Art and Science 



rity. This appears in heredity as the normal 

 non-inheritance of mutilations on the one hand, 

 and on the other as their occasional inheritance 

 in the case of injuries followed by disease. 



Fifthly, if heredity and memory are essen- 

 tially the same, we should expect that no 

 animal would develop new structures of im- 

 portance after the age at which its species 

 begins ordinarily to continue its race ; for we 

 cannot suppose offspring to remember any- 

 thing that happens to the parent subsequently 

 to the parent's ceasing to contain the offspring 

 within itself. From the average age, there- 

 fore, of reproduction, offspring should cease 

 to have any farther steady, continuous memory 

 to fall back upon ; what memory there is 

 should be full of faults, and as such unreliable. 

 An organism ought to develop as long as it 

 is backed by memory that is to say, until 

 the average age at which reproduction begins ; 

 it should then continue to go for a time on 

 the impetus already received, and should even- 

 tually decay through failure of any memory 

 to support it, and tell it what to do. This 

 corresponds absolutely with what we observe 

 in organisms generally, and explains, on the 



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