ter of our
concepts. Not only must we keep on adding new concepts, but the old must
not remain static. When our concepts stop growing, our minds have ceased
to grow--we no longer learn. This arrest of development is often seen in
persons who have settled into a life of narrow routine, where the
demands are few and of a simple nature. Unless they rise above their
routine, they early become "old fogies." Their concepts petrify from
lack of use and the constant reconstruction which growth necessitates.

On the other hand, the person who has upon him the constant demand to
meet new situations or do better in old ones will keep on enriching his
old concepts and forming new ones, or else, unable to do this, he will
fail in his position. And the person who keeps on steadily enriching his
concepts has discovered the secret of perpetual youth so far as his
mental life is concerned. For him there is no old age; his thought will
be always fresh, his experience always accumulating, and his knowledge
growing more valuable and usable.

5. JUDGMENT

But in the building up of percepts and concepts, as well as in making
use of them after they are formed, another process of thinking enters;
namely, the process of _judging_.

NATURE OF JUDGMENT.--Judging enters more or less into all our thinking,
from the simplest to the most complex. The babe lies staring at his
bottle, and finally it dawns on his sluggish mind that this is the
object from which he gets his dinner. He has performed a judgment. That
is, he has alternately directed his attention to the object before him
and to his image of former nursing, discovered the relation existing
between the two, and affirmed to himself, "This is what gives me my
dinner." "Bottle" and "what-gives-me-my-dinner" are essentially
identical to the child. _Judgment is, then, the affirmation of the
essential identity of meaning of two objects of thought._ Even if the
proposition in which we state our judgment has in it a negative, the
definition will still hold, for the mental process is the same in either
case. It is as much a judgment if we say, "The day is not-cold," as if
we say, "The day is cold."

JUDGMENT USED IN PERCEPTS AND CONCEPTS.--How judgment enters into the
forming of our percepts may be seen from the illustration just given.
The act by which the child perceived his bottle had in it a large
element of judging. He had to compare two objects of thought--the one
from past experience in