The Bacon- Shakespeare Folly 361 



any moment be born into the world, and it is as 

 likely to be in a peasant's cottage as anywhere. 



There is nothing in which men differ more widely 

 than in the capacity for imbibing and assimilating 

 knowledge. The capacity is often exercised uncon- 

 sciously. When my eldest son, at the age of six, 

 was taught to read in the course of a few weeks of 

 daily instruction, it was suddenly discovered that 

 his four-year-old brother also could read. Nobody 

 could tell how it happened. Of course the younger 

 boy must have taken keen notice of what the elder 

 one was doing, but the process went on without 

 attracting attention until the result appeared. 



This capacity for unconscious learning is not at 

 all uncommon. It is possessed to some extent by 

 everybody ; but a very high degree of it is one of 

 the marks of genius. I remember one evening, 

 many years ago, hearing Herbert Spencer in a 

 friendly discussion regarding certain functions of 

 the cerebellum. Abstruse points of comparative 

 anatomy and questions of pathology were involved. 

 Spencer's three antagonists were not violently op- 

 posed to him, but were in various degrees unready 

 to adopt his views. The three were : Huxley, one 

 of the greatest of comparative anatomists ; Hugh- 

 lings Jackson, a very eminent authority on the 

 pathology of the nervous system ; and George 



