is met with, it is looked upon as an acquaintance. Careless thought points to the absence of schooling; reckless generalisation is its embodiment. Animal, child, savage, man of culture, all respond similarly to a repeated stimulus. There is nothing mechanical about this; for we do not necessarily re-act, and we are all more or less circumscribed in this respect. Consider an example. A. advises B., who is not highly intellectual, on some trifling matter. The advice is followed, and the episode has terminated. Suppose B. had suggested the same thing to A. who is keen in detecting resemblances and acting on them. He, too, accepts the hint, and though not dreaming of any verbal generalisation, he nevertheless acts as if he had generalised in words. He possibly perceives likeness on an enormous scale in most widely divergent directions. No re-collection perhaps survives of the incident which let loose the dogs of generalisation. From a formal standpoint he knows nothing of the various notions, i.e., he does not connect them into one system of thought. If in early childhood his nervous system had been well trained and he had continued to move among persons of his own type, the widest truths would come to him without the intervention of any verbal process. The brain in him re-acts delicately, faint feelings alone being discernible. [Deliberately observe yourself whilst generalising.]

Suppose, moreover, that he instantly formulated the proposition: "Let everything be appropriately said, done and thought." Our problem remains unchanged. At worst, the words mean nothing. At best, they are a summation of previous incidents or a foreshadowing of what will happen. The verbal generalisation is a formal generalisation, and so far an action which is repeated. As we give body to the words, with the assistance of the imagination or of research, so the verbal skeleton is clothed with an armour of fleshy fact. Their value is instrumental. With the aid of words, since they are readily reinstated, we attain to new truths, and their merit lies in that the neural process corresponding to them is one, i.e., covers or superimposes itself. Hence a generalisation may appear irresistible to us, and yet be false, because the covering or the correspondence is artificial. If A is A, it is only because one stimulus is generally followed by one reaction. If the reaction were different, A would conceivably not be A. The fundamental properties of things give rise to the law of identity (sec. 185).

Generalisation is re-action, and neural sensitiveness, acquired or inherited, is here the essential. Wise and deliberate training, and a judicious study of others, enhance its worth while thought and language express its method, but are not the capacity itself.

99d. ABSTRACTION.

When a certain aspect of an object is singled out for inspection, we are said to abstract. Thus we may be thinking of the hands of a man, and neglect the man of whom they are a part. Like every human capacity, that of abstraction is, of course, susceptible of nice cultivation; and that is all one can say. Taking a large view, the reader will see that in all integration or observation we abstract what is integrated or observed. A particular human being whom we are observing at a particular time, is himself only perceived in part, while we also abstract the environment. The fact of abstraction, as usually understood, is of no psychological importance. As long as we cannot grasp the whole universe in a flash of thought, so long all primary and secondary systems are abstractions.

100.-ATTENTION AND COMBINATION.

The machinery which is to satisfy our needs might be considered as not complex, each need pressing it into service to the extent required. It might be said that when one need is satisfied, some other need will take the initiative, or, in default of a need arising for a time, the mechanism will rest. Some aspects, however, of the nature of the neural structure profoundly qualify and modify these expectations.

First of all, the facts teach us that the brain's working habits permit no rest in the waking state. Hence needs come to be connected with the mechanism itself. When there is thus no ostensible necessity to think, we are yet compelled to find some occupation. Casual happenings are then passed in review, and casual objects detain us for a few moments. Much of our time is thus idly spent in building castles on desert islands.

Again, the quantity of work put forth by the waking brain shows no sensible variation from minute to minute or from hour to hour, its capacity for labour remaining almost the same. We are compelled to attend to just so many details. If we are listless, we catch indifferent noises and are worried by otherwise indifferent bodily sensations; and if we are interested in a subject these noises and sensations are absent, their place being taken by other details, the same in quantity. Hence also the fact that if a task absorbs little of our attention, our thoughts are occupied with a second, third or fourth task, there being as many topics of thought as will make up the necessary round of details.

Once more, brain areas become prostrate when continuously engaged. Owing to this the neural work has to be distributed, the current of thought periodically shifting its direction; that is to say, under normal circumstances we do not satisfy a need at once, if its satisfaction is to occupy much time. We change the subject; we defer it; we measure out a little time to each of many needs. [Experimentally test.]

