so easily to him. I know no exception to this rule. Where is the
intricate and at one time difficult art in which perfect automatic ease
has been reached except as the result of long practice? If, then,
wherever we can trace the development of automatism we find it to have
taken this course, is it not most reasonable to infer that it has taken
the same even when it has risen in regions that are beyond our ken? Ought
we not, whenever we see a difficult action performed, automatically to
suspect antecedent practice? Granted that without the considerations in
regard to identity presented above it would not have been easy to see
where a baby of a day old could have had the practice which enables it to
do as much as it does unconsciously, but even without these
considerations it would have been more easy to suppose that the necessary
opportunities had not been wanting, than that the easy performance could
have been gained without practice and memory.

When I wrote "Life and Habit" (originally published in 1877) I said in
slightly different words:--

"Shall we say that a baby of a day old sucks (which involves the whole
principle of the pump and hence a profound practical knowledge of the
laws of pneumatics and hydrostatics), digests, oxygenises its
blood--millions of years before any one had discovered oxygen--sees and
hears, operations that involve an unconscious knowledge of the facts
concerning optics and acoustics compared with which the conscious
discoveries of Newton are insignificant--shall we say that a baby can do
all these things at once, doing them so well and so regularly without
being even able to give them attention, and yet without mistake, and
shall we also say at the same time that it has not learnt to do them, and
never did them before?

"Such an assertion would contradict the whole experience of mankind."

I have met with nothing during the thirteen years since the foregoing was
published that has given me any qualms about its soundness. From the
point of view of the law courts and everyday life it is, of course,
nonsense; but in the kingdom of thought, as in that of heaven, there are
many mansions, and what would be extravagance in the cottage or
farmhouse, as it were, of daily practice, is but common decency in the
palace of high philosophy, wherein dwells evolution. If we leave
evolution alone, we may stick to common practice and the law courts;
touch evolution and we are in another world; not