with their own innate
tendencies.

In like manner, a scientist will choose the characters _most useful_
to his associations. An anthropologist may choose the shape of the
head to distinguish the human races, and another might choose the
cutaneous pigment--either will serve the purpose. Each anthropologist
may have the most accurate knowledge of the external characteristics
of men; but the important matter consists in finding a characteristic
which will serve as a basis for classification: that is to say, a
characteristic on which it will be possible to group numerous
characteristics in the order of similitude. Purely practical persons
would consider man from the utilitarian rather than from the
scientific point of view; a maker of hats would single out the
dimensions of the head from among other human characteristics; an
orator would consider man from the point of view of his susceptibility
to the spoken word. But _selection_ is the fundamental necessity which
enables us to realize things; to emerge from the vague into the
practical, from aimless contemplation into the sphere of action.

Every created thing in existence is characterized by the fact that it
has _limitations_. Our own psycho-sensory organization is founded upon
a selection. What are the functions of the senses, but to respond to a
determined series of vibrations and to no others? Thus the eye limits
light and the ear sounds. In forming the contents of the mind the
first step is, therefore, a selection, necessarily and materially
limited. Nevertheless, the mind imposes still further limits on the
selection possible to the senses, fashioning it upon the activity of
internal choice. Thus attention is fixed upon determined objects and
not upon all objects; and the volition _chooses_ the actions which are
really to be performed from among a multitude of possible actions.

It is in like fashion that the lofty work of the intelligence is
accomplished; by an analogous action of attention and internal will,
it abstracts the dominant characteristics of things, and thus succeeds
in associating their images, and keeping them in the foreground of
consciousness. It ceases to consider an immense amount of ballast
which would render its context formless and confused. Every superior
mind distinguishes the essential form from the superfluous, rejecting
the latter, and thus it is enabled to achieve its characteristic,
clear, delicate, and vital activities. It is capable