Unconscious Memory. Samuel Butler
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should endeavour to see the so-called inorganic as living in respect of the qualities it has in common with the organic, rather than the organic as non-living in respect of the qualities it has in common with the inorganic.”
We conclude our survey of this book by mentioning the literary controversial part chiefly to be found in Chapter IV, but cropping up elsewhere. It refers to interpolations made in the authorised translation of Krause’s “Life of Erasmus Darwin.” Only one side is presented; and we are not called upon, here or elsewhere, to discuss the merits of the question.
“LUCK, OR CUNNING, as the Main Means of Organic Modification? an Attempt to throw Additional Light upon the late Mr. Charles Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection” (1887), completes the series of biological books. This is mainly a book of strenuous polemic. It brings out still more forcibly the Hering-Butler doctrine of continued personality from generation to generation, and of the working of unconscious memory throughout; and points out that, while this is implicit in much of the teaching of Herbert Spencer, Romanes, and others, it was nowhere—even after the appearance of “Life and Habit”—explicitly recognised by them, but, on the contrary, masked by inconsistent statements and teaching. Not Luck but Cunning, not the uninspired weeding out by Natural Selection but the intelligent striving of the organism, is at the bottom of the useful variety of organic life. And the parallel is drawn that not the happy accident of time and place, but the Machiavellian cunning of Charles Darwin, succeeded in imposing, as entirely his own, on the civilised world an uninspired and inadequate theory of evolution wherein luck played the leading part; while the more inspired and inspiring views of the older evolutionists had failed by the inferiority of their luck. On this controversy I am bound to say that I do not in the very least share Butler’s opinions; and I must ascribe them to his lack of personal familiarity with the biologists of the day and their modes of thought and of work. Butler everywhere undervalues the important work of elimination played by Natural Selection in its widest sense.
The “Conclusion” of “Luck, or Cunning?” shows a strong advance in monistic views, and a yet more marked development in the vibration hypothesis of memory given by Hering and only adopted with the greatest reserve in “Unconscious Memory.”
“Our conception, then, concerning the nature of any matter depends solely upon its kind and degree of unrest, that is to say, on the characteristics of the vibrations that are going on within it. The exterior object vibrating in a certain way imparts some of its vibrations to our brain; but if the state of the thing itself depends upon its vibrations, it [the thing] must be considered as to all intents and purposes the vibrations themselves—plus, of course, the underlying substance that is vibrating. … The same vibrations, therefore, form the substance remembered, introduce an infinitesimal dose of it within the brain, modify the substance remembering, and, in the course of time, create and further modify the mechanism of both the sensory and the motor nerves. Thought and thing are one.
“I commend these two last speculations to the reader’s charitable consideration, as feeling that I am here travelling beyond the ground on which I can safely venture. … I believe they are both substantially true.”
In 1885 he had written an abstract of these ideas in his notebooks (see New Quarterly Review, 1910, p. 116), and as in “Luck, or Cunning?” associated them vaguely with the unitary conceptions introduced into chemistry by Newlands and Mendelejeff. Judging himself as an outsider, the author of “Life and Habit” would certainly have considered the mild expression of faith, “I believe they are both substantially true,” equivalent to one of extreme doubt. Thus “the fact of the Archbishop’s recognising this as among the number of his beliefs is conclusive evidence, with those who have devoted attention to the laws of thought, that his mind is not yet clear” on the matter of the belief avowed (see “Life and Habit,” pp. 24, 25).
To sum up: Butler’s fundamental attitude to the vibration hypothesis was all through that taken in “Unconscious Memory”; he played with it as a pretty pet, and fancied it more and more as time went on; but instead of backing it for all he was worth, like the main theses of “Life and Habit,” he put a big stake on it—and then hedged.
The last of Butler’s biological writings is the Essay, “THE DEADLOCK IN DARWINISM,” containing much valuable criticism on Wallace and Weismann. It is in allusion to the misnomer of Wallace’s book, “Darwinism,” that he introduces the term “Wallaceism” [0d] for a theory of descent that excludes the transmission of acquired characters. This was, indeed, the chief factor that led Charles Darwin to invent his hypothesis of pangenesis, which, unacceptable as it has proved, had far more to recommend it as a formal hypothesis than the equally formal germ-plasm hypothesis of Weismann.
The chief difficulty in accepting the main theses of Butler and Hering is one familiar to every biologist, and not at all difficult to understand by the layman. Everyone knows that the complicated beings that we term “Animals” and “Plants,” consist of a number of more or less individualised units, the cells, each analogous to a simpler being, a Protist—save in so far as the character of the cell unit of the Higher being is modified in accordance with the part it plays in that complex being as a whole. Most people, too, are familiar with the fact that the complex being starts as a single cell, separated from its parent; or, where bisexual reproduction occurs, from a cell due to the fusion of two cells, each detached from its parent. Such cells are called “Germ-cells.” The germ-cell, whether of single or of dual origin, starts by dividing repeatedly, so as to form the primary embryonic cells, a complex mass of cells, at first essentially similar, which, however, as they go on multiplying, undergo differentiations and migrations, losing their simplicity as they do so. Those cells that are modified to take part in the proper work of the whole are called tissue-cells. In virtue of their activities, their growth and reproductive power are limited—much more in Animals than in Plants, in Higher than in Lower beings. It is these tissues, or some of them, that receive the impressions from the outside which leave the imprint of memory. Other cells, which may be closely associated into a continuous organ, or more or less surrounded by tissue-cells, whose part it is to nourish them, are called “secondary embryonic cells,” or “germ-cells.” The germ-cells may be differentiated in the young organism at a very early stage, but in Plants they are separated at a much later date from the less isolated embryonic regions that provide for the Plant’s branching; in all cases we find embryonic and germ-cells screened from the life processes of the complex organism, or taking no very obvious part in it, save to form new tissues or new organs, notably in Plants.
Again, in ourselves, and to a greater or less extent in all Animals, we find a system of special tissues set apart for the reception and storage of impressions from the outer world, and for guiding the other organs in their appropriate responses—the “Nervous System”; and when this system is ill-developed or out of gear the remaining organs work badly from lack of proper skilled guidance and co-ordination. How can we, then, speak of “memory” in a germ-cell which has been screened from the experiences of the organism, which is too simple in structure to realise them if it were exposed to them? My own answer is that we cannot form any theory on the subject, the only question is whether we have any right to infer this “memory” from the behaviour of living beings; and Butler, like Hering, Haeckel, and some more modern authors, has shown that the inference is a very strong presumption. Again, it is easy to over-value such complex instruments as we possess. The possessor of an up-to-date camera, well instructed in the function and manipulation of every part, but ignorant of all optics save a hand-to-mouth knowledge of the properties of his own lens, might say that a priori no picture could be taken with a cigar-box perforated by a pin-hole; and our ignorance of the mechanism of the Psychology of any organism is greater by many times than that of my supposed photographer. We know that Plants are able to do many things that can only be accounted for by ascribing to them a “psyche,” and these co-ordinated enough to satisfy their needs; and yet they possess no central organ comparable to the brain, no highly specialised system for intercommunication like our nerve trunks and fibres. As Oscar Hertwig says, we are as ignorant of the mechanism of the development of the individual as we are of that of hereditary transmission of acquired characters, and the absence of such mechanism in either case is no reason for rejecting the proven fact.