Page 279 - erewhon

‘Some one may say,’ he continued, ‘‘What do you mean by
talking about an infinite number of past occasions? When
did a rose-seed make itself into a rose-bush on any past oc-
casion?’
‘I answer this question with another. ‘Did the rose-seed
ever form part of the identity of the rose-bush on which
it grew?’ Who can say that it did not? Again I ask: ‘Was
this rose-bush ever linked by all those links that we com-
monly consider as constituting personal identity, with the
seed from which it in its turn grew?’ Who can say that it
was not?
‘Then, if rose-seed number two is a continuation of the
personality of its parent rose-bush, and if that rose-bush is a
continuation of the personality of the rose-seed from which
it sprang, rose-seed number two must also be a continu-
ation of the personality of the earlier rose-seed. And this
rose-seed must be a continuation of the personality of the
preceding rose-seed—and so back and back ad infinitum.
Hence it is impossible to deny continued personality be-
tween any existing rose-seed and the earliest seed that can
be called a rose-seed at all.
‘The answer, then, to our objector is not far to seek. The
rose- seed did what it now does in the persons of its an-
cestors—to whom it has been so linked as to be able to
remember what those ancestors did when they were placed
as the rose-seed now is. Each stage of development brings
back the recollection of the course taken in the preceding
stage, and the development has been so often repeated, that
all doubt—and with all doubt, all consciousness of action—

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