When I wrote Life and Habit (originally published in 1877) I said in slightly different words:—­

“Shall we say that a baby of a day old sucks (which involves the whole principle of the pump and hence a profound practical knowledge of the laws of pneumatics and hydrostatics), digests, oxygenizes its blood—­millions of years before anyone had discovered oxygen—­sees and hears, operations that involve an unconscious knowledge of the facts concerning optics and acoustics compared with which the conscious discoveries of Newton are insignificant—­shall we say that a baby can do all these things at once, doing them so well and so regularly without being even able to give them attention, and yet without mistake, and shall we also say at the same time that it has not learnt to do them, and never did them before?

“Such an assertion would contradict the whole experience of mankind.”

I have met with nothing during the thirteen years since the foregoing was published that has given me any qualms about its soundness.  From the point of view of the law courts and everyday life it is, of course, nonsense; but in the kingdom of thought, as in that of heaven, there are many mansions, and what would be extravagance in the cottage or farm-house, as it were, of daily practice, is but common decency in the palace of high philosophy, wherein dwells evolution.  If we leave evolution alone, we may stick to common practice and the law courts; touch evolution and we are in another world; not higher, nor lower, but different as harmony from counterpoint.  As, however, in the most absolute counterpoint there is still harmony, and in the most absolute harmony still counterpoint, so high philosophy should be still in touch with common sense, and common sense with high philosophy.

The common-sense view of the matter to people who are not over-curious and to whom time is money, will be that a baby is not a baby until it is born, and that when born it should be born in wedlock.  Nevertheless, as a sop to high philosophy, every baby is allowed to be the offspring of its father and mother.

The high-philosophy view of the matter is that every human being is still but a fresh edition of the primordial cell with the latest additions and corrections; there has been no leap nor break in continuity anywhere; the man of to-day is the primordial cell of millions of years ago as truly as he is the himself of yesterday; he can only be denied to be the one on grounds that will prove him not to be the other.  Everyone is both himself and all his direct ancestors and descendants as well; therefore, if we would be logical, he is one also with all his cousins, no matter how distant, for he and they are alike identical with the primordial cell, and we have already noted it as an axiom that things which are identical with the same are identical with one another.  This is practically making him one with all living things, whether animal or vegetable, that ever have existed or ever will—­something of all which may have been in the mind of Sophocles when he wrote:—­