s is to
go hunting expressly after them. The way to get them is to study
something of which one is fond, and to note down whatever crosses one's
mind in reference to it, either during study or relaxation, in a little
note-book kept always in the waistcoat pocket. Ernest has come to know
all about this now, but it took him a long time to find it out, for this
is not the kind of thing that is taught at schools and universities.

Nor yet did he know that ideas, no less than the living beings in whose
minds they arise, must be begotten by parents not very unlike themselves,
the most original still differing but slightly from the parents that have
given rise to them. Life is like a fugue, everything must grow out of
the subject and there must be nothing new. Nor, again, did he see how
hard it is to say where one idea ends and another begins, nor yet how
closely this is paralleled in the difficulty of saying where a life
begins or ends, or an action or indeed anything, there being an unity in
spite of infinite multitude, and an infinite multitude in spite of unity.
He thought that ideas came into clever people's heads by a kind of
spontaneous germination, without parentage in the thoughts of others or
the course of observation; for as yet he believed in genius, of which he
well knew that he had none, if it was the fine frenzied thing he thought
it was.

Not very long before this he had come of age, and Theobald had handed him
over his money, which amounted now to 5000 pounds; it was invested to
bring in 5 pounds per cent and gave him therefore an income of 250 pounds
a year. He did not, however, realise the fact (he could realise nothing
so foreign to his experience) that he was independent of his father till
a long time afterwards; nor did Theobald make any difference in his
manner towards him. So strong was the hold which habit and association
held over both father and son, that the one considered he had as good a
right as ever to dictate, and the other that he had as little right as
ever to gainsay.

During his last year at Cambridge he overworked himself through this very
blind deference to his father's wishes, for there was no reason why he
should take more than a poll degree except that his father laid such
stress upon his taking honours. He became so ill, indeed, that it was
doubtful how far he would be able to go in for his degree at all; but he
managed to do so, and when the list came out was found to be pla