How I wrote '' Life and Habit" 17 



by force of habit or routine when it is his ancestors, and 

 not he, that has done it liitlierto ? Not unless he and his 

 ancestors are one and the same person. Perhaps, then, 

 they are the same person after all. What is sameness ? 

 I remembered Bishop Butler's sermon on " Personal 

 Identity," read it again, and saw very plainly that if a 

 man of eighty may consider himself identical with the baby 

 from whom he has developed, so that he may say, " I 

 am the person who at six months old did this or that," 

 then the baby may just as fairly claim identity with its 

 father and mother, and say to its parents on being born, 

 " I was you only a few months ago." By parity of reason- 

 ing each living form now on the earth must be able to 

 claim identity with each generation of its ancestors up to 

 the primordial cell inclusive. 



Again, if the octogenarian may claim personal identity 

 with the infant, the infant may certainly do so with the 

 impregnate ovum from which it has developed. If so, 

 the octogenarian will prove to have been a fish once in 

 this his present life. This is as certain as that he was 

 living yesterday, and stands on exactly the same foun- 

 dation. 



I am aware that Professor Huxley maintains otherwise. 

 He writes : "It is not true, for example, . . . that a 

 reptile was ever a fish, but it is true that the reptile em- 

 bryo " (and ^^'hat is said here of the reptile holds good also 

 for the human embryo), " at one stage of its development, 

 is an organism, which, if it had an independent existence, 

 must be classified among fishes." ^ 



This is hke saying, "It is not true that such and such 

 a picture was rejected for the Academy, but it is true that 

 it was submitted to the President and Council of the 

 Royal Academy, with a view to acceptance at their next 

 forthcoming annual exhibition, and that the President 

 and Council regretted they were unable through want 

 of space, &c., &c." — and as much more as the reader 



1 Encycl. Brit., ed. ix., art. " Evolution," p. 750. 

 C 



