the wrongs he has inflicted on dead men, on whose behalf I now fight,
as I trust that some one--whom I thank by anticipation--may one day
fight on mine.



CHAPTER V



Introduction to Professor Hering's lecture.

After I had finished "Evolution, Old and New," I wrote some articles
for the Examiner, {52} in which I carried out the idea put forward in
"Life and Habit," that we are one person with our ancestors. It
follows from this, that all living animals and vegetables, being--as
appears likely if the theory of evolution is accepted--descended from
a common ancestor, are in reality one person, and unite to form a
body corporate, of whose existence, however, they are unconscious.
There is an obvious analogy between this and the manner in which the
component cells of our bodies unite to form our single individuality,
of which it is not likely they have a conception, and with which they
have probably only the same partial and imperfect sympathy as we, the
body corporate, have with them. In the articles above alluded to I
separated the organic from the inorganic, and when I came to rewrite
them, I found that this could not be done, and that I must
reconstruct what I had written. I was at work on this--to which I
hope to return shortly--when Dr. Krause's' "Erasmus Darwin," with its
preliminary notice by Mr. Charles Darwin, came out, and having been
compelled, as I have shown above, by Dr. Krause's work to look a