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diff --git a/16287-h/16287-h.htm b/16287-h/16287-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4a73e17 --- /dev/null +++ b/16287-h/16287-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,7291 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> +<head> +<meta name="generator" content="HTML Tidy, see www.w3.org" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" +content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Talks To Teachers, by William +James.</title> +<style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */ + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span {display: block; margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + +</style> +</head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To +Students On Some Of Life's Ideals, by William James + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals + +Author: William James + +Release Date: July 13, 2005 [EBook #16287] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALKS TO TEACHERS *** + + + + +Produced by David Newman, Dave Macfarlane and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + +<h1>TALKS TO TEACHERS</h1> + +<h2>ON PSYCHOLOGY:</h2> + +<h2>AND TO STUDENTS ON SOME OF LIFE'S IDEALS,</h2> + +<h2>By WILLIAM JAMES</h2> + +<h4>NEW YORK<br /> +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY<br /> +1925</h4> + +<h5>COPYRIGHT, 1899, 1900</h5> + +<h5>BY WILLIAM JAMES</h5> + +<h5>PRESS OF GEO. H. ELLIS CO. (INC.) BOSTON</h5> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<h2>PREFACE.</h2> + +<p>In 1892 I was asked by the Harvard Corporation to give a few +public lectures on psychology to the Cambridge teachers. The talks +now printed form the substance of that course, which has since then +been delivered at various places to various teacher-audiences. I +have found by experience that what my hearers seem least to relish +is analytical technicality, and what they most care for is concrete +practical application. So I have gradually weeded out the former, +and left the latter unreduced; and now, that I have at last written +out the lectures, they contain a minimum of what is deemed +'scientific' in psychology, and are practical and popular in the +extreme.</p> + +<p>Some of my colleagues may possibly shake their heads at this; +but in taking my cue from what has seemed to me to be the feeling +of the audiences I believe that I am shaping my book so as to +satisfy the more genuine public need.</p> + +<p>Teachers, of course, will miss the minute divisions, +subdivisions, and definitions, the lettered and numbered headings, +the variations of type, and all the other mechanical artifices on +which they are accustomed to prop their minds. But my main desire +has been to make them conceive, and, if possible, reproduce +sympathetically in their imagination, the mental life of their +pupil as the sort of active unity which he himself feels it to be. +<i>He</i> doesn't chop himself into distinct processes and +compartments; and it would have frustrated this deeper purpose of +my book to make it look, when printed, like a Baedeker's handbook +of travel or a text-book of arithmetic. So far as books printed +like this book force the fluidity of the facts upon the young +teacher's attention, so far I am sure they tend to do his intellect +a service, even though they may leave unsatisfied a craving (not +altogether without its legitimate grounds) for more nomenclature, +head-lines, and subdivisions.</p> + +<p>Readers acquainted with my larger books on Psychology will meet +much familiar phraseology. In the chapters on habit and memory I +have even copied several pages verbatim, but I do not know that +apology is needed for such plagiarism as this.</p> + +<p>The talks to students, which conclude the volume, were written +in response to invitations to deliver 'addresses' to students at +women's colleges. The first one was to the graduating class of the +Boston Normal School of Gymnastics. Properly, it continues the +series of talks to teachers. The second and the third address +belong together, and continue another line of thought.</p> + +<p>I wish I were able to make the second, 'On a Certain Blindness +in Human Beings,' more impressive. It is more than the mere piece +of sentimentalism which it may seem to some readers. It connects +itself with a definite view of the world and of our moral relations +to the same. Those who have done me the honor of reading my volume +of philosophic essays will recognize that I mean the pluralistic or +individualistic philosophy. According to that philosophy, the truth +is too great for any one actual mind, even though that mind be +dubbed 'the Absolute,' to know the whole of it. The facts and +worths of life need many cognizers to take them in. There is no +point of view absolutely public and universal. Private and +uncommunicable perceptions always remain over, and the worst of it +is that those who look for them from the outside never know +<i>where</i>.</p> + +<p>The practical consequence of such a philosophy is the well-known +democratic respect for the sacredness of individuality,—is, +at any rate, the outward tolerance of whatever is not itself +intolerant. These phrases are so familiar that they sound now +rather dead in our ears. Once they had a passionate inner meaning. +Such a passionate inner meaning they may easily acquire again if +the pretension of our nation to inflict its own inner ideals and +institutions <i>vi et armis</i> upon Orientals should meet with a +resistance as obdurate as so far it has been gallant and spirited. +Religiously and philosophically, our ancient national doctrine of +live and let live may prove to have a far deeper meaning than our +people now seem to imagine it to possess.</p> + +<small>CAMBRIDGE, MASS., March, 1899.</small> <br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<h2>CONTENTS.</h2> + +<hr style='width: 65%;' /> +<a href="#TALKS_TO_TEACHERS"><b>TALKS TO TEACHERS.</b></a> <br /> +<br /> + <a href="#I__PSYCHOLOGY_AND_THE_TEACHING_ART"><b>I. PSYCHOLOGY AND +THE TEACHING ART</b></a><br /> + + +<p>The American educational organization,—What teachers may +expect from psychology,—Teaching methods must agree with +psychology, but cannot be immediately deduced therefrom,—The +science of teaching and the science of war,—The educational +uses of psychology defined,—The teacher's duty toward +child-study.</p> + +<a href="#II__THE_STREAM_OF_CONSCIOUSNESS"><b>II. THE STREAM OF +CONSCIOUSNESS</b></a><br /> + + +<p>Our mental life is a succession of conscious +'fields,'—They have a focus and a margin,—This +description contrasted with the theory of 'ideas,'—Wundt's +conclusions, note.</p> + +<a href="#III__THE_CHILD_AS_A_BEHAVING_ORGANISM"><b>III. THE CHILD +AS A BEHAVING ORGANISM</b></a><br /> + + +<p>Mind as pure reason and mind as practical guide,—The +latter view the more fashionable one to-day,—It will be +adopted in this work,—Why so?—The teacher's function is +to train pupils to behavior.</p> + +<a href="#IV__EDUCATION_AND_BEHAVIOR"><b>IV. EDUCATION AND +BEHAVIOR</b></a><br /> + + +<p>Education defined,—Conduct is always its +outcome,—Different national ideals: Germany and England.</p> + +<a href="#V__THE_NECESSITY_OF_REACTIONS"><b>V. THE NECESSITY OF +REACTIONS</b></a><br /> + + +<p>No impression without expression,—Verbal +reproduction,—Manual training,—Pupils should know their +'marks'.</p> + +<a href="#VI__NATIVE_REACTIONS_AND_ACQUIRED_REACTIONS"><b>VI. +NATIVE REACTIONS AND ACQUIRED REACTIONS</b></a><br /> + + +<p>The acquired reactions must be preceded by native +ones,—Illustration: teaching child to ask instead of +snatching,—Man has more instincts than other mammals.</p> + +<a href="#VII__WHAT_THE_NATIVE_REACTIONS_ARE"><b>VII. WHAT THE +NATIVE REACTIONS ARE</b></a><br /> + + +<p>Fear and +love,—Curiosity,—Imitation,—Emulation,—Forbidden +by Rousseau,—His error,—Ambition, pugnacity, and pride. +Soft pedagogics and the fighting +impulse,—Ownership,—Its educational +uses,—Constructiveness,—Manual +teaching,—Transitoriness in instincts,—Their order of +succession.</p> + +<a href="#VIII__THE_LAWS_OF_HABIT"><b>VIII. THE LAWS OF +HABIT</b></a><br /> + + +<p>Good and bad habits,—Habit due to plasticity of organic +tissues,—The aim of education is to make useful habits +automatic,—Maxims relative to habit-forming: 1. Strong +initiative,—2. No exception,—3. Seize first opportunity +to act,—4. Don't preach,—Darwin and poetry: without +exercise our capacities decay,—The habit of mental and +muscular relaxation,—Fifth maxim, keep the faculty of effort +trained,—Sudden conversions compatible with laws of +habit,—Momentous influence of habits on character.</p> + +<a href="#IX__THE_ASSOCIATION_OF_IDEAS"><b>IX. THE ASSOCIATION OF +IDEAS</b></a><br /> + + +<p>A case of habit,—The two laws, contiguity and +similarity,—The teacher has to build up useful systems of +association,—Habitual associations determine +character,—Indeterminateness of our trains of +association,—We can trace them backward, but not foretell +them,—Interest deflects,—Prepotent parts of the +field,—In teaching, multiply cues.</p> + +<a href="#X__INTEREST"><b>X. INTEREST</b></a><br /> + + +<p>The child's native interests,—How uninteresting things +acquire an interest,—Rules for the +teacher,—'Preparation' of the mind for the lesson: the pupil +must have something to attend with,—All later interests are +borrowed from original ones.</p> + +<a href="#XI__ATTENTION"><b>XI. ATTENTION</b></a><br /> + + +<p>Interest and attention are two aspects of one +fact,—Voluntary attention comes in beats,—Genius and +attention,—The subject must change to win +attention,—Mechanical aids,—The physiological +process,—The new in the old is what excites +interest,—Interest and effort are +compatible,—Mind-wandering,—Not fatal to mental +efficiency.</p> + +<a href="#XII__MEMORY"><b>XII. MEMORY</b></a><br /> + + +<p>Due to association,—No recall without a cue,—Memory +is due to brain-plasticity,—Native +retentiveness,—Number of associations may practically be its +equivalent,—Retentiveness is a fixed property of the +individual,—Memory <i>versus</i> memories,—Scientific +system as help to memory,—Technical +memories,—Cramming,—Elementary memory +unimprovable,—Utility of verbal +memorizing,—Measurements of immediate memory,—They +throw little light,—Passion is the important factor in human +efficiency,—Eye-memory, ear-memory, etc.,—The rate of +forgetting, Ebbinghaus's results,—Influence of the +unreproducible,—To remember, one must think and connect.</p> + +<a href="#XIII__THE_ACQUISITION_OF_IDEAS"><b>XIII. THE ACQUISITION +OF IDEAS</b></a><br /> + + +<p>Education gives a stock of conceptions,—The order of their +acquisition,—Value of verbal material,—Abstractions of +different orders: when are they assimilable,—False +conceptions of children.</p> + +<a href="#XIV__APPERCEPTION"><b>XIV. APPERCEPTION</b></a><br /> + + +<p>Often a mystifying idea,—The process defined,—The +law of economy,—Old-fogyism,—How many types of +apperception?—New heads of classification must continually be +invented,—Alteration of the apperceiving mass,—Class +names are what we work by,—Few new fundamental conceptions +acquired after twenty-five.</p> + +<a href="#XV__THE_WILL"><b>XV. THE WILL</b></a><br /> + + +<p>The word defined,—All consciousness tends to +action,—Ideo-motor action,—Inhibition,—The +process of deliberation,—Why so few of our ideas result in +acts,—The associationist account of the will,—A balance +of impulses and inhibitions,—The over-impulsive and the +over-obstructed type,—The perfect type,—The balky +will,—What character building consists in,—Right action +depends on right apperception of the case,—Effort of will is +effort of attention: the drunkard's dilemma,—Vital importance +of voluntary attention,—Its amount may be +indeterminate,—Affirmation of free-will,—Two types of +inhibition,—Spinoza on inhibition by a higher +good,—Conclusion.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + <a href="#TALKS_TO_STUDENTS"><b>TALKS TO STUDENTS</b></a><br /> +<br /> + <a href="#I__THE_GOSPEL_OF_RELAXATION"><b>I. THE GOSPEL OF +RELAXATION</b></a><br /> + <a href="#II__ON_A_CERTAIN_BLINDNESS_IN_HUMAN_BEINGS"><b>II. ON A +CERTAIN BLINDNESS IN HUMAN BEINGS</b></a><br /> + <a href="#III__WHAT_MAKES_A_LIFE_SIGNIFICANT"><b>III. WHAT MAKES A +LIFE SIGNIFICANT</b></a><br /> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="TALKS_TO_TEACHERS" id="TALKS_TO_TEACHERS">TALKS TO +TEACHERS</a></h2> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="I__PSYCHOLOGY_AND_THE_TEACHING_ART" +id="I__PSYCHOLOGY_AND_THE_TEACHING_ART" />I. PSYCHOLOGY AND THE +TEACHING ART</h2> + +<p>In the general activity and uprising of ideal interests which +every one with an eye for fact can discern all about us in American +life, there is perhaps no more promising feature than the +fermentation which for a dozen years or more has been going on +among the teachers. In whatever sphere of education their functions +may lie, there is to be seen among them a really inspiring amount +of searching of the heart about the highest concerns of their +profession. The renovation of nations begins always at the top, +among the reflective members of the State, and spreads slowly +outward and downward. The teachers of this country, one may say, +have its future in their hands. The earnestness which they at +present show in striving to enlighten and strengthen themselves is +an index of the nation's probabilities of advance in all ideal +directions. The outward organization of education which we have in +our United States is perhaps, on the whole, the best organization +that exists in any country. The State school systems give a +diversity and flexibility, an opportunity for experiment and +keenness of competition, nowhere else to be found on such an +important scale. The independence of so many of the colleges and +universities; the give and take of students and instructors between +them all; their emulation, and their happy organic relations to the +lower schools; the traditions of instruction in them, evolved from +the older American recitation-method (and so avoiding on the one +hand the pure lecture-system prevalent in Germany and Scotland, +which considers too little the individual student, and yet not +involving the sacrifice of the instructor to the individual +student, which the English tutorial system would seem too often to +entail),—all these things (to say nothing of that coeducation +of the sexes in whose benefits so many of us heartily believe), all +these things, I say, are most happy features of our scholastic +life, and from them the most sanguine auguries may be drawn.</p> + +<p>Having so favorable an organization, all we need is to +impregnate it with geniuses, to get superior men and women working +more and more abundantly in it and for it and at it, and in a +generation or two America may well lead the education of the world. +I must say that I look forward with no little confidence to the day +when that shall be an accomplished fact.</p> + +<p>No one has profited more by the fermentation of which I speak, +in pedagogical circles, than we psychologists. The desire of the +schoolteachers for a completer professional training, and their +aspiration toward the 'professional' spirit in their work, have led +them more and more to turn to us for light on fundamental +principles. And in these few hours which we are to spend together +you look to me, I am sure, for information concerning the mind's +operations, which may enable you to labor more easily and +effectively in the several schoolrooms over which you preside.</p> + +<p>Far be it from me to disclaim for psychology all title to such +hopes. Psychology ought certainly to give the teacher radical help. +And yet I confess that, acquainted as I am with the height of some +of your expectations, I feel a little anxious lest, at the end of +these simple talks of mine, not a few of you may experience some +disappointment at the net results. In other words, I am not sure +that you may not be indulging fancies that are just a shade +exaggerated. That would not be altogether astonishing, for we have +been having something like a 'boom' in psychology in this country. +Laboratories and professorships have been founded, and reviews +established. The air has been full of rumors. The editors of +educational journals and the arrangers of conventions have had to +show themselves enterprising and on a level with the novelties of +the day. Some of the professors have not been unwilling to +co-operate, and I am not sure even that the publishers have been +entirely inert. 'The new psychology' has thus become a term to +conjure up portentous ideas withal; and you teachers, docile and +receptive and aspiring as many of you are, have been plunged in an +atmosphere of vague talk about our science, which to a great extent +has been more mystifying than enlightening. Altogether it does seem +as if there were a certain fatality of mystification laid upon the +teachers of our day. The matter of their profession, compact enough +in itself, has to be frothed up for them in journals and +institutes, till its outlines often threaten to be lost in a kind +of vast uncertainty. Where the disciples are not independent and +critical-minded enough (and I think that, if you teachers in the +earlier grades have any defect—the slightest touch of a +defect in the world—it is that you are a mite too docile), we +are pretty sure to miss accuracy and balance and measure in those +who get a license to lay down the law to them from above.</p> + +<p>As regards this subject of psychology, now, I wish at the very +threshold to do what I can to dispel the mystification. So I say at +once that in my humble opinion there <i>is</i> no 'new psychology' +worthy of the name. There is nothing but the old psychology which +began in Locke's time, plus a little physiology of the brain and +senses and theory of evolution, and a few refinements of +introspective detail, for the most part without adaptation to the +teacher's use. It is only the fundamental conceptions of psychology +which are of real value to the teacher; and they, apart from the +aforesaid theory of evolution, are very far from being new.—I +trust that you will see better what I mean by this at the end of +all these talks.</p> + +<p>I say moreover that you make a great, a very great mistake, if +you think that psychology, being the science of the mind's laws, is +something from which you can deduce definite programmes and schemes +and methods of instruction for immediate schoolroom use. Psychology +is a science, and teaching is an art; and sciences never generate +arts directly out of themselves. An intermediary inventive mind +must make the application, by using its originality.</p> + +<p>The science of logic never made a man reason rightly, and the +science of ethics (if there be such a thing) never made a man +behave rightly. The most such sciences can do is to help us to +catch ourselves up and check ourselves, if we start to reason or to +behave wrongly; and to criticise ourselves more articulately after +we have made mistakes. A science only lays down lines within which +the rules of the art must fall, laws which the follower of the art +must not transgress; but what particular thing he shall positively +do within those lines is left exclusively to his own genius. One +genius will do his work well and succeed in one way, while another +succeeds as well quite differently; yet neither will transgress the +lines.</p> + +<p>The art of teaching grew up in the schoolroom, out of +inventiveness and sympathetic concrete observation. Even where (as +in the case of Herbart) the advancer of the art was also a +psychologist, the pedagogics and the psychology ran side by side, +and the former was not derived in any sense from the latter. The +two were congruent, but neither was subordinate. And so everywhere +the teaching must <i>agree</i> with the psychology, but need not +necessarily be the only kind of teaching that would so agree; for +many diverse methods of teaching may equally well agree with +psychological laws.</p> + +<p>To know psychology, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee that +we shall be good teachers. To advance to that result, we must have +an additional endowment altogether, a happy tact and ingenuity to +tell us what definite things to say and do when the pupil is before +us. That ingenuity in meeting and pursuing the pupil, that tact for +the concrete situation, though they are the alpha and omega of the +teacher's art, are things to which psychology cannot help us in the +least.</p> + +<p>The science of psychology, and whatever science of general +pedagogics may be based on it, are in fact much like the science of +war. Nothing is simpler or more definite than the principles of +either. In war, all you have to do is to work your enemy into a +position from which the natural obstacles prevent him from escaping +if he tries to; then to fall on him in numbers superior to his own, +at a moment when you have led him to think you far away; and so, +with a minimum of exposure of your own troops, to hack his force to +pieces, and take the remainder prisoners. Just so, in teaching, you +must simply work your pupil into such a state of interest in what +you are going to teach him that every other object of attention is +banished from his mind; then reveal it to him so impressively that +he will remember the occasion to his dying day; and finally fill +him with devouring curiosity to know what the next steps in +connection with the subject are. The principles being so plain, +there would be nothing but victories for the masters of the +science, either on the battlefield or in the schoolroom, if they +did not both have to make their application to an incalculable +quantity in the shape of the mind of their opponent. The mind of +your own enemy, the pupil, is working away from you as keenly and +eagerly as is the mind of the commander on the other side from the +scientific general. Just what the respective enemies want and +think, and what they know and do not know, are as hard things for +the teacher as for the general to find out. Divination and +perception, not psychological pedagogics or theoretic strategy, are +the only helpers here.</p> + +<p>But, if the use of psychological principles thus be negative +rather than positive, it does not follow that it may not be a great +use, all the same. It certainly narrows the path for experiments +and trials. We know in advance, if we are psychologists, that +certain methods will be wrong, so our psychology saves us from +mistakes. It makes us, moreover, more clear as to what we are +about. We gain confidence in respect to any method which we are +using as soon as we believe that it has theory as well as practice +at its back. Most of all, it fructifies our independence, and it +reanimates our interest, to see our subject at two different +angles,—to get a stereoscopic view, so to speak, of the +youthful organism who is our enemy, and, while handling him with +all our concrete tact and divination, to be able, at the same time, +to represent to ourselves the curious inner elements of his mental +machine. Such a complete knowledge as this of the pupil, at once +intuitive and analytic, is surely the knowledge at which every +teacher ought to aim.</p> + +<p>Fortunately for you teachers, the elements of the mental machine +can be clearly apprehended, and their workings easily grasped. And, +as the most general elements and workings are just those parts of +psychology which the teacher finds most directly useful, it follows +that the amount of this science which is necessary to all teachers +need not be very great. Those who find themselves loving the +subject may go as far as they please, and become possibly none the +worse teachers for the fact, even though in some of them one might +apprehend a little loss of balance from the tendency observable in +all of us to overemphasize certain special parts of a subject when +we are studying it intensely and abstractly. But for the great +majority of you a general view is enough, provided it be a true +one; and such a general view, one may say, might almost be written +on the palm of one's hand.</p> + +<p>Least of all need you, merely <i>as teachers</i>, deem it part +of your duty to become contributors to psychological science or to +make psychological observations in a methodical or responsible +manner. I fear that some of the enthusiasts for child-study have +thrown a certain burden on you in this way. By all means let +child-study go on,—it is refreshing all our sense of the +child's life. There are teachers who take a spontaneous delight in +filling syllabuses, inscribing observations, compiling statistics, +and computing the per cent. Child-study will certainly enrich their +lives. And, if its results, as treated statistically, would seem on +the whole to have but trifling value, yet the anecdotes and +observations of which it in part consist do certainly acquaint us +more intimately with our pupils. Our eyes and ears grow quickened +to discern in the child before us processes similar to those we +have read of as noted in the children,—processes of which we +might otherwise have remained inobservant. But, for Heaven's sake, +let the rank and file of teachers be passive readers if they so +prefer, and feel free not to contribute to the accumulation. Let +not the prosecution of it be preached as an imperative duty or +imposed by regulation on those to whom it proves an exterminating +bore, or who in any way whatever miss in themselves the appropriate +vocation for it. I cannot too strongly agree with my colleague, +Professor Münsterberg, when he says that the teacher's +attitude toward the child, being concrete and ethical, is +positively opposed to the psychological observer's, which is +abstract and analytic. Although some of us may conjoin the +attitudes successfully, in most of us they must conflict.</p> + +<p>The worst thing that can happen to a good teacher is to get a +bad conscience about her profession because she feels herself +hopeless as a psychologist. Our teachers are overworked already. +Every one who adds a jot or tittle of unnecessary weight to their +burden is a foe of education. A bad conscience increases the weight +of every other burden; yet I know that child-study, and other +pieces of psychology as well, have been productive of bad +conscience in many a really innocent pedagogic breast. I should +indeed be glad if this passing word from me might tend to dispel +such a bad conscience, if any of you have it; for it is certainly +one of those fruits of more or less systematic mystification of +which I have already complained. The best teacher may be the +poorest contributor of child-study material, and the best +contributor may be the poorest teacher. No fact is more palpable +than this.</p> + +<p>So much for what seems the most reasonable general attitude of +the teacher toward the subject which is to occupy our +attention.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="II__THE_STREAM_OF_CONSCIOUSNESS" +id="II__THE_STREAM_OF_CONSCIOUSNESS" />II. THE STREAM OF +CONSCIOUSNESS</h2> + +<p>I said a few minutes ago that the most general elements and +workings of the mind are all that the teacher absolutely needs to +be acquainted with for his purposes.</p> + +<p>Now the <i>immediate</i> fact which psychology, the science of +mind, has to study is also the most general fact. It is the fact +that in each of us, when awake (and often when asleep), <i>some +kind of consciousness is always going on</i>. There is a stream, a +succession of states, or waves, or fields (or of whatever you +please to call them), of knowledge, of feeling, of desire, of +deliberation, etc., that constantly pass and repass, and that +constitute our inner life. The existence of this stream is the +primal fact, the nature and origin of it form the essential +problem, of our science. So far as we class the states or fields of +consciousness, write down their several natures, analyze their +contents into elements, or trace their habits of succession, we are +on the descriptive or analytic level. So far as we ask where they +come from or why they are just what they are, we are on the +explanatory level.</p> + +<p>In these talks with you, I shall entirely neglect the questions +that come up on the explanatory level. It must be frankly confessed +that in no fundamental sense do we know where our successive fields +of consciousness come from, or why they have the precise inner +constitution which they do have. They certainly follow or accompany +our brain states, and of course their special forms are determined +by our past experiences and education. But, if we ask just +<i>how</i> the brain conditions them, we have not the remotest +inkling of an answer to give; and, if we ask just how the education +moulds the brain, we can speak but in the most abstract, general, +and conjectural terms. On the other hand, if we should say that +they are due to a spiritual being called our Soul, which reacts on +our brain states by these peculiar forms of spiritual energy, our +words would be familiar enough, it is true; but I think you will +agree that they would offer little genuine explanatory meaning. The +truth is that we really <i>do not know</i> the answers to the +problems on the explanatory level, even though in some directions +of inquiry there may be promising speculations to be found. For our +present purposes I shall therefore dismiss them entirely, and turn +to mere description. This state of things was what I had in mind +when, a moment ago, I said there was no 'new psychology' worthy of +the name.</p> + +<p><i>We have thus fields of consciousness</i>,—that is the +first general fact; and the second general fact is that the +concrete fields are always complex. They contain sensations of our +bodies and of the objects around us, memories of past experiences +and thoughts of distant things, feelings of satisfaction and +dissatisfaction, desires and aversions, and other emotional +conditions, together with determinations of the will, in every +variety of permutation and combination.</p> + +<p>In most of our concrete states of consciousness all these +different classes of ingredients are found simultaneously present +to some degree, though the relative proportion they bear to one +another is very shifting. One state will seem to be composed of +hardly anything but sensations, another of hardly anything but +memories, etc. But around the sensation, if one consider carefully, +there will always be some fringe of thought or will, and around the +memory some margin or penumbra of emotion or sensation.</p> + +<p>In most of our fields of consciousness there is a core of +sensation that is very pronounced. You, for example, now, although +you are also thinking and feeling, are getting through your eyes +sensations of my face and figure, and through your ears sensations +of my voice. The sensations are the <i>centre</i> or <i>focus</i>, +the thoughts and feelings the <i>margin</i>, of your actually +present conscious field.</p> + +<p>On the other hand, some object of thought, some distant image, +may have become the focus of your mental attention even while I am +speaking,—your mind, in short, may have wandered from the +lecture; and, in that case, the sensations of my face and voice, +although not absolutely vanishing from your conscious field, may +have taken up there a very faint and marginal place.</p> + +<p>Again, to take another sort of variation, some feeling connected +with your own body may have passed from a marginal to a focal +place, even while I speak.</p> + +<p>The expressions 'focal object' and 'marginal object,' which we +owe to Mr. Lloyd Morgan, require, I think, no further explanation. +The distinction they embody is a very important one, and they are +the first technical terms which I shall ask you to remember.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>In the successive mutations of our fields of consciousness, the +process by which one dissolves into another is often very gradual, +and all sorts of inner rearrangements of contents occur. Sometimes +the focus remains but little changed, while the margin alters +rapidly. Sometimes the focus alters, and the margin stays. +Sometimes focus and margin change places. Sometimes, again, abrupt +alterations of the whole field occur. There can seldom be a sharp +description. All we know is that, for the most part, each field has +a sort of practical unity for its possessor, and that from this +practical point of view we can class a field with other fields +similar to it, by calling it a state of emotion, of perplexity, of +sensation, of abstract thought, of volition, and the like.</p> + +<p>Vague and hazy as such an account of our stream of consciousness +may be, it is at least secure from positive error and free from +admixture of conjecture or hypothesis. An influential school of +psychology, seeking to avoid haziness of outline, has tried to make +things appear more exact and scientific by making the analysis more +sharp.</p> + +<p>The various fields of consciousness, according to this school, +result from a definite number of perfectly definite elementary +mental states, mechanically associated into a mosaic or chemically +combined. According to some thinkers,—Spencer, for example, +or Taine,—these resolve themselves at last into little +elementary psychic particles or atoms of 'mind-stuff,' out of which +all the more immediately known mental states are said to be built +up. Locke introduced this theory in a somewhat vague form. Simple +'ideas' of sensation and reflection, as he called them, were for +him the bricks of which our mental architecture is built up. If I +ever have to refer to this theory again, I shall refer to it as the +theory of 'ideas.' But I shall try to steer clear of it altogether. +Whether it be true or false, it is at any rate only conjectural; +and, for your practical purposes as teachers, the more unpretending +conception of the stream of consciousness, with its total waves or +fields incessantly changing, will amply suffice.<a +name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1" /><a href="#Footnote_A_1" +class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1" /><a +href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> In the +light of some of the expectations that are abroad concerning the +'new psychology,' it is instructive to read the unusually candid +confession of its founder Wundt, after his thirty years of +laboratory-experience:</p> + +<p>"The service which it [the experimental method] can yield +consists essentially in perfecting our inner observation, or +rather, as I believe, in making this really possible, in any exact +sense. Well, has our experimental self-observation, so understood, +already accomplished aught of importance? No general answer to this +question can be given, because in the unfinished state of our +science, there is, even inside of the experimental lines of +inquiry, no universally accepted body of psychologic +doctrine....</p> + +<p>"In such a discord of opinions (comprehensible enough at a time +of uncertain and groping development), the individual inquirer can +only tell for what views and insights he himself has to thank the +newer methods. And if I were asked in what for me the worth of +experimental observation in psychology has consisted, and still +consists, I should say that it has given me an entirely new idea of +the nature and connection of our inner processes. I learned in the +achievements of the sense of sight to apprehend the fact of +creative mental synthesis.... From my inquiry into time-relations, +etc.,... I attained an insight into the close union of all those +psychic functions usually separated by artificial abstractions and +names, such as ideation, feeling, will; and I saw the +indivisibility and inner homogeneity, in all its phases, of the +mental life. The chronometric study of association-processes +finally showed me that the notion of distinct mental 'images' +[<i>reproducirten Vorstellungen</i>] was one of those numerous +self-deceptions which are no sooner stamped in a verbal term than +they forthwith thrust non-existent fictions into the place of the +reality. I learned to understand an 'idea' as a process no less +melting and fleeting than an act of feeling or of will, and I +comprehended the older doctrine of association of 'ideas' to be no +longer tenable.... Besides all this, experimental observation +yielded much other information about the span of consciousness, the +rapidity of certain processes, the exact numerical value of certain +psychophysical data, and the like. But I hold all these more +special results to be relatively insignificant by-products, and by +no means the important thing."—<i>Philosophische Studien</i>, +x. 121-124. The whole passage should be read. As I interpret it, it +amounts to a complete espousal of the vaguer conception of the +stream of thought, and a complete renunciation of the whole +business, still so industriously carried on in text-books, of +chopping up 'the mind' into distinct units of composition or +function, numbering these off, and labelling them by technical +names.</p> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="III__THE_CHILD_AS_A_BEHAVING_ORGANISM" +id="III__THE_CHILD_AS_A_BEHAVING_ORGANISM" />III. THE CHILD AS A +BEHAVING ORGANISM</h2> + +<p>I wish now to continue the description of the peculiarities of +the stream of consciousness by asking whether we can in any +intelligible way assign its <i>functions</i>.</p> + +<p>It has two functions that are obvious: it leads to knowledge, +and it leads to action.</p> + +<p>Can we say which of these functions is the more essential?</p> + +<p>An old historic divergence of opinion comes in here. Popular +belief has always tended to estimate the worth of a man's mental +processes by their effects upon his practical life. But +philosophers have usually cherished a different view. "Man's +supreme glory," they have said, "is to be a <i>rational</i> being, +to know absolute and eternal and universal truth. The uses of his +intellect for practical affairs are therefore subordinate matters. +'The theoretic life' is his soul's genuine concern." Nothing can be +more different in its results for our personal attitude than to +take sides with one or the other of these views, and emphasize the +practical or the theoretical ideal. In the latter case, abstraction +from the emotions and passions and withdrawal from the strife of +human affairs would be not only pardonable, but praiseworthy; and +all that makes for quiet and contemplation should be regarded as +conducive to the highest human perfection. In the former, the man +of contemplation would be treated as only half a human being, +passion and practical resource would become once more glories of +our race, a concrete victory over this earth's outward powers of +darkness would appear an equivalent for any amount of passive +spiritual culture, and conduct would remain as the test of every +education worthy of the name.</p> + +<p>It is impossible to disguise the fact that in the psychology of +our own day the emphasis is transferred from the mind's purely +rational function, where Plato and Aristotle, and what one may call +the whole classic tradition in philosophy had placed it, to the so +long neglected practical side. The theory of evolution is mainly +responsible for this. Man, we now have reason to believe, has been +evolved from infra-human ancestors, in whom pure reason hardly +existed, if at all, and whose mind, so far as it can have had any +function, would appear to have been an organ for adapting their +movements to the impressions received from the environment, so as +to escape the better from destruction. Consciousness would thus +seem in the first instance to be nothing but a sort of super-added +biological perfection,—useless unless it prompted to useful +conduct, and inexplicable apart from that consideration.</p> + +<p>Deep in our own nature the biological foundations of our +consciousness persist, undisguised and undiminished. Our sensations +are here to attract us or to deter us, our memories to warn or +encourage us, our feelings to impel, and our thoughts to restrain +our behavior, so that on the whole we may prosper and our days be +long in the land. Whatever of transmundane metaphysical insight or +of practically inapplicable æsthetic perception or ethical +sentiment we may carry in our interiors might at this rate be +regarded as only part of the incidental excess of function that +necessarily accompanies the working of every complex machine.</p> + +<p>I shall ask you now—not meaning at all thereby to close +the theoretic question, but merely because it seems to me the point +of view likely to be of greatest practical use to you as +teachers—to adopt with me, in this course of lectures, the +biological conception, as thus expressed, and to lay your own +emphasis on the fact that man, whatever else he may be, is +primarily a practical being, whose mind is given him to aid in +adapting him to this world's life.</p> + +<p>In the learning of all matters, we have to start with some one +deep aspect of the question, abstracting it as if it were the only +aspect; and then we gradually correct ourselves by adding those +neglected other features which complete the case. No one believes +more strongly than I do that what our senses know as 'this world' +is only one portion of our mind's total environment and object. +Yet, because it is the primal portion, it is the <i>sine qua +non</i>of all the rest. If you grasp the facts about it firmly, you +may proceed to higher regions undisturbed. As our time must be so +short together, I prefer being elementary and fundamental to being +complete, so I propose to you to hold fast to the ultra-simple +point of view.</p> + +<p>The reasons why I call it so fundamental can be easily told.</p> + +<p>First, human and animal psychology thereby become less +discontinuous. I know that to some of you this will hardly seem an +attractive reason, but there are others whom it will affect.</p> + +<p>Second, mental action is conditioned by brain action, and runs +parallel therewith. But the brain, so far as we understand it, is +given us for practical behavior. Every current that runs into it +from skin or eye or ear runs out again into muscles, glands, or +viscera, and helps to adapt the animal to the environment from +which the current came. It therefore generalizes and simplifies our +view to treat the brain life and the mental life as having one +fundamental kind of purpose.</p> + +<p>Third, those very functions of the mind that do not refer +directly to this world's environment, the ethical utopias, +æsthetic visions, insights into eternal truth, and fanciful +logical combinations, could never be carried on at all by a human +individual, unless the mind that produced them in him were also +able to produce more practically useful products. The latter are +thus the more essential, or at least the more primordial +results.</p> + +<p>Fourth, the inessential 'unpractical' activities are themselves +far more connected with our behavior and our adaptation to the +environment than at first sight might appear. No truth, however +abstract, is ever perceived, that will not probably at some time +influence our earthly action. You must remember that, when I talk +of action here, I mean action in the widest sense. I mean speech, I +mean writing, I mean yeses and noes, and tendencies 'from' things +and tendencies 'toward' things, and emotional determinations; and I +mean them in the future as well as in the immediate present. As I +talk here, and you listen, it might seem as if no action followed. +You might call it a purely theoretic process, with no practical +result. But it <i>must</i> have a practical result. It cannot take +place at all and leave your conduct unaffected. If not to-day, then +on some far future day, you will answer some question differently +by reason of what you are thinking now. Some of you will be led by +my words into new veins of inquiry, into reading special books. +These will develop your opinion, whether for or against. That +opinion will in turn be expressed, will receive criticism from +others in your environment, and will affect your standing in their +eyes. We cannot escape our destiny, which is practical; and even +our most theoretic faculties contribute to its working out.</p> + +<p>These few reasons will perhaps smooth the way for you to +acquiescence in my proposal. As teachers, I sincerely think it will +be a sufficient conception for you to adopt of the youthful +psychological phenomena handed over to your inspection if you +consider them from the point of view of their relation to the +future conduct of their possessor. Sufficient at any rate as a +first conception and as a main conception. You should regard your +professional task as if it consisted chiefly and essentially in +<i>training the pupil to behavior</i>; taking behavior, not in the +narrow sense of his manners, but in the very widest possible sense, +as including every possible sort of fit reaction on the +circumstances into which he may find himself brought by the +vicissitudes of life.</p> + +<p>The reaction may, indeed, often be a negative reaction. +<i>Not</i> to speak, <i>not</i> to move, is one of the most +important of our duties, in certain practical emergencies. "Thou +shalt refrain, renounce, abstain"! This often requires a great +effort of will power, and, physiologically considered, is just as +positive a nerve function as is motor discharge.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IV__EDUCATION_AND_BEHAVIOR" +id="IV__EDUCATION_AND_BEHAVIOR" />IV. EDUCATION AND BEHAVIOR</h2> + +<p>In our foregoing talk we were led to frame a very simple +conception of what an education means. In the last analysis it +consists in the organizing of <i>resources</i> in the human being, +of powers of conduct which shall fit him to his social and physical +world. An 'uneducated' person is one who is nonplussed by all but +the most habitual situations. On the contrary, one who is educated +is able practically to extricate himself, by means of the examples +with which his memory is stored and of the abstract conceptions +which he has acquired, from circumstances in which he never was +placed before. Education, in short, cannot be better described than +by calling it <i>the organization of acquired habits of conduct and +tendencies to behavior</i>.</p> + +<p>To illustrate. You and I are each and all of us educated, in our +several ways; and we show our education at this present moment by +different conduct. It would be quite impossible for me, with my +mind technically and professionally organized as it is, and with +the optical stimulus which your presence affords, to remain sitting +here entirely silent and inactive. Something tells me that I am +expected to speak, and must speak; something forces me to keep on +speaking. My organs of articulation are continuously innervated by +outgoing currents, which the currents passing inward at my eyes and +through my educated brain have set in motion; and the particular +movements which they make have their form and order determined +altogether by the training of all my past years of lecturing and +reading. Your conduct, on the other hand, might seem at first sight +purely receptive and inactive,—leaving out those among you +who happen to be taking notes. But the very listening which you are +carrying on is itself a determinate kind of conduct. All the +muscular tensions of your body are distributed in a peculiar way as +you listen. Your head, your eyes, are fixed characteristically. +And, when the lecture is over, it will inevitably eventuate in some +stroke of behavior, as I said on the previous occasion: you may be +guided differently in some special emergency in the schoolroom by +words which I now let fall.