250 Selective Thinking 



ism, requires the new experience to run the gantlet of 

 habitual reactions or habits which organize and unify the 

 system of knowledges, before it can be eligible for further 

 testing by action. For example, a child cannot play the 

 piano, though he might actually go through a series of 

 movements reproducing those of a skilled performer. The 

 multitude of variations, so far from aiding him, is just the 

 source of his confusion. But he can learn little by little, if 

 he practise faithfully from the platform of the movements 

 of the simple scales and finger exercises which he already 

 knows how to perform. 



§ 6. Tests of Trutk in the External World 



The first test, therefore, is that of assimilation to es- 

 tablished habits. If we grant this, and also grant that 

 subsequently to this there is a further selection, from such 

 variations, of those which work in the environment, we 

 get a double function of selection : firsts the sort of intra- 

 organic selection called above ''systematic determination,' 

 which is a testing of the general character of a new expe- 

 rience as calling o?it the acquired motor habits of the or- 

 ganism ; ^ and second, an extra-organic or environmental 

 selection, which is a testing of the special concrete character 

 of the experience, as fitted, through the motor variations to 

 which it gives rise, to bring about a new determination in 

 the system in which it goes. 



These selective tests we may call respectively the test 

 of 'habit* and the test of 'accommodation to fact' (the 



1 The phrase * intra-organic selection ' suggests (intentionally, indeed, 

 although used here in a purely descriptive sense in antithesis to extra-organic) 

 the process of adaptation called ' Intra-selection ' by Weismann and described 

 earlier by Roux under the phrase ' Struggle of the Parts.' 



