How We Think quotes

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.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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]

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.

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;

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

(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.

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 blasé from overexcitement, wooden from routine, fossilized through dogmatic instruction, or dissipated by random exercise upon trivial things.

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."

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.

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 …

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.

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."

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;

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.

(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 mind that habitually exhibits skill in divisions, definitions, generalizations, and systematic recapitulations no longer needs training in logical methods.

But it is absurd to suppose that a mind which needs training because it cannot perform these operations can begin where the expert mind stops.

The logical from the standpoint of subject-matter represents the goal, the last term of training, not the point of departure.

The difficulties that present themselves within the development of an experience are, however, to be cherished by the educator, not minimized, for they are the natural stimuli to reflective inquiry.

Freedom does not consist in keeping up uninterrupted and unimpeded external activity, but is something achieved through conquering, by personal reflection, a way out of the difficulties that prevent an immediate overflow and a spontaneous success.

(b) The method that emphasizes the psychological and natural, but yet fails to see what an important part of the natural tendencies is constituted at every period of growth by curiosity, inference, and the desire to test, cannot secure a natural development.

At present, the notion is current that childhood is almost entirely unreflective—a period of mere sensory, motor, and memory development, while adolescence suddenly brings the manifestation of thought and reason.

Adolescence is not, however, a synonym for magic.

Doubtless youth should bring with it an enlargement of the horizon of childhood, a susceptibility to larger concerns and issues, a more generous and a more general standpoint toward nature and social life.

In the case of a physician this proceeding is known as diagnosis, but a similar inspection is required in every novel and complicated situation to prevent rushing to a conclusion.

The essence of critical thinking is suspended judgment; and the essence of this suspense is inquiry to determine the nature of the problem before proceeding to attempts at its solution.

This, more than any other thing, transforms mere inference into tested inference, suggested conclusions into proof.

Reasoning has the same effect upon a suggested solution as more intimate and extensive observation has upon the original problem. Acceptance of the suggestion in its first form is prevented by looking into it more thoroughly.

Conjectures that seem plausible at first sight are often found unfit or even absurd when their full consequences are traced out.

Even when reasoning out the bearings of a supposition does not lead to rejection, it develops the idea into a form in which it is more apposite to the problem.

This double movement to and from a meaning may occur, however, in a casual, uncritical way, or in a cautious and regulated manner.

To think means, in any case, to bridge a gap in experience, to bind together facts or deeds otherwise isolated.

But we may make only a hurried jump from one consideration to another, allowing our aversion to mental disquietude to override the gaps; or, we may insist upon noting the road traveled in making connections.

Accordingly, points of unlikeness are as important as points of likeness among the cases examined.

Comparison, without contrast, does not amount to anything logically.

In the degree in which other cases observed or remembered merely duplicate the case in question, we are no better off for purposes of inference than if we had permitted our single original fact to dictate a conclusion.

Attention is not wasted upon features which though conspicuous have nothing to do with the case; it is concentrated upon just those traits which are out of the way and hence require explanation.

A question well put is half answered; i.e. a difficulty clearly apprehended is likely to suggest its own solution,—while a vague and miscellaneous perception of the problem leads to groping and fumbling.

Deductive systems are necessary in order to put the question in a fruitful form.

All parts of an experience are equally present, but they are very far from being of equal value as signs or as evidences.

Nor is there any tag or label on any trait saying: "This is important," or "This is trivial."

Nor is intensity, or vividness or conspicuousness, a safe measure of indicative and proving value. The glaring thing may be totally insignificant in this particular situation, and the key to the understanding of the whole matter may be modest or hidden (compare p. 74).

Nor is there any tag or label on any trait saying: "This is important," or "This is trivial." Nor is intensity, or vividness or conspicuousness, a safe measure of indicative and proving value.

The glaring thing may be totally insignificant in this particular situation, and the key to the understanding of the whole matter may be modest or hidden (compare p. 74).

Features that are not significant are distracting; they proffer their claims to be regarded as clues and cues to interpretation, while traits that are significant do not appear on the surface at all.

If one is not able to estimate wisely what is relevant to the interpretation of a given perplexing or doubtful issue, it avails little that arduous learning has built up a large stock of concepts.

For learning is not wisdom; information does not guarantee good judgment.

Memory may provide an antiseptic refrigerator in which to store a stock of meanings for future use, but judgment selects and adopts the one used in a given emergency—and without an emergency (some crisis, slight or great) there is no call for judgment.

