There are, we presume, very few Hamiltonians who are prepared to indorse this bold statement of their master. Mansel, the editor and annotator of his "Lectures," has very distinctly and emphatically expressed his dissent. "Whether it be true or not that we can not conceive the quantity of existence to be increased or diminished, there is at any rate no such inability as regards the _quantity of matter_. It may be true as a fact that no material atom has been added to the world since the Creation; but the assertion, however true, is certainly not necessary. The power which created once must be conceived as able to create again, whether that ability is actually exercised or not. The same conclusion is still more evident when we proceed from the consideration of matter to that of mind. Of matter, we maintain that the creation of new portions is _perfectly conceivable_--as a result, at least, if not as a process; of mind, we believe that such creation actually takes place. Every man who comes into the world comes into it as a distinct individual, having a personality and consciousness of his own, and that personality is a distinct accession to the number of persons previously existing.... Every new person that comes into the world is a _new existence_."[124] Hence we are not justified in asserting that all actual existences are only different modes of one identical reality. We can not merely conceive, but we _know_, as a primary fact of consciousness, that the _sum_ of existence, of personal conscious being, which is the most fundamental reality, may be increased in the universe.[125]