CHAPTER V
IS YOUR "THINKER" IN ORDER?
The ordinary supposition among educators as well as among the business-men of the world is that the "thinker" of the average student is not in order. This, we all "take" it, is one of the deepest of the objections to the present educational system—that it does not teach students to think for themselves. A truly educated man knows how to think, and, moreover, he has the process habituated and, therefore, in easy action. It is said with truth that the present school system does not educate as yet in this sense at all. As a school-boy said to Sir Gilbert Parker, "I am sick of information; I'd like to think a bit, but I haven't time. It's stuff me with things I learn to-day and forget to-morrow." Compare with this remark of a gamin in London that of Professor John Dewey, of Columbia University:—
"Any examination of the prevailing modes of instruction will show that the mere bulk of matter communicated in books and lectures tends to swamp the native and active interests operative in intelligent behavior and in the acquaintanceship it brings. There this matter remains unassimilated, unorganized, not really understood. It stands on a dead level, hostile to the selective arrangement characteristic of thinking."
These quotations express the opinion of all "thoughtful" students, and this condition is the same in the school systems of the whole world. A dictionary has facts and aplenty, but only man has thoughtful reason.
Read Emerson on "Self-Reliance ",—
"To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,—that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost, and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated Majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another."
The reform of the school system in this respect, that annual $800,000,000 system, is a matter of many years, but an individual may reform himself in this regard in a few weeks. He may learn to think, and "learn himself" more or less in this manner, indeed, he may keep his "thinker" in order:—
Every one of us has some kind of a "thinker," for no really feeble-minded person, probably, is reading this advice, and certainly no idiots—these last by definition have no "thinkers." In some cases our "thinkers" may be said to be atonic and small, and not of much use now. But they may be developed if we will to develop them. (These are the "thinkers" of the relatively stupid people.)
In some cases our "thinkers" are well developed, but rusty and creaky and dried out; these need a thorough cleaning and oiling and vigorous use. (These are the lazy students.)
In some cases the "thinkers" have parts which are likely to break down at any moment. (These are the illogical minds and the guessers.)
In some (in most) cases our "thinkers" are normal, but have the uncertain and difficult action of newness; they are not used nearly enough to make them run smoothly; they should. be cleaned with determination first of all, then oiled with intelligence and energy. (These are the average minds.)
To adopt a more biological metaphor, unused "thinkers", like all the other organs, tend to atrophy, and fibrosis or sclerosis is the neglectful result of inadequate action. On the other hand, it is as delightful as it is useful to take systematic exercise and so to become a strong or perhaps. even an intellectual athlete. But how few of the vast, hurrying, heedless throng of adolescents and of men and women can be made effectively to realize this! Yet the process, as well as the product, is a continual delight, and it is the most essential process in the mind's whole action. The factors of education are more numerous than many suppose, and each one requires thought and teaches thought:—the home, the schools, books, our associates, our vocation, the stage, travel, the state, the church—learning is a process of reaction to each of these. All nine factors contribute material for learning which is valuable more or less in proportion to the thought-fulness and activity with which it is allowed to act on the learning mind. Learning is a process of activity of personality, and develops in quality and quantity in proportion equally to the individual's inherent fitness and to the richness of his effective environment. Thought is this reaction or a part of it. This is an active receptivity; it is like the heat coming from a fire arising from oxygen and fuel—it is inevitable. Thought stands for INITIATIVE based on understanding and originality.
Girl- and women-readers must realize that this thinking process is less explicit and conscious in their minds in proportion as they are really feminine. The feminine mind "jumps at conclusions", has intuitions, as we say. Intuition has important educational bearings in the direction of economy and easy "learning."
If we may trust for educational purposes our general experience and the common and wide experience of numerous life observers who write fiction, there is now no acceptable reason for denying that this popular concept, intuition, is live and real, and worthy, therefore, of at least a brief scientific discussion. Some bolder psychologists and educators, certain of the vast educational importance of "the subconscious", the subsensory aspects of mind, go further and maintain that intuition is more characteristically feminine than masculine.
In general, it is one of the silent mysteries of mind why psychology does not more rapidly study the tertiary sexual characteristics. It is possible that some would maintain that this bottomless crevasse of sex, which so completely divides the entire living world into two opposite yet complementary halves, does not extend into the peaceful animistic realm of mind. For my part, however, I do not believe it, for I see, unless my vision be in vain, a forbiddingly large fraction removed from the human nature which we psychologists crave to understand were sexual mental differences smoothed out by some titanic and inchoate "drive" of some futuristic suffragism, omnimilitant in its powers. At any rate our present contention is that feminine intuition is a fact in need of study as an aid in economical learning.
In the briefest possible terms, too concise, indeed, to be thoroughly scientific, it seems that intuition perhaps has as its inherent character a fourfold nature—(1) A delicate and ill-realized affect or feeling-tone anent the intuited situation; (2) a more or less accurate process of comparison and inference, usually not at all consciously appreciated; (3) an understanding of the causal situation, often with much acuteness and with far-reaching wisdom. And (4) an effective instinct to trust the impression thus presented in the mind, the instinct in the adult already being long habitual.
At the base then of intuition stands solid and strong the appreciation of motivity, an interpretation of human purpose, an habitual and therefore automatic tendency to put ourselves in another's place, to make his problems as much our very own as if they were so. Oftentimes, of course, the situation involves the motivation of numerous persons, not alone of one, or an immediate comprehension even of a whole "social consciousness" itself. The educational quintessence of the intuitional process seems to be most always an appreciation of motivity, of cause, but more typically when in others than when in ourselves.
Accepting Professor H. C. Warren's factors of purposiveness (forethought or anticipation, assent, potency-feeling, the self-notion, and the sense of fitness) as adequate and keen, we may claim that intuition involves the appreciation by the intuiter of the potential purposive activity of the intuitee (if we may for convenience use such terms), the very essence of which activity is given to the former in ill-appreciated but none the less real adaptive, that is kinesthetic, terms—the index again of motor skill. The intuiter feels, in short, the action, the behavior which the other's attitude toward his environment properly demands on her part; and she takes it (subconsciously) for granted (on an hereditary-experience basis) that the natural behavior will occur—as, barring caprice, it will. Women, no more than men, have clairvoyant powers (so far as science is sure) on any basis other than that of their own personal or inherited experience. This experience seems to be adaptive, that is for psychology, predominantly kinesthetic and motor.
