22 LIFE AND HABIT. 



all sides equally. This perfection of knowledge some- 

 times extends to positive disbelief in the thing known, 

 so that the most thorough knower shall believe him- 

 self altogether ignorant. No thief, for example, is such 

 an utter thief — so good a thief — as the kleptomaniac. 

 Until he has become a kleptomaniac, and can steal a 

 horse as it were by a reflex action, he is still but half 

 a thief, with many unthievish notions still clinging to 

 him. Yet the kleptomaniac is probably unaware that 

 he can steal at all, much less that he can steal so well. 

 He would be shocked if he were to know the truth. 

 So again, no man is a great hypocrite until he has left 

 off knowing that he is a hypocrite. The great hypo- 

 crites of the world are almost invariably under the 

 impression that they are among the very few really 

 honest people to be found ; and, as we must all have 

 observed, it is rare to find any one strongly under this 

 impression without ourselves having good reason to 

 differ from him. 



Our own existence is another case in point. When 

 we have once become articulately conscious of existing, 

 it is an easy matter to begin doubting whether we 

 exist at all. As long as man was too unreflecting a 

 creature to articulate in words his consciousness of his 

 own existence, he knew very well that he existed, but 

 he did not know that he knew it. With introspection, 

 and the perception recognised, for better or worse, 

 that he was a fact, came also the perception that he 

 had no solid ground for believing that he was a fact at 

 all. That nice, sensible, unintrospective people who 

 were too busy trying to exist pleasantly to trouble their 



