to examine a few of these.

It will suffice to point out here that the aim of reflective
thinking is to discover the genuine consequences of things,
and to eliminate and discount those prejudices and preferences,
bred of early education and training, which might impair
our discovery of those consequences. To the untrained,
those things look most significant which stir their impulses
most strikingly. The beggar's sores seem much more important
and terrible than a gifted youngster deprived of education
through poverty. Instinctively we shrink back from the sight
of blood, but instinct is no safe clue in helping us to
distinguish between the poisons and the panaceas among the
brightly colored bottles of chemicals ranged along a shelf.
The whole technique of scientific method as opposed to the
shrewd but unreliable guesses of common sense is one of freeing
us from the compulsions of random habitual impulses.
It substitutes for caprice the measuring of consequences, the
detailed knowing of what we are about. That impartial judgment
has its difficulties is clear from the simple fact alone that
human beings start by being a bundle of instincts and soon
grow into a bundle of habits. To the extent to which they
can control these they are masters of themselves.

THE VALUE OF REFLECTION FOR LIFE. To many people there is
something terrifying about the idea of controlling life by
reason. Life (they point out correctly) is a vital process of
instincts which appear before thinking, and which are often
more powerful than reasoned judgments. Against advice to
live consciously, to be in control of ourselves, to know what
we are about, comes the call "Back to Nature." A life of
reflection appears chilling and arbitrary. Because reflection
so often reveals that impulses must be checked if disaster
is not to result, it has come to be associated with a metallic
and Stoic repression. To many a persuasive impulse we
must, after reflection, say, "No." Because of this a certain
school of philosophers, poets, and radicals urges us to trust
nature, to follow our impulses, which, being natural, must
be right.

All of these rebels against reason make the mistake of supposing
that the aim of reflective thinking is to quell instincts,
which, with the best will in the world, it cannot succeed in
doing. Instincts are present and powerful. In themselves
they are neither worth encouraging, nor ought they to be
repressed. The satisfaction of native