m,' as translated by Professor Ray
Lankester.[31] The only new feature which I believe I may claim to have
added to received ideas concerning evolution, is a perception of the
fact that the unconsciousness with which we go through our embryonic and
infantile stages, and with which we discharge the greater number and
more important of our natural functions, is of a piece with what we
observe concerning all habitual actions, as well as concerning memory;
an explanation of the phenomena of old age; and of the main principle
which underlies longevity. I may, perhaps, claim also to have more fully
explained the passage of reason into instinct than I yet know of its
having been explained elsewhere.[32]

FOOTNOTES:

[28] See ch. xviii. of this volume.

[29] Vol. xlix. p. 125.

[30] 'Origin of Species,' Hist. Sketch, xvii.

[31] See page 199 of this volume.

[32] Apropos of this, a friend has kindly sent me the following extract
from Balzac:--"Historiquement, les paysans sont encore au lendemain de
la Jacquerie, leur defaite est restee inscrite dans leur cervelle. _Ils
ne se souviennent plus du fait, il est passe a l'etat d'idee
instinctive._"--Balzac, 'Les Paysans,' v.

CHAPTER VII.

PRE-BUFFONIAN EVOLUTION, AND SOME GERMAN WRITERS.

Let us now proceed to the fuller development of the foregoing sketch.

"Undoubtedly," says Isidore Geoffroy, "from the most ancient times many
philosophers have imagined vaguely that one species can be transformed
into another. This doctrine seems to have been adopted by the Ionian
school from the sixth century before our era.... Undoubtedly also the
same opinion reappeared on several occasions in the middle ages, and in
modern times; it is to be found in some of the hermetic books, where the
transmutation of animal and vegetable species, and that of metals, are
treated as complementary to one another. In modern times we again find
it alluded to by some philosophers, and especially by Bacon, whose
boldness is on this point extreme. Admitting it as 'incontestable that
plants sometimes degenerate so far as to become plants of another
species,' Bacon did not hesitate to try and put his theory into
practice. He tried, in 1635, to give 'the rules' for the art of changing
'plants of one species into those of another.'"

This must be an error. Bacon died in 1626. The passage of Bacon referred
to is in 'Nat. Hist.,' Cent. vi. ("Experiments in consort touching the
degenerating of plan