CHAPTER II

THINKING AND ACTING

WE have seen that the man who would be efficient should strive to control the external conditions to which, sooner or later, he will inevitably adapt himself. We will assume then that the external conditions have been well planned with reference to efficiency-that the stage is set, so to speak. The next step is the organization of effective mental habits, and foremost among these, perhaps, is the subtle process called thinking. Suppose we pause a moment to correct a rather wide-spread error.

Thinking is not a spontaneous process, like breathing. To be sure, ideas come into the mind and are succeeded by others that have some sort of connection with the first. But this is not necessarily thinking in the proper sense. Mere succession of things thought of even related things -need not be thinking. There are many ways in which things and their ideas may be related. Some of these ways have significant meaning under given conditions, and others have not. Thinking implies seeing real relations, not those that are fanciful or artificial; and these relations must lead somewhere. Some consequence should follow them. This consequence becomes a body of knowledge, perhaps a belief. Thinking also finds the reasons for a belief, if it is well grounded, and, if not, it exposes the insecure foundation.

Evidently, then, mere association of ideas does not constitute thinking. The test is in the kind of associated ideas that we have. Ideas may have no more significance than is disclosed in the prattle of infants. A few illustra

tions will indicate the frequency of insignificant associations incorrectly dignified as "thoughts."

A "well-read" woman, for example, on hearing some one speak of the barren, degenerating lives of those in the slums, replied: "They should have good books to read, like those of Thackeray and George Eliot." And again, the manager of a large manufacturing plant on being told that the laborers in his mills were dragging out a joyless, hopeless existence, working ten hours a day six days in the week, said: "They don't know how to use their leisure time."

The arguments of political parties, to illustrate failure to think from a different angle, are often insulting to even moderate intelligence; yet they are not resented. A wellchosen slogan is frequently sufficient. But slogans presuppose absence of thinking. They are designed to awaken certain ready-made associations in the voters; and they take the place of arguments. Obviously, politicians assume that the public can be fooled long enough to win the election, and the voters accept their judgment. They therefore justify it.

If these illustrations are fairly chosen, and they are of a type sufficiently frequent to be rather commonplace, it is clear that ideas brought into the mind through association may revolve in a very small circle and, consequently, never advance thought. As a matter of fact, thinking is largely controlled by inheritance, tradition, and environment, including early education and social pressure; and it is partly for this reason that experience, as usually accepted, exerts such a dominating influence.

Merely living through a series of events, however, we have found does not give valid experience. Even activity -taking part in the events-does not make experience. Getting experience requires understanding causes and consequences seeing connection between what precedes and that which follows. Change is meaningless transition un

less it is connected with its results. When change is translated into cause and effect it is full of significance. We learn something.

The character of experience-indeed, the very realization of any experience at all-is determined by the proportions in which habits of response, on the one hand, and variability, on the other, enter as constituents into our thought and actions. When response becomes habitual experience is at its minimum. The quantity of experience, again, is measured by the amount of conscious, attentive reaction which is opposed to habits of thought and behavior. So far as situations fail to be adequately met with habits, adaptation tends to become conscious, new, and, to the extent of the failure of habits, inventive and original. With man, at least, any break with mental habits tends to be educative.

In the active affairs of life, however, experience usually settles what promises to be the efficient course to pursue. Here, as in other judgments, the test of the value of the decision is the success or failure of the plan in achieving the aims which are sought. Thinking is strictly an intellectual matter and in no sense a moral one. Its value depends wholly upon the accuracy of the process. The thinking of an Arsène Lupin in accomplishing his criminal purposes is as good as that of a Sherlock Holmes in thwarting them. The starting-point from which the thinking proceeds is itself a matter of experience and interpretation. The human being seems to be enclosed in a circle from which he cannot extricate himself. He begins with experience, or with the interpretation and estimate of the views of others which is determined by his experience. This interpretation, again, rests upon personal judgment, "fundamental principles," which will be shared by others in proportion as these people have had similar experiences and have reasoned with like accuracy from the same starting-point. The circle within which one reasons will be

large or small according as one's experience has been broad or limited, and in proportion to one's ability to discover meaning in the experiences of others and to reconstruct them in terms of personal experience. Probably some are born with a nervous organization that accepts certain types of "fundamental principles" more readily than do others. Mystics and believers in occult phenomena, for example, we always have with us. In the same way some are born with a brain that responds to music and poetry. But inherited tendencies no more than individual experience establish universally valid principles.

Since the ideas and beliefs with which we start will deflect even subsequently accurate thinking, it is of the utmost importance that they be subjected to the severest scrutiny at the beginning of an attempt to think out a question. From the moment of their acceptance, however, it is a matter of the accuracy of the intellectual operation by which new beliefs grow out of the facts and ideas accepted as a true starting-point.

Throughout this mental growth the interpretation of experience plays a directing rôle, and it is in just this interpretation that the difference between great and mediocre men lies. There are two classes of discerning men, each important and effective in his way; those who originate and those who, though unable to initiate in any large degree, are yet appreciative of the inventions of others. General George Meade seems to have been of the latter class. He was "not original in devising brilliant plans, but his clear understanding enabled him to discriminate between the plans of others."1 Meade's success, considered in connection with his lack of inventiveness, reminds one of a remark once made by Oliver Cromwell: "To be a Seeker," he said, "is to be of the best sect next to a Finder." The willingness and ability to admit in action the value of ideas presented by others reveals an intellecThe Story of the Civil War, by William R. Livermore, p. 495.

tual freedom of no mean worth, even though it may not represent the highest cast of mind; for one evidence of mental inferiority is the fear lest accepting the opinions of others will stamp one as weak. For the same reason, men of small mental calibre in positions of responsibility do not wish to have bigger men than themselves under them. They dread the contrast. One of the proofs of Lincoln's greatness was his willingness to take into his Cabinet men of the largest ability whom he could find, regardless of political affiliations; and he endured criticisms and innuendoes from them which would have cut deeply into the self-esteem of a less able man.

The least effective use of experience is probably exhibited by the literal man who has no sense of proportion, no sense of humor. No two situations are exactly alike, and the efficient man, other things being equal, is the one who can make distinctions between them and discover differences. There are, of course, those who are foredoomed to follow rules, and whatever efficiency these people possess lies in strict adherence to prescribed modes of action. These men cannot interpret experience. They can only follow it. Deviation from rules, of course, always involves risk, but he who never dares achieves nothing. In its best expression life is a great adventure, or rather a continuous series of adventures, and the one who reads the meaning of events with clearest understanding makes discoveries or meets emergencies in ways wholly outside the ken of men of lesser attainments.

Illustrations could easily be drawn from science, but perhaps military achievements afford the most striking instances. In the early period of Napoleon's victorious career, for example, after he had stormed the bridge of Lodi and forced the passage of the river, one of the Austrian generals exclaimed indignantly: "This beardless youth ought to have been beaten over and over again; for who ever saw such tactics! The blockhead knows nothing