There may be a vivid image and no idea; or there may be a fleeting, obscure image and yet an idea, if that image performs the function of instigating and directing the observation and relation of facts.

Logical ideas are like keys which are shaping with reference to opening a lock.

Pike, separated by a glass partition from the fish upon which they ordinarily prey, will—so it is said—butt their heads against the glass until it is literally beaten into them that they cannot get at their food.

You are then perplexed and incited to think out, to hunt for, some explanation of the apparently meaningless occurrence. If you find something that accounts for the performance, it gets meaning; you come to understand it.

As intelligent beings, we presume the existence of meaning, and its absence is an anomaly.

Hence, if it should turn out that the person merely meant to inform you that there was a scrap of paper on the sidewalk, or that paper existed somewhere in the universe, you would think him crazy or yourself the victim of a poor joke.

We reflect in order that we may get hold of the full and adequate significance of what happens. Nevertheless, something must be already understood, the mind must be in possession of some meaning which it has mastered, or else thinking is impossible.

We think in order to grasp meaning, but none the less every extension of knowledge makes us aware of blind and opaque spots, where with less knowledge all had seemed obvious and natural.

A scientist brought into a new district will find many things that he does not understand, where the native savage or rustic will be wholly oblivious to any meanings beyond those directly apparent.

Our chief difficulty in answering this question lies in the thoroughness with which the lesson of familiar things has been learnt.

Thought can more easily traverse an unexplored region than it can undo what has been so thoroughly done as to be ingrained in unconscious habit.

We apprehend chairs, tables, books, trees, horses, clouds, stars, rain, so promptly and directly that it is hard to realize that as meanings they had once to be acquired,—the meanings are now so much parts of the things themselves.

All strangers of another race proverbially look alike to the visiting foreigner. Only gross differences of size or color are perceived by an outsider in a flock of sheep, each of which is perfectly individualized to the shepherd.

A diffusive blur and an indiscriminately shifting suction characterize what we do not understand.

The problem of the acquisition of meaning by things, or (stated in another way) of forming habits of simple apprehension, is thus the problem of introducing (i) definiteness and distinction and (ii) consistency or stability of meaning into what is otherwise vague and wavering.

§ 5. Definition and Organization of Meanings

A being that cannot understand at all is at least protected from mis-understandings.

But beings that get knowledge by means of inferring and interpreting, by judging what things signify in relation to one another, are constantly exposed to the danger of mis-apprehension, mis-understanding, mis-taking—taking a thing amiss. A constant source of misunderstanding and mistake is indefiniteness of meaning.

Through vagueness of meaning we misunderstand other people, things, and ourselves; through its ambiguity we distort and pervert. Conscious distortion of meaning may be enjoyed as nonsense; erroneous meanings, if clear-cut, may be followed up and got rid of.

But vague meanings are too gelatinous to offer matter for analysis, and too pulpy to afford support to other beliefs.

They evade testing and responsibility. Vagueness disguises the unconscious mixing together of different meanings, and facilitates the substitution of one meaning for another, and covers up the failure to have any precise meaning at all.

Actually, all dealing with things, even the child's, is immersed in inferences; things are clothed by the suggestions they arouse, and are significant as challenges to interpretation or as evidences to substantiate a belief.

Nothing could be more unnatural than instruction in things without thought; in sense-perceptions without judgments based upon them.

And if the abstract to which we are to proceed denotes thought apart from things, the goal recommended is formal and empty, for effective thought always refers, more or less directly, to things.

Things such as sticks and stones, meat and potatoes, houses and trees, are such constant features of the environment of which we have to take account in order to live, that their important meanings are soon learnt, and indissolubly associated with objects.

We are acquainted with a thing (or it is familiar to us) when we have so much to do with it that its strange and unexpected corners are rubbed off.

The necessities of social intercourse convey to adults a like concreteness upon such terms as taxes, elections, wages, the law, and so on.

Truly practical men give their minds free play about a subject without asking too closely at every point for the advantage to be gained; exclusive preoccupation with matters of use and application so narrows the horizon as in the long run to defeat itself.

It does not pay to tether one's thoughts to the post of use with too short a rope.

Power in action requires some largeness and imaginativeness of vision. Men must at least have enough interest in thinking for the sake of thinking to escape the limits of routine and custom.

exclusive preoccupation with matters of use and application so narrows the horizon as in the long run to defeat itself. It does not pay to tether one's thoughts to the post of use with too short a rope.

