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There can be nothing better established or more easy, whether to understand or verify, than the unconsciousness with which habitual actions come to be performed. If, however, it is once conceded that it is the manner of habitual action generally, then all a priori objection to Professor Hering's philosophy of the unconscious is at an end.
A book pointing the difference between teleological and non-teleological views of evolution seemed likely to be useful, and would afford me the opportunity I wanted for giving a resume of the views of each one of the three chief founders of the theory, and of contrasting them with those of Mr. Charles Darwin, as well as for calling attention to Professor Hering's lecture.
He at once wrote to the Athenaeum, calling attention to Hering's lecture, and then pursued his studies in evolution. Life and Habit was followed in 1879 by Evolution Old and New, wherein he compared the teleological or purposive view of evolution taken by Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck with the view taken by Charles Darwin, and came to the conclusion that the old was better.
Francis Darwin had made several public allusions to Life and Habit; and in September, 1908, in his inaugural address to the British Association at Dublin, he did Butler the posthumous honour of quoting from his translation of Hering's lecture "On Memory," which is in Unconscious Memory, and of mentioning Butler as having enunciated the theory contained in Life and Habit.
Romanes would have been content to build frankly upon Professor Hering's foundation, the soundness of which he has elsewhere abundantly admitted, he might have said "Instinct is knowledge or habit acquired in past generations the new generation remembering what happened to it before it parted company with the old. More briefly, Instinct is inherited memory." Then he might have added a rider
As regards the accuracy of the translation, I have submitted all passages about which I was in the least doubtful to the same gentleman who revised my translation of Professor Hering's lecture; I have also given the German wherever I thought the reader might be glad to see it. Translation of the chapter on "The Unconscious in Instinct," from Von Hartmann's "Philosophy of the Unconscious."
When I say refute it, I do not mean that I shall have done with it for it is plain that it opens up a vaster question in the relations between the so-called organic and inorganic worlds but that I will refute the supposition that it any way militates against Professor Hering's theory.
Concerning the identity of the main idea put forward in "Life and Habit" with that of Professor Hering's lecture, there can hardly, I think, be two opinions. Not only is the main idea the same, but I was surprised to find how often Professor Hering and I had taken the same illustrations with which to point our meaning.
One word more and I have done. I should like to say that I do not return to the connection between memory and heredity under the impression that I shall do myself much good by doing so. My own share in the matter was very small. The theory that heredity is only a mode of memory is not mine, but Professor Hering's. He wrote in 1870, and I not till 1877.
There are two very widely distinct opinions on this point. There is the mnemic theory, recently brought before us by the republication of Butler's most interesting and suggestive work with its translations of Hering's original paper and Von Hartmann's discourse and its very illuminating introduction by Professor Hartog.
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