[1] The blooms of self-fertilising, and especially of cleistogamic plants (e.g. Viola), are examples of unconscious memory, or unconscious “association of ideas” leading to the development of organs now functionless.  The Pontederia crassipes of the Amazon, which develops its floating bladders when grown in water, but aborts them rapidly when grown on land, and seems to retain this power of adaptation to the environment for an indefinite period of time, must act in each case upon an unconscious memory based upon past experience.  Many other cases might be cited.

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physiologically dependent on the former, must be of such a nature from its origin to its completion in death, that the condition is realized of the most economical rate of expenditure at each period of life.[1] The rate of expenditure of energy at any period of life is, of course, in such a curve defined by the slope of the curve towards the axis of time at the period in question; but this particular slope must be led to by a previous part of the curve, and involves its past and future course to a very great extent.

{Fig. 7}

There will, therefore, be impressed upon the organism by the factors of evolution a unified course of economical expenditure completed only by its death, and which will give to the developmental progress of the individual its prophetic character.

In this way we look to the unified career of each organic unit, from its commencement in the ovum to the day

[1] See The Abundance of Life.

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when it is done with vitality, for that preparation for momentous organic events which is in progress throughout the entire course of development; and to the economy involved in the welding of physiological processes for the phenomenon of physiological memory, wherein we see reflected, as it were, in the development of the organism, the association of inorganic restraints occurring in nature which at some previous period impressed itself upon the plastic organism.  We may picture the seedling at Upsala, swayed by organic memory and the inherited tendency to an economical preparation for future events, gradually developing towards the aesthetic climax of its career.  In some such manner only does it appear possible to account for the prophetic development of organisms, not alone to be observed in the alpine flowers, but throughout nature.

And thus, finally, to the effects of natural selection and to actions defined by general principles involved in biology, I would refer for explanation of the manner in which flowers on the Alps develop their peculiar beauty.

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MOUNTAIN GENESIS