62 LUCK, OR CUNNING? 



action Mr. Darwin writes : " It does not seem to me 

 at all incredible that this action [and why this more 

 than any other habitual action ?] should then become 

 instinctive : " i.e., memory transmitted from one genera- 

 tion to another.* 



And yet in 1839, or thereabouts, Mr. Darwin had 

 pretty nearly grasped the conception from which until 

 the last year or two of his life he so fatally strayed ; 

 for in his contribution to the volumes giving an 

 account of the voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, 

 he wrote : " Mature by making habit omnipotent and 

 its effects hereditary, has fitted the Fuegian for the 

 climate and productions of his country" (p. 237). 



What is the secret of the long departure from the 

 simple common-sense view of the matter which he 

 took when he was a young mam ? I imagine simply 

 what I have referred to in the preceding chapter, — 

 over-anxiety to appear to be differing from his grand- 

 father. Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck. 



I believe I may say that ilr. Darwin before he died 

 not only admitted the connection between memory and 

 heredity, but came also to see that he must readmit 

 that design in organism which he had so many years 

 opposed. For in the preface to Hermann Miiller's 

 " Fertilisation of Flowers," t which bears a date only a 

 very few weeks prior to Mr. Darwin's death, I find 

 him saying : — " Design in nature has for a long time 

 deeply interested many men, and though the subject 



* Quoted by Mr. Romanes as written in the last year of Mr. Dar- 

 win's life. 



t ilacmillan, 1S83. 



