That mechanism is no respecter of persons.

It neither permits the haughtiest to be free from the monitions, nor leaves the humblest without the consolation of a knowledge of another life.
Open to no opportunities of being tampered with by the designing or interested, requiring no extraneous human agency for its effect, out always present with every man wherever he may go, it marvelously extracts from vestiges of the impressions of the past overwhelming proofs of the realities of the future, and, gathering its power from what would seem to be a most unlikely source, it insensibly leads us, no matter who or where we may be, to a profound belief in the immortal and imperishable, from phantoms which have scarcely made their appearance before they are ready to vanish away.
The insect differs from a mere automaton in this, that it is influenced by old, by registered impressions.

In the higher forms of animated life that registration becomes more and more complete, memory becomes more perfect.

There is not any necessary resemblance between an external form and its ganglionic impression, any more than there is between the words of a message delivered in a telegraphic office and the signals which the telegraph may give to the distant station; any more than there is between the letters of a printed page and the acts or scenes they describe, but the letters call up with clearness to the mind of the reader the events and scenes.
An animal without any apparatus for the retention of impressions must be a pure automaton--it cannot have memory.

From insignificant and uncertain beginnings, such an apparatus is gradually evolved, and, as its development advances, the intellectual capacity increases.