Numbers, therefore, go for nothing; and, as far as identity or continued personality goes, it is as fair to say to the two fowls, above referred to, “you were four fowls twelve months ago,” as it is to say to a dozen eggs, “you were two eggs twelve months ago.” But here a difficulty meets us; for if we say, “you were two eggs twelve months ago,” it follows that we mean, “you are now those two eggs;” just as when we say to a person, “you were such and such a boy twenty years ago,” we mean, “you are now that boy, or all that represents him;” it would seem, then, that in like manner we should say to the two fowls, “you _are_ the four fowls who between them laid the two eggs from which you sprung.” But it may be that all these four fowls are still to be seen running about; we should be therefore saying, “you two fowls are really not yourselves only, but you are also the other four fowls into the bargain;” and this might be philosophically true, and might, perhaps, be considered so, but for the convenience of the law courts. The difficulty would seem to arise from the fact that the eggs must disappear before fowls can be hatched from them, whereas, the hens so hatched may outlive the development of other hens, from the eggs which they in due course have laid. The original eggs being out of sight are out of mind, and it is without an effort that we acquiesce in the assertion,—that the dozen new eggs actually are the two original ones. But the original four fowls being still in sight, cannot be ignored, we only, therefore, see the new ones as growths from the original ones. The strict rendering of the facts should be, “you are part of the present phase of the identity of such and such a past identity,” _i.e._, either of the two eggs or the four fowls, as the case may be; this will put the eggs and the fowls, as it were, into the same box, and will meet both the philosophical and legal requirement of the case, only it is a little long. So far then, as regards actual identity of personality; which, we find, will allow us to say, that eggs are part of the present phase of a certain past identity, whether of other eggs, or of fowls, or chickens, and in like, manner that chickens are part of the present phase of certain other chickens, or eggs, or fowls; in fact, that anything is part of the present phase of any past identity in the line of its ancestry. But as regards the actual memory of such identity (unconscious memory, but still clearly memory), we observe that the egg, as long as it is an egg, appears to have a very distinct recollection of having been an egg before, and the fowl of having been a fowl before, but that neither egg nor fowl appear to have any recollection of any other stage of their past existences, than the one corresponding to that in which they are themselves at the moment existing.