namely, that practice makes things easy that were once difficult, and
often results in their being done without any consciousness of
effort. But if the repetition of an act tends ultimately, under
certain circumstances, to its being done unconsciously, so also is
the fact of an intricate and difficult action being done
unconsciously an argument that it must have been done repeatedly
already. As I said in "Life and Habit," it is more easy to suppose
that occasions on which such an action has been performed have not
been wanting, even though we do not see when and where they were,
than that the facility which we observe should have been attained
without practice and memory (p. 56).

There can be nothing better established or more easy, whether to
understand or verify, than the unconsciousness with which habitual
actions come to be performed. If, however, it is once conceded that
it is the manner of habitual action generally, then all a priori
objection to Professor Hering's philosophy of the unconscious is at
an end. The question becomes one of fact in individual cases, and of
degree.

How far, then, does the principle of the convertibility, as it were,
of practice and unconsciousness extend? Can any line be drawn beyond
which it shall cease to operate? If not, may it not have operated
and be operating to a vast and hitherto unsuspected extent? This is
all, and certainly it is sufficiently simple. I sometimes think it
has found its greatest stumbling-block in its total want of mystery,
as though we must be like those conjurers whose stock in trade is a
small deal table and a kitchen-chair with bare legs, and who, with
their parade of "no deception" and "examine everything for
yourselves," deceive worse than others who make use of all manner of