"--_The Crayfish_, p. 127.
Surely the theory which I have indicated above makes the reason plain why
no organism can permanently outlive its experience of past lives. The
death of such a body corporate as the crayfish is due to the social
condition becoming more complex than there is memory of past experience
to deal with. Hence social disruption, insubordination, and decay. The
crayfish dies as a state dies, and all states that we have heard of die
sooner or later. There are some savages who have not yet arrived at the
conception that death is the necessary end of all living beings, and who
consider even the gentlest death from old age as violent and abnormal; so
Professor Huxley seems to find a difficulty in seeing that though a city
commonly outlives many generations of its citizens, yet cities and states
are in the end no less mortal than individuals. "The _city_," he says,
"remains." Yes, but not for ever. When Professor Huxley can find a city
that will last for ever, he may wonder that a crayfish does not last for
ever.
I have already here and elsewhere said all that I can yet bring forward
in support of Professor Hering's theory; it now remains for me to meet
the most troublesome objection to it that I have been able to think of--an
objection which I had before me when I wrote Life and Habit, but which
then as now I believe to be unsound.
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