Talk of ego and non ego meeting, and of the hopelessness of avoiding
contradiction in terms--talk of this, and look, in passing, at the
amoeba. It is itself qua maker of the stomach and being fed; it is
not itself qua stomach and qua its using itself as a mere tool or
implement to feed itself with. It is active and passive, object and
subject, ego and non ego--every kind of Irish bull, in fact, which a
sound logician abhors--and it is only because it has persevered, as
I said in "Life and Habit," in thus defying logic and arguing most
virtuously in a most vicious circle, that it has come in the persons
of some of its descendants to reason with sufficient soundness. And
what the amoeba is man is also; man is only a great many amoebas,
most of them dreadfully narrow-minded, going up and down the country
with their goods and chattels like gipsies in a caravan; he is only
a great many amoebas that have had much time and money spent on
their education, and received large bequests of organised
intelligence from those that have gone before them.

The most incorporate tool--we will say an eye, or a tooth, or the
closed fist when used to strike--has still something of the non ego
about it in so far as it is used; those organs, again, that are the
most completely separate from the body, as the locomotive engine,
must still from time to time kiss the soil of the human body, and be
handled and thus crossed with man again if they would remain in
working order. They cannot be cut adrift from the most living form
of matter (I mean most living from our point of view), and remain
absolutely without connection with it for any length of time, any
more than a seal can live without coming up sometimes to breathe;
and in so far as they become linked on to living beings they live.
Everything is living which is in close communion with, and