Page:The reflections of Lichtenberg.djvu/89

 saying, to pronounce on some subject with accuracy and discretion, and yet, when pressed to give one’s reasons, find oneself only able to produce such as the merest tyro in this kind of fencing can refute. The best and wisest of men are often as ignorant of this latter art as of the muscles by which they grasp anything or play the piano. One of the solidest supports of which the Kantian philosophy may boast is the undoubted truth of the observation that we ourselves are as much something as the objects without us. Whenever, then, anything makes an impression on us, the effect must depend, not alone on the thing effecting, but on that also on which the effect is produced. As in the case of the mechanical impulse both factors are at once active and passive, for it is impossible for one thing to act on another without the effect as a whole being a compound one. In this sense a pure tabula rasa must, I should think, be an impossibility, for in every effect the agent undergoes some modification, and that which passes from it accrues to the patient, and vice versâ.

How much of what we do and think has originated by mere dint of constant usage from childhood onwards! What views we should have, if we could only strip our capital of truths, not so much of anything essential in them, but rather of what is added to them by continual repetition. The commonest opinions and the things that