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diff --git a/16287.txt b/16287.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..decc986 --- /dev/null +++ b/16287.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6486 @@ +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: ASCII + +*** 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 + + + + + + + +#TALKS TO TEACHERS# + +ON PSYCHOLOGY: AND TO +STUDENTS ON SOME OF LIFE'S +IDEALS, By WILLIAM JAMES + +#NEW YORK +HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY# +#1925# + + +#COPYRIGHT, 1899, 1900# +#BY WILLIAM JAMES# + +#PRESS OF GEO. H. ELLIS CO. (INC.) BOSTON# + + +PREFACE. + +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. + +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. + +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. _He_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _where_. + +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 _vi et armis_ 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. + +CAMBRIDGE, MASS., March, 1899. + +CONTENTS. + + +TALKS TO TEACHERS. + +I. PSYCHOLOGY AND THE TEACHING ART + +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. + +II. THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS + +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. + +III. THE CHILD AS A BEHAVING ORGANISM + +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. + +IV. EDUCATION AND BEHAVIOR + +Education defined,--Conduct is always its outcome,--Different +national ideals: Germany and England. + +V. THE NECESSITY OF REACTIONS + +No impression without expression,--Verbal reproduction,--Manual +training,--Pupils should know their 'marks'. + +VI. NATIVE AND ACQUIRED REACTIONS + +The acquired reactions must be preceded by native ones,--Illustration: +teaching child to ask instead of snatching,--Man has more instincts than +other mammals. + +VII. WHAT THE NATIVE REACTIONS ARE + +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. + +VIII. THE LAWS OF HABIT + +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. + +IX. THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS + +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. + +X. INTEREST + +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. + +XI. ATTENTION + +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. + +XII. MEMORY + +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 _versus_ 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. + +XIII. THE ACQUISITION OF IDEAS + +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. + +XIV. APPERCEPTION + +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. + +XV. THE WILL + +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. + + +TALKS TO STUDENTS. + +I. THE GOSPEL OF RELAXATION + +II. ON A CERTAIN BLINDNESS IN HUMAN BEINGS + +III. WHAT MAKES A LIFE SIGNIFICANT? + + * * * * * + + + + +TALKS TO TEACHERS + + + + +I. PSYCHOLOGY AND THE TEACHING ART + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _is_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _agree_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Least of all need you, merely _as teachers_, 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 Muensterberg, 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. + +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. + +So much for what seems the most reasonable general attitude of the +teacher toward the subject which is to occupy our attention. + + + + +II. THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS + + +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. + +Now the _immediate_ 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), _some kind of consciousness is +always going on_. 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. + +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 _how_ 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 _do not know_ 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. + +_We have thus fields of consciousness_,--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. + +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. + +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 _centre_ or _focus_, the thoughts and feelings the +_margin_, of your actually present conscious field. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + * * * * * + +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. + +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. + +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] + + [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: + + "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.... + + "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' [_reproducirten Vorstellungen_] 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."--_Philosophische Studien_, 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. + + + + +III. THE CHILD AS A BEHAVING ORGANISM + + +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 _functions_. + +It has two functions that are obvious: it leads to knowledge, and it +leads to action. + +Can we say which of these functions is the more essential? + +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 +_rational_ 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. + +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. + +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 +aesthetic 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. + +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. + +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 _sine qua non_ 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. + +The reasons why I call it so fundamental can be easily told. + +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. + +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. + +Third, those very functions of the mind that do not refer directly to +this world's environment, the ethical utopias, aesthetic 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. + +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 _must_ 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. + +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 _training the pupil to behavior_; 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. + +The reaction may, indeed, often be a negative reaction. _Not_ to speak, +_not_ 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. + + + + +IV. EDUCATION AND BEHAVIOR + + +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 _resources_ 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 _the organization of acquired habits of +conduct and tendencies to behavior_. + +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. + +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. + +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 _be_ 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. + + + + +V. THE NECESSITY OF REACTIONS + + +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. + +_No reception without reaction, no impression without correlative +expression_,--this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to +forget. + +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 _motor consequences_ 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 _sensation of having acted_, 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. + +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. + +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 _doing_ 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. + +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. + + * * * * * + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +VI. NATIVE REACTIONS AND ACQUIRED REACTIONS + + +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. _Our education means, in short, little more +than a mass of possibilities of reaction,_ acquired at home, at school, +or in the training of affairs. The teacher's task is that of supervising +the acquiring process. + +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:-- + +_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._ + +_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_. + +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 _do_ 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 _no_ way to the teacher's +first appeals, and how can you possibly take the first step in his +education? + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +[Illustration: FIGURE 1. THE BRAIN-PROCESSES BEFORE EDUCATION.] + +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. + +[Illustration: FIGURE 2. THE BRAIN-PROCESS AFTER EDUCATION.] + +In Figure 2 we have the final result. The impression _see_ awakens the +chain of memories, and the only reactions that take place are the _beg_ +and _smile_. The thought of the _slap_, connected with the activity of +Centre 2, inhibits the _snatch_, and makes it abortive, so it is +represented only by a dotted line of discharge not reaching the +terminus. Ditto of the _cry_ reaction. These are, as it were, +short-circuited by the current sweeping through the higher centres from +_see_ to _smile_. _Beg_ and _smile_, thus substituted for the original +reaction _snatch_, become at last the immediate responses when the +child sees a snatchable object in some one's hands. + +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. + + * * * * * + +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 _simply_ 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. + +I will therefore say a few words about those instinctive tendencies +which are the most important from the teacher's point of view. + + + + +VII. WHAT THE NATIVE REACTIONS ARE + + +First of all, _Fear_. 