THE STREAM OF TROUOHT. 287 



their place. A third will give a rich account of the theatres, 

 restaurants, and public balls, and naught beside ; whilst 

 the fourth will perhajDS have been so wrapped in his own 

 subjective broodings as to tell little more than a few names 

 of places through which he passed. Each has selected, out 

 of the same mass of presented objects, those which suited 

 his private interest and has made his experience thereby. 



If, now, leaving the empirical combination of objects, 

 we ask how the mind proceeds rationally to connect them, 

 we find selection again to be omnipotent. In a future 

 chapter we shall see that all Reasoning depends on the 

 ability of the mind to break up the totality of the phe- 

 nomenon reasoned about, into parts, and to pick out from 

 among these the particular one which, in our given emer- 

 gency, may lead to the proper conclusion. Another pre- 

 dicament will need another conclusion, and require another 

 element to be picked out. The man of genius is he who 

 will always stick in his bill at the right point, and bring it 

 out with the right element — 'reason' if the emergency be 

 theoretical, ' means ' if it be practical — transfixed upon it. 

 I here confine myself to this brief statement, but it may 

 suffice to show that Reasoning is but another form of the 

 selective activity of the mind. 



If now we pass to its aesthetic department, our law is 

 still more obvious. The artist notoriously selects his items, 

 rejecting all tones, colors, shapes, which do not harmonize 

 with each other and with the main purpose of his work. 

 That unity, harmony, ' convergence of characters,' as M. 

 Taiue calls it, which gives to works of art their superiority 

 over works of nature, is wholly due to elimincdion. Any 

 natural subject will do, if the artist has wit enough to 

 pounce upon some one feature of it as characteristic, and 

 suppress all merely accidental items which do not harmon- 

 ize with this. 



Ascending still higher, we reach the plane of Ethics, 

 where choice reigns notoriously supreme. An act has no 

 ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several 

 all equally possible. To sustain the arguments for the 

 good course and keep them ever before us, to stifle our 



