Transcribed from the 1910 A. C. Fifield edition by DavidPrice,

Unconscious Memory

By
Samuel Butler

Author of“Life and Habit,” “Erewhon,” “TheWay of All Flesh,” etc.

New Edition, entirely reset, withan Introduction
by Marcus Hartog, M.A., D.SC., F.L.S., F.R.H.S., Pro-
fessor of Zoology in University College, Cork.

Op.5

London
A. C. Fifield, 13 Clifford’s Inn, E.C.
1910

“As this paper contains nothing whichdeserves the name either of experiment or discovery, and as itis, in fact, destitute of every species of merit, we should haveallowed it to pass among the multitude of those articles whichmust always find their way into the collections of a societywhich 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 ofscience, and renew all those wild phantoms of the imaginationwhich Bacon and Newton put to flight from hertemple.”—Opening Paragraph of a Review of Dr.Young’s Bakerian Lecture.  EdinburghReview, January 1803, p. 450.

“Young’s work was laid before the Royal society,and was made the 1801 Bakerian Lecture.  But he was beforehis time.  The second number of the Edinburgh Reviewcontained an article levelled against him by Henry (afterwardsLord) Brougham, and this was so severe an attack thatYoung’s ideas were absolutely quenched for fifteenyears.  Brougham was then only twenty-four years ofage.  Young’s theory was reproduced in France byFresnel.  In our days it is the accepted theory, and isfound to explain all the phenomena oflight.”—Times Report of a Lecture by ProfessorTyndall on Light, April 27, 1880.

This Book

Is inscribed to

RichardGarnett, Esq.

(Of the British Museum)

In grateful acknowledgment of theunwearying kindness
with which he has so often placed at my disposal
his varied store of information.

Contents