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. + +The same is true of _Love_, 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. + +Next, a word might be said about _Curiosity_. This is perhaps a rather +poor term by which to designate the _impulse toward better cognition_ 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. + +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. + +_Imitation_. Man has always been recognized as the imitative animal +_par excellence_. 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. + +Imitation shades imperceptibly into _Emulation_. 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 'Emile,' branded rivalry between one pupil and another +as too base a passion to play a part in an ideal education. "Let Emile," +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." + +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. + +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. + +As imitation slides into emulation, so emulation slides into +_Ambition_; and ambition connects itself closely with _Pugnacity_ and +_Pride_. 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 _Ambitious Impulses_ would perhaps +be the best name for the whole group. + +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. _Soft_ 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 _can_ 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. + +The next instinct which I shall mention is that of _Ownership_, 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. + +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. + +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. + +_Constructiveness_ 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 _consciousness_. To the very last, in most of +us, the conceptions of objects and their properties are limited to the +notion of what we can _do with them_. 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +The acquired reactions must be made habitual whenever they are +appropriate. Therefore Habit is the next subject to which your attention +is invited. + + + + +VIII. THE LAWS OF HABIT + + +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. + +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. + +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) _grown_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +To quote my earlier book directly, the great thing in all education is +to _make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy_. It is to +fund and capitalize our acquisitions, and live at ease upon the +interest of the fund. _For this we must make automatic and habitual, as +early as possible, as many useful actions as we can_, 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. + +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 _launch ourselves with +as strong and decided an initiative as possible_. 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. + +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. + +The second maxim is, _Never suffer an exception to occur till the new +habit is securely rooted in your life_. 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:-- + +"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." + +A third maxim may be added to the preceding pair: _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._ 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. + +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. + +This leads to a fourth maxim. _Don't preach too much to your pupils or +abound in good talk in the abstract_. 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 _behavior_ 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. + + * * * * * + +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." + +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 +_to-day. _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 _now_ 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. + +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. + +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.[B] + + [B] See the Address on the Gospel of Relaxation, later in + this volume. + + * * * * * + +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: _Keep the +faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every +day._ 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 _does_ 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. + + * * * * * + +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 _can_ 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.' + +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. + +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 +_power of judging_ 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. + + + + +IX. THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS + + +In my last talk, in treating of Habit, I chiefly had in mind our _motor_ +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. + +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. + +The _Law of Contiguity_ tells us that objects thought of in the coming +wave are such as in some previous experience were _next_ 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. + +The _Law of Similarity_ says that, when contiguity fails to describe +what happens, the coming objects will prove to _resemble_ the going +objects, even though the two were never experienced together before. In +our 'flights of fancy,' this is frequently the case. + +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. + +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 _analogy_ 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. + + * * * * * + +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 _fact_ 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. + +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 _building up useful systems of association_ 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. + +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, _Why does just this particular field +of consciousness, constituted in this particular way, now appear before +my mind?_ 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 _run_ 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. + +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. + +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 _in +concreto_ 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. + +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 Muensterberg +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. + +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. + + * * * * * + +One more point, and I shall have said as much to you as seems necessary +about the process of association. + +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 _tends_ 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 _constellation_, +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +X. INTEREST + + +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 _interesting_ in themselves and originally. +Of the latter we say that they are natively uninteresting, and that +interest in them has first to be acquired. