906 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIV. No. 887 



complication, which confuses the mind on 

 this point, as it does on so many others. 

 How relatively simple a science would biol- 

 ogy be, and how totally different from 

 what it is, if there were no intermingling 

 of individuals for reproduction! The 

 next re-development of me is not merely 

 myself — my characteristics, but a combina- 

 tion of my characteristics with those of 

 some one else. And not all of my charac- 

 ters go into the new generation, but only a 

 part of them. And still more perplexing, 

 what I contribute to this new generation 

 often turns out not to be my personal 

 characteristics at all, but those of various 

 and sundry other persons scattered along 

 the line down which I have come, and for 

 which I have served merely as a store- 

 house, without my knowledge or consent. 

 And in fact, it turns out that / have 

 been merely a sort of focus or knot, in 

 which a lot of strands have been tied to- 

 gether — strands that diverge before and 

 behind me. Cut the knot — the strands 

 separate, scatter and unite with others. 

 Those in my knot have come from a hun- 

 dred others, and may later unite in a hun- 

 dred still diverse. Of my characteristics 

 I may say, like lago of his purse ' ' 'twas 

 mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thou- 

 sands." Only the scattered parts of me 

 will continue to exist, in diverse persons. 

 And so much is already true; my com- 

 ponent parts exist at this moment in many 

 persons now alive, so that if the continued 

 existence of my scattered parts is what we 

 must mean by immortality, then such im- 

 mortality is the lot of all; it holds as well 

 and in the same sense for him who leaves 

 no children of his own as for the parent. 

 The conclusion of the whole matter, from 

 this point of view, can be only that hu- 

 manity is but a single organism, merely 

 temporarily separated into pieces, which 



later reunite, and that we personally must 

 console ourselves (if it is a consolation) 

 with the realization that our characteris- 

 tics exist elsewhere in humanity and will 

 continue to exist after that particular knot 

 which forms the present self has been 

 untied. 



But has not our point of view thus far 

 been after all inadequate for sounding the 

 real depths of our problem? It omits the 

 deepest of all the difficulties; the fact that 

 I, the ego, as a feeling, experiencing, know- 

 ing self, am identified with only one of 

 these knots into which the living strands 

 are tied; my experiences cling to that one 

 alone. Was it the small boy Huxley (or 

 was it some other one of the famous pre- 

 cocious youngsters that fulfilled their 

 promise) who asked his mother whether 

 she was not overwhelmed by the conscious- 

 ness of her own identity? And isn't that 

 the most extraordinary of all things, that 

 my experience, embracing in its grasp the 

 universe, is tied down in relations of iden- 

 tity to a single one of the millions of knots 

 tied in this web of strands that have come 

 down from the unbeginning past? For an 

 observer standing to one side, as it were, it 

 is not difficult to comprehend that different 

 combinations of strands should give differ- 

 ent characteristics; different personalities 

 in that sense. But that the observer him- 

 self — my total possibility of experience, 

 that without which the universe for me 

 would be non-existent — that this should be 

 given only by one particular combination 

 is hard to conceive. 



It is the problem of distribution that 

 here seems to call for analysis. Through 

 the operation of what determining causes 

 is my self — ^my entire possibility of experi- 

 encing this wonderful universe — tied to 

 this particular one of the combinations of 

 strands, rather than to some of the mil- 



