“Mental Evolution in Animals” 63 
common-sense view of the matter which he took when he 
was a young man? I imagine simply what I have referred 
to in the preceding chapter,—over-anxiety to appear to be 
differing from his grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and 
Lamarck. 
I believe I may say that Mr. Darwin before he died not 
only admitted the connection between memory and hered- 
ity, 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,”’* 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 must now be looked at from a 
somewhat different point of view from what was formerly 
the case, it is not on that account rendered less interesting.” 
This is mused forth as a general gnome, and may mean 
anything or nothing: the writer of the letterpress under 
the hieroglyph in Old Moore’s Almanac could not be more 
guarded ; but I think I know what it does mean. 
I cannot, of course, be sure; Mr. Darwin did not 
probably intend that I should; but I assume with con- 
fidence that whether there is design in organism or no, 
there is at any rate design in this passage of Mr. Darwin’s. 
This, we may be sure, is not a fortuitous variation ; and, 
moreover, it is introduced for some reason which made 
Mr. Darwin think it worth while to go out of his way to 
introduce it. It has no fitness in its connection with 
Hermann Miiller’s book, for what little Hermann Miiller 
says about teleology at all is to condemn it ; why, then, 
should Mr. Darwin muse here of all places in the world 
about the interest attaching to design in organism ? 
Neither has the passage any connection with the rest of 
the preface. There is not another word about design, and 
even here Mr. Darwin seems mainly anxious to face both 
* Macmillan, 1883. 
