,,talks ,,to ,,teachers ,,on ,,psychology3 ,,and ,,to ,,students ,,on ,,some ,,of ,,life',s ,,ideals1 ,by ,,william ,,james ,,new ,,york ,,henry ,,holt ,,and ,,company #aibe ,,copyright1 #ahii1 #aijj ,,by ,,william ,,james ,,press ,,of ,,geo4 ,h4 ,,ellis ,,co4 7,,inc47 ,,boston ,,preface4 ,in #ahib ,i was asked by the ,harvard ,corporation to give a few public lectures on psychology to the ,cambridge teachers4 ,the talks now printed form the substance of that course1 which has since then been delivered at various places to various teacher-audiences4 ,i have found by experience that what my hearers seem least to relish is analytical technicality1 and what they most care for is concrete practical application4 ,so ,i have gradually weeded out the former1 and left the latter unreduced2 and now1 that ,i have at last written out the lectures1 they contain a minimum of what is deemed 'scientific' in psychology1 and are practical and popular in the extreme4 ,some of my colleagues may possibly shake their heads at this2 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 need4 ,teachers1 of course1 will miss the minute divisions1 subdivisions1 and definitions1 the lettered and numbered headings1 the variations of type1 and all the other mechanical artifices on which they are accustomed to prop their minds4 ,but my main desire has been to make them conceive1 and1 if possible1 reproduce sympathetically in their imagination1 the mental life of their pupil as the sort of active unity which he himself feels it to be4 ,he doesn't chop himself into distinct processes and compartments2 and it would have frustrated this deeper purpose of my book to make it look1 when printed1 like a ,baedeker's handbook of travel or a text-book of arithmetic4 ,so far as books printed like this book force the fluidity of the facts upon the young teacher's attention1 so far ,i am sure they tend to do his intellect a service1 even though they may leave unsatisfied a craving 7not altogether without its legitimate grounds7 for more nomenclature1 head-lines1 and subdivisions4 ,readers acquainted with my larger books on ,psychology will meet much familiar phraseology4 ,in the chapters on habit and memory ,i have even copied several pages verbatim1 but ,i do not know that apology is needed for such plagiarism as this4 ,the talks to students1 which conclude the volume1 were written in response to invitations to deliver 'addresses' to students at women's colleges4 ,the first one was to the graduating class of the ,boston ,normal ,school of ,gymnastics4 ,properly1 it continues the series of talks to teachers4 ,the second and the third address belong together1 and continue another line of thought4 ,i wish ,i were able to make the second1 ',on a ,certain ,blindness in ,human ,beings1' more impressive4 ,it is more than the mere piece of sentimentalism which it may seem to some readers4 ,it connects itself with a definite view of the world and of our moral relations to the same4 ,those who have done me the honor of reading my volume of philosophic essays will recognize that ,i mean the pluralistic or individualistic philosophy4 ,according to that philosophy1 the truth is too great for any one actual mind1 even though that mind be dubbed 'the ,absolute1' to know the whole of it4 ,the facts and worths of life need many cognizers to take them in4 ,there is no point of view absolutely public and universal4 ,private and uncommunicable perceptions always remain over1 and the worst of it is that those who look for them from the outside never know where4 ,the practical consequence of such a philosophy is the well-known democratic respect for the sacredness of individuality1--is1 at any rate1 the outward tolerance of whatever is not itself intolerant4 ,these phrases are so familiar that they sound now rather dead in our ears4 ,once they had a passionate inner meaning4 ,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 spirited4 ,religiously and philosophically1 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 possess4 ,,cambridge1 ,,mass41 ,march1 #ahii4 ,,contents4 ,,talks ,,to ,,teachers4 ,i4 ,,psychology ,,and ,,the ,,teaching ,,art ,the ,american educational organization1--,what teachers may expect from psychology1--,teaching methods must agree with psychology1 but cannot be immediately deduced therefrom1--,the science of teaching and the science of war1--,the educational uses of psychology defined1--,the teacher's duty toward child-study4 ,,ii4 ,,the ,,stream ,,of ,,consciousness ,our mental life is a succession of conscious 'fields1'--,they have a focus and a margin1--,this description contrasted with the theory of 'ideas1'--,wundt's conclusions1 note4 ,,iii4 ,,the ,,child ,,as ,a ,,behaving ,,organism ,mind as pure reason and mind as practical guide1--,the latter view the more fashionable one to-day1--,it will be adopted in this work1--,why so8--,the teacher's function is to train pupils to behavior4 ,,iv4 ,,education ,,and ,,behavior ,education defined1--,conduct is always its outcome1--,different national ideals3 ,germany and ,england4 ,v4 ,,the ,,necessity ,,of ,,reactions ,no impression without expression1--,verbal reproduction1--,manual training1--,pupils should know their 'marks'4 ,,vi4 ,,native ,,and ,,acquired ,,reactions ,the acquired reactions must be preceded by native ones1--,illustration3 teaching child to ask instead of snatching1--,man has more instincts than other mammals4 ,,vii4 ,,what ,,the ,,native ,,reactions ,,are ,fear and love1--,curiosity1--,imitation1--,emulat ion1--,forbidden by ,rousseau1--,his error1--,ambition1 pugnacity1 and pride4 ,soft pedagogics and the fighting impulse1--,ownership1--,its educational uses1--,constructiveness1--,manual teaching1--,transitoriness in instincts1--,their order of succession4 ,,viii4 ,,the ,,laws ,,of ,,habit ,good and bad habits1--,habit due to plasticity of organic tissues1--,the aim of education is to make useful habits automatic1--,maxims relative to habit-forming3 #a4 ,strong initiative1--#b4 ,no exception1--#c4 ,seize first opportunity to act1--#d4 ,don't preach1--,darwin and poetry3 without exercise our capacities decay1--,the habit of mental and muscular relaxation1--,fifth maxim1 keep the faculty of effort trained1--,sudden conversions compatible with laws of habit1--,momentous influence of habits on character4 ,,ix4 ,,the ,,association ,,of ,,ideas ,a case of habit1--,the two laws1 contiguity and similarity1--,the teacher has to build up useful systems of association1--,habitual associations determine character1--,indeterminateness of our trains of association1--,we can trace them backward1 but not foretell them1--,interest deflects1--,prepotent parts of the field1--,in teaching1 multiply cues4 ,x4 ,,interest ,the child's native interests1--,how uninteresting things acquire an interest1--,rules for the teacher1--',preparation' of the mind for the lesson3 the pupil must have something to attend with1--,all later interests are borrowed from original ones4 ,,xi4 ,,attention ,interest and attention are two aspects of one fact1--,voluntary attention comes in beats1--,genius and attention1--,the subject must change to win attention1--,mechanical aids1--,the physiological process1--,the new in the old is what excites interest1--,interest and effort are compatible1--,mind-wandering1--,not fatal to mental efficiency4 ,,xii4 ,,memory ,due to association1--,no recall without a cue1--,memory is due to brain-plasticity1--,native retentiveness1--,number of associations may practically be its equivalent1--,retentiveness is a fixed property of the individual1--,memory versus memories1--,scientific system as help to memory1--,technical memories1--,cramming1--,elementary memory unimprovable1--,utility of verbal memorizing1--,measurements of immediate memory1--,they throw little light1--,passion is the important factor in human efficiency1--,eye-memory1 ear-memory1 etc41--,the rate of forgetting1 ,ebbinghaus's results1--,influence of the unreproducible1--,to remember1 one must think and connect4 ,,xiii4 ,,the ,,acquisition ,,of ,,ideas ,education gives a stock of conceptions1--,the order of their acquisition1--,value of verbal material1--,abstractions of different orders3 when are they assimilable1--,false conceptions of children4 ,,xiv4 ,,apperception ,often a mystifying idea1--,the process defined1--,the law of economy1--,old-fogyism1--,how many types of apperception8--,new heads of classification must continually be invented1--,alteration of the apperceiving mass1--,class names are what we work by1--,few new fundamental conceptions acquired after twenty-five4 ,,xv4 ,,the ,,will ,the word defined1--,all consciousness tends to action1--,ideo-motor action1--,inhibition1--,the process of deliberation1--,why so few of our ideas result in acts1--,the associationist account of the will1--,a balance of impulses and inhibitions1--,the over-impulsive and the over-obstructed type1--,the perfect type1--,the balky will1--,what character building consists in1--,right action depends on right apperception of the case1--,effort of will is effort of attention3 the drunkard's dilemma1--,vital importance of voluntary attention1--,its amount may be indeterminate1--,affirmation of free-will1--,two types of inhibition1--,spinoza on inhibition by a higher good1--,conclusion4 ,,talks ,,to ,,students4 ,i4 ,,the ,,gospel ,,of ,,relaxation ,,ii4 ,,on ,a ,,certain ,,blindness ,,in ,,human ,,beings ,,iii4 ,,what ,,makes ,a ,,life ,,significant8 99 99 99 99 99 ,,talks ,,to ,,teachers ,i4 ,,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 life1 there is perhaps no more promising feature than the fermentation which for a dozen years or more has been going on among the teachers4 ,in whatever sphere of education their functions may lie1 there is to be seen among them a really inspiring amount of searching of the heart about the highest concerns of their profession4 ,the renovation of nations begins always at the top1 among the reflective members of the ,state1 and spreads slowly outward and downward4 ,the teachers of this country1 one may say1 have its future in their hands4 ,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 directions4 ,the outward organization of education which we have in our ,united ,states is perhaps1 on the whole1 the best organization that exists in any country4 ,the ,state school systems give a diversity and flexibility1 an opportunity for experiment and keenness of competition1 nowhere else to be found on such an important scale4 ,the independence of so many of the colleges and universities2 the give and take of students and instructors between them all2 their emulation1 and their happy organic relations to the lower schools2 the traditions of instruction in them1 evolved from the older ,american recitation-method 7and so avoiding on the one hand the pure lecture-system prevalent in ,germany and ,scotland1 which considers too little the individual student1 and yet not involving the sacrifice of the instructor to the individual student1 which the ,english tutorial system would seem too often to entail71--all these things 7to say nothing of that coeducation of the sexes in whose benefits so many of us heartily believe71 all these things1 ,i say1 are most happy features of our scholastic life1 and from them the most sanguine auguries may be drawn4 ,having so favorable an organization1 all we need is to impregnate it with geniuses1 to get superior men and women working more and more abundantly in it and for it and at it1 and in a generation or two ,america may well lead the education of the world4 ,i must say that ,i look forward with no little confidence to the day when that shall be an accomplished fact4 ,no one has profited more by the fermentation of which ,i speak1 in pedagogical circles1 than we psychologists4 ,the desire of the schoolteachers for a completer professional training1 and their aspiration toward the 'professional' spirit in their work1 have led them more and more to turn to us for light on fundamental principles4 ,and in these few hours which we are to spend together you look to me1 ,i am sure1 for information concerning the mind's operations1 which may enable you to labor more easily and effectively in the several schoolrooms over which you preside4 ,far be it from me to disclaim for psychology all title to such hopes4 ,psychology ought certainly to give the teacher radical help4 ,and yet ,i confess that1 acquainted as ,i am with the height of some of your expectations1 ,i feel a little anxious lest1 at the end of these simple talks of mine1 not a few of you may experience some disappointment at the net results4 ,in other words1 ,i am not sure that you may not be indulging fancies that are just a shade exaggerated4 ,that would not be altogether astonishing1 for we have been having something like a 'boom' in psychology in this country4 ,laboratories and professorships have been founded1 and reviews established4 ,the air has been full of rumors4 ,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 day4 ,some of the professors have not been unwilling to co-operate1 and ,i am not sure even that the publishers have been entirely inert4 ',the new psychology' has thus become a term to conjure up portentous ideas withal2 and you teachers1 docile and receptive and aspiring as many of you are1 have been plunged in an atmosphere of vague talk about our science1 which to a great extent has been more mystifying than enlightening4 ,altogether it does seem as if there were a certain fatality of mystification laid upon the teachers of our day4 ,the matter of their profession1 compact enough in itself1 has to be frothed up for them in journals and institutes1 till its outlines often threaten to be lost in a kind of vast uncertainty4 ,where the disciples are not independent and critical-minded enough 7and ,i think that1 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 docile71 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 above4 ,as regards this subject of psychology1 now1 ,i wish at the very threshold to do what ,i can to dispel the mystification4 ,so ,i say at once that in my humble opinion there is no 'new psychology' worthy of the name4 ,there is nothing but the old psychology which began in ,locke's time1 plus a little physiology of the brain and senses and theory of evolution1 and a few refinements of introspective detail1 for the most part without adaptation to the teacher's use4 ,it is only the fundamental conceptions of psychology which are of real value to the teacher2 and they1 apart from the aforesaid theory of evolution1 are very far from being new4--,i trust that you will see better what ,i mean by this at the end of all these talks4 ,i say moreover that you make a great1 a very great mistake1 if you think that psychology1 being the science of the mind's laws1 is something from which you can deduce definite programmes and schemes and methods of instruction for immediate schoolroom use4 ,psychology is a science1 and teaching is an art2 and sciences never generate arts directly out of themselves4 ,an intermediary inventive mind must make the application1 by using its originality4 ,the science of logic never made a man reason rightly1 and the science of ethics 7if there be such a thing7 never made a man behave rightly4 ,the most such sciences can do is to help us to catch ourselves up and check ourselves1 if we start to reason or to behave wrongly2 and to criticise ourselves more articulately after we have made mistakes4 ,a science only lays down lines within which the rules of the art must fall1 laws which the follower of the art must not transgress2 but what particular thing he shall positively do within those lines is left exclusively to his own genius4 ,one genius will do his work well and succeed in one way1 while another succeeds as well quite differently2 yet neither will transgress the lines4 ,the art of teaching grew up in the schoolroom1 out of inventiveness and sympathetic concrete observation4 ,even where 7as in the case of ,herbart7 the advancer of the art was also a psychologist1 the pedagogics and the psychology ran side by side1 and the former was not derived in any sense from the latter4 ,the two were congruent1 but neither was subordinate4 ,and so everywhere the teaching must agree with the psychology1 but need not necessarily be the only kind of teaching that would so agree2 for many diverse methods of teaching may equally well agree with psychological laws4 ,to know psychology1 therefore1 is absolutely no guarantee that we shall be good teachers4 ,to advance to that result1 we must have an additional endowment altogether1 a happy tact and ingenuity to tell us what definite things to say and do when the pupil is before us4 ,that ingenuity in meeting and pursuing the pupil1 that tact for the concrete situation1 though they are the alpha and omega of the teacher's art1 are things to which psychology cannot help us in the least4 ,the science of psychology1 and whatever science of general pedagogics may be based on it1 are in fact much like the science of war4 ,nothing is simpler or more definite than the principles of either4 ,in war1 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 to2 then to fall on him in numbers superior to his own1 at a moment when you have led him to think you far away2 and so1 with a minimum of exposure of your own troops1 to hack his force to pieces1 and take the remainder prisoners4 ,just so1 in teaching1 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 mind2 then reveal it to him so impressively that he will remember the occasion to his dying day2 and finally fill him with devouring curiosity to know what the next steps in connection with the subject are4 ,the principles being so plain1 there would be nothing but victories for the masters of the science1 either on the battlefield or in the schoolroom1 if they did not both have to make their application to an incalculable quantity in the shape of the mind of their opponent4 ,the mind of your own enemy1 the pupil1 is working away from you as keenly and eagerly as is the mind of the commander on the other side from the scientific general4 ,just what the respective enemies want and think1 and what they know and do not know1 are as hard things for the teacher as for the general to find out4 ,divination and perception1 not psychological pedagogics or theoretic strategy1 are the only helpers here4 ,but1 if the use of psychological principles thus be negative rather than positive1 it does not follow that it may not be a great use1 all the same4 ,it certainly narrows the path for experiments and trials4 ,we know in advance1 if we are psychologists1 that certain methods will be wrong1 so our psychology saves us from mistakes4 ,it makes us1 moreover1 more clear as to what we are about4 ,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 back4 ,most of all1 it fructifies our independence1 and it reanimates our interest1 to see our subject at two different angles1--to get a stereoscopic view1 so to speak1 of the youthful organism who is our enemy1 and1 while handling him with all our concrete tact and divination1 to be able1 at the same time1 to represent to ourselves the curious inner elements of his mental machine4 ,such a complete knowledge as this of the pupil1 at once intuitive and analytic1 is surely the knowledge at which every teacher ought to aim4 ,fortunately for you teachers1 the elements of the mental machine can be clearly apprehended1 and their workings easily grasped4 ,and1 as the most general elements and workings are just those parts of psychology which the teacher finds most directly useful1 it follows that the amount of this science which is necessary to all teachers need not be very great4 ,those who find themselves loving the subject may go as far as they please1 and become possibly none the worse teachers for the fact1 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 abstractly4 ,but for the great majority of you a general view is enough1 provided it be a true one2 and such a general view1 one may say1 might almost be written on the palm of one's hand4 ,least of all need you1 merely as teachers1 deem it part of your duty to become contributors to psychological science or to make psychological observations in a methodical or responsible manner4 ,i fear that some of the enthusiasts for child-study have thrown a certain burden on you in this way4 ,by all means let child-study go on1--it is refreshing all our sense of the child's life4 ,there are teachers who take a spontaneous delight in filling syllabuses1 inscribing observations1 compiling statistics1 and computing the per cent4 ,child-study will certainly enrich their lives4 ,and1 if its results1 as treated statistically1 would seem on the whole to have but trifling value1 yet the anecdotes and observations of which it in part consist do certainly acquaint us more intimately with our pupils4 ,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 children1--processes of which we might otherwise have remained inobservant4 ,but1 for ,heaven's sake1 let the rank and file of teachers be passive readers if they so prefer1 and feel free not to contribute to the accumulation4 ,let not the prosecution of it be preached as an imperative duty or imposed by regulation on those to whom it proves an exterminating bore1 or who in any way whatever miss in themselves the appropriate vocation for it4 ,i cannot too strongly agree with my colleague1 ,professor ,muensterberg1 when he says that the teacher's attitude toward the child1 being concrete and ethical1 is positively opposed to the psychological observer's1 which is abstract and analytic4 ,although some of us may conjoin the attitudes successfully1 in most of us they must conflict4 ,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 psychologist4 ,our teachers are overworked already4 ,every one who adds a jot or tittle of unnecessary weight to their burden is a foe of education4 ,a bad conscience increases the weight of every other burden2 yet ,i know that child-study1 and other pieces of psychology as well1 have been productive of bad conscience in many a really innocent pedagogic breast4 ,i should indeed be glad if this passing word from me might tend to dispel such a bad conscience1 if any of you have it2 for it is certainly one of those fruits of more or less systematic mystification of which ,i have already complained4 ,the best teacher may be the poorest contributor of child-study material1 and the best contributor may be the poorest teacher4 ,no fact is more palpable than this4 ,so much for what seems the most reasonable general attitude of the teacher toward the subject which is to occupy our attention4 ,,ii4 ,,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 purposes4 ,now the immediate fact which psychology1 the science of mind1 has to study is also the most general fact4 ,it is the fact that in each of us1 when awake 7and often when asleep71 some kind of consciousness is always going on4 ,there is a stream1 a succession of states1 or waves1 or fields 7or of whatever you please to call them71 of knowledge1 of feeling1 of desire1 of deliberation1 etc41 that constantly pass and repass1 and that constitute our inner life4 ,the existence of this stream is the primal fact1 the nature and origin of it form the essential problem1 of our science4 ,so far as we class the states or fields of consciousness1 write down their several natures1 analyze their contents into elements1 or trace their habits of succession1 we are on the descriptive or analytic level4 ,so far as we ask where they come from or why they are just what they are1 we are on the explanatory level4 ,in these talks with you1 ,i shall entirely neglect the questions that come up on the explanatory level4 ,it must be frankly confessed that in no fundamental sense do we know where our successive fields of consciousness come from1 or why they have the precise inner constitution which they do have4 ,they certainly follow or accompany our brain states1 and of course their special forms are determined by our past experiences and education4 ,but1 if we ask just how the brain conditions them1 we have not the remotest inkling of an answer to give2 and1 if we ask just how the education moulds the brain1 we can speak but in the most abstract1 general1 and conjectural terms4 ,on the other hand1 if we should say that they are due to a spiritual being called our ,soul1 which reacts on our brain states by these peculiar forms of spiritual energy1 our words would be familiar enough1 it is true2 but ,i think you will agree that they would offer little genuine explanatory meaning4 ,the truth is that we really do not know the answers to the problems on the explanatory level1 even though in some directions of inquiry there may be promising speculations to be found4 ,for our present purposes ,i shall therefore dismiss them entirely1 and turn to mere description4 ,this state of things was what ,i had in mind when1 a moment ago1 ,i said there was no 'new psychology' worthy of the name4 ,we have thus fields of consciousness1--that is the first general fact2 and the second general fact is that the concrete fields are always complex4 ,they contain sensations of our bodies and of the objects around us1 memories of past experiences and thoughts of distant things1 feelings of satisfaction and dissatisfaction1 desires and aversions1 and other emotional conditions1 together with determinations of the will1 in every variety of permutation and combination4 ,in most of our concrete states of consciousness all these different classes of ingredients are found simultaneously present to some degree1 though the relative proportion they bear to one another is very shifting4 ,one state will seem to be composed of hardly anything but sensations1 another of hardly anything but memories1 etc4 ,but around the sensation1 if one consider carefully1 there will always be some fringe of thought or will1 and around the memory some margin or penumbra of emotion or sensation4 ,in most of our fields of consciousness there is a core of sensation that is very pronounced4 ,you1 for example1 now1 although you are also thinking and feeling1 are getting through your eyes sensations of my face and figure1 and through your ears sensations of my voice4 ,the sensations are the centre or focus1 the thoughts and feelings the margin1 of your actually present conscious field4 ,on the other hand1 some object of thought1 some distant image1 may have become the focus of your mental attention even while ,i am speaking1--your mind1 in short1 may have wandered from the lecture2 and1 in that case1 the sensations of my face and voice1 although not absolutely vanishing from your conscious field1 may have taken up there a very faint and marginal place4 ,again1 to take another sort of variation1 some feeling connected with your own body may have passed from a marginal to a focal place1 even while ,i speak4 ,the expressions 'focal object' and 'marginal object1' which we owe to ,mr4 ,lloyd ,morgan1 require1 ,i think1 no further explanation4 ,the distinction they embody is a very important one1 and they are the first technical terms which ,i shall ask you to remember4 99 99 99 99 99 ,in the successive mutations of our fields of consciousness1 the process by which one dissolves into another is often very gradual1 and all sorts of inner rearrangements of