HOW INSTINCTS AND HABITS IMPAIR THE PROCESSES OF REFLECTION. It is as important as it is paradoxical that thinking is impaired in its efficiency by the instincts and habits in whose service it arises, and whose conflicts and maladjustments it helps to resolve. The situations of conflict or perplexity which provoke thinking are determined by the particular tendencies which, by nature or training, are brought into play in any given situation. If we are committed by tradition or habitual allegiance to a protective tariff, we will be concerned in our thinking with details, what articles need protection and how much do they need; the ultimate desirability of a protective tariff will not be a problem remotely occurring to us. If we are by training committed to capital punishment, we will be concerned, if we think about it at all, with means and methods; we will think about the relative merits of hanging or electrocution; the ultimate justification or desirability of capital punishment will not be a problem or issue for us at all. Thus, it may be said in a sense that our thinking is determined by what we do not think about as much as by what we do think about. What we take for granted limits the field within which we will inquire or reflect at all. But what we take for granted is, on the whole, settled by our habitual reactions. And the more settled habitual convictions we have, the narrower becomes the field within which reflection takes place. Force of habit may leave us blind to many situations genuinely demanding solution. Originality in thinking consists, in part at least, in an ability to see a problem where others, through routine, see none. Apples have fallen on the heads of others than Newton, but a habit-ridden rustic will not be stirred by the falling of an apple to reflection on the problem of falling bodies. The countryman may live all his life serenely oblivious to a thousand problems that would pique the curiosity and reflection of a botanist or geologist. A man may go on for years accepting income on investments earned in very dubious ways without ever pausing to reflect on the sources or the justification of his wealth.[1] [Footnote 1: According to the traditional anecdote, when Marie Antoinette was told that the people were clamoring because they could not get any bread, the one problem that occurred to her was why they didn't eat cake. From the habits and conditions of life to which she was accustomed, there had never arisen a problem as to how to get food at all; it was merely a problem of what kind of food to eat.]