ave been utterly false. Think of the
investigations being carried on now in medicine, in science, in
invention, which because of the lack of knowledge are still incomplete,
and yet in each case thinking of the most technical and rigorous type
has been used. Thinking cannot be considered in terms of the result.
Correct results may be obtained, even in problematic situations, with no
thinking, and on the other hand much thinking may be done and yet the
results reached be entirely unsatisfactory. Thinking is a process
involving a certain definite procedure. It is the organisation of all
mental states toward a certain definite end, but is not any one mental
state. In certain types of situations this procedure is the one most
certain of reaching correct conclusions, in some situations it is the
only possible one, but the conclusion is not the thinking and its
correctness does not differentiate the process from others.

From the foregoing discussions it must not be deduced that because of
the specific nature and the difficulty of thinking that the power is
given only to adults. On the contrary, the power is rooted in the
original equipment of the human race and develops gradually, just as all
other original capacities do. Children under three years of age manifest
it. True, the situations calling it out are very simple, and to the
adult seem often trivial, as they most often occur in connection with
the child's play, but they none the less call for the adjustment of
means to end, which is thinking. A lost toy, the absence of a playmate,
the breaking of a cup, a thunderstorm, these and hundreds of other
events of daily life are occasions which may arouse thinking on the part
of a little child. It is not the type of situation, nor its dignity,
that is the important thing in thinking, but the way in which it is
dealt with. The incorrectness of a child's data, their incompleteness
and lack of organization, often result in incorrect conclusions, and
still his thinking may be absolutely sound. The difference between the
child and the adult in this power is a difference in degree--both
possess the power. As Dewey says, "Only by making the most of the
thought-factor, already active in the experience of childhood, is there
any promise or warrant for the emergence of superior reflective power at
adolescence, or at any later period."[7]

Thinking, then, is involved in any response which comes as a result of
the conscious adaptation of