ensations and impulses on the part of our tributary souls or 'selves,'
who probably no more know that we exist, and that they exist as a part
of us, than a microscopic insect knows the results of spectrum analysis,
or than an agricultural labourer [sic] knows the working of the British
Constitution; and of whom we know no more than we do of the habits
and feelings of some class widely separated from our own."-("Life and
Habit," p. 110.)

After which it became natural to ask the following question:--"Is it
possible to avoid imagining that we may be ourselves atoms, undesignedly
combining to form some vaster being, though we are utterly incapable of
perceiving this being as a single individual, or of realising [sic] the
scheme and scope of our own combination? And this, too, not a spiritual
being, which, without matter or what we think matter of some sort, is
as complete nonsense to us as though men bade us love and lean upon an
intelligent vacuum, but a being with what is virtually flesh and blood
and bones, with organs, senses, dimensions in some way analogous to our
own, into some other part of which being at the time of our great change
we must infallibly re-enter, starting clean anew, with bygones bygones,
and no more ache for ever from age or antecedents.

"'An organic being,' writes Mr. Darwin, 'is a microcosm, a little
universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms inconceivably
minute and numerous as the stars in Heaven.' As these myriads of smaller
organisms are parts and processes of us, so are we parts and processes
of life at large."

A tree is composed of a multitude of subordinate trees, each bud being
a distinct individual. So coral polypes [sic] form a tree-like growth
of animal life, with branches from which spring individual polypes
[sic] that are connected by a common tissue and supported by a common
skeleton. We have no difficulty in seeing a unity in multitude, and
a multitude in unity here, because we can observe the wood and the
gelatinous tissue connecting together all the individuals which compose
either the tree or the mass of polypes [sic]. Yet the skeleton, whether
of tree or of polype [sic], is inanimate; and the tissue, whether of
bark or gelatine [sic], is only the matted roots of the individual buds;
so that the outward and striking connection between the individuals
is more delusive than real. The true connection is one which cannot be
seen, and consists in the animation of ea