CHANGING IDENTITIES 



PROPOSITION XXIV. 



Identical life is the necessary result of identical 

 form. 



Any force acting upon four primary spheres in 

 closest possible contact as one atom must needs 

 act the same way on four other primary spheres 

 held together in a similar atom. And this is equally 

 true of any other atom or form composed of many 

 atoms. 



If not, let it be otherwise, and let atom or com- 

 bination of atoms have power to verify a force 

 acting upon it. 



Then a substance (charcoal, for instance), under 

 the action of a force (heat, for instance), may or 

 may not become incandescent, or it may become 

 magnetic or lessened in weight. (Hypothesis.) 



But that is absurd, for all our knowledge is 

 based upon the certain results that certain actions 

 will invariably produce, and when the same cause 

 fails to produce the same effect upon the same ma- 

 terial, we shall be utterly lost in all the affairs of 

 ordinary life. 



So intimate are life and the material form that 

 exhibits life, that we must go outside of all our 

 experience and beyond our finite circle of reason- 

 ing to imagine a life without material form. An 

 identical form cannot be a primary identity un- 

 less it is a primary sphere. 



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