MR. HERBERT SPENCER. 31 



thought about, and so unthinkable if we try to think 

 it; — is, as it were, the matrix from which our more 

 thinkable thought is taken; it is the cloud gathering 

 in the unseen world from which the waters of life, 

 descend in an impalpable dew. Granted that all, 

 whether fusion or diffusion, whether of ideas or things, 

 is, if we dwell upon it and take it seriously, an out- 

 rage upon our understandings which common sense 

 alone enables us to brook; granted that it carries 

 with it a distinctly miraculous element which should 

 vitiate the whole process db initio, still, if we have 

 faith we can so work these miracles as Orpheus-like 

 to charm denizens of the unseen world into the seen 

 again — provided we do not look back, and provided 

 also we do not try to charm half-a-dozen Eurydices 

 at a. time. To think is to fuse and diffuse ideas, and 

 to fuse and diffuse ideas is to feed. We can all feed, 

 and by consequence within reasonable limits we can 

 fuse ideas ; or we can fuse ideas, and by consequence 

 within reasonable limits we can feed ; we know not 

 which comes first, the food or the ideas, but we must 

 not overtax our strength ; the moment we do this we 

 taste of death. 



It is in the closest connection with this that we 

 must chew our food fine before we can digest it, and 

 that the same food given in large lumps will choke 

 and kill which in small pieces feeds us; or, again, 

 that that which is impotent as a pellet may be 

 potent as a gas. Food is very thoughtful : through 

 thought it comes, and back through thought it shall 

 return ; the process of its conversion and compre- 



