TALKING AND THINKING What has so far been said of the recent views of language helps to explain the newer interpretation of the old terms mind and rea son. These seem to be processes, as we have seen, rather than agents. They are ways of doing things rather than things them selves. John Dewey calls his admirable little book on mind, How We Think. When older philosophers began to think about think ing, and how by thinking we reached truth, they commonly found themselves writing very long books, very hard to read ; and they called their great theme epistemology or the theory of cognition. The effective thinking which has built up civilization has not, how ever, relied upon their treatises ; nor has it been influenced by them. Two or three considerations only can be touched upon here which impress recent students in investigating thinking.
Thinking and words go together. For thinking, to be clear, has to rely upon names and their various associations with one an other. For instance, grocer's bill, cheque-book, fountain-pen, en velope, stamp, letter-box are names put together in a particular sequence. Of late there has been a good deal of discussion as to whether thinking was not always talking quite noiselessly to our selves. A child will first utter sounds at random, then begin to find that the sounds he makes bring things ; then he gets to naming with vast enthusiasm; then he prattles too freely and inoppor tunely to please his elders; then he may merely move his lips— as many childish people continue to do—and finally hold his tongue. It can be shown, however, by appropriate tests that this suppressed talking is accompanied by muscular adjustments of the vocal organs which indicate a silent execution of the words and sentences. We can say openly "That's too bad," or mutter it, or adjust our organs so as to say it if we wished. This sup pressed talking seems to be thinking. That all thinking is merely talking to ourselves many will doubt or deny. While some minor reservations are justifiable there is an overwhelming mass of evi dence, derived for instance from the study of deaf mutes, that fortifies the contention stated above—no words, no thinking.
But thinking can easily be seen to be of several varieties. There is the meandering succession of recollections, vague apprehen sions, hopes, preferences, disappointments and animosities which has come to be called reverie. It underlies other and more exact ing forms of thinking. It is found on inspection to consist of recollections, anticipations, excuses for past or contemplated con duct, reflections on the unfairness of our fellow creatures and of the world in general; or assurances that all is well and must in the nature of things remain so. Ordinary daily planning is an essential form of thought—making homely decisions and adjust ments. Underneath, we can perceive the reverie flowing as a sort of undercurrent—for thinking is very complicated.
We occasionally turn our thinking to trying to find out some thing that we do not yet know. This may be the result of mere personal suspicions and vulgar curiosity, or of an honest desire to improve a defective social situation, or learn more of light waves, Chinese paintings, psychoneuroses or investments. In dealing with the workings of the physical universe a special kind of thinking, the mathematical, has produced results that tend to safeguard the investigator from the usual prejudices which beset us in all thinking. It is a peculiar, highly refined lan guage, or way of talking about things, by employing the vocabu lary of sines and cosines, logarithms, constants, variables, roots, powers, etc. It has proved to be a wonderfully fruitful way of talking about light, for instance, and the nature of "matter" and "force" and in dealing with engineering problems. Few are addicted to this type or any other variety of scientific thinking. Most practical inventions seem to proceed from our power to experiment by thinking ; to fumble and stumble mentally, and sometimes succeed. This mental trying-out is a kind of trial and error. It cannot proceed long without various external acts to check up the guesses and inferences produced by meditation.
One of the most novel and promising methods of learning more about all kinds of thinking is abnormal psychology. Illusional and obsessive thinking which fill the mad-houses appear to be only the exaggerations of the thinking of those at large. The psychiatrists hold out hopes of discovering through their special knowledge, and a study of infants and children, ways of eliminat ing or reducing some of the vices of civilization as it has hitherto developed. To them civilization is in many of its manifestations a species of mild madness ; these can only be eliminated by a great change in the way children are brought up, so as to obviate the maladjustments and distress incident to a rapidly altering cul tural environment.
