O UR SUBORDINA TE PERSONALITIES. 1 1 1 



their co-operation is it possible to avoid imagining 

 that we may be ourselves atoms, undesignedly combin- 

 ing to form some vaster being, though we are utterly 

 incapable of perceiving that any such being exists, or 

 of realising the scheme or scope of our own combination? 

 And this, too, not a spiritual being, which, without 

 matter, or what we think matter of some sort, is as 

 complete nonsense to us as though men bade us love and 

 lean upon an intelligent vacuum, but a being with what 

 is virtually flesh and blood and bones ; with organs, 

 senses, dimensions, in some way analogous to our own, 

 into some other part of which being, at the time of 

 our great change we must infallibly re-enter, starting 

 clean anew, with bygones bygones, and no more 

 ache for ever from either age or antecedents. Truly, 

 sufficient for the life is the evil thereof. Any specula- 

 tions of ours concerning the nature of such a being, 

 must be as futile and little valuable as those of a 

 blood corpuscle might be expected to be concerning 

 the nature of man ; but if I were myself a blood cor- 

 puscle, I should be amused at making the discovery 

 that I was not only enjoying life in my own sphere, 

 but was bond fide part of an animal which would not die 

 with myself, and in which I might thus think of my- 

 self as continuing to live to all eternity, or to what, as 

 far as my power of thought would carry me, must 

 seem practically eternal. But, after all, the amusement 

 would be of a rather dreary nature. 



On the other hand, if I were the being of whom 

 such an introspective blood corpuscle was a component 

 item, I should conceive he served me better by 



