Despite my determination to put the question off, my mind, or sub-
conscious mind, like a dog with a bone which it refuses to drop in
defiance of its master's command, went on revolving it. It went to bed
and got up with me, and was with me the day long, and whenever I had a
still interval, when I would pull up my horse to sit motionless
watching some creature, bird or beast or snake, or sat on the ground
poring over some insect occupied with the business of its little life,
I would become conscious of the discussion and argument going on. And
every creature I watched, from the great soaring bird circling in the
sky at a vast altitude to the little life at my feet, was brought into
the argument, and was a type, representing a group marked by a family
likeness not only in figure and colouring and language, but in mind as
well, in habits and the most trivial traits and tricks of gesture and
so on; the entire group in its turn related to another group, and to
others, still further and further away, the likeness growing less and
less. What explanation was possible but that of community of descent?
How incredible it appeared that this had not been seen years ago--yes,
even before it was discovered that the world was round and was one of
a system of planets revolving round the sun.
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