—So it is with the impressions you +will make there on your pupil. You should get into the habit of +regarding them all as leading to the acquisition by him of +capacities for behavior,—emotional, social, bodily, vocal, +technical, or what not. And, this being the case, you ought to feel +willing, in a general way, and without hair-splitting or farther +ado, to take up for the purposes of these lectures with the +biological conception of the mind, as of something given us for +practical use. That conception will certainly cover the greater +part of your own educational work.</p> + +<p>If we reflect upon the various ideals of education that are +prevalent in the different countries, we see that what they all aim +at is to organize capacities for conduct. This is most immediately +obvious in Germany, where the explicitly avowed aim of the higher +education is to turn the student into an instrument for advancing +scientific discovery. The German universities are proud of the +number of young specialists whom they turn out every +year,—not necessarily men of any original force of intellect, +but men so trained to research that when their professor gives them +an historical or philological thesis to prepare, or a bit of +laboratory work to do, with a general indication as to the best +method, they can go off by themselves and use apparatus and consult +sources in such a way as to grind out in the requisite number of +months some little pepper-corn of new truth worthy of being added +to the store of extant human information on that subject. Little +else is recognized in Germany as a man's title to academic +advancement than his ability thus to show himself an efficient +instrument of research.</p> + +<p>In England, it might seem at first sight as if the higher +education of the universities aimed at the production of certain +static types of character rather than at the development of what +one may call this dynamic scientific efficiency. Professor Jowett, +when asked what Oxford could do for its students, is said to have +replied, "Oxford can teach an English gentleman how to <i>be</i> an +English gentleman." But, if you ask what it means to 'be' an +English gentleman, the only reply is in terms of conduct and +behavior. An English gentleman is a bundle of specifically +qualified reactions, a creature who for all the emergencies of life +has his line of behavior distinctly marked out for him in advance. +Here, as elsewhere, England expects every man to do his duty.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="V__THE_NECESSITY_OF_REACTIONS" +id="V__THE_NECESSITY_OF_REACTIONS" />V. THE NECESSITY OF +REACTIONS</h2> + +<p>If all this be true, then immediately one general aphorism +emerges which ought by logical right to dominate the entire conduct +of the teacher in the classroom.</p> + +<p><i>No reception without reaction, no impression without +correlative expression</i>,—this is the great maxim which the +teacher ought never to forget.</p> + +<p>An impression which simply flows in at the pupil's eyes or ears, +and in no way modifies his active life, is an impression gone to +waste. It is physiologically incomplete. It leaves no fruits behind +it in the way of capacity acquired. Even as mere impression, it +fails to produce its proper effect upon the memory; for, to remain +fully among the acquisitions of this latter faculty, it must be +wrought into the whole cycle of our operations. Its <i>motor +consequences</i> are what clinch it. Some effect due to it in the +way of an activity must return to the mind in the form of the +<i>sensation of having acted</i>, and connect itself with the +impression. The most durable impressions are those on account of +which we speak or act, or else are inwardly convulsed.</p> + +<p>The older pedagogic method of learning things by rote, and +reciting them parrot-like in the schoolroom, rested on the truth +that a thing merely read or heard, and never verbally reproduced, +contracts the weakest possible adhesion in the mind. Verbal +recitation or reproduction is thus a highly important kind of +reactive behavior on our impressions; and it is to be feared that, +in the reaction against the old parrot-recitations as the beginning +and end of instruction, the extreme value of verbal recitation as +an element of complete training may nowadays be too much +forgotten.</p> + +<p>When we turn to modern pedagogics, we see how enormously the +field of reactive conduct has been extended by the introduction of +all those methods of concrete object teaching which are the glory +of our contemporary schools. Verbal reactions, useful as they are, +are insufficient. The pupil's words may be right, but the +conceptions corresponding to them are often direfully wrong. In a +modern school, therefore, they form only a small part of what the +pupil is required to do. He must keep notebooks, make drawings, +plans, and maps, take measurements, enter the laboratory and +perform experiments, consult authorities, and write essays. He must +do in his fashion what is often laughed at by outsiders when it +appears in prospectuses under the title of 'original work,' but +what is really the only possible training for the doing of original +work thereafter. The most colossal improvement which recent years +have seen in secondary education lies in the introduction of the +manual training schools; not because they will give us a people +more handy and practical for domestic life and better skilled in +trades, but because they will give us citizens with an entirely +different intellectual fibre. Laboratory work and shop work +engender a habit of observation, a knowledge of the difference +between accuracy and vagueness, and an insight into nature's +complexity and into the inadequacy of all abstract verbal accounts +of real phenomena, which once wrought into the mind, remain there +as lifelong possessions. They confer precision; because, if you are +<i>doing</i> a thing, you must do it definitely right or definitely +wrong. They give honesty; for, when you express yourself by making +things, and not by using words, it becomes impossible to +dissimulate your vagueness or ignorance by ambiguity. They beget a +habit of self-reliance; they keep the interest and attention always +cheerfully engaged, and reduce the teacher's disciplinary functions +to a minimum.</p> + +<p>Of the various systems of manual training, so far as woodwork is +concerned, the Swedish Sloyd system, if I may have an opinion on +such matters, seems to me by far the best, psychologically +considered. Manual training methods, fortunately, are being slowly +but surely introduced into all our large cities. But there is still +an immense distance to traverse before they shall have gained the +extension which they are destined ultimately to possess.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>No impression without expression, then,—that is the first +pedagogic fruit of our evolutionary conception of the mind as +something instrumental to adaptive behavior. But a word may be said +in continuation. The expression itself comes back to us, as I +intimated a moment ago, in the form of a still farther +impression,—the impression, namely, of what we have done. We +thus receive sensible news of our behavior and its results. We hear +the words we have spoken, feel our own blow as we give it, or read +in the bystander's eyes the success or failure of our conduct. Now +this return wave of impression pertains to the completeness of the +whole experience, and a word about its importance in the schoolroom +may not be out of place.</p> + +<p>It would seem only natural to say that, since after acting we +normally get some return impression of result, it must be well to +let the pupil get such a return impression in every possible case. +Nevertheless, in schools where examination marks and 'standing' and +other returns of result are concealed, the pupil is frustrated of +this natural termination of the cycle of his activities, and often +suffers from the sense of incompleteness and uncertainty; and there +are persons who defend this system as encouraging the pupil to work +for the work's sake, and not for extraneous reward. Of course, here +as elsewhere, concrete experience must prevail over psychological +deduction. But, so far as our psychological deduction goes, it +would suggest that the pupil's eagerness to know how well he does +is in the line of his normal completeness of function, and should +never be balked except for very definite reasons indeed.</p> + +<p>Acquaint them, therefore, with their marks and standing and +prospects, unless in the individual case you have some special +practical reason for not so doing.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VI__NATIVE_REACTIONS_AND_ACQUIRED_REACTIONS" +id="VI__NATIVE_REACTIONS_AND_ACQUIRED_REACTIONS" />VI. NATIVE +REACTIONS AND ACQUIRED REACTIONS</h2> + +<p>We are by this time fully launched upon the biological +conception. Man is an organism for reacting on impressions: his +mind is there to help determine his reactions, and the purpose of +his education is to make them numerous and perfect. <i>Our +education means, in short, little more than a mass of possibilities +of reaction,</i> acquired at home, at school, or in the training of +affairs. The teacher's task is that of supervising the acquiring +process.</p> + +<p>This being the case, I will immediately state a principle which +underlies the whole process of acquisition and governs the entire +activity of the teacher. It is this:—</p> + +<p><i>Every acquired reaction is, as a rule, either a complication +grafted on a native reaction, or a substitute for a native +reaction, which the same object originally tended to +provoke.</i></p> + +<p><i>The teacher's art consists in bringing about the substitution +or complication, and success in the art presupposes a sympathetic +acquaintance with the reactive tendencies natively there</i>.</p> + +<p>Without an equipment of native reactions on the child's part, +the teacher would have no hold whatever upon the child's attention +or conduct. You may take a horse to the water, but you cannot make +him drink; and so you may take a child to the schoolroom, but you +cannot make him learn the new things you wish to impart, except by +soliciting him in the first instance by something which natively +makes him react. He must take the first step himself. He must +<i>do</i> something before you can get your purchase on him. That +something may be something good or something bad. A bad reaction is +better than no reaction at all; for, if bad, you can couple it with +consequences which awake him to its badness. But imagine a child so +lifeless as to react in <i>no</i> way to the teacher's first +appeals, and how can you possibly take the first step in his +education?</p> + +<p>To make this abstract conception more concrete, assume the case +of a young child's training in good manners. The child has a native +tendency to snatch with his hands at anything that attracts his +curiosity; also to draw back his hands when slapped, to cry under +these latter conditions, to smile when gently spoken to, and to +imitate one's gestures.</p> + +<p>Suppose now you appear before the child with a new toy intended +as a present for him. No sooner does he see the toy than he seeks +to snatch it. You slap the hand; it is withdrawn, and the child +cries. You then hold up the toy, smiling and saying, "Beg for it +nicely,—so!" The child stops crying, imitates you, receives +the toy, and crows with pleasure; and that little cycle of training +is complete. You have substituted the new reaction of 'begging' for +the native reaction of snatching, when that kind of impression +comes.</p> + +<p>Now, if the child had no memory, the process would not be +educative. No matter how often you came in with a toy, the same +series of reactions would fatally occur, each called forth by its +own impression: see, snatch; slap, cry; hear, ask; receive, smile. +But, with memory there, the child, at the very instant of +snatching, recalls the rest of the earlier experience, thinks of +the slap and the frustration, recollects the begging and the +reward, inhibits the snatching impulse, substitutes the 'nice' +reaction for it, and gets the toy immediately, by eliminating all +the intermediary steps. If a child's first snatching impulse be +excessive or his memory poor, many repetitions of the discipline +may be needed before the acquired reaction comes to be an ingrained +habit; but in an eminently educable child a single experience will +suffice.</p> + +<p>One can easily represent the whole process by a brain-diagram. +Such a diagram can be little more than a symbolic translation of +the immediate experience into spatial terms; yet it may be useful, +so I subjoin it.</p> + +<div class='ctr'><img src="images/illus051.gif" width="798" +height="452" +alt="FIGURE 1. THE BRAIN-PROCESSES BEFORE EDUCATION." + title="FIGURE 1. THE BRAIN-PROCESSES BEFORE EDUCATION." /></div> + +<p>Figure 1 shows the paths of the four successive reflexes +executed by the lower or instinctive centres. The dotted lines that +lead from them to the higher centres and connect the latter +together, represent the processes of memory and association which +the reactions impress upon the higher centres as they take +place.</p> + +<div class='ctr'><img src="images/illus052.gif" width="791" +height="439" +alt="FIGURE 2. THE BRAIN-PROCESS AFTER EDUCATION." +title="FIGURE 2. THE BRAIN-PROCESS AFTER EDUCATION." /></div> + +<p>In Figure 2 we have the final result. The impression <i>see</i> +awakens the chain of memories, and the only reactions that take +place are the <i>beg</i> and <i>smile</i>. The thought of the +<i>slap</i>, connected with the activity of Centre 2, inhibits the +<i>snatch</i>, and makes it abortive, so it is represented only by +a dotted line of discharge not reaching the terminus. Ditto of the +<i>cry</i> reaction. These are, as it were, short-circuited by the +current sweeping through the higher centres from <i>see</i> to +<i>smile</i>. <i>Beg</i> and <i>smile</i>, thus substituted for the +original reaction <i>snatch</i>, become at last the immediate +responses when the child sees a snatchable object in some one's +hands.</p> + +<p>The first thing, then, for the teacher to understand is the +native reactive tendencies,—the impulses and instincts of +childhood,—so as to be able to substitute one for another, +and turn them on to artificial objects.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>It is often said that man is distinguished from the lower +animals by having a much smaller assortment of native instincts and +impulses than they, but this is a great mistake. Man, of course, +has not the marvellous egg-laying instincts which some articulates +have; but, if we compare him with the mammalia, we are forced to +confess that he is appealed to by a much larger array of objects +than any other mammal, that his reactions on these objects are +characteristic and determinate in a very high degree. The monkeys, +and especially the anthropoids, are the only beings that approach +him in their analytic curiosity and width of imitativeness. His +instinctive impulses, it is true, get overlaid by the secondary +reactions due to his superior reasoning power; but thus man loses +the <i>simply</i> instinctive demeanor. But the life of instinct is +only disguised in him, not lost; and when the higher +brain-functions are in abeyance, as happens in imbecility or +dementia, his instincts sometimes show their presence in truly +brutish ways.</p> + +<p>I will therefore say a few words about those instinctive +tendencies which are the most important from the teacher's point of +view.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VII__WHAT_THE_NATIVE_REACTIONS_ARE" +id="VII__WHAT_THE_NATIVE_REACTIONS_ARE" />VII. WHAT THE NATIVE +REACTIONS ARE</h2> + +<p>First of all, <i>Fear</i>. Fear of punishment has always been +the great weapon of the teacher, and will always, of course, retain +some place in the conditions of the schoolroom. The subject is so +familiar that nothing more need be said about it.</p> + +<p>The same is true of <i>Love</i>, and the instinctive desire to +please those whom we love. The teacher who succeeds in getting +herself loved by the pupils will obtain results which one of a more +forbidding temperament finds it impossible to secure.</p> + +<p>Next, a word might be said about <i>Curiosity</i>. This is +perhaps a rather poor term by which to designate the <i>impulse +toward better cognition</i> in its full extent; but you will +readily understand what I mean. Novelties in the way of sensible +objects, especially if their sensational quality is bright, vivid, +startling, invariably arrest the attention of the young and hold it +until the desire to know more about the object is assuaged. In its +higher, more intellectual form, the impulse toward completer +knowledge takes the character of scientific or philosophic +curiosity. In both its sensational and its intellectual form the +instinct is more vivacious during childhood and youth than in after +life. Young children are possessed by curiosity about every new +impression that assails them. It would be quite impossible for a +young child to listen to a lecture for more than a few minutes, as +you are now listening to me. The outside sights and sounds would +inevitably carry his attention off. And, for most people in middle +life, the sort of intellectual effort required of the average +schoolboy in mastering his Greek or Latin lesson, his algebra or +physics, would be out of the question. The middle-aged citizen +attends exclusively to the routine details of his business; and new +truths, especially when they require involved trains of close +reasoning, are no longer within the scope of his capacity.</p> + +<p>The sensational curiosity of childhood is appealed to more +particularly by certain determinate kinds of objects. Material +things, things that move, living things, human actions and accounts +of human action, will win the attention better than anything that +is more abstract. Here again comes in the advantage of the +object-teaching and manual training methods. The pupil's attention +is spontaneously held by any problem that involves the presentation +of a new material object or of an activity on any one's part. The +teacher's earliest appeals, therefore, must be through objects +shown or acts performed or described. Theoretic curiosity, +curiosity about the rational relations between things, can hardly +be said to awake at all until adolescence is reached. The sporadic +metaphysical inquiries of children as to who made God, and why they +have five fingers, need hardly be counted here. But, when the +theoretic instinct is once alive in the pupil, an entirely new +order of pedagogic relations begins for him. Reasons, causes, +abstract conceptions, suddenly grow full of zest, a fact with which +all teachers are familiar. And, both in its sensible and in its +rational developments, disinterested curiosity may be successfully +appealed to in the child with much more certainty than in the +adult, in whom this intellectual instinct has grown so torpid as +usually never to awake unless it enters into association with some +selfish personal interest. Of this latter point I will say more +anon.</p> + +<p><i>Imitation</i>. Man has always been recognized as the +imitative animal <i>par excellence</i>. And there is hardly a book +on psychology, however old, which has not devoted at least one +paragraph to this fact. It is strange, however, that the full scope +and pregnancy of the imitative impulse in man has had to wait till +the last dozen years to become adequately recognized. M. Tarde led +the way in his admirably original work, "Les Lois de l'Imitation"; +and in our own country Professors Royce and Baldwin have kept the +ball rolling with all the energy that could be desired. Each of us +is in fact what he is almost exclusively by virtue of his +imitativeness. We become conscious of what we ourselves are by +imitating others—the consciousness of what the others are +precedes—the sense of self grows by the sense of pattern. The +entire accumulated wealth of mankind—languages, arts, +institutions, and sciences—is passed on from one generation +to another by what Baldwin has called social heredity, each +generation simply imitating the last. Into the particulars of this +most fascinating chapter of psychology I have no time to go. The +moment one hears Tarde's proposition uttered, however, one feels +how supremely true it is. Invention, using the term most broadly, +and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the +human race historically has walked.</p> + +<p>Imitation shades imperceptibly into <i>Emulation</i>. Emulation +is the impulse to imitate what you see another doing, in order not +to appear inferior; and it is hard to draw a sharp line between the +manifestations of the two impulses, so inextricably do they mix +their effects. Emulation is the very nerve of human society. Why +are you, my hearers, sitting here before me? If no one whom you +ever heard of had attended a 'summer school' or teachers' +institute, would it have occurred to any one of you to break out +independently and do a thing so unprescribed by fashion? Probably +not. Nor would your pupils come to you unless the children of their +parents' neighbors were all simultaneously being sent to school. We +wish not to be lonely or eccentric, and we wish not to be cut off +from our share in things which to our neighbors seem desirable +privileges.</p> + +<p>In the schoolroom, imitation and emulation play absolutely vital +parts. Every teacher knows the advantage of having certain things +performed by whole bands of children at a time. The teacher who +meets with most success is the teacher whose own ways are the most +imitable. A teacher should never try to make the pupils do a thing +which she cannot do herself. "Come and let me show you how" is an +incomparably better stimulus than "Go and do it as the book +directs." Children admire a teacher who has skill. What he does +seems easy, and they wish to emulate it. It is useless for a dull +and devitalized teacher to exhort her pupils to wake up and take an +interest. She must first take one herself; then her example is +effective, as no exhortation can possibly be.</p> + +<p>Every school has its tone, moral and intellectual. And this tone +is a mere tradition kept up by imitation, due in the first instance +to the example set by teachers and by previous pupils of an +aggressive and dominating type, copied by the others, and passed on +from year to year, so that the new pupils take the cue almost +immediately. Such a tone changes very slowly, if at all; and then +always under the modifying influence of new personalities +aggressive enough in character to set new patterns and not merely +to copy the old. The classic example of this sort of tone is the +often quoted case of Rugby under Dr. Arnold's administration. He +impressed his own character as a model on the imagination of the +oldest boys, who in turn were expected and required to impress +theirs upon the younger set. The contagiousness of Arnold's genius +was such that a Rugby man was said to be recognizable all through +life by a peculiar turn of character which he acquired at school. +It is obvious that psychology as such can give in this field no +precepts of detail. As in so many other fields of teaching, success +depends mainly on the native genius of the teacher, the sympathy, +tact, and perception which enable him to seize the right moment and +to set the right example.</p> + +<p>Among the recent modern reforms of teaching methods, a certain +disparagement of emulation, as a laudable spring of action in the +schoolroom, has often made itself heard. More than a century ago, +Rousseau, in his 'Émile,' branded rivalry between one pupil +and another as too base a passion to play a part in an ideal +education. "Let Émile," he said, "never be led to compare +himself to other children. No rivalries, not even in running, as +soon as he begins to have the power of reason. It were a hundred +times better that he should not learn at all what he could only +learn through jealousy or vanity. But I would mark out every year +the progress he may have made, and I would compare it with the +progress of the following years. I would say to him: 'You are now +grown so many inches taller; there is the ditch which you jumped +over, there is the burden which you raised. There is the distance +to which you could throw a pebble, there the distance you could run +over without losing breath. See how much more you can do now!' Thus +I should excite him without making him jealous of any one. He would +wish to surpass himself. I can see no inconvenience in this +emulation with his former self."</p> + +<p>Unquestionably, emulation with one's former self is a noble form +of the passion of rivalry, and has a wide scope in the training of +the young. But to veto and taboo all possible rivalry of one youth +with another, because such rivalry may degenerate into greedy and +selfish excess, does seem to savor somewhat of sentimentality, or +even of fanaticism. The feeling of rivalry lies at the very basis +of our being, all social improvement being largely due to it. There +is a noble and generous kind of rivalry, as well as a spiteful and +greedy kind; and the noble and generous form is particularly common +in childhood. All games owe the zest which they bring with them to +the fact that they are rooted in the emulous passion, yet they are +the chief means of training in fairness and magnanimity. Can the +teacher afford to throw such an ally away? Ought we seriously to +hope that marks, distinctions, prizes, and other goals of effort, +based on the pursuit of recognized superiority, should be forever +banished from our schools? As a psychologist, obliged to notice the +deep and pervasive character of the emulous passion, I must confess +my doubts.</p> + +<p>The wise teacher will use this instinct as he uses others, +reaping its advantages, and appealing to it in such a way as to +reap a maximum of benefit with a minimum of harm; for, after all, +we must confess, with a French critic of Rousseau's doctrine, that +the deepest spring of action in us is the sight of action in +another. The spectacle of effort is what awakens and sustains our +own effort. No runner running all alone on a race-track will find +in his own will the power of stimulation which his rivalry with +other runners incites, when he feels them at his heels, about to +pass. When a trotting horse is 'speeded,' a running horse must go +beside him to keep him to the pace.</p> + +<p>As imitation slides into emulation, so emulation slides into +<i>Ambition</i>; and ambition connects itself closely with +<i>Pugnacity</i> and <i>Pride</i>. Consequently, these five +instinctive tendencies form an interconnected group of factors, +hard to separate in the determination of a great deal of our +conduct. The <i>Ambitious Impulses</i> would perhaps be the best +name for the whole group.</p> + +<p>Pride and pugnacity have often been considered unworthy passions +to appeal to in the young. But in their more refined and noble +forms they play a great part in the schoolroom and in education +generally, being in some characters most potent spurs to effort. +Pugnacity need not be thought of merely in the form of physical +combativeness. It can be taken in the sense of a general +unwillingness to be beaten by any kind of difficulty. It is what +makes us feel 'stumped' and challenged by arduous achievements, and +is essential to a spirited and enterprising character. We have of +late been hearing much of the philosophy of tenderness in +education; 'interest' must be assiduously awakened in everything, +difficulties must be smoothed away. <i>Soft</i> pedagogics have +taken the place of the old steep and rocky path to learning. But +from this lukewarm air the bracing oxygen of effort is left out. It +is nonsense to suppose that every step in education <i>can</i> be +interesting. The fighting impulse must often be appealed to. Make +the pupil feel ashamed of being scared at fractions, of being +'downed' by the law of falling bodies; rouse his pugnacity and +pride, and he will rush at the difficult places with a sort of +inner wrath at himself that is one of his best moral faculties. A +victory scored under such conditions becomes a turning-point and +crisis of his character. It represents the high-water mark of his +powers, and serves thereafter as an ideal pattern for his +self-imitation. The teacher who never rouses this sort of +pugnacious excitement in his pupils falls short of one of his best +forms of usefulness.</p> + +<p>The next instinct which I shall mention is that of +<i>Ownership</i>, also one of the radical endowments of the race. +It often is the antagonist of imitation. Whether social progress is +due more to the passion for keeping old things and habits or to the +passion of imitating and acquiring new ones may in some cases be a +difficult thing to decide. The sense of ownership begins in the +second year of life. Among the first words which an infant learns +to utter are the words 'my' and 'mine,' and woe to the parents of +twins who fail to provide their gifts in duplicate. The depth and +primitiveness of this instinct would seem to cast a sort of +psychological discredit in advance upon all radical forms of +communistic utopia. Private proprietorship cannot be practically +abolished until human nature is changed. It seems essential to +mental health that the individual should have something beyond the +bare clothes on his back to which he can assert exclusive +possession, and which he may defend adversely against the world. +Even those religious orders who make the most stringent vows of +poverty have found it necessary to relax the rule a little in favor +of the human heart made unhappy by reduction to too disinterested +terms. The monk must have his books: the nun must have her little +garden, and the images and pictures in her room.</p> + +<p>In education, the instinct of ownership is fundamental, and can +be appealed to in many ways. In the house, training in order and +neatness begins with the arrangement of the child's own personal +possessions. In the school, ownership is particularly important in +connection with one of its special forms of activity, the +collecting impulse. An object possibly not very interesting in +itself, like a shell, a postage stamp, or a single map or drawing, +will acquire an interest if it fills a gap in a collection or helps +to complete a series. Much of the scholarly work of the world, so +far as it is mere bibliography, memory, and erudition (and this +lies at the basis of all our human scholarship), would seem to owe +its interest rather to the way in which it gratifies the +accumulating and collecting instinct than to any special appeal +which it makes to our cravings after rationality. A man wishes a +complete collection of information, wishes to know more about a +subject than anybody else, much as another may wish to own more +dollars or more early editions or more engravings before the letter +than anybody else.</p> + +<p>The teacher who can work this impulse into the school tasks is +fortunate. Almost all children collect something. A tactful teacher +may get them to take pleasure in collecting books; in keeping a +neat and orderly collection of notes; in starting, when they are +mature enough, a card catalogue; in preserving every drawing or map +which they may make. Neatness, order, and method are thus +instinctively gained, along with the other benefits which the +possession of the collection entails. Even such a noisome thing as +a collection of postage stamps may be used by the teacher as an +inciter of interest in the geographical and historical information +which she desires to impart. Sloyd successfully avails itself of +this instinct in causing the pupil to make a collection of wooden +implements fit for his own private use at home. Collecting is, of +course, the basis of all natural history study; and probably nobody +ever became a good naturalist who was not an unusually active +collector when a boy.</p> + +<p><i>Constructiveness</i> is another great instinctive tendency +with which the schoolroom has to contract an alliance. Up to the +eighth or ninth year of childhood one may say that the child does +hardly anything else than handle objects, explore things with his +hands, doing and undoing, setting up and knocking down, putting +together and pulling apart; for, from the psychological point of +view, construction and destruction are two names for the same +manual activity. Both signify the production of change, and the +working of effects, in outward things. The result of all this is +that intimate familiarity with the physical environment, that +acquaintance with the properties of material things, which is +really the foundation of human <i>consciousness</i>. To the very +last, in most of us, the conceptions of objects and their +properties are limited to the notion of what we can <i>do with +them</i>. A 'stick' means something we can lean upon or strike +with; 'fire,' something to cook, or warm ourselves, or burn things +up withal; 'string,' something with which to tie things together. +For most people these objects have no other meaning. In geometry, +the cylinder, circle, sphere, are defined as what you get by going +through certain processes of construction, revolving a +parallelogram upon one of its sides, etc. The more different kinds +of things a child thus gets to know by treating and handling them, +the more confident grows his sense of kinship with the world in +which he lives. An unsympathetic adult will wonder at the +fascinated hours which a child will spend in putting his blocks +together and rearranging them. But the wise education takes the +tide at the flood, and from the kindergarten upward devotes the +first years of education to training in construction and to +object-teaching. I need not recapitulate here what I said awhile +back about the superiority of the objective and experimental +methods. They occupy the pupil in a way most congruous with the +spontaneous interests of his age. They absorb him, and leave +impressions durable and profound. Compared with the youth taught by +these methods, one brought up exclusively by books carries through +life a certain remoteness from reality: he stands, as it were, out +of the pale, and feels that he stands so; and often suffers a kind +of melancholy from which he might have been rescued by a more real +education.</p> + +<p>There are other impulses, such as love of approbation or vanity, +shyness and secretiveness, of which a word might be said; but they +are too familiar to need it. You can easily pursue the subject by +your own reflection. There is one general law, however, that +relates to many of our instinctive tendencies, and that has no +little importance in education; and I must refer to it briefly +before I leave the subject. It has been called the law of +transitoriness in instincts. Many of our impulsive tendencies ripen +at a certain period; and, if the appropriate objects be then and +there provided, habits of conduct toward them are acquired which +last. But, if the objects be not forthcoming then, the impulse may +die out before a habit is formed; and later it may be hard to teach +the creature to react appropriately in those directions. The +sucking instincts in mammals, the following instinct in certain +birds and quadrupeds, are examples of this: they fade away shortly +after birth.</p> + +<p>In children we observe a ripening of impulses and interests in a +certain determinate order. Creeping, walking, climbing, imitating +vocal sounds, constructing, drawing, calculating, possess the child +in succession; and in some children the possession, while it lasts, +may be of a semi-frantic and exclusive sort. Later, the interest in +any one of these things may wholly fade away. Of course, the proper +pedagogic moment to work skill in, and to clench the useful habit, +is when the native impulse is most acutely present. Crowd on the +athletic opportunities, the mental arithmetic, the verse-learning, +the drawing, the botany, or what not, the moment you have reason to +think the hour is ripe. The hour may not last long, and while it +continues you may safely let all the child's other occupations take +a second place. In this way you economize time and deepen skill; +for many an infant prodigy, artistic or mathematical, has a +flowering epoch of but a few months.</p> + +<p>One can draw no specific rules for all this. It depends on close +observation in the particular case, and parents here have a great +advantage over teachers. In fact, the law of transitoriness has +little chance of individualized application in the schools.</p> + +<p>Such is the little interested and impulsive psychophysical +organism whose springs of action the teacher must divine, and to +whose ways he must become accustomed. He must start with the native +tendencies, and enlarge the pupil's entire passive and active +experience. He must ply him with new objects and stimuli, and make +him taste the fruits of his behavior, so that now that whole +context of remembered experience is what shall determine his +conduct when he gets the stimulus, and not the bare immediate +impression. As the pupil's life thus enlarges, it gets fuller and +fuller of all sorts of memories and associations and substitutions; +but the eye accustomed to psychological analysis will discern, +underneath it all, the outlines of our simple psychophysical +scheme.</p> + +<p>Respect then, I beg you, always the original reactions, even +when you are seeking to overcome their connection with certain +objects, and to supplant them with others that you wish to make the +rule. Bad behavior, from the point of view of the teacher's art, is +as good a starting-point as good behavior. In fact, paradoxical as +it may sound to say so, it is often a better starting-point than +good behavior would be.</p> + +<p>The acquired reactions must be made habitual whenever they are +appropriate. Therefore Habit is the next subject to which your +attention is invited.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="VIII__THE_LAWS_OF_HABIT" +id="VIII__THE_LAWS_OF_HABIT" />VIII. THE LAWS OF HABIT</h2> + +<p>It is very important that teachers should realize the importance +of habit, and psychology helps us greatly at this point. We speak, +it is true, of good habits and of bad habits; but, when people use +the word 'habit,' in the majority of instances it is a bad habit +which they have in mind. They talk of the smoking-habit and the +swearing-habit and the drinking-habit, but not of the +abstention-habit or the moderation-habit or the courage-habit. But +the fact is that our virtues are habits as much as our vices. All +our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of +habits,—practical, emotional, and +intellectual,—systematically organized for our weal or woe, +and bearing us irresistibly toward our destiny, whatever the latter +may be.</p> + +<p>Since pupils can understand this at a comparatively early age, +and since to understand it contributes in no small measure to their +feeling of responsibility, it would be well if the teacher were +able himself to talk to them of the philosophy of habit in some +such abstract terms as I am now about to talk of it to you.</p> + +<p>I believe that we are subject to the law of habit in consequence +of the fact that we have bodies. The plasticity of the living +matter of our nervous system, in short, is the reason why we do a +thing with difficulty the first time, but soon do it more and more +easily, and finally, with sufficient practice, do it +semi-mechanically, or with hardly any consciousness at all. Our +nervous systems have (in Dr. Carpenter's words) <i>grown</i> to the +way in which they have been exercised, just as a sheet of paper or +a coat, once creased or folded, tends to fall forever afterward +into the same identical folds.</p> + +<p>Habit is thus a second nature, or rather, as the Duke of +Wellington said, it is 'ten times nature,'—at any rate as +regards its importance in adult life; for the acquired habits of +our training have by that time inhibited or strangled most of the +natural impulsive tendencies which were originally there. +Ninety-nine hundredths or, possibly, nine hundred and ninety-nine +thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual, from +our rising in the morning to our lying down each night. Our +dressing and undressing, our eating and drinking, our greetings and +partings, our hat-raisings and giving way for ladies to precede, +nay, even most of the forms of our common speech, are things of a +type so fixed by repetition as almost to be classed as reflex +actions. To each sort of impression we have an automatic, +ready-made response. My very words to you now are an example of +what I mean; for having already lectured upon habit and printed a +chapter about it in a book, and read the latter when in print, I +find my tongue inevitably falling into its old phrases and +repeating almost literally what I said before.</p> + +<p>So far as we are thus mere bundles of habit, we are stereotyped +creatures, imitators and copiers of our past selves. And since +this, under any circumstances, is what we always tend to become, it +follows first of all that the teacher's prime concern should be to +ingrain into the pupil that assortment of habits that shall be most +useful to him throughout life. Education is for behavior, and +habits are the stuff of which behavior consists.</p> + +<p>To quote my earlier book directly, the great thing in all +education is to <i>make our nervous system our ally instead of our +enemy</i>. It is to fund and capitalize our acquisitions, and live +at ease upon the interest of the fund. <i>For this we must make +automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful +actions as we can</i>, and as carefully guard against the growing +into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous. The more of the +details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless +custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be +set free for their own proper work. There is no more miserable +human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, +and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every +cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the +beginning of every bit of work are subjects of express volitional +deliberation. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding +or regretting of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as +practically not to exist for his consciousness at all. If there be +such daily duties not yet ingrained in any one of my hearers, let +him begin this very hour to set the matter right.</p> + +<p>In Professor Bain's chapter on 'The Moral Habits' there are some +admirable practical remarks laid down. Two great maxims emerge from +the treatment. The first is that in the acquisition of a new habit, +or the leaving off of an old one, we must take care to <i>launch +ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible</i>. +Accumulate all the possible circumstances which shall reinforce the +right motives; put yourself assiduously in conditions that +encourage the new way; make engagements incompatible with the old; +take a public pledge, if the case allows; in short, envelope your +resolution with every aid you know. This will give your new +beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down will +not occur as soon as it otherwise might; and every day during which +a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring +at all.</p> + +<p>I remember long ago reading in an Austrian paper the +advertisement of a certain Rudolph Somebody, who promised fifty +gulden reward to any one who after that date should find him at the +wine-shop of Ambrosius So-and-so. 'This I do,' the advertisement +continued, 'in consequence of a promise which I have made my wife.' +With such a wife, and such an understanding of the way in which to +start new habits, it would be safe to stake one's money on +Rudolph's ultimate success.</p> + +<p>The second maxim is, <i>Never suffer an exception to occur till +the new habit is securely rooted in your life</i>. Each lapse is +like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully +winding up: a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will +wind again. Continuity of training is the great means of making the +nervous system act infallibly right. As Professor Bain +says:—</p> + +<p>"The peculiarity of the moral habits, contradistinguishing them +from the intellectual acquisitions, is the presence of two hostile +powers, one to be gradually raised into the ascendant over the +other. It is necessary above all things, in such a situation, never +to lose a battle. Every gain on the wrong side undoes the effect of +many conquests on the right. The essential precaution, therefore, +is so to regulate the two opposing powers that the one may have a +series of uninterrupted successes, until repetition has fortified +it to such a degree as to enable it to cope with the opposition, +under any circumstances. This is the theoretically best career of +mental progress."</p> + +<p>A third maxim may be added to the preceding pair: <i>Seize the +very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you +make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the +direction of the habits you aspire to gain.</i> It is not in the +moment of their forming, but in the moment of their producing motor +effects, that resolves and aspirations communicate the new 'set' to +the brain.</p> + +<p>No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no +matter how good one's sentiments may be, if one have not taken +advantage of every concrete opportunity to act, one's character may +remain entirely unaffected for the better. With good intentions, +hell proverbially is paved. This is an obvious consequence of the +principles I have laid down. A 'character,' as J.S. Mill says, 'is +a completely fashioned will'; and a will, in the sense in which he +means it, is an aggregate of tendencies to act in a firm and prompt +and definite way upon all the principal emergencies of life. A +tendency to act only becomes effectively ingrained in us in +proportion to the uninterrupted frequency with which the actions +actually occur, and the brain 'grows' to their use. When a resolve +or a fine glow of feeling is allowed to evaporate without bearing +practical fruit, it is worse than a chance lost: it works so as +positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking +the normal path of discharge. There is no more contemptible type of +human character than that of the nerveless sentimentalist and +dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility, but +never does a concrete manly deed.</p> + +<p>This leads to a fourth maxim. <i>Don't preach too much to your +pupils or abound in good talk in the abstract</i>. Lie in wait +rather for the practical opportunities, be prompt to seize those as +they pass, and thus at one operation get your pupils both to think, +to feel, and to do. The strokes of <i>behavior</i> are what give +the new set to the character, and work the good habits into its +organic tissue. Preaching and talking too soon become an +ineffectual bore.