PART III

THE TRAINING OF THOUGHT

XII. ACTIVITY AND THE TRAINING OF THOUGHT 157

XIII. LANGUAGE AND THE TRAINING OF THOUGHT 170

XIV. OBSERVATION AND INFORMATION IN THE TRAINING

OF MIND 188

XV. THE RECITATION AND THE TRAINING OF THOUGHT 201

XVI. SOME GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 214

HOW WE THINK

PART ONE: THE PROBLEM OF TRAINING THOUGHT

CHAPTER ONE

WHAT IS THOUGHT?

Sec. 1. _Varied Senses of the Term_

[Sidenote: Four senses of thought, from the wider to the limited]

No words are oftener on our lips than _thinking_ and _thought_. So

profuse and varied, indeed, is our use of these words that it is not

easy to define just what we mean by them. The aim of this chapter is to

find a single consistent meaning. Assistance may be had by considering

some typical ways in which the terms are employed. In the first place

_thought_ is used broadly, not to say loosely. Everything that comes to

mind, that "goes through our heads," is called a thought. To think of a

thing is just to be conscious of it in any way whatsoever. Second, the

term is restricted by excluding whatever is directly presented; we think

(or think of) only such things as we do not directly see, hear, smell,

or taste. Then, third, the meaning is further limited to beliefs that

rest upon some kind of evidence or testimony. Of this third type, two

kinds--or, rather, two degrees--must be discriminated. In some cases, a

belief is accepted with slight or almost no attempt to state the grounds

that support it. In other cases, the ground or basis for a belief is

deliberately sought and its adequacy to support the belief examined.

This process is called reflective thought; it alone is truly educative

in value, and it forms, accordingly, the principal subject of this

volume. We shall now briefly describe each of the four senses.

[Sidenote: Chance and idle thinking]

I. In its loosest sense, thinking signifies everything that, as we say,

is "in our heads" or that "goes through our minds." He who offers "a

penny for your thoughts" does not expect to drive any great bargain. In

calling the objects of his demand _thoughts_, he does not intend to

ascribe to them dignity, consecutiveness, or truth. Any idle fancy,

trivial recollection, or flitting impression will satisfy his demand.

Daydreaming, building of castles in the air, that loose flux of casual

and disconnected material that floats through our minds in relaxed

moments are, in this random sense, _thinking_. More of our waking life

than we should care to admit, even to ourselves, is likely to be whiled

away in this inconsequential trifling with idle fancy and unsubstantial

hope.

[Sidenote: Reflective thought is consecutive, not merely a sequence]

In this sense, silly folk and dullards _think_. The story is told of a

man in slight repute for intelligence, who, desiring to be chosen

selectman in his New England town, addressed a knot of neighbors in this

wise: "I hear you don't believe I know enough to hold office. I wish you

to understand that I am thinking about something or other most of the

time." Now reflective thought is like this random coursing of things

through the mind in that it consists of a succession of things thought

of; but it is unlike, in that the mere chance occurrence of any chance

"something or other" in an irregular sequence does not suffice.

Reflection involves not simply a sequence of ideas, but a

_con_sequence--a consecutive ordering in such a way that each

determines the next as its proper outcome, while each in turn leans back

on its predecessors. The successive portions of the reflective thought

grow out of one another and support one another; they do not

come and go in a medley. Each phase is a step from something to

something--technically speaking, it is a term of thought. Each term

leaves a deposit which is utilized in the next term. The stream or flow

becomes a train, chain, or thread.

[Sidenote: The restriction of _thinking_ to what goes beyond direct

observation]

[Sidenote: Reflective thought aims, however, at belief]

II. Even when thinking is used in a broad sense, it is usually

restricted to matters not directly perceived: to what we do not see,

smell, hear, or touch. We ask the man telling a story if he saw a

certain incident happen, and his reply may be, "No, I only thought of

it." A note of invention, as distinct from faithful record of

observation, is present. Most important in this class are successions of

imaginative incidents and episodes which, having a certain coherence,

hanging together on a continuous thread, lie between kaleidoscopic

flights of fancy and considerations deliberately employed to establish a

conclusion. The imaginative stories poured forth by children possess all

degrees of internal congruity; some are disjointed, some are

articulated. When connected, they simulate reflective thought; indeed,

they usually occur in minds of logical capacity. These imaginative

enterprises often precede thinking of the close-knit type and prepare

the way for it. But _they do not aim at knowledge, at belief about facts

or in truths_; and thereby they are marked off from reflective thought

even when they most resemble it. Those who express such thoughts do not

expect credence, but rather credit for a well-constructed plot or a

well-arranged climax. They produce good stories, not--unless by

chance--knowledge. Such thoughts are an efflorescence of feeling; the

enhancement of a mood or sentiment is their aim; congruity of emotion,

their binding tie.

[Sidenote: Thought induces belief in two ways]

III. In its next sense, thought denotes belief resting upon some basis,

that is, real or supposed knowledge going beyond what is directly

present. It is marked by _acceptance or rejection of something as

reasonably probable or improbable_. This phase of thought, however,

includes two such distinct types of belief that, even though their

difference is strictly one of degree, not of kind, it becomes

practically important to consider them separately. Some beliefs are

accepted when their grounds have not themselves been considered, others

are accepted because their grounds have been examined.

When we say, "Men used to think the world was flat," or, "I thought you

went by the house," we express belief: something is accepted, held to,

acquiesced in, or affirmed. But such thoughts may mean a supposition

accepted without reference to its real grounds. These may be adequate,

they may not; but their value with reference to the support they afford

the belief has not been considered.

Such thoughts grow up unconsciously and without reference to the

attainment of correct belief. They are picked up--we know not how. From

obscure sources and by unnoticed channels they insinuate themselves into

acceptance and become unconsciously a part of our mental furniture.

Tradition, instruction, imitation--all of which depend upon authority in

some form, or appeal to our own advantage, or fall in with a strong

passion--are responsible for them. Such thoughts are prejudices, that

is, prejudgments, not judgments proper that rest upon a survey of

evidence.[1]

[1] This mode of thinking in its contrast with thoughtful inquiry

receives special notice in the next chapter.

[Sidenote: Thinking in its best sense is that which considers the basis

and consequences of beliefs]

IV. Thoughts that result in belief have an importance attached to them

which leads to reflective thought, to conscious inquiry into the nature,

conditions, and bearings of the belief. To _think_ of whales and camels

in the clouds is to entertain ourselves with fancies, terminable at our

pleasure, which do not lead to any belief in particular. But to think of

the world as flat is to ascribe a quality to a real thing as its real

property. This conclusion denotes a connection among things and hence is

not, like imaginative thought, plastic to our mood. Belief in the

world's flatness commits him who holds it to thinking in certain

specific ways of other objects, such as the heavenly bodies, antipodes,

the possibility of navigation. It prescribes to him actions in

accordance with his conception of these objects.

The consequences of a belief upon other beliefs and upon behavior may be

so important, then, that men are forced to consider the grounds or

reasons of their belief and its logical consequences. This means

reflective thought--thought in its eulogistic and emphatic sense.

[Sidenote: Reflective thought defined]

Men _thought_ the world was flat until Columbus _thought_ it to be

round. The earlier thought was a belief held because men had not the

energy or the courage to question what those about them accepted and

taught, especially as it was suggested and seemingly confirmed by

obvious sensible facts. The thought of Columbus was a _reasoned

conclusion_. It marked the close of study into facts, of scrutiny and

revision of evidence, of working out the implications of various

hypotheses, and of comparing these theoretical results with one another

and with known facts. Because Columbus did not accept unhesitatingly the

current traditional theory, because he doubted and inquired, he arrived

at his thought. Skeptical of what, from long habit, seemed most certain,

and credulous of what seemed impossible, he went on thinking until he

could produce evidence for both his confidence and his disbelief. Even

if his conclusion had finally turned out wrong, it would have been a

different sort of belief from those it antagonized, because it was

reached by a different method. _Active, persistent, and careful

consideration of any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light

of the grounds that support it, and the further conclusions to which it

tends_, constitutes reflective thought. Any one of the first three kinds

of thought may elicit this type; but once begun, it is a conscious and

voluntary effort to establish belief upon a firm basis of reasons.

Sec. 2. _The Central Factor in Thinking_

[Sidenote: There is a common element in all types of thought:]

There are, however, no sharp lines of demarcation between the various

operations just outlined. The problem of attaining correct habits of

reflection would be much easier than it is, did not the different modes

of thinking blend insensibly into one another. So far, we have

considered rather extreme instances of each kind in order to get the

field clearly before us. Let us now reverse this operation; let us

consider a rudimentary case of thinking, lying between careful

examination of evidence and a mere irresponsible stream of fancies. A

man is walking on a warm day. The sky was clear the last time he

observed it; but presently he notes, while occupied primarily with other

things, that the air is cooler. It occurs to him that it is probably

going to rain; looking up, he sees a dark cloud between him and the

sun, and he then quickens his steps. What, if anything, in such a

situation can be called thought? Neither the act of walking nor the

noting of the cold is a thought. Walking is one direction of activity;

looking and noting are other modes of activity. The likelihood that it

will rain is, however, something _suggested_. The pedestrian _feels_ the

cold; he _thinks of_ clouds and a coming shower.

[Sidenote: _viz._ suggestion of something not observed]

[Sidenote: But reflection involves also the relation of _signifying_]

So far there is the same sort of situation as when one looking at a

cloud is reminded of a human figure and face. Thinking in both of these

cases (the cases of belief and of fancy) involves a noted or perceived

fact, followed by something else which is not observed but which is

brought to mind, suggested by the thing seen. One reminds us, as we say,

of the other. Side by side, however, with this factor of agreement in

the two cases of suggestion is a factor of marked disagreement. We do

not _believe_ in the face suggested by the cloud; we do not consider at

all the probability of its being a fact. There is no _reflective_

thought. The danger of rain, on the contrary, presents itself to us as a

genuine possibility--as a possible fact of the same nature as the

observed coolness. Put differently, we do not regard the cloud as

meaning or indicating a face, but merely as suggesting it, while we do

consider that the coolness may mean rain. In the first case, seeing an

object, we just happen, as we say, to think of something else; in the

second, we consider the _possibility and nature of the connection

between the object seen and the object suggested_. The seen thing is

regarded as in some way _the ground or basis of belief_ in the suggested

thing; it possesses the quality of _evidence_.

