This
memory of the most striking events of varied lifetimes I maintain, with
Professor Hering, to be the differentiating cause, which, accumulated in
countless generations, has led up from the amoeba to man. If there had
been no such memory, the amoeba of one generation would have exactly
resembled the amoeba of the preceding, and a perfect cycle would have
been established; the modifying effects of an additional memory in each
generation have made the cycle into a spiral, and into a spiral whose
eccentricities, in the outset hardly perceptible, is becoming greater and
greater with increasing longevity and more complex social and mechanical
inventions.
We say that the chicken grows the horny tip to its beak with which it
ultimately pecks its way out of its shell, because it remembers having
grown it before, and the use it made of it. We say that it made it on
the same principles as a man makes a spade or a hammer, that is to say,
as the joint result both of desire and experience. When I say
experience, I mean, experience not only of what will be wanted, but also
of the details of all the means that must be taken in order to effect
this. Memory, therefore, is supposed to guide the chicken not only in
respect of the main design, but in respect also of every atomic action,
so to speak, which goes to make up the execution of this design.
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