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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? + +Fortunately, we can: there is a very simple law that relates the +acquired and the native interests with each other. + +_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._ 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. + +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. + +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. +_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_. 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. + +_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._ + +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. + + * * * * * + +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 _to attend with_, 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. + +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. + +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 +_original_ source of interest in all of them is the native interest +which the earliest one once possessed. + + + + +XI. ATTENTION + + +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. + +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. _But +a little introspective observation will show any one that voluntary +attention cannot be continuously sustained,--that it comes in beats._ +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. + +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. + +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. + +The prescription is that _the subject must be made to show new aspects +of itself; to prompt new questions; in a word, to change_. 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. + +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. + +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. + + * * * * * + +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. + +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 _where_ to look and of _what_ 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. + +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. + +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 _in_ 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. + +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. + +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? + +A word or two will obviate what might perhaps become a serious +misunderstanding here. + +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. + +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 _without effort_. Effort always +has to go on, derived interest, for the most part, not awakening +attention that is _easy_, 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 _to let loose the effort_. The teacher, therefore, need never +concern himself about _inventing_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _care_ 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. + + + + +XII. MEMORY + + +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. + +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 _explanation of our general power to +recall_, 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. + +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 _cue_. 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 _'cue'_ 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 _contiguously associated_ 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, re, 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 +_introduced_; 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. + +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 _needed_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +Let us consider each of these points in turn. + +First, the persistency of the associations. This gives what may be +called the _quality of native retentiveness_ 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 cyclopaedia 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. + +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. + +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 _about_ the fact as +much as possible? Briefly, then, of two men with the same outward +experiences, _the one who thinks over his experiences most_, and weaves +them into the most systematic relations with each other, will be the one +with the best memory. + +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 +paedagogic consequence follows. _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_; 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 +_savants_ will readily think of examples of the class of mind I mean. + +The best possible sort of system into which to weave an object, +mentally, is a _rational_ 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. + +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. + +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 _ways of thinking_ 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 _t_ or _d_; 2, _n_; 3, _m_; 4, +_r_; 5, _l_; 6, _sh, j, ch_, or _g_; 7, _c, k, g_, or _qu_; 8, _f_ or +_v_; 9, _b_ or _p_; 0, _s, c_, or _z_. Suppose, now, you wish to +remember the velocity of sound, 1,142 feet a second: _t, t, r, n_, are +the letters you must use. They make the consonants of _tight run_, 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 +_sharp_, which recalls the headsman's axe. + +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 +_vibgyor_ 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. + +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. + +It follows also, from what has been said, that _the popular idea that +'the Memory,' in the sense of a general elementary faculty, can be +improved by training, is a great mistake_. 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 _their_ 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. + +But, after what I have said, I am sure you will need no farther argument +on this point; and I therefore pass it by. + +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. + +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 _the sentences_, but to +analyze _them and think_." Then finally insert the words '_by mere +reiteration_,' and the sentence is complete, and both better understood +and quicker remembered than by a more purely mechanical method. + + * * * * * + +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 +_immediate memory_ 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. + +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. + +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,--_not_ the most _intellectually capable subjects_, 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. + +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. + +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, _really_ wish these things, and wish +them with exclusiveness, and not wish at the same time a hundred other +incompatible things just as strongly. + +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. + +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. + +One word about the unconscious and unreproducible part of our +acquisitions, and I shall have done with the topic of memory. + +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. + +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 _amount of +forgetting_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 +_thinking_; 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 _impress_ and _retain_ it as to _connect_ it +with something else already there. The connecting _is_ the thinking; +and, if we attend clearly to the connection, the connected thing will +certainly be likely to remain within recall. + +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. + + + + +XIII. THE ACQUISITION OF IDEAS + + +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 _date_. +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 Caesar,' or classes of +things, like 'animal kingdom,' or, finally, entirely abstract +attributes, like 'rationality' or 'rectitude.' + +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. + +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. + +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. +_Constructiveness_ 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. + +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. + +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. _Feed_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _igneous fusion_." 