at it is either wanting or
doing, when its convictions both as to what it wants, and how to get it,
have been settled beyond further power of question. The less signs
living creatures give of knowing what they do, provided they do it, and
do it repeatedly and well, the greater proof they give that in reality
they know how to do it, and have done it already on an infinite number of
past occasions.

"Some one may say," he continued, "'What do you mean by talking about an
infinite number of past occasions? When did a rose-seed make itself into
a rose-bush on any past occasion?'

"I answer this question with another. 'Did the rose-seed ever form part
of the identity of the rose-bush on which it grew?' Who can say that it
did not? Again I ask: 'Was this rose-bush ever linked by all those links
that we commonly consider as constituting personal identity, with the
seed from which it in its turn grew?' Who can say that it was not?

"Then, if rose-seed number two is a continuation of the personality of
its parent rose-bush, and if that rose-bush is a continuation of the
personality of the rose-seed from which it sprang, rose-seed number two
must also be a continuation of the personality of the earlier rose-seed.
And this rose-seed must be a continuation of the personality of the
preceding rose-seed--and so back and back _ad infinitum_. Hence it is
impossible to deny continued personality between any existing rose-seed
and the earliest seed that can be called a rose-seed at all.

"The answer, then, to our objector is not far to seek. The rose-seed did
what it now does in the persons of its ancestors--to whom it has been so
linked as to be able to remember what those ancestors did when they were
placed as the rose-seed now is. Each stage of development brings back
the recollection of the course taken in the preceding stage, and the
development has been so often repeated, that all doubt--and with all
doubt, all consciousness of action--is suspended.

"But an objector may still say, 'Granted that the linking between all
successive generations has been so close and unbroken, that each one of
them may be conceived as able to remember what it did in the persons of
its ancestors--how do you show that it actually did remember?'

"The answer is: 'By the action which each generation takes--an action
which repeats all the phenomena that we commonly associate with
memory--which is explicable on the supposition that it has been