been taken with it, should live more or less usefully for a dozen.
About the greater number of these generations the author is in the
dark; but come what may, some of them are sure to have arrived at
conclusions diametrically opposed to our own upon every subject
connected with art, science, philosophy, and religion; it is plain,
therefore, that if posterity is to be pleased, it can only be at the
cost of repelling some present readers. Unwilling as I am to do
this, I still hold it the lesser of two evils; I will be as brief,
however, as the interests of the opinions I am supporting will
allow.

In "Life and Habit" I contended that heredity was a mode of memory.
I endeavoured to show that all hereditary traits, whether of mind or
body, are inherited in virtue of, and as a manifestation of, the
same power whereby we are able to remember intelligently what we did
half an hour, yesterday, or a twelvemonth since, and this in no
figurative but in a perfectly real sense. If life be compared to an
equation of a hundred unknown quantities, I followed Professor
Hering of Prague in reducing it to one of ninety-nine only, by
showing two of the supposed unknown quantities to be so closely
allied that they should count as one. I maintained that instinct
was inherited memory, and this without admitting more exceptions and
qualifying clauses than arise, as it were, by way of harmonics from
every proposition, and must be neglected if thought and language are
to be possible.

I showed that if the view for which I was contending was taken, many
facts which, though familiar, were still without explanation or
connection with our other ideas, would remain no longer isolated,
but be seen at once as joined with the mainland of our most assured