87r> THE DISCOVERY OF THE FUTURE. 



whiil the past has given u.s. It sees the world as one great workshop, 

 and (ho present is no more than material for the future, for the thing 

 that is yet destined to be. It is in the active mood of thought, while 

 the former is in the passive; it is the mind of youth, it is the mind 

 more manifest among the western nations, while the former is the mind 

 of age, the mind of the oriental. 



Things have been, says the legal mind, and so 'we are here. And 

 the creative mind says we are here because things liave yet to be. 



Now I do not wish to suggest that the great mass of people belong to 

 either of these two types. Indeed, I speak of them as two distinct 

 and distinguisha])le types mainly for convenience and in order to 

 accentuate their distinction. There are probably very few people who 

 brood constantly upon the past without any thought of the future at 

 all, and there arc pro1)ably scarcely any who live and think consistenth" 

 in relation to the future. The great mass of people occupy an inter- 

 mediate position between these extremes, they pass daily and hourly 

 from the passive mood to the active, they see this thing in relation to 

 its associations and that thing in relation to its consequences, and the}' 

 do not even suspect that they are using two distinct methods in their 

 minds. 



But for all that they are distinct methods, the method of reference 

 to the past and the method of reference to the future, and their min- 

 gling in many of our minds no more al)olishes their difference than the 

 existence of piebald horses proves that white is l)lack. 



I believe that it is not sufficiently recognized just how different in 

 their consequences these two methods are, and just where their differ- 

 ence and where the failure to appreciate their difference takes one. 

 This present time is a period of (juite extraordinary uncertainty and 

 indecision upon endless questions — moral questions, a?sthetic questions, 

 religious and political questions — upon which we should all of us be 

 happiei- to feel assured and settled, and a ^'erv large amount of this 

 floating uncertainty al)out these important matters is due to the fact 

 that with most of us these two insufficiently distinguished wa3's of 

 looking at things are not onl>' present together, but in actual conflict 

 in our minds, in unsuspected conflict; we pass from one to the other 

 heedlessly without any clear recognition of the fundamental diflerence 

 in conclusions that exists between the two, and we do this with disas- 

 trous r(\sults to our confldenct^ and to our consistency in dealing with 

 all sorts of things. 



But before pointing out how diN-ergent thes(> two types or habits of 

 mind really ar(% it is necessary to meet a possibU'. o])jection to what 

 has been said. 1 may put that objection in this form: Is not this dis- 

 tinction between a type of mind that thinks of the past and of a type 

 of mind that thinks of the futur(> a sort ol" hair splitting, almost like 

 distinguishing between people* who have hd't hands and [X'ople who 



