Continuity 21 



is an ultimate end, is a question difficult 

 to answer. 



The modern tendency is to emphasise 

 the discontinuous or atomic character of 

 everything. Matter has long been atomic, 

 in the same sense as Anthropology is 

 atomic; the unit of matter is the atom, 

 as the unit of humanity is the individual. x 

 Whether men or women or children 

 they can be counted as so many " souls. " 

 And atoms of matter can be counted too. 



Certainly, however, there is an illusion 

 of continuity. We recognise it in the 

 case of water. It appears to be a con- 

 tinuous medium, and yet it is certainly 

 molecular. It is made continuous again, 

 in a sense, by the ether postulated in its 

 pores, for the ether is essentially con- 

 tinuous; though Osborne Reynolds, it 

 is true, invented a discontinuous or 

 granular Ether, on the analogy of the 

 sea shore. The sands of the sea, the 

 hairs of the head, the descendants of a 



1 In his recent Canadian Address, Lord Haldane em- 

 phasised the national and social continuity of the human 

 race as opposed to individual discontinuity. 