contents occur4 ,sometimes the focus remains but little changed1 while the margin alters rapidly4 ,sometimes the focus alters1 and the margin stays4 ,sometimes focus and margin change places4 ,sometimes1 again1 abrupt alterations of the whole field occur4 ,there can seldom be a sharp description4 ,all we know is that1 for the most part1 each field has a sort of practical unity for its possessor1 and that from this practical point of view we can class a field with other fields similar to it1 by calling it a state of emotion1 of perplexity1 of sensation1 of abstract thought1 of volition1 and the like4 ,vague and hazy as such an account of our stream of consciousness may be1 it is at least secure from positive error and free from admixture of conjecture or hypothesis4 ,an influential school of psychology1 seeking to avoid haziness of outline1 has tried to make things appear more exact and scientific by making the analysis more sharp4 ,the various fields of consciousness1 according to this school1 result from a definite number of perfectly definite elementary mental states1 mechanically associated into a mosaic or chemically combined4 ,according to some thinkers1--,spencer1 for example1 or ,taine1--these resolve themselves at last into little elementary psychic particles or atoms of 'mind-stuff1' out of which all the more immediately known mental states are said to be built up4 ,locke introduced this theory in a somewhat vague form4 ,simple 'ideas' of sensation and reflection1 as he called them1 were for him the bricks of which our mental architecture is built up4 ,if ,i ever have to refer to this theory again1 ,i shall refer to it as the theory of 'ideas4' ,but ,i shall try to steer clear of it altogether4 ,whether it be true or false1 it is at any rate only conjectural2 and1 for your practical purposes as teachers1 the more unpretending conception of the stream of consciousness1 with its total waves or fields incessantly changing1 will amply suffice4,a ,a ,in the light of some of the expectations that are abroad concerning the 'new psychology1' it is instructive to read the unusually candid confession of its founder ,wundt1 after his thirty years of laboratory-experience3 ,the service which it the experimental method can yield consists essentially in perfecting our inner observation1 or rather1 as ,i believe1 in making this really possible1 in any exact sense4 ,well1 has our experimental self-observation1 so understood1 already accomplished aught of importance8 ,no general answer to this question can be given1 because in the unfinished state of our science1 there is1 even inside of the experimental lines of inquiry1 no universally accepted body of psychologic doctrine4444 ,in such a discord of opinions 7comprehensible enough at a time of uncertain and groping development71 the individual inquirer can only tell for what views and insights he himself has to thank the newer methods4 ,and if ,i were asked in what for me the worth of experimental observation in psychology has consisted1 and still consists1 ,i should say that it has given me an entirely new idea of the nature and connection of our inner processes4 ,i learned in the achievements of the sense of sight to apprehend the fact of creative mental synthesis4444 ,from my inquiry into time-relations1 etc41444 ,i attained an insight into the close union of all those psychic functions usually separated by artificial abstractions and names1 such as ideation1 feeling1 will2 and ,i saw the indivisibility and inner homogeneity1 in all its phases1 of the mental life4 ,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 reality4 ,i learned to understand an 'idea' as a process no less melting and fleeting than an act of feeling or of will1 and ,i comprehended the older doctrine of association of 'ideas' to be no longer tenable4444 ,besides all this1 experimental observation yielded much other information about the span of consciousness1 the rapidity of certain processes1 the exact numerical value of certain psychophysical data1 and the like4 ,but ,i hold all these more special results to be relatively insignificant by-products1 and by no means the important thing4--,philosophische ,studien1 x4 #aba-abd4 ,the whole passage should be read4 ,as ,i interpret it1 it amounts to a complete espousal of the vaguer conception of the stream of thought1 and a complete renunciation of the whole business1 still so industriously carried on in text-books1 of chopping up 'the mind' into distinct units of composition or function1 numbering these off1 and labelling them by technical names4 ,,iii4 ,,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 functions4 ,it has two functions that are obvious3 it leads to knowledge1 and it leads to action4 ,can we say which of these functions is the more essential8 ,an old historic divergence of opinion comes in here4 ,popular belief has always tended to estimate the worth of a man's mental processes by their effects upon his practical life4 ,but philosophers have usually cherished a different view4 ,man's supreme glory1 they have said1 is to be a rational being1 to know absolute and eternal and universal truth4 ,the uses of his intellect for practical affairs are therefore subordinate matters4 ',the theoretic life' is his soul's genuine concern4 ,nothing can be more different in its results for our personal attitude than to take sides with one or the other of these views1 and emphasize the practical or the theoretical ideal4 ,in the latter case1 abstraction from the emotions and passions and withdrawal from the strife of human affairs would be not only pardonable1 but praiseworthy2 and all that makes for quiet and contemplation should be regarded as conducive to the highest human perfection4 ,in the former1 the man of contemplation would be treated as only half a human being1 passion and practical resource would become once more glories of our race1 a concrete victory over this earth's outward powers of darkness would appear an equivalent for any amount of passive spiritual culture1 and conduct would remain as the test of every education worthy of the name4 ,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 function1 where ,plato and ,aristotle1 and what one may call the whole classic tradition in philosophy had placed it1 to the so long neglected practical side4 ,the theory of evolution is mainly responsible for this4 ,man1 we now have reason to believe1 has been evolved from infra-human ancestors1 in whom pure reason hardly existed1 if at all1 and whose mind1 so far as it can have had any function1 would appear to have been an organ for adapting their movements to the impressions received from the environment1 so as to escape the better from destruction4 ,consciousness would thus seem in the first instance to be nothing but a sort of super-added biological perfection1--useless unless it prompted to useful conduct1 and inexplicable apart from that consideration4 ,deep in our own nature the biological foundations of our consciousness persist1 undisguised and undiminished4 ,our sensations are here to attract us or to deter us1 our memories to warn or encourage us1 our feelings to impel1 and our thoughts to restrain our behavior1 so that on the whole we may prosper and our days be long in the land4 ,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 machine4 ,i shall ask you now--not meaning at all thereby to close the theoretic question1 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 me1 in this course of lectures1 the biological conception1 as thus expressed1 and to lay your own emphasis on the fact that man1 whatever else he may be1 is primarily a practical being1 whose mind is given him to aid in adapting him to this world's life4 ,in the learning of all matters1 we have to start with some one deep aspect of the question1 abstracting it as if it were the only aspect2 and then we gradually correct ourselves by adding those neglected other features which complete the case4 ,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 object4 ,yet1 because it is the primal portion1 it is the sine qua non of all the rest4 ,if you grasp the facts about it firmly1 you may proceed to higher regions undisturbed4 ,as our time must be so short together1 ,i prefer being elementary and fundamental to being complete1 so ,i propose to you to hold fast to the ultra-simple point of view4 ,the reasons why ,i call it so fundamental can be easily told4 ,first1 human and animal psychology thereby become less discontinuous4 ,i know that to some of you this will hardly seem an attractive reason1 but there are others whom it will affect4 ,second1 mental action is conditioned by brain action1 and runs parallel therewith4 ,but the brain1 so far as we understand it1 is given us for practical behavior4 ,every current that runs into it from skin or eye or ear runs out again into muscles1 glands1 or viscera1 and helps to adapt the animal to the environment from which the current came4 ,it therefore generalizes and simplifies our view to treat the brain life and the mental life as having one fundamental kind of purpose4 ,third1 those very functions of the mind that do not refer directly to this world's environment1 the ethical utopias1 aesthetic visions1 insights into eternal truth1 and fanciful logical combinations1 could never be carried on at all by a human individual1 unless the mind that produced them in him were also able to produce more practically useful products4 ,the latter are thus the more essential1 or at least the more primordial results4 ,fourth1 the inessential 'unpractical' activities are themselves far more connected with our behavior and our adaptation to the environment than at first sight might appear4 ,no truth1 however abstract1 is ever perceived1 that will not probably at some time influence our earthly action4 ,you must remember that1 when ,i talk of action here1 ,i mean action in the widest sense4 ,i mean speech1 ,i mean writing1 ,i mean yeses and noes1 and tendencies 'from' things and tendencies 'toward' things1 and emotional determinations2 and ,i mean them in the future as well as in the immediate present4 ,as ,i talk here1 and you listen1 it might seem as if no action followed4 ,you might call it a purely theoretic process1 with no practical result4 ,but it must have a practical result4 ,it cannot take place at all and leave your conduct unaffected4 ,if not to-day1 then on some far future day1 you will answer some question differently by reason of what you are thinking now4 ,some of you will be led by my words into new veins of inquiry1 into reading special books4 ,these will develop your opinion1 whether for or against4 ,that opinion will in turn be expressed1 will receive criticism from others in your environment1 and will affect your standing in their eyes4 ,we cannot escape our destiny1 which is practical2 and even our most theoretic faculties contribute to its working out4 ,these few reasons will perhaps smooth the way for you to acquiescence in my proposal4 ,as teachers1 ,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 possessor4 ,sufficient at any rate as a first conception and as a main conception4 ,you should regard your professional task as if it consisted chiefly and essentially in training the pupil to behavior2 taking behavior1 not in the narrow sense of his manners1 but in the very widest possible sense1 as including every possible sort of fit reaction on the circumstances into which he may find himself brought by the vicissitudes of life4 ,the reaction may1 indeed1 often be a negative reaction4 ,not to speak1 not to move1 is one of the most important of our duties1 in certain practical emergencies4 ,thou shalt refrain1 renounce1 abstain6 ,this often requires a great effort of will power1 and1 physiologically considered1 is just as positive a nerve function as is motor discharge4 ,,iv4 ,,education ,,and ,,behavior ,in our foregoing talk we were led to frame a very simple conception of what an education means4 ,in the last analysis it consists in the organizing of resources in the human being1 of powers of conduct which shall fit him to his social and physical world4 ,an 'uneducated' person is one who is nonplussed by all but the most habitual situations4 ,on the contrary1 one who is educated is able practically to extricate himself1 by means of the examples with which his memory is stored and of the abstract conceptions which he has acquired1 from circumstances in which he never was placed before4 ,education1 in short1 cannot be better described than by calling it the organization of acquired habits of conduct and tendencies to behavior4 ,to illustrate4 ,you and ,i are each and all of us educated1 in our several ways2 and we show our education at this present moment by different conduct4 ,it would be quite impossible for me1 with my mind technically and professionally organized as it is1 and with the optical stimulus which your presence affords1 to remain sitting here entirely silent and inactive4 ,something tells me that ,i am expected to speak1 and must speak2 something forces me to keep on speaking4 ,my organs of articulation are continuously innervated by outgoing currents1 which the currents passing inward at my eyes and through my educated brain have set in motion2 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 reading4 ,your conduct1 on the other hand1 might seem at first sight purely receptive and inactive1--leaving out those among you who happen to be taking notes4 ,but the very listening which you are carrying on is itself a determinate kind of conduct4 ,all the muscular tensions of your body are distributed in a peculiar way as you listen4 ,your head1 your eyes1 are fixed characteristically4 ,and1 when the lecture is over1 it will inevitably eventuate in some stroke of behavior1 as ,i said on the previous occasion3 you may be guided differently in some special emergency in the schoolroom by words which ,i now let fall4--,so it is with the impressions you will make there on your pupil4 ,you should get into the habit of regarding them all as leading to the acquisition by him of capacities for behavior1--emotional1 social1 bodily1 vocal1 technical1 or what not4 ,and1 this being the case1 you ought to feel willing1 in a general way1 and without hair-splitting or farther ado1 to take up for the purposes of these lectures with the biological conception of the mind1 as of something given us for practical use4 ,that conception will certainly cover the greater part of your own educational work4 ,if we reflect upon the various ideals of education that are prevalent in the different countries1 we see that what they all aim at is to organize capacities for conduct4 ,this is most immediately obvious in ,germany1 where the explicitly avowed aim of the higher education is to turn the student into an instrument for advancing scientific discovery4 ,the ,german universities are proud of the number of young specialists whom they turn out every year1--not necessarily men of any original force of intellect1 but men so trained to research that when their professor gives them an historical or philological thesis to prepare1 or a bit of laboratory work to do1 with a general indication as to the best method1 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 subject4 ,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 research4 ,in ,england1 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 efficiency4 ,professor ,jowett1 when asked what ,oxford could do for its students1 is said to have replied1 ,oxford can teach an ,english gentleman how to be an ,english gentleman4 ,but1 if you ask what it means to 'be' an ,english gentleman1 the only reply is in terms of conduct and behavior4 ,an ,english gentleman is a bundle of specifically qualified reactions1 a creature who for all the emergencies of life has his line of behavior distinctly marked out for him in advance4 ,here1 as elsewhere1 ,england expects every man to do his duty4 ,v4 ,,the ,,necessity ,,of ,,reactions ,if all this be true1 then immediately one general aphorism emerges which ought by logical right to dominate the entire conduct of the teacher in the classroom4 ,no reception without reaction1 no impression without correlative expression1--this is the great maxim which the teacher ought never to forget4 ,an impression which simply flows in at the pupil's eyes or ears1 and in no way modifies his active life1 is an impression gone to waste4 ,it is physiologically incomplete4 ,it leaves no fruits behind it in the way of capacity acquired4 ,even as mere impression1 it fails to produce its proper effect upon the memory2 for1 to remain fully among the acquisitions of this latter faculty1 it must be wrought into the whole cycle of our operations4 ,its motor consequences are what clinch it4 ,some effect due to it in the way of an activity must return to the mind in the form of the sensation of having acted1 and connect itself with the impression4 ,the most durable impressions are those on account of which we speak or act1 or else are inwardly convulsed4 ,the older pedagogic method of learning things by rote1 and reciting them parrot-like in the schoolroom1 rested on the truth that a thing merely read or heard1 and never verbally reproduced1 contracts the weakest possible adhesion in the mind4 ,verbal recitation or reproduction is thus a highly important kind of reactive behavior on our impressions2 and it is to be feared that1 in the reaction against the old parrot-recitations as the beginning and end of instruction1 the extreme value of verbal recitation as an element of complete training may nowadays be too much forgotten4 ,when we turn to modern pedagogics1 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 schools4 ,verbal reactions1 useful as they are1 are insufficient4 ,the pupil's words may be right1 but the conceptions corresponding to them are often direfully wrong4 ,in a modern school1 therefore1 they form only a small part of what the pupil is required to do4 ,he must keep notebooks1 make drawings1 plans1 and maps1 take measurements1 enter the laboratory and perform experiments1 consult authorities1 and write essays4 ,he must do in his fashion what is often laughed at by outsiders when it appears in prospectuses under the title of 'original work1' but what is really the only possible training for the doing of original work thereafter4 ,the most colossal improvement which recent years have seen in secondary education lies in the introduction of the manual training schools2 not because they will give us a people more handy and practical for domestic life and better skilled in trades1 but because they will give us citizens with an entirely different intellectual fibre4 ,laboratory work and shop work engender a habit of observation1 a knowledge of the difference between accuracy and vagueness1 and an insight into nature's complexity and into the inadequacy of all abstract verbal accounts of real phenomena1 which once wrought into the mind1 remain there as lifelong possessions4 ,they confer precision2 because1 if you are doing a thing1 you must do it definitely right or definitely wrong4 ,they give honesty2 for1 when you express yourself by making things1 and not by using words1 it becomes impossible to dissimulate your vagueness or ignorance by ambiguity4 ,they beget a habit of self-reliance2 they keep the interest and attention always cheerfully engaged1 and reduce the teacher's disciplinary functions to a minimum4 ,of the various systems of manual training1 so far as woodwork is concerned1 the ,swedish ,sloyd system1 if ,i may have an opinion on such matters1 seems to me by far the best1 psychologically considered4 ,manual training methods1 fortunately1 are being slowly but surely introduced into all our large cities4 ,but there is still an immense distance to traverse before they shall have gained the extension which they are destined ultimately to possess4 99 99 99 99 99 ,no impression without expression1 then1--that is the first pedagogic fruit of our evolutionary conception of the mind as something instrumental to adaptive behavior4 ,but a word may be said in continuation4 ,the expression itself comes back to us1 as ,i intimated a moment ago1 in the form of a still farther impression1--the impression1 namely1 of what we have done4 ,we thus receive sensible news of our behavior and its results4 ,we hear the words we have spoken1 feel our own blow as we give it1 or read in the bystander's eyes the success or failure of our conduct4 ,now this return wave of impression pertains to the completeness of the whole experience1 and a word about its importance in the schoolroom may not be out of place4 ,it would seem only natural to say that1 since after acting we normally get some return impression of result1 it must be well to let the pupil get such a return impression in every possible case4 ,nevertheless1 in schools where examination marks and 'standing' and other returns of result are concealed1 the pupil is frustrated of this natural termination of the cycle of his activities1 and often suffers from the sense of incompleteness and uncertainty2 and there are persons who defend this system as encouraging the pupil to work for the work's sake1 and not for extraneous reward4 ,of course1 here as elsewhere1 concrete experience must prevail over psychological deduction4 ,but1 so far as our psychological deduction goes1 it would suggest that the pupil's eagerness to know how well he does is in the line of his normal completeness of function1 and should never be balked except for very definite reasons indeed4 ,acquaint them1 therefore1 with their marks and standing and prospects1 unless in the individual case you have some special practical reason for not so doing4 ,,vi4 ,,native ,,reactions ,,and ,,acquired ,,reactions ,we are by this time fully launched upon the biological conception4 ,man is an organism for reacting on impressions3 his mind is there to help determine his reactions1 and the purpose of his education is to make them numerous and perfect4 ,our education means1 in short1 little more than a mass of possibilities of reaction1 acquired at home1 at school1 or in the training of affairs4 ,the teacher's task is that of supervising the acquiring process4 ,this being the case1 ,i will immediately state a principle which underlies the whole process of acquisition and governs the entire activity of the teacher4 ,it is this3-- ,every acquired reaction is1 as a rule1 either a complication grafted on a native reaction1 or a substitute for a native reaction1 which the same object originally tended to provoke4 ,the teacher's art consists in bringing about the substitution or complication1 and success in the art presupposes a sympathetic acquaintance with the reactive tendencies natively there4 ,without an equipment of native reactions on the child's part1 the teacher would have no hold whatever upon the child's attention or conduct4 ,you may take a horse to the water1 but you cannot make him drink2 and so you may take a child to the schoolroom1 but you cannot make him learn the new things you wish to impart1 except by soliciting him in the first instance by something which natively makes him react4 ,he must take the first step himself4 ,he must do something before you can get your purchase on him4 ,that something may be something good or something bad4 ,a bad reaction is better than no reaction at all2 for1 if bad1 you can couple it with consequences which awake him to its badness4 ,but imagine a child so lifeless as to react in no way to the teacher's first appeals1 and how can you possibly take the first step in his education8 ,to make this abstract conception more concrete1 assume the case of a young child's training in good manners4 ,the child has a native tendency to snatch with his hands at anything that attracts his curiosity2 also to draw back his hands when slapped1 to cry under these latter conditions1 to smile when gently spoken to1 and to imitate one's gestures4 ,suppose now you appear before the child with a new toy intended as a present for him4 ,no sooner does he see the toy than he seeks to snatch it4 ,you slap the hand2 it is withdrawn1 and the child cries4 ,you then hold up the toy1 smiling and saying1 ,beg for it nicely1--so6 ,the child stops crying1 imitates you1 receives the toy1 and crows with pleasure2 and that little cycle of training is complete4 ,you have substituted the new reaction of 'begging' for the native reaction of snatching1 when that kind of impression comes4 ,now1 if the child had no memory1 the process would not be educative4 ,no matter how often you came in with a toy1 the same series of reactions would fatally occur1 each called forth by its own impression3 see1 snatch2 slap1 cry2 hear1 ask2 receive1 smile4 ,but1 with memory there1 the child1 at the very instant of snatching1 recalls the rest of the earlier experience1 thinks of the slap and the frustration1 recollects the begging and the reward1 inhibits the snatching impulse1 substitutes the 'nice' reaction for it1 and gets the toy immediately1 by eliminating all the intermediary steps4 ,if a child's first snatching impulse be excessive or his memory poor1 many repetitions of the discipline may be needed before the acquired reaction comes to be an ingrained habit2 but in an eminently educable child a single experience will suffice4 ,one can easily represent the whole process by a brain-diagram4 ,such a diagram can be little more than a symbolic translation of the immediate experience into spatial terms2 yet it may be useful1 so ,i subjoin it4 ,illustration3 ,,figure #a4 ,,the ,,brain-,,processes ,,before ,,education4 ,figure #a shows the paths of the four successive reflexes executed by the lower or instinctive centres4 ,the dotted lines that lead from them to the higher centres and connect the latter together1 represent the processes of memory and association which the reactions impress upon the higher centres as they take place4 ,illustration3 ,,figure #b4 ,,the ,,brain-,,process ,,after ,,education4 ,in ,figure #b we have the final result4 ,the impression see awakens the chain of memories1 and the only reactions that take place are the beg and smile4 ,the thought of the slap1 connected with the activity of ,centre #b1 inhibits the snatch1 and makes it abortive1 so it is represented only by a dotted line of discharge not reaching the terminus4 ,ditto of the cry reaction4 ,these are1 as it were1 short-circuited by the current sweeping through the higher centres from see to smile4 ,beg and smile1 thus substituted for the original reaction snatch1 become at last the immediate responses when the child sees a snatchable object in some one's hands4 ,the first thing1 then1 for the teacher to understand is the native reactive tendencies1--the impulses and instincts of childhood1--so as to be able to substitute one for another1 and turn them on to artificial objects4 99 99 99 99 99 ,it is often said that man is distinguished from the lower animals by having a much smaller assortment of native instincts and impulses than they1 but this is a great mistake4 ,man1 of course1 has not the marvellous egg-laying instincts which some articulates have2 but1 if we compare him with the mammalia1 we are forced to confess that he is appealed to by a much larger array of objects than any other mammal1 that his reactions on these objects are characteristic and determinate