And lastly, we should look to find in the action of memory, as between one generation and another, a reflection of the many anomalies and exceptions to ordinary rules which we observe in memory, so far as we can watch its action in what we call our own single lives, and the single lives of others. We should expect that reversion should be frequently capricious—that is to say, give us more trouble to account for than we are either able or willing to take. And assuredly we find it so in fact. Mr. Darwin—from whom it is impossible to quote too much or too fully, inasmuch as no one else can furnish such a store of facts, so well arranged, and so above all suspicion of either carelessness or want of candour—so that, however we may differ from him, it is he himself who shows us how to do so, and whose pupils we all are—Mr. Darwin writes: “In every living being we may rest assured that a host of long-lost characters lie ready to be evolved under proper conditions” (does not one almost long to substitute the word “memories” for the word “characters?”) “How can we make intelligible, and connect with other facts, this wonderful and common capacity of reversion—this power of calling back to life long-lost characters?” (“Plants and Animals,” &c., vol. ii. p. 369, ed. 1875). Surely the answer may be hazarded, that we shall be able to do so when we can make intelligible the power of calling back to life long-lost memories. But I grant that this answer holds out no immediate prospect of a clear understanding. One word more. Abundant facts are to be found which point inevitably, as will appear more plainly in the following chapter, in the direction of thinking that offspring inherits the memories of its parents; but I know of no single fact which suggests that parents are in the smallest degree affected (other than sympathetically) by the memories of their offspring _after that offspring has been born_. Whether the unborn offspring affects the memory of the mother in some particulars, and whether we have here the explanation of occasional reversion to a previous impregnation, is a matter on which I should hardly like to express an opinion now. Nor, again, can I find a single fact which seems to indicate any memory of the parental life on the part of offspring later than the average date of the offspring’s quitting the body of the parent. CHAPTER XI. INSTINCT AS INHERITED MEMORY. I HAVE already alluded to M. Ribot’s work on “Heredity,” from which I will now take the following passages. M. Ribot writes:— “Instinct is innate, _i.e._, _anterior to all individual experience_.” This I deny on grounds already abundantly apparent; but let it pass. “Whereas intelligence is developed slowly by accumulated experience, instinct is perfect from the first” (“Heredity,” p. 14).