“But an objector may still say, ’Granted that the linking between all successive generations has been so close and unbroken, that each one of them may be conceived as able to remember what it did in the persons of its ancestors—­how do you show that it actually did remember?’

“The answer is:  ’By the action which each generation takes—­an action which repeats all the phenomena that we commonly associate with memory—­which is explicable on the supposition that it has been guided by memory—­and which has neither been explained, nor seems ever likely to be explained on any other theory than the supposition that there is an abiding memory between successive generations.’

“Will any one bring an example of any living creature whose action we can understand, performing an ineffably difficult and intricate action, time after time, with invariable success, and yet not knowing how to do it, and never having done it before?  Show me the example and I will say no more, but until it is shown me, I shall credit action where I cannot watch it, with being controlled by the same laws as when it is within our ken.  It will become unconscious as soon as the skill that directs it has become perfected.  Neither rose-seed, therefore, nor embryo should be expected to show signs of knowing that they know what they know—­if they showed such signs the fact of their knowing what they want, and how to get it, might more reasonably be doubted.”

Some of the passages already given in Chapter XXIII were obviously inspired by the one just quoted.  As I read it, in a reprint shown me by a Professor who had edited much of the early literature on the subject, I could not but remember the one in which our Lord tells His disciples to consider the lilies of the field, who neither toil nor spin, but whose raiment surpasses even that of Solomon in all his glory.

“They toil not, neither do they spin?” Is that so?  “Toil not?” Perhaps not, now that the method of procedure is so well known as to admit of no further question—­but it is not likely that lilies came to make themselves so beautifully without having ever taken any pains about the matter.  “Neither do they spin?” Not with a spinning-wheel; but is there no textile fabric in a leaf?

What would the lilies of the field say if they heard one of us declaring that they neither toil nor spin?  They would say, I take it, much what we should if we were to hear of their preaching humility on the text of Solomons, and saying, “Consider the Solomons in all their glory, they toil not neither do they spin.”  We should say that the lilies were talking about things that they did not understand, and that though the Solomons do not toil nor spin, yet there had been no lack of either toiling or spinning before they came to be arrayed so gorgeously.