Most people go through life without doing much thinking really worthy of the name. They constitute by far the largest of the three classes into which all mankind may be divided. The first of these is made up of people who think energetically and effectively, testing every proposition by the principles of logical reasoning.



The second class comprises people whose thinking, as a rule, is colored and weakened by their prejudices and prepossessions. Into the third class fall people with little continuity or effectiveness of thought, and with a marked tendency to accept the thoughts and suggestions of others.

If you can not honestly say that you belong to the first of these classes; if you must confess that your thinking is mostly a sort of dreaming, or is unduly determined by your emotions; then bestir yourself to become the real thinker you must be in order to achieve your highest possibilities.

Like everybody else you, of course, have opinions on a great variety of subjects. Have you ever examined any of your opinions with reference to the grounds on which they rest? If you have never done this I would suggest that you take some subject on which you have a definite opinion, and submit your opinion of it to a really critical examination. The result may be somewhat surprizing and extremely profitable to you.

Take, for example, the subject of a protective tariff, concerning which you are, let us suppose, strongly "anti," or just as strongly "pro." Ask yourself why you feel as strongly as you do regarding the protection issue. Is it because you have carefully considered the arguments on both sides, and have formed your opinion after deliberate reflection? Or is your opinion chiefly an emotional reaction determined by circumstances of the moment and of your environment?

Are you in favor of protection or opposed to it for no other reason than that the majority of your relatives and friends are in favor or opposed ? Is your opinion only an echo of theirs?

Scrutinize similarly your opinion on other subjects. Try earnestly to ascertain your prevailing mode of forming opinions. Consider whether it is a process of impartial, thorough, active reasoning, or a process of passive suggestibility. Far too many people, let me again remind you, are dependent on the ideas of others for the opinions they call their own. They think as their fathers and mothers think, or as their daily associates think, because they have never formed the invaluable habit of thinking things out for themselves.

If you find that you belong to this unfortunate and exceedingly numerous class of people, try to emancipate yourself forthwith. Slavish acceptance of tradition, slavish submission to prejudice, are signs of a truly appalling mental weakness. You can't become a man of mark, a man of real achievement, so long as you are but an echo of other people. You can't possibly progress as you should in your chosen life work.

For the highest success demands vigorous, alert, independent thinking. And your thinking is the opposite of this, as revealed by your blind, uncritical assimilation of other people's ideas.

Brush the cobwebs out of your mind. Rid yourself of the rubbish of prejudice and pre- possession. No longer be content with surface thinking, which is not thinking at all. Form the habit of looking at everything from more than one point of view. Balance, weigh, test. Observe, analyze, meditate.