76 LIFE AND HABIT. 



they have been accustomed to, or to change their 

 habits, or do what is unusual in the case of other 

 kings under like circumstances, then, if they but fold 

 their cloak decently around them, and die upon the 

 spot of shame at having had it even required of them 

 to do thus or thus, then are they kings indeed, of old 

 race, that know their business from generation to 

 generation. Or if, we will say, a prince, on having his 

 dinner brought to him ill-cooked, were to feel the indig- 

 nity so keenly as that he should turn his face to the 

 wall, and breathe out his wounded soul in one sigh, 

 do we not admire him as a "real prince," who knows 

 the business of princes so well that he can conceive of 

 nothing foreign to it in connection with himself, the 

 bare effort to realise a state of things other than what 

 princes have been accustomed to being immediately 

 fatal to him ? Yet is there no less than this in the 

 demise of every half-hatched hen's egg, shaken rudely 

 by a schoolboy, or neglected by a truant mother ; for 

 surely the prince would not die if he knew how to do 

 otherwise, and the hen's egg only dies of being required 

 to do something to which it is not accustomed. 



But the further consideration of this and other 

 like reflections would too long detain us. Suffice it 

 that we have established the position that all living 

 creatures which show any signs of intelligence, must 

 certainly each one have already gone through the 

 embryonic stages an infinite number of times, or they 

 could no more have achieved the intricate process of 

 self-development unconsciously, than they could play 



