Unconscious Memory

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Transcribed from the 1910 A. C. Fifield edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY

"As this paper contains nothing which deserves the name either of
experiment or discovery, and as it is, in fact, destitute of every
species of merit, we should have allowed it to pass among the
multitude of those articles which must always find their way into the
collections of a society which is pledged to publish two or three
volumes every year. . . . We wish to raise our feeble voice against
innovations, that can have no other effect than to check the progress
of science, and renew all those wild phantoms of the imagination
which Bacon and Newton put to flight from her temple."--Opening
Paragraph of a Review of Dr. Young's Bakerian Lecture. Edinburgh
Review, January 1803, p. 450.

"Young's work was laid before the Royal society, and was made the
1801 Bakerian Lecture. But he was before his time. The second
number of the Edinburgh Review contained an article levelled against
him by Henry (afterwards Lord) Brougham, and this was so severe an
attack that Young's ideas were absolutely quenched for fifteen years.
Brougham was then only twenty-four years of age. Young's theory was
reproduced in France by Fresnel. In our days it is the accepted
theory, and is found to explain all the phenomena of light."--Times
Report of a Lecture by Professor Tyndall on Light, April 27, 1880.

This Book
Is inscribed to
RICHARD GARNETT, ESQ.
(Of the British Museum)
In grateful acknowledgment of the unwearying kindness with which he
has so often placed at my disposal his varied store of information.

Contents:
Note by R. A. Streatfeild
Introduction by Marcus Hartog
Author's Preface
Unconscious Memory

NOTE

For many years a link in the chain of Samuel Butler's biological
works has been missing. "Unconscious Memory" was originally
published thirty years ago, but for fully half that period it has
been out of print, owing to the destruction of a large number of the
unbound sheets in a fire at the premises of the printers some years
ago. The present reprint comes, I think, at a peculiarly fortunate
moment, since the attention of the general public has of late been
drawn to Butler's biological theories in a marked manner by several
distinguished men of science, notably by Dr. Francis Darwin, who, in
his presidential address to the British Association in 1908, quoted
from the translation of Hering's address on "Memory as a Universal
Function of Original Matter," which Butler incorporated into
"Unconscious Memory," and spoke in the highest terms of Butler
himself. It is not necessary for me to do more than refer to the
changed attitude of scientific authorities with regard to Butler and
his theories, since Professor Marcus Hartog has most kindly consented
to contribute an introduction to the present edition of "Unconscious
Memory," summarising Butler's views upon biology, and defining his
position in the world of science. A word must be said as to the
controversy between Butler and Darwin, with which Chapter IV is
concerned. I have been told that in reissuing the book at all I am
committing a grievous error of taste, that the world is no longer
interested in these "old, unhappy far-off things and battles long
ago," and that Butler himself, by refraining from republishing
"Unconscious Memory," tacitly admitted that he wished the controversy
to be consigned to oblivion. This last suggestion, at any rate, has
no foundation in fact. Butler desired nothing less than that his
vindication of himself against what he considered unfair treatment
should be forgotten. He would have republished "Unconscious Memory"
himself, had not the latter years of his life been devoted to all-
engrossing work in other fields. In issuing the present edition I am
fulfilling a wish that he expressed to me shortly before his death.

R. A. STREATFEILD.
April, 1910.

INTRODUCTION By Marcus Hartog, M.A. D.Sc., F.L.S., F.R.H.S.

In reviewing Samuel Butler's works, "Unconscious Memory" gives us an
invaluable lead; for it tells us (Chaps. II, III) how the author came
to write the Book of the Machines in "Erewhon" (1872), with its
foreshadowing of the later theory, "Life and Habit," (1878),
"Evolution, Old and New" (1879), as well as "Unconscious Memory"
(1880) itself. His fourth book on biological theory was "Luck? or
Cunning?" (1887). {0a}

Besides these books, his contributions to biology comprise several
essays: "Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals, contained
in "Selections from Previous Works" (1884) incorporated into "Luck?
or Cunning," "The Deadlock in Darwinism" (Universal Review, April-
June, 1890), republished in the posthumous volume of "Essays on Life,
Art, and Science" (1904), and, finally, some of the "Extracts from
the Notebooks of the late Samuel Butler," edited by Mr. H. Festing
Jones, now in course of publication in the New Quarterly Review.

