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The editor kindly inserted my letter in his issue of February 9, 1878. I felt that I had now done all in the way of acknowledgment to Professor Hering which it was, for the time, in my power to do. I again took up Mr. Darwin's "Origin of Species," this time, I admit, in a spirit of scepticism.
If he does mean this, it is a pity he has nowhere said so. Professor Hering does mean this, and makes it clear that he does so. He does not catch the ball and let it slip through his fingers again, but holds it firmly. "It is to memory," he says, "that we owe almost all that we have or are; our ideas and conceptions are its work; our every thought and movement are derived from this source.
It seems to me that the theory which Professor Hering and I are supporting in common, is one the importance of which is hardly inferior to that of the theory of evolution itself for it puts the backbone, as it were, into the theory of evolution. I shall therefore make no apology for laying my translation of Professor Hering's work before my reader.
My companion in peril was at my side, and as my blood-stained face looked as if my injuries were serious he invited me to his house, which was close by the scene of the accident. On the way we introduced ourselves to each other. His name was Hering, and he was the prompter at the theatre.
If any meaning can be extracted from his words, he is no more supporting this view now than he was when he wrote the passages he has adduced to show that he was supporting it thirty years ago; but after all no coherent meaning can be got out of Mr. Spencer's letter except, of course, that Professor Hering and myself are to stand aside.
One can imagine nothing viler than those holes, full of smoke, cob-webs hanging on the black beams, those old sworders and young men drinking, shouting, and beating the tables like crazy people; and behind, in the shadow, old Annette Schnaps or Marie Héring her old wig stuck back on her head, her comb with only three teeth remaining, crosswise, in it gazing on the scene, or emptying a mug to the health of the braves.
English biologists are little likely to find Weismann satisfactory for long, and if he breaks down there is nothing left for them but Lamarck, supplemented by the important and elucidatory corollary on his theory proposed by Professor Hering.
It will be noted that, as I resolved the phenomena of heredity into phenomena of personal identity, and left the matter there, so Professor Hering resolves the phenomena of personal identity into the phenomena of a living mechanism whose equilibrium is disturbed by vibrations of a certain character and leaves it there. We now want to understand more about the vibrations.
But if, according to Professor Hering, the personal identity of the single life consists in the uninterruptedness of vibrations, so also do the phenomena of heredity.
Lastly, Professor Hering himself has never that I know of touched his own theory since the single short address read in 1870, and translated by me in 1881. Everyone, even its originator, except myself, seems afraid to open his mouth about it. Of course the inference suggests itself that other people have more sense than I have.
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