Here the children, being left to themselves, went up into thin air. They argued the possibility of nothingness. Virginia told how when she was a little child she used to imagine what would happen if there were no earth. They each described how they couldn’t imagine nothing, and what happened when they tried. Ruth told how one couldn’t imagine perfect unity and understanding, either. I stopped them, and said it made not the least difference in any fact whether they could or couldn’t imagine it. Virginia, the little artist and mystic, said she thought in childhood one touched the truth unconsciously. The others all denied this. I said it was a pleasant and comfortable thought. Now I said there was one other interesting thing I wanted to speak of, and that was memory. Most people believe we remember nothing from before birth. This is not true. Our whole body, our very being, is a memory. Florence said: “It is a race memory. Often we find it easy to do a thing we never did before, because our ancestors did it.” “Yes,” I answered, “instinct is a memory. The fact that we are here at all, our minds, our thinking, as well as our bodies, are a memory. We ourselves, our present bodies, are a consequence of the lives before us, a memory from the endless past.” “We are what they lived,” said Ruth, “as our bodies shall be what we live, not what we think on the surface, but what we live.” “Yes,” I answered, “but after a while we do live our thoughts.” Henry said life was a repetition with progress. “But in the one-celled animal,” he asked, “was life an expression of mind?” “I don’t know,” I said; “but it seems to me self or will must be at the bottom of all motion. I read a theory lately, in an ‘evolution’ book, that was very interesting. It is this: That consciousness or desire is the source of all development, and that lower creatures are conscious of acts which to us are automatic. The lowest creature, which is a mere bag or stomach, would then be conscious of itself, whereas in us the consciousness of primal organs is swamped and lost in our more intense nervous consciousness. Thus, from the first, consciousness and will might be the source of progress, as they are now.”[2] They all thought it a plausible and interesting theory. Marian said: “It seems likely. For do not babies have difficulty in walking, and are conscious of every step, whereas we do it almost automatically?” “Yes,” I said; “it might be the same with the race.” I insisted that one could know the truth in certain directions, if one were willing to admit absolute ignorance in others. I felt sure I was immortal, but I had not the least idea how. I would not build up a heaven, hell or universe of the dead, because all these conjectures were likely to be false. I said one could know much and learn more only by admitting one’s limitations.