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I can, however, have no hesitation in saying that if I had known the "Principles of Psychology" earlier, as well as I know the work now, I should have used it largely. It may be interesting, before we leave Mr. Spencer, to see whether he even now assigns to continued personality and memory the place assigned to it by Professor Hering and myself.
Romanes does in reality, like Professor Hering and myself, regard development, whether of mind or body, as due to memory, for it is now pretty generally seen to be nonsense to talk about "hereditary experience" or "hereditary memory" if anything else is intended. I have said above that on page 113 of his recent work Mr.
Few except Mr. Romanes will say this. I grant it ought to "have formed the backbone," &c., and ought "to have been elaborately stated," &c., but when I wrote "Life and Habit" neither Mr Romanes nor any one else understood it to have been even glanced at by more than a very few, and as for having been "elaborately stated," it had been stated by Professor Hering as elaborately as it could be stated within the limits of an address of only twenty-two pages, but with this exception it had never been stated at all.
To sum up briefly. The passages quoted by Mr. Spencer from his "Principles of Psychology" can hardly be called clear, even now that Professor Hering and others have thrown light upon them. If, indeed, they had been clear Mr. Spencer would probably have seen what they necesitated, and found the way of meeting the difficulties of the case which occurred to Professor Hering and myself.
Hering, is interesting if advanced merely as an illustration; but to imagine that it maintains any truth of profound significance, or that it can possibly be fraught with any benefit to science, is simply absurd. The most cursory thought is enough to show," &c. &c.
To Professor Scheibner, especially, my thanks are due for the trouble he has taken in helping me to make my notes exact and truthful. In 1884 rumors reached me of remarkable Spiritual communications from a revered friend and relative, Dr. Hering.
He did not mean to make memory the keystone of his system; he has none of that sense of the unifying, binding force of memory which Professor Hering has so well expressed, nor does he show any signs of perceiving the far-reaching consequences that ensue if the phenomena of heredity are considered as phenomena of memory.
I followed up these two books with "Unconscious Memory," the main object of which was to show how Professor Hering of Prague had treated the connection between memory and heredity; to show, again, how substantial was the difference between Von Hartmann and myself in spite of some little superficial resemblance; to put forward a suggestion as regards the physics of memory, and to meet the most plausible objection which I have yet seen brought against "Life and Habit."
For the present it is enough to say that if he does not mean what Professor Hering and, longo intervallo, myself do, he should not talk about habit or experience as between successive generations, and that if he does mean what we do which I suppose he does he should have said so much more clearly and consistently than he has.
I could not recast my work if, as was most likely, I should find something, when I saw what Professor Hering had said, which would make me wish to rewrite my own book; it was too late in the day and I did not feel equal to making any radical alteration; and so the matter ended with very little said upon either side.
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