series of conclusions by means of which
the theorem of Pythagoras will be finally demonstrated.

* * * * *

Now, as in the case of will, decision presupposes a methodical
exercise of the impulsive and inhibitory forces, only to be performed
by the individual himself, until habits have been established, so in
case of the intelligence, the individual must exercise himself in his
activities of association and selection, guided and aided by external
means, until he has developed, by the definitive elimination of
certain ideas and the choice of others, "mental habits" characteristic
of the individual, characteristic of the "type." Because, underlying
all the internal activities the mind can construct, there is, as the
phenomena of attention show us, the individual tendency, the "nature."

There is, undoubtedly, a fundamental difference between understanding
and learning the reasoning of others, and being able "to reason,"
between learning how an artist may see the external world according to
his prevailing interest in color, harmony, and form, and actually
seeing the external world about a fulcrum which sustains one's own
aesthetical creation. In the mind of one who "learns the things of
others" we may find, as in a sack of old clothes hanging over the
shoulders of a hawker, solutions of the problems of Euclid, together
with the images of Raphael's works, ideas of history and geography,
and rules of style, huddled together with a like indifference and a
like sensation of "weight." While, on the other hand, he who uses all
these things for his own life, is like the person who is assisted in
attaining his own welfare, his own relief, his own comfort by those
same objects which are merely burdens when in the sack of the hawker.
Such objects are, however, no longer huddled together without order
and without purpose in a closed bag, but set out in the spacious rooms
of a well-ordered house. The mind which constructs may contain a great
deal more than that mind in which pieces of knowledge are heaped up as
in the bag; and in that mind, as in the house, the objects are clearly
divided one from another, harmoniously arranged, and distinctive in
their uses.

Between "understanding" because another person seeks to impress upon
us the explanation of a thing by speech, and "understanding" the thing
of ourselves, there is an immeasurable distance; the two are
comparable to the impression made in soft wax, which will