16 HABIT AND INTELLIGENCE. [cHAP. 



tions, but a living unity. This is primarily a metaphysical 



truth, or, in other words, a dictum of consciousness ; but 



it is re-affirmed by biological observation. We have seen 



that many of the lower animals are not killed by being 



cut into pieces, but each separated part will continue to 



live, and will develop into a perfect animal. Some of the 



animals which have this property may be sentient, but we 



cannot think they are conscious.^ If they are sentient. 



Sensation there is no difficulty in supposing that each of the separated 



siUe^" P^^"^^ continues to feel the same sensations that it felt before 



division (provided, of course, that it contains a sensory 



Conscious- nervous centre) ; but it is impossible to conceive of con- 



ness not. gciousness being divided in this way. I do not say that 



such a division of consciousness is impossible, because it 



is inconceivable by the mind of man. I do not think 



highly of that kind of reasoning. What I say is, that 



the human consciousness affirms its own indivisibility, and 



that the facts of comparative anatomy and physiology 



tend to prove that such is the law of all consciousness 



whatever. 



In speaking in a former chapter of the laws of habit, I 

 said that all characteristics tend to become hereditary, sub- 

 ject to one important limitation. The limitation I spoke 

 Conscious- of is this, that consciousness is never inherited. This fact, 

 h^^^dir- ^^^^ consciousness is not transmissible, may perhaps stand 

 in some close connexion with the fact insisted on in the 

 last paragraph, that consciousness is not divisible. Mental 

 characters, like bodily ones, are transmissible, and often 

 become hereditary, but the transmission is never accom- 

 panied with consciousness. Habits which have been formed 

 by the conscious acts of the parents may be inherited by the 

 offspring ; but the habit is inherited without any conscious- 

 ness of its origin. The offspring have no consciousness, 

 or, what is the same thing, no memory, of the conscious 

 acts by which the habit was formed in the parent. Here- 

 ditary habit is so much more conspicuous among animals 

 than in man, that, in order to illustrate my meaning, it is 



1 "We cannot say that such animals have any true individuality. See 

 Note to Chapter XVI. 



