What similarity of action can be greater than this, and at the same time
more incontrovertible? But it has nothing to do with memory; on the
contrary, it is just because the clerk has no memory that his action of
the second day so exactly resembles that of the first. As long as he has
no power of recollecting, he will day after day repeat the same actions
in exactly the same way, until some external circumstances, such as his
being sent away, modify the situation. Till this or some other
modification occurs, he will day after day go down into the street
without knowing where to go; day after day he will see the same policeman
at the corner of the same street, and (for we may as well suppose that
the policeman has no memory too) he will ask and be answered, and ask and
be answered, till he and the policeman die of old age. This similarity
of action is plainly due to that--whatever it is--which ensures that like
persons or things when placed in like circumstances shall behave in a
like manner.
Allow the clerk ever such a little memory, and the similarity of action
will disappear; for the fact of remembering what happened to him on the
first day he went out in search of dinner will be a modification in him
in regard to his then condition when he next goes out to get his dinner.
He had no such memory on the first day, and he has upon the second.
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