nute brain of a worker ant." {243d}

1881 or 1882. Speaking of a given habitual action Mr. Darwin writes:--"It
does not seem to me at all incredible that this action [and why this more
than any other habitual action?] should then become instinctive:" _i.e._,
_memory transmitted from one generation to another_. {244a}

And yet in 1839 or thereabouts, Mr. Darwin had pretty nearly grasped the
conception from which until the last year or two of his life he so
fatally strayed; for in his contribution to the volumes giving an account
of the voyages of the _Adventure_ and _Beagle_, he wrote: "Nature by
making habit omnipotent and its effects hereditary, has fitted the
Fuegian for the climate and productions of his country" (p. 237).

What is the secret of the long departure from the simple common-sense
view of the matter which he took when he was a young man? I imagine
simply what I have referred to in the preceding chapter,--over-anxiety to
appear to be differing from his grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and
Lamarck.

I believe I may say that Mr. Darwin before he died not only admitted the
connection between memory and heredity, but came also to see that he must
readmit that design in organism which he had so many years opposed. For
in the preface to Hermann Muller's Fertilisation of Flowers, {244b} which
bears a date only a very few weeks prior to Mr. Darwin's death, I find
him saying:--"Design in nature has for a long time deeply interested many
men, and though the subject must now be looked at from a somewhat
different point of view from what was formerly the case, it is not on
that account rendered less interesting." This is mused forth as a
general gnome, and may mean anything or nothing: the writer of the
letterpress under the hieroglyph in Old Moore's Almanac could not be more
guarded; but I think I know what it does mean.

I cannot of course be sure; Mr. Darwin did not probably intend that I
should; but I assume with confidence that whether there is design in
organism or no, there is at any rate design in this passage of Mr.
Darwin's. This, we may be sure, is not a fortuitous variation; and
moreover it is introduced for some reason which made Mr. Darwin think it
worth while to go out of his way to introduce it. It has no fitness in
its connection with Hermann Muller's book, for what little Hermann Muller
says about teleology at all is to condemn it; why then should Mr. Darwin
muse here of all places in the w