famous--facts waiting for some one to 'pluck out the heart of their mystery.'

But so long as men go about the search with eyes that see not, so long will

these hidden pearls lie in their shells. Not an orator but who could more

effectively point and feather his shafts were he to search nature rather than

libraries. Too few can see 'sermons in stones' and 'books in the running

brooks,' because they are so used to seeing merely sermons in books and only

stones in running brooks. Sir Philip Sidney had a saying, 'Look in thy heart and

write;' Massillon explained his astute knowledge of the human heart by saying,

'I learned it by studying myself;' Byron says of John Locke that 'all his

knowledge of the human understanding was derived from studying his own mind.'

Since multiform nature is all about us, originality ought not to be so rare."[8]

 

_The Thinking Mind_

 

Thinking is doing mental arithmetic with facts. Add this fact to that and you

reach a certain conclusion. Subtract this truth from another and you have a

definite result. Multiply this fact by another and have a precise product. See

how many times this occurrence happens in that space of time and you have

reached a calculable dividend. In thought-processes you perform every known

problem of arithmetic and algebra. That is why mathematics are such excellent

mental gymnastics. But by the same token, thinking is work. Thinking takes

energy. Thinking requires time, and patience, and broad information, and

clearheadedness. Beyond a miserable little surface-scratching, few people really

think at all--only one in a thousand, according to the pundit already quoted. So

long as the present system of education prevails and children are taught through