[May, 
274 Hylozoism and Hylo-Idealism. 
past actions, performed by muscles and directed by a brain 
of which not one cell or fibre now remains intaCt ? These 
questions certainly cannot be answered, but a practical 
refutation of the suggested inference may very easily be 
found. 
The phenomena of personal identity form by no means an. 
isolated group, and do not testify to anything anomalous in 
the position and nature of man, or of any other conscious 
being. This survival of self amid the daily decay and reno- 
vation of its physical basis is but a special case of that per- 
sistence of function amid mutations of matter on which 
depends the reproduction of individuals, varieties, and types. 
The elm puts forth every March its green clusters of 
flower-buds, protected by brown scales. It never varies very 
widely from the fashion of colouring and grouping observed 
by its ancestors for generations back. Purple-tipped peri- 
anth, purple-tinted anthers, cleft stigma with delicate crim- 
son fringe — all are according to tradition. Advocates of the 
old “ emboUement” theory had a very convenient way of 
accounting for such faCts as these : they held that the un- 
fertilised ovule already enfolds in miniature every part of 
the perfect tree— trunk, branches, leaves, flowers, and fruit ; 
and that the animal or plant cannot develop a scale or a 
hair which was not latent in the embryo. Growth, they 
said, is simply the absorption of nutriment. The change is 
not in form, but simply in size. Moreover, every germ is 
indestruCtible, and has endured from the beginning of the 
world. It contains all its progeny down to the end of time, 
and was itself contained in its remotest ancestor. 
This plausible though baseless hypothesis, it will be noted, 
“ explained ” the riddle of personality as well as the riddle 
of heredity. Body and brain were moulded on an extensible 
framework, gradually distended during the period of growth, 
and gradually collapsing during the period of decay. There 
was an outline to be filled up and overlaid with divers 
colours ; and when all these were washed out the original 
sketch still remained. The idea, though of course long 
ago discredited, had at least one merit. It showed some 
appreciation of the connection between two sets of faCts, 
usually considered apart. The problems suggested by 
transmission of family traits, and by preservation of indi- 
vidual traits, are substantially identical ; and since the 
soul-theory fails to suggest a rationale of the former, it can 
no longer be applied to the solution of the latter. When 
we know why the man is the father of the child, we 
shall also know why the child is the father of the man. 
