CHAPTER V—­Statement of the Question at Issue

Of the two points referred to in the opening sentence of this book—­ I mean the connection between heredity and memory, and the reintroduction of design into organic modification—­the second is both the more important and the one which stands most in need of support.  The substantial identity between heredity and memory is becoming generally admitted; as regards my second point, however, I cannot flatter myself that I have made much way against the formidable array of writers on the neo-Darwinian side; I shall therefore devote the rest of my book as far as possible to this subject only.  Natural selection (meaning by these words the preservation in the ordinary course of nature of favourable variations that are supposed to be mainly matters of pure good luck and in no way arising out of function) has been, to use an Americanism than which I can find nothing apter, the biggest biological boom of the last quarter of a century; it is not, therefore, to be wondered at that Professor Ray Lankester, Mr. Romanes, Mr. Grant Allen, and others, should show some impatience at seeing its value as prime means of modification called in question.  Within the last few months, indeed, Mr. Grant Allen {70a} and Professor Ray Lankester {70b} in England, and Dr. Ernst Krause {70c} in Germany, have spoken and written warmly in support of the theory of natural selection, and in opposition to the views taken by myself; if they are not to be left in possession of the field the sooner they are met the better.

Stripped of detail the point at issue is this;—­whether luck or cunning is the fitter to be insisted on as the main means of organic development.  Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck answered this question in favour of cunning.  They settled it in favour of intelligent perception of the situation—­within, of course, ever narrower and narrower limits as organism retreats farther backwards from ourselves—­and persistent effort to turn it to account.  They made this the soul of all development whether of mind or body.

And they made it, like all other souls, liable to aberration both for better and worse.  They held that some organisms show more ready wit and savoir faire than others; that some give more proofs of genius and have more frequent happy thoughts than others, and that some have even gone through waters of misery which they have used as wells.

The sheet anchor both of Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck is in good sense and thrift; still they are aware that money has been sometimes made by “striking oil,” and ere now been transmitted to descendants in spite of the haphazard way in which it was originally acquired.  No speculation, no commerce; “nothing venture, nothing have,” is as true for the development of organic wealth as for that of any other kind, and neither Erasmus Darwin nor Lamarck hesitated about admitting that highly picturesque and romantic incidents