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>There is a passage in Darwin's short autobiography which has +been often quoted, and which, for the sake of its bearing on our +subject of habit, I must now quote again. Darwin says: "Up to the +age of thirty or beyond it, poetry of many kinds gave me great +pleasure; and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in +Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also said +that pictures formerly gave me considerable, and music very great +delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of +poetry. I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so +intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my +taste for pictures or music.... My mind seems to have become a kind +of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of +facts; but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of +the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot +conceive.... If I had to live my life again, I would have made a +rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once +every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would +thus have been kept alive through use. The loss of these tastes is +a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the +intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling +the emotional part of our nature."</p> + +<p>We all intend when young to be all that may become a man, before +the destroyer cuts us down. We wish and expect to enjoy poetry +always, to grow more and more intelligent about pictures and music, +to keep in touch with spiritual and religious ideas, and even not +to let the greater philosophic thoughts of our time develop quite +beyond our view. We mean all this in youth, I say; and yet in how +many middle-aged men and women is such an honest and sanguine +expectation fulfilled? Surely, in comparatively few; and the laws +of habit show us why. Some interest in each of these things arises +in everybody at the proper age; but, if not persistently fed with +the appropriate matter, instead of growing into a powerful and +necessary habit, it atrophies and dies, choked by the rival +interests to which the daily food is given. We make ourselves into +Darwins in this negative respect by persistently ignoring the +essential practical conditions of our case. We say abstractly: "I +mean to enjoy poetry, and to absorb a lot of it, of course. I fully +intend to keep up my love of music, to read the books that shall +give new turns to the thought of my time, to keep my higher +spiritual side alive, etc." But we do not attack these things +concretely, and we do not begin <i>to-day.</i> We forget that every +good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily +effort. We postpone and postpone, until those smiling possibilities +are dead. Whereas ten minutes a day of poetry, of spiritual reading +or meditation, and an hour or two a week at music, pictures, or +philosophy, provided we began <i>now</i> and suffered no remission, +would infallibly give us in due time the fulness of all we desire. +By neglecting the necessary concrete labor, by sparing ourselves +the little daily tax, we are positively digging the graves of our +higher possibilities. This is a point concerning which you teachers +might well give a little timely information to your older and more +aspiring pupils.</p> + +<p>According as a function receives daily exercise or not, the man +becomes a different kind of being in later life. We have lately had +a number of accomplished Hindoo visitors at Cambridge, who talked +freely of life and philosophy. More than one of them has confided +to me that the sight of our faces, all contracted as they are with +the habitual American over-intensity and anxiety of expression, and +our ungraceful and distorted attitudes when sitting, made on him a +very painful impression. "I do not see," said one, "how it is +possible for you to live as you do, without a single minute in your +day deliberately given to tranquillity and meditation. It is an +invariable part of our Hindoo life to retire for at least half an +hour daily into silence, to relax our muscles, govern our +breathing, and meditate on eternal things. Every Hindoo child is +trained to this from a very early age." The good fruits of such a +discipline were obvious in the physical repose and lack of tension, +and the wonderful smoothness and calmness of facial expression, and +imperturbability of manner of these Orientals. I felt that my +countrymen were depriving themselves of an essential grace of +character. How many American children ever hear it said by parent +or teacher, that they should moderate their piercing voices, that +they should relax their unused muscles, and as far as possible, +when sitting, sit quite still? Not one in a thousand, not one in +five thousand! Yet, from its reflex influence on the inner mental +states, this ceaseless over-tension, over-motion, and +over-expression are working on us grievous national harm.</p> + +<p>I beg you teachers to think a little seriously of this matter. +Perhaps you can help our rising generation of Americans toward the +beginning of a better set of personal ideals.<a name="FNanchor_A_2" +id="FNanchor_A_2" /><a href="#Footnote_A_2" +class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_A_2" id="Footnote_A_2" /><a +href="#FNanchor_A_2"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> See the +Address on the Gospel of Relaxation, later in this volume.</p> +</div> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>To go back now to our general maxims, I may at last, as a fifth +and final practical maxim about habits, offer something like this: +<i>Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous +exercise every day.</i> That is, be systematically heroic in little +unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other +reason than its difficulty, so that, when the hour of dire need +draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the +test. Asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man +pays on his house and goods. The tax does him no good at the time, +and possibly may never bring him a return. But, if the fire +<i>does</i> come, his having paid it will be his salvation from +ruin. So with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of +concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self-denial in +unnecessary things. He will stand like a tower when everything +rocks around him, and his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like +chaff in the blast.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>I have been accused, when talking of the subject of habit, of +making old habits appear so strong that the acquiring of new ones, +and particularly anything like a sudden reform or conversion, would +be made impossible by my doctrine. Of course, this would suffice to +condemn the latter; for sudden conversions, however infrequent they +may be, unquestionably do occur. But there is no incompatibility +between the general laws I have laid down and the most startling +sudden alterations in the way of character. New habits <i>can</i> +be launched, I have expressly said, on condition of there being new +stimuli and new excitements. Now life abounds in these, and +sometimes they are such critical and revolutionary experiences that +they change a man's whole scale of values and system of ideas. In +such cases, the old order of his habits will be ruptured; and, if +the new motives are lasting, new habits will be formed, and build +up in him a new or regenerate 'nature.'</p> + +<p>All this kind of fact I fully allow. But the general laws of +habit are no wise altered thereby, and the physiological study of +mental conditions still remains on the whole the most powerful ally +of hortatory ethics. The hell to be endured hereafter, of which +theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in +this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong +way. Could the young but realize how soon they will become mere +walking bundles of habits, they would give more heed to their +conduct while in the plastic state. We are spinning our own fates, +good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of +virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar. The drunken Rip +Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh +dereliction by saying, "I won't count this time!" Well, he may not +count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being +counted none the less. Down among his nerve-cells and fibres the +molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used +against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is, +in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.</p> + +<p>Of course, this has its good side as well as its bad one. As we +become permanent drunkards by so many separate drinks, so we become +saints in the moral, and authorities and experts in the practical +and scientific spheres, by so many separate acts and hours of work. +Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, +whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each +hour of the working day, he may safely leave the final result to +itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine +morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his +generation, in whatever pursuit he may have singled out. Silently, +between all the details of his business, the <i>power of +judging</i> in all that class of matter will have built itself up +within him as a possession that will never pass away. Young people +should know this truth in advance. The ignorance of it has probably +engendered more discouragement and faint-heartedness in youths +embarking on arduous careers than all other causes put +together.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="IX__THE_ASSOCIATION_OF_IDEAS" +id="IX__THE_ASSOCIATION_OF_IDEAS" />IX. THE ASSOCIATION OF +IDEAS</h2> + +<p>In my last talk, in treating of Habit, I chiefly had in mind our +<i>motor</i> habits,—habits of external conduct. But our +thinking and feeling processes are also largely subject to the law +of habit, and one result of this is a phenomenon which you all know +under the name of 'the association of ideas.' To that phenomenon I +ask you now to turn.</p> + +<p>You remember that consciousness is an ever-flowing stream of +objects, feelings, and impulsive tendencies. We saw already that +its phases or pulses are like so many fields or waves, each field +or wave having usually its central point of liveliest attention, in +the shape of the most prominent object in our thought, while all +around this lies a margin of other objects more dimly realized, +together with the margin of emotional and active tendencies which +the whole entails. Describing the mind thus in fluid terms, we +cling as close as possible to nature. At first sight, it might seem +as if, in the fluidity of these successive waves, everything is +indeterminate. But inspection shows that each wave has a +constitution which can be to some degree explained by the +constitution of the waves just passed away. And this relation of +the wave to its predecessors is expressed by the two fundamental +'laws of association,' so-called, of which the first is named the +Law of Contiguity, the second that of Similarity.</p> + +<p>The <i>Law of Contiguity</i> tells us that objects thought of in +the coming wave are such as in some previous experience were +<i>next</i> to the objects represented in the wave that is passing +away. The vanishing objects were once formerly their neighbors in +the mind. When you recite the alphabet or your prayers, or when the +sight of an object reminds you of its name, or the name reminds you +of the object, it is through the law of contiguity that the terms +are suggested to the mind.</p> + +<p>The <i>Law of Similarity</i> says that, when contiguity fails to +describe what happens, the coming objects will prove to +<i>resemble</i> the going objects, even though the two were never +experienced together before. In our 'flights of fancy,' this is +frequently the case.</p> + +<p>If, arresting ourselves in the flow of reverie, we ask the +question, "How came we to be thinking of just this object now?" we +can almost always trace its presence to some previous object which +has introduced it to the mind, according to one or the other of +these laws. The entire routine of our memorized acquisitions, for +example, is a consequence of nothing but the Law of Contiguity. The +words of a poem, the formulas of trigonometry, the facts of +history, the properties of material things, are all known to us as +definite systems or groups of objects which cohere in an order +fixed by innumerable iterations, and of which any one part reminds +us of the others. In dry and prosaic minds, almost all the mental +sequences flow along these lines of habitual routine repetition and +suggestion.</p> + +<p>In witty, imaginative minds, on the other hand, the routine is +broken through with ease at any moment; and one field of mental +objects will suggest another with which perhaps in the whole +history of human thinking it had never once before been coupled. +The link here is usually some <i>analogy</i> between the objects +successively thought of,—an analogy often so subtle that, +although we feel it, we can with difficulty analyze its ground; as +where, for example, we find something masculine in the color red +and something feminine in the color pale blue, or where, of three +human beings' characters, one will remind us of a cat, another of a +dog, the third perhaps of a cow.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>Psychologists have of course gone very deeply into the question +of what the causes of association may be; and some of them have +tried to show that contiguity and similarity are not two radically +diverse laws, but that either presupposes the presence of the +other. I myself am disposed to think that the phenomena of +association depend on our cerebral constitution, and are not +immediate consequences of our being rational beings. In other +words, when we shall have become disembodied spirits, it may be +that our trains of consciousness will follow different laws. These +questions are discussed in the books on psychology, and I hope that +some of you will be interested in following them there. But I will, +on the present occasion, ignore them entirely; for, as teachers, it +is the <i>fact</i> of association that practically concerns you, +let its grounds be spiritual or cerebral, or what they may, and let +its laws be reducible, or non-reducible, to one. Your pupils, +whatever else they are, are at any rate little pieces of +associating machinery. Their education consists in the organizing +within them of determinate tendencies to associate one thing with +another,—impressions with consequences, these with reactions, +those with results, and so on indefinitely. The more copious the +associative systems, the completer the individual's adaptations to +the world.</p> + +<p>The teacher can formulate his function to himself therefore in +terms of 'association' as well as in terms of 'native and acquired +reaction.' It is mainly that of <i>building up useful systems of +association</i> in the pupil's mind. This description sounds wider +than the one I began by giving. But, when one thinks that our +trains of association, whatever they may be, normally issue in +acquired reactions or behavior, one sees that in a general way the +same mass of facts is covered by both formulas.</p> + +<p>It is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when +we have once grasped the principles of association. The great +problem which association undertakes to solve is, <i>Why does just +this particular field of consciousness, constituted in this +particular way, now appear before my mind?</i> It may be a field of +objects imagined; it may be of objects remembered or of objects +perceived; it may include an action resolved on. In either case, +when the field is analyzed into its parts, those parts can be shown +to have proceeded from parts of fields previously before +consciousness, in consequence of one or other of the laws of +association just laid down. Those laws <i>run</i> the mind: +interest, shifting hither and thither, deflects it; and attention, +as we shall later see, steers it and keeps it from too zigzag a +course.</p> + +<p>To grasp these factors clearly gives one a solid and simple +understanding of the psychological machinery. The 'nature,' the +'character,' of an individual means really nothing but the habitual +form of his associations. To break up bad associations or wrong +ones, to build others in, to guide the associative tendencies into +the most fruitful channels, is the educator's principal task. But +here, as with all other simple principles, the difficulty lies in +the application. Psychology can state the laws: concrete tact and +talent alone can work them to useful results.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile it is a matter of the commonest experience that our +minds may pass from one object to another by various intermediary +fields of consciousness. The indeterminateness of our paths of +association <i>in concreto</i> is thus almost as striking a feature +of them as the uniformity of their abstract form. Start from any +idea whatever, and the entire range of your ideas is potentially at +your disposal. If we take as the associative starting-point, or +cue, some simple word which I pronounce before you, there is no +limit to the possible diversity of suggestions which it may set up +in your minds. Suppose I say 'blue,' for example: some of you may +think of the blue sky and hot weather from which we now are +suffering, then go off on thoughts of summer clothing, or possibly +of meteorology at large; others may think of the spectrum and the +physiology of color-vision, and glide into X-rays and recent +physical speculations; others may think of blue ribbons, or of the +blue flowers on a friend's hat, and proceed on lines of personal +reminiscence. To others, again, etymology and linguistic thoughts +may be suggested; or blue may be 'apperceived' as a synonym for +melancholy, and a train of associates connected with morbid +psychology may proceed to unroll themselves.</p> + +<p>In the same person, the same word heard at different times will +provoke, in consequence of the varying marginal preoccupations, +either one of a number of diverse possible associative sequences. +Professor Münsterberg performed this experiment methodically, +using the same words four times over, at three-month intervals, as +'cues' for four different persons who were the subjects of +observation. He found almost no constancy in their associations +taken at these different times. In short, the entire potential +content of one's consciousness is accessible from any one of its +points. This is why we can never work the laws of association +forward: starting from the present field as a cue, we can never +cipher out in advance just what the person will be thinking of five +minutes later. The elements which may become prepotent in the +process, the parts of each successive field round which the +associations shall chiefly turn, the possible bifurcations of +suggestion, are so numerous and ambiguous as to be indeterminable +before the fact. But, although we cannot work the laws of +association forward, we can always work them backwards. We cannot +say now what we shall find ourselves thinking of five minutes +hence; but, whatever it may be, we shall then be able to trace it +through intermediary links of contiguity or similarity to what we +are thinking now. What so baffles our prevision is the shifting +part played by the margin and focus—in fact, by each element +by itself of the margin or focus—in calling up the next +ideas.</p> + +<p>For example, I am reciting 'Locksley Hall,' in order to divert +my mind from a state of suspense that I am in concerning the will +of a relative that is dead. The will still remains in the mental +background as an extremely marginal or ultra-marginal portion of my +field of consciousness; but the poem fairly keeps my attention from +it, until I come to the line, "I, the heir of all the ages, in the +foremost files of time." The words 'I, the heir,' immediately make +an electric connection with the marginal thought of the will; that, +in turn, makes my heart beat with anticipation of my possible +legacy, so that I throw down the book and pace the floor excitedly +with visions of my future fortune pouring through my mind. Any +portion of the field of consciousness that has more potentialities +of emotional excitement than another may thus be roused to +predominant activity; and the shifting play of interest now in one +portion, now in another, deflects the currents in all sorts of +zigzag ways, the mental activity running hither and thither as the +sparks run in burnt-up paper.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>One more point, and I shall have said as much to you as seems +necessary about the process of association.</p> + +<p>You just saw how a single exciting word may call up its own +associates prepotently, and deflect our whole train of thinking +from the previous track. The fact is that every portion of the +field <i>tends</i> to call up its own associates; but, if these +associates be severally different, there is rivalry, and as soon as +one or a few begin to be effective the others seem to get siphoned +out, as it were, and left behind. Seldom, however, as in our +example, does the process seem to turn round a single item in the +mental field, or even round the entire field that is immediately in +the act of passing. It is a matter of <i>constellation</i>, into +which portions of fields that are already past especially seem to +enter and have their say. Thus, to go back to 'Locksley Hall,' each +word as I recite it in its due order is suggested not solely by the +previous word now expiring on my lips, but it is rather the effect +of all the previous words, taken together, of the verse. "Ages," +for example, calls up "in the foremost files of time," when +preceded by "I, the heir of all the"—; but, when preceded by +"for I doubt not through the,"—it calls up "one increasing +purpose runs." Similarly, if I write on the blackboard the letters +A B C D E F,... they probably suggest to you G H I.... But, if I +write A B A D D E F, if they suggest anything, they suggest as +their complement E C T or E F I C I E N C Y. The result depending +on the total constellation, even though most of the single items be +the same.</p> + +<p>My practical reason for mentioning this law is this, that it +follows from it that, in working associations into your pupils' +minds, you must not rely on single cues, but multiply the cues as +much as possible. Couple the desired reaction with numerous +constellations of antecedents,—don't always ask the question, +for example, in the same way; don't use the same kind of data in +numerical problems; vary your illustrations, etc., as much as you +can. When we come to the subject of memory, we shall learn still +more about this.</p> + +<p>So much, then, for the general subject of association. In +leaving it for other topics (in which, however, we shall abundantly +find it involved again), I cannot too strongly urge you to acquire +a habit of thinking of your pupils in associative terms. All +governors of mankind, from doctors and jail-wardens to demagogues +and statesmen, instinctively come so to conceive their charges. If +you do the same, thinking of them (however else you may think of +them besides) as so many little systems of associating machinery, +you will be astonished at the intimacy of insight into their +operations and at the practicality of the results which you will +gain. We think of our acquaintances, for example, as characterized +by certain 'tendencies.' These tendencies will in almost every +instance prove to be tendencies to association. Certain ideas in +them are always followed by certain other ideas, these by certain +feelings and impulses to approve or disapprove, assent or decline. +If the topic arouse one of those first ideas, the practical outcome +can be pretty well foreseen. 'Types of character' in short are +largely types of association.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="X__INTEREST" id="X__INTEREST" />X. INTEREST</h2> + +<p>At our last meeting I treated of the native tendencies of the +pupil to react in characteristically definite ways upon different +stimuli or exciting circumstances. In fact, I treated of the +pupil's instincts. Now some situations appeal to special instincts +from the very outset, and others fail to do so until the proper +connections have been organized in the course of the person's +training. We say of the former set of objects or situations that +they are <i>interesting</i> in themselves and originally. Of the +latter we say that they are natively uninteresting, and that +interest in them has first to be acquired.</p> + +<p>No topic has received more attention from pedagogical writers +than that of interest. It is the natural sequel to the instincts we +so lately discussed, and it is therefore well fitted to be the next +subject which we take up.</p> + +<p>Since some objects are natively interesting and in others +interest is artificially acquired, the teacher must know which the +natively interesting ones are; for, as we shall see immediately, +other objects can artificially acquire an interest only through +first becoming associated with some of these natively interesting +things.</p> + +<p>The native interests of children lie altogether in the sphere of +sensation. Novel things to look at or novel sounds to hear, +especially when they involve the spectacle of action of a violent +sort, will always divert the attention from abstract conceptions of +objects verbally taken in. The grimace that Johnny is making, the +spitballs that Tommy is ready to throw, the dog-fight in the +street, or the distant firebells ringing,—these are the +rivals with which the teacher's powers of being interesting have +incessantly to cope. The child will always attend more to what a +teacher does than to what the same teacher says. During the +performance of experiments or while the teacher is drawing on the +blackboard, the children are tranquil and absorbed. I have seen a +roomful of college students suddenly become perfectly still, to +look at their professor of physics tie a piece of string around a +stick which he was going to use in an experiment, but immediately +grow restless when he began to explain the experiment. A lady told +me that one day, during a lesson, she was delighted at having +captured so completely the attention of one of her young charges. +He did not remove his eyes from her face; but he said to her after +the lesson was over, "I looked at you all the time, and your upper +jaw did not move once!" That was the only fact that he had taken +in.</p> + +<p>Living things, then, moving things, or things that savor of +danger or of blood, that have a dramatic quality,—these are +the objects natively interesting to childhood, to the exclusion of +almost everything else; and the teacher of young children, until +more artificial interests have grown up, will keep in touch with +her pupils by constant appeal to such matters as these. Instruction +must be carried on objectively, experimentally, anecdotally. The +blackboard-drawing and story-telling must constantly come in. But +of course these methods cover only the first steps, and carry one +but a little way.</p> + +<p>Can we now formulate any general principle by which the later +and more artificial interests connect themselves with these early +ones that the child brings with him to the school?</p> + +<p>Fortunately, we can: there is a very simple law that relates the +acquired and the native interests with each other.</p> + +<p><i>Any object not interesting in itself may become interesting +through becoming associated with an object in which an interest +already exists. The two associated objects grow, as it were, +together: the interesting portion sheds its quality over the whole; +and thus things not interesting in their own right borrow an +interest which becomes as real and as strong as that of any +natively interesting thing.</i> The odd circumstance is that the +borrowing does not impoverish the source, the objects taken +together being more interesting, perhaps, than the originally +interesting portion was by itself.</p> + +<p>This is one of the most striking proofs of the range of +application of the principle of association of ideas in psychology. +An idea will infect another with its own emotional interest when +they have become both associated together into any sort of a mental +total. As there is no limit to the various associations into which +an interesting idea may enter, one sees in how many ways an +interest may be derived.</p> + +<p>You will understand this abstract statement easily if I take the +most frequent of concrete examples,—the interest which things +borrow from their connection with our own personal welfare. The +most natively interesting object to a man is his own personal self +and its fortunes. We accordingly see that the moment a thing +becomes connected with the fortunes of the self, it forthwith +becomes an interesting thing. Lend the child his books, pencils, +and other apparatus: then give them to him, make them his own, and +notice the new light with which they instantly shine in his eyes. +He takes a new kind of care of them altogether. In mature life, all +the drudgery of a man's business or profession, intolerable in +itself, is shot through with engrossing significance because he +knows it to be associated with his personal fortunes. What more +deadly uninteresting object can there be than a railroad +time-table? Yet where will you find a more interesting object if +you are going on a journey, and by its means can find your train? +At such times the time-table will absorb a man's entire attention, +its interest being borrowed solely from its relation to his +personal life. <i>From all these facts there emerges a very simple +abstract programme for the teacher to follow in keeping the +attention of the child: Begin with the line of his native +interests, and offer him objects that have some immediate +connection with these</i>. The kindergarten methods, the +object-teaching routine, the blackboard and manual-training +work,—all recognize this feature. Schools in which these +methods preponderate are schools where discipline is easy, and +where the voice of the master claiming order and attention in +threatening tones need never be heard.</p> + +<p><i>Next, step by step, connect with these first objects and +experiences the later objects and ideas which you wish to instill. +Associate the new with the old in some natural and telling way, so +that the interest, being shed along from point to point, finally +suffuses the entire system of objects of thought.</i></p> + +<p>This is the abstract statement; and, abstractly, nothing can be +easier to understand. It is in the fulfilment of the rule that the +difficulty lies; for the difference between an interesting and a +tedious teacher consists in little more than the inventiveness by +which the one is able to mediate these associations and +connections, and in the dulness in discovering such transitions +which the other shows. One teacher's mind will fairly coruscate +with points of connection between the new lesson and the +circumstances of the children's other experience. Anecdotes and +reminiscences will abound in her talk; and the shuttle of interest +will shoot backward and forward, weaving the new and the old +together in a lively and entertaining way. Another teacher has no +such inventive fertility, and his lesson will always be a dead and +heavy thing. This is the psychological meaning of the Herbartian +principle of 'preparation' for each lesson, and of correlating the +new with the old. It is the psychological meaning of that whole +method of concentration in studies of which you have been recently +hearing so much. When the geography and English and history and +arithmetic simultaneously make cross-references to one another, you +get an interesting set of processes all along the line.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>If, then, you wish to insure the interest of your pupils, there +is only one way to do it; and that is to make certain that they +have something in their minds <i>to attend with</i>, when you begin +to talk. That something can consist in nothing but a previous lot +of ideas already interesting in themselves, and of such a nature +that the incoming novel objects which you present can dovetail into +them and form with them some kind of a logically associated or +systematic whole. Fortunately, almost any kind of a connection is +sufficient to carry the interest along. What a help is our +Philippine war at present in teaching geography! But before the war +you could ask the children if they ate pepper with their eggs, and +where they supposed the pepper came from. Or ask them if glass is a +stone, and, if not, why not; and then let them know how stones are +formed and glass manufactured. External links will serve as well as +those that are deeper and more logical. But interest, once shed +upon a subject, is liable to remain always with that subject. Our +acquisitions become in a measure portions of our personal self; and +little by little, as cross-associations multiply and habits of +familiarity and practice grow, the entire system of our objects of +thought consolidates, most of it becoming interesting for some +purposes and in some degree.</p> + +<p>An adult man's interests are almost every one of them intensely +artificial: they have slowly been built up. The objects of +professional interest are most of them, in their original nature, +repulsive; but by their connection with such natively exciting +objects as one's personal fortune, one's social responsibilities, +and especially by the force of inveterate habit, they grow to be +the only things for which in middle life a man profoundly +cares.</p> + +<p>But in all these the spread and consolidation have followed +nothing but the principles first laid down. If we could recall for +a moment our whole individual history, we should see that our +professional ideals and the zeal they inspire are due to nothing +but the slow accretion of one mental object to another, traceable +backward from point to point till we reach the moment when, in the +nursery or in the schoolroom, some little story told, some little +object shown, some little operation witnessed, brought the first +new object and new interest within our ken by associating it with +some one of those primitively there. The interest now suffusing the +whole system took its rise in that little event, so insignificant +to us now as to be entirely forgotten. As the bees in swarming +cling to one another in layers till the few are reached whose feet +grapple the bough from which the swarm depends; so with the objects +of our thinking,—they hang to each other by associated links, +but the <i>original</i> source of interest in all of them is the +native interest which the earliest one once possessed.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XI__ATTENTION" id="XI__ATTENTION" />XI. ATTENTION</h2> + +<p>Whoever treats of interest inevitably treats of attention, for +to say that an object is interesting is only another way of saying +that it excites attention. But in addition to the attention which +any object already interesting or just becoming interesting +claims—passive attention or spontaneous attention, we may +call it—there is a more deliberate attention,—voluntary +attention or attention with effort, as it is called,—which we +can give to objects less interesting or uninteresting in +themselves. The distinction between active and passive attention is +made in all books on psychology, and connects itself with the +deeper aspects of the topic. From our present purely practical +point of view, however, it is not necessary to be intricate; and +passive attention to natively interesting material requires no +further elucidation on this occasion. All that we need explicitly +to note is that, the more the passive attention is relied on, by +keeping the material interesting; and the less the kind of +attention requiring effort is appealed to; the more smoothly and +pleasantly the classroom work goes on. I must say a few more +words, however, about this latter process of voluntary and +deliberate attention.</p> + +<p>One often hears it said that genius is nothing but a power of +sustained attention, and the popular impression probably prevails +that men of genius are remarkable for their voluntary powers in +this direction. <i>But a little introspective observation will show +any one that voluntary attention cannot be continuously +sustained,—that it comes in beats.</i> When we are studying +an uninteresting subject, if our mind tends to wander, we have to +bring back our attention every now and then by using distinct +pulses of effort, which revivify the topic for a moment, the mind +then running on for a certain number of seconds or minutes with +spontaneous interest, until again some intercurrent idea captures +it and takes it off. Then the processes of volitional recall must +be repeated once more. Voluntary attention, in short, is only a +momentary affair. The process, whatever it is, exhausts itself in +the single act; and, unless the matter is then taken in hand by +some trace of interest inherent in the subject, the mind fails to +follow it at all. The sustained attention of the genius, sticking +to his subject for hours together, is for the most part of the +passive sort. The minds of geniuses are full of copious and +original associations. The subject of thought, once started, +develops all sorts of fascinating consequences. The attention is +led along one of these to another in the most interesting manner, +and the attention never once tends to stray away.</p> + +<p>In a commonplace mind, on the other hand, a subject develops +much less numerous associates: it dies out then quickly; and, if +the man is to keep up thinking of it at all, he must bring his +attention back to it by a violent wrench. In him, therefore, the +faculty of voluntary attention receives abundant opportunity for +cultivation in daily life. It is your despised business man, your +common man of affairs, (so looked down on by the literary awarders +of fame) whose virtue in this regard is likely to be most +developed; for he has to listen to the concerns of so many +uninteresting people, and to transact so much drudging detail, that +the faculty in question is always kept in training. A genius, on +the contrary, is the man in whom you are least likely to find the +power of attending to anything insipid or distasteful in itself. He +breaks his engagements, leaves his letters unanswered, neglects his +family duties incorrigibly, because he is powerless to turn his +attention down and back from those more interesting trains of +imagery with which his genius constantly occupies his mind.</p> + +<p>Voluntary attention is thus an essentially instantaneous affair. +You can claim it, for your purposes in the schoolroom, by +commanding it in loud, imperious tones; and you can easily get it +in this way. But, unless the subject to which you thus recall their +attention has inherent power to interest the pupils, you will have +got it for only a brief moment; and their minds will soon be +wandering again. To keep them where you have called them, you must +make the subject too interesting for them to wander again. And for +that there is one prescription; but the prescription, like all our +prescriptions, is abstract, and, to get practical results from it, +you must couple it with mother-wit.</p> + +<p>The prescription is that <i>the subject must be made to show new +aspects of itself; to prompt new questions; in a word, to +change</i>. From an unchanging subject the attention inevitably +wanders away. You can test this by the simplest possible case of +sensorial attention. Try to attend steadfastly to a dot on the +paper or on the wall. You presently find that one or the other of +two things has happened: either your field of vision has become +blurred, so that you now see nothing distinct at all, or else you +have involuntarily ceased to look at the dot in question, and are +looking at something else. But, if you ask yourself successive +questions about the dot,—how big it is, how far, of what +shape, what shade of color, etc.; in other words, if you turn it +over, if you think of it in various ways, and along with various +kinds of associates,—you can keep your mind on it for a +comparatively long time. This is what the genius does, in whose +hands a given topic coruscates and grows. And this is what the +teacher must do for every topic if he wishes to avoid too frequent +appeals to voluntary attention of the coerced sort. In all +respects, reliance upon such attention as this is a wasteful +method, bringing bad temper and nervous wear and tear as well as +imperfect results. The teacher who can get along by keeping +spontaneous interest excited must be regarded as the teacher with +the greatest skill.</p> + +<p>There is, however, in all schoolroom work a large mass of +material that must be dull and unexciting, and to which it is +impossible in any continuous way to contribute an interest +associatively derived. There are, therefore, certain external +methods, which every teacher knows, of voluntarily arousing the +attention from time to time and keeping it upon the subject. Mr. +Fitch has a lecture on the art of securing attention, and he +briefly passes these methods in review; the posture must be +changed; places can be changed. Questions, after being answered +singly, may occasionally be answered in concert. Elliptical +questions may be asked, the pupil supplying the missing word. The +teacher must pounce upon the most listless child and wake him up. +The habit of prompt and ready response must be kept up. +Recapitulations, illustrations, examples, novelty of order, and +ruptures of routine,—all these are means for keeping the +attention alive and contributing a little interest to a dull +subject. Above all, the teacher must himself be alive and ready, +and must use the contagion of his own example.</p> + +<p>But, when all is said and done, the fact remains that some +teachers have a naturally inspiring presence, and can make their +exercises interesting, while others simply cannot. And psychology +and general pedagogy here confess their failure, and hand things +over to the deeper springs of human personality to conduct the +task.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>A brief reference to the physiological theory of the attentive +process may serve still further to elucidate these practical +remarks, and confirm them by showing them from a slightly different +point of view.</p> + +<p>What is the attentive process, psychologically considered? +Attention to an object is what takes place whenever that object +most completely occupies the mind. For simplicity's sake suppose +the object be an object of sensation,—a figure approaching us +at a distance on the road. It is far off, barely perceptible, and +hardly moving: we do not know with certainty whether it is a man or +not. Such an object as this, if carelessly looked at, may hardly +catch our attention at all. The optical impression may affect +solely the marginal consciousness, while the mental focus keeps +engaged with rival things. We may indeed not 'see' it till some one +points it out. But, if so, how does he point it out? By his finger, +and by describing its appearance,—by creating a premonitory +image of <i>where</i> to look and of <i>what</i> to expect to see. +This premonitory image is already an excitement of the same +nerve-centres that are to be concerned with the impression. The +impression comes, and excites them still further; and now the +object enters the focus of the field, consciousness being sustained +both by impression and by preliminary idea. But the maximum of +attention to it is not yet reached. Although we see it, we may not +care for it; it may suggest nothing important to us; and a rival +stream of objects or of thoughts may quickly take our mind away. +If, however, our companion defines it in a significant way, arouses +in the mind a set of experiences to be apprehended from +it,—names it an enemy or as a messenger of important +tidings,—the residual and marginal ideas now aroused, so far +from being its rivals, become its associates and allies. They shoot +together into one system with it; they converge upon it; they keep +it steadily in focus; the mind attends to it with maximum +power.</p> + +<p>The attentive process, therefore, at its maximum may be +physiologically symbolized by a brain-cell played on in two ways, +from without and from within. Incoming currents from the periphery +arouse it, and collateral currents from the centres of memory and +imagination re-enforce these.</p> + +<p>In this process the incoming impression is the newer element; +the ideas which re-enforce and sustain it are among the older +possessions of the mind. And the maximum of attention may then be +said to be found whenever we have a systematic harmony or +unification between the novel and the old. It is an odd +circumstance that neither the old nor the new, by itself, is +interesting: the absolutely old is insipid; the absolutely new +makes no appeal at all. The old <i>in</i> the new is what claims +the attention,—the old with a slightly new turn. No one wants +to hear a lecture on a subject completely disconnected with his +previous knowledge, but we all like lectures on subjects of which +we know a little already, just as, in the fashions, every year must +bring its slight modification of last year's suit, but an abrupt +jump from the fashion of one decade into another would be +distasteful to the eye.</p> + +<p>The genius of the interesting teacher consists in sympathetic +divination of the sort of material with which the pupil's mind is +likely to be already spontaneously engaged, and in the ingenuity +which discovers paths of connection from that material to the +matters to be newly learned. The principle is easy to grasp, but +the accomplishment is difficult in the extreme. And a knowledge of +such psychology as this which I am recalling can no more make a +good teacher than a knowledge of the laws of perspective can make a +landscape painter of effective skill.</p> + +<p>A certain doubt may now occur to some of you. A while ago, +apropos of the pugnacious instinct, I spoke of our modern pedagogy +as being possibly too 'soft.' You may perhaps here face me with my +own words, and ask whether the exclusive effort on the teacher's +part to keep the pupil's spontaneous interest going, and to avoid +the more strenuous path of voluntary attention to repulsive work, +does not savor also of sentimentalism. The greater part of +schoolroom work, you say, must, in the nature of things, always be +repulsive. To face uninteresting drudgery is a good part of life's +work. Why seek to eliminate it from the schoolroom or minimize the +sterner law?</p> + +<p>A word or two will obviate what might perhaps become a serious +misunderstanding here.</p> + +<p>It is certain that most schoolroom work, till it has become +habitual and automatic, is repulsive, and cannot be done without +voluntarily jerking back the attention to it every now and then. +This is inevitable, let the teacher do what he will.