blind, they are next door to blindness; yet they are diurnal animals that go abroad in the full glare of noon and wander far in search of food. But their sense of smell is marvellously acute, and, as in the case of the mole, it has made sight superfluous. To come back to man: if, in a state of nature, he is able to guess the character of objects nine times in ten, or nineteen in twenty, seen as far off as he requires to see anything, his intellectual faculties make a better sight unnecessary. If the armadillo's scent had not been so keen and man had not been gifted with nimble brains, the sight in both cases would have been vastly stronger; but the sharpening of its sense of smell has dimmed the armadillo's eyes and made him blinder than a snake; while man (from no fault of his own) is unable to see farther than the wolf and the ostrich and the wild ass. MECHANISM IN THOUGHT AND MORALS DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES [Dr. Holmes was at once a distinguished physician, poet, novelist, and wit. His "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" is one of the most charming books ever written, his poetry and essays are of even greater popularity. Dr. Holmes's Works are published in fourteen volumes by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York, copyright in various editions. The essay from which extracts follow is in the eighth volume.] Do we ever think without knowing that we are thinking? The question may be disguised so as to look a little less paradoxical. Are there any mental processes of which we are unconscious at the time, but which we recognize as having taken place by finding certain results in our minds? That there are such unconscious mental actions is laid down in the strongest terms by Leibnitz, whose doctrine reverses the axiom of Descartes into _I am, therefore I think_. The existence of unconscious thought is maintained by him in terms we might fairly call audacious, and illustrated by some of the most striking facts bearing upon it. The "insensible perceptions," he says, are as important in pneumatology [spiritual philosophy] as corpuscles are in physics.--It does not follow, he says again, that, because we do not perceive thought, it does not exist.--Something goes on in the mind which answers to the circulation of the blood and all the internal movements of the viscera.--In one word, it is a great source of error to believe that there is no perception in the mind but those of which it is conscious. This is surely a sufficiently explicit and peremptory statement of the doctrine, which, under the names of "latent consciousness," "obscure perceptions," "the hidden soul," "unconscious cerebration," "reflex action of the brain," has been of late years emerging into general recognition in treatises of psychology and physiology.