146 LIFE AND HABIT. 



other stage of their past existences, than the one 

 corresponding to that in which they are themselves at 

 the moment existing. 



So we, at six or seven years old, have no recollection of 

 ever having been infants, much less of having been 

 embryos ; but the manner in which we shed our teeth 

 and make new ones, and the way in which we grow 

 generally, making ourselves for the most part exceed- 

 ingly like what we made ourselves, in the person of 

 some one of our nearer ancestors, and not unfrequently 

 repeating the very blunders which we made upon that 

 occasion when we come to a corresponding age, proves 

 most incontestably that we remember our past exist- 

 ences, though too utterly to be capable of introspection 

 in the matter. So, when we grow wisdom teeth, at 

 the age it may be of one or two and twenty, it is plain 

 we remember our past existences at that age, however 

 completely we may have forgotten the earlier stages of 

 our present existence. It may be said that it is the 

 jaw which remembers, and not we, but it seems hard to 

 deny the jaw a right of citizenship in our personality ; 

 and in the case of a growing boy, every part of him 

 seems to remember equally well, and if every part of 

 him combined does not make him, there would seem 

 but little use in continuing the argument further. 



In like manner, a caterpillar appears not to remem- 

 ber having been an egg, either in its present or any 

 past existence. It has no concern with eggs as soon 

 as it is hatched, but it clearly remembers not only 

 having been a caterpillar before, but also having turned 

 itself into a chrysalis before ; for when the time comes 



