xiv Unconscious Memory 



mechanism special vibrations of the protoplasm, and the 

 acquired capacity to respond to such vibrations once felt 

 upon their repetition. I do not think that the theory 

 gains anything by the introduction of this even as a mere 

 formal hypothesis ; and there is no evidence for its being 

 anything more. Butler, however, gives it a warm, nay, 

 enthusiastic, reception in Chapter V (Introduction to 

 Professor Hering's lecture), and in his notes to the transla- 

 tion of the Address, which bulks so large in this book, but 

 points out that he was " not committed to this hypothesis, 

 though inchned to accept it on a prima facie view." Later 

 on, as we shall see, he attached more importance to it. 



The Hering Address is followed in "Unconscious 

 Memory" by translations of selected passages from Von 

 Hartmann's " Philosophy of the Unconscious," and anno- 

 tations to explain the difference from this personification 

 of " The Unconscious " as a mighty all-ruling, all-creating 

 personality, and his own scientific recognition of the great 

 part played by unconscious processes in the region of mind 

 and memory. 



These are the essentials of the book as a contribution 

 to biological philosophy. The closing chapters contain a 

 lucid statement of objections to his theory as they might 

 be put by a rigid necessitarian, and a refutation of that 

 interpretation as applied to human action. 



But in the second chapter Butler states his recession from 

 the strong logical position he had hitherto developed in 

 his writings from " Erewhon " onwards ; so far he had not 

 only distinguished the living from the non-living, but dis- 

 tinguished among the latter machines or tools from things at 

 large.^ Machines or tools are the external organs of living 

 beings, as organs are their internal machines : they are 



• The distinction was merely implicit in his published writings, 

 but has been printed since his death from his " Notebooks," New 

 Quarterly Review, April, 1908. I had developed this thesis, with- 

 out knowing of Butler's explicit anticipation in an article then 

 in the press : " Mechanism and Life," Contemporary Review, 

 May, 1908. 



