l occasions on which they may have been
disunited and reunited?

A boy catches the measles not because he remembers having caught them in
the persons of his father and mother, but because he is a fit soil for a
certain kind of seed to grow upon. In like manner he should be said to
grow his nose because he is a fit combination for a nose to spring from.
Dr. X---'s father died of _angina pectoris_ at the age of forty-nine; so
did Dr. X---. Can it be pretended that Dr. X--- remembered having died
of _angina pectoris_ at the age of forty-nine when in the person of his
father, and accordingly, when he came to be forty-nine years old himself,
died also? For this to hold, Dr. X---'s father must have begotten him
after he was dead; for the son could not remember the father's death
before it happened.

As for the diseases of old age, so very commonly inherited, they are
developed for the most part not only long after the average age of
reproduction, but at a time when no appreciable amount of memory of any
previous existence can remain; for a man will not have many male
ancestors who become parents at over sixty years old, nor female
ancestors who did so at over forty. By our own showing, therefore,
recollection can have nothing to do with the matter. Yet who can doubt
that gout is due to inheritance as much as eyes and noses? In what
respects do the two things differ so that we should refer the inheritance
of eyes and noses to memory, while denying any connection between memory
and gout? We may have a ghost of a pretence for saying that a man grows
a nose by rote, or even that he catches the measles or whooping-cough by
rote; but do we mean to say that he develops the gout by rote in his old
age if he comes of a gouty family? If, then, rote and red-tape have
nothing to do with the one, why should they with the other?

Remember also the cases in which aged females develop male
characteristics. Here are growths, often of not inconsiderable extent,
which make their appearance during the decay of the body, and grow with
greater and greater vigour in the extreme of old age, and even for days
after death itself. It can hardly be doubted that an especial tendency
to develop these characteristics runs as an inheritance in certain
families; here then is perhaps the best case that can be found of a
development strictly inherited, but having clearly nothing whatever to do
with memory. Why should not all development stand upon