h countless forms of which all trace has disappeared, and also with
a single root-have become invisible, yet that there is irrefragable
evidence to show that they once actually existed, and indeed are
existing at this moment, in a condition as real though as invisible
to the eye as air or electricity. Should we, I ask, under these
circumstances hesitate to call our imaginary plant or tree by a single
name, and to think of it as one person, merely upon the score that the
woody fibre [sic] was invisible? Should we not esteem the common soul,
memories and principles of growth which are preserved between all the
buds, no matter how widely they differ in detail, as a more living
bond of union than a framework of wood would be, which, though it were
visible to the eye, would still be inanimate?

The mistletoe appears as closely connected with the tree on which it
grows as any of the buds of the tree itself; it is fed upon the same sap
as the other buds are, which sap-however much it may modify it at
the last moment-it draws through the same fibres [sic] as do its
foster-brothers-why then do we at once feel that the mistletoe is no
part of the apple tree? Not from any want of manifest continuity, but
from the spiritual difference-from the profoundly different views of
life and things which are taken by the parasite and the tree on which it
grows-the two are now different because they think differently-as
long as they thought alike they were alike-that is to say they were
protoplasm-they and we and all that lives meeting in this common
substance.

We ought therefore to regard our supposed tufts of leaves as a tree,
that is to say, as a compound existence, each one of whose component
items is compounded of others which are also in their turn compounded.
But the tree above described is no imaginary parallel to the condition
of life upon the globe; it is perhaps as accurate a description of the
Tree of Life as can be put into so small a compass. The most sure proof
of a man's identity is the power to remember that such and such things
happened, which none but he can know; the most sure proof of his
remembering is the power to react his part in the original drama,
whatever it may have been; if a man can repeat a performance with
consummate truth, and can stand any amount of cross-questioning about
it, he is the performer of the original performance, whatever it was.
The memories which all living forms prove by their actions that t