26o Selective Thinking 



the sense of values has grown up all along under the 

 actual limitations of control from the imperative selective 

 conditions of the environment, and if one make use of his 

 criteria of selection beyond the teachings of his experience 

 it is only by means of those general rules which are 

 implicit in the systematic determination itself.^ 



§ lO. TJie Fitness of Ideas: the Social Envirojinient 



Turning now to the great platform of attention, we find 

 an analogous state of things, and the analogy really turns 

 out to be identity of process, thus providing a strong 

 argument for the view that the social criterion of selection 

 is here the true one. 



In the first place, we have to recognize that in all think- 

 ing whatsoever as sncJi — even in our thinking about the 

 external world when viewed not as motor accommodation, 

 but as a system of organized truths — tJie environment is 

 social. For we may ask : what does environment mean ? 

 Does it not mean that set of conditions which runs con- 

 tinuously through the individual who is said to be in the 

 environment ? The physical environment is such because 

 its conditions are those of motion, while the organism moves. 

 The environment of thought can only be thoughts ; only 

 processes of thought can influence thoughts and be influ- 

 enced by them. The sources from which spring items in 

 the world of thought are ordinarily centres of thought — 



1 Such as the laws of identity (motor habit), consistency (motor assimila- 

 tion), sufficient reason (accommodation to the item selected), etc.; cf. Men- 

 tal Development in the Child and the Race, Chap. XL § I. By these I think 

 it possible to account for the so-called ' analytical processes,' which have to 

 deal with rolntionships inside the whole of the systematic determination, on 

 which see further below. 



