Things tell a story. Their parts hang together
so as to work out a climax. They play into each other's hands
expressively. Retrospectively, we can see that altho no definite
purpose presided over a chain of events, yet the events fell into a
dramatic form, with a start, a middle, and a finish. In point of
fact all stories end; and here again the point of view of a many is
that more natural one to take. The world is full of partial stories
that run parallel to one another, beginning and ending at odd times.
They mutually interlace and interfere at points, but we cannot unify
them completely in our minds. In following your life-history, I must
temporarily turn my attention from my own. Even a biographer of
twins would have to press them alternately upon his reader's
attention.
It follows that whoever says that the whole world tells one story
utters another of those monistic dogmas that a man believes at his
risk. It is easy to see the world's history pluralistically, as a
rope of which each fibre tells a separate tale; but to conceive of
each cross-section of the rope as an absolutely single fact, and to
sum the whole longitudinal series into one being living an undivided
life, is harder. We have indeed the analogy of embryology to help
us.
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