48 THE PHILOSOPHY OF BIOLOGY 



moment of the past were connected together and had 

 direction, and this direction was something that could 

 not be influenced by our will, and may even have been 

 contrary to our will. Something that is very hot 

 always cools, a wheel that is revolving of itself always 

 comes to a stop, a pendulum ceases to swing, a stone 

 that is rolling down a hill continues to roll. Let us look 

 back at a fire that was going out : it is now nearly 

 dead ; let us start a pendulum to swing and then go 

 away : when we come back the pendulum is still 

 swinging but the amplitude of its vibrations is now 

 less than it was ; let us look away from the stone that 

 was falling : when we look again it is still falling but 

 it is not where it was. In all our givenness, in all the 

 phenomena that we perceive, there is something that 

 is determined and unequivocal, something that goes 

 its own way apart from our consciousness of it. 



Above all, we have the conviction of absoluteness in 

 our sense of personal identity. We, that is our Ego, 

 are something that endures, and we can trace no 

 beginning to our identity, and we have no intuition 

 that it will cease to exist. Our Ego is now the same 

 Ego that it was in the past, and round it something has 

 accumulated the memories of our former perceptions, 

 and the habits that these have engendered. Did our 

 Ego create this from itself ? Was it not rather a 

 centre of action which, residing in an existence other 

 than itself the absolute which we call the universe 

 modified that existence and continually acquired new 

 relationships to it ? 



