But while reasons have been offered why the One should thus "reproduce" or "differentiate" itself as a Many, no reason, so far as I am aware, has ever been found, nor ever can be, why there should be just so many of these troublers as there are--no more and no less. Nor why _you_ and _I_ should be among them. To explain why human units exist, does not explain the existence of any single individual we choose to name--of Julius Cæsar, of Napoleon, of Mr Lloyd George, whose significance in the universe, it will be admitted, consists not in their being mere human units required to make up a certain number, but in their being just the kind of men they happen to be. So too the proof that a human unit must needs be there to fill the niche in time and space you now occupy is no proof that you, and no other, must needs be the unit in question. Another, substituted in your place, could play the part of one in a multitude as well as you, and the theory of the One and the Many would not even notice the change. But it would make a notable difference to the facts. And as with the units, so with the totality. If the number of souls now drawing the breath of life were halved or doubled, nay, if they were all suddenly blotted out and their places filled by an entirely new multitude, men, angels or devils as the case might be, philosophy might still maintain its theory of the One and the Many as though nothing had happened. Why these rather than those? Why _you_? Why _me_? Philosophy precipitates this question and leaves it, at the end of all theorizing, unanswered, poignant and tremendous. "Who can say positively," writes Sir Leslie Stephen, "that it would not be better for the world at large if his neck were wrung five minutes hence?"[1] Unable, as every man is, to give a convincing reason why he should be here at all, or why, being here, he should remain here any longer,--unable to prove that it would not be better for the world at large, if all necks, his own included, were wrung five minutes hence--is there not something fundamentally irrational in our determination to continue in existence as long as we possibly can--that universal will-to-live, which forms the basis of all particular volitions, and supplies the motive power to our plans, purposes, preparations and policies for our own or others' good? Challenged to show cause why we should linger here a moment longer, what answer could any of us give that would have the slightest claim to "the universal validity of reason"? Reason cannot be bullied into acquiescence by the importance of individuals in their own eyes. Was there ever a great man whose sudden extinction would not have been hailed with joy by a considerable section of his contemporaries, or a little one who would not have made things pleasanter for somebody by taking himself off?