"It knew how to make a great many things before it was hatched.

"It grew eyes and feathers and bones.

"Yet we say it knew nothing about all this.

"After it is born it grows more feathers, and makes its bones larger,
and develops a reproductive system.

"Again we say it knows nothing about all this.

"What then does it know?

"Whatever it does not know so well as to be unconscious of knowing
it.

"Knowledge dwells upon the confines of uncertainty.

"When we are very certain, we do not know that we know. When we will
very strongly, we do not know that we will."


I then began my book, but considering myself still a painter by
profession, I gave comparatively little time to writing, and got on
but slowly. I left England for North Italy in the middle of May 1876
and returned early in August. It was perhaps thus that I failed to
hear of the account of Professor Hering's lecture given by Professor
Ray Lankester in Nature, July 13 1876; though, never at that time
seeing Nature, I should probably have missed it under any