reader has doubtless plenty of opportunity to test the truth of this description for himself. Yet we must not upbraid ourselves for childishness in too harsh terms, since, as we shall see, thinking of this type is the only kind for us to fall back upon when the attraction or practical pressure which determines other types of conscious experience fails to hold us.

tion and acquisi

tion of

In the second place, there was æsthetic appreciation. This form Esthetic of conscious experience is sufficiently identified in the illustration. appreciaEnjoyment of the beauties that surround us in nature and art is surely universal enough for no one to have difficulty distinguishing it from mere reverie, and it would as surely be violat- informaing common usage to deny the pertinence to it of the term tion thinking. A third type is exemplified in our securing information from the tablet. Here we were adding to our previous store of knowledge by absorbing a set of meanings expressed in the symbols of language, whose relation to the facts of experience which they denote has long since been familiar. For this reason such appropriation of knowledge offered by others may be accomplished so simply as to involve no conscious effort, yet it requires concentration of attention during the reading, and no one would deny it to be a form of thinking specifically different from those already enumerated.

of a

problem

But it is clear that a fourth kind of thinking is revealed in The our illustration, very different from any of these three. In this solution case a problem urgently demanding solution has come upon us. Thinking gains at once in vividness and intensity. All our conscious resources are mobilized in an effort to reach a solution. The occurrence of the problem fixes a goal which we desire very much to reach-in this particular case, of course, the saving of the imperilled boy. Now a desired goal we express in common language as a purpose, and the purpose which appears when a problem thus commands our attention controls the ensuing activity until the problem either is solved or else baffles us so completely that we give it up as impossible, at least for the present. It is precisely the conscious or intellectual side of this ensuing activity that constitutes the type of thinking we are now analyzing. The purpose fixed by the problem guides our think

Another classifi

cation

Which forms may be improved?

ing, and the outcome of successive steps of the thinking process guides the subsequent action that is needed. A more detailed analysis of how this process develops will occupy us in chapter four. Suffice it here to note that the problem first breaks up into its component parts, which are then concentrated upon in order—as when I first raised the question whether to take the children ashore, and later considered how best to get the boy aboard—that in facing each part, suggestions of how it might be solved come to mind, which are then compared with the observed facts of the situation and with one another, and that when one of them appears in the light of this comparison sufficiently superior to the others to command action we proceed to act on it, and are then ready to face in the same way the next phase of the difficulty. Thinking of this fourth type is thus essentially a conscious tool for helping us meet the difficulties and surmount the perplexities against which life from time to time throws us. Following recent custom, we shall give it the special name of reflective thinking.

It is worth observing, in passing, that there is a distinction of another sort made in common life which cuts across each of the four types above noted. This is the distinction between thinking in its widest sense as including everything that enters conscious life, and thinking as an inner train of ideas, opposed to what is directly present to the senses. Thus to the query "Did you say you saw So-and-so yesterday?" the answer might be, "No, I only happened to think of him." In connection with the matter of verification we shall have later to return to this distinction, but for the present we may neglect it.

Now let us approach the four types of thinking whose distinction has above occupied us, with a leading question.

Which of them is it possible to try to improve? The student who undertakes such a study as ours knows in a general way that it has to do with the correction of our thinking. Obviously the first type stands in a very different class from the other three in this respect. We might, of course, consider it desirable to improve our daydreaming, but we see at once that, strictly speaking, it would be quite impossible to do so. For the applica

tion of conscious effort in the attempt to improve it would transform it so that it would no longer be daydreaming. The very essence of reverie is the free, unchecked and undirected play of sensation and imagination, in response to the mood of the moment. The only way it could be improved would be to make it more pliable to a controlling purpose. But such a controlling purpose would bring about thinking of the fourth type rather than the first. On the other hand, the other three forms of thinking would all seem to be improvable in some respects. There are difficult questions to be answered as to just what these respects are, and to what extent improvement can be justly expected, but at least there seems no a priori reason against its possibility. We commonly assume, surely, that it is possible to better our appreciation of beauty, our ability to assimilate readily the experience of others, and our capacity for effective solution of the problems which face us, and we point out cases where such improvement seems concretely to have been attained.