Power in action requires some largeness and imaginativeness of vision.

Men must at least have enough interest in thinking for the sake of thinking to escape the limits of routine and custom.

But even the most reliable beliefs of this type fail when they confront the novel. Since they rest upon past uniformities, they are useless when further experience departs in any considerable measure from ancient incident and wonted precedent.

Empirical inference follows the grooves and ruts that custom wears, and has no track to follow when the groove disappears.

So important is this aspect of the matter that Clifford found the difference between ordinary skill and scientific thought right here.

Certain men or classes of men come to be the accepted guardians and transmitters—instructors—of established doctrines. To question the beliefs is to question their authority; to accept the beliefs is evidence of loyalty to the powers that be, a proof of good citizenship.

Passivity, docility, acquiescence, come to be primal intellectual virtues.

Facts and events presenting novelty and variety are slighted, or are sheared down till they fit into the Procrustean bed of habitual belief. Inquiry and doubt are silenced by citation of ancient laws or a multitude of miscellaneous and unsifted cases.

(c) The change of attitude from conservative reliance upon the past, upon routine and custom, to faith in progress through the intelligent regulation of existing conditions, is, of course, the reflex of the scientific method of experimentation.

The empirical method inevitably magnifies the influences of the past; the experimental method throws into relief the possibilities of the future.

The empirical method says, "Wait till there is a sufficient number of cases;" the experimental method says, "Produce the cases." The former depends upon nature's accidentally happening to present us with certain conjunctions of circumstances;

The empirical method inevitably magnifies the influences of the past; the experimental method throws into relief the possibilities of the future.

The empirical method says, "Wait till there is a sufficient number of cases;" the experimental method says, "Produce the cases."

The former depends upon nature's accidentally happening to present us with certain conjunctions of circumstances; the latter deliberately and intentionally endeavors to bring about the conjunction. By this method the notion of progress secures scientific warrant.

These stimuli lose nothing of their direct urgency and clamorous insistency when the thinking power develops; and yet thinking demands the subordination of the immediate stimulus to the remote and distant.

The feeble and the minute may be of much greater importance than the glaring and the big.

The latter may be signs of a force that is already exhausting itself; the former may indicate the beginnings of a process in which the whole fortune of the individual is involved.

In short, the term experience may be interpreted either with reference to the empirical or the experimental attitude of mind.

Experience is not a rigid and closed thing; it is vital, and hence growing.

When dominated by the past, by custom and routine, it is often opposed to the reasonable, the thoughtful. But experience also includes the reflection that sets us free from the limiting influence of sense, appetite, and tradition.

In this way, a world of meanings, a store of concepts (so fundamental to all intellectual achievement), is defined and built up. Moreover, not only do meanings thus become familiar acquaintances, but they are organized, arranged in groups, made to cohere in connected ways.

A play and a story blend insensibly into each other.

The most fanciful plays of children rarely lose all touch with the mutual fitness and pertinency of various meanings to one another; the "freest" plays observe some principles of coherence and unification. They have a beginning, middle, and end.

she reacted not to the stimulus sensibly present, but to the meaning suggested by the sense object. So children use a stone for a table, leaves for plates, acorns for cups. So they use their dolls, their trains, their blocks, their other toys.

In manipulating them, they are living not with the physical things, but in the large world of meanings, natural and social, evoked by these things.

So when children play horse, play store, play house or making calls, they are subordinating the physically present to the ideally signified. In this way, a world of meanings, a store of concepts (so fundamental to all intellectual achievement), is defined and built up.

There is, then, nothing mysterious or mystical in the discovery made by Plato and remade by Froebel that play is the chief, almost the only, mode of education for the child in the years of later infancy.

Playfulness is a more important consideration than play.

The former is an attitude of mind; the latter is a passing outward manifestation of this attitude. When things are treated simply as vehicles of suggestion, what is suggested overrides the thing. Hence the playful attitude is one of freedom.

It signifies that the person is not content longer to accept and to act upon the meanings that things suggest, but demands congruity of meaning with the things themselves. In the natural course of growth, children come to find irresponsible make-believe plays inadequate.

A fiction is too easy a way out to afford content.

There is not enough stimulus to call forth satisfactory mental response. When this point is reached, the ideas that things suggest must be applied to the things with some regard to fitness.

There are several fallacies in this way of thinking. (a)

The healthy imagination deals not with the unreal, but with the mental realization of what is suggested.

