ne on grounds that will prove him not
to be the other. Everyone is both himself and all his direct
ancestors and descendants as well; therefore, if we would be
logical, he is one also with all his cousins, no matter how distant,
for he and they are alike identical with the primordial cell, and we
have already noted it as an axiom that things which are identical
with the same are identical with one another. This is practically
making him one with all living things, whether animal or vegetable,
that ever have existed or ever will--something of all which may have
been in the mind of Sophocles when he wrote:--

"Nor seest thou yet the gathering hosts of ill
That shall en-one thee both with thine own self
And with thine offspring."

And all this has come of admitting that a man may be the same person
for two days running! As for sopping common sense it will be enough
to say that these remarks are to be taken in a strictly scientific
sense, and have no appreciable importance as regards life and
conduct. True they deal with the foundations on which all life and
conduct are based, but like other foundations they are hidden out of
sight, and the sounder they are, the less we trouble ourselves about
them.

What other main common features between heredity and memory may we
note besides the fact that neither can exist without that kind of
physical continuity which we call personal identity? First, the
development of the embryo proceeds in an established order; so must
all habitual actions based on memory. Disturb the normal order and
the performance is arrested. The better we know "God save the
Queen," the less easily can we play or sing it backwards. The
return of memory again depends on the return of ideas associated
with the particular thing that is remembered--we remember nothing
but for the presence of these, and when enough of these are
presented to us we remember everything. So, if the development of
an embryo is due to memory, we should suppose the memory of the
impregnate ovum to revert not to yesterday, when it was in the
persons of its parents, but to the last occasion on which it was an
impregnate ovum. The return of the old environment and the presence
of old associations would at once involve recollection of the course
that should be next taken, and the same should happen throughout the
whole course of development. The actual course of development
presents precisely the phenomena agreeable with this.