PERSONAL IDENTITY. 97 



Perhaps the most striking illustration of this is to 

 be found in the case of some Echinoderms, con- 

 cerning which Mr. Darwin tells us, that " the animal 

 in the second stage of development is formed almost 

 like a bud within the animal of the first stage, the 

 latter being then cast off like an old vestment, yet 

 sometimes maintaining for a short period an inde- 

 pendent vitality" (" Plants and Animals under Domesti- 

 cation," vol. ii. p. 362, ed. 1875). 



Nor yet does personality depend upon any con- 

 sciousness or sense of such personality on the part of 

 the creature itself — it is not likely that the moth re- 

 members having been a caterpillar, more than we our- 

 selves remember having been children of a day old. It 

 depends simply upon the fact that the various phases 

 of existence have been linked together, by links which 

 we agree in considering sufficient to cause identity, 

 and that they have flowed the one out of the other in 

 what we see as a continuous, though it may be at times, a 

 troubled stream. This is the very essence of personality, 

 but it involves the probable unity of all animal and 

 vegetable life, as being, in reality, nothing but one 

 single creature, of which the component members are 

 but, as it were, blood corpuscles or individual cells ; 

 life being a sort of leaven, which, if once introduced 

 into the world, will leaven it altogether; or of fire, 

 which will consume all it can burn; or of air or 

 water, which will turn most things into themselves. 

 Indeed, no difficulty would probably be felt about 

 admitting the continued existence of personal identity 

 between parents and their offspring through all time 



