of their recollections.
Then I admit, of course, that there is not memory in any cream, we will
say, that is about to be churned of the cream of the preceding week, but
the common absence of such memory from each week's cream is an element of
sameness between the two. And though no cream can remember having been
churned before, yet all cream in all time has had nearly identical
antecedents, and has therefore nearly the same memories and nearly the
same proclivities. Thus, in fact, the cream of one week is as truly the
same as the cream of another; week from the same cow, pasture, &c., as
anything is ever the same with anything; for the having been subjected to
like antecedents engenders the closest similarity that we can conceive
of, if the substances were like to start with. Same is as same does.

The manifest absence of any connecting memory (or memory of like
presents) from certain of the phenomena of heredity, such as, for
example, the diseases of old age, is now seen to be no valid reason for
saying that such other and far more numerous and important phenomena as
those of embryonic development are not phenomena of memory. Growth and
the diseases of old age do indeed, at first sight, appear to stand on the
same footing. The question, however, whether certain results are due to
memory or no must be settled not by showing that two combinations,
neither of which can remember the other (as between each other), may yet
generate like results, and therefore, considering the memory theory
disposed of for all other cases, but by the evidence we may be able to
adduce in any particular case that the second agent has actually
remembered the conduct of the first. Such evidence must show firstly
that the second agent cannot be supposed able to do what it is plain he
can do, except under the guidance of memory or experience, and secondly,
that the second agent has had every opportunity of remembering. When the
first of these tests fails, similarity of action on the part of two
agents need not be connected with memory of a like present as well as of
like antecedents; when both fail, similarity of action should be referred
to memory of like antecedents only.

Returning to a parenthesis a few pages back, in which I said that
consciousness of memory would be less or greater according to the greater
or fewer number of times that the act had been repeated, it may be
observed as a corollary to this, that the less consciousness of