nality,
creative intelligence, whatever one chooses to call it, consists,
in no small measure, in this ability to remain alive to a wide
variety of stimuli, to keep sensitive to all the possibilities that
are in a situation, instead of those only to which we are
immediately prompted by instinct or habit. The possibility of
using the current of a river as power is not the first possibility
that flowing water suggests.

Past training and individual differences in temperament
not only limit the possibilities that do occur to us; they
seriously distort, color, and qualify those of which we become
conscious. We forecast differently and with differing degrees
of accuracy the consequences of those possible courses of
action which do occur to us according to the influence and
stimulation which particular native traits and acquired impulses
have in our conduct. Ideally, the consequences which
we imaginatively forecast as following from a given course of
action, should tally with the consequences which genuinely
follow from it. But there is too often a sad discrepancy between
the consequences as they are foreseen by the individual
concerned and the genuine consequences that could be foreseen
by any disinterested observer. The discrepancy between
the genuine and the imagined consequences of given
ideas or suggestions is caused more than anything else by
the hopes, fears, aversions, and preferences which, by nature
or training, are controlling in a man's behavior. Facts are
weighed differently according as one or another of these
psychological influences is present. We intend unconsciously
to substitute a desired or expected consequence for the actual
one; we tend to be oblivious to consequences which we fear,
and quick to imagine those for which we hope. On the day
before an election the campaign managers on both sides, in
the glow and momentum of their activities, are confident of
the morrow's victory. The opponent of prohibition saw
nothing but drug fiends and revolution as its consequences;
its extreme advocates saw it as the salvation of mankind.

The causes of error in appraising the consequences of any
given course of action are partly individual and partly social
in character. From Francis Bacon down, there have been
various attempts to classify these factors in the distortion of
the reflective process. In connection with the particular
human traits, especially such as fear and gregariousness, we
shall have occasion