I an individual,—an individual soul! Nay, I am a population,—a population unthinkable for multitude, even by groups of a thousand millions! Generations of generations I am, æons of æons! Countless times the concourse now making me has been scattered, and mixed with other scatterings. Of what concern, then, the next disintegration? Perhaps, after trillions of ages of burning in different dynasties of suns, the very best of me may come together again.
*
If one could only imagine some explanation of the Why! The questions of the Whence and the Whither are much less troublesome, since the Present assures us, even though vaguely, of Future and Past. But the Why!
*
The cooing voice of a little girl dissolves my reverie. She is trying to teach a child brother how to make the Chinese character for Man,—I mean Man with a big M. First she draws in the dust a stroke sloping downwards from right to left, so:—
then she draws another curving downwards from left to right, thus:—
joining the two so as to form the perfect ji, or character, hito, meaning a person of either sex, or mankind:—
