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PART THREE: THE TRAINING OF
THOUGHT
CHAPTER TWELVE
ACTIVITY AND THE TRAINING OF THOUGHT
In this chapter we shall gather together and amplify considerations that have already been advanced, in various passages of the preceding pages, concerning the relation of action to thought. We shall follow, though not with exactness, the order of development in the unfolding human being.
§ 1. The Early Stage of Activity
1. The baby's problem determines his thinking
The sight of a baby often calls out the question: "What do you suppose he is thinking about?" By the nature of the case, the question is unanswerable in detail; but, also by the nature of the case, we may be sure about a baby's chief interest. His primary problem is mastery of his body as a tool of securing comfortable and effective adjustments to his surroundings, physical and social. The child has to learn to do almost everything: to see, to hear, to reach, to handle, to balance the body, to creep, to walk, and so on. Even if it be true that human beings have even more instinctive reactions than lower animals, it is also true that instinctive tendencies are much less perfect in men, and that most of them are157
