where the words stand, "Memory, inherited or acquired." I submit
that this was unintelligible when Mr. Spencer wrote it, for want of
an explanation which he never gave; I submit, also, that he could
not have left it unexplained, nor yet as an unrepeated expression
not introduced till late in his work, if he had had any idea of its
pregnancy.

At any rate, whether he intended to imply what he now implies that
he intended to imply (for Mr. Spencer, like the late Mr. Darwin, is
fond of qualifying phrases), I have shown that those most able and
willing to understand him did not take him to mean what he now
appears anxious to have it supposed that he meant. Surely,
moreover, if he had meant it he would have spoken sooner, when he
saw his meaning had been missed. I can, however, have no hesitation
in saying that if I had known the "Principles of Psychology"
earlier, as well as I know the work now, I should have used it
largely.

It may be interesting, before we leave Mr. Spencer, to see whether
he even now assigns to continued personality and memory the place
assigned to it by Professor Hering and myself. I will therefore
give the concluding words of the letter to the Athenaeum already
referred to, in which he tells us to stand aside. He writes "I
still hold that inheritance of functionally produced modifications
is the chief factor throughout the higher stages of organic
evolution, bodily as well as mental (see 'Principles of Biology,' i.
166), while I recognise the truth that throughout the lower stages
survival of the fittest is the chief factor, and in the lowest the
almost exclusive factor."