[Sidenote: Various synonymous expressions for the function of

signifying]

This function by which one thing signifies or indicates another, and

thereby leads us to consider how far one may be regarded as warrant for

belief in the other, is, then, the central factor in all reflective or

distinctively intellectual thinking. By calling up various situations to

which such terms as _signifies_ and _indicates_ apply, the student will

best realize for himself the actual facts denoted by the words

_reflective thought_. Synonyms for these terms are: points to, tells of,

betokens, prognosticates, represents, stands for, implies.[2] We also

say one thing portends another; is ominous of another, or a symptom of

it, or a key to it, or (if the connection is quite obscure) that it

gives a hint, clue, or intimation.

[2] _Implies_ is more often used when a principle or general truth

brings about belief in some other truth; the other phrases are more

frequently used to denote the cases in which one fact or event leads

us to believe in something else.

[Sidenote: Reflection and belief on evidence]

Reflection thus implies that something is believed in (or disbelieved

in), not on its own direct account, but through something else which

stands as witness, evidence, proof, voucher, warrant; that is, as

_ground of belief_. At one time, rain is actually felt or directly

experienced; at another time, we infer that it has rained from the looks

of the grass and trees, or that it is going to rain because of the

condition of the air or the state of the barometer. At one time, we see

a man (or suppose we do) without any intermediary fact; at another time,

we are not quite sure what we see, and hunt for accompanying facts that

will serve as signs, indications, tokens of what is to be believed.

Thinking, for the purposes of this inquiry, is defined accordingly as

_that operation in which present facts suggest other facts (or truths)

in such a way as to induce belief in the latter upon the ground or

warrant of the former_. We do not put beliefs that rest simply on

inference on the surest level of assurance. To say "I think so" implies

that I do not as yet _know_ so. The inferential belief may later be

confirmed and come to stand as sure, but in itself it always has a

certain element of supposition.

Sec. 3. _Elements in Reflective Thinking_

So much for the description of the more external and obvious aspects of

the fact called _thinking_. Further consideration at once reveals

certain subprocesses which are involved in every reflective operation.

These are: (_a_) a state of perplexity, hesitation, doubt; and (_b_) an

act of search or investigation directed toward bringing to light further

facts which serve to corroborate or to nullify the suggested belief.

[Sidenote: The importance of uncertainty]

(_a_) In our illustration, the shock of coolness generated confusion and

suspended belief, at least momentarily. Because it was unexpected, it

was a shock or an interruption needing to be accounted for, identified,

or placed. To say that the abrupt occurrence of the change of

temperature constitutes a problem may sound forced and artificial; but

if we are willing to extend the meaning of the word _problem_ to

whatever--no matter how slight and commonplace in character--perplexes

and challenges the mind so that it makes belief at all uncertain, there

is a genuine problem or question involved in this experience of sudden

change.

[Sidenote: and of inquiry in order to test]

(_b_) The turning of the head, the lifting of the eyes, the scanning of

the heavens, are activities adapted to bring to recognition facts that

will answer the question presented by the sudden coolness. The facts as

they first presented themselves were perplexing; they suggested,

however, clouds. The act of looking was an act to discover if this

suggested explanation held good. It may again seem forced to speak of

this looking, almost automatic, as an act of research or inquiry. But

once more, if we are willing to generalize our conceptions of our mental

operations to include the trivial and ordinary as well as the technical

and recondite, there is no good reason for refusing to give such a title

to the act of looking. The purport of this act of inquiry is to confirm

or to refute the suggested belief. New facts are brought to perception,

which either corroborate the idea that a change of weather is imminent,

or negate it.

[Sidenote: Finding one's way an illustration of reflection]

Another instance, commonplace also, yet not quite so trivial, may

enforce this lesson. A man traveling in an unfamiliar region comes to a

branching of the roads. Having no sure knowledge to fall back upon, he

is brought to a standstill of hesitation and suspense. Which road is

right? And how shall perplexity be resolved? There are but two

alternatives: he must either blindly and arbitrarily take his course,

trusting to luck for the outcome, or he must discover grounds for the

conclusion that a given road is right. Any attempt to decide the matter

by thinking will involve inquiry into other facts, whether brought out

by memory or by further observation, or by both. The perplexed wayfarer

must carefully scrutinize what is before him and he must cudgel his

memory. He looks for evidence that will support belief in favor of

either of the roads--for evidence that will weight down one suggestion.

He may climb a tree; he may go first in this direction, then in that,

looking, in either case, for signs, clues, indications. He wants

something in the nature of a signboard or a map, and _his reflection is

aimed at the discovery of facts that will serve this purpose_.

[Sidenote: Possible, yet incompatible, suggestions]

The above illustration may be generalized. Thinking begins in what may

fairly enough be called a _forked-road_ situation, a situation which is

ambiguous, which presents a dilemma, which proposes alternatives. As

long as our activity glides smoothly along from one thing to another, or

as long as we permit our imagination to entertain fancies at pleasure,

there is no call for reflection. Difficulty or obstruction in the way of

reaching a belief brings us, however, to a pause. In the suspense of

uncertainty, we metaphorically climb a tree; we try to find some

standpoint from which we may survey additional facts and, getting a more

commanding view of the situation, may decide how the facts stand related

to one another.

[Sidenote: Regulation of thinking by its purpose]

_Demand for the solution of a perplexity is the steadying and guiding

factor in the entire process of reflection._ Where there is no question

of a problem to be solved or a difficulty to be surmounted, the course

of suggestions flows on at random; we have the first type of thought

described. If the stream of suggestions is controlled simply by their

emotional congruity, their fitting agreeably into a single picture or

story, we have the second type. But a question to be answered, an

ambiguity to be resolved, sets up an end and holds the current of ideas

to a definite channel. Every suggested conclusion is tested by its

reference to this regulating end, by its pertinence to the problem in

hand. This need of straightening out a perplexity also controls the kind

of inquiry undertaken. A traveler whose end is the most beautiful path

will look for other considerations and will test suggestions occurring

to him on another principle than if he wishes to discover the way to a

given city. _The problem fixes the end of thought_ and _the end controls

the process of thinking_.

Sec. 4. _Summary_

[Sidenote: Origin and stimulus]

We may recapitulate by saying that the origin of thinking is some

perplexity, confusion, or doubt. Thinking is not a case of spontaneous

combustion; it does not occur just on "general principles." There is

something specific which occasions and evokes it. General appeals to a

child (or to a grown-up) to think, irrespective of the existence in his

own experience of some difficulty that troubles him and disturbs his

equilibrium, are as futile as advice to lift himself by his boot-straps.

[Sidenote: Suggestions and past experience]

Given a difficulty, the next step is suggestion of some way out--the

formation of some tentative plan or project, the entertaining of some

theory which will account for the peculiarities in question, the

consideration of some solution for the problem. The data at hand cannot

supply the solution; they can only suggest it. What, then, are the

sources of the suggestion? Clearly past experience and prior knowledge.

If the person has had some acquaintance with similar situations, if he

has dealt with material of the same sort before, suggestions more or

less apt and helpful are likely to arise. But unless there has been

experience in some degree analogous, which may now be represented in

imagination, confusion remains mere confusion. There is nothing upon

which to draw in order to clarify it. Even when a child (or a grown-up)

has a problem, to urge him to think when he has no prior experiences

involving some of the same conditions, is wholly futile.

[Sidenote: Exploration and testing]

If the suggestion that occurs is at once accepted, we have uncritical

thinking, the minimum of reflection. To turn the thing over in mind, to

reflect, means to hunt for additional evidence, for new data, that will

develop the suggestion, and will either, as we say, bear it out or else

make obvious its absurdity and irrelevance. Given a genuine difficulty

and a reasonable amount of analogous experience to draw upon, the

difference, _par excellence_, between good and bad thinking is found at

this point. The easiest way is to accept any suggestion that seems

plausible and thereby bring to an end the condition of mental

uneasiness. Reflective thinking is always more or less troublesome

because it involves overcoming the inertia that inclines one to accept

suggestions at their face value; it involves willingness to endure a

condition of mental unrest and disturbance. Reflective thinking, in

short, means judgment suspended during further inquiry; and suspense is

likely to be somewhat painful. As we shall see later, the most important

factor in the training of good mental habits consists in acquiring the

attitude of suspended conclusion, and in mastering the various methods

of searching for new materials to corroborate or to refute the first

suggestions that occur. To maintain the state of doubt and to carry on

systematic and protracted inquiry--these are the essentials of

thinking.

CHAPTER TWO

THE NEED FOR TRAINING THOUGHT

[Sidenote: Man the animal that thinks]

To expatiate upon the importance of thought would be absurd. The

traditional definition of man as "the thinking animal" fixes thought as

the essential difference between man and the brutes,--surely an

important matter. More relevant to our purpose is the question how

thought is important, for an answer to this question will throw light

upon the kind of training thought requires if it is to subserve its end.

Sec. 1. _The Values of Thought_

[Sidenote: The possibility of deliberate and intentional activity]

I. Thought affords the sole method of escape from purely impulsive or

purely routine action. A being without capacity for thought is moved

only by instincts and appetites, as these are called forth by outward

conditions and by the inner state of the organism. A being thus moved

is, as it were, pushed from behind. This is what we mean by the blind

nature of brute actions. The agent does not see or foresee the end for

which he is acting, nor the results produced by his behaving in one way

rather than in another. He does not "know what he is about." Where there

is thought, things present act as signs or tokens of things not yet

experienced. A thinking being can, accordingly, _act on the basis of the

absent and the future_. Instead of being pushed into a mode of action by

the sheer urgency of forces, whether instincts or habits, of which he

is not aware, a reflective agent is drawn (to some extent at least) to

action by some remoter object of which he is indirectly aware.

