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SECTION X Ideals Develop Within the Reflective Process 1. Summary Account of the Intellectual Process Lecture XXVI. March 11, 1901 I SHOULD LIKE to begin by reviewing a few points made earlier in the discussion, namely, that the process of deliberation represents the process of rehearsing activity in idea when that overt act is postponed. It is, so to speak, trying an act on before it is tried out in the objective, obvious, space and time world. Back of the association of ideas or the train of imagery in terms of which the deliberative process is carried on, lies the orderly sequence of acts. Any defined form of activity, even of a higher animal's acts, falls into an orderly sequence: One act stimulates another until a definite sequel of activity, relating perhaps to the getting of food, has been formed. Each separate act is far from being a complete whole in itself but is a member ofa series and has its significance because it is called up by some antecedent act and leads to some subsequent act. It is that continuity, organization into a sequence or series, which is the primary fact here, and which lies back of the sequence of images in the process of deliberation. When there is a conflict between incompatible modes of activity the image is born, the image standing for a third mode ofactivity in which something ofboth the series could be utilized. That image at first is vague and undefined in character. It may have much more emotional tone to it than definite intellectual content, butthat intellectual content, so far as it constitutes what we call the image, has content which is static and objective. The process ofmaking that vague, confused image definite and coherent is then the process of deliberation, and constitutes breaking the 226 Psychology of Ethics 227 image up into a series ofimages and train ofideas. The image expresses the possible outcome and possible result, therefore a somewhat remote result. It must from the necessity of the case be somewhat remote, be projected to a certain extent into the future as a possible anticipated outcome. Otherwise there would be no conflict. The intellectual process, then,just in the degree in which it is carried out at all, has to proceed from that conception of a more or less remote, possible outcome, to a definition ofthe intermediate steps. Ifthe process goes on performing the function for which it was originated, we have to supply the intermediaries, the situation in which we find ourself, with its opposed tendencies,l and the conception of this possible outcome . That means, of course, practically that we have to supply the means ofreaching that end, that we have to find the bridge which would carry us over from where we are to where we want to be, to the result that we anticipate. The whole working machinery ofthat is the association of ideas, the process of suggestion. The thought of the end suggests some other thought of another act which might be performed, and that another, and so on. One act suggests one step, and that another, and so on. We control that associative process all the time by seeing whether it tends to layout for us a path for possible intermediate steps between where we are now and where we want to get to. The associations tend or should tend to go back to our starting point. The two ends, the terminus where we are and the end proposed, remain fairly permanent, not in their content (that is always changing) but as limits of the process they remain fixed, and we are filling up the intermediate steps by the process of association, working backwards and forwards. What James says about the fringe would throw light on the psychology of the process.2 That fringe is what we check the association by so that it does not go off at random. We must have a sense ofdirection all the time in the images that come up. As psychologists have brought out frequently, in the machinery of thinking the difference between thinking and what we generally call "association of ideas" means simply that thinking is controlled association, that is to say, generally that there is some definite goal to be reached and so association cannot follow a merely chance course. In the latter case we get reverie, daydreaming, the mere recreative play of mind. The point that perhaps has not been sufficiently recognized, however, is that the...

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