192 LIFE AND HABIT. 



. "whether they desire it or not;" and, I would say also, 

 " whether they recognise the ideas as having ever before 

 been present to them or not." 



I think we might also expect that no other force, 

 save that of association, should have power to kindle, 

 so to speak, into the flame of action the atomic spark of 

 memory, which we can alone suppose to be transmitted 

 from one generation to another. 



That both plants and animals do as we should expect 

 of them in this respect is plain, not only from the per- 

 formance of the most intricate and difficult actions — 

 difficult both physically and intellectually — at an age, 

 and under circumstances which preclude all possibility 

 of what we call instruction, but from the fact that 

 deviations from the parental instinct, or rather the 

 recurrence of a memory, unless in connection with the 

 accustomed train of associations, is of. comparatively rare 

 occurrence ; the result, commonly, of some one of the 

 many memories about which we know no more than 

 we do of the memory which enables a cat to find her 

 way home after a hundred-mile journey by train, and 

 shut up in a hamper, or, perhaps even more commonly, 

 of abnormal treatment. 



VIII. If, then, memory depends on association, we 

 should expect two corresponding phenomena in the case 

 of plants and animals — namely, that they should show 

 a tendency to resume feral habits on being turned 

 wild after several generations of domestication, and also 

 that peculiarities should tend to show themselves at a 

 corresponding age in the offspring and in the parents. 

 As regards the tendency to resume feral habits, Mr. 



