as hero or heroine we pass through sundry sentimental or
practical adventures. We sweep into the ball-room, the
cynosure of all eyes; or we thunder from the senate-hall a
word of eloquence heard round the world.

About a half century ago the scientist began to tease
himself and the rest of us with fascinating questions as to
how we think of things. The everyday man does not trouble
himself much concerning how he thinks, being abundantly
satisfied if he manages to think at all. And where two or
three persons discover to their delight that they agree in
religion or politics it does not occur to them to compare their
mental stuff as well as their conclusions in order to determine
whether or not they have reached the same house by following
one and the same road. But the psychologist by asking
question after question has changed all that. He has revealed
to us many fantastic habits of the mind with reference to the
form assumed by its memories or imaginations; he has
delighted us by giving names to our inner experiences; he
has amazed us by his discovery of curious differences between
one mind and another. He has, it is true, had some difficulty
in convincing a certain type of individual that a neighbour's
report of the strange furnishings of his mind may be quite as
true as his report of the vagaries of his own! But conviction
grows by increasing revelation and the polite smile of in-
credulity that was wont to greet a particularly fantastic
report is giving place to a desire to question widely, to under-
stand thoroughly, to compare extensively. We no longer
conduct wordy wars as to the proper way of thinking. We
concede there's more than one way of realizing the same
thought; that it may shape itself in words, or appear con-
cretely in pictured form, or even make itself known as a
movement actually made or only thought of. We do not
debate now whether a man can think without words. Of
course he can so think. Our questions are much more puzzling.
Can a man talk to himself (mentally I mean) and fail to hear
himself talking? Or can he hear himself talking mentally
without at the same time actually vocalizing?

To-day, for the most part, there is a generous disposition
to receive at its face value the reports of others as to what
goes on in the workshop of their minds. We are grown aware

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