produced functionally or not, can only be perpetuated and
accumulated because they can be inherited;--and this applies just as
much to the lower as to the higher forms of life; the question which
Professor Hering and I have tried to answer is, "How comes it that
anything can be inherited at all? In virtue of what power is it
that offspring can repeat and improve upon the performances of their
parents?" Our answer was, "Because in a very valid sense, though
not perhaps in the most usually understood, there is continued
personality and an abiding memory between successive generations."
How does Mr. Spencer's confession of faith touch this? If any
meaning can be extracted from his words, he is no more supporting
this view now than he was when he wrote the passages he has adduced
to show that he was supporting it thirty years ago; but after all no
coherent meaning can be got out of Mr. Spencer's letter--except, of
course, that Professor Hering and myself are to stand aside. I have
abundantly shown that I am very ready to do this in favour of
Professor Hering, but see no reason for admitting Mr. Spencer's
claim to have been among the forestallers of "Life and Habit."



CHAPTER IV {52a}--Mr. Romanes' "Mental Evolution in Animals"



Without raising the unprofitable question how Mr. Romanes, in spite
of the indifference with which he treated the theory of Inherited
Memory in 1881, came, in 1883, to be sufficiently imbued with a
sense of its importance, I still cannot afford to dispense with the
weight of his authority, and in this chapter will show how closely