Chapter 5

Introduction to Professor Hering's lecture.

After I had finished "Evolution, Old and New," I wrote some articles for the Examiner, [52] in which I carried out the idea put forward in "Life and Habit," that we are one person with our ancestors. It follows from this, that all living animals and vegetables, being--as appears likely if the theory of evolution is accepted--descended from a common ancestor, are in reality one person, and unite to form a body corporate, of whose existence, however, they are unconscious. There is an obvious analogy between this and the manner in which the component cells of our bodies unite to form our single individuality, of which it is not likely they have a conception, and with which they have probably only the same partial and imperfect sympathy as we, the body corporate, have with them. In the articles above alluded to I separated the organic from the inorganic, and when I came to rewrite them, I found that this could not be done, and that I must reconstruct what I had written. I was at work on this--to which I hope to return shortly--when Dr. Krause's' "Erasmus Darwin," with its preliminary notice by Mr. Charles Darwin, came out, and having been compelled, as I have shown above, by Dr. Krause's work to look a little into the German language, the opportunity seemed favourable for going on with it and becoming acquainted with Professor Hering's lecture. I therefore began to translate his lecture at once, with the kind assistance of friends whose patience seemed inexhaustible, and found myself well rewarded for my trouble.

Professor Hering and I, to use a metaphor of his own, are as men who have observed the action of living beings upon the stage of the world, he from the point of view at once of a spectator and of one who has free access to much of what goes on behind the scenes, I from that of a spectator only, with none but the vaguest notion of the actual manner in which the stage machinery is worked. If two men so placed, after years of reflection, arrive independently of one another at an identical conclusion as regards the manner in which this machinery must have been invented and perfected, it is natural that each should take a deep interest in the arguments of the other, and be anxious to put them forward with the utmost possible prominence. It seems to me that the theory which Professor Hering and I are supporting in common, is one the importance of which is hardly inferior to that of the theory of evolution itself--for it puts the backbone, as it were, into the theory of evolution. I shall therefore make no apology for laying my translation of Professor Hering's work before my reader.

Concerning the identity of the main idea put forward in "Life and Habit" with that of Professor Hering's lecture, there can hardly, I think, be two opinions. We both of us maintain that we grow our limbs as we do, and possess the instincts we possess,