262 Selective Thinking 



suffice to secure those more refined elements of the atten- 

 tion complex which determine a new concrete fact. On 

 the contrary, many alternative determinations, all of them 

 answering the demands of the platform of vague general- 

 ity, might be forthcoming and the mind might rest in any 

 one of them. Note the child's long-continued and fanci- 

 ful speculations about the simplest events in the house- 

 hold. What must now be had is just the selective 

 control of an environment in which such variations can be 

 brought to a test ; and to the child this is the environ- 

 ment supplied by the persons who know more than he 

 does. To them he normally appeals, almost invariably 

 accepts their decisions, and finds certain of his alterna- 

 tives thus selected, by what is to him as direct an adjust- 

 ment to fact as are the selections of his movements by 

 accommodation to that other environment, the world of 

 things. Every new piece of knowledge needs this con- 

 firmation just in so far as the systematic determination by 

 which it is brought to the bar of selection leaves the con- 

 crete filling of the event indefinite ; that is, in so far as 

 various alternatives or variations might be brought into 

 selective rivalry with it. 



But then — and this is a vital fact in the growth of the 

 individual — this selection by a social criterion becomes 

 personal to the learner through his renewed action. The 

 selected functions, with their knowledge contents, are 

 added to the organization within, so that the ^systematic 

 determination ' of the future is influenced by the assimila- 

 tion of each new selected ele7nent. Thus the inner attitude 

 which the individual brings to his experience undergoes 

 gradual determination by the continued selective action 

 of the social environment. He himself comes more and 



