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