Fred W. Ward - "The 23rd (Service) Battalion Royal Fusiliers (First Sportsman's)"

William H. Elson and Christine Keck - "Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four."

Isabel Meredith - "A Girl Among the Anarchists"

Ezra Pound - "Certain Noble Plays of Japan"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Form and Function

E >> E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell >> Form and Function




The experimental study of form was prosecuted in many other directions
besides that of experimental embryology. The study of regeneration and
of regulatory processes attracted many workers, among whom may be
mentioned T. H. Morgan, C. M. Child, and H. Driesch. In an interesting
series of papers C. Herbst applied the principles of the physiology of
stimulus to the interpretation of development.[505] The formative power of
function was studied in Germany by Roux and his pupils, Fuld, O. Levy,
Schepelmann and others, particularly by E. Babak. In France, F. Houssay
inaugurated[506] an important series of memoirs by himself and his pupils
on "dynamical morphology," the most important memoir being his own
valuable discussion of the functional significance of form in fishes.[507]
The principles of his dynamical morphology were first laid down in his
book _La Forme et la Vie_ (1900).

The famous experiments of Loeb, Delage and others on artificial
parthenogenesis may also be mentioned, though their connection with
morphology is somewhat remote.

The period was characterised also by the lively discussion of first
principles, in which Driesch took a leading part. Materialistic methods
of interpretation were upheld by perhaps the majority of biologists, but
vitalism found powerful support.

[464] See Carus's remark, referred to on p. 194, above.

[465] Roux, _Die Entwicklungsmechanik_, p. 26, Leipzig,
1905.

[466] T. H. Morgan, _Regeneration_, p. 1, New York and
London, 1901.

[467] _Recherches sur la production artificielle des
Monstruosites_, Paris, 1877, and many later papers.

[468] _Unsere Koerperform und das physiologische Problem
ihrer Entstehung_, Leipzig, 1874.

[469] J. W. Jenkinson, _Experimental Embryology_, p. 3,
Oxford, 1909.

[470] "Ueber die Verzweigungen der Blutgefaesse des
Menschen," _Jen. Zeit_., xii., 1878.

[471] "Ueber die Bedeutung der Ablenkung des
Arterienstammes bei der Astabgabe," _Jen. Zeit_., xiii.,
1879.

[472] "Beitraege zur Morphologie der funktionellen
Anpassung. I. Struktur eines hochdifferenzierten
bindgewebigen Organes (der Schwanzflosse des Delphin),"
_Arch. Anat. Physiol._ (_Anat. Abt._) for 1883. II.
"Ueber die Selbstregulation der 'morphologischen' Laenge
der Skeletmuskeln des Menschen," _Jen. Zeit._, xvi.,
1883. III. "Beschreibung ... einer
Kniegelenkeknochenankylose," _Arch. Anat. Physiol._
(_Anat. Abt._) for 1885.

[473] In 1869 and 1877 respectively (Roux, p. 53, 1905).

[474] _Ueber die Zeit. der Bestimmung der Hauptrichtungen
des Froschembryo_, Leipzig, 1883.

[475] "Ueber den Einfluss der Schwerkraft auf die Teilung
der Zellen," Pflueger's _Archiv_, xxxi., 1883. Also
subsequent papers in same journal.

[476] For an account of the classical experiments on the
frog's egg, see T. H. Morgan, _The Development of the
Frog's Egg_, New York, 1897.

[477] In a series of "Beitraege zur Entwicklungsmechanik
des Embryo," published in various journals from 1884 to
1891, all dealing with the frog's egg. Also in many
papers in the _Archiv f. Entw. mech._, from 1895
onwards.

[478] _Die Entwicklungsmechanik der Organismen, eine
anatomische Wissenschaft der Zukunft_, Wien, 1890.

[479] The first volume contains the important _Einleitung_
or general Introduction.