Its exercise is not a flight into the purely fanciful and ideal, but a method of expanding and filling in what is real. To the child the homely activities going on about him are not utilitarian devices for accomplishing physical ends;

Their life is more united and more wholesome. To suppose that activities customarily performed by adults only under the pressure of utility may not be done perfectly freely and joyously by children indicates a lack of imagination.

Not the thing done but the quality of mind that goes into the doing settles what is utilitarian and what is unconstrained and educative.

The history of culture shows that mankind's scientific knowledge and technical abilities have developed, especially in all their earlier stages, out of the fundamental problems of life. Anatomy and physiology grew out of the practical needs of keeping healthy and active;

Gestures, pictures, monuments, visual images, finger movements—anything consciously employed as a sign is, logically, language. To say that language is necessary for thinking is to say that signs are necessary.

Thought deals not with bare things, but with their meanings, their suggestions; and meanings, in order to be apprehended, must be embodied in sensible and particular existences.

Without meaning, things are nothing but blind stimuli or chance sources of pleasure and pain; and since meanings are not themselves tangible things, they must be anchored by attachment to some physical existence.

It is hardly surprising that savages attach a magic efficacy to words.

To name anything is to give it a title; to dignify and honor it by raising it from a mere physical occurrence to a meaning that is distinct and permanent.

To know the names of people and things and to be able to manipulate these names is, in savage lore, to be in possession of their dignity and worth, to master them.

Since intellectual life depends on possession of a store of meanings, the importance of language as a tool of preserving meanings cannot be overstated.

To be sure, the method of storage is not wholly aseptic; words often corrupt and modify the meanings they are supposed to keep intact, but liability to infection is a price paid by every living thing for the privilege of living.

(c) When a meaning is detached and fixed by a sign, it is possible to use that meaning in a new context and situation. This transfer and reapplication is the key to all judgment and inference.

To be able to use the past to judge and infer the new and unknown implies that, although the past thing has gone, its meaning abides in such a way as to be applicable in determining the character of the new.

Speech forms are our great carriers: the easy-running vehicles by which meanings are transported from experiences that no longer concern us to those that are as yet dark and dubious.

II. Organization of Meanings. In emphasizing the importance of signs in relation to specific meanings, we have overlooked another aspect, equally valuable. Signs not only mark off specific or individual meanings, but they are also instruments of grouping meanings in relation to one another.

while, as a matter of fact, adults and children alike are capable of using even precise verbal formulæ with only the vaguest and most confused sense of what they mean.

Genuine ignorance is more profitable because likely to be accompanied by humility, curiosity, and open-mindedness; while ability to repeat catch-phrases, cant terms, familiar propositions, gives the conceit of learning and coats the mind with a varnish waterproof to new ideas.

(ii) Again, although new combinations of words without the intervention of physical things may supply new ideas, there are limits to this possibility. Lazy inertness causes individuals to accept ideas that have currency about them without personal inquiry and testing.

We must note also the great difference between flow of words and command of language.

Volubility is not necessarily a sign of a large vocabulary; much talking or even ready speech is quite compatible with moving round and round in a circle of moderate radius.

Most schoolrooms suffer from a lack of materials and appliances save perhaps books—and even these are "written down" to the supposed capacity, or incapacity, of children. Occasion and demand for an enriched vocabulary are accordingly restricted.

Thinking is an ordering of subject-matter with reference to discovering what it signifies or indicates.

Thinking no more exists apart from this arranging of subject-matter than digestion occurs apart from the assimilating of food.

The way in which the subject-matter is furnished marks, therefore, a fundamental point. If the subject-matter is provided in too scanty or too profuse fashion, if it comes in disordered array or in isolated scraps, the effect upon habits of thought is detrimental.

Observation is to be discriminated from recognition, or perception of what is familiar. The identification of something already understood is, indeed, an indispensable function of further investigation (ante, p. 119); but it is relatively automatic and passive, while observation proper is searching and deliberate.

Recognition refers to the already mastered; observation is concerned with mastering the unknown.

The common notions that perception is like writing on a blank piece of paper, or like impressing an image on the mind as a seal is imprinted on wax or as a picture is formed on a photographic plate (notions that have played a disastrous …

I. They rest upon the sound assumption that observation is an active process.

Observation is exploration, inquiry for the sake of discovering something previously hidden and unknown, this something being needed in order to reach some end, practical or theoretical.