Of all these, "LIFE AND HABIT" (1878) is the most important, the main
building to which the other writings are buttresses or, at most,
annexes. Its teaching has been summarised in "Unconscious Memory" in
four main principles: "(1) the oneness of personality between parent
and offspring; (2) memory on the part of the offspring of certain
actions which it did when in the persons of its forefathers; (3) the
latency of that memory until it is rekindled by a recurrence of the
associated ideas; (4) the unconsciousness with which habitual actions
come to be performed." To these we must add a fifth: the
purposiveness of the actions of living beings, as of the machines
which they make or select.

Butler tells ("Life and Habit," p. 33) that he sometimes hoped "that
this book would be regarded as a valuable adjunct to Darwinism." He
was bitterly disappointed in the event, for the book, as a whole, was
received by professional biologists as a gigantic joke--a joke,
moreover, not in the best possible taste. True, its central ideas,
largely those of Lamarck, had been presented by Hering in 1870 (as
Butler found shortly after his publication); they had been favourably
received, developed by Haeckel, expounded and praised by Ray
Lankester. Coming from Butler, they met with contumely, even from
such men as Romanes, who, as Butler had no difficulty in proving,
were unconsciously inspired by the same ideas--"Nur mit ein bischen
ander'n Worter."

It is easy, looking back, to see why "Life and Habit" so missed its
mark. Charles Darwin's presentation of the evolution theory had, for
the first time, rendered it possible for a "sound naturalist" to
accept the doctrine of common descent with divergence; and so given a
real meaning to the term "natural relationship," which had forced
itself upon the older naturalists, despite their belief in special
and independent creations. The immediate aim of the naturalists of
the day was now to fill up the gaps in their knowledge, so as to
strengthen the fabric of a unified biology. For this purpose they
found their actual scientific equipment so inadequate that they were
fully occupied in inventing fresh technique, and working therewith at
facts--save a few critics, such as St. George Mivart, who was
regarded as negligible, since he evidently held a brief for a party
standing outside the scientific world.

Butler introduced himself as what we now call "The Man in the
Street," far too bare of scientific clothing to satisfy the Mrs.
Grundy of the domain: lacking all recognised tools of science and
all sense of the difficulties in his way, he proceeded to tackle the
problems of science with little save the deft pen of the literary
expert in his hand. His very failure to appreciate the difficulties
gave greater power to his work--much as Tartarin of Tarascon ascended
the Jungfrau and faced successfully all dangers of Alpine travel, so
long as he believed them to be the mere "blagues de reclame" of the
wily Swiss host. His brilliant qualities of style and irony
themselves told heavily against him. Was he not already known for
having written the most trenchant satire that had appeared since
"Gulliver's Travels"? Had he not sneered therein at the very
foundations of society, and followed up its success by a pseudo-
biography that had taken in the "Record" and the "Rock"? In "Life
and Habit," at the very start, he goes out of his way to heap scorn
at the respected names of Marcus Aurelius, Lord Bacon, Goethe, Arnold
of Rugby, and Dr. W. B. Carpenter. He expressed the lowest opinion
of the Fellows of the Royal Society. To him the professional man of
science, with self-conscious knowledge for his ideal and aim, was a
medicine-man, priest, augur--useful, perhaps, in his way, but to be
carefully watched by all who value freedom of thought and person,
lest with opportunity he develop into a persecutor of the worst type.
Not content with blackguarding the audience to whom his work should
most appeal, he went on to depreciate that work itself and its author
in his finest vein of irony. Having argued that our best and highest
knowledge is that of whose possession we are most ignorant, he
proceeds: "Above all, let no unwary reader do me the injustice of
believing in me. In that I write at all I am among the damned."

His writing of "EVOLUTION, OLD AND NEW" (1879) was due to his
conviction that scant justice had been done by Charles Darwin and
Alfred Wallace and their admirers to the pioneering work of Buffon,
Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck. To repair this he gives a brilliant
exposition of what seemed to him the most valuable portion of their
teachings on evolution. His analysis of Buffon's true meaning,
veiled by the reticences due to the conditions under which he wrote,
is as masterly as the English in which he develops it. His sense of
wounded justice explains the vigorous polemic which here, as in all
his later writings, he carries to the extreme.