</p> + +<p>It flows from the inherent nature of the subjects and of the +learning mind. The repulsive processes of verbal memorizing, of +discovering steps of mathematical identity, and the like, must +borrow their interest at first from purely external sources, mainly +from the personal interests with which success in mastering them is +associated, such as gaining of rank, avoiding punishment, not being +beaten by a difficulty and the like. Without such borrowed +interest, the child could not attend to them at all. But in these +processes what becomes interesting enough to be attended to is not +thereby attended to <i>without effort</i>. Effort always has to go +on* derived interest, for the most part, not awakening attention +that is <i>easy</i>, however spontaneous it may now have to be +called. The interest which the teacher, by his utmost skill, can +lend to the subject, proves over and over again to be only an +interest sufficient <i>to let loose the effort</i>. The teacher, +therefore, need never concern himself about <i>inventing</i> +occasions where effort must be called into play. Let him still +awaken whatever sources of interest in the subject he can by +stirring up connections between it and the pupil's nature, whether +in the line of theoretic curiosity, of personal interest, or of +pugnacious impulse. The laws of mind will then bring enough pulses +of effort into play to keep the pupil exercised in the direction of +the subject. There is, in fact, no greater school of effort than +the steady struggle to attend to immediately repulsive or difficult +objects of thought which have grown to interest us through their +association as means, with some remote ideal end.</p> + +<p>The Herbartian doctrine of interest ought not, therefore, in +principle to be reproached with making pedagogy soft. If it do so, +it is because it is unintelligently carried on. Do not, then, for +the mere sake of discipline, command attention from your pupils in +thundering tones. Do not too often beg it from them as a favor, nor +claim it as a right, nor try habitually to excite it by preaching +the importance of the subject. Sometimes, indeed, you must do these +things; but, the more you have to do them, the less skilful teacher +you will show yourself to be. Elicit interest from within, by the +warmth with which you care for the topic yourself, and by following +the laws I have laid down.</p> + +<p>If the topic be highly abstract, show its nature by concrete +examples. If it be unfamiliar, trace some point of analogy in it +with the known. If it be inhuman, make it figure as part of a +story. If it be difficult, couple its acquisition with some +prospect of personal gain. Above all things, make sure that it +shall run through certain inner changes, since no unvarying object +can possibly hold the mental field for long. Let your pupil wander +from one aspect to another of your subject, if you do not wish him +to wander from it altogether to something else, variety in unity +being the secret of all interesting talk and thought. The relation +of all these things to the native genius of the instructor is too +obvious to need comment again.</p> + +<p>One more point, and I am done with the subject of attention. +There is unquestionably a great native variety among individuals in +the type of their attention. Some of us are naturally +scatterbrained, and others follow easily a train of connected +thoughts without temptation to swerve aside to other subjects. This +seems to depend on a difference between individuals in the type of +their field of consciousness. In some persons this is highly +focalized and concentrated, and the focal ideas predominate in +determining association. In others we must suppose the margin to be +brighter, and to be filled with something like meteoric showers of +images, which strike into it at random, displacing the focal ideas, +and carrying association in their own direction. Persons of the +latter type find their attention wandering every minute, and must +bring it back by a voluntary pull. The others sink into a subject +of meditation deeply, and, when interrupted, are 'lost' for a +moment before they come back to the outer world.</p> + +<p>The possession of such a steady faculty of attention is +unquestionably a great boon. Those who have it can work more +rapidly, and with less nervous wear and tear. I am inclined to +think that no one who is without it naturally can by any amount of +drill or discipline attain it in a very high degree. Its amount is +probably a fixed characteristic of the individual. But I wish to +make a remark here which I shall have occasion to make again in +other connections. It is that no one need deplore unduly the +inferiority in himself of any one elementary faculty. This +concentrated type of attention is an elementary faculty: it is one +of the things that might be ascertained and measured by exercises +in the laboratory. But, having ascertained it in a number of +persons, we could never rank them in a scale of actual and +practical mental efficiency based on its degrees. The total mental +efficiency of a man is the resultant of the working together of all +his faculties. He is too complex a being for any one of them to +have the casting vote. If any one of them do have the casting vote, +it is more likely to be the strength of his desire and passion, the +strength of the interest he takes in what is proposed. +Concentration, memory, reasoning power, inventiveness, excellence +of the senses,—all are subsidiary to this. No matter how +scatter-brained the type of a man's successive fields of +consciousness may be, if he really <i>care</i> for a subject, he +will return to it incessantly from his incessant wanderings, and +first and last do more with it, and get more results from it, than +another person whose attention may be more continuous during a +given interval, but whose passion for the subject is of a more +languid and less permanent sort. Some of the most efficient workers +I know are of the ultra-scatterbrained type. One friend, who does a +prodigious quantity of work, has in fact confessed to me that, if +he wants to get ideas on any subject, he sits down to work at +something else, his best results coming through his +mind-wanderings. This is perhaps an epigrammatic exaggeration on +his part; but I seriously think that no one of us need be too much +distressed at his own shortcomings in this regard. Our mind may +enjoy but little comfort, may be restless and feel confused; but it +may be extremely efficient all the same.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XII__MEMORY" id="XII__MEMORY" />XII. MEMORY</h2> + +<p>We are following a somewhat arbitrary order. Since each and +every faculty we possess is either in whole or in part a resultant +of the play of our associations, it would have been as natural, +after treating of association, to treat of memory as to treat of +interest and attention next. But, since we did take the latter +operations first, we must take memory now without farther delay; +for the phenomena of memory are among the simplest and most +immediate consequences of the fact that our mind is essentially an +associating machine. There is no more pre-eminent example for +exhibiting the fertility of the laws of association as principles +of psychological analysis. Memory, moreover, is so important a +faculty in the schoolroom that you are probably waiting with some +eagerness to know what psychology has to say about it for your +help.</p> + +<p>In old times, if you asked a person to explain why he came to be +remembering at that moment some particular incident in his previous +life, the only reply he could make was that his soul is endowed +with a faculty called memory; that it is the inalienable function +of this faculty to recollect; and that, therefore, he necessarily +at that moment must have a cognition of that portion of the past. +This explanation by a 'faculty' is one thing which explanation by +association has superseded altogether. If, by saying we have a +faculty of memory, you mean nothing more than the fact that we can +remember, nothing more than an abstract name for our power inwardly +to recall the past, there is no harm done: we do have the faculty; +for we unquestionably have such a power. But if, by faculty, you +mean a principle of <i>explanation of our general power to +recall</i>, your psychology is empty. The associationist +psychology, on the other hand, gives an explanation of each +particular fact of recollection; and, in so doing, it also gives an +explanation of the general faculty. The 'faculty' of memory is thus +no real or ultimate explanation; for it is itself explained as a +result of the association of ideas.</p> + +<p>Nothing is easier than to show you just what I mean by this. +Suppose I am silent for a moment, and then say in commanding +accents: "Remember! Recollect!" Does your faculty of memory obey +the order, and reproduce any definite image from your past? +Certainly not. It stands staring into vacancy, and asking, "What +kind of a thing do you wish me to remember?" It needs in short, a +<i>cue</i>. But, if I say, remember the date of your birth, or +remember what you had for breakfast, or remember the succession of +notes in the musical scale; then your faculty of memory immediately +produces the required result: the <i>'cue'</i> determines its vast +set of potentialities toward a particular point. And if you now +look to see how this happens, you immediately perceive that the cue +is something <i>contiguously associated</i> with the thing +recalled. The words, 'date of my birth,' have an ingrained +association with a particular number, month, and year; the words, +'breakfast this morning,' cut off all other lines of recall except +those which lead to coffee and bacon and eggs; the words, 'musical +scale,' are inveterate mental neighbors of do, ré, mi, fa, +sol, la, etc. The laws of association govern, in fact, all the +trains of our thinking which are not interrupted by sensations +breaking on us from without. Whatever appears in the mind must be +<i>introduced</i>; and, when introduced, it is as the associate of +something already there. This is as true of what you are +recollecting as it is of everything else you think of.</p> + +<p>Reflection will show you that there are peculiarities in your +memory which would be quite whimsical and unaccountable if we were +forced to regard them as the product of a purely spiritual faculty. +Were memory such a faculty, granted to us solely for its practical +use, we ought to remember easiest whatever we most <i>needed</i> to +remember; and frequency of repetition, recency, and the like, would +play no part in the matter. That we should best remember frequent +things and recent things, and forget things that are ancient or +were experienced only once, could only be regarded as an +incomprehensible anomaly on such a view. But if we remember because +of our associations, and if these are (as the physiological +psychologists believe) due to our organized brain-paths, we easily +see how the law of recency and repetition should prevail. Paths +frequently and recently ploughed are those that lie most open, +those which may be expected most easily to lead to results. The +laws of our memory, as we find them, therefore are incidents of our +associational constitution; and, when we are emancipated from the +flesh, it is conceivable that they may no longer continue to +obtain.</p> + +<p>We may assume, then, that recollection is a resultant of our +associative processes, these themselves in the last analysis being +most probably due to the workings of our brain.</p> + +<p>Descending more particularly into the faculty of memory, we have +to distinguish between its potential aspect as a magazine or +storehouse and its actual aspect as recollection now of a +particular event. Our memory contains all sorts of items which we +do not now recall, but which we may recall, provided a sufficient +cue be offered. Both the general retention and the special recall +are explained by association. An educated memory depends on an +organized system of associations; and its goodness depends on two +of their peculiarities: first, on the persistency of the +associations; and, second, on their number.</p> + +<p>Let us consider each of these points in turn.</p> + +<p>First, the persistency of the associations. This gives what may +be called the <i>quality of native retentiveness</i> to the +individual. If, as I think we are forced to, we consider the brain +to be the organic condition by which the vestiges of our experience +are associated with each other, we may suppose that some brains are +'wax to receive and marble to retain.' The slightest impressions +made on them abide. Names, dates, prices, anecdotes, quotations, +are indelibly retained, their several elements fixedly cohering +together, so that the individual soon becomes a walking +cyclopædia of information. All this may occur with no +philosophic tendency in the mind, no impulse to weave the materials +acquired into anything like a logical system. In the books of +anecdotes, and, more recently, in the psychology-books, we find +recorded instances of monstrosities, as we may call them, of this +desultory memory; and they are often otherwise very stupid men. It +is, of course, by no means incompatible with a philosophic mind; +for mental characteristics have infinite capacities for +permutation. And, when both memory and philosophy combine together +in one person, then indeed we have the highest sort of intellectual +efficiency. Your Walter Scotts, your Leibnitzes, your Gladstones, +and your Goethes, all your folio copies of mankind, belong to this +type. Efficiency on a colossal scale would indeed seem to require +it. For, although your philosophic or systematic mind without good +desultory memory may know how to work out results and recollect +where in the books to find them, the time lost in the searching +process handicaps the thinker, and gives to the more ready type of +individual the economical advantage.</p> + +<p>The extreme of the contrasted type, the type with associations +of small persistency, is found in those who have almost no +desultory memory at all. If they are also deficient in logical and +systematizing power, we call them simply feeble intellects; and no +more need to be said about them here. Their brain-matter, we may +imagine, is like a fluid jelly, in which impressions may be easily +made, but are soon closed over again, so that the brain reverts to +its original indifferent state.</p> + +<p>But it may occur here, just as in other gelatinous substances, +that an impression will vibrate throughout the brain, and send +waves into other parts of it. In cases of this sort, although the +immediate impression may fade out quickly, it does modify the +cerebral mass; for the paths it makes there may remain, and become +so many avenues through which the impression may be reproduced if +they ever get excited again. And its liability to reproduction will +depend of course upon the variety of these paths and upon the +frequency with which they are used. Each path is in fact an +associated process, the number of these associates becoming thus to +a great degree a substitute for the independent tenacity of the +original impression. As I have elsewhere written: Each of the +associates is a hook to which it hangs, a means to fish it up when +sunk below the surface. Together they form a network of attachments +by which it is woven into the entire tissue of our thought. The +'secret of a good memory' is thus the secret of forming diverse and +multiple associations with every fact we care to retain. But this +forming of associations with a fact,—what is it but thinking +<i>about</i> the fact as much as possible? Briefly, then, of two +men with the same outward experiences, <i>the one who thinks over +his experiences most</i>, and weaves them into the most systematic +relations with each other, will be the one with the best +memory.</p> + +<p>But, if our ability to recollect a thing be so largely a matter +of its associations with other things which thus becomes its cues, +an important pædagogic consequence follows. <i>There can be +no improvement of the general or elementary faculty of memory: +there can only be improvement of our memory for special systems of +associated things</i>; and this latter improvement is due to the +way in which the things in question are woven into association with +each other in the mind. Intricately or profoundly woven, they are +held: disconnected, they tend to drop out just in proportion as the +native brain retentiveness is poor. And no amount of training, +drilling, repeating, and reciting employed upon the matter of one +system of objects, the history-system, for example, will in the +least improve either the facility or the durability with which +objects belonging to a wholly disparate system—the system of +facts of chemistry, for instance—tend to be retained. That +system must be separately worked into the mind by itself,—a +chemical fact which is thought about in connection with the other +chemical facts, tending then to stay, but otherwise easily dropping +out.</p> + +<p>We have, then, not so much a faculty of memory as many faculties +of memory. We have as many as we have systems of objects habitually +thought of in connection with each other. A given object is held in +the memory by the associates it has acquired within its own system +exclusively. Learning the facts of another system will in no wise +help it to stay in the mind, for the simple reason that it has no +'cues' within that other system.</p> + +<p>We see examples of this on every hand. Most men have a good +memory for facts connected with their own pursuits. A college +athlete, who remains a dunce at his books, may amaze you by his +knowledge of the 'records' at various feats and games, and prove +himself a walking dictionary of sporting statistics. The reason is +that he is constantly going over these things in his mind, and +comparing and making series of them. They form for him, not so many +odd facts, but a concept-system, so they stick. So the merchant +remembers prices, the politician other politicians' speeches and +votes, with a copiousness which astonishes outsiders, but which the +amount of thinking they bestow on these subjects easily +explains.</p> + +<p>The great memory for facts which a Darwin or a Spencer reveal in +their books is not incompatible with the possession on their part +of a mind with only a middling degree of physiological +retentiveness. Let a man early in life set himself the task of +verifying such a theory as that of evolution, and facts will soon +cluster and cling to him like grapes to their stem. Their relations +to the theory will hold them fast; and, the more of these the mind +is able to discern, the greater the erudition will become. +Meanwhile the theorist may have little, if any, desultory memory. +Unutilizable facts may be unnoted by him, and forgotten as soon as +heard. An ignorance almost as encyclopedic as his erudition may +coexist with the latter, and hide, as it were, within the +interstices of its web. Those of you who have had much to do with +scholars and <i>savants</i> will readily think of examples of the +class of mind I mean.</p> + +<p>The best possible sort of system into which to weave an object, +mentally, is a <i>rational</i> system, or what is called a +'science.' Place the thing in its pigeon-hole in a classificatory +series; explain it logically by its causes, and deduce from it its +necessary effects; find out of what natural law it is an +instance,—and you then know it in the best of all possible +ways. A 'science' is thus the greatest of labor-saving +contrivances. It relieves the memory of an immense number of +details, replacing, as it does, merely contiguous associations by +the logical ones of identity, similarity, or analogy. If you know a +'law,' you may discharge your memory of masses of particular +instances, for the law will reproduce them for you whenever you +require them. The law of refraction, for example: If you know that, +you can with a pencil and a bit of paper immediately discern how a +convex lens, a concave lens, or a prism, must severally alter the +appearance of an object. But, if you don't know the general law, +you must charge your memory separately with each of the three kinds +of effect.</p> + +<p>A 'philosophic' system, in which all things found their rational +explanation and were connected together as causes and effects, +would be the perfect mnemonic system, in which the greatest economy +of means would bring about the greatest richness of results. So +that, if we have poor desultory memories, we can save ourselves by +cultivating the philosophic turn of mind.</p> + +<p>There are many artificial systems of mnemonics, some public, +some sold as secrets. They are all so many devices for training us +into certain methodical and stereotyped <i>ways of thinking</i> +about the facts we seek to retain. Even were I competent, I could +not here go into these systems in any detail. But a single example, +from a popular system, will show what I mean. I take the +number-alphabet, the great mnemonic device for recollecting numbers +and dates. In this system each digit is represented by a consonant, +thus: 1 is <i>t</i> or <i>d</i>; 2, <i>n</i>; 3, <i>m</i>; 4, +<i>r</i>; 5, <i>l</i>; 6, <i>sh, j, ch</i>, or <i>g</i>; 7, <i>c, +k, g</i>, or <i>qu</i>; 8, <i>f</i> or <i>v</i>; 9, <i>b</i> or +<i>p</i>; 0, <i>s, c</i>, or <i>z</i>. Suppose, now, you wish to +remember the velocity of sound, 1,142 feet a second: <i>t, t, r, +n</i>, are the letters you must use. They make the consonants of +<i>tight run</i>, and it would be a 'tight run' for you to keep up +such a speed. So 1649, the date of the execution of Charles I., may +be remembered by the word <i>sharp</i>, which recalls the +headsman's axe.</p> + +<p>Apart from the extreme difficulty of finding words that are +appropriate in this exercise, it is clearly an excessively poor, +trivial, and silly way of 'thinking' about dates; and the way of +the historian is much better. He has a lot of landmark-dates +already in his mind. He knows the historic concatenation of events, +and can usually place an event at its right date in the +chronology-table, by thinking of it in a rational way, referring it +to its antecedents, tracing its concomitants and consequences, and +thus ciphering out its date by connecting it with theirs. The +artificial memory-systems, recommending, as they do, such +irrational methods of thinking, are only to be recommended for the +first landmarks in a system, or for such purely detached facts as +enjoy no rational connection with the rest of our ideas. Thus the +student of physics may remember the order of the spectral colours +by the word <i>vibgyor</i> which their initial letters make. The +student of anatomy may remember the position of the Mitral valve on +the Left side of the heart by thinking that L.M. stands also for +'long meter' in the hymn-books.</p> + +<p>You now see why 'cramming' must be so poor a mode of study. +Cramming seeks to stamp things in by intense application +immediately before the ordeal. But a thing thus learned can form +but few associations. On the other hand, the same thing recurring +on different days, in different contexts, read, recited on, +referred to again and again, related to other things and reviewed, +gets well wrought into the mental structure. This is the reason why +you should enforce on your pupils habits of continuous application. +There is no moral turpitude in cramming. It would be the best, +because the most economical, mode of study if it led to the results +desired. But it does not, and your older pupils can readily be made +to see the reason why.</p> + +<p>It follows also, from what has been said, that <i>the popular +idea that 'the Memory,' in the sense of a general elementary +faculty, can be improved by training, is a great mistake</i>. Your +memory for facts of a certain class can be improved very much by +training in that class of facts, because the incoming new fact will +then find all sorts of analogues and associates already there, and +these will keep it liable to recall. But other kinds of fact will +reap none of that benefit, and, unless one have been also trained +and versed in <i>their</i> class, will be at the mercy of the mere +crude retentiveness of the individual, which, as we have seen, is +practically a fixed quantity. Nevertheless, one often hears people +say: "A great sin was committed against me in my youth: my teachers +entirely failed to exercise my memory. If they had only made me +learn a lot of things by heart at school, I should not be, as I am +now, forgetful of everything I read and hear." This is a great +mistake: learning poetry by heart will make it easier to learn and +remember other poetry, but nothing else; and so of dates; and so of +chemistry and geography.</p> + +<p>But, after what I have said, I am sure you will need no farther +argument on this point; and I therefore pass it by.</p> + +<p>But, since it has brought me to speak of learning things by +heart, I think that a general practical remark about verbal +memorizing may now not be out of place. The excesses of +old-fashioned verbal memorizing, and the immense advantages of +object-teaching in the earlier stages of culture, have perhaps led +those who philosophize about teaching to an unduly strong reaction; +and learning things by heart is now probably somewhat too much +despised. For, when all is said and done, the fact remains that +verbal material is, on the whole, the handiest and most useful +material in which thinking can be carried on. Abstract conceptions +are far and away the most economical instruments of thought, and +abstract conceptions are fixed and incarnated for us in words. +Statistical inquiry would seem to show that, as men advance in +life, they tend to make less and less use of visual images, and +more and more use of words. One of the first things that Mr. Galton +discovered was that this appeared to be the case with the members +of the Royal Society whom he questioned as to their mental images. +I should say, therefore, that constant exercise in verbal +memorizing must still be an indispensable feature in all sound +education. Nothing is more deplorable than that inarticulate and +helpless sort of mind that is reminded by everything of some +quotation, case, or anecdote, which it cannot now exactly +recollect. Nothing, on the other hand, is more convenient to its +possessor, or more delightful to his comrades, than a mind able, in +telling a story, to give the exact words of the dialogue or to +furnish a quotation accurate and complete. In every branch of study +there are happily turned, concise, and handy formulas which in an +incomparable way sum up results. The mind that can retain such +formulas is in so far a superior mind, and the communication of +them to the pupil ought always to be one of the teacher's favorite +tasks.</p> + +<p>In learning 'by heart,' there are, however, efficient and +inefficient methods; and, by making the pupil skilful in the best +method, the teacher can both interest him and abridge the task. The +best method is of course not to 'hammer in' the sentences, by mere +reiteration, but to analyze them, and think. For example, if the +pupil should have to learn this last sentence, let him first strip +out its grammatical core, and learn, "The best method is not to +hammer in, but to analyze," and then add the amplificative and +restrictive clauses, bit by bit, thus: "The best method is of +course not to hammer in <i>the sentences</i>, but to analyze +<i>them and think</i>." Then finally insert the words '<i>by mere +reiteration</i>,' and the sentence is complete, and both better +understood and quicker remembered than by a more purely mechanical +method.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>In conclusion, I must say a word about the contributions to our +knowledge of memory which have recently come from the +laboratory-psychologists. Many of the enthusiasts for scientific or +brass-instrument child-study are taking accurate measurements of +children's elementary faculties, and among these what we may call +<i>immediate memory</i> admits of easy measurement. All we need do +is to exhibit to the child a series of letters, syllables, figures, +pictures, or what-not, at intervals of one, two, three, or more +seconds, or to sound a similar series of names at the same +intervals, within his hearing, and then see how completely he can +reproduce the list, either directly, or after an interval of ten, +twenty, or sixty seconds, or some longer space of time. According +to the results of this exercise, the pupils may be rated in a +memory-scale; and some persons go so far as to think that the +teacher should modify her treatment of the child according to the +strength or feebleness of its faculty as thus made known.</p> + +<p>Now I can only repeat here what I said to you when treating of +attention: man is too complex a being for light to be thrown on his +real efficiency by measuring any one mental faculty taken apart +from its consensus in the working whole. Such an exercise as this, +dealing with incoherent and insipid objects, with no logical +connection with each other, or practical significance outside of +the 'test,' is an exercise the like of which in real life we are +hardly ever called upon to perform. In real life, our memory is +always used in the service of some interest: we remember things +which we care for or which are associated with things we care for; +and the child who stands at the bottom of the scale thus +experimentally established might, by dint of the strength of his +passion for a subject, and in consequence of the logical +association into which he weaves the actual materials of his +experience, be a very effective memorizer indeed, and do his +school-tasks on the whole much better than an immediate parrot who +might stand at the top of the 'scientifically accurate' list.</p> + +<p>This preponderance of interest, of passion, in determining the +results of a human being's working life, obtains throughout. No +elementary measurement, capable of being performed in a laboratory, +can throw any light on the actual efficiency of the subject; for +the vital thing about him, his emotional and moral energy and +doggedness, can be measured by no single experiment, and becomes +known only by the total results in the long run. A blind man like +Huber, with his passion for bees and ants, can observe them through +other people's eyes better than these can through their own. A man +born with neither arms nor legs, like the late Kavanagh, +M.P.—and what an icy heart his mother must have had about him +in his babyhood, and how 'negative' would the +laboratory-measurements of his motor-functions have been!—can +be an adventurous traveller, an equestrian and sportsman, and lead +an athletic outdoor life. Mr. Romanes studied the elementary rate +of apperception in a large number of persons by making them read a +paragraph as fast as they could take it in, and then immediately +write down all they could reproduce of its contents. He found +astonishing differences in the rapidity, some taking four times as +long as others to absorb the paragraph, and the swiftest readers +being, as a rule, the best immediate recollectors, too. But +not,—and this is my point,—<i>not</i> the most +<i>intellectually capable subjects</i>, as tested by the results of +what Mr. Romanes rightly names 'genuine' intellectual work; for he +tried the experiment with several highly distinguished men in +science and literature, and most of them turned out to be slow +readers.</p> + +<p>In the light of all such facts one may well believe that the +total impression which a perceptive teacher will get of the pupil's +condition, as indicated by his general temper and manner, by the +listlessness or alertness, by the ease or painfulness with which +his school work is done, will be of much more value than those +unreal experimental tests, those pedantic elementary measurements +of fatigue, memory, association, and attention, etc., which are +urged upon us as the only basis of a genuinely scientific pedagogy. +Such measurements can give us useful information only when we +combine them with observations made without brass instruments, upon +the total demeanor of the measured individual, by teachers with +eyes in their heads and common sense, and some feeling for the +concrete facts of human nature in their hearts.</p> + +<p>Depend upon it, no one need be too much cast down by the +discovery of his deficiency in any elementary faculty of the mind. +What tells in life is the whole mind working together, and the +deficiencies of any one faculty can be compensated by the efforts +of the rest. You can be an artist without visual images, a reader +without eyes, a mass of erudition with a bad elementary memory. In +almost any subject your passion for the subject will save you. If +you only care enough for a result, you will almost certainly attain +it. If you wish to be rich, you will be rich; if you wish to be +learned, you will be learned; if you wish to be good, you will be +good. Only you must, then, <i>really</i> wish these things, and +wish them with exclusiveness, and not wish at the same time a +hundred other incompatible things just as strongly.</p> + +<p>One of the most important discoveries of the 'scientific' sort +that have recently been made in psychology is that of Mr. Galton +and others concerning the great variations among individuals in the +type of their imagination. Every one is now familiar with the fact +that human beings vary enormously in the brilliancy, completeness, +definiteness, and extent of their visual images. These are +singularly perfect in a large number of individuals, and in a few +are so rudimentary as hardly to exist. The same is true of the +auditory and motor images, and probably of those of every kind; and +the recent discovery of distinct brain-areas for the various orders +of sensation would seem to provide a physical basis for such +variations and discrepancies. The facts, as I said, are nowadays so +popularly known that I need only remind you of their existence. +They might seem at first sight of practical importance to the +teacher; and, indeed, teachers have been recommended to sort their +pupils in this way, and treat them as the result falls out. You +should interrogate them as to their imagery, it is said, or exhibit +lists of written words to their eyes, and then sound similar lists +in their ears, and see by which channel a child retains most words. +Then, in dealing with that child, make your appeals predominantly +through that channel. If the class were very small, results of some +distinctness might doubtless thus be obtained by a painstaking +teacher. But it is obvious that in the usual schoolroom no such +differentiation of appeal is possible; and the only really useful +practical lesson that emerges from this analytic psychology in the +conduct of large schools is the lesson already reached in a purely +empirical way, that the teacher ought always to impress the class +through as many sensible channels as he can. Talk and write and +draw on blackboard, permit the pupils to talk, and make them write +and draw, exhibit pictures, plans, and curves, have your diagrams +colored differently in their different parts, etc.; and out of the +whole variety of impressions the individual child will find the +most lasting ones for himself. In all primary school work this +principle of multiple impressions is well recognized, so I need say +no more about it here.</p> + +<p>This principle of multiplying channels and varying associations +and appeals is important, not only for teaching pupils to remember, +but for teaching them to understand. It runs, in fact, through the +whole teaching art.</p> + +<p>One word about the unconscious and unreproducible part of our +acquisitions, and I shall have done with the topic of memory.</p> + +<p>Professor Ebbinghaus, in a heroic little investigation into the +laws of memory which he performed a dozen or more years ago by the +method of learning lists of nonsense syllables, devised a method of +measuring the rate of our forgetfulness, which lays bare an +important law of the mind.</p> + +<p>His method was to read over his list until he could repeat it +once by heart unhesitatingly. The number of repetitions required +for this was a measure of the difficulty of the learning in each +particular case. Now, after having once learned a piece in this +way, if we wait five minutes, we find it impossible to repeat it +again in the same unhesitating manner. We must read it over again +to revive some of the syllables, which have already dropped out or +got transposed. Ebbinghaus now systematically studied the number of +readings-over which were necessary to revive the unhesitating +recollection of the piece after five minutes, half an hour, an +hour, a day, a week, a month, had elapsed. The number of rereadings +required he took to be a measure of the <i>amount of forgetting</i> +that had occurred in the elapsed interval. And he found some +remarkable facts. The process of forgetting, namely, is vastly more +rapid at first than later on. Thus full half of the piece seems to +be forgotten within the first half-hour, two-thirds of it are +forgotten at the end of eight hours, but only four-fifths at the +end of a month. He made no trials beyond one month of interval; +but, if we ourselves prolong ideally the curve of remembrance, +whose beginning his experiments thus obtain, it is natural to +suppose that, no matter how long a time might elapse, the curve +would never descend quite so low as to touch the zero-line. In +other words, no matter how long ago we may have learned a poem, and +no matter how complete our inability to reproduce it now may be, +yet the first learning will still show its lingering effects in the +abridgment of the time required for learning it again. In short, +Professor Ebbinghaus's experiments show that things which we are +quite unable definitely to recall have nevertheless impressed +themselves, in some way, upon the structure of the mind. We are +different for having once learned them. The resistances in our +systems of brain-paths are altered. Our apprehensions are +quickened. Our conclusions from certain premises are probably not +just what they would be if those modifications were not there. The +latter influence the whole margin of our consciousness, even though +their products, not being distinctly reproducible, do not directly +figure at the focus of the field.</p> + +<p>The teacher should draw a lesson from these facts. We are all +too apt to measure the gains of our pupils by their proficiency in +directly reproducing in a recitation or an examination such matters +as they may have learned, and inarticulate power in them is +something of which we always underestimate the value. The boy who +tells us, "I know the answer, but I can't say what it is," we treat +as practically identical with him who knows absolutely nothing +about the answer at all. But this is a great mistake. It is but a +small part of our experience in life that we are ever able +articulately to recall. And yet the whole of it has had its +influence in shaping our character and defining our tendencies to +judge and act. Although the ready memory is a great blessing to its +possessor, the vaguer memory of a subject, of having once had to do +with it, of its neighborhood, and of where we may go to recover it +again, constitutes in most men and women the chief fruit of their +education. This is true even in professional education. The doctor, +the lawyer, are seldom able to decide upon a case off-hand. They +differ from other men only through the fact that they know how to +get at the materials for decision in five minutes or half an hour: +whereas the layman is unable to get at the materials at all, not +knowing in what books and indexes to look or not understanding the +technical terms.</p> + +<p>Be patient, then, and sympathetic with the type of mind that +cuts a poor figure in examinations. It may, in the long examination +which life sets us, come out in the end in better shape than the +glib and ready reproducer, its passions being deeper, its purposes +more worthy, its combining power less commonplace, and its total +mental output consequently more important.</p> + +<p>Such are the chief points which it has seemed worth while for me +to call to your notice under the head of memory. We can sum them up +for practical purposes by saying that the art of remembering is the +art of <i>thinking</i>; and by adding, with Dr. Pick, that, when we +wish to fix a new thing in either our own mind or a pupil's, our +conscious effort should not be so much to <i>impress</i> and +<i>retain</i> it as to <i>connect</i> it with something else +already there. The connecting <i>is</i> the thinking; and, if we +attend clearly to the connection, the connected thing will +certainly be likely to remain within recall.</p> + +<p>I shall next ask you to consider the process by which we acquire +new knowledge,—the process of 'Apperception,' as it is +called, by which we receive and deal with new experiences, and +revise our stock of ideas so as to form new or improved +conceptions.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIII__THE_ACQUISITION_OF_IDEAS" +id="XIII__THE_ACQUISITION_OF_IDEAS" />XIII. THE ACQUISITION OF +IDEAS</h2> + +<p>The images of our past experiences, of whatever nature they may +be, visual or verbal, blurred and dim, vivid and distinct, abstract +or concrete, need not be memory images, in the strict sense of the +word. That is, they need not rise before the mind in a marginal +fringe or context of concomitant circumstances, which mean for us +their <i>date</i>. They may be mere conceptions, floating pictures +of an object, or of its type or class. In this undated condition, +we call them products of 'imagination' or 'conception.' Imagination +is the term commonly used where the object represented is thought +of as an individual thing. Conception is the term where we think of +it as a type or class. For our present purpose the distinction is +not important; and I will permit myself to use either the word +'conception,' or the still vaguer word 'idea,' to designate the +inner objects of contemplation, whether these be individual things, +like 'the sun' or 'Julius Cæsar,' or classes of things, like +'animal kingdom,' or, finally, entirely abstract attributes, like +'rationality' or 'rectitude.'</p> + +<p>The result of our education is to fill the mind little by +little, as experiences accrete, with a stock of such ideas. In the +illustration I used at our first meeting, of the child snatching +the toy and getting slapped, the vestiges left by the first +experience answered to so many ideas which he acquired +thereby,—ideas that remained with him associated in a certain +order, and from the last one of which the child eventually +proceeded to act. The sciences of grammar and of logic are little +more than attempts methodically to classify all such acquired ideas +and to trace certain laws of relationship among them. The forms of +relation between them, becoming themselves in turn noticed by the +mind, are treated as conceptions of a higher and more abstract +order, as when we speak of a syllogistic relation' between +propositions, or of four quantities making a 'proportion,' or of +the 'inconsistency' of two conceptions, or the 'implication' of one +in the other.</p> + +<p>So you see that the process of education, taken in a large way, +may be described as nothing but the process of acquiring ideas or +conceptions, the best educated mind being the mind which has the +largest stock of them, ready to meet the largest possible variety +of the emergencies of life. The lack of education means only the +failure to have acquired them, and the consequent liability to be +'floored' and 'rattled' in the vicissitudes of experience.</p> + +<p>In all this process of acquiring conceptions, a certain +instinctive order is followed. There is a native tendency to +assimilate certain kinds of conception at one age, and other kinds +of conception at a later age. During the first seven or eight years +of childhood the mind is most interested in the sensible properties +of material things. <i>Constructiveness</i> is the instinct most +active; and by the incessant hammering and sawing, and dressing and +undressing dolls, putting of things together and taking them apart, +the child not only trains the muscles to co-ordinate action, but +accumulates a store of physical conceptions which are the basis of +his knowledge of the material world through life. Object-teaching +and manual training wisely extend the sphere of this order of +acquisition. Clay, wood, metals, and the various kinds of tools are +made to contribute to the store. A youth brought up with a +sufficiently broad basis of this kind is always at home in the +world. He stands within the pale. He is acquainted with Nature, and +Nature in a certain sense is acquainted with him. Whereas the youth +brought up alone at home, with no acquaintance with anything but +the printed page, is always afflicted with a certain remoteness +from the material facts of life, and a correlative insecurity of +consciousness which make of him a kind of alien on the earth in +which he ought to feel himself perfectly at home.</p> + +<p>I already said something of this in speaking of the constructive +impulse, and I must not repeat myself. Moreover, you fully realize, +I am sure, how important for life,—for the moral tone of +life, quite apart from definite practical pursuits,—is this +sense of readiness for emergencies which a man gains through early +familiarity and acquaintance with the world of material things. To +have grown up on a farm, to have haunted a carpenter's and +blacksmith's shop, to have handled horses and cows and boats and +guns, and to have ideas and abilities connected with such objects +are an inestimable part of youthful acquisition. After adolescence +it is rare to be able to get into familiar touch with any of these +primitive things. The instinctive propensions have faded, and the +habits are hard to acquire.</p> + +<p>Accordingly, one of the best fruits of the 'child-study' +movement has been to reinstate all these activities to their proper +place in a sound system of education. <i>Feed</i> the growing human +being, feed him with the sort of experience for which from year to +year he shows a natural craving, and he will develop in adult life +a sounder sort of mental tissue, even though he may seem to be +'wasting' a great deal of his growing time, in the eyes of those +for whom the only channels of learning are books and verbally +communicated information.</p> + +<p>It is not till adolescence is reached that the mind grows able +to take in the more abstract aspects of experience, the hidden +similarities and distinctions between things, and especially their +causal sequences. Rational knowledge of such things as mathematics, +mechanics, chemistry, and biology, is now possible; and the +acquisition of conceptions of this order form the next phase of +education. Later still, not till adolescence is well advanced, does +the mind awaken to a systematic interest in abstract human +relations—moral relations, properly so called,—to +sociological ideas and to metaphysical abstractions.</p> + +<p>This general order of sequence is followed traditionally of +course in the schoolroom. It is foreign to my purpose to do more +than indicate that general psychological principle of the +successive order of awakening of the faculties on which the whole +thing rests. I have spoken of it already, apropos of the +transitoriness of instincts. Just as many a youth has to go +permanently without an adequate stock of conceptions of a certain +order, because experiences of that order were not yielded at the +time when new curiosity was most acute, so it will conversely +happen that many another youth is spoiled for a certain subject of +study (although he would have enjoyed it well if led into it at a +later age) through having had it thrust upon him so prematurely +that disgust was created, and the bloom quite taken off from future +trials. I think I have seen college students unfitted forever for +'philosophy' from having taken that study up a year too soon.