This kinesthetic motor criterion on which a person may intuitively grasp an "ejective" (personal) situation would seem to account for the emotional tone in the recognition, and still more surely for the understanding of its personal nature—two of our four suggested intuitional factors. It may be properly supposed not to account for the third factor, an ill-appreciated process of reasoning. The fourth factor, the habit of confidence in the intuitive process, does not, likewise, need further explanation; however important, it is like habituation elsewhere.
But it is worth noting for educative purposes, that the entire intuitional affair, save for its product, is one of the highest possible intelligence and at the same time typically subconscious. Certainly by the fostering of its elementary components—sense-discrimination, comparison, the simple feelings, understanding, the habit of listening to one's over-soul, as Emerson terms it—intuition is liable to development much to the aid of life-efficiency; it is a possible element of training for easy learning.
Intuition, then, and the comprehension of a total situation of whatsoever sort involving motive, which intuition implies, is in a way and in a degree a real criterion of real intelligence in its most significant values. From this deep way of looking at the matter, the feminine mind is more evolved, more intelligent, in short, than is the mind of the male. Obtuseness stands for relative lowness of human-grade or for abnormality; intuition for a high degree of that which mind is especially meant to serve—the safeguarding and the furtherance of the individual. From such considerations it would appear that intuition deserves far more study and consideration than thus far has been accorded to it by educational psychologists. It should be studied in the grade schools as a class experiment, and in the psychological laboratories as a topic fertile in substantial product.
Incidentally it should rejoice every schoolboy in the Land and Everyman that the biologic source of our very being, womanhood, undoubtedly is the richer of the two sexes in this intuition, this useful criterion of our common human yet always divine intelligence. Is not this richness a measure in a way of woman's superior intelligence? Women and girls relatively do not reason in the bald cold method of comparison, but their intellect "gets there just the same", often better indeed than that of man with his technical but mechanistic reason. For logic is only a thin and cold echo of the deep voice of the rich human intellect. Women have always instinctively trusted to the products of the subconscious thought in their souls. So have philosophers of the highest rank, for example Emerson.[1]
A recent example of the latter class is Henri Poincaré, recently dead, a great discoverer in mathematics, an astronomer, a well known writer and thinker in philosophy. An editorial in a medical journal[2] discusses at some length his use of thought in the subconscious mind, in part as follows:—
"The question how so great a mind works is extremely interesting. Poincaré has told the story of how he reached his great discovery of the Fuchsian functions. It was not reached all at once, but by several steps. The first and most important development came to him one evening when, contrary to his custom, having taken a cup of black coffee at dinner, he could not sleep and the idea of this new mathematical mode took form little by little under these unusual circumstances. The problems which were involved came clearly before his mind and seemed too difficult for solution; so gradually he put them away and succeeded in falling asleep. The successive steps of the solution came to him subsequently, not as the result of deliberate study of the problems, but long afterwards and under most diverse circumstances, at moments when he was not thinking about them. They came to him as flashes of light, almost inspirations, as it were,—once when he was just about to put his foot on the step of an omnibus, again when he was crossing a boulevard, a third time in the midst of a geologic excursion with some friends, when the conversation was about ordinary subjects and had no relation at all to mathematics.
"Ordinarily mathematics at least is supposed to be eminently intellectual and its developments are connected by the most rigid logic. It might be expected, then, that it would be only in the midst of deep thinking, even absorption of mind in mathematical subjects, that great new ideas would come; but Poincaré believed that it was a subconscious mind that solved the problems. His explanation of this, which resembles that so often heard with regard to the inspiration of the poet or the musician, is that certain thoughts are passing through the unconscious mind all the time, and that, as in day-dreaming, we are never without groups of thoughts. Whenever one of these thoughts proves to be a particularly beautiful or strikingly novel conception of some kind it attracts the attention of the conscious mind and then is retained. According to Poincaré's experience, then, like poetry and music, the sciences, including mathematics, owe their development not to the rational conscious mind so much as to the unconscious and involuntary faculties. There would seem to be a tireless force in man, a part of him and yet not a part of him, working, thinking, developing, which brings to the conscious entity, man, his best thoughts and discoveries. Poincaré, for all his genius, was a sane and simple father of a family; he himself taught his four children."
This is an example of subconscious thought in the constructive process which we have discussed in our third chapter as the constructive imagination. "Stop, look, and listen!" to your own minds. This is one secret of learning to think—one which women, heaven bless 'em, have known instinctively all along. Set your subconscious "thinker" going by deliberate, fixed, permanent intention, and then listen! Encourage it now and then by actively giving it full opportunity. Let us stop the over-stuffing of our minds, and thus give them every possible opportunity to work. We feed a furnace with coal to get heat from it, but some schools and some individual minds are forever putting facts into the mind but never providing place or time to use them. If thought be "the loved one" (as it might well become by association) the familiar quotation is very apt, much to the discredit of our present educational system:—"Never the time and the place and the loved one altogether!"
The nature of thought should receive brief attention. Thought is not revery, musing, fancy, day-dreaming, although most so-called thought is just this, a loose associated train of ideas or notions or fancies. True thought is intimately of the nature of the human reason; is more precious, more productive, "sterner stuff" than a more or less passive revery, for it involves the expenditure of force, as the psychological essence of humanity well might do. The most important element of thought is reasoning, although recall, association, and other processes are of value too. In principle, reasoning is extremely simple: it is but a comparison of things and then an inference from the comparison, what Lloyd Morgan has strikingly called "thinking the therefore." Thought, then, consists of two judgments; a comparison, and an inference.
We might perhaps develop somewhat the capability of intensive thinking by actual practice in these several mental processes. Since thought as a series of efforts (we are not discussing revery, which often certainly masquerades even in good company, under the better-sounding name of thought) consists of two deliberate (although perhaps subconscious) judgments, their careful discrimination, and then their comparison, with the essential, extraneous, mental process we term inference following, it is not unlikely that thinking of the more logical and mechanically productive kind would be furthered by the deliberate development of these intellectual powers separately. (1) In practice we might train and develop our power of judgment by making many carefully considered and delicate judgments on all kinds of propositions, thus laying a firm basis for the more productive forms of mental action. (2) We might, too, even by work as subject of experimentation in a psychological laboratory or by practice and effort in many other kinds of place, develop and train our sense-discrimination. Indeed this is a neglected important function of the elementary school, as we have already emphasized, that training of the senses, the power of delicate discrimination, the only basis of accurate judgment and comparison, which last is in turn the fundamental process of the intellect. (3) Development and training of the power of keen and novel inference is not so easily suggested as a practical practice-procedure, for we know little about it save in the most general terms:— that inference is a process of judgment based on a largely subconscious process of the association of ideas, the very essence of human mental activity in its ideational aspect. Obviously, inference is an advanced and more or less "neural" form of association within or between the neurones in the parts of the brain-cortex which are devoted to thought. We may at least suppose that if the preliminary processes be developed and made vigorous and habitual, the inferences would result more frequently and more usefully, leading to novel and so to more productive thought.
