416 ADDITIONAL PHENOMENA OF NATURAL MAGIC. 



our logic into a region for which nature has no law, but 

 which is not the less a vivid reality, most deeply and per- 

 manently concerning ourselves. We have many wonder- 

 ful statements in scientific works on the subject of matter 

 and its divisibility. It is stated, for example, that there 

 are more animals in the milt of a single codfish than 

 there are men on the whole earth, and that a single grain 

 of sand is larger than four millions of these animals. 

 But let us take a moderate estimate of this fact, far 

 within the limits of truth, and therefore free from all 

 hyperbole, for the purpose of reaching a deeper and more 

 interesting region of reality beyond it. Let us, for 

 example, content ourselves with assuming that there are 

 only ten millions of those animals in a single codfish, it 

 follows that this single codfish was but one of ten 

 millions in the milt of its progenitor, and that progenitor 

 but one of ten millions in the milt of its parent, and so 

 on backward until you reach the three-hundredth ancestor 

 in a direct line of reproduction ; and here you find the 

 fact utterly surpassing all our possible investigation into 

 its physical reality, but not the less a fact on that account, 

 that this three-hundredth ancestor must at that stage of his 

 existence when he was in the milt of his parent, and only, 

 say, a millionth part the size of a grain of sand for we 

 are speaking of the progeny in the milt, not in the roe 

 this animal in this minute condition, we say, must have 

 had within him in turn a progeny whose numbers in the 

 three-hundredth generation after him would be so nume- 

 rous that, were we to begin at the top of this page with 

 the number ten millions, we should have to add as many 

 ciphers as there is space for types in the whole page to 

 note them down. Taking the page, then, at thirty- six lines 

 of three inches long, we should have for this number a line 

 of figures, of the size of the present type, three yards long. 

 Carrying this curious calculation back to the time 



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