f action into its significant
features, the same connection of a given action with a given
result which makes the intelligent learner so much more
quickly acquire effective new habits than the one who is
mechanically drilled, leads also to a continuous criticism of
habits, and their discontinuance when they are no longer
adequate. Reflection, if it is itself a habit, is the most valuable
one of all. It is an important counterpoise to the hardening
and fossilization which repeated habitual actions bring about
in the nervous system.

In acting reflectively we subject our accustomed ways to
deliberate analysis, however immediately persuasive these
may have become, and deliberately institute new habits in
the light of the more desirable consequences they will bring.
Habits come to be regarded not as final or as good in themselves,
but as methods of accomplishing good. If they fail
to bring genuine satisfaction, reflection can indicate wherein
they are inadequate, wherein they may be changed, and
whether they should be altogether discarded.

Reflection thus makes conduct conscious; it is not the substitute
for instinct and habit; it is the guide and controller of
both. When we act thoughtfully and intelligently, we are
doing things not because we have done them that way in the
past, or because it is the first response that occurs to us, but
because, in the light of analysis, that way will bring about the
most desirable results.

THE LIMITS OF REFLECTION AS A MODIFIER OF INSTINCT AND HABIT.
While our impulses and habits may be subjected to the criticism
of reflection in the light of the consequences which it
can forecast, reflection is itself seriously limited by our
original impulses and our acquired habitual ones. On reflection,
we may not follow our first impulse, but to act at all is to act
on some original or acquired impulse or a combination of
them. Which original tendency we shall follow reflection can
tell us; it cannot tell us to follow none. In the illustration
already used, the student may upon reflection study rather
than go out. But the roots of his studying will also lie back
in the instincts and habits which are, for better or for worse,
his only equipment for action. They will lie back in the
tendencies to be curious, to gain the praise of other people
and to be a leader among them, in the habits of knowing work
thoroughly, of studying in the evening, of maintaining a
scholarship average to which he h