i] IDEA OF INDIVIDUALITY 7 



powers, the fact remains that in a brain which is 

 constructed after the pattern of our own, and in 

 which therefore we postulate the existence of Con- 

 sciousness, a new machinery, different in kind from 

 any machinery we have been able to construct, has 

 been introduced; machinery that by supplying the 

 individual with memory and reason gives him the 

 largest scope to adjust his actions, and so himself, to 

 the variations of circumstance. 



Civilized man is the most independent, in our 

 sense, of any animal : this he owes partly to his com- 

 paratively large size, more to his purely mechanical 

 complexity of body and brain, giving him the pos- 

 sibility of many precise and separate actions, and 

 most to the unique machinery of part of his brain 

 which enables him to use his size and the smoothly- 

 working machine-actions of his body in the most 

 varied way. 



But he is far from perfect independence of 

 accidents. A being to whom accidents really could 

 not happen might attain to that happy state through 

 having perfected himself in any of the three qualities 

 which have been seen to assist independence. By 

 incorporating more and more matter that is, by 

 increasing in size until co-extensive with the uni- 

 verse, he would obviously be entirely independent; 

 there would remain nothing on which to be dependent. 

 Since matter is what it is, man at least has little 



