William James said that wherever there is selection among alternatives there is mental life. Man is a choosing animal, and his choices determine both the ends sought and the means to be employed. We will not discuss the question whether our choices are spontaneous or are determined wholly or in part by environmental and hereditary factors. Whatever determines them, our habits of choosing,--the general character of the things we prefer,--reveal the kind of people we are. And as learning is not merely the acquiring of more and more information but is accompanied by a gradual transformation of habit systems, its progress is manifest not merely by what a man knows at any stage in his education, but also by the kind of issue that is real to him, the questions which he permits life to put to him, the sort of temptations he has to struggle to avoid, the kind of goods that are vital to him. When I was a boy my parents used to tell me, “A man is known by the company he keeps.” The saying, while designed to protect youth from the dangerous influence of evil companionship, is not wholly true. Many persons, from ambition or other motives, seek the society of persons unlike themselves. Those who are more gregarious than selective may exercise little choice among their associates. But ordinarily people like to be with their own kind. Criminals keep company with other criminals, golfers with other golfers, stamp collectors with others who have the same interest. We wish our friends to be interested in the things that interest us. Groups long associated tend to become homogeneous. When marked differences of taste and opinion develop, companions drift apart. Hence it is obvious that the company one keeps is determined in part by the dilemmas he keeps. We do not normally keep the same set of dilemmas through life. Each stage of development presents new challenges, problems, alternatives; as we mature our habits of judgment change. We see things in a different light. What was once a matter of vital concern becomes a dead issue. Our interest is caught and our choice determined by aspects of situations to which we did not react at all at an earlier stage. We do not solve all the problems of any stage, but we outgrow them,--get over them.