express claim, and nowhere mentioned myself, but "the meanings and
implications" from which were this time as clear as could be
desired, and amount to an order to Professor Hering and myself to
stand aside.

The question is, whether the passages quoted by Mr. Spencer, or any
others that can be found in his works, show that he regarded
heredity in all its manifestations as a mode of memory. I submit
that this conception is not derivable from Mr. Spencer's writings,
and that even the passages in which he approaches it most closely
are unintelligible till read by the light of Professor Hering's
address and of "Life and Habit."

True, Mr. Spencer made abundant use of such expressions as "the
experience of the race," "accumulated experiences," and others like
them, but he did not explain--and it was here the difficulty lay--
how a race could have any experience at all. We know what we mean
when we say that an individual has had experience; we mean that he
is the same person now (in the common use of the words), on the
occasion of some present action, as the one who performed a like
action at some past time or times, and that he remembers how he
acted before, so as to be able to turn his past action to account,
gaining in proficiency through practice. Continued personality and
memory are the elements that constitute experience; where these are
present there may, and commonly will, be experience; where they are
absent the word "experience" cannot properly be used.

Formerly we used to see an individual as one, and a race as many.
We now see that though this is true as far as it goes, it is by no
means the whole truth, and that in certain important respects it is