[Sidenote: Natural events come to be a language]

An animal without thought may go into its hole when rain threatens,

because of some immediate stimulus to its organism. A thinking agent

will perceive that certain given facts are probable signs of a future

rain, and will take steps in the light of this anticipated future. To

plant seeds, to cultivate the soil, to harvest grain, are intentional

acts, possible only to a being who has learned to subordinate the

immediately felt elements of an experience to those values which these

hint at and prophesy. Philosophers have made much of the phrases "book

of nature," "language of nature." Well, it is in virtue of the capacity

of thought that given things are significant of absent things, and that

nature speaks a language which may be interpreted. To a being who

thinks, things are records of their past, as fossils tell of the prior

history of the earth, and are prophetic of their future, as from the

present positions of heavenly bodies remote eclipses are foretold.

Shakespeare's "tongues in trees, books in the running brooks," expresses

literally enough the power superadded to existences when they appeal to

a thinking being. Upon the function of signification depend all

foresight, all intelligent planning, deliberation, and calculation.

[Sidenote: The possibility of systematized foresight]

II. By thought man also develops and arranges artificial signs to remind

him in advance of consequences, and of ways of securing and avoiding

them. As the trait just mentioned makes the difference between savage

man and brute, so this trait makes the difference between civilized man

and savage. A savage who has been shipwrecked in a river may note

certain things which serve him as signs of danger in the future. But

civilized man deliberately _makes_ such signs; he sets up in advance of

wreckage warning buoys, and builds lighthouses where he sees signs that

such events may occur. A savage reads weather signs with great

expertness; civilized man institutes a weather service by which signs

are artificially secured and information is distributed in advance of

the appearance of any signs that could be detected without special

methods. A savage finds his way skillfully through a wilderness by

reading certain obscure indications; civilized man builds a highway

which shows the road to all. The savage learns to detect the signs of

fire and thereby to invent methods of producing flame; civilized man

invents permanent conditions for producing light and heat whenever they

are needed. The very essence of civilized culture is that we

deliberately erect monuments and memorials, lest we forget; and

deliberately institute, in advance of the happening of various

contingencies and emergencies of life, devices for detecting their

approach and registering their nature, for warding off what is

unfavorable, or at least for protecting ourselves from its full impact

and for making more secure and extensive what is favorable. All forms of

artificial apparatus are intentionally designed modifications of natural

things in order that they may serve better than in their natural estate

to indicate the hidden, the absent, and the remote.

[Sidenote: The possibility of objects rich in quality]

III. Finally, thought confers upon physical events and objects a very

different status and value from that which they possess to a being that

does not reflect. These words are mere scratches, curious variations of

light and shade, to one to whom they are not linguistic signs. To him

for whom they are signs of other things, each has a definite

individuality of its own, according to the meaning that it is used to

convey. _Exactly the same holds of natural objects._ A chair is a

different object to a being to whom it consciously suggests an

opportunity for sitting down, repose, or sociable converse, from what it

is to one to whom it presents itself merely as a thing to be smelled, or

gnawed, or jumped over; a stone is different to one who knows something

of its past history and its future use from what it is to one who only

feels it directly through his senses. It is only by courtesy, indeed,

that we can say that an unthinking animal experiences an _object_ at

all--so largely is anything that presents itself to us as an object made

up by the qualities it possesses as a sign of other things.

[Sidenote: The nature of the objects an animal perceives]

An English logician (Mr. Venn) has remarked that it may be questioned

whether a dog _sees_ a rainbow any more than he apprehends the political

constitution of the country in which he lives. The same principle

applies to the kennel in which he sleeps and the meat that he eats. When

he is sleepy, he goes to the kennel; when he is hungry, he is excited by

the smell and color of meat; beyond this, in what sense does he see an

_object_? Certainly he does not see a house--_i.e._ a thing with all the

properties and relations of a permanent residence, _unless_ he is

capable of making what is present a uniform sign of what is

absent--unless he is capable of thought. Nor does he see what he eats

_as_ meat unless it suggests the absent properties by virtue of which it

is a certain joint of some animal, and is known to afford nourishment.

Just what is left of an _object_ stripped of all such qualities of

meaning, we cannot well say; but we can be sure that the object is then

a very different sort of thing from the objects that we perceive. There

is moreover no particular limit to the possibilities of growth in the

fusion of a thing as it is to sense and as it is to thought, or as a

sign of other things. The child today soon regards as constituent parts

of objects qualities that once it required the intelligence of a

Copernicus or a Newton to apprehend.

[Sidenote: Mill on the business of life and the occupation of mind]

These various values of the power of thought may be summed up in the

following quotation from John Stuart Mill. "To draw inferences," he

says, "has been said to be the great business of life. Every one has

daily, hourly, and momentary need of ascertaining facts which he has not

directly observed: not from any general purpose of adding to his stock

of knowledge, but because the facts themselves are of importance to his

interests or to his occupations. The business of the magistrate, of the

military commander, of the navigator, of the physician, of the

agriculturist, _is merely to judge of evidence and to act

accordingly_.... As they do this well or ill, so they discharge well or

ill the duties of their several callings. _It is the only occupation in

which the mind never ceases to be engaged._"[3]

[3] Mill, _System of Logic_, Introduction, Sec. 5.

Sec. 2. _Importance of Direction in order to Realize these Values_

[Sidenote: Thinking goes astray]

What a person has not only daily and hourly, but momentary need of

performing, is not a technical and abstruse matter; nor, on the other

hand, is it trivial and negligible. Such a function must be congenial to

the mind, and must be performed, in an unspoiled mind, upon every

fitting occasion. Just because, however, it is an operation of drawing

inferences, of basing conclusions upon evidence, of reaching belief

_indirectly_, it is an operation that may go wrong as well as right,

and hence is one that needs safeguarding and training. The greater its

importance the greater are the evils when it is ill-exercised.

[Sidenote: Ideas are our rulers--for better or for worse]

An earlier writer than Mill, John Locke (1632-1704), brings out the

importance of thought for life and the need of training so that its best

and not its worst possibilities will be realized, in the following

words: "No man ever sets himself about anything but upon some view or

other, which serves him for a reason for what he does; and whatsoever

faculties he employs, the understanding with such light as it has, well

or ill informed, constantly leads; and by that light, true or false, all

his operative powers are directed.... Temples have their sacred images,

and we see what influence they have always had over a great part of

mankind. But in truth the ideas and images in men's minds are the

invisible powers that constantly govern them, and to these they all,

universally, pay a ready submission. It is therefore of the highest

concernment that great care should be taken of the understanding, to

conduct it aright in the search of knowledge and in the judgments it

makes."[4] If upon thought hang all deliberate activities and the uses

we make of all our other powers, Locke's assertion that it is of the

highest concernment that care should be taken of its conduct is a

moderate statement. While the power of thought frees us from servile

subjection to instinct, appetite, and routine, it also brings with it

the occasion and possibility of error and mistake. In elevating us above

the brute, it opens to us the possibility of failures to which the

animal, limited to instinct, cannot sink.

[4] Locke, _Of the Conduct of the Understanding_, first paragraph.

Sec. 3. _Tendencies Needing Constant Regulation_

[Sidenote: Physical and social sanctions of correct thinking]

Up to a certain point, the ordinary conditions of life, natural and

social, provide the conditions requisite for regulating the operations

of inference. The necessities of life enforce a fundamental and

persistent discipline for which the most cunningly devised artifices

would be ineffective substitutes. The burnt child dreads the fire; the

painful consequence emphasizes the need of correct inference much more

than would learned discourse on the properties of heat. Social

conditions also put a premium on correct inferring in matters where

action based on valid thought is socially important. These sanctions of

proper thinking may affect life itself, or at least a life reasonably

free from perpetual discomfort. The signs of enemies, of shelter, of

food, of the main social conditions, have to be correctly apprehended.

[Sidenote: The serious limitations of such sanctions]

But this disciplinary training, efficacious as it is within certain

limits, does not carry us beyond a restricted boundary. Logical

attainment in one direction is no bar to extravagant conclusions in

another. A savage expert in judging signs of the movements and location

of animals that he hunts, will accept and gravely narrate the most

preposterous yarns concerning the origin of their habits and structures.

When there is no directly appreciable reaction of the inference upon the

security and prosperity of life, there are no natural checks to the

acceptance of wrong beliefs. Conclusions may be generated by a modicum

of fact merely because the suggestions are vivid and interesting; a

large accumulation of data may fail to suggest a proper conclusion

because existing customs are averse to entertaining it. Independent of

training, there is a "primitive credulity" which tends to make no

distinction between what a trained mind calls fancy and that which it

calls a reasonable conclusion. The face in the clouds is believed in as

some sort of fact, merely because it is forcibly suggested. Natural

intelligence is no barrier to the propagation of error, nor large but

untrained experience to the accumulation of fixed false beliefs. Errors

may support one another mutually and weave an ever larger and firmer

fabric of misconception. Dreams, the positions of stars, the lines of

the hand, may be regarded as valuable signs, and the fall of cards as an

inevitable omen, while natural events of the most crucial significance

go disregarded. Beliefs in portents of various kinds, now mere nook and

cranny superstitions, were once universal. A long discipline in exact

science was required for their conquest.

[Sidenote: Superstition as natural a result as science]

In the mere function of suggestion, there is no difference between the

power of a column of mercury to portend rain, and that of the entrails

of an animal or the flight of birds to foretell the fortunes of war. For

all anybody can tell in advance, the spilling of salt is as likely to

import bad luck as the bite of a mosquito to import malaria. Only

systematic regulation of the conditions under which observations are

made and severe discipline of the habits of entertaining suggestions can

secure a decision that one type of belief is vicious and the other

sound. The substitution of scientific for superstitious habits of

inference has not been brought about by any improvement in the acuteness

of the senses or in the natural workings of the function of suggestion.

It is the result of regulation _of the conditions_ under which

observation and inference take place.

[Sidenote: General causes of bad thinking: Bacon's "idols"]

It is instructive to note some of the attempts that have been made to

classify the main sources of error in reaching beliefs. Francis Bacon,

for example, at the beginnings of modern scientific inquiry, enumerated

four such classes, under the somewhat fantastic title of "idols" (Gr.

