APPLICA TION OF FOREGOING CHAPTERS. 51 



I. That we are most conscious of, and have most con- 

 trol over, such habits as speech, the upright position, the 

 arts and sciences, which are acquisitions peculiar to 

 the human race, always acquired after birth, and not 

 common to ourselves and any ancestor who had not 

 become entirely human. 



II. That we are less conscious of, and have less control 

 over, eating and drinking, swallowing, breathing, seeing 

 and hearing, which were acquisitions of our prehuman 

 ancestry, and for which we had provided ourselves 

 with all the necessary apparatus before we saw light, 

 but which are still, geologically speaking, recent, or 

 comparatively recent. 



III. That we are most unconscious of, and have least 

 control over, our digestion and circulation, which belonged 

 even to our invertebrate ancestry, and which are habits, 

 geologically speaking, of extreme antiquity. 



There is something too like method in this for it 

 to be taken as the result of mere chance — chance again 

 being but another illustration of Nature's love of a 

 contradiction in terms; for everything is chance, and 

 nothing is chance. And you may take it that all is 

 chance or nothing chance, according as you please, 

 but you must not have half chance and half not 

 chance. 



Does it not seem as though the older and more 

 confirmed the habit, the more unquestioning the act 

 of volition, till, in the case of the oldest habits, the 

 practice of succeeding existences has so formulated the 

 procedure, that, on being once committed to such and 

 such a line beyond a certain point, the subsequent 