Moreover, whenever in thinking we meet with obstacles, we, as a rule, overcome them only when a strong need to persist is present. The capacity for tiring or exhausting work, or effort, is at first very small, slight insistence creating distraction and prostration. With practice, however, this ability, like other organic abilities, grows so considerably that in the professional thinker the more rational needs come to exercise a valuable control over the stream of thought. So habituated does he become to deliberate advance that he tires himself continually without having any suspicion of the fact or even against his wish. Between the keenest and the most lax attention, or betwixt the sleepiest doze and the most lucid effort, there is nevertheless only a difference of degree. There is no more a loading of dice, or a tampering with scales, in a great than in a small effort, or else the loading and tampering go on in every act without exception. No connection is traceable between great effort and indisputable awareness; for normally the effort which is made follows directly, no interconnecting or reasoning precedes, nor is there any near or remote consequence, aim, self-direction or self-consciousness present. Economisation is responsible for this result.*

101.-ECONOMISATION AND COMBINATION.

While it requires a chapter (ch. 3) to explain the theory of economisation in all its bearings, we must yet refer to one point. At the first blush it

* For a defence of the opposite view, see James, Psychology, 1890, especially i, pp. 453-4, and ii, pp. 573-6.

might be thought that only where several needs hotly compete for the field of attention will economisation enter as moderator. This is not so.

Being an important function both in the primary and in the secondary order, it comes to be applied universally. Hence we economise everywhere, even where economy is superfluous, as when a need only partially drains the neural reserves. The process of economisation, like the process of attention, knows no distinctions, and jealously removes whatever may possibly exceed full measure. In this manner, the process being unconditional, waste is reduced to a minimum.

102.-MEMORY AND COMBINATION.

The matter of thought is drawn from the past. Hence we may speak of thought as the cross-classification of systems or the re-production of what is relevant. Nay more, as all thought is re-developed, so all re-development is thought. Whether I see a book or open a door, as I have done on so many occasions, or whether I bring all my skill to bear on a problem, the issue is not affected.

Regarded in the above light, the process of reasoning assumes somewhat the following forms. (1) If a difficulty, muscular or neural, is given, we apply organically more energy to its solution, or generally speaking, we increase or decrease the degree or the quantity of anything which is under consideration. Thus the door yields to greater pressure, and an idea emerges owing to greater concentration. (2) We organically re-collect whether the same problem has occurred previously, and if it has, memory perhaps provides its solution. (3) We try to re-develop a situation alike in some few respects, with the same end in view as in (2). (4) We review the problem in the hope that the study of the difficulty may supply its solution. (5) We reconstruct our problem or a similar one, instead of merely re-developing it, and watch the results. (6) We systematically go over the problem, testing its every part by appropriate re-collection or examination. Individuals differ, of course, in the application of such methods. A highly-developed system of education would, however, not rest till the best means of attaining the best results were discovered and duly taught to all and applied by all. At present bare chance decides what methods are resorted to by any one person.

103.-HABIT AND THOUGHT.

An individual, X., reaches a certain sentence in a book, skips it, and goes on with his reading. If we unceremoniously peep into his brain we only discover that when a certain set of printed symbols was in sight, his attention rushed past them. If we ask X. the reason for his peculiar procedure, he is surprised at our inquiry, for he had not noticed the particular act referred to. If we press him to exert his powers of introspection, he is brought to acknowledge that we observed correctly, stating at the same time that he is at a loss to account for his behaviour. As we are interested, we continue our investigation, and learn that he always skips illustrations in an argument. We mention this to an acquaintance of his, who offers the following explanation. Some years ago this acquaintance had a long conversation with him, in which he convinced him that illustrations are