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 _the_ 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 +_launch_ the pupils, with some concrete conceptions of the facts +concerned, upon the more abstract ideas. + +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. + +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." + +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, + + "I'll row you o'er the ferry. + It is not for your silver bright, + But for your winsome lady," + +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 + + "Ring out the _food_ of rich and poor, + Ring in _redness_ to all mankind," + +and finding no inward difficulty. + +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. + +Let us next pass to the subject of Apperception. + + + + +XIV. APPERCEPTION + + +'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:-- + + #WHAT IS APPERCEPTION?# + + For an explanation of Apperception see Blank's PSYCHOLOGY, + Vol. ---- of the ---- Education Series, just published. + + The difference between Perception and Apperception is + explained for the teacher in the preface to Blank's + PSYCHOLOGY. + + 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. + + 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. + + Blank's PSYCHOLOGY will be mailed prepaid to any address on + receipt of $1.00. + + +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. + +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. + +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 _reminds_ 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 +_conceive_ 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. + +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. + +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 _absolutely_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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! + +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. + +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 _tertium quid_ 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 _tertium quid_. The foreign +terms 'desequilibre,' 'hereditary degenerate,' and 'psychopathic' +subject, have arisen in response to the same need. + +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. + +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. + +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 _names_ 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. + +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. + + + + +XV. THE WILL + + +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 _fiat_ on the mind's part, must precede their execution. + +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. + +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. + +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, _must_ pass over into +motion, open or concealed. + +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. + +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 _inhibit_ the motor effects of the first idea, A. One +word, then, about 'inhibition' in general, to make this particular case +more clear. + +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. +_Nerves of arrest_ 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.' + +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:-- + +(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 + +(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. + +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? + +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. + +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.' + +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. + +Let us humor it for a while, for it has advantages in the way of +exposition. + +_Voluntary action, then, is at all times a resultant of the compounding +of our impulsions with our inhibitions._ + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _character_ 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. + +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 _prohibition_, 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. + +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. + +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 _too reasonable_ 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. + +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. + +If, then, you are asked, "_In what does a moral act consist_ when +reduced to its simplest and most elementary form?" you can make only +one reply. You can say that _it consists in the effort of attention by +which we hold fast to an idea_ which but for that effort of attention +would be driven out of the mind by the other psychological tendencies +that are there. _To think_, in short, is the secret of will, just as it +is the secret of memory. + +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 +_thought_," they say. "I never _thought_ how mean the action was, I +never _thought_ of these abominable consequences." And what do we retort +when they say this? We say: "Why _didn't_ you think? What were you there +for but to think?" And we read them a moral lecture on their +irreflectiveness. + +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 _name_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _produced_ by a nervous machinery, though I can +perfectly well see how, if 'ideas' do accompany the workings of the +machinery, the _order_ of the ideas might very well follow exactly the +_order_ 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. + +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 +_seem_ within certain limits indeterminate. We _feel_ 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?" + +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 _were_ 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. + +Let me say one more final word now about the will, and therewith +conclude both that important subject and these lectures. + +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. + +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. + +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.' + +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 _sub specie mali_, 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. + +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 _sub specie boni_, and love him as well, +you will be in the best possible position for becoming perfect teachers. + + + + +#TALKS TO STUDENTS# + + + + +I. THE GOSPEL OF RELAXATION + + +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. + +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 _feel_ 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 _don't_ 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. + +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 _were_ 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. + +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. _Act_ 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." + +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. + + * * * * * + +A Viennese neurologist of considerable reputation has recently written +about the _Binnenleben_, 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 +_Binnenleben_ 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 +anaesthetic 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. + +Consider, for example, the effects of a well-toned _motor-apparatus_, +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 _ski_, 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. + +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. + +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 _homo sapiens_ 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. + +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 +_acquiescentia in seipso_, 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. + +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." + +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. + +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 _effects on +the over-contracted person's spiritual life_. 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 _can_ 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? + +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. + +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 _bad habits_, 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. + +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 _wholly_ +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. + +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 _do_ 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 Muensterberg, 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. + +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. + +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 _some_ 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. + +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. + +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. _Become the imitable thing_, 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 +_strong feeling about one's self tends to arrest the free association of +one's objective ideas and motor processes_. We get the extreme example +of this in the mental disease called melancholia. + +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 _painful_. 