THE NATURAL 



The new faculty? Without then the ostentation of an 

 organ. Will? The hypnotist has shown the vanity and 

 Blake the inutility of willing trifles, and black magic 

 its futility. The telepathic faculty? In the first place 

 is it new? Have not travellers always told cock and 

 bull stories about its existence in savage Africa? Is it 

 not a faculty that man has given up, if not as useless, at 

 any rate as of a very limited use, a distraction, more 

 bother than it is worth? Lacking a localizing sense, 

 the savage knowing, if he does, what happens "some- 

 where" else, but never knowing quite where. The faculty 

 was perhaps not worth the damage it does to concentra- 

 tion of mind on some useful subject. "Instinct preserves 

 the useful gestures." 



Take it that what man wants is a capacity for clearer 

 understanding, or for physical refreshment and vigour, 

 are not these precisely the faculties he is forever hammer- 

 ing at, perhaps stupidly? Muscularly he goes slowly, 

 athletic records being constantly worn down by milli- 

 metres and seconds. 



I appear to have thrown down bits of my note some- 

 what at random; let me return to physiology. People 

 were long ignorant of the circulation of the blood; that 

 known, they appeared to think the nerves stationary; 

 Gourmont speaks of "circulation nerveuse," but many 

 people still consider the nerve as at most a telegraph 

 wire, simply because it does not bleed visibly when cut. 

 The current is "interrupted." The school books of 

 twenty years ago were rather vague about lymph, and 

 various glands still baffle physicians. I have not seen the 

 suggestion that some of them may serve rather as fuses 

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