148 Unconscious Memory 



must be brought to a standstill by the wear and tear of its 

 parts, does not hold, inasmuch as the animal mechanism is 

 continually renewed and repaired ; and though it is true 

 that individual components of the body are constantly dying, 

 yet their places are taken by vigorous successors. A city 

 remains notwithstanding the constant death-rate of its 

 inhabitants ; and such an organism as a crayfish is only a 

 corporate unity, made up of innumerable partially independent 

 individualities." — The Crayfish, p. 127. 



Surely the theory which I have indicated above makes 

 the reason plain why no organism can permanently out- 

 live its experience of past lives. The death of such a body 

 corporate as the crayfish is due to the social condition be- 

 coming more complex than there is memory of past 

 experience to deal with. Hence social disruption, insub- 

 ordination, and decay. The crayfish dies as a state dies, 

 and all states that we have heard of die sooner or later. 

 There are some savages who have not yet arrived at the 

 conception that death is the necessary end of all living 

 beings, and who consider even the gentlest death from old 

 age as violent and abnormal ; so Professor Huxley seems 

 to find a difficulty in seeing that though a city commonly 

 outlives many generations of its citizens, yet cities and 

 states are in the end no less mortal than individuals. 

 " The city," he says, " remains." Yes, but not for ever. 

 When Professor Huxley can find a city that will last for 

 ever, he may wonder that a crayfish does not last for ever. 



I have already here and elsewhere said all that I can 

 yet bring forward in support of Professor Hering's theory ; 

 it now remains for me to meet the most troublesome 

 objection to it that I have been able to think of — an ob- 

 jection which I had before me when I wrote " Life and 

 Habit," but which then as now I believe to be unsound. 

 Seeing, however, as I have pointed out at the end of the 

 preceding chapter, that Von Hartmann has touched upon 

 it, and being aware that a plausible case can be made out 

 for it, I will state it and refute it here. When I say refute 

 it, I do not mean that I shall have done with it — for it is 



