Excerpt from Reactions: And Other Essays Discussing Those States of Feeling and Attitudes of Mind That Find Expressions in Our Individual Qualities When I began to write my daily essay I won dered if some morning I might not discover that subjects had given out. Now I know that they are inexhaustible. The more one writes about the teeming life of humankind the more one finds to write about. There are times when so many sub feets present themselves that I feel regret at not being able to keep up with them all. Then, too, many subjects are suggested by readers. Some of them, for one reason or another, I cannot use. Others are among the most serviceable.ten readers compliment me on having so much to say I feel like smiling. They have just as much to say. Some of them have more. We all live in an ocean of thoughts. Through the air they are continually oating. To catch them one does not need to be a writer. For writing represents only one kind of expression. Besides, the most thoughtful people are often those who take in most and say least. In the silence they may receive messages that seldom or never reach our ears, that they ex press mainly, perhaps wholly, by their living. Thoughts are common property. Many of those I express in this volume have been given to me by others, both consciously given and unconsciously. If a writer depended on his own thoughts alone he would be in a plight. Perhaps there is no such thing as one's own thoughts. Whatever we think that is worth thinking at all is valuable as it serves. Our best thoughts are likely to be those other people are thinking and have long thought, perhaps for generations. To keep a good thought to oneself, to lock it up in consciousness, is to change its nature. What I express here is finding expression all about us. It is part of the thinking and feeling of the world to-day. For this reason, maybe for this reason alone, some readers have responded to it and found in it the pleasure of verification. Most of us like to read what we already believe, not through vanity alone, but through our desire to reach out to spirits akin to ourselves. In this volume I touch on many subjects that perplex those much wiser than I am and much more capable of offering counsel. My excuse is that I do not claim to solve problems or to possess any special clues to guidance. What I like best to do isto talk things over. If the reader will talk with me and agree or disagree according to his choice I shall be satisfied. For some readers the best a writer can do is to express what they would like to express if they happened to be writers. Some of the most cheering letters I receive come from readers who in words I have used have found echoes of their own thinking. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."