ASSIMILA TION OF OUTSIDE MA TTER. 137 



what it has been accustomed to in its own life, and 

 in the lives of its forefathers, it commonly loses its 

 memories completely, once and for ever; but it must 

 immediately acquire new ones, for nothing can know 

 nothing; everything must remember either its own 

 antecedents, or some one else's. And . as nothing can 

 know nothing, so nothing can believe in nothing. 



A grain of corn, for example, has never been 

 accustomed to find itself in a hen's stomach — neither 

 it nor its forefathers. For a grain so placed leaves 

 no offspring, and hence cannot transmit its experience. 

 The first minute or so after being eaten, it may think 

 it has just been sown, and begin to prepare for sprout- 

 ing, but in a few seconds, it discovers the environment 

 to be unfamiliar ; it therefore gets frightened, loses its 

 head, is carried into the gizzard, and comminuted 

 among the gizzard stones. The hen succeeded in put- 

 ting it into a position with which it was unfamiliar ; 

 from this it was an easy stage to assimilating it 

 entirely. Once assimilated, the grain ceases to re- 

 member any more as a grain, but becomes initiated into 

 all that happens to, and has happened to, fowls for ; 

 countless ages. Then it will attack all other grains 

 whenever it sees them ; there is no such persecutor of 

 grain, as another grain when it has once fairly identi- <\i 

 * fied itself with a hen. 



We may remark in passing, that if anything be once 

 familiarised with anything, it is content. The only 

 things we really care for in life are familiar things ; 

 let us have the means of doing what we have been 

 accustomed to do, of dressing as we have been 



