ASSIMILATION OF OUTSIDE MATTER. 129 



would he not rather believe that they were always the 

 same flies, and, again, always the same men and women, 

 if he could see them at all, and if the whole human race 

 did not appear to him as a sort of spreading and 

 lichen-like growth over the earth, not differentiated at 

 all into individuals ? With the help of a microscope 

 and the intelligent exercise of his reason, he would 

 in time conceive the truth. He would put Covent 

 Garden Market on the field of his microscope, and 

 would perhaps write a great deal of nonsense about 

 the unerring "instinct" which taught each coster- 

 monger to recognise his own basket or his own 

 donkey-cart ; and this, mutatis mutandis, is what we 

 are getting to do as regards our own bodies. What 

 I wish is, to make the same sort of step in an 

 upward direction which has already been taken in a 

 downward one, and to show reason for thinking that 

 we are only component atoms of a single compound 

 creature, LIFE, which has probably a distinct conception 

 of its own personality though none whatever of ours, 

 more than we of our own units. I wish also to show 

 reason for thinking that this creature, LIFE, has only 

 come to be what it is, by the same sort of process as 

 that by which any human art or manufacture is 

 developed, i.e., through constantly doing the same thing 

 over and over again, beginning from something which 

 is barely recognisable as faith, or as the desire to know, 

 or do, or live at all, and as to the origin of which we 

 are in utter darkness, and growing till it is first con- 

 scious of effort, then conscious of power, then powerful 

 with but little consciousness, and finally, so powerful 



