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Hereditary Genius
377
from point to point, towards new and better pastures, over wide
areas, whose bounds are as yet unknown.
Nature teems with latent life, which man has large powers of
evoking under the forms and to the extent which he desires. We must
not permit ourselves to consider each human or other personality as
something supernaturally added to the stock of nature, but rather as a
segregation of what already existed, under a new shape, and as a
regular consequence of previous conditions. Neither must we be
misled by the word “individuality,” because it appears from the many
facts and arguments in this book, that our personalities are not so
independent as our self-consciousness leads us to believe. We may
look upon each individual as something not wholly detached from its
parent source,—as a wave that has been lifted and shaped by normal
conditions in an unknown, illimitable ocean. There is decidedly a
solidarity as well as a separate-ness in all human, and probably in all
lives whatsoever; and this consideration goes far, as I think, to
establish an opinion that the constitution of the living Universe is a
pure theism, and that its form of activity is what may be described as
co-operative. It points to the conclusion that all life is single in its
essence, but various, ever varying, and inter-active in its
manifestations, and that men and all other living animals are active
workers and sharers in a vastly more extended system of cosmic
action than any of ourselves, much less of them, can possibly
comprehend. It also suggests that they may contribute, more or less
unconsciously, to the manifestation of a far higher life than our own,
somewhat as—I do not propose to push the metaphor too far—the
individual cells of one of the more complex animals contribute to the
manifestation of its higher order of personality.
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