He implies, though in the short space at his command he has hardly
said so in express terms, that personal identity as we commonly think
of it--that is to say, as confined to the single life of the
individual--consists in the uninterruptedness of a sufficient number
of vibrations, which have been communicated from molecule to molecule
of the nerve fibres, and which go on communicating each one of them
its own peculiar characteristic elements to the new matter which we
introduce into the body by way of nutrition. These vibrations may be
so gentle as to be imperceptible for years together; but they are
there, and may become perceived if they receive accession through the
running into them of a wave going the same way as themselves, which
wave has been set up in the ether by exterior objects and has been
communicated to the organs of sense.

As these pages are on the point of leaving my hands, I see the
following remarkable passage in Mind for the current month, and
introduce it parenthetically here:-


"I followed the sluggish current of hyaline material issuing from
globules of most primitive living substance. Persistently it
followed its way into space, conquering, at first, the manifold
resistances opposed to it by its watery medium. Gradually, however,
its energies became exhausted, till at last, completely overwhelmed,
it stopped, an immovable projection stagnated to death-like rigidity.
Thus for hours, perhaps, it remained stationary, one of many such
rays of some of the many kinds of protoplasmic stars. By degrees,
then, or perhaps quite suddenly, HELP WOULD COME TO IT FROM FOREIGN
BUT CONGRUOUS SOURCES. IT WOULD SEEM TO COMBINE WITH OUTSIDE
COMPLEMENTAL MATTER drifted to it at random. Slowly it would regain