open to no other objection than this, and which, when its metaphorical character is borne well in mind, may be used without serious risk of error, whereas natural selection from variations that are mainly fortuitous is chimerical as well as metaphorical.  Both writers speak of natural selection as though there could not possibly be any selection in the course of nature, or natural survival, of any but accidental variations.  Thus Mr. Romanes says:  {66a} “The swamping effect of free inter-crossing upon an individual variation constitutes perhaps the most formidable difficulty with which the theory of natural selection is beset.”  And the writer of the article in the Times above referred to says:  “In truth the theory of natural selection presents many facts and results which increase rather than diminish the difficulty of accounting for the existence of species.”  The assertion made in each case is true if the Charles-Darwinian selection from fortuitous variations is intended, but it does not hold good if the selection is supposed to be made from variations under which there lies a general principle of wide and abiding application.  It is not likely that a man of Mr. Romanes’ antecedents should not be perfectly awake to considerations so obvious as the foregoing, and I am afraid I am inclined to consider his whole suggestion as only an attempt upon the part of the wearer of Mr. Darwin’s mantle to carry on Mr. Darwin’s work in Mr. Darwin’s spirit.

I have seen Professor Hering’s theory adopted recently more unreservedly by Dr. Creighton in his “Illustrations of Unconscious Memory in Disease.” {67a} Dr. Creighton avowedly bases his system on Professor Hering’s address, and endorses it; it is with much pleasure that I have seen him lend the weight of his authority to the theory that each cell and organ has an individual memory.  In “Life and Habit” I expressed a hope that the opinions it upheld would be found useful by medical men, and am therefore the more glad to see that this has proved to be the case.  I may perhaps be pardoned if I quote the passage in” Life and Habit” to which I am referring.  It runs:-

“Mutatis mutandis, the above would seem to hold as truly about medicine as about politics.  We cannot reason with our cells, for they know so much more” (of course I mean “about their own business”) “than we do, that they cannot understand us;—­but though we cannot reason with them, we can find out what they have been most accustomed to, and what, therefore, they are most likely to expect; we can see that they get this as far as it is in our power to give it them, and may then generally leave the rest to them, only bearing in mind that they will rebel equally against too sudden a change of treatment and no change at all” (p. 305).