Page:Occult Japan - Lovell.djvu/344

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
322
OCCULT JAPAN.

less self-controlled and more and more automatic to both sensations and foreign suggestions.

Now clearly the amount of inly initiated activity measures the individuality of the man. For chance of change is greatly increased if, in addition to outer impressive diversity, inner diversity have a hand in the matter. The more individual a man already, the more individual is he bound to become, and as the rate of change depends on the change already effected, individuals must grow ever logarithmically apart. Marriage may retard this, but it may also accelerate it; and the last is undoubtedly its normal result. Otherwise, why has nature departed, in the propagation of the species, from the good old protoplasmic practice of identical fission.

Less self and greater facility in becoming another, impersonality and proneness to possession, should therefore be found together. And it is to be noticed that as development proceeds, nature gives with the gift of selfhood the means of guarding it. For the same increase of mental activity that constitutes the increased individuality enables the individual to maintain that in-