This—the idea that others of his kind could exist and could share his world—had never once entered his thinking during the whole time since he had become conscious, and it led to long brooding up in the park. Like other revelations that had come to his mind over the eons, it was at once completely astonishing and strangely familiar. Of course there would be others. Just as the first leaf that he had brought forth out of the chaos had, in time, proved to be only one of many—many that were like it, but different—and just as the same had proved true of trees and snowflakes, how could it not be the case that he himself was only one instance of a thing—a pattern of which others could exist? Perhaps others as numberless as the leaves or the snowflakes.

He understood all of this but he did not like it. It displeased him that when he came down out of the park to look at this perfect leaf, his experience of it was interfered with, marred, by the crudeness with which the other saw it. He wanted to eject this wretched thing, to make it go away. But the mere thought of doing so led his thinking down strange paths. To liken himself to one leaf or one snowflake was to raise troubling matters—more disturbing than anything he had experienced since he had lain paralyzed while the chaos had washed over him for eons. For many years now, leaves had come into existence, only to fall, dry up, and blow away when their time was at an end. Likewise snowflakes had covered the ground only to melt, merge, and rush away through the declivities in the forest. One snowflake softened and merged with another, and multitudes of them became rills high in the crown of the park. Rills merged with each other at the branchings to form creeks, creeks became streams, streams became a river. It all went away so that the next season could follow in its time. He had never troubled himself with the question of where the leaves blew away to and what became of them, nor of where the river flowed. Such concerns were idle and in no way affected him. But if he were now to conceive of himself as only one leaf on a tree, or tree in a forest, and if he were to admit of the possibility of others like him coming along to abide in the same place, then he must, in order to make the thought whole and perfect and sound as it ought to be, consider whether he and others of his kind were destined to fall and be carried away on a wind, or melt and merge with others and rush away to parts unknown.