6o LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



matters as reflex action, consciousness, intelligence, 

 purpose, knowledge of purpose, &c. ; it both introduces 

 the feature of inheritance which is the one mainly 

 distinguishing instinctive from so-called intelligent 

 actions, and shows the manner in which these last 

 pass into the first, that is to say, by way of memory 

 and habitual repetition ; finally it points the fact that 

 the new generation is not to be looked upon as a new 

 thing, but (as Dr. Erasmus Darwin long since said *) 

 as " a branch or elongation " of the one immediately 

 preceding it. 



In Mr. Darwin's case it is hardly possible to ex- 

 aggerate the waste of time, money, and trouble that has 

 been caused by his not having been content to appear 

 as descending with modification like other people from 

 those who went before him. It will take years to get 

 the evolution theory out of the mess in which Mr. 

 Darwin has left it. He was heir to a discredited truth ; 

 he left behind him an accredited fallacy. Mr. Eomanes, 

 if he is not stopped in time, will get the theory con- 

 necting heredity and memory into just such another 

 muddle as Mr. Darwin has got evolution, for surely the 

 writer who can talk about " heredity hei'iig able to work 

 up the faculty of homing into the instinct of migra- 

 tion," t or of " the principle of (natural) selection com- 

 bining with that of lapsing intelligence to the formation 

 of a joint result," | is little likely to depart from the 

 usual methods of scientific procedure with advantage 



* Zoonomia, vol. i. p. 4S4. 



+ Mental Evolution in Animals, fk 297. Kegan Paul & Oa, 1883. 



J Jbid. p. 201. £^an Paul & Co., 1&83. 