Learning and all mentation are related to that form of personal ability which we have denoted as skill. The judgment of comparison is, then, one of the basal mental processes at the bottom of all thinking that is properly so called. The following research[3] by the writer, on the discernment of likeness, is a simple discussion of the processes which subtend rational thought in the thinker's mind and brain.
The Discernment of Likeness and of Unlikeness
In particular the research aimed to help the analysis of the mental process by which we become aware of similarity and of dissimilarity. Its method is experimental and it reports the simplified laboratory-judgments as to the likeness and unlikeness experienced in the case of a series of visual forms. The experiments of the work were performed in the psychological laboratories of Columbia and of Harvard universities. The simple-enough apparatus employed consisted of the blots of ink previously described. From about five hundred of these largely chance ink-blots made on paper 4 cm. square and mounted on thick pasteboard of like size, one hundred were taken as they chanced to lie in a box, that is, quite at random. The backs of the blot-cards were numbered consecutively from one to one hundred for ready identification. Besides these, four other ink-blots were selected to constitute the norms with which the others were to be compared as to their respective likeness or unlikeness. A wire frame to hold fixed the norm-blot convenient to the subject's vision and a table on which the century of blot-cards could be arranged ten-square in numerical order completed the apparatus employed.
The subjects employed in this research were twenty in number; two were philosophical professors, one an instructor, and two assistants in psychology, while the rest, with one exception, were students in the two laboratories where the experiments were performed, the exception noted being a college graduate. The subjects were all males ranging in age between twenty and forty-three. The chief interest and work of one of the subjects lay in the art of music—a circumstance whose influence will be noted later on. The interests of the others were certainly sufficiently varied to prevent the occurrence of bias in any direction in their subjective reports, no one avowing or evincing any particular prejudice as regards the nature of the processes under inquiry. All the subjects employed were sufficiently familiar with psychological analysis to afford both their introspection and their subjective reports the requisite accuracy. Here, as nearly always, however, the chief stress was laid on actual reactions rather than on more or less uncertain and ambiguous mental images and ideas, on the principle that bodily reactions express better than other means, even to the subject himself, his real meaning and intention—a fact too often overlooked, perhaps, in the laboratory of psychology.
The method of experimentation in detail was simply as follows: The hundred blot-cards being placed in order ten-square on the table before the seated subject and the norm in its frame conveniently before his eyes and above the blots, he proceeded to select within fifteen minutes the ten blot-cards out of the hundred most similar in form or shape to the norm, and to place them one side arranged carefully and deliberately in the order of their judged similarity to the norm. Meanwhile the subject reported how he apperceived the norm and what he considered its most essential form—characteristics and peculiarities. These subjective notes were recorded and the numbers of the ten blots judged most like the norm, and in their chosen order. The time required for a selection satisfactory to the subject was also recorded, and at the end of the selection the reason why each of the ten had been preferred, concisely as possible. The process in the case of judgments as to unlikeness was precisely the same, with the appropriate change in intention to keep dissimilarity instead of similarity in mind. The subject was not allowed to turn any blot-card about or to observe the characters from more than one view-point, that, namely, directly in front, but no objection was made to orientation in imagination if the subject seemed impelled to so vary its meaning to himself. This was allowed for the sufficient reason that with characters so full of suggestive meaning as are many blots of ink it is impossible to prevent their adjustments in imagination without disturbing deeply the judging and selecting process. On this matter of position lay one of the interests of the experiments, for, in the complexity of psychic association, to turn a blot a few circular degrees is often to make it seem an entirely different object with quite different meaning for a particular percipient.
Altogether, about nine hundred judgments were recorded and explained, the details of these explanations from introspection on a basis of precise objective stimulus constituting an interesting study in themselves, which here we shall not touch upon. We shall be content to indicate the general nature of the judgments as a whole and the principles of likeness and unlikeness which these judgments, so far as they go, empirically demonstrate in the range of the experiments.
The nature of the apparatus employed is obviously such that statistical results are for the most part of little use and photographic reports of the judgments made would have to be so numerous as to be impracticable. Careful and extended study and comparison of the sets of blots selected by the various subjects, however, brings out several striking facts as to the mental process concerned, the most interesting of which are as follows:—
The average size of these visual objects was such that ocular contour-movements probably were not much concerned in perceiving them. The projections, to be sure, tend after a while to be counted in an indefinite sort of way and their general shapes and directions noted. The blots are, however, too small to need outlining and are at once apprehended as units, just as are long words familiar to us. Be that as it may, the most conspicuous criterion of likeness and of unlikeness alike in these selections was what we may call relative massiveness. If the norm-blot happened to be noted as massive or as attenuated or as a mixture of these two, selection was made accordingly. This appears continually in the results of the experiments. This difference was noted immediately in practically all the cases where animal associations did not occur, thus crowding it out. It implies, apparently, a fundamental criterion in comparison-judgments of form and gets its bodily basis in the relative number of retinal local signs bunched in the perception rather than in ocular contour-movements. This is apparently the most conspicuous of the sorts of "change of consciousness" which underlie our apprehension of likeness and unlikeness.
