but will give to each an helpmeet for it which shall cross it and be
the undoing of it; and in the undoing, do; and in the doing, undo,
and so ad infinitum. Cross-fertilisation is just as necessary for
continued fertility of ideas as for that of organic life, and the
attempt to frown this or that down merely on the ground that it
involves contradiction in terms, without at the same time showing
that the contradiction is on a larger scale than healthy thought can
stomach, argues either small sense or small sincerity on the part of
those who make it. The contradictions employed by Mr. Spencer are
objectionable, not on the ground of their being contradictions at
all, but on the ground of their being blinked, and used
unintelligently.

But though it is not possible for any one to get a clear conception
of Mr. Spencer's meaning, we may say with more confidence what it
was that he did not mean. He did not mean to make memory the
keystone of his system; he has none of that sense of the unifying,
binding force of memory which Professor Hering has so well
expressed, nor does he show any signs of perceiving the far-reaching
consequences that ensue if the phenomena of heredity are considered
as phenomena of memory. Thus, when he is dealing with the phenomena
of old age (vol. i. p. 538, ed. 2) he does not ascribe them to lapse
and failure of memory, nor surmise the principle underlying
longevity. He never mentions memory in connection with heredity
without presently saying something which makes us involuntarily
think of a man missing an easy catch at cricket; it is only rarely,
however, that he connects the two at all. I have only been able to
find the word "inherited" or any derivative of the verb "to inherit"
in connection with memory once in all the 1300 long pages of the
"Principles of Psychology." It occurs in vol ii. p. 200, 2d ed.,