INTRODUCTION
When opening my eyes in the morning, and whilst still struggling with an inclination to sleep, I review the day and what it will have in store for me; but the pictures drawn are confused, and my will takes no part in it.
For some time I have been haunted by the impression that the mental faculties of the generality of men have not succeeded in throwing off a species of torpor resembling that of a person hardly awake; the supposition that this torpid condition prevents our minds from attaining that degree of lucidity to which they have a right to aspire, is perhaps a hallucination, yet possibly I may be right in thinking it.
How many confused ideas traverse my brain in one day, and how seldom those come of which I follow the thread. We know well that injunction so often given by parents to children, and by schoolmasters to their pupils: “Try to concentrate your attention.” It almost seems as if that which we require of children is beyond my powers, for I have hardly resolved to disentangle a problem of whatever kind, when, under the form of useless, futile, inept thoughts, obstacles heap themselves across my path. I conclude from this that a fatal somnolence paralyses my faculties.
When a person has to be awakened who is disinclined to be disturbed, he is violently shaken. What movement would suffice to energise a man whose mental powers were drowsy? I do not see anything from the outside; and a personal effort could not be looked for, from an enervated will.
And yet I am possessed by the desire to penetrate the mystery of my existence; I ask myself what I am, and why I am on this earth; from the moment that I put this question to myself I feel that the awakening may be possible for me. I know two classes of men who never ask it; first those who do not see that there is any problem to solve; and secondly those who are content with infantine and superficial teaching; or more or less elaborate and learned, but coming from one who appears to himself to be the depository of a collection of supernaturally inspired truths. I own that I do not belong to the first of these divisions, since I shall have no rest as long as I am ignorant of what passes in me and around me; neither do I belong to the second of these classes, since those who compose it are content to believe; but faith is not knowledge, and I am anxious to comprehend what has been discovered, known, and established by evidence. But how shall I submit to this labour of research, when the habitual condition of my thoughts is to wander at will amongst my impressions, and when I am so incurably absent-minded?
We live in an atmosphere of many and varied ideas; ideas true and false, good and bad; they pulsate in the air we breathe; they are like the winged antheral seeds which are lifted up by the slightest breeze of autumn and carried afar; they are little heeded; but should it happen that these seeds attached themselves to our garments we should notice how strikingly the one form varied from the other.
Amongst those ideas which wander at large is this aphorism—that we are ignorant of that of which we know not the commencement, or in other words of that which we do not examine from the practical point of view; he who wishes to learn how something is made, whatever it may be, must know how to begin it. This truth has so ancient a date that we cannot conceive of a time when it was absent from the mind of man; only it had the common lot of all truths with which we are so familiar that apparently there is nothing to learn from them, and this aphorism appears at first sight to be the ramblings which we hear but to which we do not listen.
To me it is of value, as it strengthens my conviction that the mist which obscures my vision will not be dissipated until I have traced certain problems to their source; I know by experience that few phenomena are easy of explanation when their appearances only are examined at any given moment; and close questioning fails to elicit light, whilst ignorance prevails concerning their beginning.
How does it happen that in spite of such unfavourable circumstances, often with no clear purpose, and with eyes half shut, humanity can advance? For the progress is indubitable. The public conscience has developed; and its actions make themselves felt; civilised nations have become more humane; they understand better than they did formerly that peace is more profitable than war; certain social problems are being seriously discussed, and some are on the point of solution. In the physical sciences, as well as in mechanical arts, progress is most marked. But I see that though imagination, observation, and a talent for invention have had much to do with this progress, the capacity of imitation has also been a powerful factor. When William Herschel gave up music for astronomy, he perfected the optical instruments which were in use at that time, and manufactured some excellent telescopes at comparatively moderate prices, with the result that his fellow astronomers and their successors were able to devote themselves to the study of the heavens with greater ease and readiness; and the discovery of Uranus was soon followed by that of a large number of celestial bodies. Again, at one of the National Exhibitions of our time, there was shown to all comers the model of a recently invented apparatus for the conveyance of the wounded on battlefields; since which, each country now produces its own design with various improvements, and the victims of the barbarism, still lingering in war, were benefited by these modern appliances, due entirely to the art of imitation.