Part 6 (2/2)

The difficulty would seem to arise from the fact that the eggs must disappear before fowls can be hatched from them, whereas, the hens so hatched may outlive the development of other hens, from the eggs which they in due course have laid. The original eggs being out of sight are out of mind, and it is without an effort that we acquiesce in the a.s.sertion,--that the dozen new eggs actually are the two original ones. But the original four fowls being still in sight, cannot be ignored, we only, therefore, see the new ones as growths from the original ones.

The strict rendering of the facts should be, ”you are part of the present phase of the ident.i.ty of such and such a past ident.i.ty,”

i.e., either of the two eggs or the four fowls, as the case may be; this will put the eggs and the fowls, as it were, into the same box, and will meet both the philosophical and legal requirement of the case, only it is a little long.

So far then, as regards actual ident.i.ty of personality; which, we find, will allow us to say, that eggs are part of the present phase of a certain past ident.i.ty, whether of other eggs, or of fowls, or chickens, and in like, manner that chickens are part of the present phase of certain other chickens, or eggs, or fowls; in fact, that anything is part of the present phase of any past ident.i.ty in the line of its ancestry. But as regards the actual memory of such ident.i.ty (unconscious memory, but still clearly memory), we observe that the egg, as long as it is an egg, appears to have a very distinct recollection of having been an egg before, and the fowl of having been a fowl before, but that neither egg nor fowl appear to have any recollection of any other stage of their past existences, than the one corresponding to that in which they are themselves at the moment existing.

So we, at six or seven years old, have no recollection of ever having been infants, much less of having been embryos; but the manner in which we shed our teeth and make new ones, and the way in which we grow generally, making ourselves for the most part exceedingly like what we made ourselves, in the person of some one of our nearer ancestors, and not unfrequently repeating the very blunders which we made upon that occasion when we come to a corresponding age, proves most incontestably that we remember our past existences, though too utterly to be capable of introspection in the matter. So, when we grow wisdom teeth, at the age it may be of one or two and twenty, it is plain we remember our past existences at that age, however completely we may have forgotten the earlier stages of our present existence. It may be said that it is the jaw which remembers, and not we, but it seems hard to deny the jaw a right of citizens.h.i.+p in our personality; and in the case of a growing boy, every part of him seems to remember equally well, and if every part of him combined does not make HIM, there would seem but little use in continuing the argument further.

In like manner, a caterpillar appears not to remember having been an egg, either in its present or any past existence. It has no concern with eggs as soon as it is hatched, but it clearly remembers not only having been a caterpillar before, but also having turned itself into a chrysalis before; for when the time comes for it to do this, it is at no loss, as it would certainly be if the position was unfamiliar, but it immediately begins doing what it did when last it was in a like case, repeating the process as nearly as the environment will allow, taking every step in the same order as last time, and doing its work with that ease and perfection which we observe to belong to the force of habit, and to be utterly incompatible with any other supposition than that of long long practice.

Once having become a chrysalis, its memory of its caterpillarhood appears to leave it for good and all, not to return until it again a.s.sumes the shape of a caterpillar by process of descent. Its memory now overleaps all past modifications, and reverts to the time when it was last what it is now, and though it is probable that both caterpillar and chrysalis, on any given day of their existence in either of these forms, have some sort of dim power of recollecting what happened to them yesterday, or the day before; yet it is plain their main memory goes back to the corresponding day of their last existence in their present form, the chrysalis remembering what happened to it on such a day far more practically, though less consciously, than what happened to it yesterday; and naturally, for yesterday is but once, and its past existences have been legion.

Hence, it prepares its wings in due time, doing each day what it did on the corresponding day of its last chrysalishood and at length becoming a moth; whereon its circ.u.mstances are so changed that it loses all sense of its ident.i.ty as a chrysalis (as completely as we, for precisely the same reason, lose all sense of our ident.i.ty with ourselves as infants), and remembers nothing but its past existences as a moth.

We observe this to hold throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms.

In any one phase of the existence of the lower animals, we observe that they remember the corresponding stage, and a little on either side of it, of all their past existences for a very great length of time. In their present existence they remember a little behind the present moment (remembering more and more the higher they advance in the scale of life), and being able to foresee about as much as they could foresee in their past existences, sometimes more and sometimes less. As with memory, so with prescience. The higher they advance in the scale of life the more prescient they are. It must, of course, be remembered, and will later on be more fully dwelt upon, that no offspring can remember anything which happens to its parents after it and its parents have parted company; and this is why there is, perhaps, more irregularity as regards our wisdom-teeth than about anything else that we grow; inasmuch as it must not uncommonly have happened in a long series of generations, that the offspring has been born before the parents have grown their wisdom-teeth, and thus there will be faults in the memory.

Is there, then, anything in memory, as we observe it in ourselves and others, under circ.u.mstances in which we shall agree in calling it memory pure and simple without ambiguity of terms--is there anything in memory which bars us from supposing it capable of overleaping a long time of abeyance, and thus of enabling each impregnate ovum, or each grain, to remember what it did when last in a like condition, and to go on remembering the corresponding period of its prior developments throughout the whole period of its present growth, though such memory has entirely failed as regards the interim between any two corresponding periods, and is not consciously recognised by the individual as being exercised at all?