[480] _Gesammelte Abhandlungen ueber Entwicklungsmechanik
der Organismen_, 2 vols., Leipzig, 1895.

[481] "Fuer unser Programm und seine Verwirklichung,"
_A.E.M._, v., pp. 1-80 and 219-342, 1897. "Ueber die
Selbstregulation der Lebewesen," _A.E.M._, xiii., pp.
610-5, 1902. "Die Entwicklungsmechanik, ein neuer Zweig
der biologischen Wissenschaft," Heft I. of the _Vortraege
u. Aufsaetze ueber Entwicklungsmechanik der Organismen_,
Leipzig, 1905. Oppel and Roux, "Ueber die gestaltliche
Anpassung der Blutgefaesse," Heft x., of the _Vortraege u.
Aufsaetze_, Leipzig, 1910.

[482] "Ueber d. funkt. Anpassung des Muskelmagens der
Gans," _A.E.M._, xxi., pp. 461-99, 1906.

[483] The exact quantitative formulation of a
_Wirkungsweise_ constitutes a law. The word itself is
perhaps most conveniently rendered as "causal process."

[484] M. Fuerbringer, perhaps under the influence of Roux,
emphasised the importance, from a morphological point of
view, of studying post-embryonic (functional)
development, _Unters. z. Morph. u. Syst. der Voegel_,
ii., Amsterdam, p. 925, 1888.

[485] See, for the development of this idea, Oppel, in
Roux-Oppel, 1910.

[486] _Cf._ the controversy between Herbert Spencer and
Weismann on the subject of "coadaptation" in the
_Contemporary Review_ for 1893 and 1894. See also
Weismann's paper in _Darwin and Modern Science_,
Cambridge, 1909.

[487] That is, the length they take up when separated from
the body.

[488] "Wilhelm Roux zum 60. Geburtstage," _Arch. f.
Entw.-Mech._, xxx. _Festschrift fuer Prof. Roux_, Pt. i,
1910.

[489] Virchow's _Archiv_, cxiv., 1888. First announced in
Sept. 1887.

[490] _Ueber die Bedeutung der Kernteilungsfiguren_,
Leipzig, 1883.

[491] _Bresl. aertz. Zeitschr._, 1885.

[492] _Journ. de l'Anat. et de la Physiologie_, xxiii.,
1887.

[493] _Zeits. f. wiss. Zool._, liii., 1891 and 1892.

[494] _Journ. Morph._, viii., 1893.

[495] _Arch. f. Ent.-Mech._, i., 1895; ii., 1896.

[496] _Arch. f. mikr. Anat._, xliii., 1893.

[497] _Arch. f. Ent.-Mech._, iii., 1896.

[498] _Arch. f. Ent.-Mech._, i., 1895.

[499] _Anat. Anz._, x., 1895.

[500] _Arch. f. Ent.-Mech._, iv. 1897.

[501] _Arch. f. Ent.-Mech._, ii., 1896.

[502] _Arch. f. Ent.-Mech._, iii., 1896.

[503] _Journ. exper. Zool._, i., 1904.

[504] _Unsere Koerperform_, p. 19, Leipzig, 1874.

[505] _Biolog. Centrlbl._, xiv., 1894, xv., 1895.
_Formative Reize in der thierischen Ontogenese_,
Leipzig, 1901.

[506] "La Morphologie dynamique," No. i. of the
_Collection de Morphologie dynamique_, Paris, 1911.

[507] "Forme, Puissance et Stabilite des Poissons," No.
iv. of the _Collection_, Paris, 1912.




CHAPTER XIX

SAMUEL BUTLER AND THE MEMORY THEORIES OF HEREDITY


We have laid stress upon the distinction established by Roux between the
two stages of development--the automatic and the functional--because of
the light which it seems to throw upon the phylogenetic relation of form
to function. We have pointed out, too, the paramount role that function
plays in Roux's theories of development and heredity, and we have
brought out the close kinship existing between his theory and that of
Lamarck. For Roux, as for Lamarck, the function creates the organ, and
it is only after long generations that the organ appears before the
function.

