§ 61. =The Nature of Thought.=—“The train of thoughts, or mental discourse,” wrote Hobbes in 1651, “is of two sorts. The first is unguided, without design, and inconstant; in which case the thoughts are said to wander, and seem impertinent one to another, as in a dream. The second is more constant; as being regulated by some desire, and design: and because the end, by the greatness of the impression, comes often to mind, in case our thoughts begin to wander, they are quickly again reduced into the way.” Hobbes is here distinguishing, so far as unaided observation allows him, between the mental connections that reflect a random play of the associative tendencies, and those whose course is directed by some determining tendency. The former, to be sure, are never wholly random; ideas are grouped together by the situation in which they appear (p. 165); and it is only fair to say that Hobbes himself, in other passages, recognises this guidance. There is, nevertheless, a marked difference between the two kinds of ‘mental discourse,’ between (say) the casual flow of conversation and the working out of an argument; and it is the second kind, the progressive movement of ideas towards an end, that modern psychology has technically named =thought=. You notice that we have spoken of a ‘progressive’ movement; and you notice that Hobbes writes a little cautiously of regulated discourse; even in that, our thoughts may ‘begin to wander,’ These are merely different ways of saying that _thought goes on in the state of secondary attention_; it is an experience of the same general type as recollection, constructive imagination, selective and volitional action. We therefore ‘think,’ in the technical sense, far less often than the popular use of the word would suggest. For, on the one hand, we accept a great many judgements, ready made, from our surroundings; parents and teachers and friends are constantly expressing opinions which we adopt without question, opinions which they themselves have adopted, for the most part, in the same unquestioning way. The present generation takes the motor-car and the air-ship for granted; it finds them natural and obvious; and every generation falls heir to a body of social, political, religious, æsthetic, and moral judgements which also seem natural and obvious; thought is not needed, and so is rarely undertaken. Secondly, even if we are obliged to think, we still tend to think no further than is necessary for the practice of life; we attain a certain level of thought, in the mastery of our business or profession, and there stop; the pattern of secondary attention is replaced by that of derived primary attention. _Most of our thought_, in other words, _is either borrowed thought or routine thought_, that is, is not (in the psychological sense) thought at all; independent, sustained, original thinking is as rare as creative imagination or as sagacious and farsighted action. In all probability, it always has been