¶ Life Is Not Physical
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Index Entry
"I am 78-- and at my age I find that I have now taken in more than 1000 tons of water, food,and air, the chemistry of which is temporarily employed for different lengths of time as hair, skin, flesh, bone, blood, etc., then progressively discarded. I weighed in at seven pounds , and I went on to 70, then 170, and even 207 pounds. Then I lost 70 pounds, and I said, ‘Who was that 70 pounds?-- because here I am.’ The 70 pounds I got rid of was ten times the flesh-and-bone inventory at which I had weighed in, in 1895.
“I am certain that I am not the avoirdupois of the most recent meals I have eaten, some of which will become my hair, only to be cut off twice a month. This lost 70 pounds of organic chemistry obviously wasn’t ‘me,’ nor are any of the remaining presently associated atoms ‘me.’ We have been making a great error in identifying ‘me’ and ‘you’ as these truly transient and, ergo, sensorially detectable chemistries.”
