56 Unconscious Memory 



Persistently it followed its way into space, conquering, at 

 first, the manifold resistances opposed to it by its watery 

 medium. Gradually, however, its energies became ex- 

 hausted, till at last, completely overwhelmed, it stopped, 

 an immovable projection stagnated to death-like rigidity. 

 Thus for hours, perhaps, it remained stationary, one of 

 many such rays of some of the many kinds of protoplasmic 

 stars. By degrees, then, or perhaps quite suddenly, help 

 would come to it from foreign hut congruous sources. It would 

 seem to combine with outside coniplemcntal matter drifted to it at 

 random. Slowly it would regain thereby its vital mobility. 

 Shrinking at first, but gradually completely restored and 

 reincorporated into the onward tide of life, it was ready to 

 take part again in the progressive flow of a new ray."^ 



To return to the end of the last paragraph but one. 

 If this is so — but I should warn the reader that Professor 

 Hering is not responsible for this suggestion, though it 

 seems to follow so naturally from what he has said that 

 I imagine he intended the inference to be drawn, — if this 

 is so, assimilation is nothing else than tlie communication 

 of its own rhythms from the assimilating to the assimilated 

 substance, to the effacement of the vibrations or rhythms 

 heretofore existing in this last ; and suitability for food 

 will depend upon whether the rhythms of the substance 

 eaten are such as to flow harmoniously into and chime in 

 with those of the body which has eaten it, or whether they 

 will refuse to act in concert with the new rhythms with 

 which they have become associated, and will persist 

 obstinately in pursuing their own course. In this case 

 they will either be turned out of the body at once, or will 

 disconcert its arrangements, with perhaps fatal conse^ 

 quences. This comes round to the conclusion I arrived 

 at in " Life and Habit," that assimilation was nothing 

 but the imbuing of one thing with the memories of another. 

 (See " Life and Habit," pp. 136, 137, 140, &c.) 



It will be noted that, as I resolved the phenomena of 

 heredity into phenomena of personal identity, and left the 



1 " The Unity of the Organic Individual," by Edward Mont- 

 gomery, Mind, October 1880, p. 466. 



