In this case the inheritance of
acquired characteristics cannot be disputed, for it is postulated in
the theory that each embryo takes note of, remembers and is guided
by the profounder impressions made upon it while in the persons of
its parents, between its present and last preceding development. To
maintain this is to maintain use and disuse to be the main factors
throughout organic development; to deny it is to deny that use and
disuse can have any conceivable effect. For the detailed reasons
which led me to my own conclusions I must refer the reader to my
books, "Life and Habit" {42} and "Unconscious Memory," {42} the
conclusions of which have been often adopted, but never, that I have
seen, disputed. A brief resume of the leading points in the
argument is all that space will here allow me to give.
We have seen that it is a first requirement of heredity that there
shall be physical continuity between parents and offspring. This
holds good with memory. There must be continued identity between
the person remembering and the person to whom the thing that is
remembered happened. We cannot remember things that happened to
some one else, and in our absence. We can only remember having
heard of them. We have seen, however, that there is as much bona-
fide sameness of personality between parents and offspring up to the
time at which the offspring quits the parent's body, as there is
between the different states of the parent himself at any two
consecutive moments; the offspring therefore, being one and the same
person with its progenitors until it quits them, can be held to
remember what happened to them within, of course, the limitations to
which all memory is subject, as much as the progenitors can remember
what happened earlier to themselves.
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