When Dr. Francis Darwin called on me a day or two before "Life and
Habit" went to the press, he said the theory which had pleased him
more than any he had seen for some time was one which referred all
life to memory; {44a} he doubtless intended "which referred all the
phenomena of heredity to memory." He then mentioned Professor Ray
Lankester's article in Nature, of which I had not heard, but he said
nothing about Mr. Spencer, and spoke of the idea as one which had
been quite new to him.

The above names comprise (excluding Mr. Spencer himself) perhaps
those of the best-known writers on evolution that can be mentioned
as now before the public; it is curious that Mr Spencer should be
the only one of them to see any substantial resemblance between the
"Principles of Psychology" and Professor Hering's address and "Life
and Habit."

I ought, perhaps, to say that Mr. Romanes, writing to the Athenaeum
(March 8, 1884), took a different view of the value of the theory of
inherited memory to the one he took in 1881.

In 1881 he said it was "simply absurd" to suppose it could "possibly
be fraught with any benefit to science" or "reveal any truth of
profound significance;" in 1884 he said of the same theory, that "it
formed the backbone of all the previous literature upon instinct" by
Darwin, Spencer, Lewes, Fiske, and Spalding, "not to mention their
numerous followers, and is by all of them elaborately stated as
clearly as any theory can be stated in words."

Few except Mr. Romanes will say this. I grant it ought to "have