THE MIND-STUFF THEORY. 167 



for which we can give no explicit logical justification, but 

 which are good inferences from certain j)i'emises. We 

 know more than we can sa}'. Our conclusions run ahead 

 of our power to analyze their grounds. A child, ignorant 

 of the axiom that two things equal to the same are equal to 

 each other, applies it nevertheless in his concrete judgments 

 unerringly. A boor will use the dictum de omni et nullo whc 

 is unable to understand it in abstract terms. 



"We seldom consciously think how our house is painted, what the 

 shade of it is, what the pattern of our furniture is, or whether the door 

 opens to the right or left, or out or in. But how quickly should we 

 notice a change in any of these things ! Think of the door you have 

 most often opened, and tell, if you can, whether it opens to the right or 

 left, out or in. Yet when you open the door you never put the hand 

 on the wrong side to find the latch, nor try to push it when it opens 

 with a pull. . . . What is the precise characteristic in your friend's step 

 that enables you to recognize it when he is coming? Did you ever con- 

 sciously think the idea, ' if I run into a solid piece of matter I shall get 

 hurt, or be hindered in my progress ' ? and do you avoid running into 

 obstacles because you ever distinctly conceived, or consciously acquired 

 and thought, that idea?"* 



Most of our knowledge is at all times potential. We act 

 in accordance with the whole drift of what we have learned, 

 but few items rise into consciousness at the time. Many 

 of them, however, we may recall at will. All this co- 

 operation of unrealized principles and facts, of potential 

 knowledge, with our actual thought is qu'ke inexplicable 

 unless we suppose the perpetual existence of an immense 

 mass of ideas in an unconscious state, all of them exerting a 

 steady pressure and influence upon our conscious thinking, 

 and many of them in such continuity with it as ever and 

 anon to become conscious themselves. 



Reply. No such mass of ideas is supposable. J3ut there 

 are all kinds of short-cuts in the brain ; and processes not 

 aroused strongly enough to give any ' idea ' distinct enough 

 to be a premise, may, nevertheless, help to determine just 

 that resultant process of whose psychic accompaniment the 

 said idea would be a premise, if the idea existed at alh A 

 certain overtone may be a feature of my friend's voice, and 



* J. E. Maude: 'The Uncouscious in Education/ in 'Education* vol. 

 L p. 401 (1882). 