Another result of these judgments appears to be our excessive dependence on language-concepts for a clear awareness even of pure form. In almost every case the choices had their criteria of sameness or of difference sharply defined in words, expressed or not, of the subject. However pragmatic in their life-philosophy, all these subjects save one were obviously strong conceptualists. They made no progress in characterizing the norm-blot to themselves until words had arisen in their minds to make its character or characters definite and sharp. The sensational basis of the apperceiving process (a mass of retinal local signs plus a tendency to contour-movements) by itself led to no clear apperception of the blots. Whatever the confused experiences might be on perception of the blots, there was no clear notion of likeness or of unlikeness, no decided change in consciousness, until ideation had had its say. This would probably not be looked for in a set of subjects outside of college influence, where ideation is taught too often as the end-all and the be-all here. Indeed, the only subject who claimed to have a true feeling of likeness and of unlikeness was a student of music, naïve enough as a student of psychology. He too had the concepts associated with the respective blots, but he avowed a distinct feeling of similarity and of dissimilarity which persisted. It needs only a glance at the sets of blots chosen by him and compared with those of others to show that his choices were by far the most satisfactory of all the subjects' sets. The explanation is not afar off: Even these simple bluish-black forms in only two dimensions have so many characters that to specify one, or two, or three, and compare them by these leads to imperfect and misleading results. On the other hand, the "feeling" of likeness or of unlikeness implies a much wider acquaintance with the blots and is, therefore, the basis of a better comparison. Related here is obviously an important educational principle which he who runs may read.
These experiments, again, illustrate the high stage which symbolism has reached in our social mental process. In nearly every case the subject found difficulty in inhibiting the reproductive imagination of animals, starting from the norm and extending to the blots chosen as like or unlike it. This process was interesting, but, being foreign to the topic in hand, was excluded because it led to comparisons obviously artificial. It was, however, often only with difficulty that most of the subjects could be induced to perceive the characters as mere chance-blots of ink, as masses of black color filling in an absolutely meaningless outline on a bit of white paper. If this inhibition were not insisted on (as at first it was not) the subject compared imagined animals rather than blots. One man, for example, promptly said the norm was a bird and thereupon chose ten "birds" flying, standing, roosting, swimming, swans and eagles, storks and humming-birds. However, it was not difficult for the subjects to overcome this symbolic menagerie-habit, so to say, and to use other criteria then those suggested by the associative imagination.
The two preceding results from these simple experiments (namely, the highly conceptual, and highly symbolic, characters of the class of perceptions here concerned) lead to suggestions as to the subjectivity of likeness as a mental fact. One thinks of Bradley's surprising collection of "objects that do not exist" when one sees how various are the qualities ascribed to this set of objects. As a matter of fact, these differ, for the most part, only in mere outline, by which they may be arranged as like or as unlike. One tends pro tanto to lose faith in mere ideas raised in the idea-overburdened mind when out of a hundred blots compared with a norm one sees seventy-one chosen as "similar" to it. Three blots were chosen by each of seven subjects, one by six subjects, six by five subjects, seven by four subjects, ten by three, sixteen blots by two subjects, and twenty-six by only one subject—these numbers applying to one norm, but being of average sizes. When one laid out the sets chosen by the concept-criteria the differences in the blots often struck him more forcibly than did their sameness. Yet each subject had all the time he wished for his selection and made a deliberate choice, as deliberate at least as real life would usually allow of his making in comparing actual experiences. Only very rarely, moreover, would the actual objective similarity in life be as narrowly confined as in the conditions of these simple experiments.
Within the number of those subjects who chose their similar and dissimilar blots by ideal (rather than by affective) criteria, there is a considerable range of formal accuracy, dependent on the ideas employed. Some ideal criteria were obviously more essential than others and led to the selection of a set of blots evidently like each other and the norm. Ideal criteria gave more accurate results. in the dissimilarity choices than in the similarity choices. This is, as we should expect, on logical principles. The awareness of unlikeness is an easier, if not a simpler, process apparently than that of likeness, for the change of consciousness is greater and so easier to appreciate. At any rate, the sets of blots chosen as unlike the norm were much more certainly unlike it than were the "similar" blots chosen like it.
As we pass, it is not improper to note the indirect evidence afforded by these experimental results of the motivity and dynamism of even conceptual consciousness. Ignoring the larger questions as to understanding, there is here ample illustration that such a cognitional process as the comparison of bi-dimensional forms does not ordinarily find issue until the actual word symbolic of a concept is fairly clear in consciousness. If it gives the subject the impression that it "appears" out of his vague subconsciousness (as often is the case) that is another problem that need have here no further mention. This conscious-becoming of an actual word can mean nothing else, it seems, than the innervation of those muscles and glands. whose proper coördination would utter the word. Such dependence of an intellectual process as general as that of a judgment of likeness or of unlikeness upon the activity of the neuromuscular mechanism of speech is not any too frequently at hand. Here it can be taken for what it is worth in the doctrine of the relations of body and mind.
Were we to summarize and fuse the notions. inductively suggested by this little research we could emphasize that judgments of bi-dimensional forms, when not geometric, are more accurately made by "feeling"-criteria than by conceptual criteria. The subjects who paid most attention to the actual visual sensations (retinal and oculo-motor) as objectified in looking at the blots instead of thinking about them, made the best, that is, most similar and most dissimilar, selections. The former in choosing similar forms kept the change of consciousness at a minimum by their method, for they retained in mind a more or less true image of the norm. The latter, the conceptualists, on the contrary (but only after innervating for the word), replaced the original visual image with a more or less partial concept and repeated it in their choices, but more or less forgot meanwhile the shape of the norm. The practical application of this principle, familiar to psychologists, to affairs, for example in the taking and evaluation of evidence in legal trials, should not be further delayed, especially since rather numerous researches along various similar lines (that of Cattell, for example) have all pointed to the same really important fact that what we see or hear or feel is often determined as much from within as from without ourselves.
Another result of this work that may be mentioned is its emphasis on the practical value of affective impressions in comparison with knowledge that is purely cognitional. It is outside of the experimental results somewhat, of course, but it may be strongly believed that this principle is continually acting often to our disadvantage, and especially in education, in our relations with our generally experienced environment, and with each other. As demonstrably here, the learning mind, through too little attention to this matter, is led frequently to errors that might be often avoided did it allow greater and more nearly natural freedom to the sensational and especially to the affective aspects of our mental process. In education we are undoubtedly apt to overdo ideation and to underdo the affective phases of the developing mind. Greater objective activity in the free realms of feeling and less reliance on the "apperception-mass" would surely lead the child to see things as they are rather than as a more or less formal and hereditary association of ideas compels him to think them.
