PERSONAL IDENTITY. 99 



cide, on the whole, as nearly as we can make them do 

 so, with the more marked changes which we can 

 observe. We lay hold, in fact, of anything we can 

 catch ; the most important feature in any existence as 

 regards ourselves being that which we can best lay 

 hold of, rather than that which is most essential to the 

 existence itself. "We can lay hold of the continued 

 personality of the egg and the moth into which the 

 egg develops, but it is less easy to catch sight of the 

 continued personality between the moth and the eggs 

 which she lays ; yet the one continuation of personality 

 is just as true and free from quibble as the other. A 

 moth becomes each egg that she lays, and that she 

 does so, she will in good time show by doing, now that 

 she has got a fresh start, as near as may be what she 

 did when first she was an egg, and then a moth, before ; 

 and this I take it, so far as I can gather from looking 

 at life and things generally, she would not be able to 

 do if she had not travelled the same road often enough 

 already, to be able to know it in her sleep and blind- 

 fold, that is to say, to remember it without any con- 

 scious act of memory. 



So also a grain of wheat is linked with an ear, con- 

 taining, we will say, a dozen grains, by a series of 

 changes so subtle that we cannot say at what moment 

 the original grain became the blade, nor when each ear 

 of the head became possessed of an individual centre 

 of action. To say that each grain of the head is per- 

 sonally identical with the original grain would per- 

 haps be an abuse of terms ; but it can be no abuse to 

 say that each grain is a continuation of the personality 