</p> + +<p>In all these later studies, verbal material is the vehicle by +which the mind thinks. The abstract conceptions of physics and +sociology may, it is true, be embodied in visual or other images of +phenomena, but they need not be so; and the truth remains that, +after adolescence has begun, "words, words, words," must constitute +a large part, and an always larger part as life advances, of what +the human being has to learn. This is so even in the natural +sciences, so far as these are causal and rational, and not merely +confined to description. So I go back to what I said awhile ago +apropos of verbal memorizing. The more accurately words are +learned, the better, if only the teacher make sure that what they +signify is also understood. It is the failure of this latter +condition, in so much of the old-fashioned recitation, that has +caused that reaction against 'parrot-like reproduction' that we are +so familiar with to-day. A friend of mine, visiting a school, was +asked to examine a young class in geography. Glancing, at the book, +she said: "Suppose you should dig a hole in the ground, hundreds of +feet deep, how should you find it at the bottom,—warmer or +colder than on top?" None of the class replying, the teacher said: +"I'm sure they know, but I think you don't ask the question quite +rightly. Let me try." So, taking the book, she asked: "In what +condition is the interior of the globe?" and received the immediate +answer from half the class at once: "The interior of the globe is +in a condition of <i>igneous fusion</i>." Better exclusive +object-teaching than such verbal recitations as that; and yet +verbal reproduction, intelligently connected with more objective +work, must always play a leading, and surely <i>the</i> leading, +part in education. Our modern reformers, in their books, write too +exclusively of the earliest years of the pupil. These lend +themselves better to explicit treatment; and I myself, in dwelling +so much upon the native impulses, and object-teaching, and +anecdotes, and all that, have paid my tribute to the line of least +resistance in describing. Yet away back in childhood we find the +beginnings of purely intellectual curiosity, and the intelligence +of abstract terms. The object-teaching is mainly to <i>launch</i> +the pupils, with some concrete conceptions of the facts concerned, +upon the more abstract ideas.</p> + +<p>To hear some authorities on teaching, however, you would suppose +that geography not only began, but ended with the school-yard and +neighboring hill, that physics was one endless round of repeating +the same sort of tedious weighing and measuring operation: whereas +a very few examples are usually sufficient to set the imagination +free on genuine lines, and then what the mind craves is more rapid, +general, and abstract treatment. I heard a lady say that she had +taken her child to the kindergarten, "but he is so bright that he +saw through it immediately." Too many school children 'see' as +immediately 'through' the namby-pamby attempts of the softer +pedagogy to lubricate things for them, and make them interesting. +Even they can enjoy abstractions, provided they be of the proper +order; and it is a poor compliment to their rational appetite to +think that anecdotes about little Tommies and little Jennies are +the only kind of things their minds can digest.</p> + +<p>But here, as elsewhere, it is a matter of more or less; and, in +the last resort, the teacher's own tact is the only thing that can +bring out the right effect. The great difficulty with abstractions +is that of knowing just what meaning the pupil attaches to the +terms he uses. The words may sound all right, but the meaning +remains the child's own secret. So varied forms of words must be +insisted on, to bring the secret out. And a strange secret does it +often prove. A relative of mine was trying to explain to a little +girl what was meant by 'the passive voice': "Suppose that you kill +me: you who do the killing are in the active voice, and I, who am +killed, am in the passive voice." "But how can you speak if you're +killed?" said the child. "Oh, well, you may suppose that I am not +yet quite dead!" The next day the child was asked, in class, to +explain the passive voice, and said, "It's the kind of voice you +speak with when you ain't quite dead."</p> + +<p>In such a case as this the illustration ought to have been more +varied. Every one's memory will probably furnish examples of the +fantastic meaning which their childhood attached to certain verbal +statements (in poetry often), and which their elders, not having +any reason to suspect, never corrected. I remember being greatly +moved emotionally at the age of eight by the ballad of Lord Ullin's +Daughter. Yet I thought that the staining of the heather by the +blood was the evil chiefly dreaded, and that, when the boatman +said,</p> + +<center>"I'll row you o'er the ferry.<br /> +It is not for your silver bright,<br /> +But for your winsome lady,"</center> + +<p>he was to receive the lady for his pay. Similarly, I recently +found that one of my own children was reading (and accepting) a +verse of Tennyson's In Memoriam as</p> + +<center>"Ring out the <i>food</i> of rich and poor,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1.5em;">Ring in <i>redness</i> to all +mankind,"</span><br /> +</center> + +<p>and finding no inward difficulty.</p> + +<p>The only safeguard against this sort of misconceiving is to +insist on varied statement, and to bring the child's conceptions, +wherever it be possible, to some sort of practical test.</p> + +<p>Let us next pass to the subject of Apperception.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XIV__APPERCEPTION" id="XIV__APPERCEPTION" />XIV. +APPERCEPTION</h2> + +<p>'Apperception' is a word which cuts a great figure in the +pedagogics of the present day. Read, for example, this +advertisement of a certain text-book, which I take from an +educational journal:—</p> + +<blockquote> +<div style="margin-left: 7em; margin-right: 7em;"> +<center><b>WHAT IS APPERCEPTION?</b></center> + +<br /> + + +<p>For an explanation of Apperception see Blank's PSYCHOLOGY, +Vol. —— of the —— Education Series, just +published.</p> + +<p>The difference between Perception and Apperception is explained +for the teacher in the preface to Blank's PSYCHOLOGY.</p> + +<p>Many teachers are inquiring, "What is the meaning of +Apperception in educational psychology?" Just the book for them is +Blank's PSYCHOLOGY in which the idea was first expounded.</p> + +<p>The most important idea in educational psychology is +Apperception. The teacher may find this expounded in Blank's +PSYCHOLOGY. The idea of Apperception is making a revolution in +educational methods in Germany. It is explained in Blank's +PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. —— of the —— Education +Series, just published.</p> + +<p>Blank's PSYCHOLOGY will be mailed prepaid to any address on +receipt of $1.00.</p> +</div> +</blockquote> + +<p>Such an advertisement is in sober earnest a disgrace to all +concerned; and such talk as it indulges in is the sort of thing I +had in view when I said at our first meeting that the teachers were +suffering at the present day from a certain industrious +mystification on the part of editors and publishers. Perhaps the +word 'apperception' flourished in their eyes and ears as it +nowadays often is, embodies as much of this mystification as any +other single thing. The conscientious young teacher is led to +believe that it contains a recondite and portentous secret, by +losing the true inwardness of which her whole career may be +shattered. And yet, when she turns to the books and reads about it, +it seems so trivial and commonplace a matter,—meaning nothing +more than the manner in which we receive a thing into our +minds,—that she fears she must have missed the point through +the shallowness of her intelligence, and goes about thereafter +afflicted with a sense either of uncertainty or of stupidity, and +in each case remaining mortified at being so inadequate to her +mission.</p> + +<p>Now apperception is an extremely useful word in pedagogics, and +offers a convenient name for a process to which every teacher must +frequently refer. But it verily means nothing more than the act of +taking a thing into the mind. It corresponds to nothing peculiar or +elementary in psychology, being only one of the innumerable results +of the psychological process of association of ideas; and +psychology itself can easily dispense with the word, useful as it +may be in pedagogics.</p> + +<p>The gist of the matter is this: Every impression that comes in +from without, be it a sentence which we hear, an object of vision, +or an effluvium which assails our nose, no sooner enters our +consciousness than it is drafted off in some determinate direction +or other, making connection with the other materials already there, +and finally producing what we call our reaction. The particular +connections it strikes into are determined by our past experiences +and the 'associations' of the present sort of impression with them. +If, for instance, you hear me call out A, B, C, it is ten to one +that you will react on the impression by inwardly or outwardly +articulating D, E, F. The impression arouses its old associates: +they go out to meet it; it is received by them, recognized by the +mind as 'the beginning of the alphabet.' It is the fate of every +impression thus to fall into a mind preoccupied with memories, +ideas, and interests, and by these it is taken in. Educated as we +already are, we never get an experience that remains for us +completely nondescript: it always <i>reminds</i> of something +similar in quality, or of some context that might have surrounded +it before, and which it now in some way suggests. This mental +escort which the mind supplies is drawn, of course, from the mind's +ready-made stock. We <i>conceive</i> the impression in some +definite way. We dispose of it according to our acquired +possibilities, be they few or many, in the way of 'ideas.' This way +of taking in the object is the process of apperception. The +conceptions which meet and assimilate it are called by Herbart the +'apperceiving mass.' The apperceived impression is engulfed in +this, and the result is a new field of consciousness, of which one +part (and often a very small part) comes from the outer world, and +another part (sometimes by far the largest) comes from the previous +contents of the mind.</p> + +<p>I think that you see plainly enough now that the process of +apperception is what I called it a moment ago, a resultant of the +association of ideas. The product is a sort of fusion of the new +with the old, in which it is often impossible to distinguish the +share of the two factors. For example, when we listen to a person +speaking or read a page of print, much of what we think we see or +hear is supplied from our memory. We overlook misprints, imagining +the right letters, though we see the wrong ones; and how little we +actually hear, when we listen to speech, we realize when we go to a +foreign theatre; for there what troubles us is not so much that we +cannot understand what the actors say as that we cannot hear their +words. The fact is that we hear quite as little under similar +conditions at home, only our mind, being fuller of English verbal +associations, supplies the requisite material for comprehension +upon a much slighter auditory hint.</p> + +<p>In all the apperceptive operations of the mind, a certain +general law makes itself felt,—the law of economy. In +admitting a new body of experience, we instinctively seek to +disturb as little as possible our pre-existing stock of ideas. We +always try to name a new experience in some way which will +assimilate it to what we already know. We hate anything +<i>absolutely</i> new, anything without any name, and for which a +new name must be forged. So we take the nearest name, even though +it be inappropriate. A child will call snow, when he sees it for +the first time, sugar or white butterflies. The sail of a boat he +calls a curtain; an egg in its shell, seen for the first time, he +calls a pretty potato; an orange, a ball; a folding corkscrew, a +pair of bad scissors. Caspar Hauser called the first geese he saw +horses, and the Polynesians called Captain Cook's horses pigs. Mr. +Rooper has written a little book on apperception, to which he gives +the title of "A Pot of Green Feathers," that being the name applied +to a pot of ferns by a child who had never seen ferns before.</p> + +<p>In later life this economical tendency to leave the old +undisturbed leads to what we know as 'old fogyism.' A new idea or a +fact which would entail extensive rearrangement of the previous +system of beliefs is always ignored or extruded from the mind in +case it cannot be sophistically reinterpreted so as to tally +harmoniously with the system. We have all conducted discussions +with middle-aged people, overpowered them with our reasons, forced +them to admit our contention, and a week later found them back as +secure and constant in their old opinion as if they had never +conversed with us at all. We call them old fogies; but there are +young fogies, too. Old fogyism begins at a younger age than we +think. I am almost afraid to say so, but I believe that in the +majority of human beings it begins at about twenty-five.</p> + +<p>In some of the books we find the various forms of apperception +codified, and their subdivisions numbered and ticketed in tabular +form in the way so delightful to the pedagogic eye. In one book +which I remember reading there were sixteen different types of +apperception discriminated from each other. There was associative +apperception, subsumptive apperception, assimilative apperception, +and others up to sixteen. It is needless to say that this is +nothing but an exhibition of the crass artificiality which has +always haunted psychology, and which perpetuates itself by +lingering along, especially in these works which are advertised as +'written for the use of teachers.' The flowing life of the mind is +sorted into parcels suitable for presentation in the +recitation-room, and chopped up into supposed 'processes' with long +Greek and Latin names, which in real life have no distinct +existence.</p> + +<p>There is no reason, if we are classing the different types of +apperception, why we should stop at sixteen rather than sixteen +hundred. There are as many types of apperception as there are +possible ways in which an incoming experience may be reacted on by +an individual mind. A little while ago, at Buffalo, I was the guest +of a lady who, a fortnight before, had taken her seven-year-old boy +for the first time to Niagara Falls. The child silently glared at +the phenomenon until his mother, supposing him struck speechless by +its sublimity, said, "Well, my boy, what do you think of it?" to +which, "Is that the kind of spray I spray my nose with?" was the +boy's only reply. That was his mode of apperceiving the spectacle. +You may claim this as a particular type, and call it by the Greek +name of rhinotherapeutical apperception, if you like; and, if you +do, you will hardly be more trivial or artificial than are some of +the authors of the books.</p> + +<p>M. Perez, in one of his books on childhood, gives a good example +of the different modes of apperception of the same phenomenon which +are possible at different stages of individual experience. A +dwelling-house took fire, and an infant in the family, witnessing +the conflagration from the arms of his nurse, standing outside, +expressed nothing but the liveliest delight at its brilliancy. But, +when the bell of the fire engine was heard approaching, the child +was thrown by the sound into a paroxysm of fear, strange sounds +being, as you know, very alarming to young children. In what +opposite ways must the child's parents have apperceived the burning +house and the engine respectively!</p> + +<p>The self-same person, according to the line of thought he may be +in, or to his emotional mood, will apperceive the same impression +quite differently on different occasions. A medical or engineering +expert retained on one side of a case will not apperceive the facts +in the same way as if the other side had retained him. When people +are at loggerheads about the interpretation of a fact, it usually +shows that they have too few heads of classification to apperceive +by; for, as a general thing, the fact of such a dispute is enough +to show that neither one of their rival interpretations is a +perfect fit. Both sides deal with the matter by approximation, +squeezing it under the handiest or least disturbing conception: +whereas it would, nine times out of ten, be better to enlarge their +stock of ideas or invent some altogether new title for the +phenomenon.</p> + +<p>Thus, in biology, we used to have interminable discussion as to +whether certain single-celled organisms were animals or vegetables, +until Haeckel introduced the new apperceptive name of Protista, +which ended the disputes. In law courts no <i>tertium quid</i> is +recognized between insanity and sanity. If sane, a man is punished: +if insane, acquitted; and it is seldom hard to find two experts who +will take opposite views of his case. All the while, nature is more +subtle than our doctors. Just as a room is neither dark nor light +absolutely, but might be dark for a watchmaker's uses, and yet +light enough to eat in or play in, so a man may be sane for some +purposes and insane for others,—sane enough to be left at +large, yet not sane enough to take care of his financial affairs. +The word 'crank,' which became familiar at the time of Guiteau's +trial, fulfilled the need of a <i>tertium quid</i>. The foreign +terms 'déséquilibré,' 'hereditary degenerate,' +and 'psychopathic' subject, have arisen in response to the same +need.</p> + +<p>The whole progress of our sciences goes on by the invention of +newly forged technical names whereby to designate the newly +remarked aspects of phenomena,—phenomena which could only be +squeezed with violence into the pigeonholes of the earlier stock of +conceptions. As time goes on, our vocabulary becomes thus ever more +and more voluminous, having to keep up with the ever-growing +multitude of our stock of apperceiving ideas.</p> + +<p>In this gradual process of interaction between the new and the +old, not only is the new modified and determined by the particular +sort of old which apperceives it, but the apperceiving mass, the +old itself, is modified by the particular kind of new which it +assimilates. Thus, to take the stock German example of the child +brought up in a house where there are no tables but square ones, +'table' means for him a thing in which square corners are +essential. But, if he goes to a house where there are round tables +and still calls them tables, his apperceiving notion 'table' +acquires immediately a wider inward content. In this way, our +conceptions are constantly dropping characters once supposed +essential, and including others once supposed inadmissible. The +extension of the notion 'beast' to porpoises and whales, of the +notion 'organism' to society, are familiar examples of what I +mean.</p> + +<p>But be our conceptions adequate or inadequate, and be our stock +of them large or small, they are all we have to work with. If an +educated man is, as I said, a group of organized tendencies to +conduct, what prompts the conduct is in every case the man's +conception of the way in which to name and classify the actual +emergency. The more adequate the stock of ideas, the more 'able' is +the man, the more uniformly appropriate is his behavior likely to +be. When later we take up the subject of the will, we shall see +that the essential preliminary to every decision is the finding of +the right <i>names</i> under which to class the proposed +alternatives of conduct. He who has few names is in so far forth an +incompetent deliberator. The names—and each name stands for a +conception or idea—are our instruments for handling our +problems and solving our dilemmas. Now, when we think of this, we +are too apt to forget an important fact, which is that in most +human beings the stock of names and concepts is mostly acquired +during the years of adolescence and the earliest years of adult +life. I probably shocked you a moment ago by saying that most men +begin to be old fogies at the age of twenty-five. It is true that a +grown-up adult keeps gaining well into middle age a great knowledge +of details, and a great acquaintance with individual cases +connected with his profession or business life. In this sense, his +conceptions increase during a very long period; for his knowledge +grows more extensive and minute. But the larger categories of +conception, the sorts of thing, and wider classes of relation +between things, of which we take cognizance, are all got into the +mind at a comparatively youthful date. Few men ever do acquaint +themselves with the principles of a new science after even +twenty-five. If you do not study political economy in college, it +is a thousand to one that its main conceptions will remain unknown +to you through life. Similarly with biology, similarly with +electricity. What percentage of persons now fifty years old have +any definite conception whatever of a dynamo, or how the +trolley-cars are made to run? Surely, a small fraction of one per +cent. But the boys in colleges are all acquiring these +conceptions.</p> + +<p>There is a sense of infinite potentiality in us all, when young, +which makes some of us draw up lists of books we intend to read +hereafter, and makes most of us think that we can easily acquaint +ourselves with all sorts of things which we are now neglecting by +studying them out hereafter in the intervals of leisure of our +business lives. Such good intentions are hardly ever carried out. +The conceptions acquired before thirty remain usually the only ones +we ever gain. Such exceptional cases of perpetually self-renovating +youth as Mr. Gladstone's only prove, by the admiration they awaken, +the universality of the rule. And it may well solemnize a teacher, +and confirm in him a healthy sense of the importance of his +mission, to feel how exclusively dependent upon his present +ministrations in the way of imparting conceptions the pupil's +future life is probably bound to be.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="XV__THE_WILL" id="XV__THE_WILL" />XV. THE WILL</h2> + +<p>Since mentality terminates naturally in outward conduct, the +final chapter in psychology has to be the chapter on the will. But +the word 'will' can be used in a broader and in a narrower sense. +In the broader sense, it designates our entire capacity for +impulsive and active life, including our instinctive reactions and +those forms of behavior that have become secondarily automatic and +semi-unconscious through frequent repetition. In the narrower +sense, acts of will are such acts only as cannot be inattentively +performed. A distinct idea of what they are, and a deliberate +<i>fiat</i> on the mind's part, must precede their execution.</p> + +<p>Such acts are often characterized by hesitation, and accompanied +by a feeling, altogether peculiar, of resolve, a feeling which may +or may not carry with it a further feeling of effort. In my earlier +talks, I said so much of our impulsive tendencies that I will +restrict myself in what follows to volition in this narrower sense +of the term.</p> + +<p>All our deeds were considered by the early psychologists to be +due to a peculiar faculty called the will, without whose fiat +action could not occur. Thoughts and impressions, being +intrinsically inactive, were supposed to produce conduct only +through the intermediation of this superior agent. Until they +twitched its coat-tails, so to speak, no outward behavior could +occur. This doctrine was long ago exploded by the discovery of the +phenomena of reflex action, in which sensible impressions, as you +know, produce movement immediately and of themselves. The doctrine +may also be considered exploded as far as ideas go.</p> + +<p>The fact is that there is no sort of consciousness whatever, be +it sensation, feeling, or idea, which does not directly and of +itself tend to discharge into some motor effect. The motor effect +need not always be an outward stroke of behavior. It may be only an +alteration of the heart-beats or breathing, or a modification in +the distribution of blood, such as blushing or turning pale; or +else a secretion of tears, or what not. But, in any case, it is +there in some shape when any consciousness is there; and a belief +as fundamental as any in modern psychology is the belief at last +attained that conscious processes of any sort, conscious processes +merely as such, <i>must</i> pass over into motion, open or +concealed.</p> + +<p>The least complicated case of this tendency is the case of a +mind possessed by only a single idea. If that idea be of an object +connected with a native impulse, the impulse will immediately +proceed to discharge. If it be the idea of a movement, the movement +will occur. Such a case of action from a single idea has been +distinguished from more complex cases by the name of 'ideo-motor' +action, meaning action without express decision or effort. Most of +the habitual actions to which we are trained are of this ideo-motor +sort. We perceive, for instance, that the door is open, and we rise +and shut it; we perceive some raisins in a dish before us, and +extend our hand and carry one of them to our mouth without +interrupting the conversation; or, when lying in bed, we suddenly +think that we shall be late for breakfast, and instantly we get up +with no particular exertion or resolve. All the ingrained +procedures by which life is carried on—the manners and +customs, dressing and undressing, acts of salutation, +etc.—are executed in this semi-automatic way unhesitatingly +and efficiently, the very outermost margin of consciousness seeming +to be concerned in them, while the focus may be occupied with +widely different things.</p> + +<p>But now turn to a more complicated case. Suppose two thoughts to +be in the mind together, of which one, A, taken alone, would +discharge itself in a certain action, but of which the other, B, +suggests an action of a different sort, or a consequence of the +first action calculated to make us shrink. The psychologists now +say that the second idea, B, will probably arrest or <i>inhibit</i> +the motor effects of the first idea, A. One word, then, about +'inhibition' in general, to make this particular case more +clear.</p> + +<p>One of the most interesting discoveries of physiology was the +discovery, made simultaneously in France and Germany fifty years +ago, that nerve currents do not only start muscles into action, but +may check action already going on or keep it from occurring as it +otherwise might. <i>Nerves of arrest</i> were thus distinguished +alongside of motor nerves. The pneumogastric nerve, for example, if +stimulated, arrests the movements of the heart: the splanchnic +nerve arrests those of the intestines, if already begun. But it +soon appeared that this was too narrow a way of looking at the +matter, and that arrest is not so much the specific function of +certain nerves as a general function which any part of the nervous +system may exert upon other parts under the appropriate conditions. +The higher centres, for example, seem to exert a constant +inhibitive influence on the excitability of those below. The +reflexes of an animal with its hemispheres wholly or in part +removed become exaggerated. You all know that common reflex in +dogs, whereby, if you scratch the animal's side, the corresponding +hind leg will begin to make scratching movements, usually in the +air. Now in dogs with mutilated hemispheres this scratching reflex +is so incessant that, as Goltz first described them, the hair gets +all worn off their sides. In idiots, the functions of the +hemispheres being largely in abeyance, the lower impulses, not +inhibited, as they would be in normal human beings, often express +themselves in most odious ways. You know also how any higher +emotional tendency will quench a lower one. Fear arrests appetite, +maternal love annuls fear, respect checks sensuality, and the like; +and in the more subtile manifestations of the moral life, whenever +an ideal stirring is suddenly quickened into intensity, it is as if +the whole scale of values of our motives changed its equilibrium. +The force of old temptations vanishes, and what a moment ago was +impossible is now not only possible, but easy, because of their +inhibition. This has been well called the 'expulsive power of the +higher emotion.'</p> + +<p>It is easy to apply this notion of inhibition to the case of our +ideational processes. I am lying in bed, for example, and think it +is time to get up; but alongside of this thought there is present +to my mind a realization of the extreme coldness of the morning and +the pleasantness of the warm bed. In such a situation the motor +consequences of the first idea are blocked; and I may remain for +half an hour or more with the two ideas oscillating before me in a +kind of deadlock, which is what we call the state of hesitation or +deliberation. In a case like this the deliberation can be resolved +and the decision reached in either of two ways:—</p> + +<p>(1) I may forget for a moment the thermometric conditions, and +then the idea of getting up will immediately discharge into act: I +shall suddenly find that I have got up—or</p> + +<p>(2) Still mindful of the freezing temperature, the thought of +the duty of rising may become so pungent that it determines action +in spite of inhibition. In the latter case, I have a sense of +energetic moral effort, and consider that I have done a virtuous +act.</p> + +<p>All cases of wilful action properly so called, of choice after +hesitation and deliberation, may be conceived after one of these +latter patterns. So you see that volition, in the narrower sense, +takes place only when there are a number of conflicting systems of +ideas, and depends on our having a complex field of consciousness. +The interesting thing to note is the extreme delicacy of the +inhibitive machinery. A strong and urgent motor idea in the focus +may be neutralized and made inoperative by the presence of the very +faintest contradictory idea in the margin. For instance, I hold out +my forefinger, and with closed eyes try to realize as vividly as +possible that I hold a revolver in my hand and am pulling the +trigger. I can even now fairly feel my finger quivering with the +tendency to contract; and, if it were hitched to a recording +apparatus, it would certainly betray its state of tension by +registering incipient movements. Yet it does not actually crook, +and the movement of pulling the trigger is not performed. Why +not?</p> + +<p>Simply because, all concentrated though I am upon the idea of +the movement, I nevertheless also realize the total conditions of +the experiment, and in the back of my mind, so to speak, or in its +fringe and margin, have the simultaneous idea that the movement is +not to take place. The mere presence of that marginal intention, +without effort, urgency, or emphasis, or any special reinforcement +from my attention, suffices to the inhibitive effect.</p> + +<p>And this is why so few of the ideas that flit through our minds +do, in point of fact, produce their motor consequences. Life would +be a curse and a care for us if every fleeting fancy were to do so. +Abstractly, the law of ideo-motor action is true; but in the +concrete our fields of consciousness are always so complex that the +inhibiting margin keeps the centre inoperative most of the time. In +all this, you see, I speak as if ideas by their mere presence or +absence determined behavior, and as if between the ideas themselves +on the one hand and the conduct on the other there were no room for +any third intermediate principle of activity, like that called 'the +will.'</p> + +<p>If you are struck by the materialistic or fatalistic doctrines +which seem to follow this conception, I beg you to suspend your +judgment for a moment, as I shall soon have something more to say +about the matter. But, meanwhile yielding one's self to the +mechanical conception of the psychophysical organism, nothing is +easier than to indulge in a picture of the fatalistic character of +human life. Man's conduct appears as the mere resultant of all his +various impulsions and inhibitions. One object, by its presence, +makes us act: another object checks our action. Feelings aroused +and ideas suggested by objects sway us one way and another: +emotions complicate the game by their mutual inhibitive effects, +the higher abolishing the lower or perhaps being itself swept away. +The life in all this becomes prudential and moral; but the +psychologic agents in the drama may be described, you see, as +nothing but the 'ideas' themselves,—ideas for the whole +system of which what we call the 'soul' or character' or 'will' of +the person is nothing but a collective name. As Hume said, the +ideas are themselves the actors, the stage, the theatre, the +spectators, and the play. This is the so-called 'associationist' +psychology, brought down to its radical expression: it is useless +to ignore its power as a conception. Like all conceptions, when +they become clear and lively enough, this conception has a strong +tendency to impose itself upon belief; and psychologists trained on +biological lines usually adopt it as the last word of science on +the subject. No one can have an adequate notion of modern +psychological theory unless he has at some time apprehended this +view in the full force of its simplicity.</p> + +<p>Let us humor it for a while, for it has advantages in the way of +exposition.</p> + +<p><i>Voluntary action, then, is at all times a resultant of the +compounding of our impulsions with our inhibitions.</i></p> + +<p>From this it immediately follows that there will be two types of +will, in one of which impulsions will predominate, in the other +inhibitions. We may speak of them, if you like, as the precipitate +and the obstructed will, respectively. When fully pronounced, they +are familiar to everybody. The extreme example of the precipitate +will is the maniac: his ideas discharge into action so rapidly, his +associative processes are so extravagantly lively, that inhibitions +have no time to arrive, and he says and does whatever pops into his +head without a moment of hesitation.</p> + +<p>Certain melancholiacs furnish the extreme example of the +over-inhibited type. Their minds are cramped in a fixed emotion of +fear or helplessness, their ideas confined to the one thought that +for them life is impossible. So they show a condition of perfect +'abulia,' or inability to will or act. They cannot change their +posture or speech or execute the simplest command.</p> + +<p>The different races of men show different temperaments in this +regard. The Southern races are commonly accounted the more +impulsive and precipitate: the English race, especially our New +England branch of it, is supposed to be all sicklied over with +repressive forms of self-consciousness, and condemned to express +itself through a jungle of scruples and checks.</p> + +<p>The highest form of character, however, abstractly considered, +must be full of scruples and inhibitions. But action, in such a +character, far from being paralyzed, will succeed in energetically +keeping on its way, sometimes overpowering the resistances, +sometimes steering along the line where they lie thinnest.</p> + +<p>Just as our extensor muscles act most truly when a simultaneous +contraction of the flexors guides and steadies them; so the mind of +him whose fields of consciousness are complex, and who, with the +reasons for the action, sees the reasons against it, and yet, +instead of being palsied, acts in the way that takes the whole +field into consideration,—so, I say, is such a mind the ideal +sort of mind that we should seek to reproduce in our pupils. Purely +impulsive action, or action that proceeds to extremities regardless +of consequences, on the other hand, is the easiest action in the +world, and the lowest in type. Any one can show energy, when made +quite reckless. An Oriental despot requires but little ability: as +long as he lives, he succeeds, for he has absolutely his own way; +and, when the world can no longer endure the horror of him, he is +assassinated. But not to proceed immediately to extremities, to be +still able to act energetically under an array of +inhibitions,—that indeed is rare and difficult. Cavour, when +urged to proclaim martial law in 1859, refused to do so, saying: +"Any one can govern in that way. I will be constitutional." Your +parliamentary rulers, your Lincoln, your Gladstone, are the +strongest type of man, because they accomplish results under the +most intricate possible conditions. We think of Napoleon Bonaparte +as a colossal monster of will-power, and truly enough he was so. +But, from the point of view of the psychological machinery, it +would be hard to say whether he or Gladstone was the larger +volitional quantity; for Napoleon disregarded all the usual +inhibitions, and Gladstone, passionate as he was, scrupulously +considered them in his statesmanship.</p> + +<p>A familiar example of the paralyzing power of scruples is the +inhibitive effect of conscientiousness upon conversation. Nowhere +does conversation seem to have flourished as brilliantly as in +France during the last century. But, if we read old French memoirs, +we see how many brakes of scrupulosity which tie our tongues to-day +were then removed. Where mendacity, treachery, obscenity, and +malignity find unhampered expression, talk can be brilliant indeed. +But its flame waxes dim where the mind is stitched all over with +conscientious fear of violating the moral and social +proprieties.</p> + +<p>The teacher often is confronted in the schoolroom with an +abnormal type of will, which we may call the 'balky will.' Certain +children, if they do not succeed in doing a thing immediately, +remain completely inhibited in regard to it: it becomes literally +impossible for them to understand it if it be an intellectual +problem, or to do it if it be an outward operation, as long as this +particular inhibited condition lasts. Such children are usually +treated as sinful, and are punished; or else the teacher pits his +or her will against the child's will, considering that the latter +must be 'broken.' "Break your child's will, in order that it may +not perish," wrote John Wesley. "Break its will as soon as it can +speak plainly—or even before it can speak at all. It should +be forced to do as it is told, even if you have to whip it ten +times running. Break its will, in order that its soul may live." +Such will-breaking is always a scene with a great deal of nervous +wear and tear on both sides, a bad state of feeling left behind it, +and the victory not always with the would-be will-breaker.</p> + +<p>When a situation of the kind is once fairly developed, and the +child is all tense and excited inwardly, nineteen times out of +twenty it is best for the teacher to apperceive the case as one of +neural pathology rather than as one of moral culpability. So long +as the inhibiting sense of impossibility remains in the child's +mind, he will continue unable to get beyond the obstacle. The aim +of the teacher should then be to make him simply forget. Drop the +subject for the time, divert the mind to something else: then, +leading the pupil back by some circuitous line of association, +spring it on him again before he has time to recognize it, and as +likely as not he will go over it now without any difficulty. It is +in no other way that we overcome balkiness in a horse: we divert +his attention, do something to his nose or ear, lead him round in a +circle, and thus get him over a place where flogging would only +have made him more invincible. A tactful teacher will never let +these strained situations come up at all.</p> + +<p>You perceive now, my friends, what your general or abstract duty +is as teachers. Although you have to generate in your pupils a +large stock of ideas, any one of which may be inhibitory, yet you +must also see to it that no habitual hesitancy or paralysis of the +will ensues, and that the pupil still retains his power of vigorous +action. Psychology can state your problem in these terms, but you +see how impotent she is to furnish the elements of its practical +solution. When all is said and done, and your best efforts are +made, it will probably remain true that the result will depend more +on a certain native tone or temper in the pupil's psychological +constitution than on anything else. Some persons appear to have a +naturally poor focalization of the field of consciousness; and in +such persons actions hang slack, and inhibitions seem to exert +peculiarly easy sway.</p> + +<p>But let us now close in a little more closely on this matter of +the education of the will. Your task is to build up a +<i>character</i> in your pupils; and a character, as I have so +often said, consists in an organized set of habits of reaction. Now +of what do such habits of reaction themselves consist? They consist +of tendencies to act characteristically when certain ideas possess +us, and to refrain characteristically when possessed by other +ideas.</p> + +<p>Our volitional habits depend, then, first, on what the stock of +ideas is which we have; and, second, on the habitual coupling of +the several ideas with action or inaction respectively. How is it +when an alternative is presented to you for choice, and you are +uncertain what you ought to do? You first hesitate, and then you +deliberate. And in what does your deliberation consist? It consists +in trying to apperceive the ease successively by a number of +different ideas, which seem to fit it more or less, until at last +you hit on one which seems to fit it exactly. If that be an idea +which is a customary forerunner of action in you, which enters into +one of your maxims of positive behavior, your hesitation ceases, +and you act immediately. If, on the other hand, it be an idea which +carries inaction as its habitual result, if it ally itself with +<i>prohibition</i>, then you unhesitatingly refrain. The problem +is, you see, to find the right idea or conception for the case. +This search for the right conception may take days or weeks.</p> + +<p>I spoke as if the action were easy when the conception once is +found. Often it is so, but it may be otherwise; and, when it is +otherwise, we find ourselves at the very centre of a moral +situation, into which I should now like you to look with me a +little nearer.</p> + +<p>The proper conception, the true head of classification, may be +hard to attain; or it may be one with which we have contracted no +settled habits of action. Or, again, the action to which it would +prompt may be dangerous and difficult; or else inaction may appear +deadly cold and negative when our impulsive feeling is hot. In +either of these latter cases it is hard to hold the right idea +steadily enough before the attention to let it exert its adequate +effects. Whether it be stimulative or inhibitive, it is <i>too +reasonable</i> for us; and the more instinctive passional +propensity then tends to extrude it from our consideration. We shy +away from the thought of it. It twinkles and goes out the moment it +appears in the margin of our consciousness; and we need a resolute +effort of voluntary attention to drag it into the focus of the +field, and to keep it there long enough for its associative and +motor effects to be exerted. Every one knows only too well how the +mind flinches from looking at considerations hostile to the +reigning mood of feeling.</p> + +<p>Once brought, however, in this way to the centre of the field of +consciousness, and held there, the reasonable idea will exert these +effects inevitably; for the laws of connection between our +consciousness and our nervous system provide for the action then +taking place. Our moral effort, properly so called, terminates in +our holding fast to the appropriate idea.</p> + +<p>If, then, you are asked, "<i>In what does a moral act +consist</i> when reduced to its simplest and most elementary form?" +you can make only one reply. You can say that <i>it consists in the +effort of attention by which we hold fast to an idea</i> which but +for that effort of attention would be driven out of the mind by the +other psychological tendencies that are there. <i>To think</i>, in +short, is the secret of will, just as it is the secret of +memory.</p> + +<p>This comes out very clearly in the kind of excuse which we most +frequently hear from persons who find themselves confronted by the +sinfulness or harmfulness of some part of their behavior. "I never +<i>thought</i>," they say. "I never <i>thought</i> how mean the +action was, I never <i>thought</i> of these abominable +consequences." And what do we retort when they say this? We say: +"Why <i>didn't</i> you think? What were you there for but to +think?" And we read them a moral lecture on their +irreflectiveness.</p> + +<p>The hackneyed example of moral deliberation is the case of an +habitual drunkard under temptation. He has made a resolve to +reform, but he is now solicited again by the bottle. His moral +triumph or failure literally consists in his finding the right +<i>name</i> for the case. If he says that it is a case of not +wasting good liquor already poured out, or a case of not being +churlish and unsociable when in the midst of friends, or a case of +learning something at last about a brand of whiskey which he never +met before, or a case of celebrating a public holiday, or a case of +stimulating himself to a more energetic resolve in favor of +abstinence than any he has ever yet made, then he is lost. His +choice of the wrong name seals his doom. But if, in spite of all +the plausible good names with which his thirsty fancy so copiously +furnishes him, he unwaveringly clings to the truer bad name, and +apperceives the case as that of "being a drunkard, being a +drunkard, being a drunkard," his feet are planted on the road to +salvation. He saves himself by thinking rightly.</p> + +<p>Thus are your pupils to be saved: first, by the stock of ideas +with which you furnish them; second, by the amount of voluntary +attention that they can exert in holding to the right ones, however +unpalatable; and, third, by the several habits of acting definitely +on these latter to which they have been successfully trained.</p> + +<p>In all this the power of voluntarily attending is the point of +the whole procedure. Just as a balance turns on its knife-edges, so +on it our moral destiny turns. You remember that, when we were +talking of the subject of attention, we discovered how much more +intermittent and brief our acts of voluntary attention are than is +commonly supposed. If they were all summed together, the time that +they occupy would cover an almost incredibly small portion of our +lives. But I also said, you will remember, that their brevity was +not in proportion to their significance, and that I should return +to the subject again. So I return to it now. It is not the mere +size of a thing which, constitutes its importance: it is its +position in the organism to which it belongs. Our acts of voluntary +attention, brief and fitful as they are, are nevertheless momentous +and critical, determining us, as they do, to higher or lower +destinies. The exercise of voluntary attention in the schoolroom +must therefore be counted one of the most important points of +training that take place there; and the first-rate teacher, by the +keenness of the remoter interests which he is able to awaken, will +provide abundant opportunities for its occurrence. I hope that you +appreciate this now without any further explanation.