When intuitions can be gripped by conscious reasoning
processes, man gains much of the knowledge which is power.
But the scope of knowledge in the fullest sense is indefinitely
greater than that of science and philosophy.
Nor is it hard to see why the sphere of reflective thought is thus
comparatively limited. For modern speculations, and even the
straitest psychology, have familiarised us with the idea of a
larger self that is beyond the reach of conscious analysis.
Obscure workings of the mind--emotions, moods, immediate
perceptions, premonitions, and the rest--have a potent part to
play in the actual living of a life. Consider in this connection
such a passage as the following, taken from Jefferies' "Story of
My Heart." It means something, though it is not scientific.
"Three things only have been discovered of that which concerns
the inner consciousness since before written history began.
Three things only in twelve thousand written, or sculptured
years, and in the dumb, dim time before them. Three ideas the
cavemen wrested from the unknown, the night which is round
us still in daylight--_the existence of the soul, immortality, the
deity_. These things . . . do not suffice me. I desire to advance
farther, and to wrest a fourth, and even still more than a fourth,
from the darkness of thought. I want more ideas of soul-life. . . .
My naked mind confronts the unknown. I see as clearly as the
noonday that this is not all; I see other and higher conditions
than existence; I see not only the existence of the soul, but, in
addition, I realise a soul-life illimitable.
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