applicable to the problem in hand, and, finally, to submit it to test or verification before acceptance. Reflective thinking, of course, is one form of purposive thinking; it is thinking that tries to be impartial and objective.

Reflective thinking might be called the ideal of thought. Like most ideals, it is seldom actually realized. It can figure, however, as a motivating force in experience, and in this manner affect, where it cannot control, the course of thinking. The problem has two somewhat different aspects-for we need to know how to think correctly, and we need really to desire to think that way. Of these the latter is, of course, the more important, though little can be done to change our desires beyond the skillful application of exhortation and example. It is essentially a moral matter, and one that is complicated by the fact that nearly all of us are convinced that, in the main, we do think fairly and straightforwardly. On the contrary, however, bias seems almost intrinsic to the human mind, and strong bias in favor of objectivity is about as rare as unusual artistic talent or greatness of soul. Few of us are interested in impartiality to the exclusion of everything that interferes. This is not to deny that many eminently fair conclusions are reached by every man, for many men are capable of estimating with great accuracy whether a given proposal will or will not fall in with the directions of the mind. Things are often judged shrewdly enough with reference to their practical usefulness in furthering or hindering purposes. But even here objectivity is not easily attained; and its achievement is still more difficult when conflicting purposes and aims must themselves be evaluated. It might be said that objectivity becomes difficult as it becomes important.

A thousand trifling illustrations of the rarity of unbiased judgments spring readily to mind, but we shall have to be content with the presentation of a single important example. The mind, then, has a natural bias towards the perception of order. We group things into kinds; we frame laws and principles which we think of as governing things; we are easily hypnotized by systems, whether of thought, of religion, of diet, of exercise, or of breaking the bank at Monte

Carlo; we think of our actions as being brought about by simple proclamation at the behest of clearly conceived ends; we imagine ourselves to be governed with Tsar-like autocracy by a single and unitary Mind; we reconstruct the past in simple and clearcut terms, see the present in obvious outlines, and often imagine that the future will usher in some delightful and orderly Utopia, if only something-perhaps woman suffrage or prohibition or light wines and beers or democracy or socialism or universal education or anything— can once be secured; and so on.

The irony of our bias towards order is heightened when we realize how disorderly our mental life itself actually is. What a wilderness of conflicting and competing purposes; what scraps of knowledge and opinion, of truths, half truths, and no truths; what a medley of feelings and desires; what a hodgepodge of tendencies and inertias, of habits and memories, of fancies, pictures, guesses, anticipations, assertions, denials-what a disorderly congeries of processes goes to make up a man's mind! Little wonder under such circumstances that order should appear important to human beings. To put the matter figuratively, Mind would rather reduce the whole cosmos to order than clear up its own private confusions. Thinking as a process is one of the most casual, hit-or-miss affairs in this jumbled world. It is even less concentrated and unified, for example, than motor trial and error; the way in which a cat will try to get out of a cage is usually system itself compared to the jumpings-about even in highly controlled thinking. It is fortunate indeed that the value of thinking in most instances does not depend on its esthetic contours or its orderliness, but on its eventual applicability to a particular purpose. The best minds are not always the quickest or the most orderly or the subtlest or the most thorough or the most versatile, but those which somehow get the point and turn the trick. Accordingly, it has been suggested that we perceive order because of its usefulness:11

However abundant chaos or complexity may be it is of no use and nobody will trouble to notice its presence. However

scarce order or simplicity may be it will be sought for until it is found. . . . The extreme difficulty and labor of finding laws of nature suggest that there is not so much simplicity and order about as people think.

For good or for ill, then, a bias towards the perception of order dominates our lives.

There is but one road of possible escape from our natural biases, and that road is open only to those who really desire to think effectively, and even to such persons only if they have the natural aptitude for such thought, and even then as a rule only after long and persistent effort. In other words learning to think is not a mere school subject, but a task for a lifetime. The task, however, can be simply stated-we must learn to know the possibilities and limitations of thought in general and of our own thinking in particular. If we can come to know and appreciate the natural biases of the mind, means can often be devised to offset them. They can be allowed for; one can be played off against another; we can call upon outside aids from other people or from instruments; etc. Hence the importance of thinking about thinking; hence the importance of method-assuming always that the desire to think straight and true is really present.

