A Lodge in the Wilderness

CHAPTER XII.-2

“I do not propose to trace the history of thought from its first psychological embryo. Let us take the stage where it is manifest to all the world, the stage which is indicated when we speak of a man’s having common- sense, or a practical mind, or a great intelligence. I do not wish to use German words, so let us call it the sphere of the Understanding. Now the essence of this mode of thought is that it insists upon clear divisions, upon the distinctions rather than upon any fundamental unity in things. A vast datum is presented to it by experience, and its business is to classify and arrange that datum. The distinctions which the Mind makes it regards as hard and fast—it must, for it has to act upon them. It acknowledges principles of union within such data, but the union is mechanical an