from corporate individuality.

They say, by the way, that doctors now perform a little operation on
the born baby, so that no more navel shows. No more belly-buttons,
dear reader! Lucky I caught you this generation, before the doctors
had saved your appearances. Yet, _caro mio_, whether it shows or not,
there you once had immediate connection with the maternal
blood-stream. And, because the male nucleus which derived from the
father still lies sparkling and potent within the solar plexus,
therefore that great nerve-center of you, still has immediate
knowledge of your father, a subtler but still vital connection. We
call it the tie of blood. So be it. It is a tie of blood. But much
more definite than we imagine. For true it is that the one bright male
germ which went to your begetting was drawn from the blood of the
father. And true it is that that same bright male germ lies unquenched
and unquenchable at the center of you, within the famous solar plexus.
And furthermore true is it that this unquenched father-spark within
you sends forth vibrations and dark currents of vital activity all the
time; connecting direct with your father. You will never be able to
get away from it while you live.

The connection with the mother may be more obvious. Is there not your
ostensible navel, where the rupture between you and her took place?
But because the mother-child relation is more plausible and flagrant,
is that any reason for supposing it deeper, more vital, more
intrinsic? Not a bit. Because if the large parent mother-germ still
lives and acts vividly and mysteriously in the great fused nucleus of
your solar plexus, does the smaller, brilliant male-spark that derived
from your father act any less vividly? By no means. It is
different--it is less ostensible. It may be even in magnitude smaller.
But it may be even more vivid, even more intrinsic. So beware how you
deny the father-quick of yourself. You may be denying the most
intrinsic quick of all.

In the same way it follows that, since brothers and sisters have the
same father and mother, therefore in every brother and sister there is
a direct communication such as can never happen between strangers. The
parent nuclei do not die within the new nucleus. They remain there,
marvelous naked sparkling dynamic life-centers, nodes, well-heads of
vivid life itself. Therefore in every individual the parent nuclei
live, and give direction connection, blood connection we call it, with