[Greek: eidola], images), spectral forms that allure the mind into false

paths. These he called the idols, or phantoms, of the (_a_) tribe, (_b_)

the marketplace, (_c_) the cave or den, and (_d_) the theater; or, less

metaphorically, (_a_) standing erroneous methods (or at least

temptations to error) that have their roots in human nature generally;

(_b_) those that come from intercourse and language; (_c_) those that

are due to causes peculiar to a specific individual; and finally, (_d_)

those that have their sources in the fashion or general current of a

period. Classifying these causes of fallacious belief somewhat

differently, we may say that two are intrinsic and two are extrinsic. Of

the intrinsic, one is common to all men alike (such as the universal

tendency to notice instances that corroborate a favorite belief more

readily than those that contradict it), while the other resides in the

specific temperament and habits of the given individual. Of the

extrinsic, one proceeds from generic social conditions--like the

tendency to suppose that there is a fact wherever there is a word, and

no fact where there is no linguistic term--while the other proceeds from

local and temporary social currents.

[Sidenote: Locke on the influence of]

Locke's method of dealing with typical forms of wrong belief is less

formal and may be more enlightening. We can hardly do better than quote

his forcible and quaint language, when, enumerating different classes of

men, he shows different ways in which thought goes wrong:

[Sidenote: (_a_) dependence on others,]

1. "The first is of those who seldom reason at all, but do and think

according to the example of others, whether parents, neighbors,

ministers, or who else they are pleased to make choice of to have an

implicit faith in, for the saving of themselves the pains and troubles

of thinking and examining for themselves."

[Sidenote: (_b_) self-interest,]

2. "This kind is of those who put passion in the place of reason, and

being resolved that shall govern their actions and arguments, neither

use their own, nor hearken to other people's reason, any farther than it

suits their humor, interest, or party."[5]

[5] In another place he says: "Men's prejudices and inclinations

impose often upon themselves.... Inclination suggests and slides

into discourse favorable terms, which introduce favorable ideas;

till at last by this means that is concluded clear and evident, thus

dressed up, which, taken in its native state, by making use of none

but precise determined ideas, would find no admittance at all."

[Sidenote: (_c_) circumscribed experience]

3. "The third sort is of those who readily and sincerely follow reason,

but for want of having that which one may call large, sound, roundabout

sense, have not a full view of all that relates to the question.... They

converse but with one sort of men, they read but one sort of books, they

will not come in the hearing but of one sort of notions.... They have a

pretty traffic with known correspondents in some little creek ... but

will not venture out into the great ocean of knowledge." Men of

originally equal natural parts may finally arrive at very different

stores of knowledge and truth, "when all the odds between them has been

the different scope that has been given to their understandings to range

in, for the gathering up of information and furnishing their heads with

ideas and notions and observations, whereon to employ their mind."[6]

[6] _The Conduct of the Understanding_, Sec. 3.

In another portion of his writings,[7] Locke states the same ideas in

slightly different form.

[7] _Essay Concerning Human Understanding_, bk. IV, ch. XX, "Of

Wrong Assent or Error."

[Sidenote: Effect of dogmatic principles,]

1. "That which is inconsistent with our _principles_ is so far from

passing for probable with us that it will not be allowed possible. The

reverence borne to these principles is so great, and their authority so

paramount to all other, that the testimony, not only of other men, but

the evidence of our own senses are often rejected, when they offer to

vouch anything contrary to these _established rules_.... There is

nothing more ordinary than children's receiving into their minds

propositions ... from their parents, nurses, or those about them; which

being insinuated in their unwary as well as unbiased understandings, and

fastened by degrees, are at last (and this whether true or false)

riveted there by long custom and education, beyond all possibility of

being pulled out again. For men, when they are grown up, reflecting upon

their opinions and finding those of this sort to be as ancient in their

minds as their very memories, not having observed their early

insinuation, nor by what means they got them, they are apt to reverence

them as sacred things, and not to suffer them to be profaned, touched,

or questioned." They take them as standards "to be the great and

unerring deciders of truth and falsehood, and the judges to which they

are to appeal in all manner of controversies."

[Sidenote: of closed minds,]

2. "Secondly, next to these are men whose understandings are cast into a

mold, and fashioned just to the size of a received hypothesis." Such

men, Locke goes on to say, while not denying the existence of facts and

evidence, cannot be convinced by the evidence that would decide them if

their minds were not so closed by adherence to fixed belief.

[Sidenote: of strong passion,]

3. "Predominant Passions. Thirdly, probabilities which cross men's

appetites and prevailing passions run the same fate. Let ever so much

probability hang on one side of a covetous man's reasoning, and money on

the other, it is easy to foresee which will outweigh. Earthly minds,

like mud walls, resist the strongest batteries.

[Sidenote: of dependence upon authority of others]

4. "Authority. The fourth and last wrong measure of probability I shall

take notice of, and which keeps in ignorance or error more people than

all the others together, is the giving up our assent to the common

received opinions, either of our friends or party, neighborhood or

country."

[Sidenote: Causes of bad mental habits are social as well as inborn]

Both Bacon and Locke make it evident that over and above the sources of

misbelief that reside in the natural tendencies of the individual (like

those toward hasty and too far-reaching conclusions), social conditions

tend to instigate and confirm wrong habits of thinking by authority, by

conscious instruction, and by the even more insidious half-conscious

influences of language, imitation, sympathy, and suggestion. Education

has accordingly not only to safeguard an individual against the

besetting erroneous tendencies of his own mind--its rashness,

presumption, and preference of what chimes with self-interest to

objective evidence--but also to undermine and destroy the accumulated

and self-perpetuating prejudices of long ages. When social life in

general has become more reasonable, more imbued with rational

conviction, and less moved by stiff authority and blind passion,

educational agencies may be more positive and constructive than at

present, for they will work in harmony with the educative influence

exercised willy-nilly by other social surroundings upon an individual's

habits of thought and belief. At present, the work of teaching must not

only transform natural tendencies into trained habits of thought, but

must also fortify the mind against irrational tendencies current in the

social environment, and help displace erroneous habits already produced.

Sec. 4. _Regulation Transforms Inference into Proof_

[Sidenote: A leap is involved in all thinking]

Thinking is important because, as we have seen, it is that function in

which given or ascertained facts stand for or indicate others which are

not directly ascertained. But the process of reaching the absent from

the present is peculiarly exposed to error; it is liable to be

influenced by almost any number of unseen and unconsidered causes,--past

experience, received dogmas, the stirring of self-interest, the arousing

of passion, sheer mental laziness, a social environment steeped in

biased traditions or animated by false expectations, and so on. The

exercise of thought is, in the literal sense of that word, _inference_;

by it one thing _carries us over_ to the idea of, and belief in, another

thing. It involves a jump, a leap, a going beyond what is surely known

to something else accepted on its warrant. Unless one is an idiot, one

simply cannot help having all things and events suggest other things not

actually present, nor can one help a tendency to believe in the latter

on the basis of the former. The very inevitableness of the jump, the

leap, to something unknown, only emphasizes the necessity of attention

to the conditions under which it occurs so that the danger of a false

step may be lessened and the probability of a right landing increased.

[Sidenote: Hence, the need of regulation which, when adequate, makes

proof]

Such attention consists in regulation (1) of the conditions under which

the function of suggestion takes place, and (2) of the conditions under

which credence is yielded to the suggestions that occur. Inference

controlled in these two ways (the study of which in detail constitutes

one of the chief objects of this book) forms _proof_. To prove a thing

means primarily to try, to test it. The guest bidden to the wedding

feast excused himself because he had to _prove_ his oxen. Exceptions are

said to prove a rule; _i.e._ they furnish instances so extreme that they

try in the severest fashion its applicability; if the rule will stand

such a test, there is no good reason for further doubting it. Not until

a thing has been tried--"tried out," in colloquial language--do we know

its true worth. Till then it may be pretense, a bluff. But the thing

that has come out victorious in a test or trial of strength carries its

credentials with it; it is approved, because it has been proved. Its

value is clearly evinced, shown, _i.e._ demonstrated. So it is with

inferences. The mere fact that inference in general is an invaluable

function does not guarantee, nor does it even help out the correctness

of any particular inference. Any inference may go astray; and as we have

seen, there are standing influences ever ready to assist its going

wrong. _What is important, is that every inference shall be a tested

inference_; _or_ (since often this is not possible) _that we shall

discriminate between beliefs that rest upon tested evidence and those

that do not, and shall be accordingly on our guard as to the kind and

degree of assent yielded_.

[Sidenote: The office of education in forming skilled]

[Sidenote: powers of thinking]

While it is not the business of education to prove every statement made,

any more than to teach every possible item of information, it is its

business to cultivate deep-seated and effective habits of

discriminating tested beliefs from mere assertions, guesses, and

opinions; to develop a lively, sincere, and open-minded preference for

conclusions that are properly grounded, and to ingrain into the

individual's working habits methods of inquiry and reasoning appropriate

to the various problems that present themselves. No matter how much an

individual knows as a matter of hearsay and information, if he has not

attitudes and habits of this sort, he is not intellectually educated. He

lacks the rudiments of mental discipline. And since these habits are not

a gift of nature (no matter how strong the aptitude for acquiring them);

since, moreover, the casual circumstances of the natural and social

environment are not enough to compel their acquisition, the main office

of education is to supply conditions that make for their cultivation.

The formation of these habits is the Training of Mind.

CHAPTER THREE

NATURAL RESOURCES IN THE TRAINING OF THOUGHT

[Sidenote: Only native powers can be trained.]

In the last chapter we considered the need of transforming, through

training, the natural capacities of inference into habits of critical

examination and inquiry. The very importance of thought for life makes

necessary its control by education because of its natural tendency to go

astray, and because social influences exist that tend to form habits of

thought leading to inadequate and erroneous beliefs. Training must,

however, be itself based upon the natural tendencies,--that is, it must

find its point of departure in them. A being who could not think without

training could never be trained to think; one may have to learn to think

_well_, but not to _think_. Training, in short, must fall back upon the

prior and independent existence of natural powers; it is concerned with

their proper direction, not with creating them.

[Sidenote: Hence, the one taught must take the initiative]

Teaching and learning are correlative or corresponding processes, as

much so as selling and buying. One might as well say he has sold when no

one has bought, as to say that he has taught when no one has learned.

