xxxiv Unconscious Memory 



translation of Hering ^ followed by a personal tribute to 

 Butler himself. 



In commemoration of the centenary of the birth of 

 Charles Darwin and of the fiftieth anniversary of the 

 publication of the " Origin of Species," at the suggestion 

 of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, the University 

 Press published during the current year a volume entitled 

 " Darwin and Modern Science," edited by Mr. A. C. 

 Seward, Professor of Botany in the University. Of the 

 twenty-nine essays by men of science of the highest dis- 

 tinction, one is of peculiar interest to the readers of Samuel 

 Butler : " Heredity and Variation in Modern Lights," by 

 Professor W. Bateson, f.r.s., to whose work on " Dis- 

 continuous Variations " we have already referred. Here 

 once more Butler receives from an official biologist of the 

 first rank full recognition for his wonderful insight and 

 keen critical power. This is the more noteworthy be- 

 cause Bateson has apparently no faith in the transmission 

 of acquired characters ; but such a passage as this would 

 have commended itself to Butler's admiration : — 



" All this indicates a definiteness and specific order in 

 heredity, and therefore in variation. This order cannot by 

 the nature of the case be dependent on Natural Selection for 

 its existence, but must be a consequence of the fundamental 

 chemical and physical nature of living things. The study of 

 Variation had from the first shown that an orderliness of this 

 kind was present. The bodies and properties of living things 

 are cosmic, not chaotic. No matter how low in the scale we 

 go, never do we find the slightest hint of a diminution in that 

 all-pervading orderliness, nor can we conceive an organism 

 existing for one moment in any other state." 



We have now before us the materials to determine the 

 problem of Butler's relation to biology and to biologists, 



' "Between the 'me' of to-day and the 'me' of yesterday lie 

 night and sleep, abysses of unconsciousness; nor is there any 

 bridge but memory with which to span them." — Unconscious 

 Memory, p. 71. 



