But in whatever way we may awake to it, the sense of personality, when first realized, appears already, like the fabled Goddess of Wisdom, full grown in the brain.

From the moment when we first remember ourselves we seem to be as old as we ever seem to others afterwards to become.

We grow, indeed, in knowledge, in wisdom, in experience, as our years increase, but deep down in our heart of hearts we are still essentially the same.
To be sure, people pay us more deference than they did, which suggests a doubt at times whether we may not have changed; small boys of a succeeding generation treat us with a respect that causes us inwardly to smile, as we think how little we differ from them, if they but knew it.
For at bottom we are not conscious of change from that morning, long ago, when first we realized ourselves.

We feel just as young now as we felt old then.

We are but amused at the world's discrimination where we can detect no difference.
Every human being has been thus "twice born": once as matter, once as mind.