And in the educational transaction, the initiative lies with the learner

even more than in commerce it lies with the buyer. If an individual can

learn to think only in the sense of learning to employ more economically

and effectively powers he already possesses, even more truly one can

teach others to think only in the sense of appealing to and fostering

powers already active in them. Effective appeal of this kind is

impossible unless the teacher has an insight into existing habits and

tendencies, the natural resources with which he has to ally himself.

[Sidenote: Three important natural resources]

Any inventory of the items of this natural capital is somewhat arbitrary

because it must pass over many of the complex details. But a statement

of the factors essential to thought will put before us in outline the

main elements. Thinking involves (as we have seen) the suggestion of a

conclusion for acceptance, and also search or inquiry to test the value

of the suggestion before finally accepting it. This implies (_a_) a

certain fund or store of experiences and facts from which suggestions

proceed; (_b_) promptness, flexibility, and fertility of suggestions;

and (_c_) orderliness, consecutiveness, appropriateness in what is

suggested. Clearly, a person may be hampered in any of these three

regards: His thinking may be irrelevant, narrow, or crude because he has

not enough actual material upon which to base conclusions; or because

concrete facts and raw material, even if extensive and bulky, fail to

evoke suggestions easily and richly; or finally, because, even when

these two conditions are fulfilled, the ideas suggested are incoherent

and fantastic, rather than pertinent and consistent.

Sec. 1. _Curiosity_

[Sidenote: Desire for fullness of experience:]

The most vital and significant factor in supplying the primary material

whence suggestion may issue is, without doubt, curiosity. The wisest of

the Greeks used to say that wonder is the mother of all science. An

inert mind waits, as it were, for experiences to be imperiously forced

upon it. The pregnant saying of Wordsworth:

"The eye--it cannot choose but see;

We cannot bid the ear be still;

Our bodies feel, where'er they be,

Against or with our will"--

holds good in the degree in which one is naturally possessed by

curiosity. The curious mind is constantly alert and exploring, seeking

material for thought, as a vigorous and healthy body is on the _qui

vive_ for nutriment. Eagerness for experience, for new and varied

contacts, is found where wonder is found. Such curiosity is the only

sure guarantee of the acquisition of the primary facts upon which

inference must base itself.

[Sidenote: (_a_) physical]

(_a_) In its first manifestations, curiosity is a vital overflow, an

expression of an abundant organic energy. A physiological uneasiness

leads a child to be "into everything,"--to be reaching, poking,

pounding, prying. Observers of animals have noted what one author calls

"their inveterate tendency to fool." "Rats run about, smell, dig, or

gnaw, without real reference to the business in hand. In the same way

Jack [a dog] scrabbles and jumps, the kitten wanders and picks, the

otter slips about everywhere like ground lightning, the elephant fumbles

ceaselessly, the monkey pulls things about."[8] The most casual notice

of the activities of a young child reveals a ceaseless display of

exploring and testing activity. Objects are sucked, fingered, and

thumped; drawn and pushed, handled and thrown; in short, experimented

with, till they cease to yield new qualities. Such activities are hardly

intellectual, and yet without them intellectual activity would be feeble

and intermittent through lack of stuff for its operations.

[8] Hobhouse, _Mind in Evolution_, p. 195.

[Sidenote: (_b_) social]

(_b_) A higher stage of curiosity develops under the influence of social

stimuli. When the child learns that he can appeal to others to eke out

his store of experiences, so that, if objects fail to respond

interestingly to his experiments, he may call upon persons to provide

interesting material, a new epoch sets in. "What is that?" "Why?" become

the unfailing signs of a child's presence. At first this questioning is

hardly more than a projection into social relations of the physical

overflow which earlier kept the child pushing and pulling, opening and

shutting. He asks in succession what holds up the house, what holds up

the soil that holds the house, what holds up the earth that holds the

soil; but his questions are not evidence of any genuine consciousness of

rational connections. His _why_ is not a demand for scientific

explanation; the motive behind it is simply eagerness for a larger

acquaintance with the mysterious world in which he is placed. The search

is not for a law or principle, but only for a bigger fact. Yet there is

more than a desire to accumulate just information or heap up

disconnected items, although sometimes the interrogating habit threatens

to degenerate into a mere disease of language. In the feeling, however

dim, that the facts which directly meet the senses are not the whole

story, that there is more behind them and more to come from them, lies

the germ of _intellectual_ curiosity.

[Sidenote: (_c_) intellectual]

(_c_) Curiosity rises above the organic and the social planes and

becomes intellectual in the degree in which it is transformed into

interest in _problems_ provoked by the observation of things and the

accumulation of material. When the question is not discharged by being

asked of another, when the child continues to entertain it in his own

mind and to be alert for whatever will help answer it, curiosity has

become a positive intellectual force. To the open mind, nature and

social experience are full of varied and subtle challenges to look

further. If germinating powers are not used and cultivated at the right

moment, they tend to be transitory, to die out, or to wane in intensity.

This general law is peculiarly true of sensitiveness to what is

uncertain and questionable; in a few people, intellectual curiosity is

so insatiable that nothing will discourage it, but in most its edge is

easily dulled and blunted. Bacon's saying that we must become as little

children in order to enter the kingdom of science is at once a reminder

of the open-minded and flexible wonder of childhood and of the ease with

which this endowment is lost. Some lose it in indifference or

carelessness; others in a frivolous flippancy; many escape these evils

only to become incased in a hard dogmatism which is equally fatal to the

spirit of wonder. Some are so taken up with routine as to be

inaccessible to new facts and problems. Others retain curiosity only

with reference to what concerns their personal advantage in their chosen

career. With many, curiosity is arrested on the plane of interest in

local gossip and in the fortunes of their neighbors; indeed, so usual is

this result that very often the first association with the word

_curiosity_ is a prying inquisitiveness into other people's business.

With respect then to curiosity, the teacher has usually more to learn

than to teach. Rarely can he aspire to the office of kindling or even

increasing it. His task is rather to keep alive the sacred spark of

wonder and to fan the flame that already glows. His problem is to

protect the spirit of inquiry, to keep it from becoming blase from

overexcitement, wooden from routine, fossilized through dogmatic

instruction, or dissipated by random exercise upon trivial things.

Sec. 2. _Suggestion_

Out of the subject-matter, whether rich or scanty, important or trivial,

of present experience issue suggestions, ideas, beliefs as to what is

not yet given. The function of suggestion is not one that can be

produced by teaching; while it may be modified for better or worse by

conditions, it cannot be destroyed. Many a child has tried his best to

see if he could not "stop thinking," but the flow of suggestions goes on

in spite of our will, quite as surely as "our bodies feel, where'er they

be, against or with our will." Primarily, naturally, it is not we who

think, in any actively responsible sense; thinking is rather something

that happens in us. Only so far as one has acquired control of the

method in which the function of suggestion occurs and has accepted

responsibility for its consequences, can one truthfully say, "_I_ think

so and so."

[Sidenote: The dimensions of suggestion:]

[Sidenote: (_a_) ease]

The function of suggestion has a variety of aspects (or dimensions as we

may term them), varying in different persons, both in themselves and in

their mode of combination. These dimensions are ease or promptness,

extent or variety, and depth or persistence. (_a_) The common

classification of persons into the dull and the bright is made primarily

on the basis of the readiness or facility with which suggestions follow

upon the presentation of objects and upon the happening of events. As

the metaphor of dull and bright implies, some minds are impervious, or

else they absorb passively. Everything presented is lost in a drab

monotony that gives nothing back. But others reflect, or give back in

varied lights, all that strikes upon them. The dull make no response;

the bright flash back the fact with a changed quality. An inert or

stupid mind requires a heavy jolt or an intense shock to move it to

suggestion; the bright mind is quick, is alert to react with

interpretation and suggestion of consequences to follow.

Yet the teacher is not entitled to assume stupidity or even dullness

merely because of irresponsiveness to school subjects or to a lesson as

presented by text-book or teacher. The pupil labeled hopeless may react

in quick and lively fashion when the thing-in-hand seems to him worth

while, as some out-of-school sport or social affair. Indeed, the school

subject might move him, were it set in a different context and treated

by a different method. A boy dull in geometry may prove quick enough

when he takes up the subject in connection with manual training; the

girl who seems inaccessible to historical facts may respond promptly

when it is a question of judging the character and deeds of people of

her acquaintance or of fiction. Barring physical defect or disease,

slowness and dullness in _all_ directions are comparatively rare.

[Sidenote: (_b_) range]

(_b_) Irrespective of the difference in persons as to the ease and

promptness with which ideas respond to facts, there is a difference in

the number or range of the suggestions that occur. We speak truly, in

some cases, of the flood of suggestions; in others, there is but a

slender trickle. Occasionally, slowness of outward response is due to a

great variety of suggestions which check one another and lead to

hesitation and suspense; while a lively and prompt suggestion may take

such possession of the mind as to preclude the development of others.

Too few suggestions indicate a dry and meager mental habit; when this is

joined to great learning, there results a pedant or a Gradgrind. Such a

person's mind rings hard; he is likely to bore others with mere bulk of

information. He contrasts with the person whom we call ripe, juicy, and

mellow.

A conclusion reached after consideration of a few alternatives may be

formally correct, but it will not possess the fullness and richness of

meaning of one arrived at after comparison of a greater variety of

alternative suggestions. On the other hand, suggestions may be too

numerous and too varied for the best interests of mental habit. So many

suggestions may rise that the person is at a loss to select among them.

He finds it difficult to reach any definite conclusion and wanders more

or less helplessly among them. So much suggests itself _pro_ and _con_,

one thing leads on to another so naturally, that he finds it difficult

to decide in practical affairs or to conclude in matters of theory.

There is such a thing as too much thinking, as when action is paralyzed

by the multiplicity of views suggested by a situation. Or again, the

very number of suggestions may be hostile to tracing logical sequences

among them, for it may tempt the mind away from the necessary but trying

task of search for real connections, into the more congenial occupation

of embroidering upon the given facts a tissue of agreeable fancies. The

best mental habit involves a balance between paucity and redundancy of

suggestions.

[Sidenote: (_c_) profundity]

(_c_) _Depth._ We distinguish between people not only upon the basis of

their quickness and fertility of intellectual response, but also with

respect to the plane upon which it occurs--the intrinsic quality of the

response.

