MR. HERBERT SPENCER. 21 



" On the one hand, Instinct may be regarded as a kind of 

 organised memory ; on the other hand, Memory may be 

 regarded as a kind of incipient instinct" (pp. 555-6.) 



" Memory, then, pertains to all that class of psychical states 

 which are in process of being organised. It continues so long as 

 the organising of them continues; and disappears when the 

 organisation of them is complete. In the advance of the corre- 

 spondence, each more complex class of phenomena which the 

 organism acquires the power of recognising is responded to at 

 first irregularly and uncertainly ; and there is then a weak re- 

 membrance of the relations. By multiplication of experiences 

 this remembrance becomes stronger, and the response more 

 certain. By further multiplication of experiences the internal 

 relations are at last automatically organised in correspondence 

 with the external ones ; and so conscious memory passes into 

 unconscious or organic memory. At the same time, a new and 

 still more complex order of experiences is thus rendered appre- 

 ciable ; the relations they present occupy the memory in place of 

 the simpler one ; they become gradually organised ; and, like 

 the previous ones, are succeeded by others more complex still " 



(P- 563). 



" Just as we saw that the establishment of those compound 

 reflex actions which we call instincts is comprehensible on 

 the principle that inner relations are, by perpetual repetition, 

 organised into correspondence with outer relations ; so the 

 establishment of those consolidated, those indissoluble, those 

 instinctive mental relations constituting our ideas of Space 

 and Time, is comprehensible on the same principle " (p. 579). 



In a book published a few weeks before Mr. 

 Spencer's letter appeared* I had said that though 

 Mr. Spencer at times closely approached Professor 

 Hering and " Life and Habit," he had nevertheless no- 

 where shown that he considered memory and heredity 

 to be parts 6f the same story and parcel of one another. 

 In his letter to the Athenceum, indeed, he does not 

 profess to have upheld this view, except " by implica- 



* Selections, &e., and Remarks on Romanes' "Mental Intelligence 

 in Animals," Triibner & Co., 1884, pp. 228, 229. 



