( 36 ) 



CHAPTEE III. 



ME. HEEBEKT SPENCER (continued). 



Whethee they ought to have gone or not, they did 

 not go. 



When "Life and Habit" was first published no one 

 considered Mr. Spencer to be maintaining the pheno- 

 mena of heredity to be in reality phenomena of memory. 

 When, for example. Professor Eay Lank-ester first called 

 attention to Professor Bering's address, he did not 

 understand Mr. Spencer to be intending this. " Pro- 

 fessor Hering," he wrote {Nature, July 13, 1876), 

 " helps us to a comprehensive view of the nature of 

 heredity and adaptation, by giving us the word 

 'memory,' conscious or unconscious, for the continuity 

 of Mr. Spencer's polar forces or polarities of physio- 

 logical units." He evidently found the prominence 

 given to memory a help to him which he had not 

 derived from reading Mr. Spencer's works. 



When, again, he attacked me in the Athenceum 

 (March 29, 1 884), he spoke of my "tardy recognition " 

 of the fact that Professor Hering had preceded me 

 " in treating all manifestations of heredity as a form 

 of memory." Professor Lankester's words could have 