in a very high degree4 ,the monkeys1 and especially the anthropoids1 are the only beings that approach him in their analytic curiosity and width of imitativeness4 ,his instinctive impulses1 it is true1 get overlaid by the secondary reactions due to his superior reasoning power2 but thus man loses the simply instinctive demeanor4 ,but the life of instinct is only disguised in him1 not lost2 and when the higher brain-functions are in abeyance1 as happens in imbecility or dementia1 his instincts sometimes show their presence in truly brutish ways4 ,i will therefore say a few words about those instinctive tendencies which are the most important from the teacher's point of view4 ,,vii4 ,,what ,,the ,,native ,,reactions ,,are ,first of all1 ,fear4 ,fear of punishment has always been the great weapon of the teacher1 and will always1 of course1 retain some place in the conditions of the schoolroom4 ,the subject is so familiar that nothing more need be said about it4 ,the same is true of ,love1 and the instinctive desire to please those whom we love4 ,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 secure4 ,next1 a word might be said about ,curiosity4 ,this is perhaps a rather poor term by which to designate the impulse toward better cognition in its full extent2 but you will readily understand what ,i mean4 ,novelties in the way of sensible objects1 especially if their sensational quality is bright1 vivid1 startling1 invariably arrest the attention of the young and hold it until the desire to know more about the object is assuaged4 ,in its higher1 more intellectual form1 the impulse toward completer knowledge takes the character of scientific or philosophic curiosity4 ,in both its sensational and its intellectual form the instinct is more vivacious during childhood and youth than in after life4 ,young children are possessed by curiosity about every new impression that assails them4 ,it would be quite impossible for a young child to listen to a lecture for more than a few minutes1 as you are now listening to me4 ,the outside sights and sounds would inevitably carry his attention off4 ,and1 for most people in middle life1 the sort of intellectual effort required of the average schoolboy in mastering his ,greek or ,latin lesson1 his algebra or physics1 would be out of the question4 ,the middle-aged citizen attends exclusively to the routine details of his business2 and new truths1 especially when they require involved trains of close reasoning1 are no longer within the scope of his capacity4 ,the sensational curiosity of childhood is appealed to more particularly by certain determinate kinds of objects4 ,material things1 things that move1 living things1 human actions and accounts of human action1 will win the attention better than anything that is more abstract4 ,here again comes in the advantage of the object-teaching and manual training methods4 ,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 part4 ,the teacher's earliest appeals1 therefore1 must be through objects shown or acts performed or described4 ,theoretic curiosity1 curiosity about the rational relations between things1 can hardly be said to awake at all until adolescence is reached4 ,the sporadic metaphysical inquiries of children as to who made ,god1 and why they have five fingers1 need hardly be counted here4 ,but1 when the theoretic instinct is once alive in the pupil1 an entirely new order of pedagogic relations begins for him4 ,reasons1 causes1 abstract conceptions1 suddenly grow full of zest1 a fact with which all teachers are familiar4 ,and1 both in its sensible and in its rational developments1 disinterested curiosity may be successfully appealed to in the child with much more certainty than in the adult1 in whom this intellectual instinct has grown so torpid as usually never to awake unless it enters into association with some selfish personal interest4 ,of this latter point ,i will say more anon4 ,imitation4 ,man has always been recognized as the imitative animal par excellence4 ,and there is hardly a book on psychology1 however old1 which has not devoted at least one paragraph to this fact4 ,it is strange1 however1 that the full scope and pregnancy of the imitative impulse in man has had to wait till the last dozen years to become adequately recognized4 ,m4 ,tarde led the way in his admirably original work1 ,les ,lois de l',imitation2 and in our own country ,professors ,royce and ,baldwin have kept the ball rolling with all the energy that could be desired4 ,each of us is in fact what he is almost exclusively by virtue of his imitativeness4 ,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 pattern4 ,the entire accumulated wealth of mankind--languages1 arts1 institutions1 and sciences--is passed on from one generation to another by what ,baldwin has called social heredity1 each generation simply imitating the last4 ,into the particulars of this most fascinating chapter of psychology ,i have no time to go4 ,the moment one hears ,tarde's proposition uttered1 however1 one feels how supremely true it is4 ,invention1 using the term most broadly1 and imitation1 are the two legs1 so to call them1 on which the human race historically has walked4 ,imitation shades imperceptibly into ,emulation4 ,emulation is the impulse to imitate what you see another doing1 in order not to appear inferior2 and it is hard to draw a sharp line between the manifestations of the two impulses1 so inextricably do they mix their effects4 ,emulation is the very nerve of human society4 ,why are you1 my hearers1 sitting here before me8 ,if no one whom you ever heard of had attended a 'summer school' or teachers' institute1 would it have occurred to any one of you to break out independently and do a thing so unprescribed by fashion8 ,probably not4 ,nor would your pupils come to you unless the children of their parents' neighbors were all simultaneously being sent to school4 ,we wish not to be lonely or eccentric1 and we wish not to be cut off from our share in things which to our neighbors seem desirable privileges4 ,in the schoolroom1 imitation and emulation play absolutely vital parts4 ,every teacher knows the advantage of having certain things performed by whole bands of children at a time4 ,the teacher who meets with most success is the teacher whose own ways are the most imitable4 ,a teacher should never try to make the pupils do a thing which she cannot do herself4 ,come and let me show you how is an incomparably better stimulus than ,go and do it as the book directs4 ,children admire a teacher who has skill4 ,what he does seems easy1 and they wish to emulate it4 ,it is useless for a dull and devitalized teacher to exhort her pupils to wake up and take an interest4 ,she must first take one herself2 then her example is effective1 as no exhortation can possibly be4 ,every school has its tone1 moral and intellectual4 ,and this tone is a mere tradition kept up by imitation1 due in the first instance to the example set by teachers and by previous pupils of an aggressive and dominating type1 copied by the others1 and passed on from year to year1 so that the new pupils take the cue almost immediately4 ,such a tone changes very slowly1 if at all2 and then always under the modifying influence of new personalities aggressive enough in character to set new patterns and not merely to copy the old4 ,the classic example of this sort of tone is the often quoted case of ,rugby under ,dr4 ,arnold's administration4 ,he impressed his own character as a model on the imagination of the oldest boys1 who in turn were expected and required to impress theirs upon the younger set4 ,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 school4 ,it is obvious that psychology as such can give in this field no precepts of detail4 ,as in so many other fields of teaching1 success depends mainly on the native genius of the teacher1 the sympathy1 tact1 and perception which enable him to seize the right moment and to set the right example4 ,among the recent modern reforms of teaching methods1 a certain disparagement of emulation1 as a laudable spring of action in the schoolroom1 has often made itself heard4 ,more than a century ago1 ,rousseau1 in his ',emile1' branded rivalry between one pupil and another as too base a passion to play a part in an ideal education4 ,let ,emile1 he said1 never be led to compare himself to other children4 ,no rivalries1 not even in running1 as soon as he begins to have the power of reason4 ,it were a hundred times better that he should not learn at all what he could only learn through jealousy or vanity4 ,but ,i would mark out every year the progress he may have made1 and ,i would compare it with the progress of the following years4 ,i would say to him3 ',you are now grown so many inches taller2 there is the ditch which you jumped over1 there is the burden which you raised4 ,there is the distance to which you could throw a pebble1 there the distance you could run over without losing breath4 ,see how much more you can do now6' ,thus ,i should excite him without making him jealous of any one4 ,he would wish to surpass himself4 ,i can see no inconvenience in this emulation with his former self4 ,unquestionably1 emulation with one's former self is a noble form of the passion of rivalry1 and has a wide scope in the training of the young4 ,but to veto and taboo all possible rivalry of one youth with another1 because such rivalry may degenerate into greedy and selfish excess1 does seem to savor somewhat of sentimentality1 or even of fanaticism4 ,the feeling of rivalry lies at the very basis of our being1 all social improvement being largely due to it4 ,there is a noble and generous kind of rivalry1 as well as a spiteful and greedy kind2 and the noble and generous form is particularly common in childhood4 ,all games owe the zest which they bring with them to the fact that they are rooted in the emulous passion1 yet they are the chief means of training in fairness and magnanimity4 ,can the teacher afford to throw such an ally away8 ,ought we seriously to hope that marks1 distinctions1 prizes1 and other goals of effort1 based on the pursuit of recognized superiority1 should be forever banished from our schools8 ,as a psychologist1 obliged to notice the deep and pervasive character of the emulous passion1 ,i must confess my doubts4 ,the wise teacher will use this instinct as he uses others1 reaping its advantages1 and appealing to it in such a way as to reap a maximum of benefit with a minimum of harm2 for1 after all1 we must confess1 with a ,french critic of ,rousseau's doctrine1 that the deepest spring of action in us is the sight of action in another4 ,the spectacle of effort is what awakens and sustains our own effort4 ,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 incites1 when he feels them at his heels1 about to pass4 ,when a trotting horse is 'speeded1' a running horse must go beside him to keep him to the pace4 ,as imitation slides into emulation1 so emulation slides into ,ambition2 and ambition connects itself closely with ,pugnacity and ,pride4 ,consequently1 these five instinctive tendencies form an interconnected group of factors1 hard to separate in the determination of a great deal of our conduct4 ,the ,ambitious ,impulses would perhaps be the best name for the whole group4 ,pride and pugnacity have often been considered unworthy passions to appeal to in the young4 ,but in their more refined and noble forms they play a great part in the schoolroom and in education generally1 being in some characters most potent spurs to effort4 ,pugnacity need not be thought of merely in the form of physical combativeness4 ,it can be taken in the sense of a general unwillingness to be beaten by any kind of difficulty4 ,it is what makes us feel 'stumped' and challenged by arduous achievements1 and is essential to a spirited and enterprising character4 ,we have of late been hearing much of the philosophy of tenderness in education2 'interest' must be assiduously awakened in everything1 difficulties must be smoothed away4 ,soft pedagogics have taken the place of the old steep and rocky path to learning4 ,but from this lukewarm air the bracing oxygen of effort is left out4 ,it is nonsense to suppose that every step in education can be interesting4 ,the fighting impulse must often be appealed to4 ,make the pupil feel ashamed of being scared at fractions1 of being 'downed' by the law of falling bodies2 rouse his pugnacity and pride1 and he will rush at the difficult places with a sort of inner wrath at himself that is one of his best moral faculties4 ,a victory scored under such conditions becomes a turning-point and crisis of his character4 ,it represents the high-water mark of his powers1 and serves thereafter as an ideal pattern for his self-imitation4 ,the teacher who never rouses this sort of pugnacious excitement in his pupils falls short of one of his best forms of usefulness4 ,the next instinct which ,i shall mention is that of ,ownership1 also one of the radical endowments of the race4 ,it often is the antagonist of imitation4 ,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 decide4 ,the sense of ownership begins in the second year of life4 ,among the first words which an infant learns to utter are the words 'my' and 'mine1' and woe to the parents of twins who fail to provide their gifts in duplicate4 ,the depth and primitiveness of this instinct would seem to cast a sort of psychological discredit in advance upon all radical forms of communistic utopia4 ,private proprietorship cannot be practically abolished until human nature is changed4 ,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 possession1 and which he may defend adversely against the world4 ,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 terms4 ,the monk must have his books3 the nun must have her little garden1 and the images and pictures in her room4 ,in education1 the instinct of ownership is fundamental1 and can be appealed to in many ways4 ,in the house1 training in order and neatness begins with the arrangement of the child's own personal possessions4 ,in the school1 ownership is particularly important in connection with one of its special forms of activity1 the collecting impulse4 ,an object possibly not very interesting in itself1 like a shell1 a postage stamp1 or a single map or drawing1 will acquire an interest if it fills a gap in a collection or helps to complete a series4 ,much of the scholarly work of the world1 so far as it is mere bibliography1 memory1 and erudition 7and this lies at the basis of all our human scholarship71 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 rationality4 ,a man wishes a complete collection of information1 wishes to know more about a subject than anybody else1 much as another may wish to own more dollars or more early editions or more engravings before the letter than anybody else4 ,the teacher who can work this impulse into the school tasks is fortunate4 ,almost all children collect something4 ,a tactful teacher may get them to take pleasure in collecting books2 in keeping a neat and orderly collection of notes2 in starting1 when they are mature enough1 a card catalogue2 in preserving every drawing or map which they may make4 ,neatness1 order1 and method are thus instinctively gained1 along with the other benefits which the possession of the collection entails4 ,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 impart4 ,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 home4 ,collecting is1 of course1 the basis of all natural history study2 and probably nobody ever became a good naturalist who was not an unusually active collector when a boy4 ,constructiveness is another great instinctive tendency with which the schoolroom has to contract an alliance4 ,up to the eighth or ninth year of childhood one may say that the child does hardly anything else than handle objects1 explore things with his hands1 doing and undoing1 setting up and knocking down1 putting together and pulling apart2 for1 from the psychological point of view1 construction and destruction are two names for the same manual activity4 ,both signify the production of change1 and the working of effects1 in outward things4 ,the result of all this is that intimate familiarity with the physical environment1 that acquaintance with the properties of material things1 which is really the foundation of human consciousness4 ,to the very last1 in most of us1 the conceptions of objects and their properties are limited to the notion of what we can do with them4 ,a 'stick' means something we can lean upon or strike with2 'fire1' something to cook1 or warm ourselves1 or burn things up withal2 'string1' something with which to tie things together4 ,for most people these objects have no other meaning4 ,in geometry1 the cylinder1 circle1 sphere1 are defined as what you get by going through certain processes of construction1 revolving a parallelogram upon one of its sides1 etc4 ,the more different kinds of things a child thus gets to know by treating and handling them1 the more confident grows his sense of kinship with the world in which he lives4 ,an unsympathetic adult will wonder at the fascinated hours which a child will spend in putting his blocks together and rearranging them4 ,but the wise education takes the tide at the flood1 and from the kindergarten upward devotes the first years of education to training in construction and to object-teaching4 ,i need not recapitulate here what ,i said awhile back about the superiority of the objective and experimental methods4 ,they occupy the pupil in a way most congruous with the spontaneous interests of his age4 ,they absorb him1 and leave impressions durable and profound4 ,compared with the youth taught by these methods1 one brought up exclusively by books carries through life a certain remoteness from reality3 he stands1 as it were1 out of the pale1 and feels that he stands so2 and often suffers a kind of melancholy from which he might have been rescued by a more real education4 ,there are other impulses1 such as love of approbation or vanity1 shyness and secretiveness1 of which a word might be said2 but they are too familiar to need it4 ,you can easily pursue the subject by your own reflection4 ,there is one general law1 however1 that relates to many of our instinctive tendencies1 and that has no little importance in education2 and ,i must refer to it briefly before ,i leave the subject4 ,it has been called the law of transitoriness in instincts4 ,many of our impulsive tendencies ripen at a certain period2 and1 if the appropriate objects be then and there provided1 habits of conduct toward them are acquired which last4 ,but1 if the objects be not forthcoming then1 the impulse may die out before a habit is formed2 and later it may be hard to teach the creature to react appropriately in those directions4 ,the sucking instincts in mammals1 the following instinct in certain birds and quadrupeds1 are examples of this3 they fade away shortly after birth4 ,in children we observe a ripening of impulses and interests in a certain determinate order4 ,creeping1 walking1 climbing1 imitating vocal sounds1 constructing1 drawing1 calculating1 possess the child in succession2 and in some children the possession1 while it lasts1 may be of a semi-frantic and exclusive sort4 ,later1 the interest in any one of these things may wholly fade away4 ,of course1 the proper pedagogic moment to work skill in1 and to clench the useful habit1 is when the native impulse is most acutely present4 ,crowd on the athletic opportunities1 the mental arithmetic1 the verse-learning1 the drawing1 the botany1 or what not1 the moment you have reason to think the hour is ripe4 ,the hour may not last long1 and while it continues you may safely let all the child's other occupations take a second place4 ,in this way you economize time and deepen skill2 for many an infant prodigy1 artistic or mathematical1 has a flowering epoch of but a few months4 ,one can draw no specific rules for all this4 ,it depends on close observation in the particular case1 and parents here have a great advantage over teachers4 ,in fact1 the law of transitoriness has little chance of individualized application in the schools4 ,such is the little interested and impulsive psychophysical organism whose springs of action the teacher must divine1 and to whose ways he must become accustomed4 ,he must start with the native tendencies1 and enlarge the pupil's entire passive and active experience4 ,he must ply him with new objects and stimuli1 and make him taste the fruits of his behavior1 so that now that whole context of remembered experience is what shall determine his conduct when he gets the stimulus1 and not the bare immediate impression4 ,as the pupil's life thus enlarges1 it gets fuller and fuller of all sorts of memories and associations and substitutions2 but the eye accustomed to psychological analysis will discern1 underneath it all1 the outlines of our simple psychophysical scheme4 ,respect then1 ,i beg you1 always the original reactions1 even when you are seeking to overcome their connection with certain objects1 and to supplant them with others that you wish to make the rule4 ,bad behavior1 from the point of view of the teacher's art1 is as good a starting-point as good behavior4 ,in fact1 paradoxical as it may sound to say so1 it is often a better starting-point than good behavior would be4 ,the acquired reactions must be made habitual whenever they are appropriate4 ,therefore ,habit is the next subject to which your attention is invited4 ,,viii4 ,,the ,,laws ,,of ,,habit ,it is very important that teachers should realize the importance of habit1 and psychology helps us greatly at this point4 ,we speak1 it is true1 of good habits and of bad habits2 but1 when people use the word 'habit1' in the majority of instances it is a bad habit which they have in mind4 ,they talk of the smoking-habit and the swearing-habit and the drinking-habit1 but not of the abstention-habit or the moderation-habit or the courage-habit4 ,but the fact is that our virtues are habits as much as our vices4 ,all our life1 so far as it has definite form1 is but a mass of habits1--practical1 emotional1 and intellectual1--systematically organized for our weal or woe1 and bearing us irresistibly toward our destiny1 whatever the latter may be4 ,since pupils can understand this at a comparatively early age1 and since to understand it contributes in no small measure to their feeling of responsibility1 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 you4 ,i believe that we are subject to the law of habit in consequence of the fact that we have bodies4 ,the plasticity of the living matter of our nervous system1 in short1 is the reason why we do a thing with difficulty the first time1 but soon do it more and more easily1 and finally1 with sufficient practice1 do it semi-mechanically1 or with hardly any consciousness at all4 ,our nervous systems have 7in ,dr4 ,carpenter's words7 grown to the way in which they have been exercised1 just as a sheet of paper or a coat1 once creased or folded1 tends to fall forever afterward into the same identical folds4 ,habit is thus a second nature1 or rather1 as the ,duke of ,wellington said1 it is 'ten times nature1'--at any rate as regards its importance in adult life2 for the acquired habits of our training have by that time inhibited or strangled most of the natural impulsive tendencies which were originally there4 ,ninety-nine hundredths or1 possibly1 nine hundred and ninety-nine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic and habitual1 from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night4 ,our dressing and undressing1 our eating and drinking1 our greetings and partings1 our hat-raisings and giving way for ladies to precede1 nay1 even most of the forms of our common speech1 are things of a type so fixed by repetition as almost to be classed as reflex actions4 ,to each sort of impression we have an automatic1 ready-made response4 ,my very words to you now are an example of what ,i mean2 for having already lectured upon habit and printed a chapter about it in a book1 and read the latter when in print1 ,i find my tongue inevitably falling into its old phrases and repeating almost literally what ,i said before4 ,so far as we are thus mere bundles of habit1 we are stereotyped creatures1 imitators and copiers of our past selves4 ,and since this1 under any circumstances1 is what we always tend to become1 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 life4 ,education is for behavior1 and habits are the stuff of which behavior consists4 ,to quote my earlier book directly1 the great thing in all education is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy4 ,it is to fund and capitalize our acquisitions1 and live at ease upon the interest of the fund4 ,for this we must make automatic and habitual1 as early as possible1 as many useful actions as we can1 and as carefully guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous4 ,the more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism1 the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work4 ,there is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision1 and for whom the lighting of every cigar1 the drinking of every cup1 the time of rising and going to bed every day1 and the beginning of every bit of work are subjects of express volitional deliberation4 ,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 all4 ,if there be such daily duties not yet ingrained in any one of my hearers1 let him begin this very hour to set the matter right4 ,in ,professor ,bain's chapter on ',the ,moral ,habits' there are some admirable practical remarks laid down4 ,two great maxims emerge from the treatment4 ,the first is that in the acquisition of a new habit1 or the leaving off of an old one1 we must take care to launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible4 ,accumulate all the possible circumstances which shall reinforce the right motives2 put yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way2 make engagements incompatible with the old2 take a public pledge1 if the case allows2 in short1 envelope your resolution with every aid you know4 ,this will give your new beginning such a momentum that the temptation to break down will not occur as soon as it otherwise might2 and every day during which a breakdown is postponed adds to the chances of its not occurring at all4 ,i remember long ago reading in an ,austrian paper the advertisement of a certain ,rudolph ,somebody1 who promised fifty gulden reward to any one who after that date should find him at the wine-shop of ,ambrosius ,so-and-so4 ',this ,i do1' the advertisement continued1 'in consequence of a promise which ,i have made my wife4' ,with such a wife1 and such an understanding of the way in which to start new habits1 it would be safe to stake one's money on ,rudolph's ultimate success4 ,the second maxim is1 ,never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life4 ,each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up3 a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again4 ,continuity of training is the great means of making the nervous system act infallibly right4 ,as ,professor ,bain says3-- ,the peculiarity of the moral habits1 contradistinguishing them from the intellectual acquisitions1 is the