Mr. Herbert Spencer wy 
All, then, whether fusion or diffusion, whether of ideas 
or things, is miraculous. It is the two in one, and at the 
same time one in two, which is only two and two making 
five put before us in another shape; yet this fusion—so 
easy to think so long as it is not 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 outrage 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 
ab 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 
comprehension within our own system is mental as well as 
physical, and here, as everywhere else with mind and 
evolution, there must be a cross, but not too wide a cross— 
that is to say, there must be a miracle, but not upon a large 
