Volume II Part 21 (1/2)

DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--On re-reading your letter I find it necessary to assure you positively (pardon me if I am rude) that you have no conception whatever, not the least, of the scientific opinions as to psychological evolution held by Spencer It is necessary I should say this,--otherwise the mere discussion of details would leave you under the i of the subject It is quite obvious that you do not understand evolution at all You do understand natural selection,--but that is quite another ical evolution, it is first necessary to banish absolutely from the ed in character, or intrinsically added to, by any influence whatever, to any perceptible degree There may be modifications or increments, just as there may be decrements, but these remain imperceptible The race is visibly modified in the course of centuries--not the individual, whether by education, environ else The millions of years required for the development of a body are much more required for the developed to the degree ienerations would suffice to form a perfectly evolved race

Education and other influences only develop or sti (possibly also a very slight incre is of that fores such as seriously affect character

The evolution of the race is perceptible,--not that of the individual, except as the individual life is that of the race in epitome

Besides emotions, passions, etc, certain ideas are necessarily inherited Otherwise mental development in the individual even could not take place Such is the idea of space, and other ideas which forht Sih to have required millions of years to for andmatter, but the development of visible matter itself out of the invisible The evidence of chemistry is that all substances we call ele infinitely simpler and massless

LAFCADIO HEARN

Precisely for the same reason that thethan by reason, and that the ereater part in the individual life than the reasoning faculties, which need training and experience for their developer importance in the study of eestion that one factor should not be dwelt on rather than others would be bad to follow,--first, because all are not equal either in importance or interest, and secondly because the circumstance related or studied must be considered especially in relation to the principal factor of the psychological state which that circumstance has evoked

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN

KOBE, April, 1895

DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--The factors of evolution are host of knowledge of the modern scientific researches on the subject could hold (as you suggest I do) that heredity is a first cause and ”exclusive”(!) Heredity is a result, and the vehicle of transeneration, atrophy, atavism, are quite as much factors in evolution as variation and natural selection and develop of the eternal stream, the river of life, is heredity,--whatever foriven some twenty years' study to these subjects, I a as environrasp of the systey and physiology is absolutely necessary before the psychology of the thing can be clearly perceived Now you say you will accept anything Spencer writes on the subject Well, he writes that ”a child” playing with its ”toys” experiences ”presentative-representative feelings” What are presentative-representative feelings? They are feelings chiefly ”deeper than individual experience” What are feelings deeper than individual experience? Mr Spencer tells us they are ”inherited feelings,”--the suates of race-experience Therefore when I said the child's delight in its toys was ”hereditary-ancestral,”

I said precisely what Spencer says, but what you would never acknowledge so long as ”only I” said it

On this subject of euished froenerally which we call reasoning or constructive iist are electrically reenforced by the startling theory of Schopenhauer, by the systerowing school Indeed, theface and laughs at a s one could be explained in no otherthat Spencer could not obtain a hearing before Darwin Before Darwin, Spencer had already been recognized by Lewes as the lish thinkers, with the ree and near to be justly estimated even in his lifetime Darwin did much, of course, to illuminate one factor of evolution; but I need hardly say that one factor, though the most commonly identified with evolution, is but one of myriads Natural selection can explain but a very s The colossal brain which first detected the necessity of evolution as a cosrowth of a solar systenat,--the brain of Spencer, discerned that law by pure mathematical study of the laws of force And the work of the Darwins and Huxleys and Tyndalls is but detail--small detail--in that tre philosophy and transformed all science and education

I need scarcely say, however, that I should not be able, as a literary dreamer, to derive the inspiration needed from Spencer alone: he is best illuminated, I think, by the aid of Schopenhauer and the new French school which considers the so-called individual as really an infiniteof value which Spencer has not said estive when they happen to coincide with him So, after a fashi+on, is the Vedantic philosophy (much more so than Buddhism), and so also some few dreams of the old Greek schools

Your criticises of relation of integrated states of consciousness with inherited integrations of e These are absolutely distinct But don't think that I pretend to be invariably a state of facts: without theory, a very large part of life's poetry could never be adequately uttered

I knew that the h I did not know the story of the German bandmaster But I did not know that the words once had no reference to the Eive me credit for,--since I wrote only ”the syllables enerations,” which, allowing for poetical exaggeration, seeht anyhow, even if the words did not refer to the En reader would, however, be wrong

Still, on the subject of loyalty, I cannot see that the existence of the feeling as inborn is invalidated by the fact of transference

The feeling is the thing,--not the object, not the Eine, es

Trained from the time of the Gods to obedience and loyalty to so of the military classes would not have been instantly dissipated or annihilated by the change of government, but si been what the Governnore or throay so enor of the race offered, and attempted (I think very successfully) to transfer it to the Emperor The fact in no way affects the truth or falsehood of the sketch ”Yuho”

Your criticis as a possibility

Ever very truly, LAFCADIO HEARN

TO BASIL HALL CHAMBERLAIN

APRIL, 1895

DEAR CHAMBERLAIN,--Excuse me if I don't reply more fully to your letter, because my eyes are a little tired I can only say I wish I were sick, somewhere near you: then perhaps you would cos You would not find the time heavy For the subject is a roram any picture-idea of what heredity ures representing a reticulation of millions of cross-lines This could only be done well under a oes by arithression The individual is the product of 2, the 2 of 4, the 4 of 8, the 8 of 16--well, you know the tale of the smith who offered to shoe a horse with 32 nails, to receive 1 cent on the first nail, and to double the sum upon every nail! The enormity of inheritance is at once apparent But to produce another individual, another life is needed, which represents the superimposition in the child of another infinitely coesting that under normal circumstances the child would necessarily represent an increment He should receive not only the experience of his father's race, but all that of his mother's race superimposed upon it