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 _fine_! it was _fine_! it was _fine_!" 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. "_Good_! GOOD! GOOD!" is all we +can at such times say to ourselves until we smile at our own very +foolishness. + +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. + +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. _Unclamp_, 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. _Their_ 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. + +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 _subject so well that it +shall be always on tap_: then in the classroom trust your spontaneity +and fling away all further care. + +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. + +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."[C] +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...." + + [C] Fleming H. Revell Company, New York. + +"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 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_.... That since then he had passed his life in +perfect liberty and continual joy." + +"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." + +"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." + +"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." + +"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." + +"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." + +The simple-heartedness of the good Brother Lawrence, and the relaxation +of all unnecessary solicitudes and anxieties in him, is a refreshing +spectacle. + + * * * * * + +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 _are_ doing it, and, having learned what the trick +feels like, you may (again by the grace of God) be enabled to go on. + +And that something like this may be the happy experience of all my +hearers is, in closing, my most earnest wish. + + + + +II. ON A CERTAIN BLINDNESS IN HUMAN BEINGS + + +Our judgments concerning the worth of things, big or little, depend on +the _feelings_ the things arouse in us. Where we judge a thing to be +precious in consequence of the _idea_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _Commercial Advertiser_, 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. + +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. + +Let me take a personal example of the kind that befalls each one of us +daily:-- + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 +_they_ 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 paean of duty, struggle, and +success. + +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. + + * * * * * + +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 _is_ 'importance' in the only real and +positive sense in which importance ever anywhere can be. + +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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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." + +... "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 _has_ sung to _us_, 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." + +... "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 _are_ 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." + +"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." + +"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."[D] + + [D] 'The Lantern-bearers,' in the volume entitled 'Across the + Plains.' Abridged in the quotation. + +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. + +The change is well described by my colleague, Josiah Royce:-- + +"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 _known_ +that, thou hast begun to know thy duty."[E] + + [E] The Religious Aspect of Philosophy, pp. 157-162 + (abridged). + + * * * * * + +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. + +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."[F] + + [F] De Senancour: Obermann, Lettre XXX. + +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.' + + "To every natural form, rock, fruit, or flower, + Even the loose stones that cover the highway, + I gave a moral life: I saw them feel + Or linked them to some feeling: the great mass + Lay bedded in some quickening soul, and all + That I beheld respired with inward meaning."[G] + + [G] The Prelude, Book III. + +"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:-- + + "Magnificent + The morning rose, in memorable pomp, + Glorious as ere I had beheld. In front + The sea lay laughing at a distance; near + The solid mountains shone, bright as the clouds, + Grain-tinctured, drenched in empyrean light; + And in the meadows and the lower grounds + Was all the sweetness of a common dawn,-- + Dews, vapors, and the melody of birds, + And laborers going forth to till the fields." + + "Ah! need I say, dear Friend, that to the brim + My heart was full; I made no vows, but vows + Were then made for me; bond unknown to me + Was given, that I should be, else sinning greatly, + A dedicated Spirit. On I walked, + In thankful blessedness, which yet survives."[H] + + [H] The Prelude, Book IV. + +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 _him_ 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. + +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:-- + +"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!"[I] + + [I] _Op. cit._, Boston, Roberts, 1883, pp. 5, 6. + +Surely, a worthless hour of life, when measured by the usual standards +of commercial value. Yet in what other _kind_ 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? + +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. + +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:-- + + Flood-tide below me! I watch you, face to face; + Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I see + you also face to face. + Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes! + how curious you are to me! + On the ferry-boats, the hundreds and hundreds that cross, + returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose; + And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence, + are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you + might suppose. + Others will enter the gates of the ferry, and cross from + shore to shore; + Others will watch the run of the flood-tide; + Others will see the shipping of Manhattan north and west, + and the heights of Brooklyn to the south and east; + Others will see the islands large and small; + Fifty years hence, others will see them as they cross, the + sun half an hour high. + A hundred years hence, or ever so many hundred years + hence, others will see them, + Will enjoy the sunset, the pouring in of the flood-tide, the + falling back to the sea of the ebb-tide. + It avails not, neither time or place--distance avails not. + Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I + felt; + Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a + crowd; + Just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and + the bright flow, I was refresh'd; + Just as you stand and lean on the rail, yet hurry with the + swift current, I stood, yet was hurried; + Just as you look on the numberless masts of ships, and the + thick-stemmed pipes of steamboats, I looked. + I too many and many a time cross'd the river, the sun half + an hour high; + I watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls--I saw them high in + the air, with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies, + I saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies, + and left the rest in strong shadow, + I saw the slow-wheeling circles, and the gradual edging + toward the south. + Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops, saw the ships + at anchor, + The sailors at work in the rigging, or out astride the spars; + The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, + the frolicsome crests and glistening; + The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray + walls of the granite store-houses by the docks; + On the neighboring shores, the fires from the foundry chimneys + burning high ... into the night, + Casting their flicker of black ... into the clefts of streets. + These, and all else, were to me the same as they are to you.