ROMANES' MENTAL EVOLUTION, ETC. 55 



however, is exactly what Professor Hering, whom I 

 have unwittingly followed, does. He resolves all 

 phenomena of heredity, whether in respect of body or 

 mind, into phenomena of memory. He says in effect, 

 " A man grows his body as he does, and a bird makes 

 her nest as she does, because both man and bird 

 remember having grown body and made nest as they 

 now do, or very nearly so, on innumerable past occa- 

 sions." He thus, as I have said on an earlier page, 

 reduces life from an equation of say 100 unknown 

 quantities to one of 99 only by showing that heredity 

 and memory, two of the original 100 unknown quan- 

 tities, are in reality part of one and the same thing. 



That he is right Mr. Eomanes seems to me to 

 admit, though in a very unsatisfactory way. 



What, for example, can be more unsatisfactory than 

 the following ? — Mr. Eomanes says that the most 

 fundamental principle of mental operation is that of 

 memory, and that this " is the conditio sine qud nan of 

 all mental life" (page 35). 



I do not understand Mr. Eomanes to hold that 

 there is any living being which has no mind at all, 

 and I do understand him to admit that development 

 of body and mind are closely interdependent. 



If, then, " the most fundamental principle " of mind 

 is memory, it follows that memory enters also as a 

 fundamental principle into development of body. For 

 mind and body are so closely connected that nothing 

 can enter largely into the one without correspondingly 

 affecting the other. 



On a later page Mr. Eomanes speaks point-blank- 



