of ideas.

Thinking is the power to take up life where the race has left off
attainment, and to lead the race one step farther on, by a new concept
or idea. It is a curious thing, this little turn in the brain, a
thought. We cannot see it, or touch it, or handle it. Yet we can give
it, one to another, or one man to the race. It has an infinite leverage.
One great thought moves millions onward. Plant the word _steam_, and
globe-transport changes. Plant _electricity_, and a hundred new
industries spring up. Plant _liberty_, tyrants fall. Plant _love_,
chaotic angers disappear.

If we refuse to learn to think, we refuse to do our share of the world's
work. We are like a horse that balks and will not pull. While we sulk
the universe is at a standstill.

Spelling and arithmetic, history, etymology, and geography, are not
tasks set over school-children by a hard taskmaster, who keeps them from
sunshine and out-of-door play. They are catch-words of the universe.
They are the implements by which each brain is to be trained to do great
work for the one in whom it lives. What every earnest soul asks is not
gold, fame, or pleasure. It is: Let me not die till I have brought
millions farther on.

We cannot deliberately make thoughts. Thought is like life itself:
science has not found a formula which will produce it. But just as
marriage produces new lives, though we cannot say how, so study and
meditation produce thoughts. Something new appears: a concept which was
not with the race before.