December 29, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



907 



lions of others? And would / never have 

 been, would I have lost my chance to par- 

 ticipate in experience, would the universe 

 never have existed for me, if this combina- 

 tion had not been made? 



There seem to be certain facts that bear 

 upon this question. My self, my personal 

 identity, has as a matter of fact arisen in 

 connection with a particular union of two 

 germ cells each bearing a certain combina- 

 tion of the strands that determine charac- 

 teristics. The essential question is: Could 

 any other combination have produced my 

 personal identity? 



We find that other combinations are 

 formed in great number, but that none of 

 these do as a matter of fact produce my 

 self, not even when they are combinations 

 of germ cells from the same two parents. 

 Suppose that my particular combination 

 of germ cells had never been made, then 

 seemingly those other combinations that 

 are made would produce the same results 

 that they now produce, namely, individ- 

 uals that are not-I. And my personal 

 possibility of experience would have been 

 forever non-existent! 



On this basis, what are the chances that 

 I should ever have existed; that the par- 

 ticular combination which produced me 

 should ever have been made? According 

 to competent authorities, one of the two 

 preexisting combinations from which my 

 combination was derived possessed some- 

 what more than 17,000 germ cells, while 

 the other produced the very considerable 

 number of 339 billions of germ cells. So 

 far as conditioned by the characteristics of 

 these germ cells, any one of the 300 bil- 

 lions might have united with any one of 

 the 17,000; any combination was a priori 

 as probable as any other, and the chance 

 that my particular combination should 

 have been formed was therefore but one in 



five millions of billions!" Gentlemen, I 

 must congratulate myself on my fortune 

 in being with you this evening ! 



But this gives but a minute fraction of 

 the real odds against my existence, or your 

 existence, if each of us depends on the 

 occurrence of some particular combination 

 of the strands. "We have taken my two 

 parents and their union as given. But the 

 chances were equally many thousands of 

 billions to one against the existence of each 

 of them, and even existing, they might 

 have mated otherwise, absolutely preclud- 

 ing the possibility of that combination to 

 which my identity and experience are at- 

 tached; and if we go back many genera- 

 tions, applying as we must the same con- 

 siderations, we see that the system of nota- 

 tion which humanity has devised would 

 be quite inadequate to express the odds 

 against the formation of the combination 

 from which I was derived, or you were 

 derived. The chances were infinite against 

 my existence and your existence. 



As an abstract mathematical proposition, 

 you may, if you like, decline to be im- 

 pressed with this, because the chances were 

 just as strong against the existence of any 

 other persons, and yet some were bound to 

 exist; you and I were therefore just as 

 probable as any one else. While this rea- 

 soning is abstractly just, it fails to be en- 

 tirely satisfying to the self when it is my 

 total possibility of existence that is dis- 

 posed of in this light way. But this and 

 all our reasoning thus far omits the essen- 

 ' If we choose to take into the computation out 

 of the 17,000 ovules only the 400 that actuaUy 

 mature, the chance for any particular combination 

 is one in 120 thousand billions. After reaching 

 the thousand billions, cancellation of si factor of 

 a few hundreds or thousands ceases to produce an 

 impressive difference. The figures here given for 

 the numbers of germ cells are from the "Amer- 

 ican Text-book of Physiology," 1901, Vol. II., 

 pp. 444 and 454. 



