i 2 6 LIFE AND HABIT. 



ism must be considered without quibble as being itself 

 millions of years old, and as imbued with an intense 

 though unconscious memory of all that it has done 

 sufficiently often to have made a permanent impres- 

 sion ; if this be so, we can answer the above questions 

 perfectly well. The creature goes through so many 

 intermediate stages between its earliest state as life at 

 all, and its latest development, for the simplest of all 

 reasons, namely, because this is the road by which it 

 has always hitherto travelled to its present differentia- 

 tion ; this is the road it knows, and into every turn 

 and up or down of which, it has been guided by the 

 force of circumstances and the balance of considera- 

 tions. These, acting in such a manner for such and 

 such a time, caused it to travel in such and such 

 fashion, which fashion having been once sufficiently 

 established, becomes a matter of trick or routine to 

 which the creature is still a slave, and in which it 

 confirms itself by repetition in each succeeding genera- 

 tion. 



Thus I suppose, as almost every one else, so far as 

 I can gather, supposes, that we are descended from 

 ancestors of widely different characters to our own. 

 If we could see some of our forefathers a million years 

 back, we should find them unlike anything we could 

 call man ; if we were to go back fifty million years, we 

 should find them, it may be, fishes pure and simple, 

 breathing through gills, and unable to exist for many 

 minutes in air. 



It is admitted on all hands that there is more or 

 less analogy between the embryological development 