It so happened that just about the time when Roux's papers were
beginning to appear a brilliant attempt was made by Samuel Butler to
revive and complete the Lamarckian doctrine.

A man of singular freshness and openness of mind, combining in an
extraordinary degree extreme intellectual subtlety with a childlike
simplicity of outlook, Butler was one of the most fascinating figures of
the 19th century. He was not a professional biologist, and much of his
biological work is, for that reason, imperfect. But he brought to bear
upon the central problems of biology an unbiassed and powerful
intelligence, and his attitude to these problems, just because it is
that of a cultivated layman, is singularly illuminating.

He was not well acquainted with biological literature; he seems to have
hit upon the main ideas of his theory of life and habit in complete
independence of Lamarck, and only later to have become aware that
Lamarck had in a measure forestalled him. He puts this very beautifully
in the following passage from his chief biological work _Life and Habit_
(1877[508]):--"I admit that when I began to write upon my subject I did
not seriously believe in it. I saw, as it were, a pebble upon the
ground, with a sheen that pleased me; taking it up, I turned it over and
over for my amusement, and found it always grow brighter and brighter
the more I examined it. At length I became fascinated, and gave loose
rein to self-illusion. The aspect of the world changed; the trifle which
I had picked up idly had proved to be a talisman of inestimable value,
and had opened a door through which I caught glimpses of a strange and
interesting transformation. Then came one who told me that the stone was
not mine, but that it had been dropped by Lamarck, to whom it belonged
rightfully, but who had lost it; whereon I said I cared not who was the
owner, if only I might use it and enjoy it. Now, therefore, having
polished it with what art and care one who is no jeweller could bestow
upon it, I return it, as best I may, to its possessor" (p. 306). In one
of his later works, however, Butler made up for his first neglect of his
predecessors by giving what is undeniably the best account in English
literature of the work of Buffon, Lamarck, and Erasmus Darwin--in his
_Evolution, Old and New_ (1879). Many of his facts he took from Charles
Darwin, whose theory of natural selection he bitterly opposed, in the
two books just mentioned and in _Unconscious Memory_ (1880) and _Luck or
Cunning_ (1887).

Butler's main thesis is that living things are active, intelligent
agents, personally continuous with all their ancestors, possessing an
intense but unconscious memory of all that their ancestors did and
suffered, and moving through habit from the spontaneity of striving to
the automatism of remembrance.

The primary cause of all variation in structure is the active response
of the organism to needs experienced by it, and the indispensable link
between the outer world and the creature itself is that same "sense of
need" upon which Lamarck insisted. "According to Lamarck, genera and
species have been evolved, in the main, by exactly the same process as
that by which human inventions and civilisations are now progressing;
and this involves that intelligence, ingenuity, heroism, and all the
elements of romance, should have had the main share in the development
of every herb and living creature around us" (_Life and Habit_, p. 253).
Variations are indubitably the raw material of evolution--"The question
is as to the origin and character of these variations. We say they
mainly originate in a creature through a sense of its needs, and vary
through the varying surroundings which will cause those needs to vary,
and through the opening-up of new desires in many creatures, as the
consequence of the gratification of old ones; they depend greatly on
differences of individual capacity and temperament; they are
communicated, and in the course of time transmitted, as what we call
hereditary habits or structures, though these are only, in truth,
intense and epitomised memories of how certain creatures liked to deal
with protoplasm" (p. 267).

Butler's theory then is essentially a bold and enlightened Lamarckism,
completed and rounded off by the conception that heredity too is a
psychological process, of the same nature as memory.

In seeking to establish a close analogy between memory and heredity
Butler starts out from the fact of common experience, that actions which
on their first performance require the conscious exercise of will and
intelligence, and are then carried out with difficulty and hesitation,
gradually through long-continued practice come to be performed easily
and automatically, without the conscious exercise of intelligence or
will.

