60 LIFE AND HABIT. 



dreaming of a dawn of trouble, the end of certainty 

 and of settled convictions. Not but what before birth 

 there have been unsettled convictions (more's the pity) 

 with not a few, and after birth we have still so made 

 up our minds upon many points as to have no further 

 need of reflection concerning them ; nevertheless, in 

 the main, birth is the end of that time when we really 

 knew our business, and the beginning of the days 

 wherein we know not what we would do, or do. It is 

 therefore the beginning of consciousness, and infancy 

 is as the dosing of one who turns in his bed on waking, 

 and takes another short sleep before he rises. When 

 we were yet unborn, our thoughts kept the roadway 

 decently enough ; then were we blessed ; we thought 

 as every man thinks, and held the same opinions 

 as our fathers and mothers had done upon nearly 

 every subject. Life was not an art and a very 

 difficult art much too difficult to be acquired in a 

 lifetime ; it was a science of which we were consum- 

 mate masters. 



In this sense, then, birth may indeed be looked upon 

 as the most salient feature in a man's life ; but this 

 is not at all the sense in which it is commonly so 

 regarded. It is commonly considered as the point at 

 which we begin to live. More truly it is the point 

 at which we leave off knowing how to live. 



A chicken, for example, is never so full of conscious- 

 ness, activity, reasoning faculty, and volition, as when 

 it is an embryo in the eggshell, making bones, and flesh, 

 and feathers, and eyes, and claws, with nothing but a 

 little warmth and white of egg to make them from. 



