kind of trouble is that it is nearly reasonable, but not quite.
Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians.
It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is;
its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden;
its wildness lies in wait. I give one coarse instance of what I mean.
Suppose some mathematical creature from the moon were to reckon
up the human body; he would at once see that the essential thing
about it was that it was duplicate. A man is two men, he on the
right exactly resembling him on the left. Having noted that there
was an arm on the right and one on the left, a leg on the right
and one on the left, he might go further and still find on each side
the same number of fingers, the same number of toes, twin eyes,
twin ears, twin nostrils, and even twin lobes of the brain.
At last he would take it as a law; and then, where he found a heart
on one side, would deduce that there was another heart on the other.
And just then, where he most felt he was right, he would be wrong.

It is this silent swerving from accuracy by an inch that is
the uncanny element in everything. It seems a sort of secret
treason in the universe. An apple or an orange is round enough
to get itself called round, and yet is not round after all.
The earth itself is shaped like an orange in order to lure some
simple astronomer into calling it a globe. A blade of grass is
called after the blade of a sword, because it comes to a point;
but it doesn't. Everywhere in things there is this element of the
quiet and incalculable. It escapes the rationalists, but it never
escapes till the last moment. From the grand curve of our earth it
could easily be inferred that every inch of it was thus curved.
It would seem rational that as a man has a brain on both sides,
he should have a heart on both sides. Yet scientific men are still