All action is random in respect of any of the minute
actions which compose it that are not done in consequence of memory, real
or supposed. So that random, or action taken in the dark, or illusion,
lies at the very root of progress.
I will now consider the objection that the phenomena of instinct and
embryonic development ought not to be ascribed to memory, inasmuch as
certain other phenomena of heredity, such as gout, cannot be ascribed to
it.
Those who object in this way forget that our actions fall into two main
classes: those which we have often repeated before by means of a regular
series of subordinate actions beginning and ending at a certain tolerably
well-defined point--as when Herr Joachim plays a sonata in public, or
when we dress or undress ourselves; and actions the details of which are
indeed guided by memory, but which in their general scope and purpose are
new--as when we are being married, or presented at court.
At each point in any action of the first of the two kinds above referred
to there is a memory (conscious or unconscious according to the less or
greater number of times the action has been repeated), not only of the
steps in the present and previous performances which have led up to the
particular point that may be selected, _but also of the particular point
itself_; there is therefore, at each point in a habitual performance, a
memory at once of like antecedents _and of a like present_.
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