Is there, then, any way of bringing these apparently
conflicting phenomena under the operation of one law? Is there any way
of showing that this experience of the race, of which so much is said
without the least attempt to show in what way it may or does become the
experience of the individual, is in sober seriousness the experience of
one single being only, repeating in a great many different ways certain
performances with which it has become exceedingly familiar?
It comes to this--that we must either suppose the conditions of
experience to differ during the earlier stages of life from those which
we observe them to become during the heyday of any existence--and this
would appear very gratuitous, tolerable only as a suggestion because the
beginnings of life are so obscure, that in such twilight we may do pretty
much whatever we please without fear of being found out--or that we must
suppose continuity of life and sameness between living beings, whether
plants or animals, and their descendants, to be far closer than we have
hitherto believed; so that the experience of one person is not enjoyed by
his successor, so much as that the successor is _bona fide_ an elongation
of the life of his progenitors, imbued with their memories, profiting by
their experiences--which are, in fact, his own until he leaves their
bodies--and only unconscious of the extent of these memories and
experiences owing to their vastness and already infinite repetition.
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