IDENTITY OF PARENT AND OFFSPRING. 209 



of twenty, sometimes, out of one. You may take 

 the water -polyp [illustrating on the blackboard], 

 and chop it through the middle, and each part will 

 develop into a perfect animal. Chop each of these 

 through the middle, and each half will develop into a 

 perfect animal ; and so you may produce from one 

 individual, it is said, forty. Many biologists affirm 

 that in some lower organisms which are homogene- 

 ous throughout as many as forty lives can thus be 

 produced from one. Of course if you take a bird 

 from a bush or a twig from a tree, you cannot 

 produce a whole organism from any one part ; al- 

 though, by the way, a twig from a tree as a scion 

 may develop into a growth like its parent. You 

 must have one of the lower organisms homogeneous 

 throughout in order to give to each segment the 

 power of reproducing itself. How all that occurs, 

 nobody understands. If you wish me to speculate, 

 I will say that the co-ordinating power goes over 

 and that physical identity exists here. The co-ordi- 

 nating power in the homogeneous animal is found in 

 every part; and, when you divide and subdivide the 

 organism, the co-ordinating power draws to itself 

 from the outer world clothing in each of the frag- 

 ments, as it drew to itself clothing in the whole ani- 

 mal originally. There arc two kinds of ghosts, — 

 tangible and intangible. Every organism is a tangi- 

 ble ghost. 1 am no Spiritualist. When I take as a 

 guide a rat-hole revelation, it will be when the clouds 

 obscure the sun at noon. [Applause.] In the water- 

 polyp we have a co-ordinating power, and it is at- 