Men and women think not only when they are awake but when they are asleep. Their sleeping thoughts and visions and experi ences we have learned to set off sharply—far too sharply as it would appear—from waking thought. Primitive man did not do this. He did not deem his dreams mere illusions, comical or distressing, to be banished when he opened his eyes. They were not negligible to him but quite as real and instructive for con duct as what he saw in the day-time. Indeed they had a weight and authority superior to the pronouncements of daily experience ; and they served vastly to widen it. What civilization would have been without the manifold influences of dreams it is quite im possible to guess. Had man been dreamless would he have had his religions, his symbolism and his allegories, his poetry and much of his art? This much at least is assured that the beliefs and practices of primitive peoples are in many cases directly at tributable to their dreams. Later beliefs and practices of more elaborately civilized peoples can usually be traced back to primi tive ideas, which seem to be the soil from which they sprang. So we have to conclude that dreams are one of the most remarkable factors that have entered into the fabrication of civilization as we know it to-day.
When asleep we find ourselves visiting distant places ; for in stance when walking the streets of Paris we suddenly wake in New York. How could early men escape the conviction that they had a second self which could wander forth from the body, leav ing it behind in the hut, while the "spirit" led for a time an emancipated and adventurous existence freed from the slow and lumpish flesh? Then in dreams the dead appear to us in full life and activity. They may admonish or fortify us; rebuke our de parture from the old ways, or fill us with assurance of success. The North American Indians shared the confidence of the ancient Hebrews and Romans in dreams. In India and China the venera tion of ancestors forms a highly practical obstacle to the intro duction of Western institutions. So have we here, without the possibility of much question as to the main issues, a fair ex planation of the original belief in the spirit or soul and its survival of death. We have much more. We have the dawn of the gods and the demigods, and the whole foundation of beliefs about supernatural beings and their converse with men; their anger and the possibility of their propitiation by sacrifice.
In the preceding sections of this article certain important con siderations are enumerated which escaped until recently the at tention of students of mankind. They are clear enough when once pointed out. But it has always been a tragic trait of civilization that the obvious has been difficult to perceive, for it is too familiar to catch our attention. It requires a peculiar penetration to dis cover what in all discussions we are unconsciously taking for granted. And what we are most prone to take for granted are unrevised childish impressions.
There is much complaint of the childishness of mankind, which has become more conspicuous with the democratic assumption that everyone should have his say. Langdon-Davies' New Age of Faith, and E. C. Ayres' Science the False Messiah, to cite two examples, dwell with some petulance and bitterness on the easy gullibility and obstinate ignorance of humanity. They assume standards of intelligence which obviously do not prevail, as one reads popular newspapers, sermons and political speeches. They are disappointed, but have no reason to be surprised. Why should an ex-animal not have made grotesque mistakes as he floundered about with words and besetting mysteries and hardened ortho doxies? Then, as we have seen, civilization is mainly acquired in childhood and perforce ever haunted with infantile longings and misapprehensions. When there is an issue between his dreams and visions and his waking experiences why should man not prefer the former? As a matter of fact those reputed as great and deep thinkers have dealt mainly, until very recently, with imaginary beings, with events that never happened ; with empty concepts, allegories and symbols and false analogies. John Dewey has in his Reconstruction in Philosophy deduced philosophy and ethics from savage antecedents and shown how these have interpene trated later speculations. The hardly to be overcome prejudice which attributes to mind and body separate existence and regards them of diverse substance is the easily explained and inevitable mistake of a savage. The will, the unconscious, the moral sense, regarded as agents, belong to the category of primitive animistic conceptions. Even causation as it used to be conceived is but an expression of the naive urge to blame or praise some particular person or thing for this or that event. We are now learning to think in terms of situations. For example when Edward Carpen ter wrote many years ago on Civilization, its Cause and Cure, he yielded to a venerable usage. It has become apparent enough that civilization has had no one cause but is the result of a situa tion of cosmic complexity. There can be no one cure for its recog nized defects. A recent Italian writer, Pareto, has filled two large volumes with instances of the misapprehensions upon which current sociological treatises are based.
As humanity, or at least their leaders, become more fully aware of the nature and origin of civilization and the manner in which it has hitherto developed they will discover firmer foundations on which to build, more efficient ways of eradicating the inevitable and congenial errors of the race, and of stimulating patient and fruitful reconstruction and reform. So far mankind has stumbled along, enslaved by its past rather than liberated by it for further advances. The reasons for this are beginning to become more apparent than ever before and might as time goes on be made the basis of a type of education, especially in man's early years, which would greatly forward and direct the progress of civiliza tion rather than retard its development. (J. H. ROB.)