86 LIFE AND HABIT. 



So that each ovum when impregnate should be con- 

 sidered not as descended from its ancestors, but as 

 being a continuation of the personality of every ovum 

 in the chain of its ancestry, which every ovum it 

 actually is quite as truly as the octogenarian is the 

 same identity with the ovum from which he has been 

 developed. 



This process cannot stop short of the primordial cell, 

 which again will probably turn out to be but a brief 

 resting-place. We therefore prove each one of us to 

 be actually the primordial cell which never died nor 

 dies, but has differentiated itself into the life of the 

 world, all living beings whatever, being one with it, 

 and members one of another. 



To look at the matter for a moment in another light, 

 it will be admitted that if the primordial cell had been 

 killed before leaving issue, all its possible descendants 

 would have been killed at one and the same time. It 

 is hard to see how this single fact does not establish 

 at the point, as it were, of a logical bayonet, an identity 

 between any creature and all others that are descended 

 from it. 



In Bishop Butler's first dissertation on personality, 

 we find expressed very much the same opinions as 

 would follow from the above considerations, though 

 they are mentioned by the Bishop only to be con- 

 demned, namely, " that personality is not a permanent 

 but a transient thing ; that it lives and dies, begins and 

 ends continually; that no man can any more remain 

 one and the same person two moments together, than 

 two successive moments can be one and the same 



