96 LIFE AND HABIT. 



various phases (for it is plain that identity survives the 

 distinction or suspension of both these), but in the fact 

 that the various stages appear to the majority of people 

 to have been in some way or other linked together. 



For a very little reflection will show that identity, 

 as commonly predicated of living agents, does not con- 

 sist in identity of matter, of which there is no same 

 particle in the infant, we will say, and the octogenarian 

 into whom he has developed. Nor, again, does it 

 depend upon sameness of form or fashion ; for person- 

 ality is felt to survive frequent and radical modification 

 of structure, as in the case of caterpillars and other 

 insects. Mr. Darwin, quoting from Professor Owen, 

 tells us (Plants and Animals under Domestication, 

 vol. ii. p. 362, ed. 1875), that in the case of what 

 is called metagenetic development, " the new parts are 

 not moulded upon the inner surfaces of the old ones. 

 The plastic force has changed its mode of operation. 

 The outer case, and all that gave form and character to 

 the precedent individual, perish, and are cast off ; they 

 are not changed into the corresponding parts of the 

 same individual. These are due to a new and distinct 

 developmental process." Assuredly, there is more 

 birth and death in the world than is dreamt of by the 

 greater part of us ; but it is so masked, and on the 

 whole, so little to our purpose, that we fail to see it. 

 Yet radical and sweeping as the changes of organism 

 above described must be, we do not feel them to be 

 more a bar to personal identity than the considerable 

 changes which take place in the structure of our own 

 bodies between youth and old age. 



