This is true only so far as it is true to say that the keys of a piano produce music. But the thoughts, which may be represented by the fingers of the player, do they not also run their course without the consciousness of the thinker? They do; not merely vague, inconsequent musings, but thoughts which follow each other with more or less logical sequence, according to the previous training of the thinker. Would you illustrate this? Mathematicians have been known to think out abstruse problems in their sleep; the bard improvises, authors “reel off” without premeditation, without any deliberate intention to write such and such things. The thoughts follow each other according to the habit of thinking previously set up in the brain of the thinker. Is it that the thoughts go round and round a subject like a horse in a mill? No; the horse is rather drawing a carriage along the same high road, but into ever new developments of the landscape. In this light, the important thing is how you _begin_ to think on any subject? Precisely so; the initial thought or suggestion touches as it were the spring which sets in motion a possibly endless succession or train of ideas; thoughts which are, so to speak, elaborated in the brain almost without the consciousness of the thinker. Are these thoughts, or successive ideas, random, or do they make for any conclusion? They make for the logical conclusion which should follow the initial idea. Then the reasoning power may be set to work involuntarily? Yes; the sole concern of this power is, apparently, to work out the rational conclusion from any idea presented to it. But surely this power of arriving at logical rational conclusions almost unconsciously is the result of education, most likely of generations of culture? It exists in greater or less degree according as it is disciplined and exercised; but it is by no means the result of education as the word is commonly understood: witness the following anecdote:[17] “When Captain Head was travelling across the Pampas of South America, his guide one day suddenly stopped him, and, pointing high into the air, cried out, ‘A lion!’ Surprised at such an exclamation, accompanied with such an act, he turned up his eyes, and with difficulty perceived, at an immeasurable height, a flight of condors soaring in circles in a particular spot. Beneath this spot, far out of sight of himself or guide, lay the carcass of a horse, and over this carcass stood, as the guide well knew, a lion, whom the condors were eyeing with envy from their airy height. The sight of the birds was to him what the sight of the lion alone would have been to the traveller, a full assurance of its existence. Here was an act of thought which cost the thinker no trouble, which was as easy to him as to cast his eyes upward, yet which from us, unaccustomed to the subject, would require many steps and some labour.” Then is what is called “the reason” innate in human beings?