</p> + +<p>I have been accused of holding up before you, in the course of +these talks, a mechanical and even a materialistic view of the +mind. I have called it an organism and a machine. I have spoken of +its reaction on the environment as the essential thing about it; +and I have referred this, either openly or implicitly, to the +construction of the nervous system. I have, in consequence, +received notes from some of you, begging me to be more explicit on +this point; and to let you know frankly whether I am a complete +materialist, or not.</p> + +<p>Now in these lectures I wish to be strictly practical and +useful, and to keep free from all speculative complications. +Nevertheless, I do not wish to leave any ambiguity about my own +position; and I will therefore say, in order to avoid all +misunderstanding, that in no sense do I count myself a materialist. +I cannot see how such a thing as our consciousness can possibly be +<i>produced</i> by a nervous machinery, though I can perfectly well +see how, if 'ideas' do accompany the workings of the machinery, the +<i>order</i> of the ideas might very well follow exactly the +<i>order</i> of the machine's operations. Our habitual associations +of ideas, trains of thought, and sequences of action, might thus be +consequences of the succession of currents in our nervous systems. +And the possible stock of ideas which a man's free spirit would +have to choose from might depend exclusively on the native and +acquired powers of his brain. If this were all, we might indeed +adopt the fatalist conception which I sketched for you but a short +while ago. Our ideas would be determined by brain currents, and +these by purely mechanical laws.</p> + +<p>But, after what we have just seen,—namely, the part played +by voluntary attention in volition,—a belief in free will and +purely spiritual causation is still open to us. The duration and +amount of this attention <i>seem</i> within certain limits +indeterminate. We <i>feel</i> as if we could make it really more or +less, and as if our free action in this regard were a genuine +critical point in nature,—a point on which our destiny and +that of others might hinge. The whole question of free will +concentrates itself, then, at this same small point: "Is or is not +the appearance of indetermination at this point an illusion?"</p> + +<p>It is plain that such a question can be decided only by general +analogies, and not by accurate observations. The free-willist +believes the appearance to be a reality: the determinist believes +that it is an illusion. I myself hold with the +free-willists,—not because I cannot conceive the fatalist +theory clearly, or because I fail to understand its plausibility, +but simply because, if free will <i>were</i> true, it would be +absurd to have the belief in it fatally forced on our acceptance. +Considering the inner fitness of things, one would rather think +that the very first act of a will endowed with freedom should be to +sustain the belief in the freedom itself. I accordingly believe +freely in my freedom; I do so with the best of scientific +consciences, knowing that the predetermination of the amount of my +effort of attention can never receive objective proof, and hoping +that, whether you follow my example in this respect or not, it will +at least make you see that such psychological and psychophysical +theories as I hold do not necessarily force a man to become a +fatalist or a materialist.</p> + +<p>Let me say one more final word now about the will, and therewith +conclude both that important subject and these lectures.</p> + +<p>There are two types of will. There are also two types of +inhibition. We may call them inhibition by repression or by +negation, and inhibition by substitution, respectively. The +difference between them is that, in the case of inhibition by +repression, both the inhibited idea and the inhibiting idea, the +impulsive idea and the idea that negates it, remain along with each +other in consciousness, producing a certain inward strain or +tension there: whereas, in inhibition by substitution, the +inhibiting idea supersedes altogether the idea which it inhibits, +and the latter quickly vanishes from the field.</p> + +<p>For instance, your pupils are wandering in mind, are listening +to a sound outside the window, which presently grows interesting +enough to claim all their attention. You can call the latter back +again by bellowing at them not to listen to those sounds, but to +keep their minds on their books or on what you are saying. And, by +thus keeping them conscious that your eye is sternly on them, you +may produce a good effect. But it will be a wasteful effect and an +inferior effect; for the moment you relax your supervision the +attractive disturbance, always there soliciting their curiosity, +will overpower them, and they will be just as they were before: +whereas, if, without saying anything about the street disturbances, +you open a counter-attraction by starting some very interesting +talk or demonstration yourself, they will altogether forget the +distracting incident, and without any effort follow you along. +There are many interests that can never be inhibited by the way of +negation. To a man in love, for example, it is literally +impossible, by any effort of will, to annul his passion. But let +'some new planet swim into his ken,' and the former idol will +immediately cease to engross his mind.</p> + +<p>It is clear that in general we ought, whenever we can, to employ +the method of inhibition by substitution. He whose life is based +upon the word 'no,' who tells the truth because a lie is wicked, +and who has constantly to grapple with his envious and cowardly and +mean propensities, is in an inferior situation in every respect to +what he would be if the love of truth and magnanimity positively +possessed him from the outset, and he felt no inferior temptations. +Your born gentleman is certainly, for this world's purposes, a more +valuable being than your "Crump, with his grunting resistance to +his native devils," even though in God's sight the latter may, as +the Catholic theologians say, be rolling up great stores of +'merit.'</p> + +<p>Spinoza long ago wrote in his Ethics that anything that a man +can avoid under the notion that it is bad he may also avoid under +the notion that something else is good. He who habitually acts +<i>sub specie mali</i>, under the negative notion, the notion of +the bad, is called a slave by Spinoza. To him who acts habitually +under the notion of good he gives the name of freeman. See to it +now, I beg you, that you make freemen of your pupils by habituating +them to act, whenever possible, under the notion of a good. Get +them habitually to tell the truth, not so much through showing them +the wickedness of lying as by arousing their enthusiasm for honor +and veracity. Wean them from their native cruelty by imparting to +them some of your own positive sympathy with an animal's inner +springs of joy. And, in the lessons which you may be legally +obliged to conduct upon the bad effects of alcohol, lay less stress +than the books do on the drunkard's stomach, kidneys, nerves, and +social miseries, and more on the blessings of having an organism +kept in lifelong possession of its full youthful elasticity by a +sweet, sound blood, to which stimulants and narcotics are unknown, +and to which the morning sun and air and dew will daily come as +sufficiently powerful intoxicants.</p> + +<p>I have now ended these talks. If to some of you the things I +have said seem obvious or trivial, it is possible that they may +appear less so when, in the course of a year or two, you find +yourselves noticing and apperceiving events in the schoolroom a +little differently, in consequence of some of the conceptions I +have tried to make more clear. I cannot but think that to +apperceive your pupil as a little sensitive, impulsive, +associative, and reactive organism, partly fated and partly free, +will lead to a better intelligence of all his ways. Understand him, +then, as such a subtle little piece of machinery. And if, in +addition, you can also see him <i>sub specie boni</i>, and love him +as well, you will be in the best possible position for becoming +perfect teachers.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="TALKS_TO_STUDENTS" id="TALKS_TO_STUDENTS" /><b>TALKS +TO STUDENTS</b></h2> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="I__THE_GOSPEL_OF_RELAXATION" +id="I__THE_GOSPEL_OF_RELAXATION" />I. THE GOSPEL OF RELAXATION</h2> + +<p>I wish in the following hour to take certain psychological +doctrines and show their practical applications to mental +hygiene,—to the hygiene of our American life more +particularly. Our people, especially in academic circles, are +turning towards psychology nowadays with great expectations; and, +if psychology is to justify them, it must be by showing fruits in +the pedagogic and therapeutic lines.</p> + +<p>The reader may possibly have heard of a peculiar theory of the +emotions, commonly referred to in psychological literature as the +Lange-James theory. According to this theory, our emotions are +mainly due to those organic stirrings that are aroused in us in a +reflex way by the stimulus of the exciting object or situation. An +emotion of fear, for example, or surprise, is not a direct effect +of the object's presence on the mind, but an effect of that still +earlier effect, the bodily commotion which the object suddenly +excites; so that, were this bodily commotion suppressed, we should +not so much <i>feel</i> fear as call the situation fearful; we +should not feel surprise, but coldly recognize that the object was +indeed astonishing. One enthusiast has even gone so far as to say +that when we feel sorry it is because we weep, when we feel afraid +it is because we run away, and not conversely. Some of you may +perhaps be acquainted with the paradoxical formula. Now, whatever +exaggeration may possibly lurk in this account of our emotions (and +I doubt myself whether the exaggeration be very great), it is +certain that the main core of it is true, and that the mere giving +way to tears, for example, or to the outward expression of an +anger-fit, will result for the moment in making the inner grief or +anger more acutely felt. There is, accordingly, no better known or +more generally useful precept in the moral training of youth, or in +one's personal self-discipline, than that which bids us pay primary +attention to what we do and express, and not to care too much for +what we feel. If we only check a cowardly impulse in time, for +example, or if we only <i>don't</i> strike the blow or rip out with +the complaining or insulting word that we shall regret as long as +we live, our feelings themselves will presently be the calmer and +better, with no particular guidance from us on their own account. +Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go +together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more +direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, +which is not.</p> + +<p>Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our +spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look +round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were +already there. If such conduct does not make you soon feel +cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can. So to feel brave, act +as if we <i>were</i> brave, use all our will to that end, and a +courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear. Again, in +order to feel kindly toward a person to whom we have been inimical, +the only way is more or less deliberately to smile, to make +sympathetic inquiries, and to force ourselves to say genial things. +One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer +communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward +wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling. To wrestle +with a bad feeling only pins our attention on it, and keeps it +still fastened in the mind: whereas, if we act as if from some +better feeling, the old bad feeling soon folds its tent like an +Arab, and silently steals away.</p> + +<p>The best manuals of religious devotion accordingly reiterate the +maxim that we must let our feelings go, and pay no regard to them +whatever. In an admirable and widely successful little book called +'The Christian's Secret of a Happy Life,' by Mrs. Hannah Whitall +Smith, I find this lesson on almost every page. <i>Act</i> +faithfully, and you really have faith, no matter how cold and even +how dubious you may feel. "It is your purpose God looks at," writes +Mrs. Smith, "not your feelings about that purpose; and your +purpose, or will, is therefore the only thing you need attend +to.... Let your emotions come or let them go, just as God pleases, +and make no account of them either way.... They really have nothing +to do with the matter. They are not the indicators of your +spiritual state, but are merely the indicators of your temperament +or of your present physical condition."</p> + +<p>But you all know these facts already, so I need no longer press +them on your attention. From our acts and from our attitudes +ceaseless inpouring currents of sensation come, which help to +determine from moment to moment what our inner states shall be: +that is a fundamental law of psychology which I will therefore +proceed to assume.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>A Viennese neurologist of considerable reputation has recently +written about the <i>Binnenleben</i>, as he terms it, or buried +life of human beings. No doctor, this writer says, can get into +really profitable relations with a nervous patient until he gets +some sense of what the patient's <i>Binnenleben</i> is, of the sort +of unuttered inner atmosphere in which his consciousness dwells +alone with the secrets of its prison-house. This inner personal +tone is what we can't communicate or describe articulately to +others; but the wraith and ghost of it, so to speak, are often what +our friends and intimates feel as our most characteristic quality. +In the unhealthy-minded, apart from all sorts of old regrets, +ambitions checked by shames and aspirations obstructed by +timidities, it consists mainly of bodily discomforts not distinctly +localized by the sufferer, but breeding a general self-mistrust and +sense that things are not as they should be with him. Half the +thirst for alcohol that exists in the world exists simply because +alcohol acts as a temporary anæsthetic and effacer to all +these morbid feelings that never ought to be in a human being at +all. In the healthy-minded, on the contrary, there are no fears or +shames to discover; and the sensations that pour in from the +organism only help to swell the general vital sense of security and +readiness for anything that may turn up.</p> + +<p>Consider, for example, the effects of a well-toned +<i>motor-apparatus</i>, nervous and muscular, on our general +personal self-consciousness, the sense of elasticity and efficiency +that results. They tell us that in Norway the life of the women has +lately been entirely revolutionized by the new order of muscular +feelings with which the use of the <i>ski</i>, or long snow-shoes, +as a sport for both sexes, has made the women acquainted. Fifteen +years ago the Norwegian women were even more than the women of +other lands votaries of the old-fashioned ideal of femininity, 'the +domestic angel,' the 'gentle and refining influence' sort of thing. +Now these sedentary fireside tabby-cats of Norway have been +trained, they say, by the snow-shoes into lithe and audacious +creatures, for whom no night is too dark or height too giddy, and +who are not only saying good-bye to the traditional feminine pallor +and delicacy of constitution, but actually taking the lead in every +educational and social reform. I cannot but think that the tennis +and tramping and skating habits and the bicycle-craze which are so +rapidly extending among our dear sisters and daughters in this +country are going also to lead to a sounder and heartier moral +tone, which will send its tonic breath through all our American +life.</p> + +<p>I hope that here in America more and more the ideal of the +well-trained and vigorous body will be maintained neck by neck with +that of the well-trained and vigorous mind as the two coequal +halves of the higher education for men and women alike. The +strength of the British Empire lies in the strength of character of +the individual Englishman, taken all alone by himself. And that +strength, I am persuaded, is perennially nourished and kept up by +nothing so much as by the national worship, in which all classes +meet, of athletic outdoor life and sport.</p> + +<p>I recollect, years ago, reading a certain work by an American +doctor on hygiene and the laws of life and the type of future +humanity. I have forgotten its author's name and its title, but I +remember well an awful prophecy that it contained about the future +of our muscular system. Human perfection, the writer said, means +ability to cope with the environment; but the environment will more +and more require mental power from us, and less and less will ask +for bare brute strength. Wars will cease, machines will do all our +heavy work, man will become more and more a mere director of +nature's energies, and less and less an exerter of energy on his +own account. So that, if the <i>homo sapiens</i> of the future can +only digest his food and think, what need will he have of +well-developed muscles at all? And why, pursued this writer, should +we not even now be satisfied with a more delicate and intellectual +type of beauty than that which pleased our ancestors? Nay, I have +heard a fanciful friend make a still further advance in this +'new-man' direction. With our future food, he says, itself prepared +in liquid form from the chemical elements of the atmosphere, +pepsinated or half-digested in advance, and sucked up through a +glass tube from a tin can, what need shall we have of teeth, or +stomachs even? They may go, along with our muscles and our physical +courage, while, challenging ever more and more our proper +admiration, will grow the gigantic domes of our crania, arching +over our spectacled eyes, and animating our flexible little lips to +those floods of learned and ingenious talk which will constitute +our most congenial occupation.</p> + +<p>I am sure that your flesh creeps at this apocalyptic vision. +Mine certainly did so; and I cannot believe that our muscular vigor +will ever be a superfluity. Even if the day ever dawns in which it +will not be needed for fighting the old heavy battles against +Nature, it will still always be needed to furnish the background of +sanity, serenity, and cheerfulness to life, to give moral +elasticity to our disposition, to round off the wiry edge of our +fretfulness, and make us good-humored and easy of approach. +Weakness is too apt to be what the doctors call irritable weakness. +And that blessed internal peace and confidence, that +<i>acquiescentia in seipso</i>, as Spinoza used to call it, that +wells up from every part of the body of a muscularly well-trained +human being, and soaks the indwelling soul of him with +satisfaction, is, quite apart from every consideration of its +mechanical utility, an element of spiritual hygiene of supreme +significance.</p> + +<p>And now let me go a step deeper into mental hygiene, and try to +enlist your insight and sympathy in a cause which I believe is one +of paramount patriotic importance to us Yankees. Many years ago a +Scottish medical man, Dr. Clouston, a mad-doctor as they call him +there, or what we should call an asylum physician (the most eminent +one in Scotland), visited this country, and said something that has +remained in my memory ever since. "You Americans," he said, "wear +too much expression on your faces. You are living like an army with +all its reserves engaged in action. The duller countenances of the +British population betoken a better scheme of life. They suggest +stores of reserved nervous force to fall back upon, if any occasion +should arise that requires it. This inexcitability, this presence +at all times of power not used, I regard," continued Dr. Clouston, +"as the great safeguard of our British people. The other thing in +you gives me a sense of insecurity, and you ought somehow to tone +yourselves down. You really do carry too much expression, you take +too intensely the trivial moments of life."</p> + +<p>Now Dr. Clouston is a trained reader of the secrets of the soul +as expressed upon the countenance, and the observation of his which +I quote seems to me to mean a great deal. And all Americans who +stay in Europe long enough to get accustomed to the spirit that +reigns and expresses itself there, so unexcitable as compared with +ours, make a similar observation when they return to their native +shores. They find a wild-eyed look upon their compatriots' faces, +either of too desperate eagerness and anxiety or of too intense +responsiveness and good-will. It is hard to say whether the men or +the women show it most. It is true that we do not all feel about it +as Dr. Clouston felt. Many of us, far from deploring it, admire it. +We say: "What intelligence it shows! How different from the stolid +cheeks, the codfish eyes, the slow, inanimate demeanor we have been +seeing in the British Isles!" Intensity, rapidity, vivacity of +appearance, are indeed with us something of a nationally accepted +ideal; and the medical notion of 'irritable weakness' is not the +first thing suggested by them to our mind, as it was to Dr. +Clouston's. In a weekly paper not very long ago I remember reading +a story in which, after describing the beauty and interest of the +heroine's personality, the author summed up her charms by saying +that to all who looked upon her an impression as of 'bottled +lightning' was irresistibly conveyed.</p> + +<p>Bottled lightning, in truth, is one of our American ideals, even +of a young girl's character! Now it is most ungracious, and it may +seem to some persons unpatriotic, to criticise in public the +physical peculiarities of one's own people, of one's own family, so +to speak. Besides, it may be said, and said with justice, that +there are plenty of bottled-lightning temperaments in other +countries, and plenty of phlegmatic temperaments here; and that, +when all is said and done, the more or less of tension about which +I am making such a fuss is a very small item in the sum total of a +nation's life, and not worth solemn treatment at a time when +agreeable rather than disagreeable things should be talked about. +Well, in one sense the more or less of tension in our faces and in +our unused muscles is a small thing: not much mechanical work is +done by these contractions. But it is not always the material size +of a thing that measures its importance: often it is its place and +function. One of the most philosophical remarks I ever heard made +was by an unlettered workman who was doing some repairs at my house +many years ago. "There is very little difference between one man +and another," he said, "when you go to the bottom of it. But what +little there is, is very important." And the remark certainly +applies to this case. The general over-contraction may be small +when estimated in foot-pounds, but its importance is immense on +account of its <i>effects on the over-contracted person's spiritual +life</i>. This follows as a necessary consequence from the theory +of our emotions to which I made reference at the beginning of this +article. For by the sensations that so incessantly pour in from the +over-tense excited body the over-tense and excited habit of mind is +kept up; and the sultry, threatening, exhausting, thunderous inner +atmosphere never quite clears away. If you never wholly give +yourself up to the chair you sit in, but always keep your leg- and +body-muscles half contracted for a rise; if you breathe eighteen or +nineteen instead of sixteen times a minute, and never quite breathe +out at that,—what mental mood <i>can</i> you be in but one of +inner panting and expectancy, and how can the future and its +worries possibly forsake your mind? On the other hand, how can they +gain admission to your mind if your brow be unruffled, your +respiration calm and complete, and your muscles all relaxed?</p> + +<p>Now what is the cause of this absence of repose, this +bottled-lightning quality in us Americans? The explanation of it +that is usually given is that it comes from the extreme dryness of +our climate and the acrobatic performances of our thermometer, +coupled with the extraordinary progressiveness of our life, the +hard work, the railroad speed, the rapid success, and all the other +things we know so well by heart. Well, our climate is certainly +exciting, but hardly more so than that of many parts of Europe, +where nevertheless no bottled-lightning girls are found. And the +work done and the pace of life are as extreme an every great +capital of Europe as they are here. To me both of these pretended +causes are utterly insufficient to explain the facts.</p> + +<p>To explain them, we must go not to physical geography, but to +psychology and sociology. The latest chapter both in sociology and +in psychology to be developed in a manner that approaches adequacy +is the chapter on the imitative impulse. First Bagehot, then Tarde, +then Royce and Baldwin here, have shown that invention and +imitation, taken together, form, one may say, the entire warp and +woof of human life, in so far as it is social. The American +over-tension and jerkiness and breathlessness and intensity and +agony of expression are primarily social, and only secondarily +physiological, phenomena. They are <i>bad habits</i>, nothing more +or less, bred of custom and example, born of the imitation of bad +models and the cultivation of false personal ideals. How are idioms +acquired, how do local peculiarities of phrase and accent come +about? Through an accidental example set by some one, which struck +the ears of others, and was quoted and copied till at last every +one in the locality chimed in. Just so it is with national tricks +of vocalization or intonation, with national manners, fashions of +movement and gesture, and habitual expressions of face. We, here in +America, through following a succession of pattern-setters whom it +is now impossible to trace, and through influencing each other in a +bad direction, have at last settled down collectively into what, +for better or worse, is our own characteristic national +type,—a type with the production of which, so far as these +habits go, the climate and conditions have had practically nothing +at all to do.</p> + +<p>This type, which we have thus reached by our imitativeness, we +now have fixed upon us, for better or worse. Now no type can be +<i>wholly</i> disadvantageous; but, so far as our type follows the +bottled-lightning fashion, it cannot be wholly good. Dr. Clouston +was certainly right in thinking that eagerness, breathlessness, and +anxiety are not signs of strength: they are signs of weakness and +of bad co-ordination. The even forehead, the slab-like cheek, the +codfish eye, may be less interesting for the moment; but they are +more promising signs than intense expression is of what we may +expect of their possessor in the long run. Your dull, unhurried +worker gets over a great deal of ground, because he never goes +backward or breaks down. Your intense, convulsive worker breaks +down and has bad moods so often that you never know where he may be +when you most need his help,—he may be having one of his 'bad +days.' We say that so many of our fellow-countrymen collapse, and +have to be sent abroad to rest their nerves, because they work so +hard. I suspect that this is an immense mistake. I suspect that +neither the nature nor the amount of our work is accountable for +the frequency and severity of our breakdowns, but that their cause +lies rather in those absurd feelings of hurry and having no time, +in that breathlessness and tension, that anxiety of feature and +that solicitude for results, that lack of inner harmony and ease, +in short, by which with us the work is so apt to be accompanied, +and from which a European who should do the same work would nine +times out of ten be free. These perfectly wanton and unnecessary +tricks of inner attitude and outer manner in us, caught from the +social atmosphere, kept up by tradition, and idealized by many as +the admirable way of life, are the last straws that break the +American camel's back, the final overflowers of our measure of wear +and tear and fatigue.</p> + +<p>The voice, for example, in a surprisingly large number of us has +a tired and plaintive sound. Some of us are really tired (for I do +not mean absolutely to deny that our climate has a tiring quality); +but far more of us are not tired at all, or would not be tired at +all unless we had got into a wretched trick of feeling tired, by +following the prevalent habits of vocalization and expression. And +if talking high and tired, and living excitedly and hurriedly, +would only enable us to <i>do</i> more by the way, even while +breaking us down in the end, it would be different. There would be +some compensation, some excuse, for going on so. But the exact +reverse is the case. It is your relaxed and easy worker, who is in +no hurry, and quite thoughtless most of the while of consequences, +who is your efficient worker; and tension and anxiety, and present +and future, all mixed up together in our mind at once, are the +surest drags upon steady progress and hindrances to our success. My +colleague, Professor Münsterberg, an excellent observer, who +came here recently, has written some notes on America to German +papers. He says in substance that the appearance of unusual energy +in America is superficial and illusory, being really due to nothing +but the habits of jerkiness and bad co-ordination for which we have +to thank the defective training of our people. I think myself that +it is high time for old legends and traditional opinions to be +changed; and that, if any one should begin to write about Yankee +inefficiency and feebleness, and inability to do anything with time +except to waste it, he would have a very pretty paradoxical little +thesis to sustain, with a great many facts to quote, and a great +deal of experience to appeal to in its proof.</p> + +<p>Well, my friends, if our dear American character is weakened by +all this over-tension,—and I think, whatever reserves you may +make, that you will agree as to the main facts,—where does +the remedy lie? It lies, of course, where lay the origins of the +disease. If a vicious fashion and taste are to blame for the thing, +the fashion and taste must be changed. And, though it is no small +thing to inoculate seventy millions of people with new standards, +yet, if there is to be any relief, that will have to be done. We +must change ourselves from a race that admires jerk and snap for +their own sakes, and looks down upon low voices and quiet ways as +dull, to one that, on the contrary, has calm for its ideal, and for +their own sakes loves harmony, dignity, and ease.</p> + +<p>So we go back to the psychology of imitation again. There is +only one way to improve ourselves, and that is by some of us +setting an example which the others may pick up and imitate till +the new fashion spreads from east to west. Some of us are in more +favorable positions than others to set new fashions. Some are much +more striking personally and imitable, so to speak. But no living +person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody. Thackeray +somewhere says of the Irish nation that there never was an Irishman +so poor that he didn't have a still poorer Irishman living at his +expense; and, surely, there is no human being whose example doesn't +work contagiously in <i>some</i> particular. The very idiots at our +public institutions imitate each other's peculiarities. And, if you +should individually achieve calmness and harmony in your own +person, you may depend upon it that a wave of imitation will spread +from you, as surely as the circles spread outward when a stone is +dropped into a lake.</p> + +<p>Fortunately, we shall not have to be absolute pioneers. Even now +in New York they have formed a society for the improvement of our +national vocalization, and one perceives its machinations already +in the shape of various newspaper paragraphs intended to stir up +dissatisfaction with the awful thing that it is. And, better still +than that, because more radical and general, is the gospel of +relaxation, as one may call it, preached by Miss Annie Payson Call, +of Boston, in her admirable little volume called 'Power through +Repose,' a book that ought to be in the hands of every teacher and +student in America of either sex. You need only be followers, then, +on a path already opened up by others. But of one thing be +confident: others still will follow you.</p> + +<p>And this brings me to one more application of psychology to +practical life, to which I will call attention briefly, and then +close. If one's example of easy and calm ways is to be effectively +contagious, one feels by instinct that the less voluntarily one +aims at getting imitated, the more unconscious one keeps in the +matter, the more likely one is to succeed. <i>Become the imitable +thing</i>, and you may then discharge your minds of all +responsibility for the imitation. The laws of social nature will +take care of that result. Now the psychological principle on which +this precept reposes is a law of very deep and wide-spread +importance in the conduct of our lives, and at the same time a law +which we Americans most grievously neglect. Stated technically, the +law is this: that <i>strong feeling about one's self tends to +arrest the free association of one's objective ideas and motor +processes</i>. We get the extreme example of this in the mental +disease called melancholia.</p> + +<p>A melancholic patient is filled through and through with +intensely painful emotion about himself. He is threatened, he is +guilty, he is doomed, he is annihilated, he is lost. His mind is +fixed as if in a cramp on these feelings of his own situation, and +in all the books on insanity you may read that the usual varied +flow of his thoughts has ceased. His associative processes, to use +the technical phrase, are inhibited; and his ideas stand +stock-still, shut up to their one monotonous function of +reiterating inwardly the fact of the man's desperate estate. And +this inhibitive influence is not due to the mere fact that his +emotion is <i>painful</i>. Joyous emotions about the self also stop +the association of our ideas. A saint in ecstasy is as motionless +and irresponsive and one-idea'd as a melancholiac. And, without +going as far as ecstatic saints, we know how in every one a great +or sudden pleasure may paralyze the flow of thought. Ask young +people returning from a party or a spectacle, and all excited about +it, what it was. "Oh, it was <i>fine</i>! it was <i>fine</i>! it +was <i>fine</i>!" is all the information you are likely to receive +until the excitement has calmed down. Probably every one of my +hearers has been made temporarily half-idiotic by some great +success or piece of good fortune. "<i>Good</i>! GOOD! GOOD!" is all +we can at such times say to ourselves until we smile at our own +very foolishness.</p> + +<p>Now from all this we can draw an extremely practical conclusion. +If, namely, we wish our trains of ideation and volition to be +copious and varied and effective, we must form the habit of freeing +them from the inhibitive influence of reflection upon them, of +egoistic preoccupation about their results. Such a habit, like +other habits, can be formed. Prudence and duty and self-regard, +emotions of ambition and emotions of anxiety, have, of course, a +needful part to play in our lives.</p> + +<p>But confine them as far as possible to the occasions when you +are making your general resolutions and deciding on your plans of +campaign, and keep them out of the details. When once a decision is +reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely +all responsibility and care about the outcome. <i>Unclamp</i>, in a +word, your intellectual and practical machinery, and let it run +free; and the service it will do you will be twice as good. Who are +the scholars who get 'rattled' in the recitation-room? Those who +think of the possibilities of failure and feel the great importance +of the act. Who are those who do recite well? Often those who are +most indifferent. <i>Their</i> ideas reel themselves out of their +memory of their own accord. Why do we hear the complaint so often +that social life in New England is either less rich and expressive +or more fatiguing than it is in some other parts of the world? To +what is the fact, if fact it be, due unless to the over-active +conscience of the people, afraid of either saying something too +trivial and obvious, or something insincere, or something unworthy +of one's interlocutor, or something in some way or other not +adequate to the occasion? How can conversation possibly steer +itself through such a sea of responsibilities and inhibitions as +this? On the other hand, conversation does flourish and society is +refreshing, and neither dull on the one hand nor exhausting from +its effort on the other, wherever people forget their scruples and +take the brakes off their hearts, and let their tongues wag as +automatically and irresponsibly as they will.</p> + +<p>They talk much in pedagogic circles to-day about the duty of the +teacher to prepare for every lesson in advance. To some extent this +is useful. But we Yankees are assuredly not those to whom such a +general doctrine should be preached. We are only too careful as it +is. The advice I should give to most teachers would be in the words +of one who is herself an admirable teacher. Prepare yourself in the +<i>subject so well that it shall be always on tap</i>: then in the +class-room trust your spontaneity and fling away all further +care.</p> + +<p>My advice to students, especially to girl-students, would be +somewhat similar. Just as a bicycle-chain may be too tight, so may +one's carefulness and conscientiousness be so tense as to hinder +the running of one's mind. Take, for example, periods when there +are many successive days of examination impending. One ounce of +good nervous tone in an examination is worth many pounds of anxious +study for it in advance. If you want really to do your best in an +examination, fling away the book the day before, say to yourself, +"I won't waste another minute on this miserable thing, and I don't +care an iota whether I succeed or not." Say this sincerely, and +feel it; and go out and play, or go to bed and sleep, and I am sure +the results next day will encourage you to use the method +permanently. I have heard this advice given to a student by Miss +Call, whose book on muscular relaxation I quoted a moment ago. In +her later book, entitled 'As a Matter of Course,' the gospel of +moral relaxation, of dropping things from the mind, and not +'caring,' is preached with equal success. Not only our preachers, +but our friends the theosophists and mind-curers of various +religious sects are also harping on this string. And with the +doctors, the Delsarteans, the various mind-curing sects, and such +writers as Mr. Dresser, Prentice Mulford, Mr. Horace Fletcher, and +Mr. Trine to help, and the whole band of schoolteachers and +magazine-readers chiming in, it really looks as if a good start +might be made in the direction of changing our American mental +habit into something more indifferent and strong.</p> + +<p>Worry means always and invariably inhibition of associations and +loss of effective power. Of course, the sovereign cure for worry is +religious faith; and this, of course, you also know. The turbulent +billows of the fretful surface leave the deep parts of the ocean +undisturbed, and to him who has a hold on vaster and more permanent +realities the hourly vicissitudes of his personal destiny seem +relatively insignificant things. The really religious person is +accordingly unshakable and full of equanimity, and calmly ready for +any duty that the day may bring forth. This is charmingly +illustrated by a little work with which I recently became +acquainted, "The Practice of the Presence of God, the Best Ruler of +a Holy Life, by Brother Lawrence, being Conversations and Letters +of Nicholas Herman of Lorraine, Translated from the French."<a +name="FNanchor_A_3" id="FNanchor_A_3" /><a href="#Footnote_A_3" +class="fnanchor">[A]</a> I extract a few passages, the +conversations being given in indirect discourse. Brother Lawrence +was a Carmelite friar, converted at Paris in 1666. "He said that he +had been footman to M. Fieubert, the Treasurer, and that he was a +great awkward fellow, who broke everything. That he had desired to +be received into a monastery, thinking that he would there be made +to smart for his awkwardness and the faults he should commit, and +so he should sacrifice to God his life, with its pleasures; but +that God had disappointed him, he having met with nothing but +satisfaction in that state....</p> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_A_3" id="Footnote_A_3" /><a +href="#FNanchor_A_3"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> Fleming H. +Revell Company, New York.</p> +</div> + +<p>"That he had long been troubled in mind from a certain belief +that he should be damned; that all the men in the world could not +have persuaded him to the contrary; but that he had thus reasoned +with himself about it: <i>I engaged in a religious life only for +the love of God, and I have endeavored to act only for Him; +whatever becomes of me, whether I be lost or saved, I will always +continue to act purely for the love of God. I shall have this good +at least, that till death I shall have done all that is in me to +love Him</i>.... That since then he had passed his life in perfect +liberty and continual joy.</p> + +<p>"That when an occasion of practising some virtue offered, he +addressed himself to God, saying, 'Lord, I cannot do this unless +thou enablest me'; and that then he received strength more than +sufficient. That, when he had failed in his duty, he only confessed +his fault, saying to God, 'I shall never do otherwise, if You leave +me to myself; it is You who must hinder my failing, and mend what +is amiss.' That after this he gave himself no further uneasiness +about it.</p> + +<p>"That he had been lately sent into Burgundy to buy the provision +of wine for the society, which was a very unwelcome task for him, +because he had no turn for business, and because he was lame, and +could not go about the boat but by rolling himself over the casks. +That, however, he gave himself no uneasiness about it, nor about +the purchase of the wine. That he said to God, 'It was his business +he was about,' and that he afterward found it well performed. That +he had been sent into Auvergne, the year before, upon the same +account; that he could not tell how the matter passed, but that it +proved very well.</p> + +<p>"So, likewise, in his business in the kitchen (to which he had +naturally a great aversion), having accustomed himself to do +everything there for the love of God, and with prayer upon all +occasions, for his grace to do his work well, he had found +everything easy during fifteen years that he had been employed +there.</p> + +<p>"That he was very well pleased with the post he was now in, but +that he was as ready to quit that as the former, since he was +always pleasing himself in every condition, by doing little things +for the love of God.</p> + +<p>"That the goodness of God assured him he would not forsake him +utterly, and that he would give him strength to bear whatever evil +he permitted to happen to him; and, therefore, that he feared +nothing, and had no occasion to consult with anybody about his +state. That, when he had attempted to do it, he had always come +away more perplexed."</p> + +<p>The simple-heartedness of the good Brother Lawrence, and the +relaxation of all unnecessary solicitudes and anxieties in him, is +a refreshing spectacle.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>The need of feeling responsible all the livelong day has been +preached long enough in our New England. Long enough exclusively, +at any rate,—and long enough to the female sex. What our +girl-students and woman-teachers most need nowadays is not the +exacerbation, but rather the toning-down of their moral tensions. +Even now I fear that some one of my fair hearers may be making an +undying resolve to become strenuously relaxed, cost what it will, +for the remainder of her life. It is needless to say that that is +not the way to do it. The way to do it, paradoxical as it may seem, +is genuinely not to care whether you are doing it or not. Then, +possibly, by the grace of God, you may all at once find that you +<i>are</i> doing it, and, having learned what the trick feels like, +you may (again by the grace of God) be enabled to go on.</p> + +<p>And that something like this may be the happy experience of all +my hearers is, in closing, my most earnest wish.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="II__ON_A_CERTAIN_BLINDNESS_IN_HUMAN_BEINGS" +id="II__ON_A_CERTAIN_BLINDNESS_IN_HUMAN_BEINGS" />II. ON A CERTAIN +BLINDNESS IN HUMAN BEINGS</h2> + +<p>Our judgments concerning the worth of things, big or little, +depend on the <i>feelings</i> the things arouse in us. Where we +judge a thing to be precious in consequence of the <i>idea</i> we +frame of it, this is only because the idea is itself associated +already with a feeling. If we were radically feelingless, and if +ideas were the only things our mind could entertain, we should lose +all our likes and dislikes at a stroke, and be unable to point to +any one situation or experience in life more valuable or +significant than any other.</p> + +<p>Now the blindness in human beings, of which this discourse will +treat, is the blindness with which we all are afflicted in regard +to the feelings of creatures and people different from +ourselves.</p> + +<p>We are practical beings, each of us with limited functions and +duties to perform. Each is bound to feel intensely the importance +of his own duties and the significance of the situations that call +these forth. But this feeling is in each of us a vital secret, for +sympathy with which we vainly look to others. The others are too +much absorbed in their own vital secrets to take an interest in +ours. Hence the stupidity and injustice of our opinions, so far as +they deal with the significance of alien lives. Hence the falsity +of our judgments, so far as they presume to decide in an absolute +way on the value of other persons' conditions or ideals.</p> + +<p>Take our dogs and ourselves, connected as we are by a tie more +intimate than most ties in this world; and yet, outside of that tie +of friendly fondness, how insensible, each of us, to all that makes +life significant for the other!—we to the rapture of bones +under hedges, or smells of trees and lamp-posts, they to the +delights of literature and art. As you sit reading the most moving +romance you ever fell upon, what sort of a judge is your +fox-terrier of your behavior? With all his good will toward you, +the nature of your conduct is absolutely excluded from his +comprehension. To sit there like a senseless statue, when you might +be taking him to walk and throwing sticks for him to catch! What +queer disease is this that comes over you every day, of holding +things and staring at them like that for hours together, paralyzed +of motion and vacant of all conscious life? The African savages +came nearer the truth; but they, too, missed it, when they gathered +wonderingly round one of our American travellers who, in the +interior, had just come into possession of a stray copy of the New +York <i>Commercial Advertiser</i>, and was devouring it column by +column. When he got through, they offered him a high price for the +mysterious object; and, being asked for what they wanted it, they +said: "For an eye medicine,"—that being the only reason they +could conceive of for the protracted bath which he had given his +eyes upon its surface.