Luck, or Cunning, as the Main Means of Organic Modification — John Shaqi
Luck, or Cunning, as the Main Means of Organic ModificationButler, Samuel
Philosophy
Luck, or Cunning, as the Main Means of Organic Modification
Butler, Samuel
Evolution; Natural selection
Memory, then, pertains to all that class of psychical states which
are in process of being organised. It continues so long as the
organising of them continues; and disappears when the organisation of
them is complete. In the advance of the correspondence, each more
complex class of phenomena which the organism acquires the power of
recognising is responded to at first irregularly and uncertainly; and
there is then a weak remembrance of the relations. By multiplication
of experiences this remembrance becomes stronger, and the response
more certain. By further multiplication of experiences the internal
relations are at last automatically organised in correspondence with
the external ones; and so conscious memory passes into unconscious or
organic memory. At the same time, a new and still more complex order
of experiences is thus rendered appreciable; the relations they
present occupy the memory in place of the simpler one; they become
gradually organised; and, like the previous ones, are succeeded by
others more complex still (p. 563).
Just as we saw that the establishment of those compound reflex
actions which we call instincts is comprehensible on the principle
that inner relations are, by perpetual repetition, organised into
correspondence with outer relations; so the establishment of those
consolidated, those indissoluble, those instinctive mental relations
constituting our ideas of Space and Time, is comprehensible on the
same principle (p. 579).
In a book published a few weeks before Mr. Spencer’s letter appeared
{29a} I had said that though Mr. Spencer at times closely approached
Professor Hering and “Life and Habit,” he had nevertheless nowhere shown
that he considered memory and heredity to be parts of the same story and
parcel of one another. In his letter to the _Athenæum_, indeed, he does
not profess to have upheld this view, except “by implications;” nor yet,
though in the course of the six or seven years that had elapsed since
“Life and Habit” was published I had brought out more than one book to
support my earlier one, had he said anything during those years to lead
me to suppose that I was trespassing upon ground already taken by
himself. Nor, again, had he said anything which enabled me to appeal to
his authority—which I should have been only too glad to do; at last,
however, he wrote, as I have said, to the _Athenæum_ a letter which,
indeed, made no express claim, and nowhere mentioned myself, but “the
meanings and implications” from which were this time as clear as could be
desired, and amount to an order to Professor Hering and myself to stand
aside.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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