all animals spring.

It must be remembered that if there is any truth in the view put
forward in "Life and Habit," and in "Evolution Old and New" (and
I have met with no serious attempt to upset the line of argument
taken in either of these books), then no complex animal or plant
can reach its full development without having already gone
through the stages of that development on an infinite number of
past occasions. An egg makes itself into a hen because it knows
the way to do so, having already made itself into a hen millions
and millions of times over; the ease and unconsciousness with
which it grows being in themselves sufficient demonstration of
this fact. At each stage in its growth {he chicken is reminded,
by a return of the associated ideas, of the next step that it
should take, and it accordingly takes it.

But if this is so, and if also the congeries of all the
living forms in the world must be regarded as a single person,
throughout their long growth from the primordial cell onwards to
the present day, then, by parity of reasoning, the person thus
compounded-that is to say, Life or God-should have already passed
through a growth analogous to that which we find he has taken
upon this earth on an infinite number of past occasions; and the
development of each class of life, with its culmination in the
vertebrate animals and in man, should be due to recollection
by God of his having passed through the same stages, or nearly
so, in worlds and universes, which we know of from personal
recollection, as evidenced in the growth and structure of our
bodies, but concerning which we have no other knowledge
whatsoever.