But it does not follow that the action of two people who have had
tolerably similar antecedents and are placed in tolerably similar
circumstances should be more unlike each other in this second case than
in the first. On the contrary, nothing is more common than to observe
the same kind of people making the same kind of mistake when placed for
the first time in the same kind of new circumstances. I did not say that
there would be no sameness of action without memory of a like present.
There may be sameness of action proceeding from a memory, conscious or
unconscious, of like antecedents, and _a presence only of like presents
without recollection of the same_.
The sameness of action of like persons placed under like circumstances
for the first time, resembles the sameness of action of inorganic matter
under the same combinations. Let us for a moment suppose what we call
non-living substances to be capable of remembering their antecedents, and
that the changes they undergo are the expressions of their recollections.
Then I admit, of course, that there is not memory in any cream, we will
say, that is about to be churned of the cream of the preceding week, but
the common absence of such memory from each week's cream is an element of
sameness between the two. And though no cream can remember having been
churned before, yet all cream in all time has had nearly identical
antecedents, and has therefore nearly the same memories and nearly the
same proclivities.
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