THE DISCOVERY OF THE FUTURE
But before pointing out how divergent these two types or habits of mind really are, it is necessary to meet a possible objection to what has been said. I may put that objection in this form: Is not this distinction between a type of mind that thinks of the past and a type of mind that thinks of the future a sort of hair-splitting, almost like distinguishing between people who have left hands and people who have right? Everybody believes that the present is entirely determined by the past, you say; but then everybody believes also that the present determines the future. Are we simply separating and contrasting two sides of everybody's opinion? To which one replies that we are not discussing what we know and believe about the relations of past, present, and future, or of the relation of cause and effect to each other in time. We all know the present depends for its causes on the past, and the future depends for its causes upon the present. But this discussion concerns the way in which we approach things upon this common ground of knowledge and belief. We may all know there is an east and a west, but if some of us always approach and look at things from the west, if some of us always approach and look at things from the east, and if others again wander about with a pretty disregard of direction, looking at things as chance determines, some of us will get to a westward conclusion of this journey, and some of us will get to an eastward conclusion, and some of us will get to no definite conclusion at all about all sorts of important matters. And yet those who are travelling east, and those who are travelling
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