Observation is to be discriminated from recognition, or perception of what is familiar. The identification of something already understood is, indeed, an indispensable function of further investigation (ante, p. 119); but it is relatively automatic and passive, while observation proper is searching and deliberate.

Alertness of observation is at its height wherever there is "plot interest." Why? Because of the balanced combination of the old and the new, of the familiar and the unexpected.

We hang on the lips of the story-teller because of the element of mental suspense.

Alternatives are suggested, but are left ambiguous, so that our whole being questions: What befell next? Which way did things turn out?

Something is going to come of what is present to the sense, but just what is doubtful.

The plot is unfolding toward success or failure, but just when or how is uncertain.

Hence the keen and tense observation of conditions and results that attends constructive manual operations. Where the subject-matter is of a more impersonal sort, the same principle of movement toward a dénouement may apply.

His originality is not incompatible with large use of materials and suggestions contributed by others. Originality means personal interest in the question, personal initiative in turning over the suggestions furnished by others, and sincerity in following them out to a tested conclusion.

Literally, the phrase "Think for yourself" is tautological; any thinking is thinking for one's self.

(iii) The material furnished by way of information should be relevant to a question that is vital in the student's own experience. What has been said about the evil of observations that begin and end in themselves may be transferred without change to communicated learning.

When the feeling of a genuine perplexity lays hold of any mind (no matter how the feeling arises), that mind is alert and inquiring, because stimulated from within.

The shock, the bite, of a question will force the mind to go wherever it is capable of going, better than will the most ingenious pedagogical devices unaccompanied by this mental ardor.

It is the sense of a problem that forces the mind to a survey and recall of the past to discover what the question means and how it may be dealt with.

To insist too minutely upon turning over habitual dispositions into conscious ideas is to interfere with their best workings. Some factors of familiar experience must indeed be brought to conscious recognition, just as transplanting is necessary for the best growth of some plants.

But it is fatal to be forever digging up either experiences or plants to see how they are getting along.

Constraint, self-consciousness, embarrassment, are the consequence of too much conscious refurbishing of familiar experiences.

The metaphors of digestion and assimilation, that so readily occur to mind in connection with rational elaboration, are highly instructive. A silent, uninterrupted working-over of considerations by comparing and weighing alternative suggestions, is indispensable for the development of coherent and compact conclusions.

Reasoning is no more akin to disputing or arguing, or to the abrupt seizing and dropping of suggestions, than digestion is to a noisy champing of the jaws.

The teacher must secure opportunity for leisurely mental digestion.

In short, pains should be taken to see that the object on which thought centers is typical: material being typical when, although individual or specific, it is such as readily and fruitfully suggests the principles of an entire class of facts.

No sane person begins to think about rivers wholesale or at large.

He begins with the one river that has presented some puzzling trait.

The principle is one self-contained thing; its use is another and independent thing. When this divorce occurs, principles become fossilized and rigid; they lose their inherent vitality, their self-impelling power.

A true conception is a moving idea, and it seeks outlet, or application to the interpretation of particulars and the guidance of action, as naturally as water runs downhill.

In fine, just as reflective thought requires particular facts of observation and events of action for its origination, so it also requires particular facts and deeds for its own consummation. "Glittering generalities" are inert because they are spurious.

To pry into the familiar, the usual, the automatic, simply for the sake of making it conscious, simply for the sake of formulating it, is both an impertinent interference, and a source of boredom.

To be forced to dwell consciously upon the accustomed is the essence of ennui; to pursue methods of instruction that have that tendency is deliberately to cultivate lack of interest.

On the other hand, what has been said in criticism of merely routine forms of skill, what has been said about the importance of having a genuine problem, of introducing the novel, and of reaching a deposit of general meaning weighs on the other side …

… exclude the novel for the sake of prompt skill, to avoid obstacles for the sake of averting errors, is as detrimental as to try to get pupils to formulate everything they know and to state every step of the process employed in getting a result.

Where the shoe pinches, analytic examination is indicated.

When a topic is to be clinched so that knowledge of it will carry over into an effective resource in further topics, conscious condensation and summarizing are imperative.

in the later stages, conscious formulation and review may be encouraged. Projection and reflection, going directly ahead and turning back in scrutiny, should alternate.

Unconsciousness gives spontaneity and freshness; consciousness, conviction and control.

