326 THE FOUNDATION'S OF ZOOLOGY 



or Berthelot could put together ; where such fabrics are woven, 

 such colors dyed, such a commerce carried on with the elements 

 and forces of the outer universe, that the industries of all the fac- 

 tories and trading establishments in the world are mere indolence 

 and awkwardness and unproductiveness compared with the mi- 

 raculous activities of which his lazy bulk is the unheeding centre." 



" We wish to remember something in the course of conversation. 

 No effort of the will can reach it ; but we say, ' Wait a little, and 

 it will come to me,' and go on talking. Presently, perhaps some 

 minutes later, the idea we are in search of comes all at once into 

 the mind, delivered like a prepaid bundle, laid at the door of con- 

 sciousness like a foundling in a basket." 



" There are thoughts that never emerge into consciousness which 

 yet make their influence felt among the perceptible mental cur- 

 rents, just as the unseen planets sway the movements of those 

 which are watched and mapped by the astronomers. Old prej- 

 udices, that are ashamed to confess themselves, nudge our talking 

 thoughts to utter their magisterial veto. The more we examine 

 the mechanism of thought, the more we shall see that the automatic 

 unconscious action of the mind enters largely into all its processes. 

 Our definite ideas are stepping-stones ; how we get from one to 

 the other we do not know ; something carries us, we do not take 

 the step. 



" It is not strange that remembered ideas should often take 

 advantage of the crowd of thoughts, and smuggle themselves in as 

 original. Honest thinkers are always stealing unconsciously from 

 each other. Our minds are full of waifs and estrays which we 

 think are our own. Innocent plagiarism turns up everywhere. 

 Our best musical critic tells me a few notes from the air of ' Shoo 

 Fly ' are borrowed from a movement in one of the magnificent 

 harmonies of Beethoven." ^ 



While it is as a metaphysician that Berkeley is best known in 

 our day, no one can read any of his works without discovering that 

 their purpose is practical and not speculative. The avowed object 

 of " Siris " is to show why tar water must be a " catholicon " ; but the 

 whole aim of his other works is to show that immediately and in 

 itself natural knowledge is a language by which we are instructed ; 



^ Holmes, " Mechanism in Thought and Morals." 