presence of two hostile powers1 one to be gradually raised into the ascendant over the other4 ,it is necessary above all things1 in such a situation1 never to lose a battle4 ,every gain on the wrong side undoes the effect of many conquests on the right4 ,the essential precaution1 therefore1 is so to regulate the two opposing powers that the one may have a series of uninterrupted successes1 until repetition has fortified it to such a degree as to enable it to cope with the opposition1 under any circumstances4 ,this is the theoretically best career of mental progress4 ,a third maxim may be added to the preceding pair3 ,seize the very first possible opportunity to act on every resolution you make1 and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain4 ,it is not in the moment of their forming1 but in the moment of their producing motor effects1 that resolves and aspirations communicate the new 'set' to the brain4 ,no matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess1 and no matter how good one's sentiments may be1 if one have not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to act1 one's character may remain entirely unaffected for the better4 ,with good intentions1 hell proverbially is paved4 ,this is an obvious consequence of the principles ,i have laid down4 ,a 'character1' as ,j4,s4 ,mill says1 'is a completely fashioned will'2 and a will1 in the sense in which he means it1 is an aggregate of tendencies to act in a firm and prompt and definite way upon all the principal emergencies of life4 ,a tendency to act only becomes effectively ingrained in us in proportion to the uninterrupted frequency with which the actions actually occur1 and the brain 'grows' to their use4 ,when a resolve or a fine glow of feeling is allowed to evaporate without bearing practical fruit1 it is worse than a chance lost3 it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge4 ,there is no more contemptible type of human character than that of the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer1 who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility1 but never does a concrete manly deed4 ,this leads to a fourth maxim4 ,don't preach too much to your pupils or abound in good talk in the abstract4 ,lie in wait rather for the practical opportunities1 be prompt to seize those as they pass1 and thus at one operation get your pupils both to think1 to feel1 and to do4 ,the strokes of behavior are what give the new set to the character1 and work the good habits into its organic tissue4 ,preaching and talking too soon become an ineffectual bore4 99 99 99 99 99 ,there is a passage in ,darwin's short autobiography which has been often quoted1 and which1 for the sake of its bearing on our subject of habit1 ,i must now quote again4 ,darwin says3 ,up to the age of thirty or beyond it1 poetry of many kinds gave me great pleasure2 and even as a schoolboy ,i took intense delight in ,shakespeare1 especially in the historical plays4 ,i have also said that pictures formerly gave me considerable1 and music very great delight4 ,but now for many years ,i cannot endure to read a line of poetry4 ,i have tried lately to read ,shakespeare1 and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me4 ,i have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music4444 ,my mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts2 but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone1 on which the higher tastes depend1 ,i cannot conceive4444 ,if ,i had to live my life again1 ,i would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week2 for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept alive through use4 ,the loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness1 and may possibly be injurious to the intellect1 and more probably to the moral character1 by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature4 ,we all intend when young to be all that may become a man1 before the destroyer cuts us down4 ,we wish and expect to enjoy poetry always1 to grow more and more intelligent about pictures and music1 to keep in touch with spiritual and religious ideas1 and even not to let the greater philosophic thoughts of our time develop quite beyond our view4 ,we mean all this in youth1 ,i say2 and yet in how many middle-aged men and women is such an honest and sanguine expectation fulfilled8 ,surely1 in comparatively few2 and the laws of habit show us why4 ,some interest in each of these things arises in everybody at the proper age2 but1 if not persistently fed with the appropriate matter1 instead of growing into a powerful and necessary habit1 it atrophies and dies1 choked by the rival interests to which the daily food is given4 ,we make ourselves into ,darwins in this negative respect by persistently ignoring the essential practical conditions of our case4 ,we say abstractly3 ,i mean to enjoy poetry1 and to absorb a lot of it1 of course4 ,i fully intend to keep up my love of music1 to read the books that shall give new turns to the thought of my time1 to keep my higher spiritual side alive1 etc4 ,but we do not attack these things concretely1 and we do not begin to-day4 ,we forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort4 ,we postpone and postpone1 until those smiling possibilities are dead4 ,whereas ten minutes a day of poetry1 of spiritual reading or meditation1 and an hour or two a week at music1 pictures1 or philosophy1 provided we began now and suffered no remission1 would infallibly give us in due time the fulness of all we desire4 ,by neglecting the necessary concrete labor1 by sparing ourselves the little daily tax1 we are positively digging the graves of our higher possibilities4 ,this is a point concerning which you teachers might well give a little timely information to your older and more aspiring pupils4 ,according as a function receives daily exercise or not1 the man becomes a different kind of being in later life4 ,we have lately had a number of accomplished ,hindoo visitors at ,cambridge1 who talked freely of life and philosophy4 ,more than one of them has confided to me that the sight of our faces1 all contracted as they are with the habitual ,american over-intensity and anxiety of expression1 and our ungraceful and distorted attitudes when sitting1 made on him a very painful impression4 ,i do not see1 said one1 how it is possible for you to live as you do1 without a single minute in your day deliberately given to tranquillity and meditation4 ,it is an invariable part of our ,hindoo life to retire for at least half an hour daily into silence1 to relax our muscles1 govern our breathing1 and meditate on eternal things4 ,every ,hindoo child is trained to this from a very early age4 ,the good fruits of such a discipline were obvious in the physical repose and lack of tension1 and the wonderful smoothness and calmness of facial expression1 and imperturbability of manner of these ,orientals4 ,i felt that my countrymen were depriving themselves of an essential grace of character4 ,how many ,american children ever hear it said by parent or teacher1 that they should moderate their piercing voices1 that they should relax their unused muscles1 and as far as possible1 when sitting1 sit quite still8 ,not one in a thousand1 not one in five thousand6 ,yet1 from its reflex influence on the inner mental states1 this ceaseless over-tension1 over-motion1 and over-expression are working on us grievous national harm4 ,i beg you teachers to think a little seriously of this matter4 ,perhaps you can help our rising generation of ,americans toward the beginning of a better set of personal ideals4,b ,b ,see the ,address on the ,gospel of ,relaxation1 later in this volume4 99 99 99 99 99 ,to go back now to our general maxims1 ,i may at last1 as a fifth and final practical maxim about habits1 offer something like this3 ,keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day4 ,that is1 be systematically heroic in little unnecessary points1 do every day or two something for no other reason than its difficulty1 so that1 when the hour of dire need draws nigh1 it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand the test4 ,asceticism of this sort is like the insurance which a man pays on his house and goods4 ,the tax does him no good at the time1 and possibly may never bring him a return4 ,but1 if the fire does come1 his having paid it will be his salvation from ruin4 ,so with the man who has daily inured himself to habits of concentrated attention1 energetic volition1 and self-denial in unnecessary things4 ,he will stand like a tower when everything rocks around him1 and his softer fellow-mortals are winnowed like chaff in the blast4 99 99 99 99 99 ,i have been accused1 when talking of the subject of habit1 of making old habits appear so strong that the acquiring of new ones1 and particularly anything like a sudden reform or conversion1 would be made impossible by my doctrine4 ,of course1 this would suffice to condemn the latter2 for sudden conversions1 however infrequent they may be1 unquestionably do occur4 ,but there is no incompatibility between the general laws ,i have laid down and the most startling sudden alterations in the way of character4 ,new habits can be launched1 ,i have expressly said1 on condition of there being new stimuli and new excitements4 ,now life abounds in these1 and sometimes they are such critical and revolutionary experiences that they change a man's whole scale of values and system of ideas4 ,in such cases1 the old order of his habits will be ruptured2 and1 if the new motives are lasting1 new habits will be formed1 and build up in him a new or regenerate 'nature4' ,all this kind of fact ,i fully allow4 ,but the general laws of habit are no wise altered thereby1 and the physiological study of mental conditions still remains on the whole the most powerful ally of hortatory ethics4 ,the hell to be endured hereafter1 of which theology tells1 is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way4 ,could the young but realize how soon they will become mere walking bundles of habits1 they would give more heed to their conduct while in the plastic state4 ,we are spinning our own fates1 good or evil1 and never to be undone4 ,every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never-so-little scar4 ,the drunken ,rip ,van ,winkle1 in ,jefferson's play1 excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying1 ,i won't count this time6 ,well1 he may not count it1 and a kind ,heaven may not count it2 but it is being counted none the less4 ,down among his nerve-cells and fibres the molecules are counting it1 registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes4 ,nothing we ever do is1 in strict scientific literalness1 wiped out4 ,of course1 this has its good side as well as its bad one4 ,as we become permanent drunkards by so many separate drinks1 so we become saints in the moral1 and authorities and experts in the practical and scientific spheres1 by so many separate acts and hours of work4 ,let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education1 whatever the line of it may be4 ,if he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working day1 he may safely leave the final result to itself4 ,he can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation1 in whatever pursuit he may have singled out4 ,silently1 between all the details of his business1 the power of judging in all that class of matter will have built itself up within him as a possession that will never pass away4 ,young people should know this truth in advance4 ,the ignorance of it has probably engendered more discouragement and faint-heartedness in youths embarking on arduous careers than all other causes put together4 ,,ix4 ,,the ,,association ,,of ,,ideas ,in my last talk1 in treating of ,habit1 ,i chiefly had in mind our motor habits1--habits of external conduct4 ,but our thinking and feeling processes are also largely subject to the law of habit1 and one result of this is a phenomenon which you all know under the name of 'the association of ideas4' ,to that phenomenon ,i ask you now to turn4 ,you remember that consciousness is an ever-flowing stream of objects1 feelings1 and impulsive tendencies4 ,we saw already that its phases or pulses are like so many fields or waves1 each field or wave having usually its central point of liveliest attention1 in the shape of the most prominent object in our thought1 while all around this lies a margin of other objects more dimly realized1 together with the margin of emotional and active tendencies which the whole entails4 ,describing the mind thus in fluid terms1 we cling as close as possible to nature4 ,at first sight1 it might seem as if1 in the fluidity of these successive waves1 everything is indeterminate4 ,but inspection shows that each wave has a constitution which can be to some degree explained by the constitution of the waves just passed away4 ,and this relation of the wave to its predecessors is expressed by the two fundamental 'laws of association1' so-called1 of which the first is named the ,law of ,contiguity1 the second that of ,similarity4 ,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 away4 ,the vanishing objects were once formerly their neighbors in the mind4 ,when you recite the alphabet or your prayers1 or when the sight of an object reminds you of its name1 or the name reminds you of the object1 it is through the law of contiguity that the terms are suggested to the mind4 ,the ,law of ,similarity says that1 when contiguity fails to describe what happens1 the coming objects will prove to resemble the going objects1 even though the two were never experienced together before4 ,in our 'flights of fancy1' this is frequently the case4 ,if1 arresting ourselves in the flow of reverie1 we ask the question1 ,how came we to be thinking of just this object now8 we can almost always trace its presence to some previous object which has introduced it to the mind1 according to one or the other of these laws4 ,the entire routine of our memorized acquisitions1 for example1 is a consequence of nothing but the ,law of ,contiguity4 ,the words of a poem1 the formulas of trigonometry1 the facts of history1 the properties of material things1 are all known to us as definite systems or groups of objects which cohere in an order fixed by innumerable iterations1 and of which any one part reminds us of the others4 ,in dry and prosaic minds1 almost all the mental sequences flow along these lines of habitual routine repetition and suggestion4 ,in witty1 imaginative minds1 on the other hand1 the routine is broken through with ease at any moment2 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 coupled4 ,the link here is usually some analogy between the objects successively thought of1--an analogy often so subtle that1 although we feel it1 we can with difficulty analyze its ground2 as where1 for example1 we find something masculine in the color red and something feminine in the color pale blue1 or where1 of three human beings' characters1 one will remind us of a cat1 another of a dog1 the third perhaps of a cow4 99 99 99 99 99 ,psychologists have of course gone very deeply into the question of what the causes of association may be2 and some of them have tried to show that contiguity and similarity are not two radically diverse laws1 but that either presupposes the presence of the other4 ,i myself am disposed to think that the phenomena of association depend on our cerebral constitution1 and are not immediate consequences of our being rational beings4 ,in other words1 when we shall have become disembodied spirits1 it may be that our trains of consciousness will follow different laws4 ,these questions are discussed in the books on psychology1 and ,i hope that some of you will be interested in following them there4 ,but ,i will1 on the present occasion1 ignore them entirely2 for1 as teachers1 it is the fact of association that practically concerns you1 let its grounds be spiritual or cerebral1 or what they may1 and let its laws be reducible1 or non-reducible1 to one4 ,your pupils1 whatever else they are1 are at any rate little pieces of associating machinery4 ,their education consists in the organizing within them of determinate tendencies to associate one thing with another1--impressions with consequences1 these with reactions1 those with results1 and so on indefinitely4 ,the more copious the associative systems1 the completer the individual's adaptations to the world4 ,the teacher can formulate his function to himself therefore in terms of 'association' as well as in terms of 'native and acquired reaction4' ,it is mainly that of building up useful systems of association in the pupil's mind4 ,this description sounds wider than the one ,i began by giving4 ,but1 when one thinks that our trains of association1 whatever they may be1 normally issue in acquired reactions or behavior1 one sees that in a general way the same mass of facts is covered by both formulas4 ,it is astonishing how many mental operations we can explain when we have once grasped the principles of association4 ,the great problem which association undertakes to solve is1 ,why does just this particular field of consciousness1 constituted in this particular way1 now appear before my mind8 ,it may be a field of objects imagined2 it may be of objects remembered or of objects perceived2 it may include an action resolved on4 ,in either case1 when the field is analyzed into its parts1 those parts can be shown to have proceeded from parts of fields previously before consciousness1 in consequence of one or other of the laws of association just laid down4 ,those laws run the mind3 interest1 shifting hither and thither1 deflects it2 and attention1 as we shall later see1 steers it and keeps it from too zigzag a course4 ,to grasp these factors clearly gives one a solid and simple understanding of the psychological machinery4 ,the 'nature1' the 'character1' of an individual means really nothing but the habitual form of his associations4 ,to break up bad associations or wrong ones1 to build others in1 to guide the associative tendencies into the most fruitful channels1 is the educator's principal task4 ,but here1 as with all other simple principles1 the difficulty lies in the application4 ,psychology can state the laws3 concrete tact and talent alone can work them to useful results4 ,meanwhile it is a matter of the commonest experience that our minds may pass from one object to another by various intermediary fields of consciousness4 ,the indeterminateness of our paths of association in concreto is thus almost as striking a feature of them as the uniformity of their abstract form4 ,start from any idea whatever1 and the entire range of your ideas is potentially at your disposal4 ,if we take as the associative starting-point1 or cue1 some simple word which ,i pronounce before you1 there is no limit to the possible diversity of suggestions which it may set up in your minds4 ,suppose ,i say 'blue1' for example3 some of you may think of the blue sky and hot weather from which we now are suffering1 then go off on thoughts of summer clothing1 or possibly of meteorology at large2 others may think of the spectrum and the physiology of color-vision1 and glide into ,x-rays and recent physical speculations2 others may think of blue ribbons1 or of the blue flowers on a friend's hat1 and proceed on lines of personal reminiscence4 ,to others1 again1 etymology and linguistic thoughts may be suggested2 or blue may be 'apperceived' as a synonym for melancholy1 and a train of associates connected with morbid psychology may proceed to unroll themselves4 ,in the same person1 the same word heard at different times will provoke1 in consequence of the varying marginal preoccupations1 either one of a number of diverse possible associative sequences4 ,professor ,muensterberg performed this experiment methodically1 using the same words four times over1 at three-month intervals1 as 'cues' for four different persons who were the subjects of observation4 ,he found almost no constancy in their associations taken at these different times4 ,in short1 the entire potential content of one's consciousness is accessible from any one of its points4 ,this is why we can never work the laws of association forward3 starting from the present field as a cue1 we can never cipher out in advance just what the person will be thinking of five minutes later4 ,the elements which may become prepotent in the process1 the parts of each successive field round which the associations shall chiefly turn1 the possible bifurcations of suggestion1 are so numerous and ambiguous as to be indeterminable before the fact4 ,but1 although we cannot work the laws of association forward1 we can always work them backwards4 ,we cannot say now what we shall find ourselves thinking of five minutes hence2 but1 whatever it may be1 we shall then be able to trace it through intermediary links of contiguity or similarity to what we are thinking now4 ,what so baffles our prevision is the shifting part played by the margin and focus--in fact1 by each element by itself of the margin or focus--in calling up the next ideas4 ,for example1 ,i am reciting ',locksley ,hall1' in order to divert my mind from a state of suspense that ,i am in concerning the will of a relative that is dead4 ,the will still remains in the mental background as an extremely marginal or ultra-marginal portion of my field of consciousness2 but the poem fairly keeps my attention from it1 until ,i come to the line1 ,i1 the heir of all the ages1 in the foremost files of time4 ,the words ',i1 the heir1' immediately make an electric connection with the marginal thought of the will2 that1 in turn1 makes my heart beat with anticipation of my possible legacy1 so that ,i throw down the book and pace the floor excitedly with visions of my future fortune pouring through my mind4 ,any portion of the field of consciousness that has more potentialities of emotional excitement than another may thus be roused to predominant activity2 and the shifting play of interest now in one portion1 now in another1 deflects the currents in all sorts of zigzag ways1 the mental activity running hither and thither as the sparks run in burnt-up paper4 99 99 99 99 99 ,one more point1 and ,i shall have said as much to you as seems necessary about the process of association4 ,you just saw how a single exciting word may call up its own associates prepotently1 and deflect our whole train of thinking from the previous track4 ,the fact is that every portion of the field tends to call up its own associates2 but1 if these associates be severally different1 there is rivalry1 and as soon as one or a few begin to be effective the others seem to get siphoned out1 as it were1 and left behind4 ,seldom1 however1 as in our example1 does the process seem to turn round a single item in the mental field1 or even round the entire field that is immediately in the act of passing4 ,it is a matter of constellation1 into which portions of fields that are already past especially seem to enter and have their say4 ,thus1 to go back to ',locksley ,hall1' each word as ,i recite it in its due order is suggested not solely by the previous word now expiring on my lips1 but it is rather the effect of all the previous words1 taken together1 of the verse4 ,ages1 for example1 calls up in the foremost files of time1 when preceded by ,i1 the heir of all the--2 but1 when preceded by for ,i doubt not through the1--it calls up one increasing purpose runs4 ,similarly1 if ,i write on the blackboard the letters ,a ,b ,c ,d ,e ,f1444 they probably suggest to you ,g ,h ,i4444 ,but1 if ,i write ,a ,b ,a ,d ,d ,e ,f1 if they suggest anything1 they suggest as their complement ,e ,c ,t or ,e ,f ,i ,c ,i ,e ,n ,c ,y4 ,the result depending on the total constellation1 even though most of the single items be the same4 ,my practical reason for mentioning this law is this1 that it follows from it that1 in working associations into your pupils' minds1 you must not rely on single cues1 but multiply the cues as much as possible4 ,couple the desired reaction with numerous constellations of antecedents1--don't always ask the question1 for example1 in the same way2 don't use the same kind of data in numerical problems2 vary your illustrations1 etc41 as much as you can4 ,when we come to the subject of memory1 we shall learn still more about this4 ,so much1 then1 for the general subject of association4 ,in leaving it for other topics 7in which1 however1 we shall abundantly find it involved again71 ,i cannot too strongly urge you to acquire a habit of thinking of your pupils in associative terms4 ,all governors of mankind1 from doctors and jail-wardens to demagogues and statesmen1 instinctively come so to conceive their charges4 ,if you do the same1 thinking of them 7however else you may think of them besides7 as so many little systems of associating machinery1 you will be astonished at the intimacy of insight into their operations and at the practicality of the results which you will gain4 ,we think of our acquaintances1 for example1 as characterized by certain 'tendencies4' ,these tendencies will in almost every instance prove to be tendencies to association4 ,certain ideas in them are always followed by certain other ideas1 these by certain feelings and impulses to approve or disapprove1 assent or decline4 ,if the topic arouse one of those first ideas1 the practical outcome can be pretty well foreseen4 ',types of character' in short are largely types of association4 ,x4 ,,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 circumstances4 ,in fact1 ,i treated of the pupil's instincts4 ,now some situations appeal to special instincts from the very outset1 and others fail to do so until the proper connections have been organized in the course of the person's training4 ,we say of the former set of objects or situations that they are interesting in themselves and originally4 ,of the latter we say that they are natively uninteresting1 and that interest in them has first to be acquired4 ,no topic has received more attention from pedagogical writers than that of interest4 ,it is the natural sequel to the instincts we so lately discussed1 and it is therefore well fitted to be the next subject which we take up4 ,since some objects are natively interesting and in others interest is artificially acquired1 the teacher must know which the natively interesting ones are2 for1 as we shall see immediately1 other objects can artificially acquire an interest only through first becoming associated with some of these natively interesting things4 ,the native interests of children lie altogether in the sphere of sensation4 ,novel things to look at or novel sounds to hear1 especially when they involve the spectacle of action of a violent sort1 will always divert the attention from abstract conceptions of objects verbally taken in4 ,the grimace that ,johnny is making1 the spitballs that ,tommy is ready to throw1 the dog-fight in the street1 or the distant firebells ringing1--these are the rivals with which the teacher's powers of being interesting have incessantly to cope4 ,the child will always attend more to what a teacher does than to what the same teacher says4 ,during the performance of experiments or while the teacher is drawing on the blackboard1 the children are tranquil and absorbed4 ,i have