One man's thought is profound while another's is superficial; one goes

to the roots of the matter, and another touches lightly its most

external aspects. This phase of thinking is perhaps the most untaught of

all, and the least amenable to external influence whether for

improvement or harm. Nevertheless, the conditions of the pupil's contact

with subject-matter may be such that he is compelled to come to quarters

with its more significant features, or such that he is encouraged to

deal with it upon the basis of what is trivial. The common assumptions

that, if the pupil only thinks, one thought is just as good for his

mental discipline as another, and that the end of study is the amassing

of information, both tend to foster superficial, at the expense of

significant, thought. Pupils who in matters of ordinary practical

experience have a ready and acute perception of the difference between

the significant and the meaningless, often reach in school subjects a

point where all things seem equally important or equally unimportant;

where one thing is just as likely to be true as another, and where

intellectual effort is expended not in discriminating between things,

but in trying to make verbal connections among words.

[Sidenote: Balance of mind]

Sometimes slowness and depth of response are intimately connected. Time

is required in order to digest impressions, and translate them into

substantial ideas. "Brightness" may be but a flash in the pan. The "slow

but sure" person, whether man or child, is one in whom impressions sink

and accumulate, so that thinking is done at a deeper level of value

than with a slighter load. Many a child is rebuked for "slowness," for

not "answering promptly," when his forces are taking time to gather

themselves together to deal effectively with the problem at hand. In

such cases, failure to afford time and leisure conduce to habits of

speedy, but snapshot and superficial, judgment. The depth to which a

sense of the problem, of the difficulty, sinks, determines the quality

of the thinking that follows; and any habit of teaching which encourages

the pupil for the sake of a successful recitation or of a display of

memorized information to glide over the thin ice of genuine problems

reverses the true method of mind training.

[Sidenote: Individual differences]

It is profitable to study the lives of men and women who achieve in

adult life fine things in their respective callings, but who were called

dull in their school days. Sometimes the early wrong judgment was due

mainly to the fact that the direction in which the child showed his

ability was not one recognized by the good old standards in use, as in

the case of Darwin's interest in beetles, snakes, and frogs. Sometimes

it was due to the fact that the child dwelling habitually on a deeper

plane of reflection than other pupils--or than his teachers--did not

show to advantage when prompt answers of the usual sort were expected.

Sometimes it was due to the fact that the pupil's natural mode of

approach clashed habitually with that of the text or teacher, and the

method of the latter was assumed as an absolute basis of estimate.

[Sidenote: Any subject may be intellectual]

In any event, it is desirable that the teacher should rid himself of the

notion that "thinking" is a single, unalterable faculty; that he should

recognize that it is a term denoting the various ways in which things

acquire significance. It is desirable to expel also the kindred notion

that some subjects are inherently "intellectual," and hence possessed of

an almost magical power to train the faculty of thought. Thinking is

specific, not a machine-like, ready-made apparatus to be turned

indifferently and at will upon all subjects, as a lantern may throw its

light as it happens upon horses, streets, gardens, trees, or river.

Thinking is specific, in that different things suggest their own

appropriate meanings, tell their own unique stories, and in that they do

this in very different ways with different persons. As the growth of the

body is through the assimilation of food, so the growth of mind is

through the logical organization of subject-matter. Thinking is not like

a sausage machine which reduces all materials indifferently to one

marketable commodity, but is a power of following up and linking

together the specific suggestions that specific things arouse.

Accordingly, any subject, from Greek to cooking, and from drawing to

mathematics, is intellectual, if intellectual at all, not in its fixed

inner structure, but in its function--in its power to start and direct

significant inquiry and reflection. What geometry does for one, the

manipulation of laboratory apparatus, the mastery of a musical

composition, or the conduct of a business affair, may do for another.

Sec. 3. _Orderliness: Its Nature_

[Sidenote: Continuity]

Facts, whether narrow or extensive, and conclusions suggested by them,

whether many or few, do not constitute, even when combined, reflective

thought. The suggestions must be _organized_; they must be arranged with

reference to one another and with reference to the facts on which they

depend for proof. When the factors of facility, of fertility, and of

depth are properly balanced or proportioned, we get as the outcome

continuity of thought. We desire neither the slow mind nor yet the

hasty. We wish neither random diffuseness nor fixed rigidity.

Consecutiveness means flexibility and variety of materials, conjoined

with singleness and definiteness of direction. It is opposed both to a

mechanical routine uniformity and to a grasshopper-like movement. Of

bright children, it is not infrequently said that "they might do

anything, if only they settled down," so quick and apt are they in any

particular response. But, alas, they rarely settle.

On the other hand, it is not enough _not_ to be diverted. A deadly and

fanatic consistency is not our goal. Concentration does not mean fixity,

nor a cramped arrest or paralysis of the flow of suggestion. It means

variety and change of ideas combined into a _single steady trend moving

toward a unified conclusion_. Thoughts are concentrated not by being

kept still and quiescent, but by being kept moving toward an object, as

a general concentrates his troops for attack or defense. Holding the

mind to a subject is like holding a ship to its course; it implies

constant change of place combined with unity of direction. Consistent

and orderly thinking is precisely such a change of subject-matter.

Consistency is no more the mere absence of contradiction than

concentration is the mere absence of diversion--which exists in dull

routine or in a person "fast asleep." All kinds of varied and

incompatible suggestions may sprout and be followed in their growth, and

yet thinking be consistent and orderly, provided each one of the

suggestions is viewed in relation to the main topic.

[Sidenote: Practical demands enforce some degree of continuity]

In the main, for most persons, the primary resource in the development

of orderly habits of thought is indirect, not direct. Intellectual

organization originates and for a time grows as an accompaniment of the

organization of the acts required to realize an end, not as the result

of a direct appeal to thinking power. The need of thinking to accomplish

something beyond thinking is more potent than thinking for its own sake.

All people at the outset, and the majority of people probably all their

lives, attain ordering of thought through ordering of action. Adults

normally carry on some occupation, profession, pursuit; and this

furnishes the continuous axis about which their knowledge, their

beliefs, and their habits of reaching and testing conclusions are

organized. Observations that have to do with the efficient performance

of their calling are extended and rendered precise. Information related

to it is not merely amassed and then left in a heap; it is classified

and subdivided so as to be available as it is needed. Inferences are

made by most men not from purely speculative motives, but because they

are involved in the efficient performance of "the duties involved in

their several callings." Thus their inferences are constantly tested by

results achieved; futile and scattering methods tend to be discounted;

orderly arrangements have a premium put upon them. The event, the issue,

stands as a constant check on the thinking that has led up to it; and

this discipline by efficiency in action is the chief sanction, in

practically all who are not scientific specialists, of orderliness of

thought.

Such a resource--the main prop of disciplined thinking in adult life--is

not to be despised in training the young in right intellectual habits.

There are, however, profound differences between the immature and the

adult in the matter of organized activity--differences which must be

taken seriously into account in any educational use of activities: (_i_)

The external achievement resulting from activity is a more urgent

necessity with the adult, and hence is with him a more effective means

of discipline of mind than with the child; (_ii_) The ends of adult

activity are more specialized than those of child activity.

[Sidenote: Peculiar difficulty with children]

(_i_) The selection and arrangement of appropriate lines of action is a

much more difficult problem as respects youth than it is in the case of

adults. With the latter, the main lines are more or less settled by

circumstances. The social status of the adult, the fact that he is a

citizen, a householder, a parent, one occupied in some regular

industrial or professional calling, prescribes the chief features of the

acts to be performed, and secures, somewhat automatically, as it were,

appropriate and related modes of thinking. But with the child there is

no such fixity of status and pursuit; there is almost nothing to dictate

that such and such a consecutive line of action, rather than another,

should be followed, while the will of others, his own caprice, and

circumstances about him tend to produce an isolated momentary act. The

absence of continued motivation cooeperates with the inner plasticity of

the immature to increase the importance of educational training and the

difficulties in the way of finding consecutive modes of activities which

may do for child and youth what serious vocations and functions do for

the adult. In the case of children, the choice is so peculiarly exposed

to arbitrary factors, to mere school traditions, to waves of pedagogical

fad and fancy, to fluctuating social cross currents, that sometimes, in

sheer disgust at the inadequacy of results, a reaction occurs to the

total neglect of overt activity as an educational factor, and a recourse

to purely theoretical subjects and methods.

[Sidenote: Peculiar opportunity with children]

(_ii_) This very difficulty, however, points to the fact that the

_opportunity for selecting truly educative activities_ is indefinitely

greater in child life than in adult. The factor of external pressure is

so strong with most adults that the educative value of the pursuit--its

reflex influence upon intelligence and character--however genuine, is

incidental, and frequently almost accidental. The problem and the

opportunity with the young is selection of orderly and continuous modes

of occupation, which, while they lead up to and prepare for the

indispensable activities of adult life, have their own _sufficient

justification in their present reflex influence upon the formation of

habits of thought_.

[Sidenote: Action and reaction between extremes]

Educational practice shows a continual tendency to oscillate between two

extremes with respect to overt and exertive activities. One extreme is

to neglect them almost entirely, on the ground that they are chaotic and

fluctuating, mere diversions appealing to the transitory unformed taste

and caprice of immature minds; or if they avoid this evil, are

objectionable copies of the highly specialized, and more or less

commercial, activities of adult life. If activities are admitted at all

into the school, the admission is a grudging concession to the necessity

of having occasional relief from the strain of constant intellectual

work, or to the clamor of outside utilitarian demands upon the school.

The other extreme is an enthusiastic belief in the almost magical

educative efficacy of any kind of activity, granted it is an activity

and not a passive absorption of academic and theoretic material. The

conceptions of play, of self-expression, of natural growth, are

appealed to almost as if they meant that opportunity for any kind of

spontaneous activity inevitably secures the due training of mental

power; or a mythological brain physiology is appealed to as proof that

any exercise of the muscles trains power of thought.

[Sidenote: Locating the problem of education]

While we vibrate from one of these extremes to the other, the most

serious of all problems is ignored: the problem, namely, of discovering

and arranging the forms of activity (_a_) which are most congenial, best

adapted, to the immature stage of development; (_b_) which have the most

ulterior promise as preparation for the social responsibilities of adult

life; and (_c_) which, _at the same time_, have the maximum of influence

in forming habits of acute observation and of consecutive inference. As

curiosity is related to the acquisition of material of thought, as

suggestion is related to flexibility and force of thought, so the

ordering of activities, not themselves primarily intellectual, is

related to the forming of intellectual powers of consecutiveness.

