MIND. Between you and me as we set our minds together, and between us
and the rest of mankind, there is SOMETHING, something real, something
that rises through us and is neither you nor me, that comprehends us,
that is thinking here and using me and you to play against each other in
that thinking just as my finger and thumb play against each other as I
hold this pen with which I write.

Let me point out that this is no sentimental or mystical statement. It
is hard fact as any hard fact we know. We, you and I, are not only parts
in a thought process, but parts of one flow of blood and life. Let me
put that in a way that may be new to some readers. Let me remind you of
what is sometimes told as a jest, the fact that the number of one's
ancestors increases as we look back in time. Disregarding the chances of
intermarriage, each one of us had two parents, four grandparents, eight
great-grandparents, and so on backward, until very soon, in less than
fifty generations, we should find that, but for the qualification
introduced, we should have all the earth's inhabitants of that time as
our progenitors. For a hundred generations it must hold absolutely true,
that everyone of that time who has issue living now is ancestral to all
of us. That brings the thing quite within the historical period. There
is not a western European palaeolithic or neolithic relic that is not a
family relic for every soul alive. The blood in our veins has handled
it.

And there is something more. We are all going to mingle our blood again.
We cannot keep ourselves apart; the worst enemies will some day come to
the Peace of Verona. All the Montagues and Capulets are doomed to
intermarry. A time will come in less than fifty generations when all the
population of the world will have my blood, and I and my worst enemy
will not be able to say which child is his or mine.