ed without quibble as being itself millions of
years old, and as imbued with an intense though unconscious memory of
all that it has done sufficiently often to have made a permanent
impression; if this be so, we can answer the above questions perfectly
well. The creature goes through so many intermediate stages between its
earliest state as life at all, and its latest development, for the
simplest of all reasons, namely, because this is the road by which it
has always hitherto travelled to its present differentiation; this is
the road it knows, and into every turn and up or down of which it has
been guided by the force of circumstances and the balance of
considerations" (pp. 125-6).

The hypothesis explains also the way in which the orderly succession of
stages in embryogeny is brought about, for we can readily understand
that the embryo will not remember any stage until it has passed through
the stage immediately preceding it. "Each step of normal development
will lead the impregnated ovum up to, and remind it of, its next
ordinary course of action, in the same way as we, when we recite a
well-known passage, are led up to each successive sentence by the
sentence which has immediately preceded it.... Though the ovum
immediately after impregnation is instinct with all the memories of both
parents, not one of these memories can normally become active till both
the ovum itself and its surroundings are sufficiently like what they
respectively were, when the occurrence now to be remembered last took
place. The memory will then immediately return, and the creature will do
as it did on the last occasion that it was in like case as now. This
ensures that similarity of order shall be preserved in all the stages of
development in successive generations" (pp. 297-8).

Abnormal conditions of development will cause the embryo to pause and
hesitate, as if at a loss what to do, having no ancestral experience to
guide it. Abnormalities of development represent the embryo's attempt to
make the best of an unexpected situation. Or, as Butler puts it, "When
... events are happening to it which, if it has the kind of memory we
are attributing to it, would baffle that memory, or which have rarely or
never been included in the category of its recollections, _it acts
precisely as a creature acts_ _when its recollection is disturbed, or
when it is required to do something which it has never done before_" (p.
132). "It is certainly noteworthy t