He tries to show that this is a general law--that knowledge and will
become intense and perfect only when through long-continued exercise
they become automatic and unconscious--and he applies this conception to
the elucidation of development.

Developmental processes, especially the early ones (of Roux's first
stage) are automatic and unconscious, and yet imply the possession by
the embryo of a wonderfully perfect knowledge of the processes to be
gone through, and an assured power of will and judgment. Is it
conceivable, says Butler, that the embryo can do all these things
without knowing how to do them, and without having done them before?
"Shall we say ... that a baby of a day old sucks (which involves the
whole principle of the pump, and hence a profound practical knowledge of
the laws of pneumatics and hydrostatics), digests, oxygenises its blood
(millions of years before Sir Humphrey Davy discovered oxygen), sees and
hears--all most difficult and complicated operations, involving a
knowledge of the facts concerning optics and acoustics, compared with
which the discoveries of Newton sink into utter insignificance? Shall we
say that a baby can do all these things at once, doing them so well and
so regularly, without being even able to direct its attention to them,
and without mistake, and at the same time not know how to do them, and
never have done them before?" (p. 54). Assuredly not.

The only possible explanation is that the embryo's ancestors have done
these things so often, throughout so many millions of generations, that
the embryo's knowledge of how to do them has become unconscious and
automatic by reason of this age-long practice. This implies that there
is in a very real sense actual personal continuity between the embryo
and all its ancestors, so that their experiences are his, their memory
also his. "We must suppose the continuity of life and sameness between
living beings, whether plants or animals, to be far closer than we have
hitherto believed; so that the experience of one person is not enjoyed
by his successor, so much as that the successor is _bona fide_ but a
part of the life of his progenitor, imbued with all his memories,
profiting by all his experiences--which are, in fact, his own--and only
unconscious of the extent of his own memories and experiences owing to
their vastness and already infinite repetitions" (p. 50). It is very
suggestive in this connection, he continues--"I. That we are _most
conscious of, and have most control over_, such habits as speech, the
upright position, the arts and sciences, which are acquisitions peculiar
to the human race, always acquired after birth, and not common to
ourselves and any ancestor who had not become entirely human.

"II. That we are _less conscious of, and have less control over_, eating
and drinking, swallowing, breathing, seeing and hearing, which were
acquisitions of our prehuman ancestry, and for which we had provided
ourselves with all the necessary apparatus before we saw light, but
which are, geologically speaking, recent, or comparatively recent.

"III. That we are _most unconscious of, and have least control over_,
our digestion and circulation, which belonged even to our invertebrate
ancestry, and which are habits, geologically speaking, of extreme
antiquity.... Does it not seem as though the older and more confirmed
the habit, the more unquestioning the act of volition, till, in the case
of the oldest habits, the practice of succeeding existences has so
formulated the procedure, that, on being once committed to such and such
a line beyond a certain point, the subsequent course is so clear as to
be open to no further doubt, to admit of no alternative, till the very
power of questioning is gone, and even the consciousness of volition"
(pp. 51-2).

The hypothesis then, that heredity and development are due to
unconscious memory, finds much to support it--"the self-development of
each new life in succeeding generations--the various stages through
which it passes (as it would appear, at first sight, without rhyme or
reason), the manner in which it prepares structures of the most
surpassing intricacy and delicacy, for which it has no use at the time
when it prepares them, and the many elaborate instincts which it
exhibits immediately on, and indeed before, birth--all point in the
direction of habit and memory, as the only causes which could produce
them" (p. 125). The hypothesis explains, for instance, the fact of
recapitulation:--"Why should the embryo of any animal go through so many
stages--embryological allusions to forefathers of a widely different
type? And why, again, should the germs of the same kind of creature
always go through the same stages? If the germ of any animal now living
is, in its simplest state, but part of the personal identity of one of
the original germs of all life whatsoever, and hence, if any now living
organism must be considered without quibble as being itself millions of
years old, and as imbued with an intense though unconscious memory of
all that it has done sufficiently often to have made a permanent
impression; if this be so, we can answer the above questions perfectly
well. The creature goes through so many intermediate stages between its
earliest state as life at all, and its latest development, for the
simplest of all reasons, namely, because this is the road by which it
has always hitherto travelled to its present differentiation; this is
the road it knows, and into every turn and up or down of which it has
been guided by the force of circumstances and the balance of
considerations" (pp. 125-6).