seen a roomful of college students suddenly become perfectly still1 to look at their professor of physics tie a piece of string around a stick which he was going to use in an experiment1 but immediately grow restless when he began to explain the experiment4 ,a lady told me that one day1 during a lesson1 she was delighted at having captured so completely the attention of one of her young charges4 ,he did not remove his eyes from her face2 but he said to her after the lesson was over1 ,i looked at you all the time1 and your upper jaw did not move once6 ,that was the only fact that he had taken in4 ,living things1 then1 moving things1 or things that savor of danger or of blood1 that have a dramatic quality1--these are the objects natively interesting to childhood1 to the exclusion of almost everything else2 and the teacher of young children1 until more artificial interests have grown up1 will keep in touch with her pupils by constant appeal to such matters as these4 ,instruction must be carried on objectively1 experimentally1 anecdotally4 ,the blackboard-drawing and story-telling must constantly come in4 ,but of course these methods cover only the first steps1 and carry one but a little way4 ,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 school8 ,fortunately1 we can3 there is a very simple law that relates the acquired and the native interests with each other4 ,any object not interesting in itself may become interesting through becoming associated with an object in which an interest already exists4 ,the two associated objects grow1 as it were1 together3 the interesting portion sheds its quality over the whole2 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 thing4 ,the odd circumstance is that the borrowing does not impoverish the source1 the objects taken together being more interesting1 perhaps1 than the originally interesting portion was by itself4 ,this is one of the most striking proofs of the range of application of the principle of association of ideas in psychology4 ,an idea will infect another with its own emotional interest when they have become both associated together into any sort of a mental total4 ,as there is no limit to the various associations into which an interesting idea may enter1 one sees in how many ways an interest may be derived4 ,you will understand this abstract statement easily if ,i take the most frequent of concrete examples1--the interest which things borrow from their connection with our own personal welfare4 ,the most natively interesting object to a man is his own personal self and its fortunes4 ,we accordingly see that the moment a thing becomes connected with the fortunes of the self1 it forthwith becomes an interesting thing4 ,lend the child his books1 pencils1 and other apparatus3 then give them to him1 make them his own1 and notice the new light with which they instantly shine in his eyes4 ,he takes a new kind of care of them altogether4 ,in mature life1 all the drudgery of a man's business or profession1 intolerable in itself1 is shot through with engrossing significance because he knows it to be associated with his personal fortunes4 ,what more deadly uninteresting object can there be than a railroad time-table8 ,yet where will you find a more interesting object if you are going on a journey1 and by its means can find your train8 ,at such times the time-table will absorb a man's entire attention1 its interest being borrowed solely from its relation to his personal life4 ,from all these facts there emerges a very simple abstract programme for the teacher to follow in keeping the attention of the child3 ,begin with the line of his native interests1 and offer him objects that have some immediate connection with these4 ,the kindergarten methods1 the object-teaching routine1 the blackboard and manual-training work1--all recognize this feature4 ,schools in which these methods preponderate are schools where discipline is easy1 and where the voice of the master claiming order and attention in threatening tones need never be heard4 ,next1 step by step1 connect with these first objects and experiences the later objects and ideas which you wish to instill4 ,associate the new with the old in some natural and telling way1 so that the interest1 being shed along from point to point1 finally suffuses the entire system of objects of thought4 ,this is the abstract statement2 and1 abstractly1 nothing can be easier to understand4 ,it is in the fulfilment of the rule that the difficulty lies2 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 connections1 and in the dulness in discovering such transitions which the other shows4 ,one teacher's mind will fairly coruscate with points of connection between the new lesson and the circumstances of the children's other experience4 ,anecdotes and reminiscences will abound in her talk2 and the shuttle of interest will shoot backward and forward1 weaving the new and the old together in a lively and entertaining way4 ,another teacher has no such inventive fertility1 and his lesson will always be a dead and heavy thing4 ,this is the psychological meaning of the ,herbartian principle of 'preparation' for each lesson1 and of correlating the new with the old4 ,it is the psychological meaning of that whole method of concentration in studies of which you have been recently hearing so much4 ,when the geography and ,english and history and arithmetic simultaneously make cross-references to one another1 you get an interesting set of processes all along the line4 99 99 99 99 99 ,if1 then1 you wish to insure the interest of your pupils1 there is only one way to do it2 and that is to make certain that they have something in their minds to attend with1 when you begin to talk4 ,that something can consist in nothing but a previous lot of ideas already interesting in themselves1 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 whole4 ,fortunately1 almost any kind of a connection is sufficient to carry the interest along4 ,what a help is our ,philippine war at present in teaching geography6 ,but before the war you could ask the children if they ate pepper with their eggs1 and where they supposed the pepper came from4 ,or ask them if glass is a stone1 and1 if not1 why not2 and then let them know how stones are formed and glass manufactured4 ,external links will serve as well as those that are deeper and more logical4 ,but interest1 once shed upon a subject1 is liable to remain always with that subject4 ,our acquisitions become in a measure portions of our personal self2 and little by little1 as cross-associations multiply and habits of familiarity and practice grow1 the entire system of our objects of thought consolidates1 most of it becoming interesting for some purposes and in some degree4 ,an adult man's interests are almost every one of them intensely artificial3 they have slowly been built up4 ,the objects of professional interest are most of them1 in their original nature1 repulsive2 but by their connection with such natively exciting objects as one's personal fortune1 one's social responsibilities1 and especially by the force of inveterate habit1 they grow to be the only things for which in middle life a man profoundly cares4 ,but in all these the spread and consolidation have followed nothing but the principles first laid down4 ,if we could recall for a moment our whole individual history1 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 another1 traceable backward from point to point till we reach the moment when1 in the nursery or in the schoolroom1 some little story told1 some little object shown1 some little operation witnessed1 brought the first new object and new interest within our ken by associating it with some one of those primitively there4 ,the interest now suffusing the whole system took its rise in that little event1 so insignificant to us now as to be entirely forgotten4 ,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 depends2 so with the objects of our thinking1--they hang to each other by associated links1 but the original source of interest in all of them is the native interest which the earliest one once possessed4 ,,xi4 ,,attention ,whoever treats of interest inevitably treats of attention1 for to say that an object is interesting is only another way of saying that it excites attention4 ,but in addition to the attention which any object already interesting or just becoming interesting claims--passive attention or spontaneous attention1 we may call it--there is a more deliberate attention1--voluntary attention or attention with effort1 as it is called1--which we can give to objects less interesting or uninteresting in themselves4 ,the distinction between active and passive attention is made in all books on psychology1 and connects itself with the deeper aspects of the topic4 ,from our present purely practical point of view1 however1 it is not necessary to be intricate2 and passive attention to natively interesting material requires no further elucidation on this occasion4 ,all that we need explicitly to note is that1 the more the passive attention is relied on1 by keeping the material interesting2 and the less the kind of attention requiring effort is appealed to2 the more smoothly and pleasantly the classroom work goes on4 ,i must say a few more words1 however1 about this latter process of voluntary and deliberate attention4 ,one often hears it said that genius is nothing but a power of sustained attention1 and the popular impression probably prevails that men of genius are remarkable for their voluntary powers in this direction4 ,but a little introspective observation will show any one that voluntary attention cannot be continuously sustained1--that it comes in beats4 ,when we are studying an uninteresting subject1 if our mind tends to wander1 we have to bring back our attention every now and then by using distinct pulses of effort1 which revivify the topic for a moment1 the mind then running on for a certain number of seconds or minutes with spontaneous interest1 until again some intercurrent idea captures it and takes it off4 ,then the processes of volitional recall must be repeated once more4 ,voluntary attention1 in short1 is only a momentary affair4 ,the process1 whatever it is1 exhausts itself in the single act2 and1 unless the matter is then taken in hand by some trace of interest inherent in the subject1 the mind fails to follow it at all4 ,the sustained attention of the genius1 sticking to his subject for hours together1 is for the most part of the passive sort4 ,the minds of geniuses are full of copious and original associations4 ,the subject of thought1 once started1 develops all sorts of fascinating consequences4 ,the attention is led along one of these to another in the most interesting manner1 and the attention never once tends to stray away4 ,in a commonplace mind1 on the other hand1 a subject develops much less numerous associates3 it dies out then quickly2 and1 if the man is to keep up thinking of it at all1 he must bring his attention back to it by a violent wrench4 ,in him1 therefore1 the faculty of voluntary attention receives abundant opportunity for cultivation in daily life4 ,it is your despised business man1 your common man of affairs1 7so looked down on by the literary awarders of fame7 whose virtue in this regard is likely to be most developed2 for he has to listen to the concerns of so many uninteresting people1 and to transact so much drudging detail1 that the faculty in question is always kept in training4 ,a genius1 on the contrary1 is the man in whom you are least likely to find the power of attending to anything insipid or distasteful in itself4 ,he breaks his engagements1 leaves his letters unanswered1 neglects his family duties incorrigibly1 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 mind4 ,voluntary attention is thus an essentially instantaneous affair4 ,you can claim it1 for your purposes in the schoolroom1 by commanding it in loud1 imperious tones2 and you can easily get it in this way4 ,but1 unless the subject to which you thus recall their attention has inherent power to interest the pupils1 you will have got it for only a brief moment2 and their minds will soon be wandering again4 ,to keep them where you have called them1 you must make the subject too interesting for them to wander again4 ,and for that there is one prescription2 but the prescription1 like all our prescriptions1 is abstract1 and1 to get practical results from it1 you must couple it with mother-wit4 ,the prescription is that the subject must be made to show new aspects of itself2 to prompt new questions2 in a word1 to change4 ,from an unchanging subject the attention inevitably wanders away4 ,you can test this by the simplest possible case of sensorial attention4 ,try to attend steadfastly to a dot on the paper or on the wall4 ,you presently find that one or the other of two things has happened3 either your field of vision has become blurred1 so that you now see nothing distinct at all1 or else you have involuntarily ceased to look at the dot in question1 and are looking at something else4 ,but1 if you ask yourself successive questions about the dot1--how big it is1 how far1 of what shape1 what shade of color1 etc42 in other words1 if you turn it over1 if you think of it in various ways1 and along with various kinds of associates1--you can keep your mind on it for a comparatively long time4 ,this is what the genius does1 in whose hands a given topic coruscates and grows4 ,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 sort4 ,in all respects1 reliance upon such attention as this is a wasteful method1 bringing bad temper and nervous wear and tear as well as imperfect results4 ,the teacher who can get along by keeping spontaneous interest excited must be regarded as the teacher with the greatest skill4 ,there is1 however1 in all schoolroom work a large mass of material that must be dull and unexciting1 and to which it is impossible in any continuous way to contribute an interest associatively derived4 ,there are1 therefore1 certain external methods1 which every teacher knows1 of voluntarily arousing the attention from time to time and keeping it upon the subject4 ,mr4 ,fitch has a lecture on the art of securing attention1 and he briefly passes these methods in review2 the posture must be changed2 places can be changed4 ,questions1 after being answered singly1 may occasionally be answered in concert4 ,elliptical questions may be asked1 the pupil supplying the missing word4 ,the teacher must pounce upon the most listless child and wake him up4 ,the habit of prompt and ready response must be kept up4 ,recapitulations1 illustrations1 examples1 novelty of order1 and ruptures of routine1--all these are means for keeping the attention alive and contributing a little interest to a dull subject4 ,above all1 the teacher must himself be alive and ready1 and must use the contagion of his own example4 ,but1 when all is said and done1 the fact remains that some teachers have a naturally inspiring presence1 and can make their exercises interesting1 while others simply cannot4 ,and psychology and general pedagogy here confess their failure1 and hand things over to the deeper springs of human personality to conduct the task4 99 99 99 99 99 ,a brief reference to the physiological theory of the attentive process may serve still further to elucidate these practical remarks1 and confirm them by showing them from a slightly different point of view4 ,what is the attentive process1 psychologically considered8 ,attention to an object is what takes place whenever that object most completely occupies the mind4 ,for simplicity's sake suppose the object be an object of sensation1--a figure approaching us at a distance on the road4 ,it is far off1 barely perceptible1 and hardly moving3 we do not know with certainty whether it is a man or not4 ,such an object as this1 if carelessly looked at1 may hardly catch our attention at all4 ,the optical impression may affect solely the marginal consciousness1 while the mental focus keeps engaged with rival things4 ,we may indeed not 'see' it till some one points it out4 ,but1 if so1 how does he point it out8 ,by his finger1 and by describing its appearance1--by creating a premonitory image of where to look and of what to expect to see4 ,this premonitory image is already an excitement of the same nerve-centres that are to be concerned with the impression4 ,the impression comes1 and excites them still further2 and now the object enters the focus of the field1 consciousness being sustained both by impression and by preliminary idea4 ,but the maximum of attention to it is not yet reached4 ,although we see it1 we may not care for it2 it may suggest nothing important to us2 and a rival stream of objects or of thoughts may quickly take our mind away4 ,if1 however1 our companion defines it in a significant way1 arouses in the mind a set of experiences to be apprehended from it1--names it an enemy or as a messenger of important tidings1--the residual and marginal ideas now aroused1 so far from being its rivals1 become its associates and allies4 ,they shoot together into one system with it2 they converge upon it2 they keep it steadily in focus2 the mind attends to it with maximum power4 ,the attentive process1 therefore1 at its maximum may be physiologically symbolized by a brain-cell played on in two ways1 from without and from within4 ,incoming currents from the periphery arouse it1 and collateral currents from the centres of memory and imagination re-enforce these4 ,in this process the incoming impression is the newer element2 the ideas which re-enforce and sustain it are among the older possessions of the mind4 ,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 old4 ,it is an odd circumstance that neither the old nor the new1 by itself1 is interesting3 the absolutely old is insipid2 the absolutely new makes no appeal at all4 ,the old in the new is what claims the attention1--the old with a slightly new turn4 ,no one wants to hear a lecture on a subject completely disconnected with his previous knowledge1 but we all like lectures on subjects of which we know a little already1 just as1 in the fashions1 every year must bring its slight modification of last year's suit1 but an abrupt jump from the fashion of one decade into another would be distasteful to the eye4 ,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 engaged1 and in the ingenuity which discovers paths of connection from that material to the matters to be newly learned4 ,the principle is easy to grasp1 but the accomplishment is difficult in the extreme4 ,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 skill4 ,a certain doubt may now occur to some of you4 ,a while ago1 apropos of the pugnacious instinct1 ,i spoke of our modern pedagogy as being possibly too 'soft4' ,you may perhaps here face me with my own words1 and ask whether the exclusive effort on the teacher's part to keep the pupil's spontaneous interest going1 and to avoid the more strenuous path of voluntary attention to repulsive work1 does not savor also of sentimentalism4 ,the greater part of schoolroom work1 you say1 must1 in the nature of things1 always be repulsive4 ,to face uninteresting drudgery is a good part of life's work4 ,why seek to eliminate it from the schoolroom or minimize the sterner law8 ,a word or two will obviate what might perhaps become a serious misunderstanding here4 ,it is certain that most schoolroom work1 till it has become habitual and automatic1 is repulsive1 and cannot be done without voluntarily jerking back the attention to it every now and then4 ,this is inevitable1 let the teacher do what he will4 ,it flows from the inherent nature of the subjects and of the learning mind4 ,the repulsive processes of verbal memorizing1 of discovering steps of mathematical identity1 and the like1 must borrow their interest at first from purely external sources1 mainly from the personal interests with which success in mastering them is associated1 such as gaining of rank1 avoiding punishment1 not being beaten by a difficulty and the like4 ,without such borrowed interest1 the child could not attend to them at all4 ,but in these processes what becomes interesting enough to be attended to is not thereby attended to without effort4 ,effort always has to go on1 derived interest1 for the most part1 not awakening attention that is easy1 however spontaneous it may now have to be called4 ,the interest which the teacher1 by his utmost skill1 can lend to the subject1 proves over and over again to be only an interest sufficient to let loose the effort4 ,the teacher1 therefore1 need never concern himself about inventing occasions where effort must be called into play4 ,let him still awaken whatever sources of interest in the subject he can by stirring up connections between it and the pupil's nature1 whether in the line of theoretic curiosity1 of personal interest1 or of pugnacious impulse4 ,the laws of mind will then bring enough pulses of effort into play to keep the pupil exercised in the direction of the subject4 ,there is1 in fact1 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 means1 with some remote ideal end4 ,the ,herbartian doctrine of interest ought not1 therefore1 in principle to be reproached with making pedagogy soft4 ,if it do so1 it is because it is unintelligently carried on4 ,do not1 then1 for the mere sake of discipline1 command attention from your pupils in thundering tones4 ,do not too often beg it from them as a favor1 nor claim it as a right1 nor try habitually to excite it by preaching the importance of the subject4 ,sometimes1 indeed1 you must do these things2 but1 the more you have to do them1 the less skilful teacher you will show yourself to be4 ,elicit interest from within1 by the warmth with which you care for the topic yourself1 and by following the laws ,i have laid down4 ,if the topic be highly abstract1 show its nature by concrete examples4 ,if it be unfamiliar1 trace some point of analogy in it with the known4 ,if it be inhuman1 make it figure as part of a story4 ,if it be difficult1 couple its acquisition with some prospect of personal gain4 ,above all things1 make sure that it shall run through certain inner changes1 since no unvarying object can possibly hold the mental field for long4 ,let your pupil wander from one aspect to another of your subject1 if you do not wish him to wander from it altogether to something else1 variety in unity being the secret of all interesting talk and thought4 ,the relation of all these things to the native genius of the instructor is too obvious to need comment again4 ,one more point1 and ,i am done with the subject of attention4 ,there is unquestionably a great native variety among individuals in the type of their attention4 ,some of us are naturally scatterbrained1 and others follow easily a train of connected thoughts without temptation to swerve aside to other subjects4 ,this seems to depend on a difference between individuals in the type of their field of consciousness4 ,in some persons this is highly focalized and concentrated1 and the focal ideas predominate in determining association4 ,in others we must suppose the margin to be brighter1 and to be filled with something like meteoric showers of images1 which strike into it at random1 displacing the focal ideas1 and carrying association in their own direction4 ,persons of the latter type find their attention wandering every minute1 and must bring it back by a voluntary pull4 ,the others sink into a subject of meditation deeply1 and1 when interrupted1 are 'lost' for a moment before they come back to the outer world4 ,the possession of such a steady faculty of attention is unquestionably a great boon4 ,those who have it can work more rapidly1 and with less nervous wear and tear4 ,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 degree4 ,its amount is probably a fixed characteristic of the individual4 ,but ,i wish to make a remark here which ,i shall have occasion to make again in other connections4 ,it is that no one need deplore unduly the inferiority in himself of any one elementary faculty4 ,this concentrated type of attention is an elementary faculty3 it is one of the things that might be ascertained and measured by exercises in the laboratory4 ,but1 having ascertained it in a number of persons1 we could never rank them in a scale of actual and practical mental efficiency based on its degrees4 ,the total mental efficiency of a man is the resultant of the working together of all his faculties4 ,he is too complex a being for any one of them to have the casting vote4 ,if any one of them do have the casting vote1 it is more likely to be the strength of his desire and passion1 the strength of the interest he takes in what is proposed4 ,concentration1 memory1 reasoning power1 inventiveness1 excellence of the senses1--all are subsidiary to this4 ,no matter how scatter-brained the type of a man's successive fields of consciousness may be1 if he really care for a subject1 he will return to it incessantly from his incessant wanderings1 and first and last do more with it1 and get more results from it1 than another person whose attention may be more continuous during a given interval1 but whose passion for the subject is of a more languid and less permanent sort4 ,some of the most efficient workers ,i know are of the ultra-scatterbrained type4 ,one friend1 who does a prodigious quantity of work1 has in fact confessed to me that1 if he wants to get ideas on any subject1 he sits down to work at something else1 his best results coming through his mind-wanderings4 ,this is perhaps an epigrammatic exaggeration on his part2 but ,i seriously think that no one of us need be too much distressed at his own shortcomings in this regard4 ,our mind may enjoy but little comfort1 may be restless and feel confused2 but it may be extremely efficient all the same4 ,,xii4 ,,memory ,we are following a somewhat arbitrary order4 ,since each and every faculty we possess is either in whole or in part a resultant of the play of our associations1 it would have been as natural1 after treating of association1 to treat of memory as to treat of interest and attention next4 ,but1 since we did take the latter operations first1 we must take memory now without farther delay2 for the phenomena of memory are among the simplest and most immediate consequences of the fact that our mind is essentially an associating machine4 ,there is no more pre-eminent example for exhibiting the fertility of the laws of association as principles of psychological analysis4 ,memory1 moreover1 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 help4 ,in old times1 if you asked a person to explain why he came to be remembering at that moment some particular incident in his previous life1 the only reply he could make was that his soul is endowed with a faculty called memory2 that it is the inalienable function of this faculty to recollect2 and that1 therefore1 he necessarily at that moment must have a cognition of that portion of the past4 ,this explanation by a 'faculty' is one thing which explanation by association has superseded altogether4 ,if1 by saying we have a faculty of memory1 you mean nothing more than the fact that we can remember1 nothing more than an abstract name for our power inwardly to recall the past1 there is no harm done3 we do have the