thought is to fix static terms and reveal eternal relations, have
inadvertently transferred to the living act what is true only of its
ideal object; and they have expected to find in the process, treated
psychologically, that luminous deductive clearness which belongs to the
ideal world it tends to reveal. The intelligible, however, lies at the
periphery of experience, the surd at its core; and intelligence is but
one centrifugal ray darting from the slime to the stars. Thought must
execute a metamorphosis; and while this is of course mysterious, it is
one of those familiar mysteries, like motion and will, which are more
natural than dialectical lucidity itself; for dialectic grows cogent by
fulfilling intent, but intent or meaning is itself vital and
inexplicable.

[Sidenote: Perception cumulative and synthetic]

The process of counting is perhaps as simple an instance as can be found
of a mental operation on sensible data. The clock, let us say, strikes
two: if the sensorium were perfectly elastic and after receiving the
first blow reverted exactly to its previous state, retaining absolutely
no trace of that momentary oscillation and no altered habit, then it is
certain that a sense for number or a faculty of counting could never
arise. The second stroke would be responded to with the same reaction
which had met the first. There would be no summation of effects, no
complication. However numerous the successive impressions might come to
be, each would remain fresh and pure, the last being identical in
character with the first. One, one, one, would be the monotonous
response for ever. Just so generations of ephemeral insects that
succeeded one another without transmitting experience might repeat the
same round of impressions--an everlasting progression without a shadow
of progress. Such, too, is the idiot's life: his liquid brain transmits