The hypothesis explains also the way in which the orderly succession of
stages in embryogeny is brought about, for we can readily understand
that the embryo will not remember any stage until it has passed through
the stage immediately preceding it. "Each step of normal development
will lead the impregnated ovum up to, and remind it of, its next
ordinary course of action, in the same way as we, when we recite a
well-known passage, are led up to each successive sentence by the
sentence which has immediately preceded it.... Though the ovum
immediately after impregnation is instinct with all the memories of both
parents, not one of these memories can normally become active till both
the ovum itself and its surroundings are sufficiently like what they
respectively were, when the occurrence now to be remembered last took
place. The memory will then immediately return, and the creature will do
as it did on the last occasion that it was in like case as now. This
ensures that similarity of order shall be preserved in all the stages of
development in successive generations" (pp. 297-8).

Abnormal conditions of development will cause the embryo to pause and
hesitate, as if at a loss what to do, having no ancestral experience to
guide it. Abnormalities of development represent the embryo's attempt to
make the best of an unexpected situation. Or, as Butler puts it, "When
... events are happening to it which, if it has the kind of memory we
are attributing to it, would baffle that memory, or which have rarely or
never been included in the category of its recollections, _it acts
precisely as a creature acts_ _when its recollection is disturbed, or
when it is required to do something which it has never done before_" (p.
132). "It is certainly noteworthy that the embryo is never at a loss,
unless something happens to it which has not usually happened to its
forefathers, and which in the nature of things it cannot remember" (p.
132).

Butler's teleological conception of organic evolution was of course
completely antagonistic to the naturalistic conceptions current in his
time. In one of his later books he repeats Paley's arguments in favour
of design, and to the question, "Where, then, is your designer of beasts
and birds, of fishes, and of plants?" he replies: "Our answer is simple
enough; it is that we can and do point to a living tangible person with
flesh, blood, eyes, nose, ears, organs, senses, dimensions, who did of
his own cunning, after infinite proof of every kind of hazard and
experiment, scheme out and fashion each organ of the human body. This is
the person whom we claim as the designer and artificer of that body, and
he is the one of all others the best fitted for the task by his
antecedents, and his practical knowledge of the requirements of the
case--for he is man himself. Not man, the individual of any given
generation, but man in the entirety of his existence from the dawn of
life onwards to the present moment" (_Evolution, Old and New_, p. 30,
1879).

Butler's theory of life and habit remained only a sketch, and he was
perhaps not fully aware of its philosophical implications. Since
Butler's time, a new complexion has been put upon biological philosophy
by the profound speculations of Bergson.

But it is not impossible that the future development of biological
thought will follow some such lines as those which he tentatively laid
down.

