is, reflective par excellence. The deliberate
cultivation of this phase of thought constitutes thinking as a
distinctive experience. Thinking, in other words, is the intentional
endeavor to discover specific connections between something which we do
and the consequences which result, so that the two become continuous.
Their isolation, and consequently their purely arbitrary going together,
is canceled; a unified developing situation takes its place. The
occurrence is now understood; it is explained; it is reasonable, as we
say, that the thing should happen as it does.

Thinking is thus equivalent to an explicit rendering of the intelligent
element in our experience. It makes it possible to act with an end
in view. It is the condition of our having aims. As soon as an infant
begins to expect he begins to use something which is now going on as
a sign of something to follow; he is, in however simple a fashion,
judging. For he takes one thing as evidence of something else, and so
recognizes a relationship. Any future development, however elaborate
it may be, is only an extending and a refining of this simple act of
inference. All that the wisest man can do is to observe what is going on
more widely and more minutely and then select more carefully from what
is noted just those factors which point to something to happen. The
opposites, once more, to thoughtful action are routine and capricious
behavior. The former accepts what has been customary as a full measure
of possibility and omits to take into account the connections of the
particular things done. The latter makes the momentary act a measure
of value, and ignores the connections of our personal action with the
energies of the environment. It says, virtually, "things are to be just
as I happen to like them at this instant," as routine says in effect
"let things continue just as I have found them in the past." Both refuse
to acknowledge responsibility for the future consequences which
flow from present action. Reflection is the acceptance of such
responsibility.

The starting point of any process of thinking is something going on,
something which just as it stands is incomplete or unfulfilled. Its
point, its meaning lies literally in what it is going to be, in how it
is going to turn out. As this is written, the world is filled with the
clang of contending armies. For an active participant in the war, it is
clear that the momentous thing is the issue, the future conseq