faculty2 for we unquestionably have such a power4 ,but if1 by faculty1 you mean a principle of explanation of our general power to recall1 your psychology is empty4 ,the associationist psychology1 on the other hand1 gives an explanation of each particular fact of recollection2 and1 in so doing1 it also gives an explanation of the general faculty4 ,the 'faculty' of memory is thus no real or ultimate explanation2 for it is itself explained as a result of the association of ideas4 ,nothing is easier than to show you just what ,i mean by this4 ,suppose ,i am silent for a moment1 and then say in commanding accents3 ,remember6 ,recollect6 ,does your faculty of memory obey the order1 and reproduce any definite image from your past8 ,certainly not4 ,it stands staring into vacancy1 and asking1 ,what kind of a thing do you wish me to remember8 ,it needs in short1 a cue4 ,but1 if ,i say1 remember the date of your birth1 or remember what you had for breakfast1 or remember the succession of notes in the musical scale2 then your faculty of memory immediately produces the required result3 the 'cue' determines its vast set of potentialities toward a particular point4 ,and if you now look to see how this happens1 you immediately perceive that the cue is something contiguously associated with the thing recalled4 ,the words1 'date of my birth1' have an ingrained association with a particular number1 month1 and year2 the words1 'breakfast this morning1' cut off all other lines of recall except those which lead to coffee and bacon and eggs2 the words1 'musical scale1' are inveterate mental neighbors of do1 re1 mi1 fa1 sol1 la1 etc4 ,the laws of association govern1 in fact1 all the trains of our thinking which are not interrupted by sensations breaking on us from without4 ,whatever appears in the mind must be introduced2 and1 when introduced1 it is as the associate of something already there4 ,this is as true of what you are recollecting as it is of everything else you think of4 ,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 faculty4 ,were memory such a faculty1 granted to us solely for its practical use1 we ought to remember easiest whatever we most needed to remember2 and frequency of repetition1 recency1 and the like1 would play no part in the matter4 ,that we should best remember frequent things and recent things1 and forget things that are ancient or were experienced only once1 could only be regarded as an incomprehensible anomaly on such a view4 ,but if we remember because of our associations1 and if these are 7as the physiological psychologists believe7 due to our organized brain-paths1 we easily see how the law of recency and repetition should prevail4 ,paths frequently and recently ploughed are those that lie most open1 those which may be expected most easily to lead to results4 ,the laws of our memory1 as we find them1 therefore are incidents of our associational constitution2 and1 when we are emancipated from the flesh1 it is conceivable that they may no longer continue to obtain4 ,we may assume1 then1 that recollection is a resultant of our associative processes1 these themselves in the last analysis being most probably due to the workings of our brain4 ,descending more particularly into the faculty of memory1 we have to distinguish between its potential aspect as a magazine or storehouse and its actual aspect as recollection now of a particular event4 ,our memory contains all sorts of items which we do not now recall1 but which we may recall1 provided a sufficient cue be offered4 ,both the general retention and the special recall are explained by association4 ,an educated memory depends on an organized system of associations2 and its goodness depends on two of their peculiarities3 first1 on the persistency of the associations2 and1 second1 on their number4 ,let us consider each of these points in turn4 ,first1 the persistency of the associations4 ,this gives what may be called the quality of native retentiveness to the individual4 ,if1 as ,i think we are forced to1 we consider the brain to be the organic condition by which the vestiges of our experience are associated with each other1 we may suppose that some brains are 'wax to receive and marble to retain4' ,the slightest impressions made on them abide4 ,names1 dates1 prices1 anecdotes1 quotations1 are indelibly retained1 their several elements fixedly cohering together1 so that the individual soon becomes a walking cyclopaedia of information4 ,all this may occur with no philosophic tendency in the mind1 no impulse to weave the materials acquired into anything like a logical system4 ,in the books of anecdotes1 and1 more recently1 in the psychology-books1 we find recorded instances of monstrosities1 as we may call them1 of this desultory memory2 and they are often otherwise very stupid men4 ,it is1 of course1 by no means incompatible with a philosophic mind2 for mental characteristics have infinite capacities for permutation4 ,and1 when both memory and philosophy combine together in one person1 then indeed we have the highest sort of intellectual efficiency4 ,your ,walter ,scotts1 your ,leibnitzes1 your ,gladstones1 and your ,goethes1 all your folio copies of mankind1 belong to this type4 ,efficiency on a colossal scale would indeed seem to require it4 ,for1 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 them1 the time lost in the searching process handicaps the thinker1 and gives to the more ready type of individual the economical advantage4 ,the extreme of the contrasted type1 the type with associations of small persistency1 is found in those who have almost no desultory memory at all4 ,if they are also deficient in logical and systematizing power1 we call them simply feeble intellects2 and no more need to be said about them here4 ,their brain-matter1 we may imagine1 is like a fluid jelly1 in which impressions may be easily made1 but are soon closed over again1 so that the brain reverts to its original indifferent state4 ,but it may occur here1 just as in other gelatinous substances1 that an impression will vibrate throughout the brain1 and send waves into other parts of it4 ,in cases of this sort1 although the immediate impression may fade out quickly1 it does modify the cerebral mass2 for the paths it makes there may remain1 and become so many avenues through which the impression may be reproduced if they ever get excited again4 ,and its liability to reproduction will depend of course upon the variety of these paths and upon the frequency with which they are used4 ,each path is in fact an associated process1 the number of these associates becoming thus to a great degree a substitute for the independent tenacity of the original impression4 ,as ,i have elsewhere written3 ,each of the associates is a hook to which it hangs1 a means to fish it up when sunk below the surface4 ,together they form a network of attachments by which it is woven into the entire tissue of our thought4 ,the 'secret of a good memory' is thus the secret of forming diverse and multiple associations with every fact we care to retain4 ,but this forming of associations with a fact1--what is it but thinking about the fact as much as possible8 ,briefly1 then1 of two men with the same outward experiences1 the one who thinks over his experiences most1 and weaves them into the most systematic relations with each other1 will be the one with the best memory4 ,but1 if our ability to recollect a thing be so largely a matter of its associations with other things which thus becomes its cues1 an important paedagogic consequence follows4 ,there can be no improvement of the general or elementary faculty of memory3 there can only be improvement of our memory for special systems of associated things2 and this latter improvement is due to the way in which the things in question are woven into association with each other in the mind4 ,intricately or profoundly woven1 they are held3 disconnected1 they tend to drop out just in proportion as the native brain retentiveness is poor4 ,and no amount of training1 drilling1 repeating1 and reciting employed upon the matter of one system of objects1 the history-system1 for example1 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 chemistry1 for instance--tend to be retained4 ,that system must be separately worked into the mind by itself1--a chemical fact which is thought about in connection with the other chemical facts1 tending then to stay1 but otherwise easily dropping out4 ,we have1 then1 not so much a faculty of memory as many faculties of memory4 ,we have as many as we have systems of objects habitually thought of in connection with each other4 ,a given object is held in the memory by the associates it has acquired within its own system exclusively4 ,learning the facts of another system will in no wise help it to stay in the mind1 for the simple reason that it has no 'cues' within that other system4 ,we see examples of this on every hand4 ,most men have a good memory for facts connected with their own pursuits4 ,a college athlete1 who remains a dunce at his books1 may amaze you by his knowledge of the 'records' at various feats and games1 and prove himself a walking dictionary of sporting statistics4 ,the reason is that he is constantly going over these things in his mind1 and comparing and making series of them4 ,they form for him1 not so many odd facts1 but a concept-system1 so they stick4 ,so the merchant remembers prices1 the politician other politicians' speeches and votes1 with a copiousness which astonishes outsiders1 but which the amount of thinking they bestow on these subjects easily explains4 ,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 retentiveness4 ,let a man early in life set himself the task of verifying such a theory as that of evolution1 and facts will soon cluster and cling to him like grapes to their stem4 ,their relations to the theory will hold them fast2 and1 the more of these the mind is able to discern1 the greater the erudition will become4 ,meanwhile the theorist may have little1 if any1 desultory memory4 ,unutilizable facts may be unnoted by him1 and forgotten as soon as heard4 ,an ignorance almost as encyclopedic as his erudition may coexist with the latter1 and hide1 as it were1 within the interstices of its web4 ,those of you who have had much to do with scholars and savants will readily think of examples of the class of mind ,i mean4 ,the best possible sort of system into which to weave an object1 mentally1 is a rational system1 or what is called a 'science4' ,place the thing in its pigeon-hole in a classificatory series2 explain it logically by its causes1 and deduce from it its necessary effects2 find out of what natural law it is an instance1--and you then know it in the best of all possible ways4 ,a 'science' is thus the greatest of labor-saving contrivances4 ,it relieves the memory of an immense number of details1 replacing1 as it does1 merely contiguous associations by the logical ones of identity1 similarity1 or analogy4 ,if you know a 'law1' you may discharge your memory of masses of particular instances1 for the law will reproduce them for you whenever you require them4 ,the law of refraction1 for example3 ,if you know that1 you can with a pencil and a bit of paper immediately discern how a convex lens1 a concave lens1 or a prism1 must severally alter the appearance of an object4 ,but1 if you don't know the general law1 you must charge your memory separately with each of the three kinds of effect4 ,a 'philosophic' system1 in which all things found their rational explanation and were connected together as causes and effects1 would be the perfect mnemonic system1 in which the greatest economy of means would bring about the greatest richness of results4 ,so that1 if we have poor desultory memories1 we can save ourselves by cultivating the philosophic turn of mind4 ,there are many artificial systems of mnemonics1 some public1 some sold as secrets4 ,they are all so many devices for training us into certain methodical and stereotyped ways of thinking about the facts we seek to retain4 ,even were ,i competent1 ,i could not here go into these systems in any detail4 ,but a single example1 from a popular system1 will show what ,i mean4 ,i take the number-alphabet1 the great mnemonic device for recollecting numbers and dates4 ,in this system each digit is represented by a consonant1 thus3 #a is t or d2 #b1 n2 #c1 m2 #d1 r2 #e1 l2 #f1 sh1 j1 ch1 or g2 #g1 c1 k1 g1 or qu2 #h1 f or v2 #i1 b or p2 #j1 s1 c1 or z4 ,suppose1 now1 you wish to remember the velocity of sound1 #a1adb feet a second3 t1 t1 r1 n1 are the letters you must use4 ,they make the consonants of tight run1 and it would be a 'tight run' for you to keep up such a speed4 ,so #afdi1 the date of the execution of ,charles ,i41 may be remembered by the word sharp1 which recalls the headsman's axe4 ,apart from the extreme difficulty of finding words that are appropriate in this exercise1 it is clearly an excessively poor1 trivial1 and silly way of 'thinking' about dates2 and the way of the historian is much better4 ,he has a lot of landmark-dates already in his mind4 ,he knows the historic concatenation of events1 and can usually place an event at its right date in the chronology-table1 by thinking of it in a rational way1 referring it to its antecedents1 tracing its concomitants and consequences1 and thus ciphering out its date by connecting it with theirs4 ,the artificial memory-systems1 recommending1 as they do1 such irrational methods of thinking1 are only to be recommended for the first landmarks in a system1 or for such purely detached facts as enjoy no rational connection with the rest of our ideas4 ,thus the student of physics may remember the order of the spectral colours by the word vibgyor which their initial letters make4 ,the student of anatomy may remember the position of the ,mitral valve on the ,left side of the heart by thinking that ,l4,m4 stands also for 'long meter' in the hymn-books4 ,you now see why 'cramming' must be so poor a mode of study4 ,cramming seeks to stamp things in by intense application immediately before the ordeal4 ,but a thing thus learned can form but few associations4 ,on the other hand1 the same thing recurring on different days1 in different contexts1 read1 recited on1 referred to again and again1 related to other things and reviewed1 gets well wrought into the mental structure4 ,this is the reason why you should enforce on your pupils habits of continuous application4 ,there is no moral turpitude in cramming4 ,it would be the best1 because the most economical1 mode of study if it led to the results desired4 ,but it does not1 and your older pupils can readily be made to see the reason why4 ,it follows also1 from what has been said1 that the popular idea that 'the ,memory1' in the sense of a general elementary faculty1 can be improved by training1 is a great mistake4 ,your memory for facts of a certain class can be improved very much by training in that class of facts1 because the incoming new fact will then find all sorts of analogues and associates already there1 and these will keep it liable to recall4 ,but other kinds of fact will reap none of that benefit1 and1 unless one have been also trained and versed in their class1 will be at the mercy of the mere crude retentiveness of the individual1 which1 as we have seen1 is practically a fixed quantity4 ,nevertheless1 one often hears people say3 ,a great sin was committed against me in my youth3 my teachers entirely failed to exercise my memory4 ,if they had only made me learn a lot of things by heart at school1 ,i should not be1 as ,i am now1 forgetful of everything ,i read and hear4 ,this is a great mistake3 learning poetry by heart will make it easier to learn and remember other poetry1 but nothing else2 and so of dates2 and so of chemistry and geography4 ,but1 after what ,i have said1 ,i am sure you will need no farther argument on this point2 and ,i therefore pass it by4 ,but1 since it has brought me to speak of learning things by heart1 ,i think that a general practical remark about verbal memorizing may now not be out of place4 ,the excesses of old-fashioned verbal memorizing1 and the immense advantages of object-teaching in the earlier stages of culture1 have perhaps led those who philosophize about teaching to an unduly strong reaction2 and learning things by heart is now probably somewhat too much despised4 ,for1 when all is said and done1 the fact remains that verbal material is1 on the whole1 the handiest and most useful material in which thinking can be carried on4 ,abstract conceptions are far and away the most economical instruments of thought1 and abstract conceptions are fixed and incarnated for us in words4 ,statistical inquiry would seem to show that1 as men advance in life1 they tend to make less and less use of visual images1 and more and more use of words4 ,one of the first things that ,mr4 ,galton discovered was that this appeared to be the case with the members of the ,royal ,society whom he questioned as to their mental images4 ,i should say1 therefore1 that constant exercise in verbal memorizing must still be an indispensable feature in all sound education4 ,nothing is more deplorable than that inarticulate and helpless sort of mind that is reminded by everything of some quotation1 case1 or anecdote1 which it cannot now exactly recollect4 ,nothing1 on the other hand1 is more convenient to its possessor1 or more delightful to his comrades1 than a mind able1 in telling a story1 to give the exact words of the dialogue or to furnish a quotation accurate and complete4 ,in every branch of study there are happily turned1 concise1 and handy formulas which in an incomparable way sum up results4 ,the mind that can retain such formulas is in so far a superior mind1 and the communication of them to the pupil ought always to be one of the teacher's favorite tasks4 ,in learning 'by heart1' there are1 however1 efficient and inefficient methods2 and1 by making the pupil skilful in the best method1 the teacher can both interest him and abridge the task4 ,the best method is of course not to 'hammer in' the sentences1 by mere reiteration1 but to analyze them1 and think4 ,for example1 if the pupil should have to learn this last sentence1 let him first strip out its grammatical core1 and learn1 ,the best method is not to hammer in1 but to analyze1 and then add the amplificative and restrictive clauses1 bit by bit1 thus3 ,the best method is of course not to hammer in the sentences1 but to analyze them and think4 ,then finally insert the words 'by mere reiteration1' and the sentence is complete1 and both better understood and quicker remembered than by a more purely mechanical method4 99 99 99 99 99 ,in conclusion1 ,i must say a word about the contributions to our knowledge of memory which have recently come from the laboratory-psychologists4 ,many of the enthusiasts for scientific or brass-instrument child-study are taking accurate measurements of children's elementary faculties1 and among these what we may call immediate memory admits of easy measurement4 ,all we need do is to exhibit to the child a series of letters1 syllables1 figures1 pictures1 or what-not1 at intervals of one1 two1 three1 or more seconds1 or to sound a similar series of names at the same intervals1 within his hearing1 and then see how completely he can reproduce the list1 either directly1 or after an interval of ten1 twenty1 or sixty seconds1 or some longer space of time4 ,according to the results of this exercise1 the pupils may be rated in a memory-scale2 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 known4 ,now ,i can only repeat here what ,i said to you when treating of attention3 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 whole4 ,such an exercise as this1 dealing with incoherent and insipid objects1 with no logical connection with each other1 or practical significance outside of the 'test1' is an exercise the like of which in real life we are hardly ever called upon to perform4 ,in real life1 our memory is always used in the service of some interest3 we remember things which we care for or which are associated with things we care for2 and the child who stands at the bottom of the scale thus experimentally established might1 by dint of the strength of his passion for a subject1 and in consequence of the logical association into which he weaves the actual materials of his experience1 be a very effective memorizer indeed1 and do his school-tasks on the whole much better than an immediate parrot who might stand at the top of the 'scientifically accurate' list4 ,this preponderance of interest1 of passion1 in determining the results of a human being's working life1 obtains throughout4 ,no elementary measurement1 capable of being performed in a laboratory1 can throw any light on the actual efficiency of the subject2 for the vital thing about him1 his emotional and moral energy and doggedness1 can be measured by no single experiment1 and becomes known only by the total results in the long run4 ,a blind man like ,huber1 with his passion for bees and ants1 can observe them through other people's eyes better than these can through their own4 ,a man born with neither arms nor legs1 like the late ,kavanagh1 ,m4,p4--and what an icy heart his mother must have had about him in his babyhood1 and how 'negative' would the laboratory-measurements of his motor-functions have been6--can be an adventurous traveller1 an equestrian and sportsman1 and lead an athletic outdoor life4 ,mr4 ,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 in1 and then immediately write down all they could reproduce of its contents4 ,he found astonishing differences in the rapidity1 some taking four times as long as others to absorb the paragraph1 and the swiftest readers being1 as a rule1 the best immediate recollectors1 too4 ,but not1--and this is my point1--not the most intellectually capable subjects1 as tested by the results of what ,mr4 ,romanes rightly names 'genuine' intellectual work2 for he tried the experiment with several highly distinguished men in science and literature1 and most of them turned out to be slow readers4 ,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 condition1 as indicated by his general temper and manner1 by the listlessness or alertness1 by the ease or painfulness with which his school work is done1 will be of much more value than those unreal experimental tests1 those pedantic elementary measurements of fatigue1 memory1 association1 and attention1 etc41 which are urged upon us as the only basis of a genuinely scientific pedagogy4 ,such measurements can give us useful information only when we combine them with observations made without brass instruments1 upon the total demeanor of the measured individual1 by teachers with eyes in their heads and common sense1 and some feeling for the concrete facts of human nature in their hearts4 ,depend upon it1 no one need be too much cast down by the discovery of his deficiency in any elementary faculty of the mind4 ,what tells in life is the whole mind working together1 and the deficiencies of any one faculty can be compensated by the efforts of the rest4 ,you can be an artist without visual images1 a reader without eyes1 a mass of erudition with a bad elementary memory4 ,in almost any subject your passion for the subject will save you4 ,if you only care enough for a result1 you will almost certainly attain it4 ,if you wish to be rich1 you will be rich2 if you wish to be learned1 you will be learned2 if you wish to be good1 you will be good4 ,only you must1 then1 really wish these things1 and wish them with exclusiveness1 and not wish at the same time a hundred other incompatible things just as strongly4 ,one of the most important discoveries of the 'scientific' sort that have recently been made in psychology is that of ,mr4 ,galton and others concerning the great variations among individuals in the type of their imagination4 ,every one is now familiar with the fact that human beings vary enormously in the brilliancy1 completeness1 definiteness1 and extent of their visual images4 ,these are singularly perfect in a large number of individuals1 and in a few are so rudimentary as hardly to exist4 ,the same is true of the auditory and motor images1 and probably of those of every kind2 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 discrepancies4 ,the facts1 as ,i said1 are nowadays so popularly known that ,i need only remind you of their existence4 ,they might seem at first sight of practical importance to the teacher2 and1 indeed1 teachers have been recommended to sort their pupils in this way1 and treat them as the result falls out4 ,you should interrogate them as to their imagery1 it is said1 or exhibit lists of written words to their eyes1 and then sound similar lists in their ears1 and see by which channel a child retains most words4 ,then1 in dealing with that child1 make your appeals predominantly through that channel4 ,if the class were very small1 results of some distinctness might doubtless thus be obtained by a painstaking teacher4 ,but it is obvious that in the usual schoolroom no such differentiation of appeal is possible2 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 way1 that the teacher ought always to impress the class through as many sensible channels as he can4 ,talk and write and draw on blackboard1 permit the pupils to talk1 and make them write and draw1 exhibit pictures1 plans1 and curves1 have your diagrams colored differently in their different parts1 etc42 and out of the whole variety of impressions the individual child will find the most lasting ones for himself4 ,in all primary school work this principle of multiple impressions is well recognized1 so ,i need say no more about it here4 ,this principle of multiplying channels and varying associations and appeals is important1 not only for teaching pupils to remember1 but for teaching them to understand4 ,it runs1 in fact1 through the whole teaching art4 ,one word about the unconscious and unreproducible part of our acquisitions1 and ,i shall have done with the topic of memory4 ,professor ,ebbinghaus1 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 syllables1 devised a method of measuring the rate of our forgetfulness1 which lays bare an important law of the mind4 ,his method was to read over his list until he could repeat it once by heart unhesitatingly4 ,the number of repetitions required for this was a measure of the difficulty of the learning in each particular case4 ,now1 after having once learned a piece in this way1 if we wait five minutes1 we find it impossible to repeat it again in the same unhesitating manner4 ,we must read it over again to revive some of the syllables1 which have already dropped out or got transposed4 ,ebbinghaus now systematically studied the number of readings-over which were necessary to revive the unhesitating recollection of the piece after five minutes1 half an hour1 an hour1 a day1 a week1 a month1 had elapsed4 ,the number of rereadings required he took to be a measure of the amount of forgetting that had occurred in the elapsed interval4 ,and he found some remarkable facts4 ,the process of forgetting1 namely1 is vastly more rapid at first than later on4 ,thus full half of the piece seems to be forgotten within the first half-hour1 two-thirds of it are forgotten at the end of eight hours1 