244 Selective Thinking 



pointed out ; but that does not seem to be necessary. It 

 is just the evident difference between the child and the 

 man, say, that the former proceeds to test data which the 

 latter never thinks of testing. The child thinks the moon 

 may be made of green cheese, that birds may grow on the 

 limbs of trees, that the sun does set around the corner of 

 the world, that eating bread-crusts does make the hair 

 curly ; such conceits the man smiles at. The difference is 

 that at the child's level of what we go on to call * system- 

 atic determination,' these are variations of possible value ; 

 he has yet to test them ; but to the man they are not on 

 the level or platform which his selective thinking has 

 reached ; they are not in any sense candidates for selec- 

 tion ; they do not even enter into the complexly distributed 

 series of thought-variations within the limits of which his 

 criteria of value and truth lie. Various reasons have been 

 given for this in the literature, and however they differ as 

 explaining principles they are yet severally available as 

 against the theory that all our imaginings afford a chance 

 — and the more, the better the chance — of profit. The 

 untruth of this position is what concerns us. 



In getting his information about nature, the child learns 

 by experimenting, as also do the animals. But having 

 learned this or that, he proceeds on this basis to learn 

 more. In judging a statement he scouts in advance what 

 his lessons have already discredited. In admiring the 

 aesthetic and in adhering to the good, he hesitates only 

 where his sense of worth does not positively go out ; what 

 is to him ugly and bad he repudiates with emphasis. 



We might take up the parable on the side of brain pro- 

 cesses and ask what brain variations give good, true, fit 

 conscious states ; and the same would be seen. Suppose, 



