the idea of sameness. So we may safely assume that meaning and symbol are strictly correlative. If this is true psychologically, it has pedagogical implications of considerable importance. These we shall try to point out in another place.

(4) The functional nature of meaning.

Meaning as an aspect of consciousness is functional. Our account of its genesis, as well as our definition, have emphasized this fact. A study of children's definitions, where you see meaning not yet fossilized, furnishes striking evidence of the truth of our position. Chamberlain1 has collated definitions from several sources. A few of the most striking ones follow:

Kiss is if you hug and kiss somebody.

Mast is what holds the sail up top of a ship.

Nail is something to put things together.

Nut is something with a shell good to eat.

Quarrel is if you begin a little fight.

Ring is what you wear on your finger.

Saw is if you see something, after you see it you saw it.

Vain is if you always look in the glass.

A dog is to have by one.

A garden is to walk in.

Village means one sees everybody pass.
Flame is the power of the candle.

The truth of the functional view of meaning here presented is still further seen in the fact that meaning is relative to a given situation. When the child is hungry, an apple is something good to eat; when he is not hungry, but playful, an apple is something to roll or to throw up and down and catch. The meaning is different in the two cases because the individual anticipates from the object the satis

'Chamberlain, The Child, pp. 146-147.

faction of a different need through, or as the result of, a different mode of reaction.

There seems to be a good deal of evidence in support of the view that the earlier and cruder meanings are functional, but will it hold true of the technical and scientific meanings of the trained man? To the child a ball is something to roll, the meaning is plainly functional; but how different the mathematician's conception! He would think of a ball as a material sphere, every point of whose surface is equidistant from a point within called the center. But his problem is very different. Because he is meeting through the ball a different need, his meaning for the ball is different from that of the child. It answers his purpose as a mathematican, it fits in with his mathematical experiences more adequately, to attach that meaning to the ball. In both the case of the child and that of the mathematician, what is anticipated is in terms of characteristic experiences that the object has yielded and is capable of yielding again. The same line of thought can be applied to all manner of meanings that get expression in descriptive terms. The writer believes that it holds equally well for the meanings of such abstract terms as justice, honesty, and patriotism also, but he does not wish to prolong this aspect of the discussion.

(5) The abstract image and meaning.

In his Outline of Psychology, Mr. Titchener discusses the manner in which the abstract idea originates. By abstract idea he seems to mean practically what is meant in this discussion by abstract image. He describes a prevalent view of the abstract idea as analogous to the composite photograph, the various percepts of a thing corresponding to the individual pictures which enter into the composite photograph. In the resulting picture the resemblances are emphasized and the differences, not repeating themselves so often on the plate, are blurred and 1 Pp. 294-297.

fainter. "The abstract idea of cat, on this analogy, is a reproduction in which all the cat-resemblances are emphasized, and all the cat-differences left faint and obscure. Now there can be no doubt that the abstract idea might take this form in an 'all-round' mind, a mind which was equally well developed in all its sense departments. But it is not the form which the idea does take, as a matter of fact, in the average consciousness. The photographic plate is impartial; it gives equal attention, so to speak, to every detail of the picture before it. The organism, on the contrary, is always biased; it gives more attention to some constituents of an idea than to others. My abstract idea of a cat, therefore, is a composite photograph only of those cat-attributes which have caught my attention; it is more like an impressionist sketch of a cat-the sketch of some particular artist, throwing into relief the particular characteristics which have 'struck' him-than like a composite photograph of some hundred cats."

This long quotation from Mr. Titchener has been introduced at this point largely for the sake of the contrast which he points out between the impartial photographic plate and the bias of the organism. This bias of the organism on which Mr. Titchener comments here incidentally is really made central in functional psychology. The organism is always biased in all its conscious processes. That bias comes from the fact that it is continually being confronted with new situations, involving new problems. The needs of the organism in its process of adaptation and adjustment to the world in which it lives make it impossible for any "all-round" mind to exist. An "all-round" mind would be hopelessly at sea in a world like ours in which a variety of individual needs have to be met by a variety of modes of individual control. No, the only guarantee that any of our conscious processes shall be of service to us is that they be fashioned with reference to the "bias" of the organism; for the organism can never be otherwise

than biased according to some situation or other. Consequently, while abstract images will be based on perception, none of them can be photographic in character. They are rather mental constructs suited to needs.

It is inconceivable that the number of teeth on the upper jaw of a steer is as important a fact to the farmer as the number of horns on its head or the number of pounds in its weight. When the farmer constructs an image to meet the ordinary purposes of his thought, the number of teeth serves no useful function and of course will not be made use of. Abstract images are tools of the mind constructed for use. How they shall be constructed, just what elements shall enter into them, depends upon the particular needs of the organism, on its particular "bias." Abstract images are symbols for the carrying of meaning. Whether they arise out of the background of concrete experiences or whether they are arbitrary inventions, the only thing that can logically be demanded of them is that they be capable of performing their function.

4. SUPERIORITY OF THE ABSTRACT IMAGE As an Element OF TECHNIQUE IN THINKING.

(1) Less irrelevancy of suggestion.

In a thinking process, concrete images often suggest more than is necessary. They cumber the thinking process with unnecessary details. Consequently, they offer more lines of departure for the thought to run off into irrelevant channels. If, in a thinking process concerned with some problem of lumbering, the image tree arises as a necessity to the movement of thought, and this image comes with all its concrete detail as the particular beech tree at the bottom of a hill, with a cool spring under its shade, my thought may be easily switched off from its proper movement into the by-paths of reminiscences of my boyhood on the farm. But if the image is more schematic, or if it is the still more abstract word-image, the associates

suggested are more likely to fall within the field of relevancy. However, there are conditions, as will soon be pointed out, under which good thinking demands the use of concrete images. Each kind of image has its own peculiar value and function in the thought process. One superior value of the abstract image as an element of technique in thinking is certainly to be found in the fact that it affords less irrelevant suggestion for the side-tracking of the movement of thought.

(2) Greater rapidity of movement.

This same freedom from a mass of concrete detail brings with it a still further advantage. Abstract imagery flows more easily and rapidly through the mind than concrete imagery. We have only to compare arithmetical and algebraic methods of solution of the same problem to observe the superior freedom, brevity, and compactness of the thought process the more symbolic it can be made.

(3) Superiority in making logical connections.

The chief value of the abstract image, a value not separate from those already stated, is that it carries better than the concrete image those meanings which are most recurrent and general and thus makes possible the concept. The abstract image is the more likely to be a center for the correlation of meanings on which depend general and necessary connections of thought rather than those which are accidental and ever-shifting. Such an element of technique as the abstract image thus gives added power in dealing with problems involving complex and far-reaching relations.

(4) Increase of power.

To many people the term abstract is a synonym for remoteness from reality. It is true that when we get over into the realm of the abstract we are getting away from the immediately real and practical, but this is only for the purpose of coming back at the practical and concrete situation with added power. One who has a heavy stone to lift