This was written a few days after my arrival in Canada, June 1874. I was on Montreal mountain for the first time, and was struck with its extreme beauty. It was a magnificent Summer’s evening; the noble St. Lawrence flowed almost immediately beneath, and the vast expanse of country beyond it was suffused with a colour which even Italy cannot surpass. Sitting down for a while, I began making notes for “Life and Habit,” of which I was then continually thinking, and had written the first few lines of the above, when the bells of Notre Dame in Montreal began to ring, and their sound was carried to and fro in a remarkably beautiful manner. I took advantage of the incident to insert then and there the last lines of the piece just quoted. I kept the whole passage with hardly any alteration, and am thus able to date it accurately. Though so occupied in Canada that writing a book was impossible, I nevertheless got many notes together for future use. I left Canada at the end of 1875, and early in 1876 began putting these notes into more coherent form. I did this in thirty pages of closely written matter, of which a pressed copy remains in my commonplace-book. I find two dates among them—the first, “Sunday, Feb. 6, 1876”; and the second, at the end of the notes, “Feb. 12, 1876.” From these notes I find that by this time I had the theory contained in “Life and Habit” completely before me, with the four main principles which it involves, namely, the oneness of personality between parents and offspring; memory on the part of offspring of certain actions which it did when in the persons of its forefathers; the latency of that memory until it is rekindled by a recurrence of the associated ideas; and the unconsciousness with which habitual actions come to be performed. The first half-page of these notes may serve as a sample, and runs thus:— “Those habits and functions which we have in common with the lower animals come mainly within the womb, or are done involuntarily, as our [growth of] limbs, eyes, &c., and our power of digesting food, &c. . . . “We say of the chicken that it knows how to run about as soon as it is hatched, . . . but had it no knowledge before it was hatched? “It knew how to make a great many things before it was hatched. “It grew eyes and feathers and bones. “Yet we say it knew nothing about all this. “After it is born it grows more feathers, and makes its bones larger, and develops a reproductive system. “Again we say it knows nothing about all this. “What then does it know? “Whatever it does not know so well as to be unconscious of knowing it. “Knowledge dwells upon the confines of uncertainty. “When we are very certain, we do not know that we know. When we will very strongly, we do not know that we will.”