Refutation 171 



a recollection of two performances and of only one, that a 

 less modification of action should be expected. At the 

 same time consciousness concerning an action repeated 

 for the tenth time should be less acute than on the first 

 repetition. Memory, therefore, though tending to disturb 

 similarity of action less and less continually, must always 

 cause some disturbance. At the same time the possession 

 of a memory on the successive repetitions of an action 

 after the first, and, perhaps, the first two or three, during 

 which the recollection may be supposed still imperfect, 

 will tend to ensure uniformity, for it will be one of the 

 elements of sameness in the agents — they both acting by 

 the light of experience and memory. 



During the embryonic stages and in childhood we are 

 almost entirely under the guidance of a practised and 

 powerful memory of circumstances which have been often 

 repeated, not only in detail and piecemeal, but as a whole, 

 and under many shghtly varying conditions ; thus the 

 performance has become well averaged and matured in its 

 arrangements, so as to meet all ordinary emergencies. 

 We therefore act with great unconsciousness and vary our 

 performances little. Babies are much more alike than 

 persons of middle age. 



Up to the average age at which our ancestors have had 

 children during many generations, we are still guided in 

 great measure by memory ; but the variations in external 

 circumstances begin to make themselves perceptible in 

 our characters. In middle life we live more and more 

 continually upon the piecing together of details of memory 

 drawn from our personal experience, that is to say, upon 

 the memory of our own antecedents ; and this resembles 

 the kind of memory we hypothetically attached to cream 

 a little time ago. It is not surprising, then, that a son 

 who has inherited his father's tastes and constitution, and 

 who lives much as his father had done, should make the 

 same mistakes as his father did when he reaches his father's 

 age — we will say of seventy — though he cannot possibly 