CHAPTER FOUR

SCHOOL CONDITIONS AND THE TRAINING OF THOUGHT

Sec. 1. _Introductory: Methods and Conditions_

[Sidenote: Formal discipline]

The so-called faculty-psychology went hand in hand with the vogue of the

formal-discipline idea in education. If thought is a distinct piece of

mental machinery, separate from observation, memory, imagination, and

common-sense judgments of persons and things, then thought should be

trained by special exercises designed for the purpose, as one might

devise special exercises for developing the biceps muscles. Certain

subjects are then to be regarded as intellectual or logical subjects

_par excellence_, possessed of a predestined fitness to exercise the

thought-faculty, just as certain machines are better than others for

developing arm power. With these three notions goes the fourth, that

method consists of a set of operations by which the machinery of thought

is set going and kept at work upon any subject-matter.

[Sidenote: versus real thinking]

We have tried to make it clear in the previous chapters that there is no

single and uniform power of thought, but a multitude of different ways

in which specific things--things observed, remembered, heard of, read

about--evoke suggestions or ideas that are pertinent to the occasion and

fruitful in the sequel. Training is such development of curiosity,

suggestion, and habits of exploring and testing, as increases their

scope and efficiency. A subject--any subject--is intellectual in the

degree in which _with any given person_ it succeeds in effecting this

growth. On this view the fourth factor, method, is concerned with

providing conditions so adapted to individual needs and powers as to

make for the permanent improvement of observation, suggestion, and

investigation.

[Sidenote: True and false meaning of method]

The teacher's problem is thus twofold. On the one side, he needs (as we

saw in the last chapter) to be a student of individual traits and

habits; on the other side, he needs to be a student of the conditions

that modify for better or worse the directions in which individual

powers habitually express themselves. He needs to recognize that method

covers not only what he intentionally devises and employs for the

purpose of mental training, but also what he does without any conscious

reference to it,--anything in the atmosphere and conduct of the school

which reacts in any way upon the curiosity, the responsiveness, and the

orderly activity of children. The teacher who is an intelligent student

both of individual mental operations and of the effects of school

conditions upon those operations, can largely be trusted to develop for

himself methods of instruction in their narrower and more technical

sense--those best adapted to achieve results in particular subjects,

such as reading, geography, or algebra. In the hands of one who is not

intelligently aware of individual capacities and of the influence

unconsciously exerted upon them by the entire environment, even the best

of technical methods are likely to get an immediate result only at the

expense of deep-seated and persistent habits. We may group the

conditioning influences of the school environment under three heads: (1)

the mental attitudes and habits of the persons with whom the child is

in contact; (2) the subjects studied; (3) current educational aims and

ideals.

Sec. 2. _Influence of the Habits of Others_

Bare reference to the imitativeness of human nature is enough to suggest

how profoundly the mental habits of others affect the attitude of the

one being trained. Example is more potent than precept; and a teacher's

best conscious efforts may be more than counteracted by the influence of

personal traits which he is unaware of or regards as unimportant.

Methods of instruction and discipline that are technically faulty may be

rendered practically innocuous by the inspiration of the personal method

that lies back of them.

[Sidenote: Response to environment fundamental in method]

To confine, however, the conditioning influence of the educator, whether

parent or teacher, to imitation is to get a very superficial view of the

intellectual influence of others. Imitation is but one case of a deeper

principle--that of stimulus and response. _Everything the teacher does,

as well as the manner in which he does it, incites the child to respond

in some way or other, and each response tends to set the child's

attitude in some way or other._ Even the inattention of the child to the

adult is often a mode of response which is the result of unconscious

training.[9] The teacher is rarely (and even then never entirely) a

transparent medium of access by another mind to a subject. With the

young, the influence of the teacher's personality is intimately fused

with that of the subject; the child does not separate nor even

distinguish the two. And as the child's response is _toward_ or _away

from_ anything presented, he keeps up a running commentary, of which he

himself is hardly distinctly aware, of like and dislike, of sympathy and

aversion, not merely to the acts of the teacher, but also to the subject

with which the teacher is occupied.

[9] A child of four or five who had been repeatedly called to the

house by his mother with no apparent response on his own part, was

asked if he did not hear her. He replied quite judicially, "Oh, yes,

but she doesn't call very mad yet."

[Sidenote: Influence of teacher's own habits]

[Sidenote: Judging others by ourselves]

The extent and power of this influence upon morals and manners, upon

character, upon habits of speech and social bearing, are almost

universally recognized. But the tendency to conceive of thought as an

isolated faculty has often blinded teachers to the fact that this

influence is just as real and pervasive in intellectual concerns.

Teachers, as well as children, stick more or less to the main points,

have more or less wooden and rigid methods of response, and display more

or less intellectual curiosity about matters that come up. And every

trait of this kind is an inevitable part of the teacher's method of

teaching. Merely to accept without notice slipshod habits of speech,

slovenly inferences, unimaginative and literal response, is to indorse

these tendencies, and to ratify them into habits--and so it goes

throughout the whole range of contact between teacher and student. In

this complex and intricate field, two or three points may well be

singled out for special notice. (_a_) Most persons are quite unaware of

the distinguishing peculiarities of their own mental habit. They take

their own mental operations for granted, and unconsciously make them the

standard for judging the mental processes of others.[10] Hence there is

a tendency to encourage everything in the pupil which agrees with this

attitude, and to neglect or fail to understand whatever is incongruous

with it. The prevalent overestimation of the value, for mind-training,

of _theoretic_ subjects as compared with practical pursuits, is

doubtless due partly to the fact that the teacher's calling tends to

select those in whom the theoretic interest is specially strong and to

repel those in whom executive abilities are marked. Teachers sifted out

on this basis judge pupils and subjects by a like standard, encouraging

an intellectual one-sidedness in those to whom it is naturally

congenial, and repelling from study those in whom practical instincts

are more urgent.

[10] People who have _number-forms_--_i.e._ project number series

into space and see them arranged in certain shapes--when asked why

they have not mentioned the fact before, often reply that it never

occurred to them; they supposed that everybody had the same power.

[Sidenote: Exaggeration of direct personal influence]

(_b_) Teachers--and this holds especially of the stronger and better

teachers--tend to rely upon their personal strong points to hold a child

to his work, and thereby to substitute their personal influence for that

of subject-matter as a motive for study. The teacher finds by experience

that his own personality is often effective where the power of the

subject to command attention is almost nil; then he utilizes the former

more and more, until the pupil's relation to the teacher almost takes

the place of his relation to the subject. In this way the teacher's

personality may become a source of personal dependence and weakness, an

influence that renders the pupil indifferent to the value of the subject

for its own sake.

[Sidenote: Independent thinking _versus_ "getting the answer"]

(_c_) The operation of the teacher's own mental habit tends, unless

carefully watched and guided, to make the child a student of the

teacher's peculiarities rather than of the subjects that he is supposed

to study. His chief concern is to accommodate himself to what the

teacher expects of him, rather than to devote himself energetically to

the problems of subject-matter. "Is this right?" comes to mean "Will

this answer or this process satisfy the teacher?"--instead of meaning,

"Does it satisfy the inherent conditions of the problem?" It would be

folly to deny the legitimacy or the value of the study of human nature

that children carry on in school; but it is obviously undesirable that

their chief intellectual problem should be that of producing an answer

approved by the teacher, and their standard of success be successful

adaptation to the requirements of another.

Sec. 3. _Influence of the Nature of Studies_

[Sidenote: Types of studies]

Studies are conventionally and conveniently grouped under these

heads: (1) Those especially involving the acquisition of skill

in performance--the school arts, such as reading, writing,

figuring, and music. (2) Those mainly concerned with acquiring

knowledge--"informational" studies, such as geography and history. (3)

Those in which skill in doing and bulk of information are relatively

less important, and appeal to abstract thinking, to "reasoning," is most

marked--"disciplinary" studies, such as arithmetic and formal

grammar.[11] Each of these groups of subjects has its own special

pitfalls.

[11] Of course, any one subject has all three aspects: _e.g._ in

arithmetic, counting, writing, and reading numbers, rapid adding,

etc., are cases of skill in doing; the tables of weights and

measures are a matter of information, etc.

[Sidenote: The abstract as the isolated]

(_a_) In the case of the so-called disciplinary or pre-eminently logical

studies, there is danger of the isolation of intellectual activity from

the ordinary affairs of life. Teacher and student alike tend to set up

a chasm between logical thought as something abstract and remote, and

the specific and concrete demands of everyday events. The abstract tends

to become so aloof, so far away from application, as to be cut loose

from practical and moral bearing. The gullibility of specialized

scholars when out of their own lines, their extravagant habits of

inference and speech, their ineptness in reaching conclusions in

practical matters, their egotistical engrossment in their own subjects,

are extreme examples of the bad effects of severing studies completely

from their ordinary connections in life.

[Sidenote: Overdoing the mechanical and automatic]

[Sidenote: "Drill"]

(_b_) The danger in those studies where the main emphasis is upon

acquisition of skill is just the reverse. The tendency is to take the

shortest cuts possible to gain the required end. This makes the subjects

_mechanical_, and thus restrictive of intellectual power. In the mastery

of reading, writing, drawing, laboratory technique, etc., the need of

economy of time and material, of neatness and accuracy, of promptness

and uniformity, is so great that these things tend to become ends in

themselves, irrespective of their influence upon general mental

attitude. Sheer imitation, dictation of steps to be taken, mechanical

drill, may give results most quickly and yet strengthen traits likely to

be fatal to reflective power. The pupil is enjoined to do this and that

specific thing, with no knowledge of any reason except that by so doing

he gets his result most speedily; his mistakes are pointed out and

corrected for him; he is kept at pure repetition of certain acts till

they become automatic. Later, teachers wonder why the pupil reads with

so little expression, and figures with so little intelligent

consideration of the terms of his problem. In some educational dogmas

and practices, the very idea of training mind seems to be hopelessly

confused with that of a drill which hardly touches _mind_ at all--or

touches it for the worse--since it is wholly taken up with training

skill in external execution. This method reduces the "training" of human

beings to the level of animal training. Practical skill, modes of

effective technique, can be intelligently, non-mechanically _used_, only

when intelligence has played a part in their _acquisition_.

