THE LIVING SUBSTANCE. 121 



as a child might arrange the pieces of a puzzle whose total sig- 

 nificance is beyond him; wondering to find upon so many- 

 isolated pieces the same bright colours; trying by these to 

 make connection, but little dreaming that the whole is built 

 up on a system of grand but subtle lines to which the colour, 

 although limited here and there by them, is mere incident. 



From this standpoint, animals, even man the animal's lord, 

 is but a piece of the sacred substance, mingled with an enor- 

 mous proportion of alien and valueless material. It is nothing 

 to nature then what happens to this or that individual, species 

 family, or race even. Before these fall like a leaf from their 

 place, some most precious substance has already been massed 

 under her guidance in other storehouses, or is on its way to 

 yet more secure keeping; or the triumphant substance in other 

 forms proved better fitted to the new conditions. Again and 

 again the facts repeat that form is little or nothing except as a 

 means to this end. Whatever form will best preserve the 

 living stuff, whatever modifications it can best be cherished 

 by, are seized on. As conditions change, one disguise after 

 another is assumed by the substance as such that it may run 

 the gauntlet of adverse, or hostile, conditions. 



Transmigration is thus seen to be a strictly biological truth. 

 In this, too, is rooted nature's apparent cruelty. Creatures 

 destroy each other, but nothing is lost; the substance is rather 

 actually strengthened. Barring the outcome for the substance 

 as such, it is all one to nature whether the bacterium or the 

 Buddha win.^ The living substance is free to determine its 

 own fate, so only that that substance, stronger and subtler and 

 more powerful to control its own immediate conditions survive. 

 It is as though the multiplication of forms and individuals were 

 but a device by means of which the substance as such should 

 be strengthened, — as though a man were to practise one hand 

 against the other to increase the strength of either.^ The indi- 

 vidual is part of the game, and the conscious or semi-conscious 



1 The ideas of nature and of a deity are not to be confused here, for " God is a 

 Spirit " and something, I conceive, quite apart from the order of physiological 

 nature as dealt with here. 



2 I use device always in the sense in which a mechanician uses it. 



