Unconscious Memory(Fiscle Part-3) - Samuel Butler (digital e reader TXT) 📗
- Author: Samuel Butler
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So As To Form The Primary Embryonic Cells, A Complex Mass Of Cells,
At First Essentially Similar, Which, However, As They Go On
Multiplying, Undergo Differentiations And Migrations, Losing Their
Simplicity As They Do So. Those Cells That Are Modified To Take Part
In The Proper Work Of The Whole Are Called Tissue-Cells. In Virtue
Introduction Pg 9Of Their Activities, Their Growth And Reproductive Power Are Limited-
-Much More In Animals Than In Plants, In Higher Than In Lower Beings.
It Is These Tissues, Or Some Of Them, That Receive The Impressions
From The Outside Which Leave The Imprint Of Memory. Other Cells,
Which May Be Closely Associated Into A Continuous Organ, Or More Or
Less Surrounded By Tissue-Cells, Whose Part It Is To Nourish Them,
Are Called "Secondary Embryonic Cells," Or "Germ-Cells." The Germ-
Cells May Be Differentiated In The Young Organism At A Very Early
Stage, But In Plants They Are Separated At A Much Later Date From The
Less Isolated Embryonic Regions That Provide For The Plant's
Branching; In All Cases We Find Embryonic And Germ-Cells Screened
From The Life Processes Of The Complex Organism, Or Taking No Very
Obvious Part In It, Save To Form New Tissues Or New Organs, Notably
In Plants.
Again, In Ourselves, And To A Greater Or Less Extent In All Animals,
We Find A System Of Special Tissues Set Apart For The Reception And
Storage Of Impressions From The Outer World, And For Guiding The
Other Organs In Their Appropriate Responses--The "Nervous System";
And When This System Is Ill-Developed Or Out Of Gear The Remaining
Organs Work Badly From Lack Of Proper Skilled Guidance And Co-
Ordination. How Can We, Then, Speak Of "Memory" In A Germ-Cell Which
Has Been Screened From The Experiences Of The Organism, Which Is Too
Simple In Structure To Realise Them If It Were Exposed To Them? My
Own Answer Is That We Cannot Form Any Theory On The Subject, The Only
Question Is Whether We Have Any Right To Infer This "Memory" From The
Behaviour Of Living Beings; And Butler, Like Hering, Haeckel, And
Some More Modern Authors, Has Shown That The Inference Is A Very
Strong Presumption. Again, It Is Easy To Over-Value Such Complex
Instruments As We Possess. The Possessor Of An Up-To-Date Camera,
Well Instructed In The Function And Manipulation Of Every Part, But
Ignorant Of All Optics Save A Hand-To-Mouth Knowledge Of The
Properties Of His Own Lens, Might Say That A Priori No Picture Could
Be Taken With A Cigar-Box Perforated By A Pin-Hole; And Our Ignorance
Of The Mechanism Of The Psychology Of Any Organism Is Greater By Many
Times Than That Of My Supposed Photographer. We Know That Plants Are
Able To Do Many Things That Can Only Be Accounted For By Ascribing To
Them A "Psyche," And These Co-Ordinated Enough To Satisfy Their
Needs; And Yet They Possess No Central Organ Comparable To The Brain,
No Highly Specialised System For Intercommunication Like Our Nerve
Trunks And Fibres. As Oscar Hertwig Says, We Are As Ignorant Of The
Mechanism Of The Development Of The Individual As We Are Of That Of
Hereditary Transmission Of Acquired Characters, And The Absence Of
Such Mechanism In Either Case Is No Reason For Rejecting The Proven
Fact.
However, The Relations Of Germ And Body Just Described Led Jager,
Nussbaum, Galton, Lankester, And, Above All, Weismann, To The View
That The Germ-Cells Or "Stirp" (Galton) Were In The Body, But Not Of
It. Indeed, In The Body And Out Of It, Whether As Reproductive Cells
Introduction Pg 10Set Free, Or In The Developing Embryo, They Are Regarded As Forming
One Continuous Homogeneity, In Contrast To The Differentiation Of The
Body; And It Is To These Cells, Regarded As A Continuum, That The
Terms Stirp, Germ-Plasm, Are Especially Applied. Yet On This View,
So Eagerly Advocated By Its Supporters, We Have To Substitute For The
Hypothesis Of Memory, Which They Declare To Have No Real Meaning
Here, The Far More Fantastic Hypotheses Of Weismann: By These They
Explain The Process Of Differentiation In The Young Embryo Into New
Germ And Body; And In The Young Body The Differentiation Of Its
Cells, Each In Due Time And Place, Into The Varied Tissue Cells And
Organs. Such Views Might Perhaps Be Acceptable If It Could Be Shown
That Over Each Cell-Division There Presided A Wise All-Guiding Genie
Of Transcending Intellect, To Which Clerk-Maxwell's Sorting Demons
Were Mere Infants. Yet These Views Have So Enchanted Many
Distinguished Biologists, That In Dealing With The Subject They Have
Actually Ignored The Existence Of Equally Able Workers Who Hesitate
To Share The Extremest Of Their Views. The Phenomenon Is One Well
Known In Hypnotic Practice. So Long As The Non-Weismannians Deal
With Matters Outside This Discussion, Their Existence And Their Work
Is Rated At Its Just Value; But Any Work Of Theirs On This Point So
Affects The Orthodox Weismannite (Whether He Accept This Label Or
Reject It Does Not Matter), That For The Time Being Their Existence
And The Good Work They Have Done Are Alike Non-Existent. {0e}
Butler Founded No School, And Wished To Found None. He Desired That
What Was True In His Work Should Prevail, And He Looked Forward
Calmly To The Time When The Recognition Of That Truth And Of His
Share In Advancing It Should Give Him In The Lives Of Others That
Immortality For Which Alone He Craved.
