54 LIFE AND HABIT. 



our realising the idea in which it results, is not 

 perceived by the individual. So also all the deeper 

 springs of action and conviction. The residuum with 

 which we fret and worry ourselves is a mere matter 

 of detail, as the higgling and haggling of the market, 

 which is not over the bulk of the price, but over the 

 last halfpenny. 



Shall we say, then, that a baby of a day old sucks 

 (which involves the whole principle of the pump, and 

 hence a profound practical knowledge of the laws of 

 pneumatics and hydrostatics), digests, oxygenises its 

 blood (millions of years before Sir Humphry Davy 

 discovered oxygen), sees and hears all most difficult 

 and complicated operations, involving a knowledge of 

 the facts concerning optics and acoustics, compared 

 with which the discoveries of Newton sink into utter 

 insignificance ? Shall we say that a baby can do all 

 these things at once, doing them so well and so 

 regularly, without being even able to direct its 

 attention to them, and without mistake, and at the 

 same time not know how to do them, and never have 

 done them before ? 



Such an assertion would be a contradiction to the 

 whole experience of mankind. Surely the onus pro- 

 bandi must rest with him who makes it. 



A man may make a lucky hit now and again by 

 what is called a fluke, but even this must be only 

 a little in advance of his other performances of the 

 same kind. He may multiply seven by eight by a 

 fluke after a little study of the multiplication table, 

 but he will not be able to extract the cube root of 