§ 2. Process and Product

The sequence of deeds, images, emotions, suffices on its own account. In work, the end holds attention and controls the notice given to means. Since the difference is one of direction of interest, the contrast is one of emphasis, not of cleavage.

When comparative prominence in consciousness of activity or outcome is transformed into isolation of one from the other, play degenerates into fooling, and work into drudgery.

By "fooling" we understand a series of disconnected temporary overflows of energy dependent upon whim and accident.

But when it is excessive in amount, dissipation and disintegration follow; and the only way of preventing this consequence is to make regard for results enter into even the freest play activity.

Exclusive interest in the result alters work to drudgery.

For by drudgery is meant those activities in which the interest in the outcome does not suffuse the means of getting the result. Whenever a piece of work becomes drudgery, the process of doing loses all value for the doer;

However, the argument that children should be kept doing drudgery-tasks because thereby they acquire power to be faithful to distasteful duties, is wholly fallacious.

Repulsion, shirking, and evasion are the consequences of having the repulsive imposed—not loyal love of duty.

Willingness to work for ends by means of acts not naturally attractive is best attained by securing such an appreciation of the value of the end that a sense of its value is transferred to its means of accomplishment.

That the obverse is true is perhaps sufficiently signalized in the fact that fooling is so near to foolishness.

To be playful and serious at the same time is possible, and it defines the ideal mental condition.

Absence of dogmatism and prejudice, presence of intellectual curiosity and flexibility, are manifest in the free play of the mind upon a topic.

Successful portrayals of children have always made their wistful intentness at least as obvious as their lack of worry for the morrow.

To live in the present is compatible with condensation of far-reaching meanings in the present.

Such enrichment of the present for its own sake is the just heritage of childhood and the best insurer of future growth.

For this, there is good reason: to devote attention to the old, when new circumstances are constantly arising to which we should adjust ourselves, would be wasteful and dangerous.

Thought must be reserved for the new, the precarious, the problematic.

Hence the mental constraint, the sense of being lost, that comes to pupils when they are invited to turn their thoughts upon that with which they are already familiar.

Thought must be reserved for the new, the precarious, the problematic. Hence the mental constraint, the sense of being lost, that comes to pupils when they are invited to turn their thoughts upon that with which they are already familiar.

The old, the near, the accustomed, is not that to which but that with which we attend; it does not furnish the material of a problem, but of its solution.

The last sentence has brought us to the balancing of new and old, of the far and that close by, involved in reflection. The more remote supplies the stimulus and the motive; the nearer at hand furnishes the point of approach and the available resources.

This principle may also be stated in this form: the best thinking occurs when the easy and the difficult are duly proportioned to each other. The easy and the familiar are equivalents, as are the strange and the difficult.

Too much that is easy gives no ground for inquiry; too much of the hard renders inquiry hopeless.

The necessity of the interaction of the near and the far follows directly from the nature of thinking. Where there is thought, something present suggests and indicates something absent.

Clear insight into the remote, the absent, the obscure is its aim. History, literature, and geography, the principles of science, nay, even geometry and arithmetic, are full of matters that must be imaginatively realized if they are realized at all.

Imagination supplements and deepens observation; only when it turns into the fanciful does it become a substitute for observation and lose logical force.

A final exemplification of the required balance between near and far is found in the relation that obtains between the narrower field of experience realized in an individual's own contact with persons and things, and the wider experience of the race that may become his …

Let the facts be presented so as to stimulate imagination, and culture ensues naturally enough. The converse is equally true. The imaginative is not necessarily the imaginary; that is, the unreal.

The proper function of imagination is vision of realities that cannot be exhibited under existing conditions of sense-perception.

Clear insight into the remote, the absent, the obscure is its aim. History, literature, and geography, the principles of science, nay, even geometry and arithmetic, are full of matters that must be imaginatively realized if they are realized at all. Imagination supplements and deepens observation;

The instructor ceases and the teacher begins at the point where communicated matter stimulates into fuller and more significant life that which has entered by the strait and narrow gate of sense-perception and motor activity.

Genuine communication involves contagion; its name should not be taken in vain by terming communication that which produces no community of thought and purpose between the child and the race of which he is the heir.

Abstract, 135-144 Abstraction, 155 f. Action, activity, activities, 46, 140 f., 157-169, 190 f. Active attitude and the concept, 128 Analysis, 111-115, 152 f.; in education, 112 Apperception, 199; apperceptive masses, 203 Application, 129 f., 212 f. Apprehension, 119 f.; see Understanding.