conformation of body, organs, and cells, but the habitual actions of
the parent are also reproduced. The chicken on emerging from the
eggshell runs off as its mother ran off before it; yet what an
extraordinary complication of emotions and sensations is necessary in
order to preserve equilibrium in running. Surely the supposition of
an inborn capacity for the reproduction of these intricate actions
can alone explain the facts. As habitual practice becomes a second
nature to the individual during his single lifetime, so the often-
repeated action of each generation becomes a second nature to the
race.

The chicken not only displays great dexterity in the performance of
movements for the effecting of which it has an innate capacity, but
it exhibits also a tolerably high perceptive power. It immediately
picks up any grain that may be thrown to it. Yet, in order to do
this, more is wanted than a mere visual perception of the grains;
there must be an accurate apprehension of the direction and distance
of the precise spot in which each grain is lying, and there must be
no less accuracy in the adjustment of the movements of the head and
of the whole body. The chicken cannot have gained experience in
these respects while it was still in the egg. It gained it rather
from the thousands of thousands of beings that have lived before it,
and from which it is directly descended.

The memory of organised substance displays itself here in the most
surprising fashion. The gentle stimulus of the light proceeding from
the grain that affects the retina of the chicken, {82} gives occasion
for the reproduction of a many-linked chain of sensations,
perceptions, and emotions, which were never yet brought together in
the case of the individual before us. We are accustomed to regard