CHAP. VIII - APPLICATION OF THE FOREGOING CHAPTERS — THE ASSIMILATION OF OUTSIDE MATTER

Summary

Let us now return to the position which we left at the end of the fourth chapter. We had then concluded that the self-development of each new life in succeeding generations—the various stages through which it passes (as it would appear, at first sight, without rhyme or reason)—the manner in which it prepares structures of the most surpassing intricacy and delicacy, for which it has no use at the time when it prepares them—and the many elaborate instincts which it exhibits immediately on, and indeed before, birth—all point in the direction of habit and memory, as the only causes which could produce them.

Why should the embryo of any animal go through so many stages—embryological allusions to forefathers of a widely different type? And why, again, should the germs of the same kind of creature always go through the same stages? If the germ of any animal now living is, in its simplest state, but part of the personal identity of one of the original germs of all life whatsoever, and hence, if any now living organism must be considered without quibble as being itself millions of years old, and as imbued with an intense though unconscious memory of all that it has done sufficiently often to have made a permanent impression; if this be so, we can answer the above questions perfectly well.