ns are called up. If one is a
scientist, one looks for causes. If one is a lawyer, one looks up the
court decisions. If one is a physician, one looks for symptoms, etc.

One of the most important habits in connection with reasoning is the
habit of caution. Reasoning is waiting, waiting for ideas to come that
will be adequate for the situation. One must form the habit of waiting a
reasonable length of time for associations to run their course. If one
act too soon, before his organized experience has had time to pass in
review, he may act improperly. Therefore one must be trained to a proper
degree of caution. Of course, caution may be overdone. One must act
sometime, one cannot wait always.

Another habit is that of testing out a conclusion before it is finally
put into practice. It is often possible to put a conclusion to some sort
of test before it is put to the real test, just as one makes a model and
tries out an invention on a small scale. One should not have full
confidence in a conclusion that is the result of reasoning, till the
conclusion has been put to the final test of experiment, of trial.

This last statement leads us to the real function of reasoning. Reason
points the way to action in a new situation. After the situation is
repeated for a sufficient number of times, action passes into the realm
of habit.

=Language and Thinking.= The fact that man has spoken and written language
is of the greatest significance. It has already been pointed out that
language is a means through which we can get experience secondhand. This
proves to be a great advantage to man. But language gives us still
another advantage. Without language, thinking is limited to the passing
of sensory images that arise in accordance with the laws of association.
But man can name things and the attributes of things, and these names
become associated, so that thinking comes to be, in part at least, a
matter of words. Thinking is talking to oneself. One cannot talk without
language.

The importance that attaches to language can hardly be overestimated.
When the child acquires the use of language, he has acquired the use of
a tool, the importance of which to thinking is greater than that of any
other tool. Now, one can think without language, in the sense that
memory images come and go,--we have defined thinking as the flow of
imagery, the passing or succession of ideas. But after we have named
things, thinking, particularly reasoning, bec