"The centipede was happy, quite,
Until the toad for fun
Said, 'Pray which leg comes after which?'
This worked her mind to such a pitch
She lay distracted in a ditch,
Considering how to run."
And no wonder! Problems so complex as this should be left to the disposal of nature, and not be drawn over into the region of spiritual guidance. But the complexities of the centipede are simple matters when compared with the elaborate machinery of man. The human mind offers more alternatives in a minute than does the centipede in a lifetime. If spiritual guidance is inadequate to the latter, and is found merely to hinder action, why is not the blind control of nature necessary for the former also? Our age believes it is and, ever disparaging the conscious world, attaches steadily greater consequence to the unconscious. "It is the unintelligent me," writes Dr. O. W. Holmes, "stupid as an idiot, that has to try a thing a thousand times before he can do it and then never knows how he does it, that at last does it well. We have to educate ourselves through the pretentious claims of intellect into the humble accuracy of instinct; and we end at last by acquiring the dexterity, the perfection, the certainty which those masters of arts, the bee and the spider, inherit from nature."
REFERENCES ON NATURE AND SPIRIT
Green's Prolegomena, Section 297.
Dewey's Study of Ethics, Section xli.
Seth's Study of Ethical Principles, pt. i. ch. 3, Section 6.
Alexander's Moral Order and Progress, bk. i. ch. i. Section iii.
Earle's English Prose, p. 490-500.
Palmer in The Forum, Jan. 1893.