94 LIFE AND HABIT. 



to be personally identical with each single egg, and, 

 hence, each egg to be identical with every other egg, as 

 far as the past, and community of memories, are con- 

 cerned ; and it is not easy at first to break the spell 

 which words have cast around us, and to feel that one 

 person may become many persons, and that many 

 different persons may be practically one and the same 

 person, as far as their past experience is concerned ; 

 and again, that two or more persons may unite and 

 become one person, with the memories and experiences 

 of both, though this has been actually the case with 

 every one of us. 



Our present way of looking at these matters is 

 perfectly right and reasonable, so long as we bear in 

 mind that it is a fagon de parlcr, a sort of hieroglyphic 

 which shall stand for the course of nature, but nothing 

 more. Eepair (as is now universally admitted by 

 physiologists) is only a phase of reproduction, or 

 rather reproduction and repair are only phases of the 

 same power ; and again, death and the ordinary daily 

 waste of tissue, are phases of the same thing. As for 

 identity it is determined in any true sense of the word, 

 not by death alone, but by a combination of death and 

 failure of issue, whether of mind or body. 



To repeat. Wherever there is a separate centre of 

 thought and action, we see that it is connected with 

 its successive stages of being, by a series of infinitely 

 small changes from moment to moment, with, perhaps, 

 at times more startling and rapid changes, but, never- 

 theless, with no such sudden, complete, and unrepaired 

 break up of the preceding condition, as we shall agree 



