38 PSYCHOLOGY AND PREACHING
is a scientific farmer. But we need only consider how few farmers indeed, how few men in any walk of life receive so thorough a training in their occupation, in order to realize that the great majority of men have for the most part unreflectively organized systems of ideas corresponding to the central fields of their experience ; and answering to the collateral and secondary fields of their experience there are systems of ideas even more crudely unreflective, full of gaps and inconsistencies, chaotic and vague.
In a completed act of thought Professor Dewey distin guishes five separate steps : A felt difficulty ; its location and definition ; suggestions of possible solution ; development by reasoning of the bearings of the suggestions; further ob servations and experiment leading to acceptance or rejec tion. 1 He states that the characteristic which distinguishes reflective from unreflective thinking is in the second step. In reflective thinking care is exercised in the location and definition of the difficulty. The situation which causes doubt and difficulty is carefully scrutinized. This is doubt less true ; but in reflection all the latter four steps are more carefully taken than in unreflective thought. The difficulty is accurately located and defined; the suggested solution is not acted upon so quickly; alternative suggestions are sought for before proceeding ; the development by reasoning of these suggested solutions is more patient and thorough; and the final testing of the tentative conclusion by further observation and experiment is more adequate. The general characteristics of reflection are self-control, suspended judg ment, deliberate effort to grasp all the elements of the prob lem, to consider all possible solutions and to accept only those which bear the test of experience. These constitute in their perfection the ideal scientific attitude. This atti tude, if maintained, will fill out many of the gaps and re move many of the latent inconsistencies which are certain to inhere in an unreflective correlation of ideas, and result in an organization of ideas adequate to the guidance of action
i " How We Think," p. 72.
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