re wrung five minutes
hence. Indeed, if the half-born logic of the unconverted reason is to
rule our actions, I am inclined to think that the advice to commit
universal suicide would be at least as "logical" as any other that
philosophy could tender to the human race at the present moment.

But the advice would not be accepted. Rightly or wrongly each one of
us insists on regarding his own existence as a fact of some
significance--insists on believing that, on the whole, it is better for
him to be here than not to be here. However firmly we may be convinced
that the One has done its duty when it has differentiated itself into a
Many, there is none of us who would take lightly to the proposal that
he, John Smith, as one of the Many, should forthwith be blotted out,
and another, Wong Fu, placed in the gap left vacant by his
disappearance. To most of us, I believe, nay to all, it does make an
enormous difference whether the particular niche in question is filled
by Wong Fu or by _me_, but a difference for which we should find it
extremely difficult to give a "logical" account.

In my youth I was much in contact with a group of excellent Christians
who held that the number of the "saved" had been definitely fixed by
divine pre-ordination, the extremists placing it as low as 40,000. But
looking back on those times I now see that the ardour with which we
believed these things was strictly relevant to the hope each of us
entertained that he himself might be included in the number aforesaid.
I am very sure that our faith would have collapsed immediately had the
revelation been made that the elect were composed exclusively of
converted Chinamen. Our conception of the One and the Many was not so
disinterested or abstract as to exclude ourselves from a fair chance of
having a share in whatever good things happened to be going.

And so it always is, even where more enlightened philosophies prevail.
The significance of the universe, whatever it may be, is, ultimately,
its significance for _me_; which is another way of saying that I attach
importance to the fact that just I, and nobody else, am here to
perceive the significance.

There are certain forms of mysticism, mostly Indian, which would wean
us from all this. They would delete the value which the soul perceives
in being just this soul and no other. But I am very sure they do not
succeed. Whatever fascination the thought of being absorbed into the
Infinite may have