CHAPTER IX--ON THE ABEYANCE OF MEMORY

Let us a.s.sume, for the moment, that the action of each impregnate germ is due to memory, which, as it were, pulsates anew in each succeeding generation, so that immediately on impregnation, the germ's memory reverts to the last occasion on which it was in a like condition, and recognising the position, is at no loss what to do.

It is plain that in all cases where there are two parents, that is to say, in the greater number of cases, whether in the vegetable or animal kingdoms, there must be two such last occasions, each of which will have an equal claim upon the attention of the new germ. Its memory would therefore revert to both, and though it would probably adhere more closely to the course which it took either as its father or its mother, and thus come out eventually male or female, yet it would be not a little influenced by the less potent memory.

And not only this, but each of the germs to which the memory of the new germ reverts, is itself imbued with the memories of its own parent germs, and these again with the memories of preceding generations, and so on ad infinitum; so that, ex hypothesi, the germ must become instinct with all these memories, epitomised as after long time, and unperceived though they may well be, not to say obliterated in part or entirely so far as many features are concerned, by more recent impressions. In this case, we must conceive of the impregnate germ as of a creature which has to repeat a performance already repeated before on countless different occasions, but with no more variation on the more recent ones than is inevitable in the repet.i.tion of any performance by an intelligent being.

Now if we take the most parallel case to this which we can find, and consider what we should ourselves do under such circ.u.mstances, that is to say, if we consider what course is actually taken by beings who are influenced by what we all call memory, when they repeat an already often-repeated performance, and if we find a very strong a.n.a.logy between the course so taken by ourselves, and that which from whatever cause we observe to be taken by a living germ, we shall surely be much inclined to think that there must be a similarity in the causes of action in each case; and hence, to conclude, that the action of the germ is due to memory.

It will, therefore, be necessary to consider the general tendency of our minds in regard to impressions made upon us, and the memory of such impressions.

Deep impressions upon the memory are made in two ways, differing rather in degree than kind, but with two somewhat widely different results. They are made:-

I. By unfamiliar objects, or combinations, which come at comparatively long intervals, and produce their effect, as it were, by one hard blow. The effect of these will vary with the unfamiliarity of the impressions themselves, and the manner in which they seem likely to lead to a further development of the unfamiliar, i.e., with the question, whether they seem likely to compel us to change our habits, either for better or worse.

Thus, if an object or incident be very unfamiliar, as, we will say, a whale or an iceberg to one travelling to America for the first time, it will make a deep impression, though but little affecting our interests; but if we struck against the iceberg and were s.h.i.+pwrecked, or nearly so, it would produce a much deeper impression, we should think much more about icebergs, and remember much more about them, than if we had merely seen one. So, also, if we were able to catch the whale and sell its oil, we should have a deep impression made upon us. In either case we see that the amount of unfamiliarity, either present or prospective, is the main determinant of the depth of the impression.

As with consciousness and volition, so with sudden unfamiliarity. It impresses us more and more deeply the more unfamiliar it is, until it reaches such a point of impressiveness as to make no further impression at all; on which we then and there die. For death only kills through unfamiliarity--that is to say, because the new position, whatever it is, is so wide a cross as compared with the old one, that we cannot fuse the two so as to understand the combination; hence we lose all recognition of, and faith in, ourselves and our surroundings.

But however much we imagine we remember concerning the details of any remarkable impression which has been made us by a single blow, we do not remember as much or nearly as much as we think we do. The subordinate details soon drop out of mind. Those who think they remember even such a momentous matter as the battle of Waterloo recall now probably but half-a-dozen episodes, a gleam here, and a gleam there, so that what they call remembering the battle of Waterloo, is, in fact, little more than a kind of dreaming--so soon vanishes the memory of any unrepeated occurrence.

As for smaller impressions, there is very little of what happens to us in each week that will be in our memories a week hence; a man of eighty remembers few of the unrepeated incidents of his life beyond those of the last fortnight, a little here, and a little there, forming a matter of perhaps six weeks or two months in all, if everything that he can call to mind were acted over again with no greater fulness than he can remember it. As for incidents that have been often repeated, his mind strikes a balance of its past reminiscences, remembering the two or three last performances, and a general method of procedure, but nothing more.

If, then, the recollection of all that is not very novel, or very often repeated, so soon fades from our own minds, during what we consider as our single lifetime, what wonder that the details of our daily experience should find no place in that brief epitome of them which is all we can give in so small a volume as offspring?

If we cannot ourselves remember the hundred-thousandth part of what happened to us during our own childhood, how can we expect our offspring to remember more than what, through frequent repet.i.tion, they can now remember as a residuum, or general impression. On the other hand, whatever we remember in consequence of but a single impression, we remember consciously. We can at will recall details, and are perfectly well aware, when we do so, that we are recollecting. A man who has never seen death looks for the first time upon the dead face of some near relative or friend. He gazes for a few short minutes, but the impression thus made does not soon pa.s.s out of his mind. He remembers the room, the hour of the day or night, and if by day, what sort of a day. He remembers in what part of the room, and how disposed the body of the deceased was lying.

Twenty years afterwards he can, at will, recall all these matters to his mind, and picture to himself the scene as he originally witnessed it.

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