As a matter of fact, he never realised Charles Darwin's utter lack of
sympathetic understanding of the work of his French precursors, let
alone his own grandfather, Erasmus. Yet this practical ignorance,
which to Butler was so strange as to transcend belief, was altogether
genuine, and easy to realise when we recall the position of Natural
Science in the early thirties in Darwin's student days at Cambridge,
and for a decade or two later. Catastropharianism was the tenet of
the day: to the last it commended itself to his Professors of Botany
and Geology,--for whom Darwin held the fervent allegiance of the
Indian scholar, or chela, to his guru. As Geikie has recently
pointed out, it was only later, when Lyell had shown that the breaks
in the succession of the rocks were only partial and local, without
involving the universal catastrophes that destroyed all life and
rendered fresh creations thereof necessary, that any general
acceptance of a descent theory could be expected. We may be very
sure that Darwin must have received many solemn warnings against the
dangerous speculations of the "French Revolutionary School." He
himself was far too busy at the time with the reception and
assimilation of new facts to be awake to the deeper interest of far-
reaching theories.

It is the more unfortunate that Butler's lack of appreciation on
these points should have led to the enormous proportion of bitter
personal controversy that we find in the remainder of his biological
writings. Possibly, as suggested by George Bernard Shaw, his
acquaintance and admirer, he was also swayed by philosophical
resentment at that banishment of mind from the organic universe,
which was generally thought to have been achieved by Charles Darwin's
theory. Still, we must remember that this mindless view is not
implicit in Charles Darwin's presentment of his own theory, nor was
it accepted by him as it has been by so many of his professed
disciples.

"UNCONSCIOUS MEMORY" (1880).--We have already alluded to an
anticipation of Butler's main theses. In 1870 Dr. Ewald Hering, one
of the most eminent physiologists of the day, Professor at Vienna,
gave an Inaugural Address to the Imperial Royal Academy of Sciences:
"Das Gedachtniss als allgemeine Funktion der organisirter Substanz"
("Memory as a Universal Function of Organised Matter"). When "Life
and Habit" was well advanced, Francis Darwin, at the time a frequent
visitor, called Butler's attention to this essay, which he himself
only knew from an article in "Nature." Herein Professor E. Ray
Lankester had referred to it with admiring sympathy in connection
with its further development by Haeckel in a pamphlet entitled "Die
Perigenese der Plastidule." We may note, however, that in his
collected Essays, "The Advancement of Science" (1890), Sir Ray
Lankester, while including this Essay, inserts on the blank page
{0b}--we had almost written "the white sheet"--at the back of it an
apology for having ever advocated the possibility of the transmission
of acquired characters.

"Unconscious Memory" was largely written to show the relation of
Butler's views to Hering's, and contains an exquisitely written
translation of the Address. Hering does, indeed, anticipate Butler,
and that in language far more suitable to the persuasion of the
scientific public. It contains a subsidiary hypothesis that memory
has for its mechanism special vibrations of the protoplasm, and the
acquired capacity to respond to such vibrations once felt upon their
repetition. I do not think that the theory gains anything by the
introduction of this even as a mere formal hypothesis; and there is
no evidence for its being anything more. Butler, however, gives it a
warm, nay, enthusiastic, reception in Chapter V (Introduction to
Professor Hering's lecture), and in his notes to the translation of
the Address, which bulks so large in this book, but points out that
he was "not committed to this hypothesis, though inclined to accept
it on a prima facie view." Later on, as we shall see, he attached
more importance to it.

The Hering Address is followed in "Unconscious Memory" by
translations of selected passages from Von Hartmann's "Philosophy of
the Unconscious," and annotations to explain the difference from this
personification of "The Unconscious" as a mighty all-ruling, all-
creating personality, and his own scientific recognition of the great
part played by UNCONSCIOUS PROCESSES in the region of mind and
memory.

These are the essentials of the book as a contribution to biological
philosophy. The closing chapters contain a lucid statement of
objections to his theory as they might be put by a rigid
necessitarian, and a refutation of that interpretation as applied to
human action.

But in the second chapter Butler states his recession from the strong
logical position he had hitherto developed in his writings from
"Erewhon" onwards; so far he had not only distinguished the living
from the non-living, but distinguished among the latter MACHINES or
TOOLS from THINGS AT LARGE. {0c} Machines or tools are the external
organs of living beings, as organs are their internal machines: they
are fashioned, assembled, or selected by the beings for a purposes so
they have a FUTURE PURPOSE, as well as a PAST HISTORY. "Things at
large" have a past history, but no purpose (so long as some being
does not convert them into tools and give them a purpose): Machines
have a Why? as well as a How?: "things at large" have a How? only.