Lamarckian Views Have Never Lacked Defenders Here And In America. Of
The English, Herbert Spencer, Who However, Was Averse To The
Vitalistic Attitude, Vines And Henslow Among Botanists, Cunningham
Among Zoologists, Have Always Resisted Weismannism; But, I Think,
None Of These Was Distinctly Influenced By Hering And Butler. In
America The Majority Of The Great School Of Palaeontologists Have
Been Strong Lamarckians, Notably Cope, Who Has Pointed Out, Moreover,
That The Transformations Of Energy In Living Beings Are Peculiar To
Them.
We Have Already Adverted To Haeckel's Acceptance And Development Of
Hering's Ideas In His "Perigenese Der Plastidule." Oscar Hertwig Has
Been A Consistent Lamarckian, Like Yves Delage Of The Sorbonne, And
These Occupy Pre-Eminent Positions Not Only As Observers, But As
Discriminating Theorists And Historians Of The Recent Progress Of
Biology. We May Also Cite As A Lamarckian--Of A Sort--Felix Le
Dantec, The Leader Of The Chemico-Physical School Of The Present Day.
But We Must Seek Elsewhere For Special Attention To The Points Which
Butler Regarded As The Essentials Of "Life And Habit." In 1893 Henry
P. Orr, Professor Of Biology In The University Of Louisiana,
Published A Little Book Entitled "A Theory Of Heredity." Herein He
Insists On The Nervous Control Of The Whole Body, And On The
Transmission To The Reproductive Cells Of Such Stimuli, Received By
Introduction Pg 11The Body, As Will Guide Them On Their Path Until They Shall Have
Acquired Adequate Experience Of Their Own In The New Body They Have
Formed. I Have Found The Name Of Neither Butler Nor Hering, But The
Treatment Is Essentially On Their Lines, And Is Both Clear And
Interesting.
In 1896 I Wrote An Essay On "The Fundamental Principles Of Heredity,"
Primarily Directed To The Man In The Street. This, After Being Held
Over For More Than A Year By One Leading Review, Was "Declined With
Regret," And Again After Some Weeks Met The Same Fate From Another
Editor. It Appeared In The Pages Of "Natural Science" For October,
1897, And In The "Biologisches Centralblatt" For The Same Year. I
Reproduce Its Closing Paragraph:-
"This Theory [Hering-Butler's] Has, Indeed, A Tentative Character,
And Lacks Symmetrical Completeness, But Is The More Welcome As Not
Aiming At The Impossible. A Whole Series Of Phenomena In Organic
Beings Are Correlated Under The Term Of Memory, Conscious And
Unconscious, Patent And Latent. . . . Of The Order Of Unconscious
Memory, Latent Till The Arrival Of The Appropriate Stimulus, Is All
The Co-Operative Growth And Work Of The Organism, Including Its
Development From The Reproductive Cells. Concerning The Modus
Operandi We Know Nothing: The Phenomena May Be Due, As Hering
Suggests, To Molecular Vibrations, Which Must Be At Least As Distinct
From Ordinary Physical Disturbances As Rontgen's Rays Are From
Ordinary Light; Or It May Be Correlated, As We Ourselves Are Inclined
To Think, With Complex Chemical Changes In An Intricate But Orderly
Succession. For The Present, At Least, The Problem Of Heredity Can
Only Be Elucidated By The Light Of Mental, And Not Material
Processes."
It Will Be Seen That I Express Doubts As To The Validity Of Hering's
Invocation Of Molecular Vibrations As The Mechanism Of Memory, And
Suggest As An Alternative Rhythmic Chemical Changes. This View Has
Recently Been Put Forth In Detail By J. J. Cunningham In His Essay On
The "Hormone {0f} Theory Of Heredity," In The Archiv Fur
Entwicklungsmechanik (1909), But I Have Failed To Note Any Direct
Effect Of My Essay On The Trend Of Biological Thought.
Among Post-Darwinian Controversies The One That Has Latterly Assumed
The Greatest Prominence Is That Of The Relative Importance Of Small
Variations In The Way Of More Or Less "Fluctuations," And Of
"Discontinuous Variations," Or "Mutations," As De Vries Has Called
Them. Darwin, In The First Four Editions Of The "Origin Of Species,"
Attached More Importance To The Latter Than In Subsequent Editions;
He Was Swayed In His Attitude, As Is Well Known, By An Article Of The
Introduction Pg 12Physicist, Fleeming Jenkin, Which Appeared In The North British
Review. The Mathematics Of This Article Were Unimpeachable, But They
Were Founded On The Assumption That Exceptional Variations Would Only
Occur In Single Individuals, Which Is, Indeed, Often The Case Among
Those Domesticated Races On Which Darwin Especially Studied The
Phenomena Of Variation. Darwin Was No Mathematician Or Physicist,
And We Are Told In His Biography That He Regarded Every Tool-Shop
Rule Or Optician's Thermometer As An Instrument Of Precision: So He
Appears To Have
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