It is easiest to explain my meaning by aid of analogues,—by the construction, as it were, of "models," just as is the custom in Physics whenever a recondite idea has to be grasped before it can be properly formulated and before a theory is complete. I will take two analogies: one from Magnetism and one from Politics. "Parliament," or "the Army," is a body which consists of individual members constantly changing, and its existence is not dependent on their existence: it pre-existed any particular set of them, and it can survive a dissolution. Even after a complete slaughter, the idea of the Army would survive, and another would come into being, to carry on the permanent traditions and life. Except as an idea in some sentient mind, it could not be said to exist at all. The mere individuals composing it do not make it: without the idea they would be only a disorganised mob. Abstractions like the British Constitution, and other such things, can hardly be said to have any incarnate existence. These exist _only_ as ideas. Parliament exists fundamentally as an idea, and it can be called into existence or re-incarnated again. Whether it is the same Parliament or not after a general election is a question that may be differently answered. It is not identical, it may have different characteristics, but there is certainly a sort of continuity; it is still a British Parliament, for instance, it has not changed its character to that of the French Assembly or the American Congress. It is a permanent entity even when disembodied; it has a past and it has a future; it has a fundamentally continuous existence though there are breaks or dislocations in its conspicuous activity, and though each incarnation has a separate identity or personality of its own. It is larger and more comprehensive than any individual representation of it; it may be said to have a "subliminal self," of which any septennial period sees but a meagre epitome. Some of those epitomes are more, some less, worthy; sometimes there appears only a poor deformity or a feeble-minded attempt, sometimes a strong and vigorous embodiment of the root idea. As to its technical continuity of existence and actual mode of reproduction, I suppose it would be merely fanciful to liken the "Crown" to those germ-cells or nuclei, whose existence continues without break, which serve the purpose of collecting and composing the somatic cells in due season. Other illustrations of the temporary incarnation of a permanent idea are readily furnished from the domain of Art; but, after all, the best analogy to life that I can at present think of is to be found in the subject of Magnetism.