In "Unconscious Memory" the allurements of unitary or monistic views
have gained the upper hand, and Butler writes (p. 23):-

"The only thing of which I am sure is, that the distinction between
the organic and inorganic is arbitrary; that it is more coherent with
our other ideas, and therefore more acceptable, to start with every
molecule as a living thing, and then deduce death as the breaking up
of an association or corporation, than to start with inanimate
molecules and smuggle life into them; and that, therefore, what we
call the inorganic world must be regarded as up to a certain point
living, and instinct, within certain limits, with consciousness,
volition, and power of concerted action. IT IS ONLY OF LATE,
HOWEVER, THAT I HAVE COME TO THIS OPINION."

I have italicised the last sentence, to show that Butler was more or
less conscious of its irreconcilability with much of his most
characteristic doctrine. Again, in the closing chapter, Butler
writes (p. 275):-

"We should endeavour to see the so-called inorganic as living in
respect of the qualities it has in common with the organic, rather
than the organic as non-living in respect of the qualities it has in
common with the inorganic."

We conclude our survey of this book by mentioning the literary
controversial part chiefly to be found in Chapter IV, but cropping up
elsewhere. It refers to interpolations made in the authorised
translation of Krause's "Life of Erasmus Darwin." Only one side is
presented; and we are not called upon, here or elsewhere, to discuss
the merits of the question.

"LUCK, OR CUNNING, as the Main Means of Organic Modification? an
Attempt to throw Additional Light upon the late Mr. Charles Darwin's
Theory of Natural Selection" (1887), completes the series of
biological books. This is mainly a book of strenuous polemic. It
brings out still more forcibly the Hering-Butler doctrine of
continued personality from generation to generation, and of the
working of unconscious memory throughout; and points out that, while
this is implicit in much of the teaching of Herbert Spencer, Romanes,
and others, it was nowhere--even after the appearance of "Life and
Habit"--explicitly recognised by them, but, on the contrary, masked
by inconsistent statements and teaching. Not Luck but Cunning, not
the uninspired weeding out by Natural Selection but the intelligent
striving of the organism, is at the bottom of the useful variety of
organic life. And the parallel is drawn that not the happy accident
of time and place, but the Machiavellian cunning of Charles Darwin,
succeeded in imposing, as entirely his own, on the civilised world an
uninspired and inadequate theory of evolution wherein luck played the
leading part; while the more inspired and inspiring views of the
older evolutionists had failed by the inferiority of their luck. On
this controversy I am bound to say that I do not in the very least
share Butler's opinions; and I must ascribe them to his lack of
personal familiarity with the biologists of the day and their modes
of thought and of work. Butler everywhere undervalues the important
work of elimination played by Natural Selection in its widest sense.

The "Conclusion" of "Luck, or Cunning?" shows a strong advance in
monistic views, and a yet more marked development in the vibration
hypothesis of memory given by Hering and only adopted with the
greatest reserve in "Unconscious Memory."

"Our conception, then, concerning the nature of any matter depends
solely upon its kind and degree of unrest, that is to say, on the
characteristics of the vibrations that are going on within it. The
exterior object vibrating in a certain way imparts some of its
vibrations to our brain; but if the state of the thing itself depends
upon its vibrations, it [the thing] must be considered as to all
intents and purposes the vibrations themselves--plus, of course, the
underlying substance that is vibrating. . . . The same vibrations,
therefore, form the substance remembered, introduce an infinitesimal
dose of it within the brain, modify the substance remembering, and,
in the course of time, create and further modify the mechanism of
both the sensory and the motor nerves. Thought and thing are one.

"I commend these two last speculations to the reader's charitable
consideration, as feeling that I am here travelling beyond the ground
on which I can safely venture. . . . I believe they are both
substantially true."

In 1885 he had written an abstract of these ideas in his notebooks
(see New Quarterly Review, 1910, p. 116), and as in "Luck, or
Cunning?" associated them vaguely with the unitary conceptions
introduced into chemistry by Newlands and Mendelejeff. Judging
himself as an outsider, the author of "Life and Habit" would
certainly have considered the mild expression of faith, "I believe
they are both substantially true," equivalent to one of extreme
doubt. Thus "the fact of the Archbishop's recognising this as among
the number of his beliefs is conclusive evidence, with those who have
devoted attention to the laws of thought, that his mind is not yet
clear" on the matter of the belief avowed (see "Life and Habit," pp.
24, 25).

