’Tis wise to learn; ’tis godlike to create!
J. G. Saxe.
Madame Swetchine says that to have ideas is to gather flowers: to think is to weave them into garlands. There could be no happier synonym for thinking than the word weaving,—a putting together of the best products of observation, reading, experience, and travel so as to represent a patterned whole, receiving its design from the weaver’s own mind. We have plenty of flowers; we want more garlands. We have libraries, books, and newspapers; we want more thinkers.
T. Sharper Knowlson.
XIII
THE STREAM OF THOUGHT
In speaking of our inner life we employ language that abounds in metaphors drawn from the external world. Some are faded metaphors; others are still fresh and new enough to suggest what was in the minds of those first using them. Many of these metaphorical expressions draw attention to one side or phase of the truth. If pressed with the design of making them embody the whole truth, they become untruths.
The flow of thought.
One fact of our waking consciousness is that thought goes on without stopping so long as we remain awake. Indeed, some philosophers have drawn the inference that the soul always thinks, that during the hours of deep sleep the brain-centres may be at rest, but that thought nevertheless flows on in the unconscious depths of our being. Locke combats this idea at length and with more than usual warmth. During sleep on a railway train we sometimes seem to be awake, the ends of our conscious thinking apparently fitting into each other without gaps; and yet the calling out of the stations convinces us that we must have been wrapped in unconscious slumber when we passed certain stations without noticing that the train stopped and the stations were announced. On the other hand, it is the experience of earnest students that the striking of a clock may escape notice because the mind has been deeply absorbed in a difficult problem.
Teacher’s duty.