Chapter XIII 



Conclusion. 



IF we observed the resem])Iance between successive 

 generations to be as close as that between distilled 

 water and distilled water through all time, and if we 

 observed that perfect unchangeableness in the action of 

 living beings which we see in what we call chemical and 

 mechanical combinations, we might indeed suspect that 

 memory had as little place among the causes of their 

 action as it can have in anj^thing, and that each repetition, 

 whether of a habit or the practice of art, or of an em- 

 br^'onic process in successive generations, was an original 

 performance, for all that memory had to do with it. I 

 submit, however, that in the case of the reproductive 

 forms of life we see just so much variety, in spite of uni- 

 formity, as is consistent with a repetition involving not 

 only a nearly perfect similarity in the agents and their 

 circumstances, but also the little departure therefrom 

 that is inevitably involved in the supposition that a 

 memory of like presents as well as of like antecedents (as 

 distinguished from a memory of like antecedents only) has 

 played a part in their development — a cyclonic memory, 

 if the expression ma}' be pardoned. 



There is life infinitely lower and more minute than any 

 which our most powerful microscopes reveal to us, but 

 let us leave this upon one side and begin with the amoeba. 

 Let us suppose that this structureless morsel of proto- 

 plasm is, for all its structurelessness, composed of an in- 

 finite number of living molecules, each one of them with 

 hopes and fears of its own, and all dwelling together like 



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