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THINKING, HOW COORDINATED
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 are of little use till they are intelligently combined and directed. A little chick just out of the shell will after a few trials peck and grasp grains of food with its beak as well as at any later time. This involves a complicated coordination of the eye and the head. An infant does not even begin to reach definitely for things that the eye sees till he is several months old, and even then several weeks’ practise is required before he learns the adjustment so as neither to overreach nor to underreach.
It may not be literally true that the child will grasp for the moon, but it is true that he needs much practise before he can tell whether an object is within reach or not. The arm is thrust out instinctively in response to a stimulus from the eye and this tendency is the origin of the ability to reach and grasp exactly and quickly; but nevertheless final mastery requires observing and selecting the successful movements and arranging them in view of an end. These operations of conscious selection and arrangement constitute thinking, tho of a rudimentary type.—John Dewey, “How to Think.”
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THIRTEEN SUPERSTITION, THE
“Have a thirteenth floor in this building?” queries a part owner of one of the famous office buildings in New York. “Never! The thirteenth floor is sometimes difficult to rent; tenants would prefer to go higher or lower.
“The thirteen hoodoo affects more otherwise sane men than is acknowledged. Many of the most famous business buildings in the country have no thirteenth floor—the fourteenth story follows the twelfth. By following this plan, we take the least risk. As the names of tenants are arranged alphabetically on the directory, the omission is seldom noticed.”—System.
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Thorn, Value of the—See [Cross, Glorious].