THE MADEIRA BEETLES CONCLUSION. 381 



twenty, should be longer lived than one that on the 

 average begins to reproduce itself at a year old. I also 

 maintained that the phenomena of old age should be 

 referred to failure of memory on the part of the or- 

 ganism, which in the embryonic stages, infancy, youth, 

 and early manhood, leans upon the memory of what 

 it did when it was in the persons of its ancestors ; 

 in middle life, carries its action onward by means of 

 the impetus, already received, and by the force of 

 habit ; and in old age becomes puzzled, having no ex- 

 perience of any past existence at seventy-five, we will 

 say, to guide it, and therefore forgetting itself more 

 and more completely till it dies. I hope to extend this, 

 and to bring forward arguments in support of it in a 

 uture work. 



Of the importance of the theory put forward in ' Life 

 and Habit' I am daily more and more convinced. 

 Unless we admit oneness of personality between parents 

 and offspring, memory of the often repeated facts of 

 past existences, the latency of that memory until it is 

 rekindled by the presence of the associated ideas, or of 

 a sufficient number of them, and the far-reaching con- 

 sequences of the unconsciousness which results from 

 habitual action, evolution does not greatly add to our 

 knowledge as to how we shall live here to the best 

 advantage. Add these considerations, and its value as 

 a guide becomes immediately apparent ; a new light is 

 poured upon a hundred problems of the greatest deli- 

 cacy and difficulty. Not the least interesting of these 

 is the gradual extension of human longevity an exten- 

 sion, however, which cannot be effected till many 