To sum up: Butler's fundamental attitude to the vibration hypothesis
was all through that taken in "Unconscious Memory"; he played with it
as a pretty pet, and fancied it more and more as time went on; but
instead of backing it for all he was worth, like the main theses of
"Life and Habit," he put a big stake on it--and then hedged.

The last of Butler's biological writings is the Essay, "THE DEADLOCK
IN DARWINISM," containing much valuable criticism on Wallace and
Weismann. It is in allusion to the misnomer of Wallace's book,
"Darwinism," that he introduces the term "Wallaceism" {0d} for a
theory of descent that excludes the transmission of acquired
characters. This was, indeed, the chief factor that led Charles
Darwin to invent his hypothesis of pangenesis, which, unacceptable as
it has proved, had far more to recommend it as a formal hypothesis
than the equally formal germ-plasm hypothesis of Weismann.

The chief difficulty in accepting the main theses of Butler and
Hering is one familiar to every biologist, and not at all difficult
to understand by the layman. Everyone knows that the complicated
beings that we term "Animals" and "Plants," consist of a number of
more or less individualised units, the cells, each analogous to a
simpler being, a Protist--save in so far as the character of the cell
unit of the Higher being is modified in accordance with the part it
plays in that complex being as a whole. Most people, too, are
familiar with the fact that the complex being starts as a single
cell, separated from its parent; or, where bisexual reproduction
occurs, from a cell due to the fusion of two cells, each detached
from its parent. Such cells are called "Germ-cells." The germ-cell,
whether of single or of dual origin, starts by dividing repeatedly,
so as to form the PRIMARY EMBRYONIC CELLS, a complex mass of cells,
at first essentially similar, which, however, as they go on
multiplying, undergo differentiations and migrations, losing their
simplicity as they do so. Those cells that are modified to take part
in the proper work of the whole are called tissue-cells. In virtue
of their activities, their growth and reproductive power are limited-
-much more in Animals than in Plants, in Higher than in Lower beings.
It is these tissues, or some of them, that receive the impressions
from the outside which leave the imprint of memory. Other cells,
which may be closely associated into a continuous organ, or more or
less surrounded by tissue-cells, whose part it is to nourish them,
are called "secondary embryonic cells," or "germ-cells." The germ-
cells may be differentiated in the young organism at a very early
stage, but in Plants they are separated at a much later date from the
less isolated embryonic regions that provide for the Plant's
branching; in all cases we find embryonic and germ-cells screened
from the life processes of the complex organism, or taking no very
obvious part in it, save to form new tissues or new organs, notably
in Plants.

Again, in ourselves, and to a greater or less extent in all Animals,
we find a system of special tissues set apart for the reception and
storage of impressions from the outer world, and for guiding the
other organs in their appropriate responses--the "Nervous System";
and when this system is ill-developed or out of gear the remaining
organs work badly from lack of proper skilled guidance and co-
ordination. How can we, then, speak of "memory" in a germ-cell which
has been screened from the experiences of the organism, which is too
simple in structure to realise them if it were exposed to them? My
own answer is that we cannot form any theory on the subject, the only
question is whether we have any right to INFER this "memory" from the
BEHAVIOUR of living beings; and Butler, like Hering, Haeckel, and
some more modern authors, has shown that the inference is a very
strong presumption. Again, it is easy to over-value such complex
instruments as we possess. The possessor of an up-to-date camera,
well instructed in the function and manipulation of every part, but
ignorant of all optics save a hand-to-mouth knowledge of the
properties of his own lens, might say that a priori no picture could
be taken with a cigar-box perforated by a pin-hole; and our ignorance
of the mechanism of the Psychology of any organism is greater by many
times than that of my supposed photographer. We know that Plants are
able to do many things that can only be accounted for by ascribing to
them a "psyche," and these co-ordinated enough to satisfy their
needs; and yet they possess no central organ comparable to the brain,
no highly specialised system for intercommunication like our nerve
trunks and fibres. As Oscar Hertwig says, we are as ignorant of the
mechanism of the development of the individual as we are of that of
hereditary transmission of acquired characters, and the absence of
such mechanism in either case is no reason for rejecting the proven
fact.

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