102 Life and Matter [chap.vi. 



ment may have a date of origin and of 

 destruction. 



A crowd, for instance, is of this fugitive 

 character : it assembles and it disperses, its 

 existence as a crowd is over, but its con- 

 stituent elements persist ; and the same can 

 be said of a planet or a sun. Yet for some 

 " soul " or underlying reality even in these 

 temporary accretions there is permanence of 

 a sort : Tyndall's " streak of morning 

 cloud/' though it may have " melted into 

 infinite azure,' ' has not thereby become non- 

 existent, although as a visible object it has dis- 

 appeared from our ken and become a memory 

 only. It is true that it was a mere aggregate 

 or accidental agglomeration it had developed 

 no self-consciousness, nothing that could be 

 called personality or identity characterised it, 

 and so no individual persistence is to be 

 expected for it ; yet even it low down in 

 the scale of being as it is even it has 

 rejoined the general body of aqueous vapour 

 whence, through the incarnating influence 

 of night, it arose. The thing that is, both 