[Observe yourself as to above.] Now this habit may be con

misleading. After this X. struggled hard to ignore them, until finally he reached the stage at which we found him. He had fully formed, as men say, a habit. sidered automatic since it seemingly lacks all relations; while the process involved in its formation may be regarded as typical of secondary activity, habits being, as it were, secretions of thought. Assuming, what we have seen is contrary to fact, that the secondary complication referred to is dead and has nothing to do with the psychologist, we must inquire into the nature of the process which led to the production of the habit. The reply we obtain amounts to this. A certain need is present. In the course of its being satisfied, many vistas are explored. Finally, a resolution is arrived at; the man persists in its application; and the formative process and the resolution are after a time forgotten. However, every line of thought which was pursued, the resolution arrived at, and the persistence in its application, were themselves due to secondary complications. The need itself was likewise the result of previous activity. All that we learn, therefore, is that when a new need is evolved, a familiar process is set going which ends in the construction of a secondary complication. Hence when we are said to deliberate, we act from habit as much as when we are said to act without deliberation. Had it not been for the multitude of fixed acquisitions of which the process consists, the process would be unintelligible; and as these acquisitions decrease in number, so the problems to be solved have to be simplified proportionately. We are, then, driven back to the structural aptitudes with which the infant is equipped, and we must also inquire into the origin of our needs. We cannot arrest our backward steps until we reach the time when life's drawbridge was lowered, since inquiry shows that the process of economisation begins with birth, and that the complexity of thought evolves with growth and with the complexity of the neural structure.

The human organism, seen in this light, may be regarded as a bundle of habits. Hence arises the question as to how these habits arose. Taking the history of a man to be one with the history of life, we might argue that the habits inherent in the human structure take their origin precisely as did the habit of ignoring illustrations, which habits, again, are inherited by the next generation. Plausible and suggestive as such an explanation may be, it proves of little value on examination. We saw that the formative process becomes simpler as we retreat to infancy. Hence as we straggle backwards to the amoeba, we are still left face to face with the initial problem. Each habit has been, it is true, acquired; but habits were responsible for the acquisition. Thus we may descend in the pit of life till the phrase "formation of habit " loses all meaning.

We have assumed the transmission of acquired tendencies; but this is a doubtful doctrine, since variations in the germ, sifted by natural selection, are the chief present-day explanation of the animal structure and of instincts. As far as the matter is open to scrutiny, there seems little reason to doubt that acquired habits or characteristics are but seldom transmitted.

What is true of the habit-forming process, holds good of the needs which are the stimuli to action. These, too, have their roots in favourable variations which have been preserved by natural selection. From the veriest dawn of life, want and satisfaction of want have been intimately related, and the neural system has developed along lines which best connect and satisfy these.

Moreover, no other explanation of the development of thought appears for the present feasible. If what happens is not in general accord with this suggestion, what is the alternative theory? There seems no reason why we should go behind the principle of growing complications in the individual and the preservation of favourable variations by natural selection. The elaboration of complications would thus result as a consequence of the evolved variations.

Prof. Ward (Psychology, 1886) is responsible for the very ingenious theory criticised in this section. The same view, alike in detail, is expressed by Wundt, Psychologie, 1893, ii, pp. 507-17, also in Wundt's 1880 ed., pp. 455-8, six years before the publication of Ward's Article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

104.-INTERDEPENDENCE AND INTERACTION IN COMBINING.

The problem of combinational sequence would be easy of solution if one bare image followed spontaneously another bare image, and that another, and so on. In such circumstances we could readily describe the evolution of a process of thought. The actual situation, however, is far more complex. Now one image develops out of its predecessor; now another puts us on our guard; and again the sensitising of one area has for its accompaniment the sensitising of half-a-dozen others to a more or less intimate degree. The entanglements to be considered are sometimes highly complicated. So also with the needs. While one leading need may more or less control the current of thought, it is yet at frequent intervals crossed by subsidiary or secondary needs. Every bend in the stream. of progress gives rise to a little eddy capable of considerable development. The central need is like a farm bailiff who has a crowd of intelligent men to help him in the management and working of an estate. While each subordinate performs a particular task in his own way at any time, he is yet capable of performing others, even to the extent of playing a leading part, as, e.g., in the bosom of his family. We may, without straining, carry the analogy much farther. (At bottom it is more than an analogy.) On the one hand, the bailiff is a complex product himself, almost entirely dependent on his environment. On the other, he would be paralysed if left to his own devices. His very existence presupposes the existence of others of his kind, and but for them his office would be an impossible one. To drop metaphor, a need can only be reasonably satisfied when the means. to its satisfaction lie to hand. Secondary complications must be in readiness to twist the rope which shall haul the want towards its object. Without these subsidiary needs and complications, the need will fail to be