it otherwise, learning would be of relatively little financial use, for every common millionaire would be a thinker, and each whilom tramp a millionaire.
He who really thinks can never become conceited over his supposed learning. We may adopt the traditional colored preacher's attempt to make massive the idea of infinity despite the simile's inconsistencies on close examination: imagine a small bird hopping to and fro from Boston to San Francisco, carrying at each westward trip a mouthful of water from the Atlantic into the Pacific Ocean: when the Atlantic at last was empty—this was this man's suggestion of an infinitely future time. But so is human thought in comparison with the eternal miracle of Reality. Its eternal interest is a vast delight, and the interest "grows with what it feeds upon." Our thought and imagination grow best when the mind is fresh, for then the neurons are stimulated and actuated by the desire for activity. Sleep and play are as essential for thinking as for other biologic things. In thought, more than in any other mode of action, the mind makes profit out of sudden gleams of light, out of inspirations; and play often stimulates
