that a man no sooner adapts himself to one set of conditions than he must readapt himself to others. Those who cannot do so fall behind the more versatile. One of the largest manufacturers of engines failed to grasp the significance of the steam-turbine. The management sat still while other companies brought it to a successful commercial basis."

Methods of doing the day's work also bring their problems of organization and co-ordination. There is an enormous amount of overlapping of duties and responsibilities. A large furniture manufactory spent several days trying to determine the responsibility for failure to do a given piece of work satisfactorily and promptly. Each department concerned blamed another, and in the end no one was satisfied. Such inefficiency produces continual financial loss and frequent dissatisfaction both within the organization and with customers.

Success in business, as in other matters, requires that conflicts be adjusted and difficulties overcome. Now the solution may be delayed until the problem is thought out. Then the several ways that suggest themselves may be thought through so as to determine how they would work out in practice. Again, one of the more promising solutions may be put to the actual test of a preliminary trial to determine what errors had been overlooked. As a matter of fact, however, a man commonly uses neither of these methods. The idea in mind is the somewhat general notion of success, and the first method that seems to meet the exigencies of the situation is usually adopted. But the exigencies that are met are the immediate ones, those that are pressing for solution at the moment. The result is that the more remote, related conflicts are not adjusted. This was the case in the overlapping of responsibilities in the furniture factory to which we have referred.

When we ask what determines the selection of the plan or method of meeting difficulties that arise in business or

in the professions, we come upon an important fact in human psychology. The obstacle that confronts us must be overcome, and the method employed is commonly the first one that promises to attain the desired result. The situation is urgent and there is always a tendency to meet it with an economical use of energy. This frugality of energy does not indicate intentional slighting of difficulties. It is a phase of unreflective adaptation to them. In the acquisition of skill, where we shall see it playing a leading rôle, this adaptation is so strictly unconscious that the learner is not aware of the particular method which he has adopted for meeting a difficulty until he finds himself using it with more or less success.

Now it is significant for efficiency that the method unconsciously adopted, in the unreflective adaptation of which we have been speaking, is not always the best. Out of six young men learning the juggler's feat of tossing two balls into the air, catching and tossing one before the other reached the hand, the writer found that only two adopted successful devices for avoiding "collisions" in the air, which was the difficulty they were trying to meet. The other four used methods which soon ended in failure. All six found themselves employing devices before they were aware of the attempt. The plan unconsciously adopted to meet an emergency, in acts of skill, is usually the one requiring the least expenditure of energy. A very small matter may be the determining cause. Unselected actions follow the line of least resistance. So a business

man attends to a matter of detail. It must be done at once, as it is an integral part of what he is engaged upon. To explain the matter to a clerk would require more time and energy at the moment than to do it himself. Consequently, he attends to the matter, and soon attention to details has become a habit. This adaptation is quite as unconscious as those which have been noted in acts of muscular skill. In both cases they are attempts to meet

quickly an emergency, and the most available methodthe easiest at the moment—is unconsciously employed.

This mode of overcoming obstacles is the "trial-anderror" method. The term was first used to designate the manner in which animals attack a problem. They do not stop to think the matter over, but go right at it, trying one way after another in rapid succession until they either obtain the desired result or become discouraged and stop. The means which they employ are determined by specific inheritance or individual experience. If a dog, for example, within an enclosure sees food he will probably first stick his head between the bars; next he is likely to jump up and paw the bars; then he does something else until he finally hits upon the right combination for getting out and obtaining the meat. Afterward, by degrees, the useless actions are eliminated,1 and the dog performs only those acts necessary to secure the food."

It is commonly assumed that there is a sharp distinction in this respect between the actions of animals and man. The one does not reason, it is said, and the other does. As a matter of fact, man does not reason as much as he thinks he does. Perhaps this explains why he calls himself a reasoning animal. He reasons so seldom that he likes to call attention to the little that he does. Children, for example, in learning to write use the trial-and-error method in determining the posture of the body and the movements in the writing. Of course it is used unconsciously, as in the other instances of which we have spoken. This is always the case in unreflective unconsciousadaptation. The finger movement is the quickest way of getting results, and since it attains the desired end passably well, it is used unless the teacher is insistent. That the arm movement in the long run is less fatiguing and produces a better writer does not avail unless the beginner

1 For a full treatment of this subject, see Behavior, by John B. Watson, pp. 256 ff.

is held rigidly to instructions. In children and adults alike, if the first method meets the difficulty fairly well, it is likely to be adopted without further search for a better way. This is the explanation of slovenly habits in acts of skill, in language, literary style, and in other things. But it goes further than this.

Unreflective unconscious-adaptation was the method of progress during the early history of the race. Problems were not foreseen. There was no outlook beyond immediate needs. Difficulties were met by the simplest possible adjustment, and the environment was the compelling, directing force. It was the trial-and-error method, without interpretation, without clarifying judgment. Through long years some working principles were acquired, but they were gained at an enormous cost of time and life, and the final result was, at best, an approximate and temporary makeshift. Learning the curative qualities of roots and herbs is an example of the method and of the value of the knowledge gained by it. Indeed, this way of making progress under the influence of prevailing beliefs and conditions, as well as the adjustment of knowledge and method to them, is admirably illustrated by the entire history of the art of medicine which preceded the scientific period.

Systems of medicine if the philosophical and religious view of diseases and their cures may be so dignified—followed one another as philosophy and religion changed.1 Medicine, like other beliefs, rested on authority. Systems were respectable or disreputable. Massaria, of Padua, in the sixteenth century, would rather be wrong with Galen than right with any other physician. One system was used until another was thought to be better, though at that time the trial-and-error judgment was guided more by the underlying philosophical belief than by the results

1 Superstition in Medicine, by Hugo Magnus, 1908. The Relation of Medicine to Philosophy, by R. O. Moon, 1909.

of the treatment. It could not be otherwise, since accurate records were not kept. One uncriticised authority ruled until superseded by another. But through it all the importance of finding the cause of diseases was unrecognized. There was no problem here. The mind, then as now, played its rôle in cures, and so we have Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing.1

Naturally in the past no other method of progress than that of uncriticised trial and error could be expected. The scientific method of investigation and experimentation was unknown. Consequently, there was nothing to stimulate thought. Besides, thinking has never been popular. It is too difficult. So any means of escaping from it has always been welcome. And when, as in the earlier days, besides the pains natural to originality, the thinker risked his life, new ideas were rarely made secure until the old had been worn out by the corroding effect of time. In the past this had its justification, but in the present it is without excuse. Out of a long period of progress by unconscious trial and error some truths emerge, but they are secured at an enormous cost of time and suffering. Blind trial and error is the animal and racial way. Unfortunately, it continues to be the chief method of modern man. Unreflective adaptation is followed to-day when obstacles are not so overwhelming as to force deliberation.

but

Man rarely stops to think out the method of procedure unless the difficulty is so great that no plan of action immediately presents itself. A momentarily insoluble problem is needed to make him think. But this is not all that is necessary. There must not only be a problem, the individual must see it. The common supposition that problems are recognized is an error. Usually they pass unnoticed. If an illustration of so obvious a fact of human behavior is needed, advertising is a case in point. Thousands of dollars are spent for newspaper, street-car, and

1 By George B. Cutten, 1911.