acts in the
world around us which we can discover by deliberate observation and
analysis.

In this chapter I propose to consider the second assumption, and to
inquire how far it is true that men, when they do form inferences as to
the result of their political actions, always form them by a process of
reasoning.

In such an inquiry one meets the preliminary difficulty that it is very
hard to arrive at a clear definition of reasoning. Any one who watches
the working of his own mind will find that it is by no means easy to
trace these sharp distinctions between various mental states, which seem
so obvious when they are set out in little books on psychology. The mind
of man is like a harp, all of whose strings throb together; so that
emotion, impulse, inference, and the special kind of inference called
reasoning, are often simultaneous and intermingled aspects of a single
mental experience.

This is especially true in moments of action and excitement; but when we
are sitting in passive contemplation we would often find it hard to say
whether our successive states of consciousness are best described as
emotions or inferences. And when our thought clearly belongs to the type
of inference it is often hard to say whether its steps are controlled by
so definite a purpose of discovering truth that we are entitled to call
it reasoning.

Even when we think with effort and with a definite purpose, we do not
always draw inferences or form beliefs of any kind. If we forget a name
we say the alphabet over to ourselves and pause at each letter to see
if the name we want will be suggested to us. When we receive bad news we
strive to realise it by allowing successive mental associations to arise
of themselves, and waiting to discover what the news will mean for us. A
poet broods with intense creative effort on the images which appear in
his mind and arranges them, not in order to discover truth, but in order
to attain an artistic and dramatic end. In Prospero's great speech in
_The Tempest_ the connection between the successive images--the baseless
fabric of this vision--the cloud-capped towers--the gorgeous
palaces--the solemn temples--the great globe itself--is, for instance,
one not of inference but of reverie, heightened by creative effort, and
subordinated to poetic intention.

Most of the actual inferences which we draw during any day belong,
indeed, to a much humbler type of thought than do some of the higher
forms of non-i