</p> + +<p>The spectator's judgment is sure to miss the root of the matter, +and to possess no truth. The subject judged knows a part of the +world of reality which the judging spectator fails to see, knows +more while the spectator knows less; and, wherever there is +conflict of opinion and difference of vision, we are bound to +believe that the truer side is the side that feels the more, and +not the side that feels the less.</p> + +<p>Let me take a personal example of the kind that befalls each one +of us daily:—</p> + +<p>Some years ago, while journeying in the mountains of North +Carolina, I passed by a large number of 'coves,' as they call them +there, or heads of small valleys between the hills, which had been +newly cleared and planted. The impression on my mind was one of +unmitigated squalor. The settler had in every case cut down the +more manageable trees, and left their charred stumps standing. The +larger trees he had girdled and killed, in order that their foliage +should not cast a shade. He had then built a log cabin, plastering +its chinks with clay, and had set up a tall zigzag rail fence +around the scene of his havoc, to keep the pigs and cattle out. +Finally, he had irregularly planted the intervals between the +stumps and trees with Indian corn, which grew among the chips; and +there he dwelt with his wife and babes—an axe, a gun, a few +utensils, and some pigs and chickens feeding in the woods, being +the sum total of his possessions.</p> + +<p>The forest had been destroyed; and what had 'improved' it out of +existence was hideous, a sort of ulcer, without a single element of +artificial grace to make up for the loss of Nature's beauty. Ugly, +indeed, seemed the life of the squatter, scudding, as the sailors +say, under bare poles, beginning again away back where our first +ancestors started, and by hardly a single item the better off for +all the achievements of the intervening generations.</p> + +<p>Talk about going back to nature! I said to myself, oppressed by +the dreariness, as I drove by. Talk of a country life for one's old +age and for one's children! Never thus, with nothing but the bare +ground and one's bare hands to fight the battle! Never, without the +best spoils of culture woven in! The beauties and commodities +gained by the centuries are sacred. They are our heritage and +birthright. No modern person ought to be willing to live a day in +such a state of rudimentariness and denudation.</p> + +<p>Then I said to the mountaineer who was driving me, "What sort of +people are they who have to make these new clearings?" "All of us," +he replied. "Why, we ain't happy here, unless we are getting one of +these coves under cultivation." I instantly felt that I had been +losing the whole inward significance of the situation. Because to +me the clearings spoke of naught but denudation, I thought that to +those whose sturdy arms and obedient axes had made them they could +tell no other story. But, when <i>they</i> looked on the hideous +stumps, what they thought of was personal victory. The chips, the +girdled trees, and the vile split rails spoke of honest sweat, +persistent toil and final reward. The cabin was a warrant of safety +for self and wife and babes. In short, the clearing, which to me +was a mere ugly picture on the retina, was to them a symbol +redolent with moral memories and sang a very pæan of duty, +struggle, and success.</p> + +<p>I had been as blind to the peculiar ideality of their conditions +as they certainly would also have been to the ideality of mine, had +they had a peep at my strange indoor academic ways of life at +Cambridge.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>Wherever a process of life communicates an eagerness to him who +lives it, there the life becomes genuinely significant. Sometimes +the eagerness is more knit up with the motor activities, sometimes +with the perceptions, sometimes with the imagination, sometimes +with reflective thought. But, wherever it is found, there is the +zest, the tingle, the excitement of reality; and there <i>is</i> +'importance' in the only real and positive sense in which +importance ever anywhere can be.</p> + +<p>Robert Louis Stevenson has illustrated this by a case, drawn +from the sphere of the imagination, in an essay which I really +think deserves to become immortal, both for the truth of its matter +and the excellence of its form.</p> + +<p>"Toward the end of September," Stevenson writes, "when +school-time was drawing near, and the nights were already black, we +would begin to sally from our respective villas, each equipped with +a tin bull's-eye lantern. The thing was so well known that it had +worn a rut in the commerce of Great Britain; and the grocers, about +the due time, began to garnish their windows with our particular +brand of luminary. We wore them buckled to the waist upon a cricket +belt, and over them, such was the rigor of the game, a buttoned +top-coat. They smelled noisomely of blistered tin. They never +burned aright, though they would always burn our fingers. Their use +was naught, the pleasure of them merely fanciful, and yet a boy +with a bull's-eye under his top-coat asked for nothing more. The +fishermen used lanterns about their boats, and it was from them, I +suppose, that we had got the hint; but theirs were not bull's-eyes, +nor did we ever play at being fishermen. The police carried them at +their belts, and we had plainly copied them in that; yet we did not +pretend to be policemen. Burglars, indeed, we may have had some +haunting thought of; and we had certainly an eye to past ages when +lanterns were more common, and to certain story-books in which we +had found them to figure very largely. But take it for all in all, +the pleasure of the thing was substantive; and to be a boy with a +bull's-eye under his top-coat was good enough for us.</p> + +<p>"When two of these asses met, there would be an anxious 'Have +you got your lantern?' and a gratified 'Yes!' That was the +shibboleth, and very needful, too; for, as it was the rule to keep +our glory contained, none could recognize a lantern-bearer unless +(like the polecat) by the smell. Four or five would sometimes climb +into the belly of a ten-man lugger, with nothing but the thwarts +above them,—for the cabin was usually locked,—or chose +out some hollow of the links where the wind might whistle overhead. +Then the coats would be unbuttoned, and the bull's-eyes discovered; +and in the chequering glimmer, under the huge, windy hall of the +night, and cheered by a rich steam of toasting tinware, these +fortunate young gentlemen would crouch together in the cold sand of +the links, or on the scaly bilges of the fishing-boat, and delight +them with inappropriate talk. Woe is me that I cannot give some +specimens!... But the talk was but a condiment, and these +gatherings themselves only accidents in the career of the +lantern-bearer. The essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself +in the black night, the slide shut, the top-coat buttoned, not a +ray escaping, whether to conduct your footsteps or to make your +glory public,—a mere pillar of darkness in the dark; and all +the while, deep down in the privacy of your fool's heart, to know +you had a bull's-eye at your belt, and to exult and sing over the +knowledge.</p> + +<p>"It is said that a poet has died young in the breast of the most +stolid. It may be contended rather that a (somewhat minor) bard in +almost every case survives, and is the spice of life to his +possessor. Justice is not done to the versatility and the unplumbed +childishness of man's imagination. His life from without may seem +but a rude mound of mud: there will be some golden chamber at the +heart of it, in which he dwells delighted; and for as dark as his +pathway seems to the observer, he will have some kind of bull's-eye +at his belt.</p> + +<p>..."There is one fable that touches very near the quick of +life,—the fable of the monk who passed into the woods, heard +a bird break into song, hearkened for a trill or two, and found +himself at his return a stranger at his convent gates; for he had +been absent fifty years, and of all his comrades there survived but +one to recognize him. It is not only in the woods that this +enchanter carols, though perhaps he is native there. He sings in +the most doleful places. The miser hears him and chuckles, and his +days are moments. With no more apparatus than an evil-smelling +lantern, I have evoked him on the naked links. All life that is not +merely mechanical is spun out of two strands,—seeking for +that bird and hearing him. And it is just this that makes life so +hard to value, and the delight of each so incommunicable. And it is +just a knowledge of this, and a remembrance of those fortunate +hours in which the bird <i>has</i> sung to <i>us</i>, that fills us +with such wonder when we turn to the pages of the realist. There, +to be sure, we find a picture of life in so far as it consists of +mud and of old iron, cheap desires and cheap fears, that which we +are ashamed to remember and that which we are careless whether we +forget; but of the note of that time-devouring nightingale we hear +no news.</p> + +<p>..."Say that we came [in such a realistic romance] on some such +business as that of my lantern-bearers on the links, and described +the boys as very cold, spat upon by flurries of rain, and drearily +surrounded, all of which they were; and their talk as silly and +indecent, which it certainly was. To the eye of the observer they +<i>are</i> wet and cold and drearily surrounded; but ask +themselves, and they are in the heaven of a recondite pleasure, the +ground of which is an ill-smelling lantern.</p> + +<p>"For, to repeat, the ground of a man's joy is often hard to hit. +It may hinge at times upon a mere accessory, like the lantern; it +may reside in the mysterious inwards of psychology.... It has so +little bond with externals ... that it may even touch them not, and +the man's true life, for which he consents to live, lie together in +the field of fancy.... In such a case the poetry runs underground. +The observer (poor soul, with his documents!) is all abroad. For to +look at the man is but to court deception. We shall see the trunk +from which he draws his nourishment; but he himself is above and +abroad in the green dome of foliage, hummed through by winds and +nested in by nightingales. And the true realism were that of the +poets, to climb after him like a squirrel, and catch some glimpse +of the heaven in which he lives. And the true realism, always and +everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, +and give it a voice far beyond singing.</p> + +<p>"For to miss the joy is to miss all. In the joy of the actors +lies the sense of any action. That is the explanation, that the +excuse. To one who has not the secret of the lanterns the scene +upon the links is meaningless. And hence the haunting and truly +spectral unreality of realistic books.... In each we miss the +personal poetry, the enchanted atmosphere, that rainbow work of +fancy that clothes what is naked and seems to ennoble what is base; +in each, life falls dead like dough, instead of soaring away like a +balloon into the colors of the sunset; each is true, each +inconceivable; for no man lives in the external truth among salts +and acids, but in the warm, phantasmagoric chamber of his brain, +with the painted windows and the storied wall."<a +name="FNanchor_A_4" id="FNanchor_A_4" /><a href="#Footnote_A_4" +class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_A_4" id="Footnote_A_4" /><a +href="#FNanchor_A_4"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> 'The +Lantern-bearers,' in the volume entitled 'Across the Plains.' +Abridged in the quotation.</p> +</div> + +<p>These paragraphs are the best thing I know in all Stevenson. "To +miss the joy is to miss all." Indeed, it is. Yet we are but finite, +and each one of us has some single specialized vocation of his own. +And it seems as if energy in the service of its particular duties +might be got only by hardening the heart toward everything unlike +them. Our deadness toward all but one particular kind of joy would +thus be the price we inevitably have to pay for being practical +creatures. Only in some pitiful dreamer, some philosopher, poet, or +romancer, or when the common practical man becomes a lover, does +the hard externality give way, and a gleam of insight into the +ejective world, as Clifford called it, the vast world of inner life +beyond us, so different from that of outer seeming, illuminate our +mind. Then the whole scheme of our customary values gets +confounded, then our self is riven and its narrow interests fly to +pieces, then a new centre and a new perspective must be found.</p> + +<p>The change is well described by my colleague, Josiah +Royce:—</p> + +<p>"What, then, is our neighbor? Thou hast regarded his thought, +his feeling, as somehow different from thine. Thou hast said, 'A +pain in him is not like a pain in me, but something far easier to +bear.' He seems to thee a little less living than thou; his life is +dim, it is cold, it is a pale fire beside thy own burning +desires.... So, dimly and by instinct hast thou lived with thy +neighbor, and hast known him not, being blind. Thou hast made [of +him] a thing, no Self at all. Have done with this illusion, and +simply try to learn the truth. Pain is pain, joy is joy, +everywhere, even as in thee. In all the songs of the forest birds; +in all the cries of the wounded and dying, struggling in the +captor's power; in the boundless sea where the myriads of +water-creatures strive and die; amid all the countless hordes of +savage men; in all sickness and sorrow; in all exultation and hope, +everywhere, from the lowest to the noblest, the same conscious, +burning, wilful life is found, endlessly manifold as the forms of +the living creatures, unquenchable as the fires of the sun, real as +these impulses that even now throb in thine own little selfish +heart. Lift up thy eyes, behold that life, and then turn away, and +forget it as thou canst; but, if thou hast <i>known</i> that, thou +hast begun to know thy duty."<a name="FNanchor_A_5" +id="FNanchor_A_5" /><a href="#Footnote_A_5" +class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_A_5" id="Footnote_A_5" /><a +href="#FNanchor_A_5"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> The +Religious Aspect of Philosophy, pp. 157-162 (abridged).</p> +</div> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>This higher vision of an inner significance in what, until then, +we had realized only in the dead external way, often comes over a +person suddenly; and, when it does so, it makes an epoch in his +history. As Emerson says, there is a depth in those moments that +constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other +experiences. The passion of love will shake one like an explosion, +or some act will awaken a remorseful compunction that hangs like a +cloud over all one's later day.</p> + +<p>This mystic sense of hidden meaning starts upon us often from +non-human natural things. I take this passage from 'Obermann,' a +French novel that had some vogue in its day: "Paris, March +7.—It was dark and rather cold. I was gloomy, and walked +because I had nothing to do. I passed by some flowers placed +breast-high upon a wall. A jonquil in bloom was there. It is the +strongest expression of desire: it was the first perfume of the +year. I felt all the happiness destined for man. This unutterable +harmony of souls, the phantom of the ideal world, arose in me +complete. I never felt anything so great or so instantaneous. I +know not what shape, what analogy, what secret of relation it was +that made me see in this flower a limitless beauty.... I shall +never enclose in a conception this power, this immensity that +nothing will express; this form that nothing will contain; this +ideal of a better world which one feels, but which it would seem +that nature has not made."<a name="FNanchor_A_6" +id="FNanchor_A_6" /><a href="#Footnote_A_6" +class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_A_6" id="Footnote_A_6" /><a +href="#FNanchor_A_6"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> De +Sénancour: Obermann, Lettre XXX.</p> +</div> + +<p>Wordsworth and Shelley are similarly full of this sense of a +limitless significance in natural things. In Wordsworth it was a +somewhat austere and moral significance,—a 'lonely +cheer.'</p> + +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">"To every natural form, rock, +fruit, or flower,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Even the loose stones that cover +the highway,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I gave a moral life: I saw them +feel</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or linked them to some feeling: the +great mass</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lay bedded in some quickening soul, +and all</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That I beheld respired with inward +meaning."<a name="FNanchor_A_7" id="FNanchor_A_7" /><a +href="#Footnote_A_7" class="fnanchor">[A]</a></span><br /> + + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_A_7" id="Footnote_A_7" /><a +href="#FNanchor_A_7"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> The +Prelude, Book III.</p> +</div> + +<p>"Authentic tidings of invisible things!" Just what this hidden +presence in nature was, which Wordsworth so rapturously felt, and +in the light of which he lived, tramping the hills for days +together, the poet never could explain logically or in articulate +conceptions. Yet to the reader who may himself have had gleaming +moments of a similar sort the verses in which Wordsworth simply +proclaims the fact of them come with a heart-satisfying +authority:—</p> + +<span style="margin-left: 16em;">"Magnificent</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The morning rose, in memorable +pomp,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Glorious as ere I had beheld. In +front</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The sea lay laughing at a distance; +near</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The solid mountains shone, bright +as the clouds,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Grain-tinctured, drenched in +empyrean light;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And in the meadows and the lower +grounds</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Was all the sweetness of a common +dawn,—</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dews, vapors, and the melody of +birds,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And laborers going forth to till +the fields."</span><br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 0.5em;">"Ah! need I say, dear Friend, +that to the brim</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">My heart was full; I made no vows, +but vows</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Were then made for me; bond unknown +to me</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Was given, that I should be, else +sinning greatly,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A dedicated Spirit. On I +walked,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In thankful blessedness, which yet +survives."<a name="FNanchor_A_8" id="FNanchor_A_8" /><a +href="#Footnote_A_8" class="fnanchor">[A]</a></span><br /> + + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_A_8" id="Footnote_A_8" /><a +href="#FNanchor_A_8"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> The +Prelude, Book IV.</p> +</div> + +<p>As Wordsworth walked, filled with his strange inner joy, +responsive thus to the secret life of nature round about him, his +rural neighbors, tightly and narrowly intent upon their own +affairs, their crops and lambs and fences, must have thought him a +very insignificant and foolish personage. It surely never occurred +to any one of them to wonder what was going on inside of <i>him</i> +or what it might be worth. And yet that inner life of his carried +the burden of a significance that has fed the souls of others, and +fills them to this day with inner joy.</p> + +<p>Richard Jefferies has written a remarkable autobiographic +document entitled The Story of my Heart. It tells, in many pages, +of the rapture with which in youth the sense of the life of nature +filled him. On a certain hill-top he says:—</p> + +<p>"I was utterly alone with the sun and the earth. Lying down on +the grass, I spoke in my soul to the earth, the sun, the air, and +the distant sea, far beyond sight.... With all the intensity of +feeling which exalted me, all the intense communion I held with the +earth, the sun and sky, the stars hidden by the light, with the +ocean,—in no manner can the thrilling depth of these feelings +be written,—with these I prayed as if they were the keys of +an instrument.... The great sun, burning with light, the strong +earth,—dear earth,—the warm sky, the pure air, the +thought of ocean, the inexpressible beauty of all filled me with a +rapture, an ecstasy, an inflatus. With this inflatus, too, I +prayed.... The prayer, this soul-emotion, was in itself, not for an +object: it was a passion. I hid my face in the grass. I was wholly +prostrated, I lost myself in the wrestle, I was rapt and carried +away.... Had any shepherd accidentally seen me lying on the turf, +he would only have thought I was resting a few minutes. I made no +outward show. Who could have imagined the whirlwind of passion that +was going on in me as I reclined there!"<a name="FNanchor_A_9" +id="FNanchor_A_9" /><a href="#Footnote_A_9" +class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p> + +<p>Surely, a worthless hour of life, when measured by the usual +standards of commercial value. Yet in what other <i>kind</i> of +value can the preciousness of any hour, made precious by any +standard, consist, if it consist not in feelings of excited +significance like these, engendered in some one, by what the hour +contains?</p> + +<p>Yet so blind and dead does the clamor of our own practical +interests make us to all other things, that it seems almost as if +it were necessary to become worthless as a practical being, if one +is to hope to attain to any breadth of insight into the impersonal +world of worths as such, to have any perception of life's meaning +on a large objective scale. Only your mystic, your dreamer, or your +insolvent tramp or loafer, can afford so sympathetic an occupation, +an occupation which will change the usual standards of human value +in the twinkling of an eye, giving to foolishness a place ahead of +power, and laying low in a minute the distinctions which it takes a +hard-working conventional man a lifetime to build up. You may be a +prophet, at this rate; but you cannot be a worldly success.</p> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_A_9" id="Footnote_A_9" /><a +href="#FNanchor_A_9"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> <i>Op. +cit.</i>, Boston, Roberts, 1883, pp. 5, 6.</p> +</div> + +<p>Walt Whitman, for instance, is accounted by many of us a +contemporary prophet. He abolishes the usual human distinctions, +brings all conventionalisms into solution, and loves and celebrates +hardly any human attributes save those elementary ones common to +all members of the race. For this he becomes a sort of ideal tramp, +a rider on omnibus-tops and ferry-boats, and, considered either +practically or academically, a worthless, unproductive being. His +verses are but ejaculations—things mostly without subject or +verb, a succession of interjections on an immense scale. He felt +the human crowd as rapturously as Wordsworth felt the mountains, +felt it as an overpoweringly significant presence, simply to absorb +one's mind in which should be business sufficient and worthy to +fill the days of a serious man. As he crosses Brooklyn ferry, this +is what he feels:—</p> + +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Flood-tide below me! I watch you, +face to face;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Clouds of the west! sun there half +an hour high! I see</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">you also face to face.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Crowds of men and women attired in +the usual costumes!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">how curious you are to +me!</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On the ferry-boats, the hundreds +and hundreds that cross,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">returning home, are more curious to +me than you suppose;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And you that shall cross from shore +to shore years hence,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">are more to me, and more in my +meditations, than you</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">might suppose.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Others will enter the gates of the +ferry, and cross from</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">shore to shore;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Others will watch the run of the +flood-tide;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Others will see the shipping of +Manhattan north and west,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">and the heights of Brooklyn to the +south and east;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Others will see the islands large +and small;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fifty years hence, others will see +them as they cross, the</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">sun half an hour high.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A hundred years hence, or ever so +many hundred years</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">hence, others will see +them,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring +in of the flood-tide, the</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">falling back to the sea of the +ebb-tide.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">It avails not, neither time or +place—distance avails not.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Just as you feel when you look on +the river and sky, so I</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">felt;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Just as any of you is one of a +living crowd, I was one of a</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">crowd;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Just as you are refresh'd by the +gladness of the river and</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">the bright flow, I was +refresh'd;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Just as you stand and lean on the +rail, yet hurry with the</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">swift current, I stood, yet was +hurried;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Just as you look on the numberless +masts of ships, and the</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">thick-stemmed pipes of steamboats, +I looked.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I too many and many a time cross'd +the river, the sun half</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">an hour high;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I watched the Twelfth-month +sea-gulls—I saw them high in</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">the air, with motionless wings, +oscillating their bodies,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I saw how the glistening yellow lit +up parts of their bodies,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">and left the rest in strong +shadow,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I saw the slow-wheeling circles, +and the gradual edging</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">toward the south.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Saw the white sails of schooners +and sloops, saw the ships</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">at anchor,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The sailors at work in the rigging, +or out astride the spars;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The scallop-edged waves in the +twilight, the ladled cups,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">the frolicsome crests and +glistening;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The stretch afar growing dimmer and +dimmer, the gray</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">walls of the granite store-houses +by the docks;</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On the neighboring shores, the +fires from the foundry chimneys</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">burning high ... into the +night,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Casting their flicker of black ... +into the clefts of streets.</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">These, and all else, were to me the +same as they are to you.<a name="FNanchor_A_10" +id="FNanchor_A_10" /><a href="#Footnote_A_10" +class="fnanchor">[A]</a></span><br /> + + +<p>And so on, through the rest of a divinely beautiful poem. And, +if you wish to see what this hoary loafer considered the most +worthy way of profiting by life's heaven-sent opportunities, read +the delicious volume of his letters to a young car-conductor who +had become his friend:—</p> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_A_10" id="Footnote_A_10" /><a +href="#FNanchor_A_10"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> 'Crossing +Brooklyn Ferry' (abridged).</p> +</div> + +<br /> +<br /> +<p class='blockquot' style="text-align:right">"NEW YORK, Oct. 9, +1868.</p> + +<p class='blockquot' style="text-align:left">"<i>Dear +Pete</i>,—It is splendid here this forenoon—bright and +cool. I was out early taking a short walk by the river only two +squares from where I live.... Shall I tell you about [my life] just +to fill up? I generally spend the forenoon in my room writing, +etc., then take a bath fix up and go out about twelve and loafe +somewhere or call on someone down town or on business, or perhaps +if it is very pleasant and I feel like it ride a trip with some +driver friend on Broadway from 23rd Street to Bowling Green, three +miles each way. (Every day I find I have plenty to do, every hour +is occupied with something.) You know it is a never ending +amusement and study and recreation for me to ride a couple of hours +on a pleasant afternoon on a Broadway stage in this way. You see +everything as you pass, a sort of living, endless +panorama—shops and splendid buildings and great windows: on +the broad sidewalks crowds of women richly dressed continually +passing, altogether different, superior in style and looks from any +to be seen anywhere else—in fact a perfect stream of +people—men too dressed in high style, and plenty of +foreigners—and then in the streets the thick crowd of +carriages, stages, carts, hotel and private coaches, and in fact +all sorts of vehicles and many first class teams, mile after mile, +and the splendor of such a great street and so many tall, +ornamental, noble buildings many of them of white marble, and the +gayety and motion on every side: you will not wonder how much +attraction all this is on a fine day, to a great loafer like me, +who enjoys so much seeing the busy world move by him, and +exhibiting itself for his amusement, while he takes it easy and +just looks on and observes."<a name="FNanchor_A_11" +id="FNanchor_A_11" /><a href="#Footnote_A_11" +class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_A_11" id="Footnote_A_11" /><a +href="#FNanchor_A_11"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> Calamus, +Boston, 1897, pp. 41, 42.</p> +</div> + +<p>Truly a futile way of passing the time, some of you may say, and +not altogether creditable to a grown-up man. And yet, from the +deepest point of view, who knows the more of truth, and who knows +the less,—Whitman on his omnibus-top, full of the inner joy +with which the spectacle inspires him, or you, full of the disdain +which the futility of his occupation excites?</p> + +<p>When your ordinary Brooklynite or New Yorker, leading a life +replete with too much luxury, or tired and careworn about his +personal affairs, crosses the ferry or goes up Broadway, <i>his</i> +fancy does not thus 'soar away into the colors of the sunset' as +did Whitman's, nor does he inwardly realize at all the indisputable +fact that this world never did anywhere or at any time contain more +of essential divinity, or of eternal meaning, than is embodied in +the fields of vision over which his eyes so carelessly pass. There +is life; and there, a step away, is death. There is the only kind +of beauty there ever was. There is the old human struggle and its +fruits together. There is the text and the sermon, the real and the +ideal in one. But to the jaded and unquickened eye it is all dead +and common, pure vulgarism, flatness, and disgust. "Hech! it is a +sad sight!" says Carlyle, walking at night with some one who +appeals to him to note the splendor of the stars. And that very +repetition of the scene to new generations of men in <i>secula +seculorum</i>, that eternal recurrence of the common order, which +so fills a Whitman with mystic satisfaction, is to a Schopenhauer, +with the emotional anæsthesia, the feeling of 'awful inner +emptiness' from out of which he views it all, the chief ingredient +of the tedium it instils. What is life on the largest scale, he +asks, but the same recurrent inanities, the same dog barking, the +same fly buzzing, forevermore? Yet of the kind of fibre of which +such inanities consist is the material woven of all the +excitements, joys, and meanings that ever were, or ever shall be, +in this world.</p> + +<p>To be rapt with satisfied attention, like Whitman, to the mere +spectacle of the world's presence, is one way, and the most +fundamental way, of confessing one's sense of its unfathomable +significance and importance. But how can one attain to the feeling +of the vital significance of an experience, if one have it not to +begin with? There is no receipt which one can follow. Being a +secret and a mystery, it often comes in mysteriously unexpected +ways. It blossoms sometimes from out of the very grave wherein we +imagined that our happiness was buried. Benvenuto Cellini, after a +life all in the outer sunshine, made of adventures and artistic +excitements, suddenly finds himself cast into a dungeon in the +Castle of San Angelo. The place is horrible. Rats and wet and mould +possess it. His leg is broken and his teeth fall out, apparently +with scurvy. But his thoughts turn to God as they have never turned +before. He gets a Bible, which he reads during the one hour in the +twenty-four in which a wandering ray of daylight penetrates his +cavern. He has religious visions. He sings psalms to himself, and +composes hymns. And thinking, on the last day of July, of the +festivities customary on the morrow in Rome, he says to himself: +"All these past years I celebrated this holiday with the vanities +of the world: from this year henceforward I will do it with the +divinity of God. And then I said to myself, 'Oh, how much more +happy I am for this present life of mine than for all those things +remembered!'"<a name="FNanchor_A_12" id="FNanchor_A_12" /><a +href="#Footnote_A_12" class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_A_12" id="Footnote_A_12" /><a +href="#FNanchor_A_12"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> Vita, lib. +2, chap. iv.</p> +</div> + +<p>But the great understander of these mysterious ebbs and flows is +Tolstoï. They throb all through his novels. In his 'War and +Peace,' the hero, Peter, is supposed to be the richest man in the +Russian empire. During the French invasion he is taken prisoner, +and dragged through much of the retreat. Cold, vermin, hunger, and +every form of misery assail him, the result being a revelation to +him of the real scale of life's values. "Here only, and for the +first time, he appreciated, because he was deprived of it, the +happiness of eating when he was hungry, of drinking when he was +thirsty, of sleeping when he was sleepy, and of talking when he +felt the desire to exchange some words.... Later in life he always +recurred with joy to this month of captivity, and never failed to +speak with enthusiasm of the powerful and ineffaceable sensations, +and especially of the moral calm which he had experienced at this +epoch. When at daybreak, on the morrow of his imprisonment, he saw +[I abridge here Tolstoï's description] the mountains with +their wooded slopes disappearing in the grayish mist; when he felt +the cool breeze caress him; when he saw the light drive away the +vapors, and the sun rise majestically behind the clouds and +cupolas, and the crosses, the dew, the distance, the river, sparkle +in the splendid, cheerful rays,—his heart overflowed with +emotion. This emotion kept continually with him, and increased a +hundred-fold as the difficulties of his situation grew graver.... +He learnt that man is meant for happiness, and that this happiness +is in him, in the satisfaction of the daily needs of existence, and +that unhappiness is the fatal result, not of our need, but of our +abundance.... When calm reigned in the camp, and the embers paled, +and little by little went out, the full moon had reached the +zenith. The woods and the fields roundabout lay clearly visible; +and, beyond the inundation of light which filled them, the view +plunged into the limitless horizon. Then Peter cast his eyes upon +the firmament, filled at that hour with myriads of stars. 'All that +is mine,' he thought. 'All that is in me, is me! And that is what +they think they have taken prisoner! That is what they have shut up +in a cabin!' So he smiled, and turned in to sleep among his +comrades."<a name="FNanchor_A_13" id="FNanchor_A_13" /><a +href="#Footnote_A_13" class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_A_13" id="Footnote_A_13" /><a +href="#FNanchor_A_13"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> La Guerre +et la Paix, Paris, 1884, vol. iii. pp. 268, 275, 316.</p> +</div> + +<p>The occasion and the experience, then, are nothing. It all +depends on the capacity of the soul to be grasped, to have its +life-currents absorbed by what is given. "Crossing a bare common," +says Emerson, "in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, +without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good +fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the +brink of fear."</p> + +<p>Life is always worth living, if one have such responsive +sensibilities. But we of the highly educated classes (so called) +have most of us got far, far away from Nature. We are trained to +seek the choice, the rare, the exquisite exclusively, and to +overlook the common. We are stuffed with abstract conceptions, and +glib with verbalities and verbosities; and in the culture of these +higher functions the peculiar sources of joy connected with our +simpler functions often dry up, and we grow stone-blind and +insensible to life's more elementary and general goods and +joys.</p> + +<p>The remedy under such conditions is to descend to a more +profound and primitive level. To be imprisoned or shipwrecked or +forced into the army would permanently show the good of life to +many an over-educated pessimist. Living in the open air and on the +ground, the lop-sided beam of the balance slowly rises to the level +line; and the over-sensibilities and insensibilities even +themselves out. The good of all the artificial schemes and fevers +fades and pales; and that of seeing, smelling, tasting, sleeping, +and daring and doing with one's body, grows and grows. The savages +and children of nature, to whom we deem ourselves so much superior, +certainly are alive where we are often dead, along these lines; +and, could they write as glibly as we do, they would read us +impressive lectures on our impatience for improvement and on our +blindness to the fundamental static goods of life. "Ah! my +brother," said a chieftain to his white guest, "thou wilt never +know the happiness of both thinking of nothing and doing nothing. +This, next to sleep, is the most enchanting of all things. Thus we +were before our birth, and thus we shall be after death. Thy +people,... when they have finished reaping one field, they begin to +plough another; and, if the day were not enough, I have seen them +plough by moonlight. What is their life to ours,—the life +that is as naught to them? Blind that they are, they lose it all! +But we live in the present."<a name="FNanchor_A_14" +id="FNanchor_A_14" /><a href="#Footnote_A_14" +class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_A_14" id="Footnote_A_14" /><a +href="#FNanchor_A_14"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> Quoted by +Lotze, Microcosmus, English translation, vol. ii. p. 240.</p> +</div> + +<p>The intense interest that life can assume when brought down to +the non-thinking level, the level of pure sensorial perception, has +been beautifully described by a man who <i>can</i> write,—Mr. +W.H. Hudson, in his volume, "Idle Days in Patagonia."</p> + +<p>"I spent the greater part of one winter," says this admirable +author, "at a point on the Rio Negro, seventy or eighty miles from +the sea.</p> + +<p>..."It was my custom to go out every morning on horseback with +my gun, and, followed by one dog, to ride away from the valley; and +no sooner would I climb the terrace, and plunge into the gray, +universal thicket, than I would find myself as completely alone as +if five hundred instead of only five miles separated me from the +valley and river. So wild and solitary and remote seemed that gray +waste, stretching away into infinitude, a waste untrodden by man, +and where the wild animals are so few that they have made no +discoverable path in the wilderness of thorns.... Not once nor +twice nor thrice, but day after day I returned to this solitude, +going to it in the morning as if to attend a festival, and leaving +it only when hunger and thirst and the westering sun compelled me. +And yet I had no object in going,—no motive which could be +put into words; for, although I carried a gun, there was nothing to +shoot,—the shooting was all left behind in the valley.... +Sometimes I would pass a whole day without seeing one mammal, and +perhaps not more than a dozen birds of any size. The weather at +that time was cheerless, generally with a gray film of cloud spread +over the sky, and a bleak wind, often cold enough to make my +bridle-hand quite numb.... At a slow pace, which would have seemed +intolerable under other circumstances, I would ride about for hours +together at a stretch. On arriving at a hill, I would slowly ride +to its summit, and stand there to survey the prospect. On every +side it stretched away in great undulations, wild and irregular. +How gray it all was! Hardly less so near at hand than on the +haze-wrapped horizon where the hills were dim and the outline +obscured by distance. Descending from my outlook, I would take up +my aimless wanderings again, and visit other elevations to gaze on +the same landscape from another point; and so on for hours. And at +noon I would dismount, and sit or lie on my folded poncho for an +hour or longer. One day in these rambles I discovered a small grove +composed of twenty or thirty trees, growing at a convenient +distance apart, that had evidently been resorted to by a herd of +deer or other wild animals. This grove was on a hill differing in +shape from other hills in its neighborhood; and, after a time, I +made a point of finding and using it as a resting-place every day +at noon. I did not ask myself why I made choice of that one spot, +sometimes going out of my way to sit there, instead of sitting down +under any one of the millions of trees and bushes on any other +hillside. I thought nothing about it, but acted unconsciously. Only +afterward it seemed to me that, after having rested there once, +each time I wished to rest again, the wish came associated with the +image of that particular clump of trees, with polished stems and +clean bed of sand beneath; and in a short time I formed a habit of +returning, animal like, to repose at that same spot.</p> + +<p>"It was, perhaps, a mistake to say that I would sit down and +rest, since I was never tired; and yet, without being tired, that +noon-day pause, during which I sat for an hour without moving, was +strangely grateful. All day there would be no sound, not even the +rustling of a leaf. One day, while <i>listening</i> to the silence, +it occurred to my mind to wonder what the effect would be if I were +to shout aloud. This seemed at the time a horrible suggestion, +which almost made me shudder. But during those solitary days it was +a rare thing for any thought to cross my mind. In the state of mind +I was in, thought had become impossible. My state was one of +<i>suspense</i> and <i>watchfulness</i>; yet I had no expectation +of meeting an adventure, and felt as free from apprehension as I +feel now while sitting in a room in London. The state seemed +familiar rather than strange, and accompanied by a strong feeling +of elation; and I did not know that something had come between me +and my intellect until I returned to my former self,—to +thinking, and the old insipid existence [again].</p> + +<p>"I had undoubtedly <i>gone back</i>; and that state of intense +watchfulness or alertness, rather, with suspension of the higher +intellectual faculties, represented the mental state of the pure +savage. He thinks little, reasons little, having a surer guide in +his [mere sensory perceptions]. He is in perfect harmony with +nature, and is nearly on a level, mentally, with the wild animals +he preys on, and which in their turn sometimes prey on him."<a +name="FNanchor_A_15" id="FNanchor_A_15" /><a href="#Footnote_A_15" +class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_A_15" id="Footnote_A_15" /><a +href="#FNanchor_A_15"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> <i>Op. +cit.</i>, pp. 210-222 (abridged).</p> +</div> + +<p>For the spectator, such hours as Mr. Hudson writes of form a +mere tale of emptiness, in which nothing happens, nothing is +gained, and there is nothing to describe. They are meaningless and +vacant tracts of time. To him who feels their inner secret, they +tingle with an importance that unutterably vouches for itself. I am +sorry for the boy or girl, or man or woman, who has never been +touched by the spell of this mysterious sensorial life, with its +irrationality, if so you like to call it, but its vigilance and its +supreme felicity. The holidays of life are its most vitally +significant portions, because they are, or at least should be, +covered with just this kind of magically irresponsible spell.