consequences imaginatively foreseen, it is often necessary to
institute a very elaborate system of connecting links between
an immediately suggested course of action and its not at all
obvious results. "Thinking a thing out" involves precisely
this introduction of connecting links, or "middle terms," between
what is immediately given or suggested and what
necessarily, though by no means obviously, follows. This
is illustrated in the case of any more or less theoretical problem
and its solution. To perceive, for example, the connection
between atmospheric pressure and the rise of water in a
suction pump involves the introduction of connecting links
in the form of the general law of gravitation, of which atmospheric
pressure is a special case.

But the same is true of practical problems. A young man
may be trying to decide whether or not to take a nomination
to the training course at West Point. He may be attracted
by the four years' training, and highly value the results of it.
He may think, however, that the training involves an obligation
to serve in the army; it may mean, for a long time, service
in some remote army post. His decision may be determined
by this last consideration, which required a series of
intermediate "linking" ideas to bring to light.

The technique of scientific or expert thinking is, in large
part, concerned with devices for enabling the thinker more
securely to trace the obscure and remote connections between
actions and their consequences, between causes and effects.
But, whether simple or complex, the essential feature of
reflective activity is that it is action performed in the light of
consequences foreseen in imagination. Physical stimuli are
not responded to immediately with physical action. They
are responded to as symbols, signs, or portents; they are
taken as symptoms of the results that _would_ follow if they
_were_ acted upon. That is, they are, until decision is made,
reacted to imaginatively. When an actual response is finally
made, it is made on the basis of the results that have been
more or less accurately and directly anticipated in imagination.

REFLECTION AS THE MODIFIER OF INSTINCT. Reflection is
primarily a revealer of consequences. Instead of yielding to
the first impulse that occurs to him, the thinking man
considers where that impulse, if followed out, will lead. And
since man is moved by more than one impulse at a time, reflection
traces the consequences of each,