ASSIMILA TION OF OUTSIDE MA TTER. 133 



whether or not we then remembered having grown 

 them before ; but it is probable that our memory was 

 then, in respect of our previous existences as embryos, 

 as much more intense than it is now in respect of 

 our childhood, as our power of acquiring a new lan- 

 guage was greater when we were one or two years old, 

 than when we were twenty. And why should this 

 power of acquiring languages be greater at two years 

 than at twenty, but that for many generations we have 

 learnt to speak at about this age, and hence look to 

 learn to do so again on reaching it, just as we looked 

 to making eyes, when the time came at which we were 

 accustomed to make them. 



If we once had the memory of having been infants 

 (which we had from day to day during infancy), and 

 have lost it, we may well have had other and more in- 

 tense memories which we have lost no less completely. 

 Indeed, there is nothing more extraordinary in the 

 supposition that the impregnate ovum has an intense 

 sense of its continuity with, and therefore of its 

 identity with, the two impregnate ova from which it 

 has sprung, than in the fact that we have no sense of 

 our continuity with ourselves as infants. If, then, 

 there is no d priori objection to this view, and if the 

 impregnate ovum acts in such a manner as to carry 

 the strongest conviction that it must have already on 

 many occasions done what it is doing now, and that it 

 has a vivid though unconscious recollection of what 

 all, and more especially its nearer, ancestral ova did 

 under similar circumstances, there would seem to be 

 little doubt what conclusion we ought to come to. 



