I ought to say that the late Mr. Darwin appears himself eventually to have admitted the soundness of the theory connecting heredity and memory.  Mr. Romanes quotes a letter written by Mr. Darwin in the last year of his life, in which he speaks of an intelligent action gradually becoming “Instinctive, I.E., Memory transmitted from one generation to another.” {62a}

Briefly, the stages of Mr. Darwin’s opinion upon the subject of hereditary memory are as follows:-

1859.  “It would be the most serious error to suppose that the greater number of instincts have been acquired by habit in one generation and transmitted by inheritance to succeeding generations.” {62b} And this more especially applies to the instincts of many ants.

1876.  “It would be a serious error to suppose,” &c., as before. {62c}

1881.  “We should remember what A mass of inherited knowledge is crowded into the minute brain of a worker ant.” {62d}

1881 or 1882.  Speaking of a given habitual action Mr. Darwin writes:  “It does not seem to me at all incredible that this action [and why this more than any other habitual action?] should then become instinctive:”  i.e., memory transmitted from one generation to another. {62e}

And yet in 1839, or thereabouts, Mr. Darwin had pretty nearly grasped the conception from which until the last year or two of his life he so fatally strayed; for in his contribution to the volumes giving an account of the voyages of the Adventure and Beagle, he wrote:  “Nature by making habit omnipotent and its effects hereditary, has fitted the Fuegian for the climate and productions of his country” (p. 237).

What is the secret of the long departure from the simple common-sense view of the matter which he took when he was a young man?  I imagine simply what I have referred to in the preceding chapter, over-anxiety to appear to be differing from his grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck.

I believe I may say that Mr. Darwin before he died not only admitted the connection between memory and heredity, but came also to see that he must readmit that design in organism which he had so many years opposed.  For in the preface to Hermann Muller’s “Fertilisation of Flowers,” {63a} which bears a date only a very few weeks prior to Mr. Darwin’s death, I find him saying:- “Design in nature has for a long time deeply interested many men, and though the subject must now be looked at from a somewhat different point of view from what was formerly the case, it is not on that account rendered less interesting.”  This is mused forth as a general gnome, and may mean anything or nothing:  the writer of the letterpress under the hieroglyph in Old Moore’s Almanac could not be more guarded; but I think I know what it does mean.