but only four-fifths at the end of a month4 ,he made no trials beyond one month of interval2 but1 if we ourselves prolong ideally the curve of remembrance1 whose beginning his experiments thus obtain1 it is natural to suppose that1 no matter how long a time might elapse1 the curve would never descend quite so low as to touch the zero-line4 ,in other words1 no matter how long ago we may have learned a poem1 and no matter how complete our inability to reproduce it now may be1 yet the first learning will still show its lingering effects in the abridgment of the time required for learning it again4 ,in short1 ,professor ,ebbinghaus's experiments show that things which we are quite unable definitely to recall have nevertheless impressed themselves1 in some way1 upon the structure of the mind4 ,we are different for having once learned them4 ,the resistances in our systems of brain-paths are altered4 ,our apprehensions are quickened4 ,our conclusions from certain premises are probably not just what they would be if those modifications were not there4 ,the latter influence the whole margin of our consciousness1 even though their products1 not being distinctly reproducible1 do not directly figure at the focus of the field4 ,the teacher should draw a lesson from these facts4 ,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 learned1 and inarticulate power in them is something of which we always underestimate the value4 ,the boy who tells us1 ,i know the answer1 but ,i can't say what it is1 we treat as practically identical with him who knows absolutely nothing about the answer at all4 ,but this is a great mistake4 ,it is but a small part of our experience in life that we are ever able articulately to recall4 ,and yet the whole of it has had its influence in shaping our character and defining our tendencies to judge and act4 ,although the ready memory is a great blessing to its possessor1 the vaguer memory of a subject1 of having once had to do with it1 of its neighborhood1 and of where we may go to recover it again1 constitutes in most men and women the chief fruit of their education4 ,this is true even in professional education4 ,the doctor1 the lawyer1 are seldom able to decide upon a case off-hand4 ,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 hour3 whereas the layman is unable to get at the materials at all1 not knowing in what books and indexes to look or not understanding the technical terms4 ,be patient1 then1 and sympathetic with the type of mind that cuts a poor figure in examinations4 ,it may1 in the long examination which life sets us1 come out in the end in better shape than the glib and ready reproducer1 its passions being deeper1 its purposes more worthy1 its combining power less commonplace1 and its total mental output consequently more important4 ,such are the chief points which it has seemed worth while for me to call to your notice under the head of memory4 ,we can sum them up for practical purposes by saying that the art of remembering is the art of thinking2 and by adding1 with ,dr4 ,pick1 that1 when we wish to fix a new thing in either our own mind or a pupil's1 our conscious effort should not be so much to impress and retain it as to connect it with something else already there4 ,the connecting is the thinking2 and1 if we attend clearly to the connection1 the connected thing will certainly be likely to remain within recall4 ,i shall next ask you to consider the process by which we acquire new knowledge1--the process of ',apperception1' as it is called1 by which we receive and deal with new experiences1 and revise our stock of ideas so as to form new or improved conceptions4 ,,xiii4 ,,the ,,acquisition ,,of ,,ideas ,the images of our past experiences1 of whatever nature they may be1 visual or verbal1 blurred and dim1 vivid and distinct1 abstract or concrete1 need not be memory images1 in the strict sense of the word4 ,that is1 they need not rise before the mind in a marginal fringe or context of concomitant circumstances1 which mean for us their date4 ,they may be mere conceptions1 floating pictures of an object1 or of its type or class4 ,in this undated condition1 we call them products of 'imagination' or 'conception4' ,imagination is the term commonly used where the object represented is thought of as an individual thing4 ,conception is the term where we think of it as a type or class4 ,for our present purpose the distinction is not important2 and ,i will permit myself to use either the word 'conception1' or the still vaguer word 'idea1' to designate the inner objects of contemplation1 whether these be individual things1 like 'the sun' or ',julius ,caesar1' or classes of things1 like 'animal kingdom1' or1 finally1 entirely abstract attributes1 like 'rationality' or 'rectitude4' ,the result of our education is to fill the mind little by little1 as experiences accrete1 with a stock of such ideas4 ,in the illustration ,i used at our first meeting1 of the child snatching the toy and getting slapped1 the vestiges left by the first experience answered to so many ideas which he acquired thereby1--ideas that remained with him associated in a certain order1 and from the last one of which the child eventually proceeded to act4 ,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 them4 ,the forms of relation between them1 becoming themselves in turn noticed by the mind1 are treated as conceptions of a higher and more abstract order1 as when we speak of a syllogistic relation' between propositions1 or of four quantities making a 'proportion1' or of the 'inconsistency' of two conceptions1 or the 'implication' of one in the other4 ,so you see that the process of education1 taken in a large way1 may be described as nothing but the process of acquiring ideas or conceptions1 the best educated mind being the mind which has the largest stock of them1 ready to meet the largest possible variety of the emergencies of life4 ,the lack of education means only the failure to have acquired them1 and the consequent liability to be 'floored' and 'rattled' in the vicissitudes of experience4 ,in all this process of acquiring conceptions1 a certain instinctive order is followed4 ,there is a native tendency to assimilate certain kinds of conception at one age1 and other kinds of conception at a later age4 ,during the first seven or eight years of childhood the mind is most interested in the sensible properties of material things4 ,constructiveness is the instinct most active2 and by the incessant hammering and sawing1 and dressing and undressing dolls1 putting of things together and taking them apart1 the child not only trains the muscles to co-ordinate action1 but accumulates a store of physical conceptions which are the basis of his knowledge of the material world through life4 ,object-teaching and manual training wisely extend the sphere of this order of acquisition4 ,clay1 wood1 metals1 and the various kinds of tools are made to contribute to the store4 ,a youth brought up with a sufficiently broad basis of this kind is always at home in the world4 ,he stands within the pale4 ,he is acquainted with ,nature1 and ,nature in a certain sense is acquainted with him4 ,whereas the youth brought up alone at home1 with no acquaintance with anything but the printed page1 is always afflicted with a certain remoteness from the material facts of life1 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 home4 ,i already said something of this in speaking of the constructive impulse1 and ,i must not repeat myself4 ,moreover1 you fully realize1 ,i am sure1 how important for life1--for the moral tone of life1 quite apart from definite practical pursuits1--is this sense of readiness for emergencies which a man gains through early familiarity and acquaintance with the world of material things4 ,to have grown up on a farm1 to have haunted a carpenter's and blacksmith's shop1 to have handled horses and cows and boats and guns1 and to have ideas and abilities connected with such objects are an inestimable part of youthful acquisition4 ,after adolescence it is rare to be able to get into familiar touch with any of these primitive things4 ,the instinctive propensions have faded1 and the habits are hard to acquire4 ,accordingly1 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 education4 ,feed the growing human being1 feed him with the sort of experience for which from year to year he shows a natural craving1 and he will develop in adult life a sounder sort of mental tissue1 even though he may seem to be 'wasting' a great deal of his growing time1 in the eyes of those for whom the only channels of learning are books and verbally communicated information4 ,it is not till adolescence is reached that the mind grows able to take in the more abstract aspects of experience1 the hidden similarities and distinctions between things1 and especially their causal sequences4 ,rational knowledge of such things as mathematics1 mechanics1 chemistry1 and biology1 is now possible2 and the acquisition of conceptions of this order form the next phase of education4 ,later still1 not till adolescence is well advanced1 does the mind awaken to a systematic interest in abstract human relations--moral relations1 properly so called1--to sociological ideas and to metaphysical abstractions4 ,this general order of sequence is followed traditionally of course in the schoolroom4 ,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 rests4 ,i have spoken of it already1 apropos of the transitoriness of instincts4 ,just as many a youth has to go permanently without an adequate stock of conceptions of a certain order1 because experiences of that order were not yielded at the time when new curiosity was most acute1 so it will conversely happen that many another youth is spoiled for a certain subject of study 7although he would have enjoyed it well if led into it at a later age7 through having had it thrust upon him so prematurely that disgust was created1 and the bloom quite taken off from future trials4 ,i think ,i have seen college students unfitted forever for 'philosophy' from having taken that study up a year too soon4 ,in all these later studies1 verbal material is the vehicle by which the mind thinks4 ,the abstract conceptions of physics and sociology may1 it is true1 be embodied in visual or other images of phenomena1 but they need not be so2 and the truth remains that1 after adolescence has begun1 words1 words1 words1 must constitute a large part1 and an always larger part as life advances1 of what the human being has to learn4 ,this is so even in the natural sciences1 so far as these are causal and rational1 and not merely confined to description4 ,so ,i go back to what ,i said awhile ago apropos of verbal memorizing4 ,the more accurately words are learned1 the better1 if only the teacher make sure that what they signify is also understood4 ,it is the failure of this latter condition1 in so much of the old-fashioned recitation1 that has caused that reaction against 'parrot-like reproduction' that we are so familiar with to-day4 ,a friend of mine1 visiting a school1 was asked to examine a young class in geography4 ,glancing1 at the book1 she said3 ,suppose you should dig a hole in the ground1 hundreds of feet deep1 how should you find it at the bottom1--warmer or colder than on top8 ,none of the class replying1 the teacher said3 ,i'm sure they know1 but ,i think you don't ask the question quite rightly4 ,let me try4 ,so1 taking the book1 she asked3 ,in what condition is the interior of the globe8 and received the immediate answer from half the class at once3 ,the interior of the globe is in a condition of igneous fusion4 ,better exclusive object-teaching than such verbal recitations as that2 and yet verbal reproduction1 intelligently connected with more objective work1 must always play a leading1 and surely the leading1 part in education4 ,our modern reformers1 in their books1 write too exclusively of the earliest years of the pupil4 ,these lend themselves better to explicit treatment2 and ,i myself1 in dwelling so much upon the native impulses1 and object-teaching1 and anecdotes1 and all that1 have paid my tribute to the line of least resistance in describing4 ,yet away back in childhood we find the beginnings of purely intellectual curiosity1 and the intelligence of abstract terms4 ,the object-teaching is mainly to launch the pupils1 with some concrete conceptions of the facts concerned1 upon the more abstract ideas4 ,to hear some authorities on teaching1 however1 you would suppose that geography not only began1 but ended with the school-yard and neighboring hill1 that physics was one endless round of repeating the same sort of tedious weighing and measuring operation3 whereas a very few examples are usually sufficient to set the imagination free on genuine lines1 and then what the mind craves is more rapid1 general1 and abstract treatment4 ,i heard a lady say that she had taken her child to the kindergarten1 but he is so bright that he saw through it immediately4 ,too many school children 'see' as immediately 'through' the namby-pamby attempts of the softer pedagogy to lubricate things for them1 and make them interesting4 ,even they can enjoy abstractions1 provided they be of the proper order2 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 digest4 ,but here1 as elsewhere1 it is a matter of more or less2 and1 in the last resort1 the teacher's own tact is the only thing that can bring out the right effect4 ,the great difficulty with abstractions is that of knowing just what meaning the pupil attaches to the terms he uses4 ,the words may sound all right1 but the meaning remains the child's own secret4 ,so varied forms of words must be insisted on1 to bring the secret out4 ,and a strange secret does it often prove4 ,a relative of mine was trying to explain to a little girl what was meant by 'the passive voice'3 ,suppose that you kill me3 you who do the killing are in the active voice1 and ,i1 who am killed1 am in the passive voice4 ,but how can you speak if you're killed8 said the child4 ,oh1 well1 you may suppose that ,i am not yet quite dead6 ,the next day the child was asked1 in class1 to explain the passive voice1 and said1 ,it's the kind of voice you speak with when you ain't quite dead4 ,in such a case as this the illustration ought to have been more varied4 ,every one's memory will probably furnish examples of the fantastic meaning which their childhood attached to certain verbal statements 7in poetry often71 and which their elders1 not having any reason to suspect1 never corrected4 ,i remember being greatly moved emotionally at the age of eight by the ballad of ,lord ,ullin's ,daughter4 ,yet ,i thought that the staining of the heather by the blood was the evil chiefly dreaded1 and that1 when the boatman said1 ,i'll row you o'er the ferry4 ,it is not for your silver bright1 ,but for your winsome lady1 he was to receive the lady for his pay4 ,similarly1 ,i recently found that one of my own children was reading 7and accepting7 a verse of ,tennyson's ,in ,memoriam as ,ring out the food of rich and poor1 ,ring in redness to all mankind1 and finding no inward difficulty4 ,the only safeguard against this sort of misconceiving is to insist on varied statement1 and to bring the child's conceptions1 wherever it be possible1 to some sort of practical test4 ,let us next pass to the subject of ,apperception4 ,,xiv4 ,,apperception ',apperception' is a word which cuts a great figure in the pedagogics of the present day4 ,read1 for example1 this advertisement of a certain text-book1 which ,i take from an educational journal3-- ,,what ,,is ,,apperception8 ,for an explanation of ,apperception see ,blank's ,,psychology1 ,vol4 ---- of the ---- ,education ,series1 just published4 ,the difference between ,perception and ,apperception is explained for the teacher in the preface to ,blank's ,,psychology4 ,many teachers are inquiring1 ,what is the meaning of ,apperception in educational psychology8 ,just the book for them is ,blank's ,,psychology in which the idea was first expounded4 ,the most important idea in educational psychology is ,apperception4 ,the teacher may find this expounded in ,blank's ,,psychology4 ,the idea of ,apperception is making a revolution in educational methods in ,germany4 ,it is explained in ,blank's ,,psychology1 ,vol4 ---- of the ---- ,education ,series1 just published4 ,blank's ,,psychology will be mailed prepaid to any address on receipt of #a4jj4 ,such an advertisement is in sober earnest a disgrace to all concerned2 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 publishers4 ,perhaps the word 'apperception' flourished in their eyes and ears as it nowadays often is1 embodies as much of this mystification as any other single thing4 ,the conscientious young teacher is led to believe that it contains a recondite and portentous secret1 by losing the true inwardness of which her whole career may be shattered4 ,and yet1 when she turns to the books and reads about it1 it seems so trivial and commonplace a matter1--meaning nothing more than the manner in which we receive a thing into our minds1--that she fears she must have missed the point through the shallowness of her intelligence1 and goes about thereafter afflicted with a sense either of uncertainty or of stupidity1 and in each case remaining mortified at being so inadequate to her mission4 ,now apperception is an extremely useful word in pedagogics1 and offers a convenient name for a process to which every teacher must frequently refer4 ,but it verily means nothing more than the act of taking a thing into the mind4 ,it corresponds to nothing peculiar or elementary in psychology1 being only one of the innumerable results of the psychological process of association of ideas2 and psychology itself can easily dispense with the word1 useful as it may be in pedagogics4 ,the gist of the matter is this3 ,every impression that comes in from without1 be it a sentence which we hear1 an object of vision1 or an effluvium which assails our nose1 no sooner enters our consciousness than it is drafted off in some determinate direction or other1 making connection with the other materials already there1 and finally producing what we call our reaction4 ,the particular connections it strikes into are determined by our past experiences and the 'associations' of the present sort of impression with them4 ,if1 for instance1 you hear me call out ,a1 ,b1 ,c1 it is ten to one that you will react on the impression by inwardly or outwardly articulating ,d1 ,e1 ,f4 ,the impression arouses its old associates3 they go out to meet it2 it is received by them1 recognized by the mind as 'the beginning of the alphabet4' ,it is the fate of every impression thus to fall into a mind preoccupied with memories1 ideas1 and interests1 and by these it is taken in4 ,educated as we already are1 we never get an experience that remains for us completely nondescript3 it always reminds of something similar in quality1 or of some context that might have surrounded it before1 and which it now in some way suggests4 ,this mental escort which the mind supplies is drawn1 of course1 from the mind's ready-made stock4 ,we conceive the impression in some definite way4 ,we dispose of it according to our acquired possibilities1 be they few or many1 in the way of 'ideas4' ,this way of taking in the object is the process of apperception4 ,the conceptions which meet and assimilate it are called by ,herbart the 'apperceiving mass4' ,the apperceived impression is engulfed in this1 and the result is a new field of consciousness1 of which one part 7and often a very small part7 comes from the outer world1 and another part 7sometimes by far the largest7 comes from the previous contents of the mind4 ,i think that you see plainly enough now that the process of apperception is what ,i called it a moment ago1 a resultant of the association of ideas4 ,the product is a sort of fusion of the new with the old1 in which it is often impossible to distinguish the share of the two factors4 ,for example1 when we listen to a person speaking or read a page of print1 much of what we think we see or hear is supplied from our memory4 ,we overlook misprints1 imagining the right letters1 though we see the wrong ones2 and how little we actually hear1 when we listen to speech1 we realize when we go to a foreign theatre2 for there what troubles us is not so much that we cannot understand what the actors say as that we cannot hear their words4 ,the fact is that we hear quite as little under similar conditions at home1 only our mind1 being fuller of ,english verbal associations1 supplies the requisite material for comprehension upon a much slighter auditory hint4 ,in all the apperceptive operations of the mind1 a certain general law makes itself felt1--the law of economy4 ,in admitting a new body of experience1 we instinctively seek to disturb as little as possible our pre-existing stock of ideas4 ,we always try to name a new experience in some way which will assimilate it to what we already know4 ,we hate anything absolutely new1 anything without any name1 and for which a new name must be forged4 ,so we take the nearest name1 even though it be inappropriate4 ,a child will call snow1 when he sees it for the first time1 sugar or white butterflies4 ,the sail of a boat he calls a curtain2 an egg in its shell1 seen for the first time1 he calls a pretty potato2 an orange1 a ball2 a folding corkscrew1 a pair of bad scissors4 ,caspar ,hauser called the first geese he saw horses1 and the ,polynesians called ,captain ,cook's horses pigs4 ,mr4 ,rooper has written a little book on apperception1 to which he gives the title of ,a ,pot of ,green ,feathers1 that being the name applied to a pot of ferns by a child who had never seen ferns before4 ,in later life this economical tendency to leave the old undisturbed leads to what we know as 'old fogyism4' ,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 system4 ,we have all conducted discussions with middle-aged people1 overpowered them with our reasons1 forced them to admit our contention1 and a week later found them back as secure and constant in their old opinion as if they had never conversed with us at all4 ,we call them old fogies2 but there are young fogies1 too4 ,old fogyism begins at a younger age than we think4 ,i am almost afraid to say so1 but ,i believe that in the majority of human beings it begins at about twenty-five4 ,in some of the books we find the various forms of apperception codified1 and their subdivisions numbered and ticketed in tabular form in the way so delightful to the pedagogic eye4 ,in one book which ,i remember reading there were sixteen different types of apperception discriminated from each other4 ,there was associative apperception1 subsumptive apperception1 assimilative apperception1 and others up to sixteen4 ,it is needless to say that this is nothing but an exhibition of the crass artificiality which has always haunted psychology1 and which perpetuates itself by lingering along1 especially in these works which are advertised as 'written for the use of teachers4' ,the flowing life of the mind is sorted into parcels suitable for presentation in the recitation-room1 and chopped up into supposed 'processes' with long ,greek and ,latin names1 which in real life have no distinct existence4 ,there is no reason1 if we are classing the different types of apperception1 why we should stop at sixteen rather than sixteen hundred4 ,there are as many types of apperception as there are possible ways in which an incoming experience may be reacted on by an individual mind4 ,a little while ago1 at ,buffalo1 ,i was the guest of a lady who1 a fortnight before1 had taken her seven-year-old boy for the first time to ,niagara ,falls4 ,the child silently glared at the phenomenon until his mother1 supposing him struck speechless by its sublimity1 said1 ,well1 my boy1 what do you think of it8 to which1 ,is that the kind of spray ,i spray my nose with8 was the boy's only reply4 ,that was his mode of apperceiving the spectacle4 ,you may claim this as a particular type1 and call it by the ,greek name of rhinotherapeutical apperception1 if you like2 and1 if you do1 you will hardly be more trivial or artificial than are some of the authors of the books4 ,m4 ,perez1 in one of his books on childhood1 gives a good example of the different modes of apperception of the same phenomenon which are possible at different stages of individual experience4 ,a dwelling-house took fire1 and an infant in the family1 witnessing the conflagration from the arms of his nurse1 standing outside1 expressed nothing but the liveliest delight at its brilliancy4 ,but1 when the bell of the fire engine was heard approaching1 the child was thrown by the sound into a paroxysm of fear1 strange sounds being1 as you know1 very alarming to young children4 ,in what opposite ways must the child's parents have apperceived the burning house and the engine respectively6 ,the self-same person1 according to the line of thought he may be in1 or to his emotional mood1 will apperceive the same impression quite differently on different occasions4 ,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 him4 ,when people are at loggerheads about the interpretation of a fact1 it usually shows that they have too few heads of classification to apperceive by2 for1 as a general thing1 the fact of such a dispute is enough to show that neither one of their rival interpretations is a perfect fit4 ,both sides deal with the matter by approximation1 squeezing it under the handiest or least disturbing conception3 whereas it would1 nine times out of ten1 be better to enlarge their stock of ideas or invent some altogether new title for the phenomenon4 ,thus1 in biology1 we used to have interminable discussion as to whether certain single-celled organisms were animals or vegetables1 until ,haeckel introduced the new apperceptive name of ,protista1 which ended the disputes4 ,in law courts no tertium quid is recognized between insanity and sanity4 ,if sane1 a man is punished3 if insane1 acquitted2 and it is seldom hard to find two experts who will take opposite views of his case4 ,all the while1 nature is more subtle than our doctors4 ,just as a room is neither dark nor light absolutely1 but might be dark for a watchmaker's uses1 and yet light enough to eat in or play in1 so a man may be sane for some purposes and insane for others1--sane enough to be left at large1 yet not sane enough to take care of his financial affairs4 ,the word 'crank1' which became familiar at the time of ,guiteau's trial1 fulfilled the need of a tertium quid4 ,the foreign terms 'desequilibre1' 'hereditary degenerate1' and 'psychopathic' subject1 have arisen in response to the same need4 ,the whole progress of our sciences goes on by the invention of newly forged technical names whereby to designate the newly remarked aspects of phenomena1--phenomena which could only be squeezed with violence into the pigeonholes of the earlier stock of conceptions4 ,as time goes on1 our vocabulary becomes thus ever more and more voluminous1 having to keep up with the ever-growing multitude of our stock of apperceiving ideas4 ,in this gradual process of interaction between the new and the old1 not only is the new modified and determined by the particular sort of old which apperceives it1 but the apperceiving mass1 the