Our own design is tentative, and neither very far-foreseeing nor
very retrospective; it is a little of both, but much of neither; it
is like a comet with a little light in front of the nucleus and a
good deal more behind it, which ere long, however, fades away into
the darkness; it is of a kind that, though a little wise before the
event, is apt to be much wiser after it, and to profit even by
mischance so long as the disaster is not an overwhelming one;
nevertheless, though it is so interwoven with luck, there is no
doubt about its being design; why, then, should the design which
must have attended organic development be other than this? If the
thing that has been is the thing that also shall be, must not the
thing which is be that which also has been? Was there anything in
the phenomena of organic life to militate against such a view of
design as this? Not only was there nothing, but this view made
things plain, as the connecting of heredity and memory had already
done, which till now had been without explanation. Rudimentary
organs were no longer a hindrance to our acceptance of design, they
became weighty arguments in its favour.

I therefore wrote "Evolution Old and New," with the object partly of
backing up "Life and Habit," and showing the easy rider it admitted,
partly to show how superior the old view of descent had been to Mr.
Darwin's, and partly to reintroduce design into organism. I wrote
"Life and Habit" to show that our mental and bodily acquisitions
were mainly stores of memory: I wrote "Evolution Old and New" to
add that the memory must be a mindful and designing 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,