[54] The only alternative to this seems to be to suppose that the “soul” comes into association with the body, not at the very first inception of the latter, but at some later pre-natal or post-natal stage, when the body is already partially or wholly built up by the primitive process of cell-division—that the soul then takes possession of the organism so formed, and makes use of it for self-expression; and finally at death discards it. This theory—though it seems a possible one, and in accordance with the apparent “possession” and control of the bodies of trance mediums by independent spirits—presents some difficulties. One difficulty is the absence of any obvious or acknowledged period when such entry of the soul takes place; another is the difficulty of seeing how a real and effective harmony could be permanently established between a body already formed and organized on hereditary lines, and an independent soul entering on its own errand at a later date. These (and other) difficulties, however, are not insuperable, and it may well be, in the great variety of Nature, that the process of incarnation actually does take place in both ways—_i.e._ in the way outlined in this note, as well as (more generally) in the way mentioned in the text. [55] See _The Art of Creation_, 1908, p. 82 _et seq._ Compare also Bergson’s “elan vital,” in _L’Évolution Créatrice_, p. 100 _et seq._ [56] The _Upanishads_, whose authority on these subjects is surely great, seem often to try to express the other-dimensional nature of the soul by a paradox of opposites. “The self, smaller than small (or more subtle than subtle), greater than great, is hidden in the heart of each creature” (Katha-Up. I. Adh. 2 valli. 20; also Svetasvatara-Up. III. Adh. 20)—or again, “The embodied soul is to be thought like the hundredth part of the point of a hair, divided into a hundred parts; he is to be thought infinite” (Svet.-Up. v. 9). And the last quoted passage continues: “He is not woman, he is not man, nor hermaphrodite; whatever body he assumes, with that he is joined (only); and as by the use of food and drink the body grows, so the individual soul, by means of thoughts, touching, seeing and the passions, assumes successively in various places various forms in accordance with his deeds.” [57] See Myers, _op. cit._ p. 233, on Clairvoyance of the Dying. [58] Even on the battlefield, after the battle, faces of the dead have been observed with this expression upon them. [59] It is, of course, quite possible that our ordinary consciousness is discontinuous, even down to its minutest elements, and that it is only made up of successive and separate sensations which, as in a cinematograph, follow each with lightning speed. But even this almost compels us to the assumption of another and profounder and more continuous consciousness beneath, which is the means of the synthesis and comparison of these sensations. [60] _Human Personality_, _op. cit._ p. 29.