Life and Habit | Page 8

found able to do without apparent effort what in the great majority of
cases requires a long apprenticeship. It is needless to multiply instances;
the point that concerns us is, that knowledge under such circumstances
being very intense, and the ease with which the result is produced
extreme, it eludes the conscious apprehension of the performer himself,
who only becomes conscious when a difficulty arises which taxes even
his abnormal power. Such a case, therefore, confirms rather than
militates against our opinion that consciousness of knowledge vanishes
on the knowledge becoming perfect--the only difference between those
possessed of any such remarkable special power and the general run of
people being, that the first are born with such an unusual aptitude for
their particular specialty that they are able to dispense with all or nearly
all the preliminary exercise of their faculty, while the latter must
exercise it for a considerable time before they can get it to work
smoothly and easily; but in either case when once the knowledge is
intense it is unconscious.
Nor again would such an instance as that of Zerah Colburn warrant us
in believing that this white heat, as it were, of unconscious knowledge
can be attained by any one without his ever having been originally cold.
Young Colburn, for example, could not extract roots when he was an
embryo of three weeks' standing. It is true we can seldom follow the
process, but we know there must have been a time in every case when
even the desire for information or action had not been kindled; the

forgetfulness of effort on the part of those with exceptional genius for a
special subject is due to the smallness of the effort necessary, so that it
makes no impression upon the individual himself, rather than to the
absence of any effort at all. {3}
It would, therefore, appear as though perfect knowledge and perfect
ignorance were extremes which meet and become indistinguishable
from one another; so also perfect volition and perfect absence of
volition, perfect memory and utter forgetfulness; for we are
unconscious of knowing, willing, or remembering, either from not yet
having known or willed, or from knowing and willing so well and so
intensely as to be no longer conscious of either. Conscious knowledge
and volition are of attention; attention is of suspense; suspense is of
doubt; doubt is of uncertainty; uncertainty is of ignorance; so that the
mere fact of conscious knowing or willing implies the presence of more
or less novelty and doubt.
It would also appear as a general principle on a superficial view of the
foregoing instances (and the reader may readily supply himself with
others which are perhaps more to the purpose), that unconscious
knowledge and unconscious volition are never acquired otherwise than
as the result of experience, familiarity, or habit; so that whenever we
observe a person able to do any complicated action unconsciously, we
may assume both that he must have done it very often before he could
acquire so great proficiency, and also that there must have been a time
when he did not know how to do it at all.
We may assume that there was a time when he was yet so nearly on the
point of neither knowing nor willing perfectly, that he was quite alive
to whatever knowledge or volition he could exert; going further back,
we shall find him still more keenly alive to a less perfect knowledge;
earlier still, we find him well aware that he does not know nor will
correctly, but trying hard to do both the one and the other; and so on,
back and back, till both difficulty and consciousness become little more
than a sound of going in the brain, a flitting to and fro of something
barely recognisable as the desire to will or know at all--much less as the
desire to know or will definitely this or that. Finally, they retreat
beyond our ken into the repose--the inorganic kingdom--of as yet
unawakened interest.
In either case,--the repose of perfect ignorance or of perfect

knowledge--disturbance is troublesome. When first starting on an
Atlantic steamer, our rest is hindered by the screw; after a short time, it
is hindered if the screw stops. A uniform impression is practically no
impression. One cannot either learn or unlearn without pains or pain.



CHAPTER II
--CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS KNOWERS--THE LAW
AND GRACE

In this chapter we shall show that the law, which we have observed to
hold as to the vanishing tendency of knowledge upon becoming perfect,
holds good not only concerning acquired actions or habits of body, but
concerning opinions, modes of thought, and mental habits generally,
which are no more recognised as soon as firmly fixed, than are the
steps with which we go