[Sidenote: Wisdom _versus_ information]

(_c_) Much the same sort of thing is to be said regarding studies where

emphasis traditionally falls upon bulk and accuracy of information. The

distinction between information and wisdom is old, and yet requires

constantly to be redrawn. Information is knowledge which is merely

acquired and stored up; wisdom is knowledge operating in the direction

of powers to the better living of life. Information, merely as

information, implies no special training of intellectual capacity;

wisdom is the finest fruit of that training. In school, amassing

information always tends to escape from the ideal of wisdom or good

judgment. The aim often seems to be--especially in such a subject as

geography--to make the pupil what has been called a "cyclopedia of

useless information." "Covering the ground" is the primary necessity;

the nurture of mind a bad second. Thinking cannot, of course, go on in a

vacuum; suggestions and inferences can occur only upon a basis of

information as to matters of fact.

But there is all the difference in the world whether the acquisition of

information is treated as an end in itself, or is made an integral

portion of the training of thought. The assumption that information

which has been accumulated apart from use in the recognition and

solution of a problem may later on be freely employed at will by thought

is quite false. The skill at the ready command of intelligence is the

skill acquired with the aid of intelligence; the only information which,

otherwise than by accident, can be put to logical use is that acquired

in the course of thinking. Because their knowledge has been achieved in

connection with the needs of specific situations, men of little

book-learning are often able to put to effective use every ounce of

knowledge they possess; while men of vast erudition are often swamped by

the mere bulk of their learning, because memory, rather than thinking,

has been operative in obtaining it.

Sec.4. _The Influence of Current Aims and Ideals_

It is, of course, impossible to separate this somewhat intangible

condition from the points just dealt with; for automatic skill and

quantity of information are educational ideals which pervade the whole

school. We may distinguish, however, certain tendencies, such as that to

judge education from the standpoint of external results, instead of from

that of the development of personal attitudes and habits. The ideal of

the _product_, as against that of the mental _process_ by which the

product is attained, shows itself in both instruction and moral

discipline.

[Sidenote: External results _versus_ processes]

(_a_) In instruction, the external standard manifests itself in the

importance attached to the "correct answer." No one other thing,

probably, works so fatally against focussing the attention of teachers

upon the training of mind as the domination of _their_ minds by the idea

that the chief thing is to get pupils to recite their lessons

correctly. As long as this end is uppermost (whether consciously or

unconsciously), training of mind remains an incidental and secondary

consideration. There is no great difficulty in understanding why this

ideal has such vogue. The large number of pupils to be dealt with, and

the tendency of parents and school authorities to demand speedy and

tangible evidence of progress, conspire to give it currency. Knowledge

of subject-matter--not of children--is alone exacted of teachers by this

aim; and, moreover, knowledge of subject-matter only in portions

definitely prescribed and laid out, and hence mastered with comparative

ease. Education that takes as its standard the improvement of the

intellectual attitude and method of students demands more serious

preparatory training, for it exacts sympathetic and intelligent insight

into the workings of individual minds, and a very wide and flexible

command of subject-matter--so as to be able to select and apply just

what is needed when it is needed. Finally, the securing of external

results is an aim that lends itself naturally to the mechanics of school

administration--to examinations, marks, gradings, promotions, and so on.

[Sidenote: Reliance upon others]

(_b_) With reference to behavior also, the external ideal has a great

influence. Conformity of acts to precepts and rules is the easiest,

because most mechanical, standard to employ. It is no part of our

present task to tell just how far dogmatic instruction, or strict

adherence to custom, convention, and the commands of a social superior,

should extend in moral training; but since problems of conduct are the

deepest and most common of all the problems of life, the ways in which

they are met have an influence that radiates into every other mental

attitude, even those far remote from any direct or conscious moral

consideration. Indeed, the _deepest plane of the mental attitude of

every one is fixed by the way in which problems of behavior are

treated_. If the function of thought, of serious inquiry and reflection,

is reduced to a minimum in dealing with them, it is not reasonable to

expect habits of thought to exercise great influence in less important

matters. On the other hand, habits of active inquiry and careful

deliberation in the significant and vital problems of conduct afford the

best guarantee that the general structure of mind will be reasonable.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE MEANS AND END OF MENTAL TRAINING: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL AND THE LOGICAL

Sec. 1. _Introductory: The Meaning of Logical_

[Sidenote: Special topic of this chapter]

In the preceding chapters we have considered (_i_) what thinking is;

(_ii_) the importance of its special training; (_iii_) the natural

tendencies that lend themselves to its training; and (_iv_) some of the

special obstacles in the way of its training under school conditions. We

come now to the relation of _logic_ to the purpose of mental training.

[Sidenote: Three senses of term _logical_]

[Sidenote: The practical is the important meaning of _logical_]

In its broadest sense, any thinking that ends in a conclusion is

logical--whether the conclusion reached be justified or fallacious; that

is, the term _logical_ covers both the logically good and the illogical

or the logically bad. In its narrowest sense, the term _logical_ refers

only to what is demonstrated to follow necessarily from premises that

are definite in meaning and that are either self-evidently true, or that

have been previously proved to be true. Stringency of proof is here the

equivalent of the logical. In this sense mathematics and formal logic

(perhaps as a branch of mathematics) alone are strictly logical.

Logical, however, is used in a third sense, which is at once more vital

and more practical; to denote, namely, the systematic care, negative and

positive, taken to safeguard reflection so that it may yield the best

results under the given conditions. If only the word _artificial_ were

associated with the idea of _art_, or expert skill gained through

voluntary apprenticeship (instead of suggesting the factitious and

unreal), we might say that logical refers to artificial thought.

[Sidenote: Care, thoroughness, and exactness the marks of the logical]

In this sense, the word _logical_ is synonymous with wide-awake,

thorough, and careful reflection--thought in its best sense (_ante_, p.

5). Reflection is turning a topic over in various aspects and in various

lights so that nothing significant about it shall be overlooked--almost

as one might turn a stone over to see what its hidden side is like or

what is covered by it. _Thoughtfulness_ means, practically, the same

thing as careful attention; to give our mind to a subject is to give

heed to it, to take pains with it. In speaking of reflection, we

naturally use the words _weigh_, _ponder_, _deliberate_--terms implying

a certain delicate and scrupulous balancing of things against one

another. Closely related names are _scrutiny_, _examination_,

_consideration_, _inspection_--terms which imply close and careful

vision. Again, to think is to relate things to one another definitely,

to "put two and two together" as we say. Analogy with the accuracy and

definiteness of mathematical combinations gives us such expressions as

_calculate_, _reckon_, _account for_; and even _reason_ itself--_ratio_.

Caution, carefulness, thoroughness, definiteness, exactness,

orderliness, methodic arrangement, are, then, the traits by which we

mark off the logical from what is random and casual on one side, and

from what is academic and formal on the other.

[Sidenote: Whole object of intellectual education is formation of

logical disposition]

[Sidenote: False opposition of the logical and psychological]

No argument is needed to point out that the educator is concerned with

the logical in its practical and vital sense. Argument is perhaps needed

to show that the _intellectual_ (as distinct from the _moral_) _end of

education is entirely and only the logical in this sense_; _namely, the

formation of careful, alert, and thorough habits of thinking_. The chief

difficulty in the way of recognition of this principle is a false

conception of the relation between the psychological tendencies of an

individual and his logical achievements. If it be assumed--as it is so

frequently--that these have, intrinsically, nothing to do with each

other, then logical training is inevitably regarded as something foreign

and extraneous, something to be ingrafted upon the individual from

without, so that it is absurd to identify the object of education with

the development of logical power.

[Sidenote: Opposing the _natural_ to the logical]

The conception that the psychology of individuals has no intrinsic

connections with logical methods and results is held, curiously enough,

by two opposing schools of educational theory. To one school, the

_natural_[12] is primary and fundamental; and its tendency is to make

little of distinctly intellectual nurture. Its mottoes are freedom,

self-expression, individuality, spontaneity, play, interest, natural

unfolding, and so on. In its emphasis upon individual attitude and

activity, it sets slight store upon organized subject-matter, or the

material of study, and conceives _method_ to consist of various devices

for stimulating and evoking, in their natural order of growth, the

native potentialities of individuals.

[12] Denoting whatever has to do with the natural constitution and

functions of an individual.

[Sidenote: Neglect of the innate logical resources]

[Sidenote: Identification of logical with subject-matter, exclusively]

The other school estimates highly the value of the logical, but

conceives the natural tendency of individuals to be averse, or

at least indifferent, to logical achievement. It relies upon

_subject-matter_--upon matter already defined and classified. Method,

then, has to do with the devices by which these characteristics may be

imported into a mind naturally reluctant and rebellious. Hence its

mottoes are discipline, instruction, restraint, voluntary or conscious

effort, the necessity of tasks, and so on. From this point of view

studies, rather than attitudes and habits, embody the logical factor in

education. The mind becomes logical only by learning to conform to an

external subject-matter. To produce this conformity, the study should

first be analyzed (by text-book or teacher) into its logical elements;

then each of these elements should be defined; finally, all of the

elements should be arranged in series or classes according to logical

formulae or general principles. Then the pupil learns the definitions one

by one; and progressively adding one to another builds up the logical

system, and thereby is himself gradually imbued, from without, with

logical quality.

[Sidenote: Illustration from geography,]

This description will gain meaning through an illustration. Suppose the

subject is geography. The first thing is to give its definition, marking

it off from every other subject. Then the various abstract terms upon

which depends the scientific development of the science are stated and

defined one by one--pole, equator, ecliptic, zone,--from the simpler

units to the more complex which are formed out of them; then the more

concrete elements are taken in similar series: continent, island, coast,

promontory, cape, isthmus, peninsula, ocean, lake, coast, gulf, bay, and

so on. In acquiring this material, the mind is supposed not only to gain

important information, but, by accommodating itself to ready-made

logical definitions, generalizations, and classifications, gradually to

acquire logical habits.

[Sidenote: from drawing]