102 LIFE AND HABIT. 



law." Does it not then follow, quite reasonably and 

 necessarily, that all offspring, however generated, is in 

 one sense part of the individuality of its parent or parents. 

 The question, therefore, turns upon " in what sense " 

 this may be said to be the case ? To which I would 

 venture to reply, "In the same sense as the parent 

 plant 'which is but the representative of the outside 

 matter which it has assimilated during growth, and of 

 its own powers of development) is the same individual 

 that it was when it was itself an offset, or a cow the 

 same individual that it was when it was a calf — but 

 no otherwise." 



Not much difficulty will be felt about supposing the 

 offset of a plant, to be imbued with the memory of the 

 past history of the plant of which it is an offset. It 

 is part of the plant itself, and will know whatever 

 the plant knows. Why, then, should there be more 

 difficulty in supposing the offspring of the highest 

 mammals, to remember in a profound but unself- 

 conscious way, the anterior history of the creatures of 

 which they too have been part and parcel ? 



Personal identity, then, is much like species itself. 

 It is now, thanks to Mr. Darwin, generally held that 

 species blend or have blended into one another ; so that 

 any possibility of arrangement and apparent sub- 

 division into definite groups, is due to the suppression 

 by death both of individuals and whole genera, which, 

 had they been now existing, would have linked all liv- 

 ing beings by a series of gradations so subtle that little 

 classification could have been attempted. How it is 

 that the one great personality of life as a whole, should 



