50 LIFE AND HABIT. 



good in the case of creatures and their descendants. 

 Is there, then, any way of bringing these apparently 

 conflicting phenomena under the operation of one law ? 

 Is there any way of showing that this experience of the 

 race, of which so much is said without the least attempt 

 to show in what way it may or does become the ex- 

 perience of the individual, is in sober seriousness the 

 experience of one single being only, repeating in a great 

 many different ways certain performances with winch 

 he has become exceedingly familiar ? 



It would seem that we must either suppose the con- 

 ditions of experience to differ during the earlier stages 

 of life from those which we observe them to become 

 during the heyday of any existence — and this would 

 appear very gratuitous, tolerable only as a suggestion 

 because the beginnings of life are so obscure, that in 

 such twilight we may do pretty much whatever we 

 please without danger of confutation — or that we must 

 suppose the continuity of life and sameness between 

 living beings, whether plants or animals, and their 

 descendants, to be far closer than we have hitherto 

 believed ; so that the experience of one person is not 

 enjoyed by his successor, so much as that the successor 

 is bond fide but a part of the life of his progenitor, 

 imbued with all his memories, profiting by all his 

 experiences — which are, in fact, his own — and only un- 

 conscious of the extent of Iris own memories and ex- 

 periences owing to their vastness and already infinite 

 1 repetitions. 



Certainly it presents itself to us at once as a sin- 

 gular coincidence — 



