Chapter XII 



Refutation — Memory at once a promoter and a disturber of 

 uniformity of action and structure. 



TO meet the objections in the two foregoing chapters, 

 I need do Httle more than show that the fact of 

 certain often inherited diseases and developments, whether 

 of youth or old age, being obviously not due to a memory 

 on the part of offspring of like diseases and developments 

 in the parents, does not militate against supposing that 

 embryonic and youthful development generally is due to 

 memory. 



This is the main part of the objection ; the rest resolves 

 itself into an assertion that there is no evidence in support 

 of instinct and embryonic development being due to 

 memory, and a contention that the necessity of each 

 particular moment in each particular case is sufficient to 

 account for the facts without the introduction of memory. 



I will deal with these two last points briefly first. As 

 regards the evidence in support of the theory that instinct 

 and growth are due to a rapid unconscious memory of 

 past experiences and developments in the persons of the 

 ancestors of the living form in which they appear, I must 

 refer my readers to " Life and Habit," and to the transla- 

 tion of Professor Hering's lecture given in this volume. I 

 will only repeat here that a chrysalis, we will say, is as 

 much one and the same person with the chrysalis of its 

 preceding generation, as this last is one and the same 

 person with the egg or caterpillar from which it sprang. 

 You cannot deny personal identity between two succes- 

 sive generations without sooner or later denying it during 

 M i6i 



