 »What do you mean by talking about an
infinite number of past occasions? When did a rose-seed make itself into a
rose-bush on any past occasion?
    I answer this question with another. Did the rose-seed ever form part of the
identity of the rose-bush on which it grew? Who can say that it did not? Again I
ask: Was this rose-bush ever linked by all those links that we commonly consider
as constituting personal identity, with the seed from which it in its turn grew?
Who can say that it was not?
    Then, if rose-seed number two is a continuation of the personality of its
parent rose-bush, and if that rose-bush is a continuation of the personality of
the rose-seed from which it sprang, rose-seed number two must also be a
continuation of the personality of the earlier rose-seed. And this rose-seed
must be a continuation of the personality of the preceding rose-seed - and so
back and back ad infinitum. Hence it is impossible to deny continued personality
between any existing rose-seed and the earliest seed that can be called a
rose-seed at all.
    The answer, then, to our objector is not far to seek. The rose-seed did what
it now does in the persons of its ancestors - to whom it has been so linked as
to be able to remember what those ancestors did when they were placed as the
rose-seed now is. Each stage of development brings back the recollection of the
course taken in the preceding stage, and the development has been so often
repeated, that all doubt - and with all doubt, all consciousness of action - is
suspended.
    But an objector may still say: Granted that the linking between all
successive generations has been so close and unbroken, that each one of them may
be conceived as able to remember what it did in the persons of its ancestors -
how do you show that it actually did remember?
    The answer is: By the action which each generation takes - an action which
repeats all the phenomena that we commonly associate with memory - which is
explicable on the supposition that it has been guided by memory - and which has
neither been explained, nor seems ever likely to be explained on any other
theory than the supposition that there is an abiding memory between successive
generations.
    Will anyone bring an example of any living creature, whose action we can
understand, performing an ineffably difficult and intricate action, time after
time, with invariable success, and yet not knowing how to do it, and
