222 LIFE AND HABIT. 



him on to some unusual course, inasmuch as he cannot 

 recognise and remember his usual one by reason of the 

 change now made in it. Habits and instincts, again, 

 may be modified by any important change in the con- 

 dition of the parents, which will then both affect the 

 parent's sense of his own identity, and also create more 

 or less fault, or dislocation of memory, in the offspring 

 immediately behind the memory of his last life. 

 Change of food may at times be sufficient to create a 

 specific modification that is to say, to affect all the 

 individuals whose food is so changed, in one and the 

 same way whether as regards structure or habit. Thus 

 we see that certain changes in food (and domicile), from 

 those with which its ancestors have been familiar, will 

 disturb the memory of a queen bee's egg, and set it at 

 such disadvantage as to make it make itself into a 

 neuter bee ; but yet we find that the larva thus partly 

 aborted may have its memories restored to it, if not 

 already too much disturbed, and may thus return to its 

 condition as a queen bee, if it only again be restored to 

 the food and domicile, which its past memories can 

 alone remember. 



So we see that opium, tobacco, alcohol, hasheesh, and 

 tea produce certain effects upon our own structure and 

 instincts. But though capable of modification, and of 

 specific modification, which may in time become in- 

 herited, and hence resolve itself into a true instinct or 

 settled question, yet I maintain that the main bulk of 

 the instinct (whether as affecting structure or habits of 

 life) will be derived from memory pure and simple; 

 the individual growing up in the shape he does, and 



