Solitary walking is conducive to clearing the mind and settling into contemplation. The same is true of bicycling, albeit only for a narrower range of circumstances. The same is true of driving, albeit only for an even narrower range of circumstances. One could summarize this trend with the statement that the potential of a particular form of travel to foster a thought paradise is inversely proportional to the associated speed. Generally, the ranges of circumstances are distinguished from one another by the number of occasions within a span of time that one must step off one’s train of thought and awaken to one’s surroundings in the here and now for the purpose of self-preservation.
The density of fellow pedestrians and the street clamor may seem obstacles insurmountable, but neither they nor the frequency of encountering crosswalks, persistent beggars, etc. precludes the possibility of passing one’s time in the city through ponderous perambulation. Bicyclists will find attaining a similar serenity of mind contingent upon pedaling, at a minimum, into the suburbs. Likewise, a motorist driven towards reflection is further restricted to regions of remoteness characteristic of the countryside, where a winding, lonesome road is one of those few pavement snakes sufficiently void of distraction to welcome a pensive mood.
It’s worth noting that every form of transportation mentioned thus far has implied one’s travel is entirely one’s own responsibility, but, of course, there are other forms for which this isn’t the case. One of the alluring aspects of these other forms is that by virtue of entrusting the responsibility of your travel to a pilot, conductor, etc., the range-of-viable-circumstances constraint is retired to obsolescence. When you’re a passenger, whether the environment outside your moving capsule is better described as chaotic or calm is of no consequence to your endeavor to muse.
The preceding invites queries of this sort: why does being in transit facilitate immersion in the activity conveyed by Rodin’s sculpture? If it is human to interpret observations in terms of what we know, to explain the new through creating associations with the existing, then my humanity is evinced insofar as my answer is a result of this popularly employed and innate technique. Movement in the physical world may induce movement in the mental, where the latter is the essence of thought.