fe is that we are likely to miss it entirely if it
doesn't conform exactly to our preconceived notions. We assume that if a
being is intelligent it must get the urge to build artifacts of some
kind--pots and vases, houses, idols, machinery, metal objects. But MUST
it? In order to do so it must have hands and perhaps legs. Suppose it
doesn't have such things? Suppose that no matter how intelligent it
might be, it could not do those things!"

"Then it wouldn't be intelligent, would it?" Harold asked, puzzled.

"We are assuming it is," Gordon said patiently. "There are other
outlets for intelligence than making clay pots. As a last resort for
an intelligent being there is always--thinking."

He chuckled at his joke.

[Illustration: Harold held a newspaper in his hands.]

"I've often wondered what it would be like to be a thinking, reasoning
being with no powers of movement whatsoever. With bodily energy provided
automatically by environment, say, and all the days of life with nothing
to do but think. What a chance for a philosopher! What depths of thought
he might explore. What heights of intellectual perception he might
attain. And if there were some means of contact with others of his kind,
so that all could pool their thoughts and guide the younger generation,
what progress such a race might make!"

* * * * *

"And so we see," Ont telepathed, "that there must be a Whole of which
each of us is a part only. The old process which says 'I think,
therefore I am,' has its fallacy in the statement, 'I think.' It assumes
that that assertion is axiomatic and basic, when in reality it is the
conclusion derived from a long process of mental introspection. It is a
theory rather than an axiom."

"But don't you think, Ont," Upt replied, "that you are confusing the
noumenon with the phenomenon? What I mean is, the fact of thinking is
there from the very start or the conclusion couldn't be reached; and the
theoretical conclusion, as you call it, is merely the final recognition
of something basic and axiomatic that was there all the time!"

"True," Ont replied. "But still, to the thinking mind, it is a theory
and not an axiom. All noumena are there before we arrive at an
understanding of them. Thought, if it exists as such, is also there. But
the theoretical conclusion I think has no more degree of certainty than
any other thing the mind can deal with. To say 'I think' is to assert
the truth of a