CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS KNOWERS. 29 



principle should breed, so to speak, hermaphroditically, 

 but will give to each an help meet for it which shall 

 cross it and be the undoing of it ; as in the case of 

 descent with modification, of which the essence would 

 appear to be that every offspring should resemble its 

 parents, and yet, at the same time, that no offspring 

 should resemble its parents. But for the slightly irri- 

 tating stimulant of this perpetual crossing, we should 

 pass our lives unconsciously as though in slumber. 



Until we have got to understand that though black 

 is not white, yet it may be whiter than white itself 

 (and any painter will readily paint that which shall 

 show obviously as black, yet it shall be whiter than 

 that which shall show no less obviously as white), we 

 may be good logicians, but we are still poor reasoners. 

 Knowledge is in an inchoate state as long as it is 

 capable of logical treatment; it must be transmuted 

 into that sense or instinct which rises altogether above 

 the sphere in which words can have being at all, other- 

 wise it is not yet vital. For sense is to knowledge 

 what conscience is to reasoning about right and wrong; 

 the reasoning must be so rapid as to defy conscious 

 reference to first principles, and even at times to be 

 apparently subversive of them altogether, or the action 

 will halt. It must, in fact, become automatic before 

 we are safe with it. While we are fumbling for the 

 grounds of our conviction, our conviction is prone to 

 fall, as Peter for lack of faith sinking into the waves 

 of Galilee ; so that the very power to prove at all is 

 an d priori argument against the truth — or at any 

 rate the practical importance to the vast majority of 



