The real fact collector is at the opposite pole from the man of action.
One erudite scholar might spend years establishing the facts about the
assassination of Louis, duc d'Orléans, in 1407, while another might devote
his time to tracing Napoleon's itinerary day by day. Here are facta that
could have no effect on our judgments concerning the future and on our
present decisions.

For this reason these facta do not concern our practical man. If he is
interested in certain facta, it is only because he uses them in presuming
a futurum. For example, he may be worried about the departure time
of his plane. Tell him that this flight has left on time for a long succes-
sion of days, and he will be reassured. He regards these facta as a guar-
antee of the futurum, which is all that matters to him. Now let us suppose
that this man contemplates buying a business that holds no interest for
him except as an investment. If the accounts show that sales have in-
creased steadily every year, he will derive from these figures a strong
presumption that this steady increase will be maintained in future sales.

The case of the business concern differs from that of the airplane in
two immediately apparent ways: first, a much larger stretch of time is
considered; next, and more particularly, the investor counts on the con-
tinuance of the same change, whereas the traveler counts on a simple
repetition of the same phenomenon.

In both cases, however, the only use of the known facta is as raw
material out of which the mind makes estimates of futura. The unceasing
transformation of facta into futura by summary processes in the mind
is part of our daily life, and thus the undertaking of conscious and
systematic forecasting is simply an attempt to effect improvements in a
natural activity of the mind.

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