The one other result that appears most note-worthy of those suggested by this work is its evidence for the neuromuscular dynamic "basis" of conceptualization—evidence coming, it is true, perhaps not less from within than from without! These chance-characters as a rule have in them a minimum certainty of conceptual symbolism—that is, on the average, they are about as far away in shape from language-symbols as any forms that could be devised. None the less, as we have seen, they usually start some conceptual associations, more often, on the whole, than trains of imagination, and they start these associations, so to say, without a push, without giving them more than the needful minimum of bias in any one direction—they introduce the energy but do not guide its course. Under these circumstances the association-time and especially the wholly subconscious start is very long oftentimes. Often, as we have seen, the consciousness was to introspection a mere confused and scarcely conscious jumble of more or less unpleasant strains in and about the head, eventuating, however, sooner or later in a word clearly thought or even spoken aloud. In the usual form of word-association measurements, in the formerly so numerous researches on reaction-time, the symbol used as a stimulus was either a printed or a spoken language-symbol and therefore in the closest cerebral connection with the muscular innervations, etc., of language-expression as developed in the brain when the individual learned to understand and speak and write. In these cases, on the other hand, the stimuli were no such familiar symbols, practically part of the language-expression mechanism, but were rather almost unrelated stimuli, abstract, so to say, rather than concrete. None the less, after a time the speech-innervations were suitably set going.
It is hard to believe that this difficulty of language-association under these circumstances is other than the difficulty of making "new" pathways, combinations, in the expression-neurones of the brain. This means, probably, each time a new struggle through unaccustomed innervations of speech-muscles. There is apparently no other neurologic basis for the confusion and the delay. These last were both experiences unpleasant to the subject and tended, therefore, to be eliminated by repetition and habit, if it were possible; yet they were neither eliminated nor much shortened, at least within the limits of these experiments. Neurologically this is interesting, this slow and unpleasant fumbling around of a sense-impression among the infinite possibilities of cortical (and nuclear?) routes. It is interesting, too, in a broader way, philological and psychological, in so far as it suggests that, in the human mind as of old in the great empire, all roads, even the most unlikely trail of a chance ink-blot form, lead sooner or later into the (mostly muscular and epithelial) innervations of language-expression—the one function characteristic of humanity. As has already been suggested, these stimuli were as far as possible from language-symbols of any language, and the outcome of the association-process was, therefore, all the more striking and suggestive, however inferior the determination of likeness and unlikeness by this process as compared with the few cases where the cerebral association remained of the affective aspect.
Recent advancement in biochemistry and especially in neuro-metabolism has made possible suggestions more definite by far than ever before. as the real nature in scientific terms of these innumerable influences darting through the cerebral maze that psychologically we discuss as subconscious associations. However interesting, however, such speculations may be, the broader questions as to the relationship of mental "energies" to the forces we know as chemic and electric must outweigh in interest the purely physiologic problem. How can we designate for proximate scientific use the ultimate nature of the neurogram, the memory-trace, the endless and perhaps ineffaceable "vestigia" of ever unique experiences? And if we could and did "connote" them, should we not forthwith find it quite impossible to discriminate the energies we described from the thing we speak of as consciousness, with its sthenic and asthenic conditions, its dynamogeny, its varying qualities and quantities and durations, and the other numerous characters which it shares with the "somewhats" that even the avowed dualist (if he truly exists still) speaks of as energies? In fine, then, why do we not give up this two-faced terminology of a bygone time and speak the straight language that leads to clear thinking and to real knowledge in terms that are ultimate? To the writer it is unknown what proportion in general of the psychologically informed consider that ideation (as well as feeling and willing) is immediately inter-knit with ("dependent on") the innervation of the muscles and glands that would express the concerned ideas. One would almost assume that nearly all psychologists who know their physiology fairly well (they are none too numerous) would nowadays thus presume the basis of thought, for gradually the psychophysiologic chasm is narrowing, or, at least, many firm bridges are being thrown across it; perhaps before we fully realize it we shall look in vain for the chasm itself!
However all this may be (the "physiology" of ideation and thought), here in this research is adequate evidence, so far as it goes, that an idea comes plainly "into the mind", that it becomes clearly conscious, only with definite innervation and more or less deliberate and complete occurrence of the dynamic muscular movements that would express the concept in words. One can dimly feel the similarity or dissimilarity between two chance shapes, but in most persons, too many, perhaps, the feeling is useless and even oppressive, until definitely expressible in neuromuscular terms more definite and distinct than those of a feeling-tone: that is, articulated.
And this "articulation" in its turn depends upon a phase of neuro-musculo-glandular skill just as in the opposite direction, speaking logically, thought depends on comparisons, that is, to say it once more, on determinations of likeness and of unlikeness.
Professor J. H. Bair, of Philadelphia, sets out the reasoning process, systematic thought, in a simple and untechnical way which relieves logic of some of its familiar awe and unnaturalness:[4]—
"It is true that, even logic, in order that it may develop the mind in an efficient manner, must be based on concrete data. The order of the development toward thought is: first the child has impressions. Soon it recognizes likenesses and differences. The faculty of perception, recognition and discrimination appears. The child begins to associate and classify the likenesses. Assimilation or apperception takes place. When it classifies the likenesses, i.e., assorts them according to their characteristics, labeling is inevitable and thus the concept is formed.
"Every time the child puts an object in a class he passes judgment. 'This is a pencil. He mentally assimilates this object with a class. Each class of objects has a boundary drawn around it, and in passing judgment the child decides whether the object belongs inside that boundary or not. Judgment involves, therefore, perception and discrimination. Judgment is unavoidably exercised where perception and discrimination take place, and discrimination and perception are impossible except with reference to the objective. In formal exercises of judgment, discrimination and perception are not exercised and this shows the futility of working beyond the bounds of concrete experience with children.
"Reasoning is but one step in advance of judgment and implies judgment and all that judgment implies. And so if it can be shown that judgment formally trained is less fruitful than when developed incidentally in the ordinary processes of observation is it not equally true that training in observation is the best groundwork for reasoning?
"If we take the following illustration of reasoning: 'All men are mortal. John is a man. Therefore John is mortal.' Is not the whole process a case of refined observation? This can be illustrated by circles. Mortal beings have a large boundary, within which are a great many groups having smaller boundaries. One of these groups is man. Now if John falls within the circle of mankind, which fact is ascertained by judgment through comparison then he must also fall within the larger circle mortal beings. The point I wish to make in this analysis is that teachers should make it their primary object first, to stock the mind with facts to develop the power of observation and discrimination which are fundamentally involved in all higher forms of thought and secondly, where the higher faculties are exercised, to confine their activity within the realm of the stock of facts in the mind. If this point is complied with in primary education it is certain that the results will be satisfactory. . . .
