As a general rule, however, abnormal impressions
cannot long hold their own against the overwhelming preponderance of
normal authority. This appears in heredity as the normal non-
inheritance of mutilations on the one hand, and on the other as
their occasional inheritance in the case of injuries followed by
disease.
Fifthly, if heredity and memory are essentially the same, we should
expect that no animal would develop new structures of importance
after the age at which its species begins ordinarily to continue its
race; for we cannot suppose offspring to remember anything that
happens to the parent subsequently to the parent's ceasing to
contain the offspring within itself. From the average age,
therefore, of reproduction, offspring should cease to have any
farther steady, continuous memory to fall back upon; what memory
there is should be full of faults, and as such unreliable. An
organism ought to develop as long as it is backed by memory--that is
to say, until the average age at which reproduction begins; it
should then continue to go for a time on the impetus already
received, and should eventually decay through failure of any memory
to support it, and tell it what to do. This corresponds absolutely
with what we observe in organisms generally, and explains, on the
one hand, why the age of puberty marks the beginning of completed
development--a riddle hitherto not only unexplained but, so far as I
have seen, unasked; it explains, on the other hand, the phenomena of
old age--hitherto without even attempt at explanation.
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