that the cost of thinking is so reasonable. One can get thirty thousand thoughts for $2.98.

As a thought is conceived of as something that can be stored away in a book, so reverence for the Law sometimes takes the form of reverence for certain printed words beginning with the aweinspiring formula, "Be it enacted." That the law should be enforced seems unnecessary; its proper place is on the statute-book, where it is respected as a counsel of perfection. So attempts to make the conduct of the citizens conform to the law or the law conform to the ordinary conduct of the citizen are resisted with the same earnestness. We may see whole communities so encrusted with statutory virtue that it is impossible to know what they are really like.

Religion is liable to the same incrustation, as you may learn if you attempt to read almost any formal church history. You begin with pleasant anticipations. You think you are to have the story of the Christians and learn what they have been doing during these many centuries to realize the beatitudes and put the Golden Rule on a business basis. You will have a succession of personal narratives like the Acts of the Apostles. But after

the first century it is evident that the author loses the thread of the narrative. There is a great deal about Councils and Heresies and Schisms and Creeds and Decretals and Liturgies and Reformations and Counter-reformations. But what has become of the Christians?

Even Philosophy, which is a brave attempt to winnow the wheat from the chaff, and to rescue the essential from the non-essential, is liable to be encased in a formalism of its own. It is in its main intent a rebellion against the tyranny of the external. Its characteristic expression is in what Lord Bacon called "sober satire; or the insides of things." To one who is curious about the insides of things there is something ludicrous in the assumption of the matter-of-fact man that he knows it all, and that realities are the same as appearances. What is a matter of fact?" asks the philosopher; "pray show me one." But the philosopher, being human, is as likely as the rest of us to fall a victim to the ambition to make a fair show in the world. Having exposed the matter-of-fact world, he proceeds to construct a world out of matter-of-theory. He has the same feeling toward his doctrines that the tradesman

66

has toward his goods which he is arranging attractively in the show-window.

This interest in the arrangement of his ideas becomes more important to him as his surprise over their novelty grows less. That happens in the grave philosophical world which happens in the hen-yard to the distress of the manager. A fowl of excellent breed will go on cheerfully laying an egg a day and calling upon her friends to rejoice over each achievement. Then suddenly she becomes irritably self-conscious and anti-social. She is on the defensive and insists on sitting on the one china egg rather than any longer contributing to the common store.

So the philosophic mind is liable to become "broody." It is then no longer content to produce fresh thoughts. It must hatch out a complete system of its own. The philosopher in this mood is irritable beyond the wont of ordinary mortals. When another philosopher approaches he flies at him, for he suspects that he has come to destroy his metaphysical nest-eggs.

A glance at a philosophical library will show how many huge volumes have been the result of this mood. A philosopher is at his best when

he is thinking a new thought, he is at his worst when he is defending his old thoughts against all comers. This is a sore trial to his temper and does not really improve his intellect. Now and then we find one who keeps on thinking, without caring very much what becomes of his thoughts. He knows that there are more where they come from. Then you have a Plato whose philosophy takes the form, not of a system, but of a conversation among friends.

The beauty of a conversation is that the other side always has a chance. There is no finality as the friendly speech goes on in a series of polite half-contradictions. "What you were saying just now was very interesting and was quite true in its way. It reminds me of an experience which I once had which shows that the subject may be looked at in a different way."

The natural man, or rather the natural boy, puts these contradictions more bluntly. Huckleberry Finn and his compeers begin the conversation with "You lie!" which leads to the clever repartee "You're another!"; after which they feel acquainted.

As we grow more maturely civilized, these

sharp antagonisms are softened until they become merely a pleasing variety; or, in Milton's phrase, "brotherly dissimilitudes not vastly disproportionable." In order to have a conversation with you, it is not necessary for me to assume that the truth is not in you, but only that you have approached the truth from a somewhat different angle. You had overstated one side in order that I might make the needed correction.

Two Infallibilities, each speaking ex cathedra, could not converse; they could only fulminate. After the first round they would relapse into sullen silence. When we start out with the easy assurance of mutual fallibility, we can go on indefinitely setting each other right. Thinking comes to be a coöperative industry in which we share the profits. We not only reason, but we reason together.

In free conversation the truth slips out that would be carefully concealed in a formal document. We perceive not only what was done but the "moving why they did it."

King James the First was one of the most voluminous of royal writers, and in the huge folio volume that contains his complete works