134 LIFE AND HABIT. 



A hen's egg, for example, as soon as the hen begins 

 to sit, sets to work immediately to do as nearly as 

 may be what the two eggs from which its father and 

 mother were hatched did when hens began to sit upon 

 them. The inference would seem almost irresistible, 

 that the second egg remembers the course pursued by 

 the eggs from which it has sprung, and of whose pre- 

 sent identity it is unquestionably a part-phase ; it also 

 seems irresistibly forced upon us to believe that the 

 intensity of this memory is the secret of its easy 

 action. 



It has, I believe, been often remarked, that a hen is 

 only an egg's way of making another egg. Every 

 creature must be allowed to "run" its own development 

 in its own way ; the egg's way may seem a very round- 

 about manner of doing things ; but it is its way, and 

 it is one of which man, upon the whole, has no 

 great reason to complain. Why the fowl should 

 be considered more alive than the egg, and why 

 it should be said that the hen lays the egg, and not 

 that the egg lays the hen, these are questions which 

 lie beyond the power of philosophic explanation, but 

 are perhaps most answerable by considering the con- 

 ceit of man, and his habit, persisted in during 

 many ages, of ignoring all that does not remind 

 him of himself, or hurt him, or profit him ; also by 

 considering the use of language, which, if it is to serve 

 at all, can only do so by ignoring a vast number of 

 facts which gradually drop out of mind from being 

 out of sight. But, perhaps, after all, the real reason 

 is, that the egg does not cackle when it has laid the 