Attributes of good thinking

A person might succeed in avoiding all of the fallacies, and still not be very successful as a thinker. He would make no mistakes in his thinking, but nobody would care, because the quality of his intellectual operations was so poor. How shall a person know, after all, when his thoughts are worth thinking? Although it must be admitted that the best thinking is probably in most instances hardly conscious of its own existence, and that too great an effort to think well can easily do more harm than good, an effort to list some of the desiderata of thought may not be out of place. Among the qualities, then, that go to make up good thinking are the following:

(1) Clarity. Good thinking should not be obscure. It

may be difficult and hard to follow, either because of the abstruseness of the subject matter or from the ignorance or dullness of those who try to understand it, but it should not be dark in its own right. Good thinking will often be subtle, acute, penetrating; it may exact patience and effort from those who seek to comprehend it; but it should in the end be intelligible. It is not necessary to be vague in writing of vagueness.

Clarity is not synonymous with simplicity, for good thinking is often winding and even sinuous. There is a distinct pleasure in chasing a long argument over hill and dale, or in following the tortuous curves of a spider-fine web of dialectic. Nor is clarity identical with superficiality. Many people are clear for lack of something intricate to say, but we would rather listen to the maunderings of a wise man than to the precise utterances of a fool. Perhaps, then, clarity is more a convenience than a necessity of good thinking-a grace rather than the sine qua non of the intellectual life. An ultimate obscurity seems to cling by nature to much of the highest thought. From a dark and impenetrable center there emerge, from time to time, great flashes of light which illuminate all else, leaving only the place whence they came shrouded in night. So it is with the greatest thinkers-with a Plato, a Spinoza, or a Kant; but perhaps the rest of us had best try to be clear.

(2) Consistency. Good thinking does not contradict itself; it tells a story and sticks to it. This is the sum and substance of modern mathematical logic. The mathematician of today develops a set of postulates-these are his story; and then he tries to stick to them through thick and thin-that is, he traces their implications or consequences in various directions, hoping that something interesting will turn up. Consistency is thus a somewhat arbitrary matter, since it has to do only with the internal relations of thought to thought within a universe of discourse, but it does keep thought close knit and aware of its obligations to other thought. It must not be confused. with stubbornness. It is not a mark of good thinking to refuse to give up a notion when it has lost its pertinence. It

was against such bullheadedness that Emerson inveighed when he said that "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

The science or art of attaining consistency is known as formal logic, but it is in mathematics that the aspiration for concatenated thought has been allowed to run wild. And, curiously enough, it is mathematics, the most abstract of all mental disciplines, that has given man the largest measure of control over physical nature.

(3) This leads us to the third criterion of good thinkingagreement with the facts. Every thought is about something— it has some subject matter; and good thinking does not do violence to its subject matter. Whether it be about prunes or prisms or politics, it remains pertinent to its subject and commits no irrelevancies. Since good thinking is possible in any field, the standard of agreement with the facts will differ according to the subject. This is only another way of saying that a know-nothing can hardly be a good thinker. Though large stores of knowledge are not a guarantee of good thinking, thought suffers when it is ignorant of the facts.

Just what "the facts" are in a given instance it is sometimes extremely difficult or even impossible to say. What, for example, were the facts during the years when the Copernican or heliocentric system was displacing the Ptolemaic or geocentric system? The facts remained the same during all that time, and are the same today, but what they are, entirely divorced from any theory or speculation about them, it would be most difficult to say. What are the facts about birth control? the Eighteenth Amendment? the League of Nations? the morality of the youth of today (or any other day)? We may all think we know, but we all know differently. The criterion of agreement with the facts, however, is a sound one, even if it does serve to emphasize once more the difficulties of really good thinking.

(4) Significance. A man who always thought clearly, consistently, and accurately would still lack something of being a good thinker if his mind never dealt in anything but commonplaces. No one would ever be able to question his