"The fundamental reason why children fail in their power to construct is not because the logical faculty is immature. But it is a fact of development that the logical processes do not function efficiently until the mind has a stock of information which constitutes the material upon which the logical faculty can work. The savage, or ignorant person, as well as the child ofttimes arrive at conclusions which are invalid because their concepts are indefinite and their stock of information limited. The primitive man, when he hears wind whistling through the boughs of a tree, thinks there is a man or a spirit up there making the sound. This conclusion he reaches because of his notion that sound is always produced by animate beings. To modify and to improve his reasoning his information must be exact and his ideas changed.
"The fact that in the Middle Ages arguments were advanced and conclusions supported which are no more tenable is no evidence that in these days the reasoning power is more subtly developed. Quite to the contrary the thinking powers of modern scholars are probably less exercised and developed than those of those early thinkers. What makes present day thinking more efficient is the fact that for several generations the students have devoted themselves to observing and collecting facts, not to getting acquainted with nature. A century ago the whole spirit of science was to gather facts from nature first hand. Earlier thinkers had many arbitrary notions and preformed ideas about things. When the ideas upon which a conclusion is based are not right no amount of intellectual legerdemain will make the conclusion right.
"To lay the foundation for sound thinking the power of observation and discrimination must be constantly exercised and developed. Childhood is for training the senses. Its principal school exercises should be observing, examining, handling, comparing and reproducing. The foundation for the intellect is laid in this manner."
This or something similar assuredly is the essence of thought. It is the most productive of processes because it alone of all mental processes produces something new and rational. Ingenuity, originality, invention, and discovery in part rest often wholly on this simple (?) process of inferring something from the results obtained by comparing two things. If love "makes the world go round", thought makes it go around its orbit, makes it revolve and so advance. If love makes the days worth while, thought, as well as love, helps so to make the years.
Let us not forget the educationally important matter of the complexes of thought and imagination and feeling already discussed in the treatment on the imagination. The mind works as much in thinking as it does in feeling, or in willing on the symbolic plan. Morton Prince, in his enlightening "The Unconscious", has summarized certain of the conditions of complex- or symbol-formation, memorizing, and recall, in a way well worth quotation:—
"Though the main teleological function of the unconscious, so far as it represents acquired dispositions, is to provide the material for conscious memory and conscious processes, in order that the organism may be consciously guided in its reactions by experience, yet under certain conditions neurographic residua ["brain-traces"] can function as a subconscious process which may be unconscious, i.e. , without being accompanied by conscious equivalents. The latter were classed as a sub-order of subconscious processes. We saw reason for believing that any neurogram deposited by life's experience can, given certain other factors, thus function subsconsciously, either autonomously or as a factor in a larger mechanism embracing both conscious and unconscious elements; and that this was peculiarly the case when the neurogram was organized with an emotional disposition or instinct. The impulsive force of the latter gives energy to the former and enables it to be an active factor in determining behaviour. The organism may then be subconsciously governed in its reactions to the environment. . . .
"We found evidence showing that a conserved idea may undergo subconscious incubation and elaboration, and that subconscious processes may acquire a marked degree of autonomy, may determine or inhibit conscious processes of thought, solve problems, enter into conflicts, and in various modes produce all sorts of psychological phenomena, (hallucinations, impulsive phenomena, aboulia, amnesia, dissociation of personality, etc.) . . .
"Evidence has been adduced to show that life's experiences, and therefore acquired dispositions, tend to become organized into groups. The latter, termed for descriptive purposes neurograms, thereby acquire a functional unity; and they may become compounded into larger functioning groups, or complexes, and still larger systems of neurograms. Whether their origin is remembered or not they become a part of the personality. Such complexes and systems play an important part by determining mental and bodily behavior. Amongst other things they tend to determine the points of view, the attitudes of mind, the individual and social conscience, judgments, and the like, and, as large systems, may become 'sides to one's character."
This is the very latest scientific word on thought and ideas as they persist in the mind, but for the most part just outside of the conscious process, immersed deep in that truly "Wundtian myth", the stream of mind. This store of ideas, of thoughts, unlike most other stores, loses nothing by being drawn upon. On the other hand, it can be added to indefinitely without any crowding, for the useless material is continually being put into the scrap-pile—forgotten.
In discussing learning to think, there are six practical points to be noted: (1) a realization of the necessity and the joy of thought to education and to success; (2) development of interests as various as possible, provided they be not too diverse and too numerous at the same time; (3) an abundance of clear ideas ("concepts"), especially of relationship; (4) a habit of concentrated attention along more or less "rational" or logical lines; (5) a thought-habit developed by practice (writing, debating, reflection), and (6) the opportunity for thought, (time and relative solitude).
The realization of the necessity and the delight of thought. The average boy and girl has no way of learning that what counts most is this thought, this initiative, this imagination. Experience alone (sometimes precept!) will prove this to him. But observe the advertisements of the efficiency schools! Without a doubt experience shows overwhelmingly that just this chiefly makes the difference between a narrow life of wages and the broader life supplied by a salary. Everyone has more or less information, but only a few use it. in thought and so do things which are new, or do old things in new ways—which is the next best accomplishment.
Development of interests. In a previous chapter the absolute necessity of interest for learning has been pointed out. The necessity is still surer for thought, for true wisdom, for real education. If we develop interest in any subject, the subconscious will think it out by association, by the aid of the imagination, if given a chance, while we are doing something else. This involves, as we have seen repeatedly, an affect or feeling-tone to furnish the motive power.
An abundance of clear ideas, especially ideas of relationship. The relation of language is immediate here, as has been pointed out recently by Dr. A. A. Berle, in the second chapter of his interesting "Teaching in the Home", already quoted in the discussion of books and their educative use. Harvard College has recently made an extensive investigation tending to develop the study of English along this basal line of intimate relationship to our primal and dominant intelligence. Ideas of relation are especially essential; by their very nature they tend actively to associate educatively, and their elaboration should be a systematic part of all school work. The habit of the use of thesauri (dictionaries of synonyms and antonyms) is easily. acquired, and there is an amazing interest in the relations of verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs—things, their qualities, what they do, and how. Knowledge about these very relations is essential. Especially important, then, are these books of synonyms and antonyms. When the habit of using them has been acquired, they do much to develop thought, as well as clearness of expression and literary style; they help the mind to work logically and systematically.
For emphasis it is worth while repeating that words are dynamic and make up language and, moreover, they serve to connect it with the brain and thereby with the remainder of the body and the rest of the individual's kinetic world. Words, then, are the indispensable handles of our human thinking, symbols of our energy-expense, and so of our humanity itself. The closeness and the depth of this dynamic relation are worth strong emphasis, for its general educative importance is supreme.
