It should be remembered that the question whether memory is due to the persistence within the body of certain vibrations, which have been already set up within the bodies of its ancestors, is true or no, will not affect the position I took up in “Life and Habit.” In that book I have maintained nothing more than that whatever memory is heredity is also. I am not committed to the vibration theory of memory, though inclined to accept it on a _primâ facie_ view. All I am committed to is, that if memory is due to persistence of vibrations, so is heredity; and if memory is not so due, then no more is heredity. Finally, I may say that Professor Hering’s lecture, the passage quoted from Dr. Erasmus Darwin on p. 26 of this volume, and a few hints in the extracts from Mr. Patrick Mathew which I have quoted in “Evolution, Old and New,” are all that I yet know of in other writers as pointing to the conclusion that the phenomena of heredity are phenomena also of memory. Chapter VI Professor Ewald Hering “On Memory.” I WILL now lay before the reader a translation of Professor Hering’s own words. I have had it carefully revised throughout by a gentleman whose native language is German, but who has resided in England for many years past. The original lecture is entitled “On Memory as a Universal Function of Organised Matter,” and was delivered at the anniversary meeting of the Imperial Academy of Sciences at Vienna, May 30, 1870. {63} It is as follows:— “When the student of Nature quits the narrow workshop of his own particular inquiry, and sets out upon an excursion into the vast kingdom of philosophical investigation, he does so, doubtless, in the hope of finding the answer to that great riddle, to the solution of a small part of which he devotes his life. Those, however, whom he leaves behind him still working at their own special branch of inquiry, regard his departure with secret misgivings on his behalf, while the born citizens of the kingdom of speculation among whom he would naturalise himself, receive him with well-authorised distrust. He is likely, therefore, to lose ground with the first, while not gaining it with the second. The subject to the consideration of which I would now solicit your attention does certainly appear likely to lure us on towards the flattering land of speculation, but bearing in mind what I have just said, I will beware of quitting the department of natural science to which I have devoted myself hitherto. I shall, however, endeavour to attain its highest point, so as to take a freer view of the surrounding territory. It will soon appear that I should fail in this purpose if my remarks were to confine themselves solely to physiology. I hope to show how far psychological investigations also afford not only permissible, but indispensable, aid to physiological inquiries.