of the Constitution, for example, the provision for equal representation of the states in the Senate and proportional representation in the House of Representatives; or the provision for the abolition of the slave trade in 1808.

(2) Value of emphasis on the concrete problem.

In so far as the study of history can be made to center about concrete problems which give meaning to the collection of masses of details and which call for the exercise of the pupil's constructive and interpretative powers in construing facts and events in terms of social and political movements, in so far is the child getting splendid training in thinking through his study of history. We are too prone to think of history in terms of record of fact. It is in reality not one half so much record of fact as it is interpretation of fact. It is a weighing, judging, and sifting of facts, leading to some reorganization which throws light upon social and political movements and makes them intelligible. In the concrete body of historical facts there lie imbedded social and political laws and principles which have meaning and significance only as they are seen in their setting.

We might give the pupil outright an organized system of historical facts closely knit and bound together by the significant laws and principles of the science. But this gives him neither a just appreciation of the facts nor of the principles involved. He has not thought them through for himself in a way that makes them forever his own, a body of working capital for further study and interpretation of social and political problems in his own time and generation. May not the pupil within certain limits be encouraged to go through the facts for himself, judging and sifting them from the point of view of some problem, making his own interpretations and discovering principles for himself, and only later bringing his interpretations and conclusions to the test of their comparison with the views of the expert historian? This would throw a decided emphasis upon thinking and would cultivate an independence

of thought which can never be secured by always following and trying to understand others. We already have too many gr schools, and even of our colleges, of the We ought to be developing more of those convictions of their own, convictions born gation for themselves and of that clear thin problems which enables one to give a reas ment which he makes.

Geography furnishes hosts of problems th in such a way as to provide the conditions ing. We need suggest only a few by wa without working out the method of treat is the climate of England warmer than th Why are the lands just east of the Rocky Why is the United States cutting a ca Isthmus of Panama? What are the con operated to make New York, Chicago, an large cities? It is easy to supply the data solution of such problems. Why should be left to work out the solutions for ther possible instead of being told the whole thi

Almost all of the vital truths of geograph out through the study of typical problems be trained to think of existing things not of themselves,-even mountains, lakes, an come to think of in terms of conditions and

of processes which are going on all the t as in the past, in terms of complex relat means and ends. Thus he not only gets in thinking, but he is also building up the of looking for principles in accordance w plain the simplest phenomena which to taken for granted as mere brute facts.

It would be interesting to work out suggestions for the teaching of language, reading, and some of the physical and biological sciences with special reference to the fulfilment of the conditions of thinking. But enough has been done to illustrate the principle which we wish to make clear, and to emphasize the value and the possibility of doing more in the way of training pupils in elementary and high schools to think. It is evident from the preceding discussions that the process of training children to think is not so much dependent upon the selection of a particular body of subject matter as it is upon the attitude taken toward that subject matter. No teacher can be so thoroughly circumscribed and limited by the nature of the subject matter or by the directions of supervisors as to exclude the possibility within certain limits of leading children to conceive problems and to use their own powers of mind in the struggle for their solution.

THE ACTIVITY OF THE IMAGINATION IN
THINKING

1. THINKING IN TERMS OF ITS CONTENT.

(1) Distinction between imagination and thinking. If we look into our minds when a thinking process is going on we find a stream of imagery. Images are the content, or mental stuff, of the thinking process. But thinking differs from other processes in which past experience functions to determine action not so much in terms of content as it does in terms of the organization of the imagery and its conscious direction toward ends. Imagination and thinking are not two separate and distinct processes. Images are involved in both cases. Our attention may be taken up primarily with the forms in which ideas are embodied, with their explanation in terms of past experience and in the light of present conditions, with the laws of connection and sequence of images, etc. When we are dealing with problems of this sort, we are apt to use the term imagination. But when we think of the stream of images as organized in such a way as to perform the function of consciously adjusting means to ends, then we call the activity of imagination a thinking process.

(2) Constructive imagination and thinking.

When it comes to a case of constructive imagination the line between it and a thinking process is very shadowy indeed. From one point of view they are absolutely identical. In so far as we can distinguish them at all, it is only with reference to the aspect on which attention is fixed, whether that of content or that of function. If we are considering the mental content and the facts and laws of its

organization as related to the process of getting new mental forms, we call the process constructive imagination; if we are considering the function of this reorganization and reconstruction of the elements of past experience and their embodiment in new forms, we call the process thinking.

2. GENERAL SIGNIFICANCE OF IMAGINATION IN THE THINKING PROCESS.

In thinking, imagination gets its fullest significance and meaning. The power of imaging things or events does not exist for its own sake but to make past experience the more effective in processes of adjustment. In thinking, the image process rises to the level of meeting the needs of the organism in new and problematic situations.

(1) Necessity of imagination in conception of ends.

Thinking is teleological. It has at its bottom a practical basis. It is a process that goes on with reference to ends. It always involves some kind of forward reference. It presupposes that there is something not in your present experience which you seek to bring into it. There is an end unrealized, still in the future. As it does not exist now in terms of reality, it exists only as a fact of consciousness. As a psychic reality it is embodied in the form of an image. In no other way can it be presented to consciousness. It would be possible, of course, without imagination to set up motor activities, to make things happen, but we could not determine in advance what should happen. The process would be blind and random experimentation, involving no individual control whatever. The conception of an end toward which activity is directed necessarily involves imagination.

(2) Necessity of imagination in conscious use of past experience.

Reference to the future is meaningless except in terms of past experience. All conceptions of ends are projections of some sort out of past experience. They may involve