mean to

improve

our

But just what would it mean to improve our thinking? It What has been said above that improvement would involve rendering does it it more pliable to a controlling purpose. Let us consider more exactly what is contained in this assertion. And since the second and third forms of thinking brought out in our analysis carry thinka certain ambiguity at this point, let us turn to the form that we ing? have called reflective thinking. A decisive contrast appears at once between this and daydreaming which is worth examination. Daydreams issue in no belief which claims to correspond to some real fact in our world, and on which further action is based. Now beliefs may be right or wrong, correct or incorrect. And from the nature of the resulting belief the adjectives are referred back by a natural metonymy to the process which culminated in them-thinking is accordingly right or wrong, correct or incorrect, true or false, as it proceeds or does not proceed in the manner appropriate to attaining true beliefs. Well, it is always (is it not?) matters to which these adjectives apply that we have in mind when we think of improving them. To improve anything is to make it correct instead of incorrect, right instead of wrong, or at least to bring about a definite change in this

direction. But reverie is certainly thinking of a sort which quite evades such description. It is not concerned with beliefs at all. It is spontaneous imaginative play, to which real facts as such are quite irrelevant. A reverie may be good or bad, entertaining or insipid, dramatic or dull, pretty or ugly, wild or sober, but it can hardly be right or wrong. When I pictured the battle of the fishes across the submerged bars of the lake, I did not really believe that such battles actually took place. If I had done so I should have been a proper candidate for admission to an insane asylum, for the commonest forms of insanity consist precisely in mistaking reveries for real events. It was merely a fancy momentarily entertaining, to which the succession of bars as really perceived merely gave the sensory clue. To be sane and normal is to be able to hold fast the distinction between such fancies and genuine beliefs about the objects in question, such as, for example, that the fourth bar from shore is about six feet below the surface of the water. To make judgments of this sort, upon which one is willing to commit himself to action when occasion arises, is clearly to think in a way which may be right or wrong, and one very different from mere daydreaming. For there surely is some distance below the surface of the water which, if believed of the fourth bar, constitutes it a true, or right, or correct belief.

But discussion need not be expanded to show that the fourth type of thinking is occupied with beliefs about real things and gains its sole value and justification from its ability to yield and use correct beliefs. For the purpose which is fixed by the nature of the problem, and which controls the process of reflection, can only be attained by securing true beliefs instead of alternative false ones, either as themselves furnishing the answer to the problem (when the latter is theoretical in nature), or as necessary intellectual guides to its solution (when it is practical rather than theoretical). Thus when we were engaged in rescuing the boy from his barrel, the happy solution of our problem depended on our having correct beliefs, first as to the advisability of waiting to land the children before going 1Except perhaps in the moral sense of these terms.

after him, second as to his calm or excited condition, and third as to the steadiness of his craft. On true beliefs about these things the action fulfilling our purpose depended, and accordingly thinking was solely occupied in bringing to light relevant suggestions on just these points and weighing the evidence for their truth or falsity. It is exactly the close connection of thinking of this urgent, problem-solving sort with beliefs about real things that makes it possible for it to be right or wrong thinking. If it attains correct beliefs, on which whatever further action is demanded may dependably be based, it is right thinking; if it fails to do so it is wrong thinking. With two qualifications, indeed, the above statement will serve well as a definition. It must be qualified because of the facts that sometimes factors upset our calculations which could not at all be foreseen in advance, and that often the time available for reflection is not sufficient to yield the best solution that would otherwise be possible. Hence we may in the light of them define right thinking as that which proceeds in the manner shown by experience to date to be most likely to reach correctness in the beliefs about real things at which it aims, in so far as made possible by the time available for decision.

We are now prepared to return briefly to the ambiguity in types two and three, which we have temporarily neglected. Under what conditions is such thinking susceptible of correctness or incorrectness?

æsthetic

To take type two first, if we mean by the appreciative activity In there described mere personal absorption in the attractiveness what of the scene, such as could be expressed in the words, "I like sense is this," or "This looks pretty to me," the adjectives right- apprecianess and wrongness are surely just as irrelevant as in the case tion of daydreaming. It is simply an immediate fact, not a belief. right It could not be false without ceasing to exist, and, therefore, or wrong? as not appealing to evidence, but resting solely on its own character as real, it could not be true, either. But if in the experience we are endeavoring to apply an objective standard, such as would be expressed by the words, "This is beautiful," meaning that others must find it so as well as we, then clearly