1902.] on the Discovery of tlie Future. 11 



that, but most of us are deeply tinged with the spirit of compromise 

 between the past and the future ; we profess an unbounded allegiance 

 to the prescriptions of the past, and we practise a general observance 

 of its injunctions, but we qualify to a vague, variable extent with 

 considerations of expediency. We hold, for example, that we must 

 respect our promises. But suppose we find unexpectedly that for 

 one of us to keep a promise must lead to the great suffering of some 

 other human being — must lead to practical evil: would a man do 

 right if he broke such a promise ? The practical decision most 

 modern people would make would be to break the promise. But 

 suppose it was not such very great suffering we were going to inflict, 

 but only some suffering ? And suppose it was a rather solemn 

 promise ? With most of us it would then come to be a matter of 

 weighing the promise, the thing of the past, quite apart from its 

 effect upon our credit, against the unexpected bad consequence, the 

 thing of the future. And the smaller the evil consequences the 

 more most of us would vacillate. But neither of the two types of 

 mind we are contrasting would vacillate at all. The legal type of 

 mind would obey the past unhesitatingly ; the creative would un- 

 liesitatingly sacrifice it to the future. The legal mind would say 

 that whoever breaks the law at any point breaks it altogether, while 

 the creative mind would say, Let the dead past bury its dead. 



I have taken this simple case of a promise as my illustration for 

 many reasons, but it is in the field of sexual morality that the two 

 methods are most in conflict. 



And I would like to suggest that until you have definitely deter- 

 mined to adhere to one or other of these two types of mental action 

 in these matters, you are not even within hope of a sustained con- 

 sistency in the thought that underlies your acts, that in every issue 

 of piincij^le that comes upon you, you will be entirely at the mercy 

 of the intellectual mood that happens to be at that particular moment 

 ascendant in your mind. 



In the sphere of public affairs also these two ways of looking at 

 things work out into equally divergent and incompatible conse- 

 quences. The legal mind insists upon treaties, constitutions, legiti- 

 macies, and charters ; the legislative incessantly assails these. 

 Whenever same period of stress sots in, some great conflict between 

 institutions and the forces in things, there comes a sorting between 

 these two types of mind. The legal mind becomes glorified and 

 transfigured in the form of hopeless loyalty ; the creative mind in- 

 spires revolutions and reconstructions. And particularly is this 

 difference of attitude accentuated in the disputes that arise out of 

 wars. In most modern wars there is no doubt quite traceable on 

 one side or the other a distinct creative idea — a distinct regard for 

 some future consequence. But the main dispute even in most modern 

 wars, and the sole dispute in most mediaeval wars, will be found to 

 be a reference not to the future but to the past ; to turn upon a 

 question of fact and right. 



