Men of purely constructive ability have not of themselves taken very conspicuous parts on the stage of history; and yet the things that they have constructed comprise nearly all that we can see and hear and touch in the world of civilization. Thus history, while it is a narrative of things that have been done, is not a narrative of all the things that have been done, but only of the new and striking things. It is a narrative of wars, of the rise and fall of nations, of the founding of cities, of the establishment of religions and theories, of the writing of books, of the invention of mechanisms, of the painting of pictures, of the carving of statues; in general, of the creative work that man has done. The merely constructive man, unless he has been inventive also, has never constructed anything of a really novel kind. It is a matter of everyday experience that nearly all the things that are constructed are according to former patterns and the lessons of experience. All the constructive and engineering arts and sciences are studied and practiced for the purpose of enabling men to build bridges and houses and locomotives, etc., in such ways, as experience has shown to be good. Nearly all our acts, nearly all our utterances, nearly all our thoughts, are of stereotyped and conventional forms. This condition of affairs possesses so many advantages that we cannot even imagine any other to exist. It enables a man to act nearly automatically in most of the situations of life. The main reason for drilling a soldier is that when confronted with the conditions of battle, he shall fire his musket and do his other acts automatically, undisturbed by the danger and excitement. Similarly, all our experience in life tends to automaticity. It is a very comfortable condition, for it demands the minimum amount of mental and nervous energy. The conductor demands your fare, and you pay it almost automatically. That a condition of automaticity prevails in nature, as we see it, one is tempted to suppose: for the seasons succeed each other with a regularity suggestive of it. But even if the machine of nature and the machine of civilization are automatic now, we have no reason for believing that they always were so. Even the most perfect automatic engine had to be started at some time, and it had to be invented before it could be started; and it had also to go through a long process of development. Similarly, a man reads a paper almost automatically; but it required years of time to develop his ability to do so. Now it has happened from time to time in history that some invention has broken in on the smoothly running machine of civilization and introduced a change. The gun did this, and so did the printing press. In every such case, a few men have welcomed the invention, but the majority have resented the change: some of them because their interests were threatened by it; others because of the instinctive but powerful influence of dislike of change.