Butler was not the first to suggest that there is a close connection
between heredity and memory--it is a thought likely to occur to any
unprejudiced thinker. The first enunciation of it which attracted
general attention was that contained in Hering's famous lecture "On
Memory as a general Function of organised Matter."[509] Butler was not
aware of Hering's work when he published his _Life and Habit_, but in
_Unconscious Memory_ (1880) he gave full credit to Hering as the first
discoverer, and supplied an admirable translation of Hering's lecture.
As far as the assimilation of heredity to memory is concerned Hering and
Butler have much in common, but Hering did not share Butler's Lamarckian
and vitalistic views, preferring to hold fast, for the practical
purposes of physiology at all events, to the general accepted theory of
the parallelism between psychical and physical processes. He was
inclined to regard memory in the ordinary sense as a function of the
brain, and memory in general as a function of all organised matter.
Speaking of the psychical life, he says, "Thus the cause which produces
the unity of all single phenomena of consciousness must be looked for in
unconscious life. As we know nothing of this except what we learn from
our investigations of matter, and since in a purely empirical
consideration, matter and the unconscious must be regarded as identical,
the physiologist may justly define memory in a wider sense to be a
faculty of the brain, the results of which to a great extent belong to
both consciousness and unconsciousness."[510] Hering's views were
supported by Haeckel.[511]

In 1893 an American, H. F. Orr,[512] tried to work out a theory of
development and heredity based upon the fundamental idea "that the
property which is the basis of bodily development in organisms is the
same property which we recognise as the basis of psychic activity and
psychic development." He tried also to explain the recapitulation of
phylogeny by ontogeny as due to habit.

The neo-Lamarckian school of American palaeontologists were also in
sympathy with the memory idea, and this was expressed most clearly
perhaps by Cope.[513]

In 1904 appeared the work on this subject which has attracted the most
attention--R. Semon's _Die Mneme_.[514] This was an elaborate treatment of
the question from the materialistic point of view, the main assumption
of Semon's theory being that the action of a stimulus upon the organism
leaves a more or less permanent material trace or "engramm," of such a
nature as to modify the subsequent action of the organism.

Applied to the explanation of heredity and development, Semon's theory
comes to very much the same as Weismann's, with engramms substituted for
determinants, but it has the great advantage of allowing for the
transmission of acquired characters. The application of the concept of
stimulus is valuable and suggestive, but it seems to us that the memory
theory of heredity can be properly utilised only by adopting a frankly
Lamarckian and vitalistic standpoint, and this standpoint Semon
expressly combats. As Ward[515] points out in his illuminating lecture on
heredity and memory--"Records or memoranda alone are not memory, for
they presuppose it. _They_ may consist of physical traces, but memory,
even when called 'unconscious,' suggests mind; for, as we have seen, the
automatic character implied by this term 'unconscious' presupposes
foregone experience.... The mnemic theory then, if it is to be worth
anything, seems to me clearly to require not merely physical records or
'engrams,' but living experience or tradition. The mnemic theory will
work for those who can accept a monadistic or pampsychist interpretation
of the beings that make up the world, who believe with Spinoza and
Leibniz that 'all individual things are animated albeit in divers
degree'" (pp. 55-6).

Perhaps the best and most ingenious treatment of memory and heredity
from a physical standpoint is that offered by E. Rignano in his book,
_Sur la transmissibilite des caracteres acquis_.[516] Rignano seeks to
construct a physico-chemical "model" which will explain both heredity
and memory.

His system, which is based more firmly upon the facts of experimental
embryology than Semon's, postulates the existence of "specific nervous
accumulators." The essential hypothesis set up is that every functional
stimulus is transformed into specific vital energy, and deposits in the
nucleus of the cell a specific substance which is capable of
discharging, in an inverse direction, the nervous current which has
formed it, as soon as the dynamical equilibrium of the organism is
restored to the state in which it was when the original stimulus acted
upon it. These specific nuclear substances, different for each cell, are
accumulated also in the nuclei of the germinal substance, constituting
what Rignano calls the central zone of development. That is to say, each
functional adaptation changes slightly the dynamical equilibrium of the
organism, and this change in the system of distribution of the nervous
currents leads to the deposit in the central zone of development of a
new specific substance. In the development of the next individual this
new specific element enters into activity, and reproduces the nervous
current which has formed it, as soon as the organism reaches the same
conditions of dynamical equilibrium as those obtaining when the stimulus
acted on the parent.

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