34 LUCK, OR CUNNING ! 



tions of any race are bond fide united by a common 

 personality, and that in virtue of being so united each 

 generation remembers (within, of course, the limits 

 to which all memory is subject) what happened to 

 it while still in the persons of its progenitors — then 

 his order to Professor Hering and myself should be 

 immediately obeyed ; but this was just what was at 

 once most wanted, and least done by Mr. Spencer. 

 Even in the passages given above — passages col- 

 lected by Mr. Spencer himself — this point is altogether 

 ignored ; make it clear as Professor Hering made it — 

 put continued personality and memory in the foreground 

 as Professor Hering did, instead of leaving them to be 

 discovered "by implications," and then such expressions 

 as " accumulated experiences " and " experience of the 

 race" become luminous; .till this had been done they 

 were " Vox et prceterea nihil." 



To sum up briefly. The passages quoted by Mr. 

 Spencer from his "Principles of Psychology" can 

 hardly be called clear, even now that Professor Hering 

 and others have thrown light upon them. If, indeed, 

 they had been clear, Mr. Spencer would probably have 

 seen what they necessitated, and found the way of 

 meeting the difficulties of the case which occurred to 

 Professor Hering and myself. Till we wrote, very few 

 writers had even suggested this. The idea that off- 

 spring was only " an elongation or branch proceeding 

 from its parents '' had scintillated in the ingenious 

 brain of Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and in that of the 

 designer of Jesse tree windows, but it had kindled 

 no fire ; it now turns out that Canon Kingsley had 