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>And now what is the result of all these considerations and +quotations? It is negative in one sense, but positive in another. +It absolutely forbids us to be forward in pronouncing on the +meaninglessness of forms of existence other than our own; and it +commands us to tolerate, respect, and indulge those whom we see +harmlessly interested and happy in their own ways, however +unintelligible these may be to us. Hands off: neither the whole of +truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer, +although each observer gains a partial superiority of insight from +the peculiar position in which he stands. Even prisons and +sick-rooms have their special revelations. It is enough to ask of +each of us that he should be faithful to his own opportunities and +make the most of his own blessings, without presuming to regulate +the rest of the vast field.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="III__WHAT_MAKES_A_LIFE_SIGNIFICANT" +id="III__WHAT_MAKES_A_LIFE_SIGNIFICANT" />III. WHAT MAKES A LIFE +SIGNIFICANT</h2> + +<p>In my previous talk, 'On a Certain Blindness,' I tried to make +you feel how soaked and shot-through life is with values and +meanings which we fail to realize because of our external and +insensible point of view. The meanings are there for the others, +but they are not there for us. There lies more than a mere interest +of curious speculation in understanding this. It has the most +tremendous practical importance. I wish that I could convince you +of it as I feel it myself. It is the basis of all our tolerance, +social, religious, and political. The forgetting of it lies at the +root of every stupid and sanguinary mistake that rulers over +subject-peoples make. The first thing to learn in intercourse with +others is non-interference with their own peculiar ways of being +happy, provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence +with ours. No one has insight into all the ideals. No one should +presume to judge them off-hand. The pretension to dogmatize about +them in each other is the root of most human injustices and +cruelties, and the trait in human character most likely to make the +angels weep.</p> + +<p>Every Jack sees in his own particular Jill charms and +perfections to the enchantment of which we stolid onlookers are +stone-cold. And which has the superior view of the absolute truth, +he or we? Which has the more vital insight into the nature of +Jill's existence, as a fact? Is he in excess, being in this matter +a maniac? or are we in defect, being victims of a pathological +anæsthesia as regards Jill's magical importance? Surely the +latter; surely to Jack are the profounder truths revealed; surely +poor Jill's palpitating little life-throbs <i>are</i> among the +wonders of creation, <i>are</i> worthy of this sympathetic +interest; and it is to our shame that the rest of us cannot feel +like Jack. For Jack realizes Jill concretely, and we do not. He +struggles toward a union with her inner life, divining her +feelings, anticipating her desires, understanding her limits as +manfully as he can, and yet inadequately, too; for he is also +afflicted with some blindness, even here. Whilst we, dead clods +that we are, do not even seek after these things, but are contented +that that portion of eternal fact named Jill should be for us as if +it were not. Jill, who knows her inner life, knows that Jack's way +of taking it—so importantly—is the true and serious +way; and she responds to the truth in him by taking him truly and +seriously, too. May the ancient blindness never wrap its clouds +about either of them again! Where would any of <i>us</i> be, were +there no one willing to know us as we really are or ready to repay +us for <i>our</i> insight by making recognizant return? We ought, +all of us, to realize each other in this intense, pathetic, and +important way.</p> + +<p>If you say that this is absurd, and that we cannot be in love +with everyone at once, I merely point out to you that, as a matter +of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for +friendship and for taking delight in other people's lives; and that +such persons know more of truth than if their hearts were not so +big. The vice of ordinary Jack and Jill affection is not its +intensity, but its exclusions and its jealousies. Leave those out, +and you see that the ideal I am holding up before you, however +impracticable to-day, yet contains nothing intrinsically +absurd.</p> + +<p>We have unquestionably a great cloud-bank of ancestral blindness +weighing down upon us, only transiently riven here and there by +fitful revelations of the truth. It is vain to hope for this state +of things to alter much. Our inner secrets must remain for the most +part impenetrable by others, for beings as essentially practical as +we are are necessarily short of sight. But, if we cannot gain much +positive insight into one another, cannot we at least use our sense +of our own blindness to make us more cautious in going over the +dark places? Cannot we escape some of those hideous ancestral +intolerances and cruelties, and positive reversals of the +truth?</p> + +<p>For the remainder of this hour I invite you to seek with me some +principle to make our tolerance less chaotic. And, as I began my +previous lecture by a personal reminiscence, I am going to ask your +indulgence for a similar bit of egotism now.</p> + +<p>A few summers ago I spent a happy week at the famous Assembly +Grounds on the borders of Chautauqua Lake. The moment one treads +that sacred enclosure, one feels one's self in an atmosphere of +success. Sobriety and industry, intelligence and goodness, +orderliness and ideality, prosperity and cheerfulness, pervade the +air. It is a serious and studious picnic on a gigantic scale. Here +you have a town of many thousands of inhabitants, beautifully laid +out in the forest and drained, and equipped with means for +satisfying all the necessary lower and most of the superfluous +higher wants of man. You have a first-class college in full blast. +You have magnificent music—a chorus of seven hundred voices, +with possibly the most perfect open-air auditorium in the world. +You have every sort of athletic exercise from sailing, rowing, +swimming, bicycling, to the ball-field and the more artificial +doings which the gymnasium affords. You have kindergartens and +model secondary schools. You have general religious services and +special club-houses for the several sects. You have perpetually +running soda-water fountains, and daily popular lectures by +distinguished men. You have the best of company, and yet no effort. +You have no zymotic diseases, no poverty, no drunkenness, no crime, +no police. You have culture, you have kindness, you have cheapness, +you have equality, you have the best fruits of what mankind has +fought and bled and striven for tinder the name of civilization for +centuries. You have, in short, a foretaste of what human society +might be, were it all in the light, with no suffering and no dark +corners.</p> + +<p>I went in curiosity for a day. I stayed for a week, held +spell-bound by the charm and ease of everything, by the +middle-class paradise, without a sin, without a victim, without a +blot, without a tear.</p> + +<p>And yet what was my own astonishment, on emerging into the dark +and wicked world again, to catch myself quite unexpectedly and +involuntarily saying: "Ouf! what a relief! Now for something +primordial and savage, even though it were as bad as an Armenian +massacre, to set the balance straight again. This order is too +tame, this culture too second-rate, this goodness too uninspiring. +This human drama without a villain or a pang; this community so +refined that ice-cream soda-water is the utmost offering it can +make to the brute animal in man; this city simmering in the tepid +lakeside sun; this atrocious harmlessness of all things,—I +cannot abide with them. Let me take my chances again in the big +outside worldly wilderness with all its sins and sufferings. There +are the heights and depths, the precipices and the steep ideals, +the gleams of the awful and the infinite; and there is more hope +and help a thousand times than in this dead level and quintessence +of every mediocrity."</p> + +<p>Such was the sudden right-about-face performed for me by my +lawless fancy! There had been spread before me the +realization—on a small, sample scale of course—of all +the ideals for which our civilization has been striving: security, +intelligence, humanity, and order; and here was the instinctive +hostile reaction, not of the natural man, but of a so-called +cultivated man upon such a Utopia. There seemed thus to be a +self-contradiction and paradox somewhere, which I, as a professor +drawing a full salary, was in duty bound to unravel and explain, if +I could.</p> + +<p>So I meditated. And, first of all, I asked myself what the thing +was that was so lacking in this Sabbatical city, and the lack of +which kept one forever falling short of the higher sort of +contentment. And I soon recognized that it was the element that +gives to the wicked outer world all its moral style, expressiveness +and picturesqueness,—the element of precipitousness, so to +call it, of strength and strenuousness, intensity and danger.</p> + +<p>What excites and interests the looker-on at life, what the +romances and the statues celebrate and the grim civic monuments +remind us of, is the everlasting battle of the powers of light with +those of darkness; with heroism, reduced to its bare chance, yet +ever and anon snatching victory from the jaws of death. But in this +unspeakable Chautauqua there was no potentiality of death in sight +anywhere, and no point of the compass visible from which danger +might possibly appear. The ideal was so completely victorious +already that no sign of any previous battle remained, the place +just resting on its oars. But what our human emotions seem to +require is the sight of the struggle going on. The moment the +fruits are being merely eaten, things become ignoble. Sweat and +effort, human nature strained to its uttermost and on the rack, yet +getting through alive, and then turning its back on its success to +pursue another more rare and arduous still—this is the sort +of thing the presence of which inspires us, and the reality of +which it seems to be the function of all the higher forms of +literature and fine art to bring home to us and suggest. At +Chautauqua there were no racks, even in the place's historical +museum; and no sweat, except possibly the gentle moisture on the +brow of some lecturer, or on the sides of some player in the +ball-field.</p> + +<p>Such absence of human nature <i>in extremis</i> anywhere seemed, +then, a sufficient explanation for Chautauqua's flatness and lack +of zest.</p> + +<p>But was not this a paradox well calculated to fill one with +dismay? It looks indeed, thought I, as if the romantic idealists +with their pessimism about our civilization were, after all, quite +right. An irremediable flatness is coming over the world. +Bourgeoisie and mediocrity, church sociables and teachers' +conventions, are taking the place of the old heights and depths and +romantic chiaroscuro. And, to get human life in its wild intensity, +we must in future turn more and more away from the actual, and +forget it, if we can, in the romancer's or the poet's pages. The +whole world, delightful and sinful as it may still appear for a +moment to one just escaped from the Chautauquan enclosure, is +nevertheless obeying more and more just those ideals that are sure +to make of it in the end a mere Chautauqua Assembly on an enormous +scale. <i>Was im Gesang soll leben muss im Leben untergehn</i>. +Even now, in our own country, correctness, fairness, and compromise +for every small advantage are crowding out all other qualities. The +higher heroisms and the old rare flavors are passing out of life.<a +name="FNanchor_A_16" id="FNanchor_A_16" /><a href="#Footnote_A_16" +class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_A_16" id="Footnote_A_16" /><a +href="#FNanchor_A_16"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> This +address was composed before the Cuban and Philippine wars. Such +outbursts of the passion of mastery are, however, only episodes in +a social process which in the long run seems everywhere tending +toward the Chautauquan ideals.</p> +</div> + +<p>With these thoughts in my mind, I was speeding with the train +toward Buffalo, when, near that city, the sight of a workman doing +something on the dizzy edge of a sky-scaling iron construction +brought me to my senses very suddenly. And now I perceived, by a +flash of insight, that I had been steeping myself in pure ancestral +blindness, and looking at life with the eyes of a remote spectator. +Wishing for heroism and the spectacle of human nature on the rack, +I had never noticed the great fields of heroism lying round about +me, I had failed to see it present and alive. I could only think of +it as dead and embalmed, labelled and costumed, as it is in the +pages of romance. And yet there it was before me in the daily lives +of the laboring classes. Not in clanging fights and desperate +marches only is heroism to be looked for, but on every railway +bridge and fire-proof building that is going up to-day. On +freight-trains, on the decks of vessels, in cattle-yards and mines, +on lumber-rafts, among the firemen and the policemen, the demand +for courage is incessant; and the supply never fails. There, every +day of the year somewhere, is human nature <i>in extremis</i> for +you. And wherever a scythe, an axe, a pick, or a shovel is wielded, +you have it sweating and aching and with its powers of patient +endurance racked to the utmost under the length of hours of the +strain.</p> + +<p>As I awoke to all this unidealized heroic life around me, the +scales seemed to fall from my eyes; and a wave of sympathy greater +than anything I had ever before felt with the common life of common +men began to fill my soul. It began to seem as if virtue with horny +hands and dirty skin were the only virtue genuine and vital enough +to take account of. Every other virtue poses; none is absolutely +unconscious and simple, and unexpectant of decoration or +recognition, like this. These are our soldiers, thought I, these +our sustainers, these the very parents of our life.</p> + +<p>Many years ago, when in Vienna, I had had a similar feeling of +awe and reverence in looking at the peasant-women, in from the +country on their business at the market for the day. Old hags many +of them were, dried and brown and wrinkled, kerchiefed and +short-petticoated, with thick wool stockings on their bony shanks, +stumping through the glittering thoroughfares, looking neither to +the right nor the left, bent on duty, envying nothing, +humble-hearted, remote;—and yet at bottom, when you came to +think of it, bearing the whole fabric of the splendors and +corruptions of that city on their laborious backs. For where would +any of it have been without their unremitting, unrewarded labor in +the fields? And so with us: not to our generals and poets, I +thought, but to the Italian and Hungarian laborers in the Subway, +rather, ought the monuments of gratitude and reverence of a city +like Boston to be reared.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>If any of you have been readers of Tolstoï, you will see +that I passed into a vein of feeling similar to his, with its +abhorrence of all that conventionally passes for distinguished, and +its exclusive deification of the bravery, patience, kindliness, and +dumbness of the unconscious natural man.</p> + +<p>Where now is <i>our</i> Tolstoï, I said, to bring the truth +of all this home to our American bosoms, fill us with a better +insight, and wean us away from that spurious literary romanticism +on which our wretched culture—as it calls itself—is +fed? Divinity lies all about us, and culture is too hidebound to +even suspect the fact. Could a Howells or a Kipling be enlisted in +this mission? or are they still too deep in the ancestral +blindness, and not humane enough for the inner joy and meaning of +the laborer's existence to be really revealed? Must we wait for +some one born and bred and living as a laborer himself, but who, by +grace of Heaven, shall also find a literary voice?</p> + +<p>And there I rested on that day, with a sense of widening of +vision, and with what it is surely fair to call an increase of +religious insight into life. In God's eyes the differences of +social position, of intellect, of culture, of cleanliness, of +dress, which different men exhibit, and all the other rarities and +exceptions on which they so fantastically pin their pride, must be +so small as practically quite to vanish; and all that should remain +is the common fact that here we are, a countless multitude of +vessels of life, each of us pent in to peculiar difficulties, with +which we must severally struggle by using whatever of fortitude and +goodness we can summon up. The exercise of the courage, patience, +and kindness, must be the significant portion of the whole +business; and the distinctions of position can only be a manner of +diversifying the phenomenal surface upon which these underground +virtues may manifest their effects. At this rate, the deepest human +life is everywhere, is eternal. And, if any human attributes exist +only in particular individuals, they must belong to the mere +trapping and decoration of the surface-show.</p> + +<p>Thus are men's lives levelled up as well as levelled +down,—levelled up in their common inner meaning, levelled +down in their outer gloriousness and show. Yet always, we must +confess, this levelling insight tends to be obscured again; and +always the ancestral blindness returns and wraps us up, so that we +end once more by thinking that creation can be for no other purpose +than to develop remarkable situations and conventional distinctions +and merits. And then always some new leveller in the shape of a +religious prophet has to arise—the Buddha, the Christ, or +some Saint Francis, some Rousseau or Tolstoï—to redispel +our blindness. Yet, little by little, there comes some stable gain; +for the world does get more humane, and the religion of democracy +tends toward permanent increase.</p> + +<p>This, as I said, became for a time my conviction, and gave me +great content. I have put the matter into the form of a personal +reminiscence, so that I might lead you into it more directly and +completely, and so save time. But now I am going to discuss the +rest of it with you in a more impersonal way.</p> + +<p>Tolstoï's levelling philosophy began long before he had the +crisis of melancholy commemorated in that wonderful document of his +entitled 'My Confession,' which led the way to his more +specifically religious works. In his masterpiece 'War and +Peace,'—assuredly the greatest of human novels,—the +rôle of the spiritual hero is given to a poor little soldier +named Karataïeff, so helpful, so cheerful, and so devout that, +in spite of his ignorance and filthiness, the sight of him opens +the heavens, which have been closed, to the mind of the principal +character of the book; and his example evidently is meant by +Tolstoï to let God into the world again for the reader. Poor +little Karataïeff is taken prisoner by the French; and, when +too exhausted by hardship and fever to march, is shot as other +prisoners were in the famous retreat from Moscow. The last view one +gets of him is his little figure leaning against a white +birch-tree, and uncomplainingly awaiting the end.</p> + +<p>"The more," writes Tolstoï in the work 'My Confession,' +"the more I examined the life of these laboring folks, the more +persuaded I became that they veritably have faith, and get from it +alone the sense and the possibility of life.... Contrariwise to +those of our own class, who protest against destiny and grow +indignant at its rigor, these people receive maladies and +misfortunes without revolt, without opposition, and with a firm and +tranquil confidence that all had to be like that, could not be +otherwise, and that it is all right so.... The more we live by our +intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life. We see only +a cruel jest in suffering and death, whereas these people live, +suffer, and draw near to death with tranquillity, and oftener than +not with joy.... There are enormous multitudes of them happy with +the most perfect happiness, although deprived of what for us is the +sole good of life. Those who understand life's meaning, and know +how to live and die thus, are to be counted not by twos, threes, +tens, but by hundreds, thousands, millions. They labor quietly, +endure privations and pains, live and die, and throughout +everything see the good without seeing the vanity. I had to love +these people. The more I entered into their life, the more I loved +them; and the more it became possible for me to live, too. It came +about not only that the life of our society, of the learned and of +the rich, disgusted me—more than that, it lost all semblance +of meaning in my eyes. All our actions, our deliberations, our +sciences, our arts, all appeared to me with a new significance. I +understood that these things might be charming pastimes, but that +one need seek in them no depth, whereas the life of the +hard-working populace, of that multitude of human beings who really +contribute to existence, appeared to me in its true light. I +understood that there veritably is life, that the meaning which +life there receives is the truth; and I accepted it."<a +name="FNanchor_A_17" id="FNanchor_A_17" /><a href="#Footnote_A_17" +class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p> + +<p>In a similar way does Stevenson appeal to our piety toward the +elemental virtue of mankind.</p> + +<p>"What a wonderful thing," he writes,<a name="FNanchor_B_18" +id="FNanchor_B_18" /><a href="#Footnote_B_18" +class="fnanchor">[B]</a> "is this Man! How surprising are his +attributes! Poor soul, here for so little, cast among so many +hardships, savagely surrounded, savagely descended, irremediably +condemned to prey upon his fellow-lives,—who should have +blamed him, had he been of a piece with his destiny and a being +merely barbarous?... [Yet] it matters not where we look, under +what climate we observe him, in what stage of society, in what +depth of ignorance, burdened with what erroneous morality; in ships +at sea, a man inured to hardship and vile pleasures, his brightest +hope a fiddle in a tavern, and a bedizened trull who sells herself +to rob him, and he, for all that, simple, innocent, cheerful, +kindly like a child, constant to toil, brave to drown, for +others;... in the slums of cities, moving among indifferent +millions to mechanical employments, without hope of change in the +future, with scarce a pleasure in the present, and yet true to +his virtues, honest up to his lights, kind to his neighbors, +tempted perhaps in vain by the bright gin-palace,... often repaying +the world's scorn with service, often standing firm upon a +scruple;... everywhere some virtue cherished or affected, everywhere +some decency of thought and courage, everywhere the ensign of man's +ineffectual goodness,—ah! if I could show you this! If I +could show you these men and women all the world over, in every +stage of history, under every abuse of error, under every +circumstance of failure, without hope, without help, without +thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still +clinging to some rag of honor, the poor jewel of their souls."</p> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_A_17" id="Footnote_A_17" /><a +href="#FNanchor_A_17"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> My +Confession, X. (condensed).</p> +</div> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_B_18" id="Footnote_B_18" /><a +href="#FNanchor_B_18"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> Across the +Plains: "Pulvis et Umbra" (abridged).</p> +</div> + +<p>All this is as true as it is splendid, and terribly do we need +our Tolstoïs and Stevensons to keep our sense for it alive. +Yet you remember the Irishman who, when asked, "Is not one man as +good as another?" replied, "Yes; and a great deal better, too!" +Similarly (it seems to me) does Tolstoï overcorrect our social +prejudices, when he makes his love of the peasant so exclusive, and +hardens his heart toward the educated man as absolutely as he does. +Grant that at Chautauqua there was little moral effort, little +sweat or muscular strain in view. Still, deep down in the souls of +the participants we may be sure that something of the sort was hid, +some inner stress, some vital virtue not found wanting when +required. And, after all, the question recurs, and forces itself +upon us, Is it so certain that the surroundings and circumstances +of the virtue do make so little difference in the importance of the +result? Is the functional utility, the worth to the universe of a +certain definite amount of courage, kindliness, and patience, no +greater if the possessor of these virtues is in an educated +situation, working out far-reaching tasks, than if he be an +illiterate nobody, hewing wood and drawing water, just to keep +himself alive? Tolstoï's philosophy, deeply enlightening +though it certainly is, remains a false abstraction. It savors too +much of that Oriental pessimism and nihilism of his, which declares +the whole phenomenal world and its facts and their distinctions to +be a cunning fraud.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>A mere bare fraud is just what our Western common sense will +never believe the phenomenal world to be. It admits fully that the +inner joys and virtues are the <i>essential</i> part of life's +business, but it is sure that <i>some</i> positive part is also +played by the adjuncts of the show. If it is idiotic in romanticism +to recognize the heroic only when it sees it labelled and +dressed-up in books, it is really just as idiotic to see it only in +the dirty boots and sweaty shirt of some one in the fields. It is +with us really under every disguise: at Chautauqua; here in your +college; in the stock-yards and on the freight-trains; and in the +czar of Russia's court. But, instinctively, we make a combination +of two things in judging the total significance of a human being. +We feel it to be some sort of a product (if such a product only +could be calculated) of his inner virtue <i>and</i> his outer +place,—neither singly taken, but both conjoined. If the outer +differences had no meaning for life, why indeed should all this +immense variety of them exist? They <i>must</i> be significant +elements of the world as well.</p> + +<p>Just test Tolstoï's deification of the mere manual laborer +by the facts. This is what Mr. Walter Wyckoff, after working as an +unskilled laborer in the demolition of some buildings at West +Point, writes of the spiritual condition of the class of men to +which he temporarily chose to belong:—</p> + +<p>"The salient features of our condition are plain enough. We are +grown men, and are without a trade. In the labor-market we stand +ready to sell to the highest bidder our mere muscular strength for +so many hours each day. We are thus in the lowest grade of labor. +And, selling our muscular strength in the open market for what it +will bring, we sell it under peculiar conditions. It is all the +capital that we have. We have no reserve means of subsistence, and +cannot, therefore, stand off for a 'reserve price.' We sell under +the necessity of satisfying imminent hunger. Broadly speaking, we +must sell our labor or starve; and, as hunger is a matter of a few +hours, and we have no other way of meeting this need, we must sell +at once for what the market offers for our labor.</p> + +<p>"Our employer is buying labor in a dear market, and he will +certainly get from us as much work as he can at the price. The +gang-boss is secured for this purpose, and thoroughly does he know +his business. He has sole command of us. He never saw us before, +and he will discharge us all when the débris is cleared +away. In the mean time he must get from us, if he can, the utmost +of physical labor which we, individually and collectively, are +capable of. If he should drive some of us to exhaustion, and we +should not be able to continue at work, he would not be the loser; +for the market would soon supply him with others to take our +places.</p> + +<p>"We are ignorant men, but so much we clearly see,—that we +have sold our labor where we could sell it dearest, and our +employer has bought it where he could buy it cheapest. He has paid +high, and he must get all the labor that he can; and, by a strong +instinct which possesses us, we shall part with as little as we +can. From work like ours there seems to us to have been eliminated +every element which constitutes the nobility of labor. We feel no +personal pride in its progress, and no community of interest with +our employer. There is none of the joy of responsibility, none of +the sense of achievement, only the dull monotony of grinding toil, +with the longing for the signal to quit work, and for our wages at +the end.</p> + +<p>"And being what we are, the dregs of the labor-market, and +having no certainty of permanent employment, and no organization +among ourselves, we must expect to work under the watchful eye of a +gang-boss, and be driven, like the wage-slaves that we are, through +our tasks.</p> + +<p>"All this is to tell us, in effect, that our lives are hard, +barren, hopeless lives."</p> + +<p>And such hard, barren, hopeless lives, surely, are not lives in +which one ought to be willing permanently to remain. And why is +this so? Is it because they are so dirty? Well, Nansen grew a great +deal dirtier on his polar expedition; and we think none the worse +of his life for that. Is it the insensibility? Our soldiers have to +grow vastly more insensible, and we extol them to the skies. Is it +the poverty? Poverty has been reckoned the crowning beauty of many +a heroic career. Is it the slavery to a task, the loss of finer +pleasures?</p> + +<p>Such slavery and loss are of the very essence of the higher +fortitude, and are always counted to its credit,—read the +records of missionary devotion all over the world. It is not any +one of these things, then, taken by itself,—no, nor all of +them together,—that make such a life undesirable. A man might +in truth live like an unskilled laborer, and do the work of one, +and yet count as one of the noblest of God's creatures. Quite +possibly there were some such persons in the gang that our author +describes; but the current of their souls ran underground; and he +was too steeped in the ancestral blindness to discern it.</p> + +<p>If there <i>were</i> any such morally exceptional individuals, +however, what made them different from the rest? It can only have +been this,—that their souls worked and endured in obedience +to some inner <i>ideal</i>, while their comrades were not actuated +by anything worthy of that name. These ideals of other lives are +among those secrets that we can almost never penetrate, although +something about the man may often tell us when they are there. In +Mr. Wyckoff's own case we know exactly what the self-imposed ideal +was. Partly he had stumped himself, as the boys say, to carry +through a strenuous achievement; but mainly he wished to enlarge +his sympathetic insight into fellow-lives. For this his sweat and +toil acquire a certain heroic significance, and make us accord to +him exceptional esteem. But it is easy to imagine his fellows with +various other ideals. To say nothing of wives and babies, one may +have been a convert of the Salvation Army, and had a nightingale +singing of expiation and forgiveness in his heart all the while he +labored. Or there might have been an apostle like Tolstoï +himself, or his compatriot Bondareff, in the gang, voluntarily +embracing labor as their religious mission. Class-loyalty was +undoubtedly an ideal with many. And who knows how much of that +higher manliness of poverty, of which Phillips Brooks has spoken so +penetratingly, was or was not present in that gang?</p> + +<p>"A rugged, barren land," says Phillips Brooks, "is poverty to +live in,—a land where I am thankful very often if I can get a +berry or a root to eat. But living in it really, letting it bear +witness to me of itself, not dishonoring it all the time by judging +it after the standard of the other lands, gradually there come out +its qualities. Behold! no land like this barren and naked land of +poverty could show the moral geology of the world. See how the hard +ribs ... stand out strong and solid. No life like poverty could so +get one to the heart of things and make men know their meaning, +could so let us feel life and the world with all the soft cushions +stripped off and thrown away.... Poverty makes men come very near +each other, and recognize each other's human hearts; and poverty, +highest and best of all, demands and cries out for faith in God.... +I know how superficial and unfeeling, how like mere mockery, words +in praise of poverty may seem.... But I am sure that the poor man's +dignity and freedom, his self-respect and energy, depend upon his +cordial knowledge that his poverty is a true region and kind of +life, with its own chances of character, its own springs of +happiness and revelations of God. Let him resist the +characterlessness which often goes with being poor. Let him insist +on respecting the condition where he lives. Let him learn to love +it, so that by and by, [if] he grows rich, he shall go out of the +low door of the old familiar poverty with a true pang of regret, +and with a true honor for the narrow home in which he has lived so +long."<a name="FNanchor_A_19" id="FNanchor_A_19" /><a +href="#Footnote_A_19" class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_A_19" id="Footnote_A_19" /><a +href="#FNanchor_A_19"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> Sermons. +5th Series, New York, 1893, pp. 166, 167.</p> +</div> + +<p>The barrenness and ignobleness of the more usual laborer's life +consist in the fact that it is moved by no such ideal inner +springs. The backache, the long hours, the danger, are patiently +endured—for what? To gain a quid of tobacco, a glass of beer, +a cup of coffee, a meal, and a bed, and to begin again the next day +and shirk as much as one can. This really is why we raise no +monument to the laborers in the Subway, even though they be our +conscripts, and even though after a fashion our city is indeed +based upon their patient hearts and enduring backs and shoulders. +And this is why we do raise monuments to our soldiers, whose +outward conditions were even brutaller still. The soldiers are +supposed to have followed an ideal, and the laborers are supposed +to have followed none.</p> + +<p>You see, my friends, how the plot now thickens; and how +strangely the complexities of this wonderful human nature of ours +begin to develop under our hands. We have seen the blindness and +deadness to each other which are our natural inheritance; and, in +spite of them, we have been led to acknowledge an inner meaning +which passeth show, and which may be present in the lives of others +where we least descry it. And now we are led to say that such inner +meaning can be <i>complete</i> and <i>valid for us also</i>, only +when the inner joy, courage, and endurance are joined with an +ideal.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>But what, exactly, do we mean by an ideal? Can we give no +definite account of such a word?</p> + +<p>To a certain extent we can. An ideal, for instance, must be +something intellectually conceived, something of which we are not +unconscious, if we have it; and it must carry with it that sort of +outlook, uplift, and brightness that go with all intellectual +facts. Secondly, there must be <i>novelty</i> in an +ideal,—novelty at least for him whom the ideal grasps. Sodden +routine is incompatible with ideality, although what is sodden +routine for one person may be ideal novelty for another. This shows +that there is nothing absolutely ideal: ideals are relative to the +lives that entertain them. To keep out of the gutter is for us here +no part of consciousness at all, yet for many of our brethren it is +the most legitimately engrossing of ideals.</p> + +<p>Now, taken nakedly, abstractly, and immediately, you see that +mere ideals are the cheapest things in life. Everybody has them in +some shape or other, personal or general, sound or mistaken, low or +high; and the most worthless sentimentalists and dreamers, +drunkards, shirks and verse-makers, who never show a grain of +effort, courage, or endurance, possibly have them on the most +copious scale. Education, enlarging as it does our horizon and +perspective, is a means of multiplying our ideals, of bringing new +ones into view. And your college professor, with a starched shirt +and spectacles, would, if a stock of ideals were all alone by +itself enough to render a life significant, be the most absolutely +and deeply significant of men. Tolstoï would be completely +blind in despising him for a prig, a pedant and a parody; and all +our new insight into the divinity of muscular labor would be +altogether off the track of truth.</p> + +<p>But such consequences as this, you instinctively feel, are +erroneous. The more ideals a man has, the more contemptible, on the +whole, do you continue to deem him, if the matter ends there for +him, and if none of the laboring man's virtues are called into +action on his part,—no courage shown, no privations +undergone, no dirt or scars contracted in the attempt to get them +realized. It is quite obvious that something more than the mere +possession of ideals is required to make a life significant in any +sense that claims the spectator's admiration. Inner joy, to be +sure, it may <i>have</i>, with its ideals; but that is its own +private sentimental matter. To extort from us, outsiders as we are, +with our own ideals to look after, the tribute of our grudging +recognition, it must back its ideal visions with what the laborers +have, the sterner stuff of manly virtue; it must multiply their +sentimental surface by the dimension of the active will, if we are +to have <i>depth</i>, if we are to have anything cubical and solid +in the way of character.</p> + +<p>The significance of a human life for communicable and publicly +recognizable purposes is thus the offspring of a marriage of two +different parents, either of whom alone is barren. The ideals taken +by themselves give no reality, the virtues by themselves no +novelty. And let the orientalists and pessimists say what they +will, the thing of deepest—or, at any rate, of comparatively +deepest—significance in life does seem to be its character of +<i>progress</i>, or that strange union of reality with ideal +novelty which it continues from one moment to another to present. +To recognize ideal novelty is the task of what we call +intelligence. Not every one's intelligence can tell which novelties +are ideal. For many the ideal thing will always seem to cling still +to the older more familiar good. In this case character, though not +significant totally, may be still significant pathetically. So, if +we are to choose which is the more essential factor of human +character, the fighting virtue or the intellectual breadth, we must +side with Tolstoï, and choose that simple faithfulness to his +light or darkness which any common unintellectual man can show.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> + + +<p>But, with all this beating and tacking on my part, I fear you +take me to be reaching a confused result. I seem to be just taking +things up and dropping them again. First I took up Chautauqua, and +dropped that; then Tolstoï and the heroism of common toil, and +dropped them; finally, I took up ideals, and seem now almost +dropping those. But please observe in what sense it is that I drop +them. It is when they pretend <i>singly</i> to redeem life from +insignificance. Culture and refinement all alone are not enough to +do so. Ideal aspirations are not enough, when uncombined with pluck +and will. But neither are pluck and will, dogged endurance and +insensibility to danger enough, when taken all alone. There must be +some sort of fusion, some chemical combination among these +principles, for a life objectively and thoroughly significant to +result.</p> + +<p>Of course, this is a somewhat vague conclusion. But in a +question of significance, of worth, like this, conclusions can +never be precise. The answer of appreciation, of sentiment, is +always a more or a less, a balance struck by sympathy, insight, and +good will. But it is an answer, all the same, a real conclusion. +And, in the course of getting it, it seems to me that our eyes have +been opened to many important things. Some of you are, perhaps, +more livingly aware than you were an hour ago of the depths of +worth that lie around you, hid in alien lives. And, when you ask +how much sympathy you ought to bestow, although the amount is, +truly enough, a matter of ideal on your own part, yet in this +notion of the combination of ideals with active virtues you have a +rough standard for shaping your decision. In any case, your +imagination is extended. You divine in the world about you matter +for a little more humility on your own part, and tolerance, +reverence, and love for others; and you gain a certain inner +joyfulness at the increased importance of our common life. Such +joyfulness is a religious inspiration and an element of spiritual +health, and worth more than large amounts of that sort of technical +and accurate information which we professors are supposed to be +able to impart.</p> + +<p>To show the sort of thing I mean by these words, I will just +make one brief practical illustration and then close.</p> + +<p>We are suffering to-day in America from what is called the +labor-question; and, when you go out into the world, you will each +and all of you be caught up in its perplexities. I use the brief +term labor-question to cover all sorts of anarchistic discontents +and socialistic projects, and the conservative resistances which +they provoke. So far as this conflict is unhealthy and +regrettable,—and I think it is so only to a limited +extent,—the unhealthiness consists solely in the fact that +one-half of our fellow-countrymen remain entirely blind to the +internal significance of the lives of the other half. They miss the +joys and sorrows, they fail to feel the moral virtue, and they do +not guess the presence of the intellectual ideals. They are at +cross-purposes all along the line, regarding each other as they +might regard a set of dangerously gesticulating automata, or, if +they seek to get at the inner motivation, making the most horrible +mistakes. Often all that the poor man can think of in the rich man +is a cowardly greediness for safety, luxury, and effeminacy, and a +boundless affectation. What he is, is not a human being, but a +pocket-book, a bank-account. And a similar greediness, turned by +disappointment into envy, is all that many rich men can see in the +state of mind of the dissatisfied poor. And, if the rich man begins +to do the sentimental act over the poor man, what senseless +blunders does he make, pitying him for just those very duties and +those very immunities which, rightly taken, are the condition of +his most abiding and characteristic joys! Each, in short, ignores +the fact that happiness and unhappiness and significance are a +vital mystery; each pins them absolutely on some ridiculous feature +of the external situation; and everybody remains outside of +everybody else's sight.</p> + +<p>Society has, with all this, undoubtedly got to pass toward some +newer and better equilibrium, and the distribution of wealth has +doubtless slowly got to change: such changes have always happened, +and will happen to the end of time. But if, after all that I have +said, any of you expect that they will make any <i>genuine vital +difference</i> on a large scale, to the lives of our descendants, +you will have missed the significance of my entire lecture. The +solid meaning of life is always the same eternal thing,—the +marriage, namely, of some unhabitual ideal, however special, with +some fidelity, courage, and endurance; with some man's or woman's +pains.—And, whatever or wherever life may be, there will +always be the chance for that marriage to take place.</p> + +<p>Fitz-James Stephen wrote many years ago words to this effect +more eloquent than any I can speak: "The 'Great Eastern,' or some +of her successors," he said, "will perhaps defy the roll of the +Atlantic, and cross the seas without allowing their passengers to +feel that they have left the firm land. The voyage from the cradle +to the grave may come to be performed with similar facility. +Progress and science may perhaps enable untold millions to live and +die without a care, without a pang, without an anxiety. They will +have a pleasant passage and plenty of brilliant conversation. They +will wonder that men ever believed at all in clanging fights and +blazing towns and sinking ships and praying hands; and, when they +come to the end of their course, they will go their way, and the +place thereof will know them no more. But it seems unlikely that +they will have such a knowledge of the great ocean on which they +sail, with its storms and wrecks, its currents and icebergs, its +huge waves and mighty winds, as those who battled with it for years +together in the little craft, which, if they had few other merits, +brought those who navigated them full into the presence of time and +eternity, their maker and themselves, and forced them to have some +definite view of their relations to them and to each other."<a +name="FNanchor_A_20" id="FNanchor_A_20" /><a href="#Footnote_A_20" +class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"> +<p><a name="Footnote_A_20" id="Footnote_A_20" /><a +href="#FNanchor_A_20"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> Essays by +a Barrister, London, 1862, p. 318.</p> +</div> + +<p>In this solid and tridimensional sense, so to call it, those +philosophers are right who contend that the world is a standing +thing, with no progress, no real history. The changing conditions +of history touch only the surface of the show. The altered +equilibriums and redistributions only diversify our opportunities +and open chances to us for new ideals. But, with each new ideal +that comes into life, the chance for a life based on some old ideal +will vanish; and he would needs be a presumptuous calculator who +should with confidence say that the total sum of significances is +positively and absolutely greater at any one epoch than at any +other of the world.</p> + +<p>I am speaking broadly, I know, and omitting to consider certain +qualifications in which I myself believe. But one can only make one +point in one lecture, and I shall be well content if I have brought +my point home to you this evening in even a slight degree. <i>There +are compensations</i>: and no outward changes of condition in life +can keep the nightingale of its eternal meaning from singing in all +sorts of different men's hearts. That is the main fact to remember. +If we could not only admit it with our lips, but really and truly +believe it, how our convulsive insistencies, how our antipathies +and dreads of each other, would soften down! If the poor and the +rich could look at each other in this way, <i>sub specie +æternatis</i>, how gentle would grow their disputes! what +tolerance and good humor, what willingness to live and let live, +would come into the world!</p> + +<p>THE END.</p> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And +To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals, by William James + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TALKS TO TEACHERS *** + +***** This file should be named 16287-h.htm or 16287-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/2/8/16287/ + +Produced by David Newman, Dave Macfarlane and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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