hey
possess-the memories of their common identity with a single person in
whom they meet-this is incontestable proof of their being animated by
a common soul. It is certain, therefore, that all living forms, whether
animal or vegetable, are in reality one animal; we and the mosses being
part of the same vast person in no figurative sense, but with as much
bona fide literal truth as when we say that a man's finger-nails and his
eyes are parts of the same man.

It is in this Person that we may see the Body of God-and in the
evolution of this Person, the mystery of His Incarnation.

[In "Unconscious Memory," Chapter V, Butler wrote: "In the articles
above alluded to ("God the Known and God the Unknown") I separated the
organic from the inorganic, but when I came to rewrite them I found that
this could not be done, and that I must reconstruct what I had written."
This reconstruction never having been effected, it may be well to quote
further from "Unconscious Memory" (concluding chapter): "At parting,
therefore, I would recommend the reader to see every atom in the
universe as living and able to feel and remember, but in a humble way.
He must have life eternal as well as matter eternal; and the life and
the matter must be joined together inseparably as body and soul to
one another. Thus he will see God everywhere, not as those who repeat
phrases conventionally, but as people who would have their words taken
according to their most natural and legitimate meaning; and he will feel
that the main difference between him and many of those who oppose him
lies in the fact that whereas both he and they use the same language,
his opponents only half mean what they say, while he means it
entirely... We shall endeavour [sic] to see the so-called inorganic as
living, in respect of the qualities it has in common with the organic,
rather than the organic as non-living in respect of the qualities it has
in common with the inorganic."]

CHAPTER VII. THE LIKENESS OF GOD

In my last chapter I endeavoured [sic] to show that each living being,
whether animal or plant, throughout the world is a component item of
a single personality, in the same way as each individual citizen of a
community is a member of one state, or as each cell of our own bodies
is a separate person, or each bud of a tree a separate plant. We must
therefore see the whole varied congeries of living things as a single
very ancient Being, of inconceivable vastness, and