First and Last Things

person with experience and declare that I have been through the distres

ELI

st as much as my powers and successes, are things that are necessary and important and contributory in that scheme, that scheme which passes my unders

eless I hope you will see no inconsistency when I say that ne

can perceive, however

hold steadfastly to that conception, I am SAVED. I find in that idea of perceiving the scheme as a whole towards me and in this attempt to perceive, that somethin

s I perceive, what aspect this scheme

ing of the species, one's OWN PERSONAL BEING LIVES AND MOVES-A PART OF IT AND CONTRIBUTING TO IT. ONE'S INDIVIDUAL EXISTENCE IS NOT SO ENTIRELY CUT OFF AS IT SEEMS AT FIRST; ONE'S ENTIRELY SEPARATE INDIVIDUALITY IS ANOTHER, A PROFOUNDER, AMONG THE SUBTLE INHERENT DELUSIONS OF THE HUMAN MIND. Between you and me as we set our minds toget

ncestors 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

ay come to the Peace of Verona. All the Montagues and Capulets are doomed to intermarry. A time will come in less than fifty generatio

all the sooner the whole species will get the little

ividualities, our nations and states and races are but bubbles and clusters of foam upon the great stream

g into the collective mind. I believe the species is still as a whole unawakened, still sunken in the delusion of the permanent separateness of the individual and of race

suasion that I am a gatherer of experience, a mere tentacle that arranges thought beside thought for this being of the species, this being that grows beautiful and powerful, in this persuasion I find the r