If we now turn to p. 357, we find the conclusion arrived at, as it would appear, on the most satisfactory evidence, that “sexual and asexual reproduction are not seen to differ essentially; and . . . that asexual reproduction, the power of regrowth, and development are all parts of one and the same great law.” Does it not then follow, quite reasonably and necessarily, that all offspring, however generated, is _in one sense_ part of the individuality of its parent or parents. The question, therefore, turns upon “in what sense” this may be said to be the case? To which I would venture to reply, “In the same sense as the parent plant (which is but the representative of the outside matter which it has assimilated during growth, and of its own powers of development) is the same individual that it was when it was itself an offset, or a cow the same individual that it was when it was a calf—but no otherwise.” Not much difficulty will be felt about supposing the offset of a plant, to be imbued with the memory of the past history of the plant of which it is an offset. It is part of the plant itself; and will know whatever the plant knows. Why, then, should there be more difficulty in supposing the offspring of the highest mammals, to remember in a profound but unselfconscious way, the anterior history of the creatures of which they too have been part and parcel? Personal identity, then, is much like species itself. It is now, thanks to Mr. Darwin, generally held that species blend or have blended into one another; so that any possibility of arrangement and apparent subdivision into definite groups, is due to the suppression by death both of individuals and whole genera, which, had they been now existing, would have linked all living beings by a series of gradations so subtle that little classification could have been attempted. How it is that the one great personality of life as a whole, should have split itself up into so many centres of thought and action, each one of which is wholly, or at any rate nearly, unconscious of its connection with the other members, instead of having grown up into a huge polyp, or as it were coral reef or compound animal over the whole world, which should be conscious but of its own one single existence; how it is that the daily waste of this creature should be carried on by the conscious death of its individual members, instead of by the unconscious waste of tissue which goes on in the bodies of each individual (if indeed the tissue which we waste daily in our own bodies is so unconscious of its birth and death as we suppose); how, again, that the daily repair of this huge creature life should have become decentralised, and be carried on by conscious reproduction on the part of its component items, instead of by the unconscious nutrition of the whole from a single centre, as the nutrition of our own bodies would appear (though perhaps falsely) to be carried on;