[J] + + [J] 'Crossing Brooklyn Ferry' (abridged). + +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:-- + + "NEW YORK, Oct. 9, 1868. + + "_Dear Pete_,--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."[K] + + [K] Calamus, Boston, 1897, pp. 41, 42. + +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? + +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, _his_ 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 _secula seculorum_, +that eternal recurrence of the common order, which so fills a Whitman +with mystic satisfaction, is to a Schopenhauer, with the emotional +anaesthesia, 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. + +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!'"[L] + + [L] Vita, lib. 2, chap. iv. + +But the great understander of these mysterious ebbs and flows is +Tolstoi. 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 Tolstoi'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."[M] + + [M] La Guerre et la Paix, Paris, 1884, vol. iii. pp. 268, 275, 316. + +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." + +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. + +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."[N] + + [N] Quoted by Lotze, Microcosmus, English translation, vol. ii. + p. 240. + +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 _can_ write,--Mr. W.H. Hudson, in his +volume, "Idle Days in Patagonia." + +"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." + +... "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." + +"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 _listening_ 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 _suspense_ and _watchfulness_; 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]." + +"I had undoubtedly _gone back_; 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."[O] + + [O] _Op. cit._, pp. 210-222 (abridged). + +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. + + * * * * * + +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. + + + + +III. WHAT MAKES A LIFE SIGNIFICANT + + +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. + +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 anaesthesia 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 _are_ among +the wonders of creation, _are_ 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 _us_ be, were there no one willing to know us as we +really are or ready to repay us for _our_ insight by making recognizant +return? We ought, all of us, to realize each other in this intense, +pathetic, and important way. + +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. + +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? + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Such absence of human nature _in extremis_ anywhere seemed, then, a +sufficient explanation for Chautauqua's flatness and lack of zest. + +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. _Was im Gesang soll leben muss im Leben untergehn_. 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.[P] + + [P] 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. + +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 _in extremis_ 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. + +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. + +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. + + * * * * * + +If any of you have been readers of Tolstoi, 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. + +Where now is _our_ Tolstoi, 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? + +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. + +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 Tolstoi--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. + +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. + +Tolstoi'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 role of the spiritual hero is given to a poor little +soldier named Karataieff, 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 Tolstoi to let God +into the world again for the reader. Poor little Karataieff 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. + +"The more," writes Tolstoi 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."[Q] + + [Q] My Confession, X. (condensed). + +In a similar way does Stevenson appeal to our piety toward the elemental +virtue of mankind. + +"What a wonderful thing," he writes,[R] "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." + + [R] Across the Plains: "Pulvis et Umbra" (abridged). + +All this is as true as it is splendid, and terribly do we need our +Tolstois 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 Tolstoi 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? Tolstoi'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. + + * * * * * + +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 _essential_ part of life's business, but it is sure +that _some_ 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 _and_ 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 +_must_ be significant elements of the world as well. + +Just test Tolstoi'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:-- + +"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. + +"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 debris 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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"All this is to tell us, in effect, that our lives are hard, barren, +hopeless lives." + +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? + +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. + +If there _were_ 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 _ideal_, 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 Tolstoi 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? + +"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."[S] + + [S] Sermons. 5th Series, New York, 1893, pp. 166, 167. + +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. + +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 _complete_ and _valid for us +also_, only when the inner joy, courage, and endurance are joined with +an ideal. + + * * * * * + +But what, exactly, do we mean by an ideal? Can we give no definite +account of such a word? + +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 +_novelty_ 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. + +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. Tolstoi 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. + +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 _have_, 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 _depth_, if we are to +have anything cubical and solid in the way of character. + +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 _progress_, 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 Tolstoi, +and choose that simple faithfulness to his light or darkness which any +common unintellectual man can show. + + * * * * * + +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 +Tolstoi 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 _singly_ +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. + +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. + +To show the sort of thing I mean by these words, I will just make one +brief practical illustration and then close. + +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. + +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 _genuine vital difference_ 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. + +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."[T] + + [T] Essays by a Barrister, London, 1862, p. 318. + +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. + +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. _There are +compensations_: 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, _sub specie aeternatis_, how gentle would grow their +disputes! what tolerance and good humor, what willingness to live and +let live, would come into the world! + + +THE END. + + + + + +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.txt or 16287.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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