Professor Max Müller was undoubtedly the farthest- and deepest-seeing of all who have searched the depths of human speech. It is to his writings the reader may best turn who wishes a knowledge of the philosophy of words. "We arrive in the end", says he, "at roots, and every one of these expresses a general, not an individual, idea. Every name, if we analyze it, contains a predicate by which the object to which the name applies was known." ("Science of Language", London, 1861, Vol. I, Page 356.) Language-root; general idea; predicate; bodily action relating the personality to its kinetic environment, thus becomes the logical series of ideas linking speech, skill, and intelligence. Language is the dynamic index of a world of energy in relation to ourselves, and the kinesthetic sensations are the more immediate personal and mental index of this dynamic relationship.
Here once more, and more explicitly still, perhaps, the reader may see for himself the necessity of what we have termed "skill" (complete bodily control) for clear thinking. Here obviously is the basis, or part of it, of the undoubted heredity of talent "mental" as well as "bodily." Normal living fosters skill because right-living means good health, plenty of sleep, abundant nourishing food; and the generations hand down its results. And skill, in our sense, for the reasons suggested just above, fosters language; and therefore thought; and therefore intelligence; and therefore, generally, real success; and therefore, finally, happiness. This concatenation, this chain of life, is as certain as the great sun's energy in our muscles, and physical education will one day learn to make it clear and certain to everyone.
The habit of concentrated attention is necessary in thought. This concentration should be for short periods along lines not disagreeable to the human rationality. Concentration sinks ideas more deeply into the brain—how we do not know as yet and cannot imagine. Attention, either reflex or voluntary, however exactly it may act, is certainly essential, but save in cases of exceptional individual interest, such as that in discoveries, emergencies, inventions, and the like, attention can be concentrated properly for only short periods of time. Professor W. H. Pyle, of the University of Missouri, as a result of experiments on practice work, in using a devised set of characters instead of the ordinary letters, found that the adult's ideal period for concentrated effort of attention is only thirty minutes. He says:[5]—
"The object of this investigation was to determine the proper length of period and the proper distribution of periods in drill or habit-formation. The experiments were begun in February, 1910, and have been continued to the present time; the subjects—at all times as many as eight or ten—were mostly seniors in the University of Missouri, and the practice has been in type-writing, shorthand, memory work and in learning to write in arbitrary characters instead of with the ordinary alphabet. The method was to give the subjects practice for a certain length of time, requiring all to use the same procedure, then the subjects were divided into two groups. One group was then given practice using the same procedure as before, while the other group used the method then being tested. The first or control served to give a measure of ability of the subjects when using the same method. After this method was perfected, the only material used was the arbitrary alphabets which seemed best to serve the purposes of the experiment.
"The results, in brief, are as follows: On the whole, 30 minutes seems to be the best length of practice period. In some cases, shorter periods seem a trifle more advantageous, especially in the early stage of practice or habituation. But, generally speaking, one gets ample returns in habituation for practicing up to the point of fatigue, which, in our experiments proves to be 30 or 40 minutes for most subjects. Eighty minutes, the longest period used, proved decidedly disadvantageous, especially in the early stage of habituation. Generally speaking, daily practice seems to give better returns than the same number of periods distributed on alternate days or in twice-a-day periods. However, there is some evidence that in the early stage of habituation, the second practice on the same day gives good returns and that, later on, alternate days may be the best distribution. While practicing twice a day does not give, on the average, as good returns as once a day, if we count the same number of periods, it gives much better returns if we count the number of days, the subjects, of course, having twice as much practice as those working once a day. That is to say, if one does not count the time, it pays to practice twice a day, at least till we gain considerable efficiency."
Professor Daniel Starch of the University of Wisconsin, in 1910, studied the comparative economy of different periods of work, and he summarizes his findings thus:—
"The purpose of this experiment was to determine the relation of the length and distribution of periods of work to economy in learning. The learning consisted in associating numbers with letters. These associations were formed while transcribing prose into numbers.
"One group of persons worked 10 minutes at a time twice a day for six days. The second group worked 20 minutes at a time once a day for six days. The third group worked 40 minutes at a time every other day for six days.
"The records show that the 10-minute group improved more rapidly than the 20-minute group and the latter improved much more rapidly than the 40-minute group. The 20-minute group transcribed on the average 31 more letters in every five minutes than the 40-minute group and the 10-minute group transcribed on the average ten more letters in every five minutes than the 20-minute group."
Thus we see that ideas "stick" best when they are impressed in periods of only thirty minutes or less, two or three times a day. We may use this as a rule for thinking—it means the importance of keeping the brain always rested. This is far more essential than the saving of mere time. Muscles, especially in gross masses, may be fatigued without nervous harm, (in fact this kind of fatigue makes for sound, restful sleep) but never the nerves. There are nine thousand million neurons or nerve-units, weighing only a few grams altogether, in the human cortex: from this may be seen how minute and subtly delicate they are. We should not fail to appreciate this fear of their easy liability to fatigue, for it is a very real educational matter. At the same time the brain may be trained so we need not coddle it. Most people undoubtedly do coddle their brains, but usually from human laziness, not because deeply wise in hygiene!
Habituation to the thinking process. Habit makes thinking much easier than it is at first. Habituation makes thought a continuous subconscious process. Just as we know that worry is worse for the health than an occasional fright; and just as a steady drinker suffers more pathologic harm than the man who goes off on an occasional drunken spree; so, on the other hand, the continuous use of thought most impresses the brain. The habit of learning-interest must be acquired; but this mental attitude soon becomes more or less permanent. Habituations of all kinds, of course, are more or less accumulative. It is "the first step that counts" we have often heard, and all habit grows with what it feeds upon. Thought is a habit, subconscious like all of them. In order to acquire the thinking-habit, other habits may have to be bent[6] or even, sometimes, broken. (a) The general principle is that in proportion to the stability of the nervous system of the individual, according to age, sex, or vigor, may a habit be suddenly bent down out of existence. (b) A second process of displacing a habit is busy normality. And a third, (c) is replacement with some other more useful habit. In general, students who are apt to read these pages can break short off whatever habits conflict with the thinking or the study habit.
