Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 3).djvu/319

 ting the legs and arms at the four corners, and the head in the middle—and so forth."

"Not in the least. The positions of all parts would be relatively identical in all cases."

"Now, James, when you talk something distantly approaching reason, I can bear with you (by an effort); but if you are going to talk such childish nonsense as this, I must leave you. You speak of millions of individuals whose general conformation is practically unvaried; and yet each one is to be individually recognisable—how?"

"Why—why, by minor peculiarities, I suppose—"

Minor peculiarities!' Then one of your beings would, on meeting another, have to institute a thorough and minute examination of him from end to end in order to discover one of these 'minor peculiarities' by which to identify him. He would hardly be able to remember the minor peculiarities of all the other millions of individuals, and would therefore have to carry a document whereon each of them was set down. Very practical! Now let us work it out: This scroll of his has to contain, let us say, ten million different signs, with the name of the owner attached. Perhaps you wil me how he is going to carry this scroll, which would certainly weigh some hundred-weights? Then, granting he could carry it, he is to sit down and wade through ten millions of signs in order to identify his friend or enemy. This would occupy a considerable time—let us say, moderately, five years."

The younger spirit looked crestfallen.

"I must admit you rather have me there!" he said ruefully. "I see there would be a difficulty about recognition. Perhaps there might be lists of identifying peculiarities set up at various points of the world, so that everybody could meet there, and—"

"Pooh!" said William, "get on to some other absurdity. I can't see what, save fighting, you would give your creatures to do."

"Oh, they would have to gain their living—to provide for themselves."

"Food?"

"Yes, they could only keep alive by consuming periodically something which would nourish their frames."

"Whence would they obtain it?"

"From the material of which their world was made."

"Oh, I see—your beings would gradually increase in numbers, and at the same time eat away the world they were clinging to, until, in course of time, there would be no world left to cling to at all? But I suppose you would lengthen the thing out—they would only eat at intervals of an æon or so?"

"No; I was thinking of several times a day."

The sage burst into a loud laugh, which rolled away for ever through space.