When we reflect further that the old oratory had a certain judicial flavor about it, we are prompted to ask whether thinking as then conceived did not have a different status from today’s thinking. One is led to make this query by the suggestion that when the most fundamental propositions of a culture are under attack, then it becomes a duty to “think for one’s self.” Not that it is a bad thing to think; yet when the whole emphasis is upon “thinking for one’s self,” it is hard to avoid a feeling that certain postulates have broken down, and the most courage we can muster is to ask people, not to “think in a certain direction,” but to “think for themselves.” Where the primary directive of thinking is known, the object of thinking will not be mere cerebral motion (as some exponents of the policy of thinking for one’s self leave us to infer), but rather the object of such thinking, or knowledge. This is a very rudimentary proposition, but it deserves attention because the modern tendency has reversed a previous order. From the position that only propositions are interesting because they alone make judgments, we are passing to a position in which only evidence is interesting because it alone is uncontaminated by propositions. In brief, interest has shifted from inference to reportage, and this has had a demonstrable effect upon the tone of oratory. The large resonant phrase is itself a kind of condensed proposition; as propositions begin to sink with the general sagging of the substructure, the phrases must do the same. Obviously we are pointing here to a profound cultural change, and the same shifts can be seen in literature; the poet or novelist may feel that the content of his consciousness is more valid (and this will be true even of those who have not formulated the belief) than the formal arrangement which would be produced by selection, abstraction, and arrangement. Or viewed in another respect, experiential order has taken precedence over logical order.