A sixth and last element in easy thinking is opportunity for thought, in time and in relative solitude. Many of us are "too busy" (but with far less productive things) really to live or really to think. We should make time, make solitude, for thought. People are often much too continuously together, especially young people. Each individual is separate, and occasionally requires individual separate self-communion. Most of us should room alone, or else manage in some way to spend considerable time alone in the forest, along the seashore or brookside, or even in our own rooms. The gentle exercise of a stroll or of a slow bicycle ride which requires little attention for itself is an ideal stimulant and occasion for thinking—unless the attention wanders outwardly too much. The time to be alone now and then should be had somehow. Oftentimes schools are too crowded to allow their students to think. We can properly afford, even as a matter of dollars and cents, to take an extra year in school, if by doing so we can learn to think; the time so used is a rich and certain investment, not an expense. In default of a better time, a half hour after waking and before rising is a good time in which to think. Indeed, many people have their most productive and original thoughts occur to them at just this time in the morning, early, after a good night's brain rest, for the unconscious grist of the night then tends to become conscious. The nervous system will generally be found thoughtful if an opportunity be given it.
This advice to make thought-time at any cost is well considered, not an idle notion. It is wholly practicable and expedient. In fact, it is very often a matter of dollars and cents and of advancement, and not one only of developing our soul and personality, which much of the world has not yet learned to value at its worth. Robert. Browning's familiar three stanzas express this so well that we repeat them here. They are from "Rabbi Ben Ezra", a poem of efficiency, of human life, as well as of God:—
"Not on the vulgar mass
Called 'work' must sentence pass,
Things done that took the eye and had the price;
O'er which, from level stand,
The low world laid its hand,
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:
But all the world's coarse thumb
And fingers failed to plumb,
So passed in making up the main account;
All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure,
That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount:
Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke through language and escaped;
All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped."
Thought, like almost nothing else in the whole world, makes for both of these, for human personality, and for success as measured by dollars and cents.
Rules for thinking are wholly unnecessary even to a young student. The normal human mind, always knows how, as part of its normality. Possibly no other animal knows how, but man knows how, and so do all normal boys and girls. The only explicit rule for thinking is, it seems, Acquire the habit! In plain language it is laziness, that more than anything else prevents this habit of thought, for with all its interest and delight to learn to think, to become a thinker, is not always easy in this resistless world which never stops its hurry. Some really do not know how to think, but only, we may be certain, because they have never tried to learn. The vast majority are just simply too lazy to put their thinkers in order and to use them. And this is so, curiously enough, notwithstanding that constructive mental action is a great delight as well as by far the most practically productive process of the mind. A few of my readers may here be "thinking" or even saying in annoyance, "I did not buy this book to be accused of laziness." No indeed, you did not, but some of you did buy it to learn how to learn easily, and one of the most essential things to be learned for this purpose is the utter incompatibility of learning and indolence. Were it otherwise, learning would be of relatively little financial use, for every common millionaire would be a thinker, and each whilom tramp a millionaire.
He who really thinks can never become conceited over his supposed learning. We may adopt the traditional colored preacher's attempt to make massive the idea of infinity despite the simile's inconsistencies on close examination: imagine a small bird hopping to and fro from Boston to San Francisco, carrying at each westward trip a mouthful of water from the Atlantic into the Pacific Ocean: when the Atlantic at last was empty—this was this man's suggestion of an infinitely future time. But so is human thought in comparison with the eternal miracle of Reality. Its eternal interest is a vast delight, and the interest "grows with what it feeds upon." Our thought and imagination grow best when the mind is fresh, for then the neurons are stimulated and actuated by the desire for activity. Sleep and play are as essential for thinking as for other biologic things. In thought, more than in any other mode of action, the mind makes profit out of sudden gleams of light, out of inspirations; and play often stimulates the imagination and leads to the development of something new in thought.
The time of day in relation to the quality and the quantity of the work accomplished in thinking has much practical importance in the long run, and despite widely-varying personal habits of work and sleep and play the scientific status of the matter has worth while practical interest. Professor W. H. Heck, of the University of Virginia, has studied the matter by grading the arithmetical reasoning of 255 girls and 212 boys (average age 14.2 years) in a grammar school. "The number of examples done in the afternoon was 0.68 per cent greater than in the morning; the per cent of examples right in the afternoon was 3.22 per cent. less than in the morning." This result has been corroborated by like work done at Lynchburg and in New York. Thus we see that while the speed of such thinking in the afternoon is practically that of the forenoon, the accuracy is distinctly less. I have the impression derived both from personal experience and from sundry researches, that the most productive hours in the whole twenty-four, qualitatively and quantitatively together, are the hours from 10:30 Α.Μ. το 12:30 P.M. Then certainly the quality is at its highest, and this is particularly true of creative work—thought in its broadest sense.
For the integration of our thinking in a broad way and for making our opinions and ideas at once more coherent, more intensive, and more conscious, no method exceeds in usefulness that of writing definite articles or essays, each with some topic-title not too narrow. Obviously for learning purposes this is the often-hated "composition" of our early school-life—hated oftentimes just because its writing involved the completion of a certain definite amount of real mental activity in a definite time. This is a kind of debt to our education which may not be, like "Micawber's" note-debts, paid always with other notes, other promises to do. Writing, as Francis Bacon reminds us, "maketh an exact man," but writing, too, makes a boy or girl, as well as a man, not only consciously aware of what is known and thought in his more or less hidden mind, but makes that more precise and its relations round about more real. And also more numerous. In other words, writing much on set topics not too narrow, clarifies and extends our ideas and makes them also more dynamic. Nothing else, unless it be active oral debate, can do this either so economically or so well.
- ↑ The author has further suggested the nature of intuition in an article in the Psychological Review, XXIII, 6, 1916.
- ↑ Journal Am. Medical Assoc., LIX, 18, 2 Nov., 1912.
- ↑ Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods. February third, 1910. The volume "Kinesthesia" in Moffatt, Yard, & Co.'s "Our Senses and What They Mean to Us" Series, 1917-18, ten volumes, will set forth the philosophy of skill and of ability in general.
- ↑ University of Colorado Investigations, III, 2, April, 1906.
- ↑ Paper before the American Psychological Association in Cleveland, 1913.
- ↑ See for a recent discussion of habit-bending G. V. N. Dearborn: "Habit and Malocclusion", Medical Record, New York, 88, 18, 3 Oct. 1915, 727-732; and "An Ideal Gift for Your Children", American Physical Education Review, XXI, 7, 1916.