Statement of an Objection 151 



antecedents, with no more sense of connection between 

 the steps in the action, or memory of similar action taken 

 before, than we suppose on the part of oxygen and hydrogen 

 molecules between the several occasions on which they 

 may have been disunited and reunited ? 



A boy catches the measles not because he remembers 

 having caught them in the persons of his father and 

 mother, but because he is a fit soil for a certain kind of 

 seed to grow upon. In like manner he should be said to 

 grow his nose because he is a fit combination for a nose 



to spring from. Dr. X 's father died of angina pectoris 



at the age of forty-nine ; so did Dr. X . Can it be 



pretended that Dr. X remembered having died of 



angina pectoris at the age of forty-nine when in the person 

 of his father, and accordingly, when he came to be forty- 

 nine years old himself, died also ? For this to hold, Dr. 



X 's father must have begotten him after he was 



dead ; for the son could not remember the father's death 

 before it happened. 



As for the diseases of old age, so very commonly in- 

 herited, they are developed for the most part not only 

 long after the average age of reproduction, but at a time 

 when no appreciable amount of memory of any previous 

 existence can remain ; for a man will not have many 

 male ancestors who become parents at over sixty years 

 old, nor female ancestors who did so at over forty. By 

 our own showing, therefore, recollection can have nothing 

 to do with the matter. Yet who can doubt that gout is 

 due to inheritance as much as eyes and noses ? In what 

 respects do the two things differ so that we should refer 

 the inheritance of eyes and noses to memory, while deny- 

 ing any connection between memory and gout ? We may 

 have a ghost of a pretence for saying that a man grew a 

 nose by rote, or even that he catches the measles or whoop- 

 ing-cough by rote during his boyhood ; but do we mean 

 to say that he develops the gout by rote in his old age if 

 he comes of a gouty family ? If, then, rote and red-tape 



