I do not flatter myself that this general show-up of man's thought through the ages will cure myself or others of carelessness in adopting ideas, or of unseemly heat in defending them just because we have adopted them. But if the considerations which I propose to recall are really incorporated into our thinking and are permitted to establish our general outlook on human affairs, they will do much to relieve the imaginary obligation we feel in regard to traditional sentiments and ideals. Few of us are capable of engaging in creative thought, but some of us can at least come to distinguish it from other and inferior kinds of thought and accord to it the esteem that it merits as the greatest treasure of the past and the only hope of the future. NOTES. [2] The poet-clergyman, John Donne, who lived in the time of James I, has given a beautifully honest picture of the doings of a saint's mind: "I throw myself down in my chamber and call in and invite God and His angels thither, and when they are there I neglect God and His angels for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door. I talk on in the same posture of praying, eyes lifted up, knees bowed down, as though I prayed to God, and if God or His angels should ask me when I thought last of God in that prayer I cannot tell. Sometimes I find that I had forgot what I was about, but when I began to forget it I cannot tell. A memory of yesterday's pleasures, a fear of to-morrow's dangers, a straw under my knee, a noise in mine ear, a light in mine eye, an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a chimera in my brain troubles me in my prayer."--Quoted by ROBERT LYND, _The Art of Letters_, pp. 46-47. [3] Instincts of the Herd, p. 44. [4] Diogenes Laertius, book v. [5] _Reconstruction in Philosophy_. [6] _The Place of Science in Modern Civilization._ [7] _Traité de Sociologie Générale, passim._ The author's term "_derivations_" seems to be his precise way of expressing what we have called the "good" reasons, and his "_residus_" correspond to the "real" reasons. He well says, _"L'homme éprouve le besoin de raisonner, et en outre d'étendre un voile sur ses instincts et sur ses sentiments"_--hence, rationalization. (P. 788.) His aim is to reduce sociology to the "real" reasons. (P. 791.) [8] Recently a re-examination of creative thought has begun as a result of new knowledge which discredits many of the notions formerly held about "reason". See, for example, _Creative Intelligence_, by a group of American philosophic thinkers; John Dewey, _Essays in Experimental Logic_ (both pretty hard books); and Veblen, _The Place of Science in Modern Civilization_. Easier than these and very stimulating are Dewey, _Reconstruction in Philosophy_, and Woodworth, _Dynamic Psychology_. [9] Trotter, _op. cit._, p. 45. The first part of this little volume is excellent. * * * * * III Nous étions déjà si vieux quand nous sommes nés.--ANATOLE FRANCE.