CHAPTER XII
THINKING
No word is more constantly on our lips than the word think. A hundred times a
day we tell what we think about this thing or that. Any exceptional power of
thought classes us among the efficient of our generation. It is in their ability to
think that men stand preëminently above the animals.
1. DIFFERENT TYPES OF THINKING
The term think, or thinking, is employed in so many different senses that it will
be well first of all to come to an understanding as to its various uses. Four
different types of thinking which we shall note are:[5] (1) chance, or idle,
thinking; (2) thinking in the form of uncritical belief; (3) assimilative thinking;
and (4) deliberative thinking.
Chance or Idle Thinking.—Our thinking is of the chance or idle kind when we
think to no conscious end. No particular problem is up for solution, and the
stream of thought drifts along in idleness. In such thinking, immediate interest,
some idle fancy, the impulse of the moment, or the suggestions from our
environment determine the train of associations and give direction to our
thought. In a sense, we surrender our mental bark to the winds of circumstance
to drive it whithersoever they will without let or hindrance from us. Since no
results are sought from our thinking, none are obtained. The best of us spend
more time in these idle trains of thought than we would like to admit, while
inferior and untrained minds seldom rise above this barren thought level. Not
infrequently even when we are studying a lesson which demands our best
thought power we find that an idle chain of associations has supplanted the more
rigid type of thinking and appropriated the field.
Uncritical Belief.—We often say that we think a certain thing is true or false
when we have, as a matter of fact, done little or no thinking about it. We only
believe, or uncritically accept, the common point of view as to the truth or
untruth of the matter concerned. The ancients believed that the earth was flat,