852 Dynamic Theory. 



When our perception becomes sufficiently acute and comprehensive to 

 recognize which related fact is subsequent to and dependent on the other, 

 such perception enters into the composition of the will in procuring the 

 things we want. A beaver will build a dam in order to have a pond. 

 A man will work for a dollar, which he can neither eat nor wear, in or- 

 der to have it to exchange for food or clothes. A buffalo will travel 

 miles to reach a spring of water, and a cow will lift a gate off its hinges 

 in order to gain access to the garden. In the will lying before all such 

 acts, there enters a perception of things in their relation of antecedent 

 and consequent, or cause and effect. As observed above, prediction 

 or prophecy necessarily enters into the formation of every will. All 

 our acts are based on a conviction that there will be a certain state of 

 things in the future. If we make our plans for to-morrow, we thereby 

 predict that there will be a to-morrow, and that there will be a state of 

 things into which our intended action will fit. In fact, our intended ac- 

 tion is based on the prediction, together with some emotional motive. 

 It is in reality the outcome of these, and stands in relation to them as 

 the effect of a cause. 



All our reasoning processes, based as they are upon memory, are also 

 processes of imitation. That is, the train of reasoning, whatever the 

 subject may be, is a reproduction and expression of the memory of 

 things seen or otherwise impressed upon the internal sense organs. 

 Such imitation is seldom or never perfect, even when we wish it to be, 

 and to the extent that it is imperfect it becomes invention. The facts 

 as they stand in external nature or the environment, constitute the orig- 

 inal pattern for imitation in the organs of internal sense. The faulty 

 and incomplete copy of this pattern which we get in the brain, does not 

 long remain the same, and if we try to recollect it, we can seldom get a 

 perfect reproduction of it, even when there is strong motive for doing 

 it. That is, we did not see the thing perfectly in the first place ; and, 

 secondly, we cannot remember perfectly how we did see it. The mem- 

 ory of one thing is almost certain to become involved and confused 

 more or less with that of another, the outcome of which is something 

 Original. Thus, we are more or less original when we do our best not 

 to be. When we are indifferent to the outcome, as in the ordinary run 

 of our waking thoughts, or when engaged in light conversation, or, most 

 of all, when dreaming, the indiscriminate mixture of images produces 

 the highest degree of originality. When there is a motive or purpose 

 for the production of some special end, such motive becomes an element 

 in the cerebral action, and fixes attention on such details of the chaotic 

 mass of images and scraps of memory aroused by our cerebral activity, 

 as harmonize with it; thus forming a new and coherent series, to which, 

 as a whole, we give the title of invention. Obviously no single detail 



