8 ANIMAL INDIVIDUALITY [CH. 



chance of advancing far along that road. By building 

 up within himself a separate machine for dealing with 

 each possible eventuality, independence would like- 

 wise be obtained were it not that there is an infinity of 

 eventualities, and so the project is self-contradictory. 

 But by perfecting his mental attributes his means 

 of perceiving, remembering, and reasoning he would 

 become capable of dealing with any one of the infinite 

 eventualities, for though he could not construct an 

 infinity of machines simultaneously, yet as each new 

 eventuality cropped up, he would be able to invent a 

 new plan to cope with it. Though Zarathustra had 

 climbed far up this path, he probably was not quite 

 accurate about the accidents : it is not likely that he 

 would be able to experience everything, to remember 

 everything, and to understand everything, but so alone 

 would he be altogether immune from the accidental. 

 That is neither here nor there. The chief importance 

 lies in this: all life of which we have any assured 

 cognizance is dependent upon or inseparably asso- 

 ciated with a certain kind of matter protoplasm. 

 Knowing what we do of the properties of protoplasm, 

 it becomes evident that no considerable advance 

 towards independence through either of the first two 

 methods is physically possible for life ; it is only the 

 third way, with its multiplication of potentialities, 

 which, in spite of size really not so hugely great and 

 mechanism really not so vastly complex, can yet give 



