o understand
what is intended. How can each portion be all? How can one Londoner
be all London? I know that this, too, can in a way be shown, but the
resulting idea is too far to fetch, and when fetched does not fit in
well enough with our other ideas to give it practical and commercial
value. How, again, can all things be said to be born of one integer,
unless the statement is confined to living things, which can alone be
born at all, and unless a theory of evolution is intended, such as Linus
would hardly have accepted?

Yet limit the "all things" to "all living things," grant the theory of
evolution, and explain "each portion is All" to mean that all life is
akin, and possesses the same essential fundamental characteristics,
and it is surprising how nearly Linus approaches both to truth and
intelligibility.

It may be said that the animate and the inanimate have the same
fundamental substance, so that a chair might rot and be absorbed by
grass, which grass might be eaten by a cow, which cow might be eaten by
a man; and by similar processes the man might become a chair; but these
facts are not presented to the mind by saying that "one energy governs
all things"-a chair, we will say, and a man; we could only say that one
energy governed a man and a chair, if the chair were a reasonable living
person, who was actively and consciously engaged in helping the man to
attain a certain end, unless, that is to say, we are to depart from
all usual interpretation of words, in which case we invalidate the
advantages of language and all the sanctions of morality.

"All things shall again become unity" is intelligible as meaning that
all things probably have come from a single elementary substance,
say hydrogen or what not, and that they will return to it; but the
explanation of unity as being the "unity of multiplicity" puzzles; if
there is any meaning it is too recondite to be of service to us.

What, again, is meant by saying that "the soul of the world is the
Divine energy which interpenetrates every portion of the mass"? The soul
of the world is an expression which, to myself, and, I should imagine,
to most people, is without propriety. We cannot think of the world
except as earth, air, and water, in this or that state, on and in which
there grow plants and animals. What is meant by saying that earth has a
soul, and lives? Does it move from place to place erratically? Does it
feed? Does it reproduce itself? Does it make su