Meanwhile this discrepancy means no more than that the answer of science, couched in such a form, despite its apparent accuracy yields men no satisfaction. For that I am descended from my parents, on this no rational being can cast a doubt; and if the believer says that beings have sprung from God, he can only mean this in some particular respect. Upon what foundation rests the necessity for this peculiar interpretation of facts patent to all eyes--the facts concerned with procreation? All things in the world may be divided up into two great classes--things that admit of being generalized, and things that do not admit of being generalized. Of these, the former alone lie within reach of science, for science comes into play only where comparison and repetition are possible, comparison being a generalization in regard to what is presented simultaneously, and repetition a generalization in respect of what is presented in succession. Living beings do not admit of being either compared or repeated, hence cannot become a subject of science. In one particular regard, it is true, living beings may be conceived of as open to comparison and repetition; but this, as pointed out, has to do only with that in the individual which precisely in a certain specific elaboration can be rendered capable of comparison and repetition--namely, that in me which is re-actual, not the actual, not that which says, “_I_ am.”[16] As this latter I can neither be compared nor repeated. As a being endowed with consciousness, I am a something unique, a unity--more correctly, a non-duality; and here is to be found the reason why the answer given by science never satisfies and never can satisfy. Heredity requires the single-branched tracing back of one being to another. I bestow no theory of heredity upon a flame when, on the one hand, I trace it back to the kindling wood, and on the other to the oxygen of the atmosphere. The answer of science, however, would have me, the unity, arise out of two other unities, father and mother, each of whom in their turn would spring from two other unities, and so on in geometrical progression; thus, in place of a single-branched tracing back, one infinite in its ramifications. Hence the answer of science is lacking in that which it is bound to supply if it is to satisfy the thinker. As a something unique I am a something singly determined. If, however, I were nothing but the product of the union of an ovum-cell and a sperm-cell, there would positively be nothing present to make it necessary that precisely _I_ should spring from this ovum-cell and this sperm-cell. I could just as well have sprung from the cell material out of which, as a matter of fact, my brother has come forth; while he, on his part, could just as well have come from the cell material from which in the actual event I have come. The uniquely determined goes by the board. But that that which “_I_” now am, might just as well have been some other _I_,--such an idea is a