196 LIFE AND HABIT. 



bered with any definiteness, or precision. We may 

 talk as we will about mental pain, and mental scars, 

 but after all, the impressions they leave are incompar- 

 ably less durable than those made by an organic lesion. 

 It is probable, therefore, that the feeling which so many 

 have described, as though they remembered this or that 

 in some past existence, is purely imaginary, and due 

 rather to unconscious recognition of the fact that we 

 certainly have lived before, than to any actual occur- 

 rence corresponding to the supposed recollection. 



And lastly, we should look to find in the action of 

 memory, as between one generation and another, a re- 

 flection of the many anomalies and exceptions to ordi- 

 nary rules which we observe in memory, so far as we 

 can watch its action in what we call our own single 

 lives, and the single lives of others. We should expect 

 that reversion should be frequently capricious — that is 

 to say, give us more trouble to account for than we are 

 either able or willing to take. And assuredly we find 

 it so in fact. Mr. Darwin — from whom it is impossible 

 to quote too much or too fully, inasmuch as no one 

 else can furnish such a store of facts, so well arranged, 

 and so above all suspicion of either carelessness or want 

 of candour — so that, however we may differ from him, 

 it is he himself who shows us how to do so, and whose 

 pupils we all are — Mr. Darwin writes : " In every 

 living being we may rest assured that a host of long- 

 lost characters lie ready to be evolved under proper 

 conditions" (does not one almost long to substitute the 

 word " memories" for the word " characters ?") " How 

 can we make intelligible, and connect with other facts, 



