PHILOSOPHIC ANTS 197 



condensed, at his old ordinary rate, to form the con- 

 tinuous sensation of light, so now the events of na- 

 ture coalesced to give new objects, new kinds of sen- 

 sation. Especially was this so with life: the re- 

 peated generations seemed to act like separate re- 

 peated waves of light, blending to give a picture of 

 the species changing and evolving before his eyes. 



Other experiences he could explain less well. He 

 was conscious of strange sensations that he thought 

 were probably associated with changes in energy- 

 distribution, in entropy; others which he seemed to 

 perceive directly, by some form of telepathy, con- 

 cerning the type of mental process occurring around 

 him. It was all strange: but of one thing he was 

 sure — that if only he could fmd a way of nourish- 

 ing and maintaining himself in this new state, he 

 would be able, as a child does in the first few years 

 of life, to correlate his puzzling new sensations, and 

 that when he had done this he would obtain a differ- 

 ent and more direct view of reality than any he had 

 ever obtained or thought of obtaining before. 



As the individual light-waves were summed to 

 give light, as the microcosm of gas-molecules can- 

 celled out to give a uniformity of pressure, so now 

 the repetition of the years coalesced into what could 

 be described as visible time, a sensation of cosmic 

 rate; the repeated pullulations of living things fused 

 into something perceived as organic achievement: 

 and the infinite variety of organisms, their conflicts 

 and interactions, resolved itself, through the media- 



