DELIBERATIVE THINKING.--Deliberative thinking constitutes the highest type of thought process. In order to do deliberative thinking there is necessary, first of all, what Dewey calls a "split-road" situation. A traveler going along a well-beaten highway, says Dr. Dewey, does not deliberate; he simply keeps on going. But let the highway split into two roads at a fork, only one of which leads to the desired destination, and now a problem confronts him; he must take one road or the other, but _which_? The intelligent traveler will at once go to _seeking for evidence_ as to which road he should choose. He will balance this fact against that fact, and this probability against that probability, in an effort to arrive at a solution of his problem. Before we can engage in deliberative thinking we must be confronted by some problem, some such "_split-road_" situation in our mental stream--we must have something to think about. It is this fact that makes one writer say that the great purpose of one's education is not to solve all his problems for him. It is rather to help him (1) to _discover_ problems, or "_split-road_" situations, (2) to assist him in gathering the facts necessary for their solution, and (3) to train him in the weighing of his facts or evidence, that is, in deliberative thinking. Only as we learn to recognize the true problems that confront us in our own lives and in society about us can we become thinkers in the best sense. Our own plans and projects, the questions of right and wrong that are constantly arising, the social, political and religious problems awaiting solution, all afford the opportunity and the necessity for deliberative thinking. And unhappy is the pupil whose school work does not set the problems and employ the methods which will insure training in this as well as in the assimilative type of thinking. Every school subject, besides supplying certain information to be "learned," should present its problems requiring true deliberative thinking within the range of development and ability of the pupil, and no subject--literature, history, science, language--is without many such problems. 2. THE FUNCTION OF THINKING All true thinking is for the purpose of discovering relations between the things we think about. Imagine a world in which nothing is related to anything else; in which every object perceived, remembered, or imagined, stands absolutely by itself, independent and self-sufficient! What a chaos it would be! We might perceive, remember, and imagine all the various objects we please, but without the power to think them together, they would all be totally unrelated, and hence have no meaning.