Page:Hare and Tortoise (1925).pdf/136

 combinations of remnants. . . The folly of regarding Socrates as sublime and me as ridiculous is that we are one and the same entity, just as those asters are merely a continuation of the first aster seed, which was merely the continuation of a continuation."

Louise recalled the discussion she had had with her father on the day of Billy's funeral, when they had agreed to grant cats equal rights with Billy in the matter of immortality. "Would you go so far as to say that Socrates and Sundown were parts of the same entity?" she inquired.

"Even further. I should include the fly that his tail can't quite reach, the worms under his feet, and the leaves over his head. It's all in the ocean . . . Stones and mud aren't as self-assertive as radium, but who is to say that they have no phosphorescent potentialities? If you eat a speck of mud on your celery, doesn't it, or something chemical in it, become a part of you and take a more distinguished place in the realm of things vital?"

"Then how to account for the fact that we can talk, Sundown can only neigh, and stones can't even sigh,—even if they are full of sermons."

"By the fact that stones are figuratively phosphorescent in an extremely negligible degree, that Sundown is phosphorescent in an infinitely greater degree, and that you and I are so surcharged with phosphorescence that we simply burst into hissing flames of intelligence. Or, if you prefer, we're not so tight-