'; I will be as brief, however, as the interests 

 of the opinions I am supporting will allow. 



In " Life and Habit " I contended that heredity was 

 a mode of memory. 1 endeavoured to show that all 

 hereditary traits, whether of mind or body, are inherited 



