eyes I saw a naked great savage hurl his little boy against the
rocks for a trifling fault; saw the poor mother gather up her
dying child and hug it to her breast and weep, uttering no word.
Did my mind stop to mourn with that nude black sister of mine?
No–it was far away from that scene in an instant, and was
busying itself with an ever-recurring and disagreeable dream of
mine. In this dream I always find myself, stripped to my shirt,
cringing and dodging about in the midst of a great drawing-room
throng of finely dressed ladies and gentlemen, and wondering how
I got there. And so on and so on, picture after picture,
incident after incident, a drifting panorama of ever-changing,
ever-dissolving views manufactured by my mind without any help
from me–why, it would take me two hours to merely name the
multitude of things my mind tallied off and photographed in
fifteen minutes, let alone describe them to you.
O.M. A man’s mind, left free, has no use for his help. But
there is one way whereby he can get its help when he desires it.
Y.M. What is that way?
O.M. When your mind is racing along from subject to subject
and strikes an inspiring one, open your mouth and begin talking
upon that matter–or–take your pen and use that. It will
interest your mind and concentrate it, and it will pursue the
subject with satisfaction. It will take full charge, and furnish
the words itself.
Y.M. But don’t I tell it what to say?
O.M. There are certainly occasions when you haven’t time.
The words leap out before you know what is coming.
Y.M. For instance?
O.M. Well, take a “flash of wit”–repartee. Flash is the
right word. It is out instantly. There is no time to arrange
the words. There is no thinking, no reflecting. Where there is
a wit-mechanism it is automatic in its action and needs no help.
Where the whit-mechanism is lacking, no amount of study and
reflection can manufacture the product.
Y.M. You really think a man originates nothing, creates nothing.
The Thinking-Process
O.M. I do. Men perceive, and their brain-machines
automatically combine the things perceived. That is all.
Y.M. The steam-engine?
O.M. It takes fifty men a hundred years to invent it. One
meaning of invent is discover. I use the word in that sense.
Little by little they discover and apply the multitude of details
that go to make the perfect engine. Watt noticed that confined
steam was strong enough to lift the lid of the teapot. He didn’t
create the idea, he merely discovered the fact; the cat had
noticed it a hundred times. From the teapot he evolved the
cylinder–from the displaced lid he evolved the piston-rod. To
attach something to the piston-rod to be moved by it, was a
simple matter–crank and wheel. And so there was a working
engine. [1]
One by one, improvements were discovered by men who used
their eyes, not their creating powers–for they hadn’t any–and
now, after a hundred years the patient contributions of fifty or
a hundred observers stand compacted in the wonderful machine
which drives the ocean liner.
Y.M. A Shakespearean play?
O.M. The process is the same. The first actor was a
savage. He reproduced in his theatrical war-dances, scalp-
dances, and so on, incidents which he had seen in real life. A
more advanced civilization produced more incidents, more
episodes; the actor and the story-teller borrowed them. And so
the drama grew, little by little, stage by stage. It is made up
of the facts of life, not creations. It took centuries to
develop the Greek drama. It borrowed from preceding ages; it
lent to the ages that came after. Men observe and combine, that
is all. So does a rat.
Y.M. How?
O.M. He observes a smell, he infers a cheese, he seeks and
finds. The astronomer observes this and that; adds his this and
that to the this-and-thats of a hundred predecessors, infers an
invisible planet, seeks it and finds it. The rat gets into a
trap; gets out with trouble; infers that cheese in traps lacks
value, and meddles with that trap no more. The astronomer is