thinking process is guided and directed and safeguarded at every point. The process is methodized. There is consequently greater accuracy and adequacy in the performance of its function. In reasoning we have consciousness as the factor of variation and control of action realizing its function at the very highest level.

(2) Relation between reason and human freedom.

We may get at this same thought from a different angle by trying to state the relation between reasoning and will. Will is sometimes thought of as a separate faculty. In reality, will is only another name for the fact of control of action. This control of action has its basis in the motor, or impulsive, character of all consciousness. Every idea has in it a motor tendency, every thought is fraught with some sort of motor consequence either visible or invisible. In so far as any set of ideas can be brought into the focus of consciousness and held there by virtue of the nature and strength and number of the connections which have been set up between the various elements of the whole system to which it belongs, that set of ideas will determine action rather than some other set of ideas. Will is only the guidance and direction of action or of thought by means of ideas. From this point of view, will is not innate; it is an acquisition, an achievement. The tremendous output and expression of energy in a fit of anger is not will, because it is not free. It controls the individual instead of the individual controlling it. The same expenditure of energy put forth under the guidance and direction of ideas would be will. Freedom of the will is at its maximum where action is most fully under the guidance and direction of ideas. As reasoning gives the fullest and freest and most far-reaching kind of control over action, human freedom, if we do not like the term freedom of the will, is achieved most completely where reason functions most fully.

In our last statement we have come out at the same point at which Kant arrived when he made the possibility of all morality rest upon human freedom and conceived of human freedom as inherent only in reason. But we have arrived at the same thought as Kant without the necessity of thinking of reason as something apart from the rest of the conscious life and likely to be vitiated and contaminated if it had any connection with impulse and feeling. From the biological and functional point of view we cannot conceive of any conscious process which is not dynamically related to all the other conscious processes and to the life of action. It is because of this fact that reason can control impulse, action, and thought and man can be free. It is through the evolution of the power of reasoning that man has risen to his high level of a free moral agent. Through this power he has become not only a creature who exercises more fully than all others the power of controlling his environment to meet the exigencies of his own individual life, but also he has achieved the power of determining within certain limits his own self, of controlling his own character. To work out the biological significance of this would carry us far over into the fields of ethics and sociology. But it needs no extended argument to enable those who have followed the line of thought which is central in this book to see that the development of the ethical and social consciousness in its more reflective form, made possible through reasoning, is of immense biological significance.

6. THE QUESTION OF THE REASONING OF ANIMALS.

Now that we have worked out the specific differentia of reasoning, we are able to attack the question so often asked, "Do animals reason?" One class of writers is very strong in the assertion of the negative of this question, and another is just as strong in the assertion of the positive. In both cases there is usually a confusion arising from the

failure to analyze exactly what is meant by reasoning. If we mean by reasoning the power to think by means of abstract images, logical concepts, and other highly developed elements of technique in the thinking process, and still further if we include the organization of the thinking process into modes of procedure dominated by laws and principles, then we shall have to say that animals do not reason. But this is not saying that they do not think. It still may be that on the basis of crude memory processes and vague imagery animals do actually vary their modes of procedure to better adjust means to ends in situations the nature of which they dimly recognize and appreciate.

It is very doubtful whether any cases of animal intelligence can be found in which the supposition of reasoning is necessary to their explanation; but in these same cases it might be very difficult to account for the facts without presupposing some sort of thinking process. The writer himself inclines to the view that animals do not reason, but that they may and do think, the extent of their thinking, however, being very much less than the lovers of animal pets or the writers of animal stories usually suppose. Before passing judgment upon any case of animal intelligence, it is necessary to know its complete background and setting. We must take account very carefully of the specific instincts of the species and of the nature and length of any learning process which has been involved. The cleverest performances of animals, often regarded as exhibitions of thinking, may be the result of a very long period of learning or of training during which firm associations have been set up between certain signs and certain acts. The only factor of consciousness necessary to their explanation may be associative memory, a type of memory which is far more organic than intellectual in character.

We are on pretty safe ground when we are quite skeptical regarding apparent cases of animal thinking, yet from the evolutionary point of view there seems to be no

reason why one should be so determined to interpret every act of the lower animals on the basis of automatism as some scientists are. Why not grant that the conscious processes which attain their highest development in the human race have their roots far back in animal life? This seems more consistent than the contrary with the general theory of evolution. Biologically, consciousness is the great factor of variation of responses to meet the needs of individuals as distinct from those of species. We find considerable variation of response in foxes, dogs, horses, monkeys, etc., and in many of the birds. It is entirely problematic how much development of consciousness we need to assume in order to explain the facts. It seems clear that we do not find variations of the sort that make necessary the assumption of reasoning; it is not so clear that we do not need to assume some crude form of thinking.

7. THE QUESTION OF THE REASONING OF CHILDREN.

This topic has been discussed in an earlier chapter. There it was held that we need to distinguish carefully between reasoning and ordinary thinking. The general line of distinction was pointed out. Now that the meaning of reasoning has been cleared up by an elaborate discussion of its specific differentia, the discussion of the thinking of the child ought to be more intelligible.

It is evident that the child does not very early make use of the elaborate and highly specialized technique of thinking which justifies us in calling it a reasoning process. This technique is developed in the process of experience to meet the needs of the thinking function more adequately, and not until it has been sufficiently developed and brought under control can the child reason. To infer, however, that be

cause the child does not reason therefore he cannot think is not legitimate. He does organize his crude conscious processes in such a way as to deal satisfactorily with certain kinds of problems whose nature demands thinking,

principally those which are quite concrete and relatively simple. The child is not merely receptive, his mental processes are constructive to some extent at a very early age. Consequently he ought to be given school exercises which make demands upon his rudimentary thinking power.

8. TRAINING IN REASONING.

(1) Reasoning the remote goal.

The power to reason ought to be regarded as the remote goal in the early stages of education. It is the finished product which should be the outcome of a long period of development and training. In this case, as in many others, the quickest way to reach the goal is not to aim directly at it. Such a course of procedure may only result in arrested development.

(2) Stages of progress in attainment of the goal.

The psychology of thinking which we have worked out recognizes the continuity of development of the thinking process from its crudest beginnings in the differentiation of the imagination up to its highest development in the reasoning process of the most highly trained and educated man. At the same time, we have emphasized certain characteristic phases of development. While no exact time can be assigned to them, and while they cannot be sharply separated from one another, yet there is an order of development, and the stress of training should vary with the dominant characteristics of different periods.

There seem to be about three phases in the development of the thinking process. These three phases we have seen to be (1) the rapid development of the imagination; (2) the conscious distinction within the imagination between means and ends; and (3) the wider appreciation of laws and principles. The first period of development corresponds roughly to that of the kindergarten and the first two grades. The training of thinking in this period should concern itself largely with the task of laying the foundation