But
even for an onlooker in a neutral country, the significance of
every move made, of every advance here and retreat there, lies in
what it portends. To think upon the news as it comes to us is to
attempt to see what is indicated as probable or possible
regarding an outcome. To fill our heads, like a scrapbook, with
this and that item as a finished and done-for thing, is not to
think. It is to turn ourselves into a piece of registering
apparatus. To consider the bearing of the occurrence upon what
may be, but is not yet, is to think. Nor will the reflective
experience be different in kind if we substitute distance in time
for separation in space. Imagine the war done with, and a future
historian giving an account of it. The episode is, by
assumption, past. But he cannot give a thoughtful account of the
war save as he preserves the time sequence; the meaning of each
occurrence, as he deals with it, lies in what was future for it,
though not for the historian. To take it by itself as a complete
existence is to take it unreflectively. Reflection also implies
concern with the issue -- a certain sympathetic identification of
our own destiny, if only dramatic, with the outcome of the course
of events. For the general in the war, or a common soldier, or a
citizen of one of the contending nations, the stimulus to
thinking is direct and urgent. For neutrals, it is indirect and
dependent upon imagination.
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