old itself1 is modified by the particular kind of new which it assimilates4 ,thus1 to take the stock ,german example of the child brought up in a house where there are no tables but square ones1 'table' means for him a thing in which square corners are essential4 ,but1 if he goes to a house where there are round tables and still calls them tables1 his apperceiving notion 'table' acquires immediately a wider inward content4 ,in this way1 our conceptions are constantly dropping characters once supposed essential1 and including others once supposed inadmissible4 ,the extension of the notion 'beast' to porpoises and whales1 of the notion 'organism' to society1 are familiar examples of what ,i mean4 ,but be our conceptions adequate or inadequate1 and be our stock of them large or small1 they are all we have to work with4 ,if an educated man is1 as ,i said1 a group of organized tendencies to conduct1 what prompts the conduct is in every case the man's conception of the way in which to name and classify the actual emergency4 ,the more adequate the stock of ideas1 the more 'able' is the man1 the more uniformly appropriate is his behavior likely to be4 ,when later we take up the subject of the will1 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 conduct4 ,he who has few names is in so far forth an incompetent deliberator4 ,the names--and each name stands for a conception or idea--are our instruments for handling our problems and solving our dilemmas4 ,now1 when we think of this1 we are too apt to forget an important fact1 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 life4 ,i probably shocked you a moment ago by saying that most men begin to be old fogies at the age of twenty-five4 ,it is true that a grown-up adult keeps gaining well into middle age a great knowledge of details1 and a great acquaintance with individual cases connected with his profession or business life4 ,in this sense1 his conceptions increase during a very long period2 for his knowledge grows more extensive and minute4 ,but the larger categories of conception1 the sorts of thing1 and wider classes of relation between things1 of which we take cognizance1 are all got into the mind at a comparatively youthful date4 ,few men ever do acquaint themselves with the principles of a new science after even twenty-five4 ,if you do not study political economy in college1 it is a thousand to one that its main conceptions will remain unknown to you through life4 ,similarly with biology1 similarly with electricity4 ,what percentage of persons now fifty years old have any definite conception whatever of a dynamo1 or how the trolley-cars are made to run8 ,surely1 a small fraction of one per cent4 ,but the boys in colleges are all acquiring these conceptions4 ,there is a sense of infinite potentiality in us all1 when young1 which makes some of us draw up lists of books we intend to read hereafter1 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 lives4 ,such good intentions are hardly ever carried out4 ,the conceptions acquired before thirty remain usually the only ones we ever gain4 ,such exceptional cases of perpetually self-renovating youth as ,mr4 ,gladstone's only prove1 by the admiration they awaken1 the universality of the rule4 ,and it may well solemnize a teacher1 and confirm in him a healthy sense of the importance of his mission1 to feel how exclusively dependent upon his present ministrations in the way of imparting conceptions the pupil's future life is probably bound to be4 ,,xv4 ,,the ,,will ,since mentality terminates naturally in outward conduct1 the final chapter in psychology has to be the chapter on the will4 ,but the word 'will' can be used in a broader and in a narrower sense4 ,in the broader sense1 it designates our entire capacity for impulsive and active life1 including our instinctive reactions and those forms of behavior that have become secondarily automatic and semi-unconscious through frequent repetition4 ,in the narrower sense1 acts of will are such acts only as cannot be inattentively performed4 ,a distinct idea of what they are1 and a deliberate fiat on the mind's part1 must precede their execution4 ,such acts are often characterized by hesitation1 and accompanied by a feeling1 altogether peculiar1 of resolve1 a feeling which may or may not carry with it a further feeling of effort4 ,in my earlier talks1 ,i said so much of our impulsive tendencies that ,i will restrict myself in what follows to volition in this narrower sense of the term4 ,all our deeds were considered by the early psychologists to be due to a peculiar faculty called the will1 without whose fiat action could not occur4 ,thoughts and impressions1 being intrinsically inactive1 were supposed to produce conduct only through the intermediation of this superior agent4 ,until they twitched its coat-tails1 so to speak1 no outward behavior could occur4 ,this doctrine was long ago exploded by the discovery of the phenomena of reflex action1 in which sensible impressions1 as you know1 produce movement immediately and of themselves4 ,the doctrine may also be considered exploded as far as ideas go4 ,the fact is that there is no sort of consciousness whatever1 be it sensation1 feeling1 or idea1 which does not directly and of itself tend to discharge into some motor effect4 ,the motor effect need not always be an outward stroke of behavior4 ,it may be only an alteration of the heart-beats or breathing1 or a modification in the distribution of blood1 such as blushing or turning pale2 or else a secretion of tears1 or what not4 ,but1 in any case1 it is there in some shape when any consciousness is there2 and a belief as fundamental as any in modern psychology is the belief at last attained that conscious processes of any sort1 conscious processes merely as such1 must pass over into motion1 open or concealed4 ,the least complicated case of this tendency is the case of a mind possessed by only a single idea4 ,if that idea be of an object connected with a native impulse1 the impulse will immediately proceed to discharge4 ,if it be the idea of a movement1 the movement will occur4 ,such a case of action from a single idea has been distinguished from more complex cases by the name of 'ideo-motor' action1 meaning action without express decision or effort4 ,most of the habitual actions to which we are trained are of this ideo-motor sort4 ,we perceive1 for instance1 that the door is open1 and we rise and shut it2 we perceive some raisins in a dish before us1 and extend our hand and carry one of them to our mouth without interrupting the conversation2 or1 when lying in bed1 we suddenly think that we shall be late for breakfast1 and instantly we get up with no particular exertion or resolve4 ,all the ingrained procedures by which life is carried on--the manners and customs1 dressing and undressing1 acts of salutation1 etc4--are executed in this semi-automatic way unhesitatingly and efficiently1 the very outermost margin of consciousness seeming to be concerned in them1 while the focus may be occupied with widely different things4 ,but now turn to a more complicated case4 ,suppose two thoughts to be in the mind together1 of which one1 ,a1 taken alone1 would discharge itself in a certain action1 but of which the other1 ,b1 suggests an action of a different sort1 or a consequence of the first action calculated to make us shrink4 ,the psychologists now say that the second idea1 ,b1 will probably arrest or inhibit the motor effects of the first idea1 ,a4 ,one word1 then1 about 'inhibition' in general1 to make this particular case more clear4 ,one of the most interesting discoveries of physiology was the discovery1 made simultaneously in ,france and ,germany fifty years ago1 that nerve currents do not only start muscles into action1 but may check action already going on or keep it from occurring as it otherwise might4 ,nerves of arrest were thus distinguished alongside of motor nerves4 ,the pneumogastric nerve1 for example1 if stimulated1 arrests the movements of the heart3 the splanchnic nerve arrests those of the intestines1 if already begun4 ,but it soon appeared that this was too narrow a way of looking at the matter1 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 conditions4 ,the higher centres1 for example1 seem to exert a constant inhibitive influence on the excitability of those below4 ,the reflexes of an animal with its hemispheres wholly or in part removed become exaggerated4 ,you all know that common reflex in dogs1 whereby1 if you scratch the animal's side1 the corresponding hind leg will begin to make scratching movements1 usually in the air4 ,now in dogs with mutilated hemispheres this scratching reflex is so incessant that1 as ,goltz first described them1 the hair gets all worn off their sides4 ,in idiots1 the functions of the hemispheres being largely in abeyance1 the lower impulses1 not inhibited1 as they would be in normal human beings1 often express themselves in most odious ways4 ,you know also how any higher emotional tendency will quench a lower one4 ,fear arrests appetite1 maternal love annuls fear1 respect checks sensuality1 and the like2 and in the more subtile manifestations of the moral life1 whenever an ideal stirring is suddenly quickened into intensity1 it is as if the whole scale of values of our motives changed its equilibrium4 ,the force of old temptations vanishes1 and what a moment ago was impossible is now not only possible1 but easy1 because of their inhibition4 ,this has been well called the 'expulsive power of the higher emotion4' ,it is easy to apply this notion of inhibition to the case of our ideational processes4 ,i am lying in bed1 for example1 and think it is time to get up2 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 bed4 ,in such a situation the motor consequences of the first idea are blocked2 and ,i may remain for half an hour or more with the two ideas oscillating before me in a kind of deadlock1 which is what we call the state of hesitation or deliberation4 ,in a case like this the deliberation can be resolved and the decision reached in either of two ways3-- 7#a7 ,i may forget for a moment the thermometric conditions1 and then the idea of getting up will immediately discharge into act3 ,i shall suddenly find that ,i have got up--or 7#b7 ,still mindful of the freezing temperature1 the thought of the duty of rising may become so pungent that it determines action in spite of inhibition4 ,in the latter case1 ,i have a sense of energetic moral effort1 and consider that ,i have done a virtuous act4 ,all cases of wilful action properly so called1 of choice after hesitation and deliberation1 may be conceived after one of these latter patterns4 ,so you see that volition1 in the narrower sense1 takes place only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas1 and depends on our having a complex field of consciousness4 ,the interesting thing to note is the extreme delicacy of the inhibitive machinery4 ,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 margin4 ,for instance1 ,i hold out my forefinger1 and with closed eyes try to realize as vividly as possible that ,i hold a revolver in my hand and am pulling the trigger4 ,i can even now fairly feel my finger quivering with the tendency to contract2 and1 if it were hitched to a recording apparatus1 it would certainly betray its state of tension by registering incipient movements4 ,yet it does not actually crook1 and the movement of pulling the trigger is not performed4 ,why not8 ,simply because1 all concentrated though ,i am upon the idea of the movement1 ,i nevertheless also realize the total conditions of the experiment1 and in the back of my mind1 so to speak1 or in its fringe and margin1 have the simultaneous idea that the movement is not to take place4 ,the mere presence of that marginal intention1 without effort1 urgency1 or emphasis1 or any special reinforcement from my attention1 suffices to the inhibitive effect4 ,and this is why so few of the ideas that flit through our minds do1 in point of fact1 produce their motor consequences4 ,life would be a curse and a care for us if every fleeting fancy were to do so4 ,abstractly1 the law of ideo-motor action is true2 but in the concrete our fields of consciousness are always so complex that the inhibiting margin keeps the centre inoperative most of the time4 ,in all this1 you see1 ,i speak as if ideas by their mere presence or absence determined behavior1 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 activity1 like that called 'the will4' ,if you are struck by the materialistic or fatalistic doctrines which seem to follow this conception1 ,i beg you to suspend your judgment for a moment1 as ,i shall soon have something more to say about the matter4 ,but1 meanwhile yielding one's self to the mechanical conception of the psychophysical organism1 nothing is easier than to indulge in a picture of the fatalistic character of human life4 ,man's conduct appears as the mere resultant of all his various impulsions and inhibitions4 ,one object1 by its presence1 makes us act3 another object checks our action4 ,feelings aroused and ideas suggested by objects sway us one way and another3 emotions complicate the game by their mutual inhibitive effects1 the higher abolishing the lower or perhaps being itself swept away4 ,the life in all this becomes prudential and moral2 but the psychologic agents in the drama may be described1 you see1 as nothing but the 'ideas' themselves1--ideas for the whole system of which what we call the 'soul' or character' or 'will' of the person is nothing but a collective name4 ,as ,hume said1 the ideas are themselves the actors1 the stage1 the theatre1 the spectators1 and the play4 ,this is the so-called 'associationist' psychology1 brought down to its radical expression3 it is useless to ignore its power as a conception4 ,like all conceptions1 when they become clear and lively enough1 this conception has a strong tendency to impose itself upon belief2 and psychologists trained on biological lines usually adopt it as the last word of science on the subject4 ,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 simplicity4 ,let us humor it for a while1 for it has advantages in the way of exposition4 ,voluntary action1 then1 is at all times a resultant of the compounding of our impulsions with our inhibitions4 ,from this it immediately follows that there will be two types of will1 in one of which impulsions will predominate1 in the other inhibitions4 ,we may speak of them1 if you like1 as the precipitate and the obstructed will1 respectively4 ,when fully pronounced1 they are familiar to everybody4 ,the extreme example of the precipitate will is the maniac3 his ideas discharge into action so rapidly1 his associative processes are so extravagantly lively1 that inhibitions have no time to arrive1 and he says and does whatever pops into his head without a moment of hesitation4 ,certain melancholiacs furnish the extreme example of the over-inhibited type4 ,their minds are cramped in a fixed emotion of fear or helplessness1 their ideas confined to the one thought that for them life is impossible4 ,so they show a condition of perfect 'abulia1' or inability to will or act4 ,they cannot change their posture or speech or execute the simplest command4 ,the different races of men show different temperaments in this regard4 ,the ,southern races are commonly accounted the more impulsive and precipitate3 the ,english race1 especially our ,new ,england branch of it1 is supposed to be all sicklied over with repressive forms of self-consciousness1 and condemned to express itself through a jungle of scruples and checks4 ,the highest form of character1 however1 abstractly considered1 must be full of scruples and inhibitions4 ,but action1 in such a character1 far from being paralyzed1 will succeed in energetically keeping on its way1 sometimes overpowering the resistances1 sometimes steering along the line where they lie thinnest4 ,just as our extensor muscles act most truly when a simultaneous contraction of the flexors guides and steadies them2 so the mind of him whose fields of consciousness are complex1 and who1 with the reasons for the action1 sees the reasons against it1 and yet1 instead of being palsied1 acts in the way that takes the whole field into consideration1--so1 ,i say1 is such a mind the ideal sort of mind that we should seek to reproduce in our pupils4 ,purely impulsive action1 or action that proceeds to extremities regardless of consequences1 on the other hand1 is the easiest action in the world1 and the lowest in type4 ,any one can show energy1 when made quite reckless4 ,an ,oriental despot requires but little ability3 as long as he lives1 he succeeds1 for he has absolutely his own way2 and1 when the world can no longer endure the horror of him1 he is assassinated4 ,but not to proceed immediately to extremities1 to be still able to act energetically under an array of inhibitions1--that indeed is rare and difficult4 ,cavour1 when urged to proclaim martial law in #ahei1 refused to do so1 saying3 ,any one can govern in that way4 ,i will be constitutional4 ,your parliamentary rulers1 your ,lincoln1 your ,gladstone1 are the strongest type of man1 because they accomplish results under the most intricate possible conditions4 ,we think of ,napoleon ,bonaparte as a colossal monster of will-power1 and truly enough he was so4 ,but1 from the point of view of the psychological machinery1 it would be hard to say whether he or ,gladstone was the larger volitional quantity2 for ,napoleon disregarded all the usual inhibitions1 and ,gladstone1 passionate as he was1 scrupulously considered them in his statesmanship4 ,a familiar example of the paralyzing power of scruples is the inhibitive effect of conscientiousness upon conversation4 ,nowhere does conversation seem to have flourished as brilliantly as in ,france during the last century4 ,but1 if we read old ,french memoirs1 we see how many brakes of scrupulosity which tie our tongues to-day were then removed4 ,where mendacity1 treachery1 obscenity1 and malignity find unhampered expression1 talk can be brilliant indeed4 ,but its flame waxes dim where the mind is stitched all over with conscientious fear of violating the moral and social proprieties4 ,the teacher often is confronted in the schoolroom with an abnormal type of will1 which we may call the 'balky will4' ,certain children1 if they do not succeed in doing a thing immediately1 remain completely inhibited in regard to it3 it becomes literally impossible for them to understand it if it be an intellectual problem1 or to do it if it be an outward operation1 as long as this particular inhibited condition lasts4 ,such children are usually treated as sinful1 and are punished2 or else the teacher pits his or her will against the child's will1 considering that the latter must be 'broken4' ,break your child's will1 in order that it may not perish1 wrote ,john ,wesley4 ,break its will as soon as it can speak plainly--or even before it can speak at all4 ,it should be forced to do as it is told1 even if you have to whip it ten times running4 ,break its will1 in order that its soul may live4 ,such will-breaking is always a scene with a great deal of nervous wear and tear on both sides1 a bad state of feeling left behind it1 and the victory not always with the would-be will-breaker4 ,when a situation of the kind is once fairly developed1 and the child is all tense and excited inwardly1 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 culpability4 ,so long as the inhibiting sense of impossibility remains in the child's mind1 he will continue unable to get beyond the obstacle4 ,the aim of the teacher should then be to make him simply forget4 ,drop the subject for the time1 divert the mind to something else3 then1 leading the pupil back by some circuitous line of association1 spring it on him again before he has time to recognize it1 and as likely as not he will go over it now without any difficulty4 ,it is in no other way that we overcome balkiness in a horse3 we divert his attention1 do something to his nose or ear1 lead him round in a circle1 and thus get him over a place where flogging would only have made him more invincible4 ,a tactful teacher will never let these strained situations come up at all4 ,you perceive now1 my friends1 what your general or abstract duty is as teachers4 ,although you have to generate in your pupils a large stock of ideas1 any one of which may be inhibitory1 yet you must also see to it that no habitual hesitancy or paralysis of the will ensues1 and that the pupil still retains his power of vigorous action4 ,psychology can state your problem in these terms1 but you see how impotent she is to furnish the elements of its practical solution4 ,when all is said and done1 and your best efforts are made1 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 else4 ,some persons appear to have a naturally poor focalization of the field of consciousness2 and in such persons actions hang slack1 and inhibitions seem to exert peculiarly easy sway4 ,but let us now close in a little more closely on this matter of the education of the will4 ,your task is to build up a character in your pupils2 and a character1 as ,i have so often said1 consists in an organized set of habits of reaction4 ,now of what do such habits of reaction themselves consist8 ,they consist of tendencies to act characteristically when certain ideas possess us1 and to refrain characteristically when possessed by other ideas4 ,our volitional habits depend1 then1 first1 on what the stock of ideas is which we have2 and1 second1 on the habitual coupling of the several ideas with action or inaction respectively4 ,how is it when an alternative is presented to you for choice1 and you are uncertain what you ought to do8 ,you first hesitate1 and then you deliberate4 ,and in what does your deliberation consist8 ,it consists in trying to apperceive the ease successively by a number of different ideas1 which seem to fit it more or less1 until at last you hit on one which seems to fit it exactly4 ,if that be an idea which is a customary forerunner of action in you1 which enters into one of your maxims of positive behavior1 your hesitation ceases1 and you act immediately4 ,if1 on the other hand1 it be an idea which carries inaction as its habitual result1 if it ally itself with prohibition1 then you unhesitatingly refrain4 ,the problem is1 you see1 to find the right idea or conception for the case4 ,this search for the right conception may take days or weeks4 ,i spoke as if the action were easy when the conception once is found4 ,often it is so1 but it may be otherwise2 and1 when it is otherwise1 we find ourselves at the very centre of a moral situation1 into which ,i should now like you to look with me a little nearer4 ,the proper conception1 the true head of classification1 may be hard to attain2 or it may be one with which we have contracted no settled habits of action4 ,or1 again1 the action to which it would prompt may be dangerous and difficult2 or else inaction may appear deadly cold and negative when our impulsive feeling is hot4 ,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 effects4 ,whether it be stimulative or inhibitive1 it is too reasonable for us2 and the more instinctive passional propensity then tends to extrude it from our consideration4 ,we shy away from the thought of it4 ,it twinkles and goes out the moment it appears in the margin of our consciousness2 and we need a resolute effort of voluntary attention to drag it into the focus of the field1 and to keep it there long enough for its associative and motor effects to be exerted4 ,every one knows only too well how the mind flinches from looking at considerations hostile to the reigning mood of feeling4 ,once brought1 however1 in this way to the centre of the field of consciousness1 and held there1 the reasonable idea will exert these effects inevitably2 for the laws of connection between our consciousness and our nervous system provide for the action then taking place4 ,our moral effort1 properly so called1 terminates in our holding fast to the appropriate idea4 ,if1 then1 you are asked1 ,in what does a moral act consist when reduced to its simplest and most elementary form8 you can make only one reply4 ,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 there4 ,to think1 in short1 is the secret of will1 just as it is the secret of memory4 ,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 behavior4 ,i never thought1 they say4 ,i never thought how mean the action was1 ,i never thought of these abominable consequences4 ,and what do we retort when they say this8 ,we say3 ,why didn't you think8 ,what were you there for but to think8 ,and we read them a moral lecture on their irreflectiveness4 ,the hackneyed example of moral deliberation is the case of an habitual drunkard under temptation4 ,he has made a resolve to reform1 but he is now solicited again by the bottle4 ,his moral triumph or failure literally consists in his finding the right name for the case4 ,if he says that it is a case of not wasting good liquor already poured out1 or a case of not being churlish and unsociable when in the midst of friends1 or a case of learning something at last about a brand of whiskey which he never met before1 or a case of celebrating a public holiday1 or a case of stimulating himself to a more energetic resolve in favor of abstinence than any he has ever yet made1 then he is lost4 ,his choice of the wrong name seals his doom4 ,but if1 in spite of all the plausible good names with which his thirsty fancy so copiously furnishes him1 he unwaveringly clings to the truer bad name1 and apperceives the case as that of being a drunkard1 being a drunkard1 being a drunkard1 his feet are planted on the road to salvation4 ,he saves himself by thinking rightly4 ,thus are your pupils to be saved3 first1 by the stock of ideas with which you furnish them2 second1 by the amount of voluntary attention that they can exert in holding to the right ones1 however unpalatable2 and1 third1 by the several habits of acting definitely on these latter to which they have been successfully trained4 ,in all this the power of voluntarily attending is the point of the whole procedure4 ,just as a balance turns on its knife-edges1 so on it our moral destiny turns4 ,you remember that1 when we were talking of the subject of attention1 we discovered how much more intermittent and brief our acts of voluntary attention are than is commonly supposed4 ,if they were all summed together1 the time that they occupy would cover an almost incredibly small portion of our lives4 ,but ,i also said1 you will remember1 that their brevity was not in proportion to their significance1 and that ,i should return to the subject again4 ,so ,i return to it now4 ,it is not the mere size of a thing which1 constitutes its importance3 it is its position in the organism to which it belongs4 ,our acts of voluntary attention1 brief and fitful as they are1 are nevertheless momentous and critical1 determining us1 as they do1 to higher or lower destinies4 ,the exercise of voluntary attention in the schoolroom must therefore be counted one of the most important points of training that take place there2 and the first-rate teacher1 by the keenness of the remoter interests which he is able to awaken1 will provide abundant opportunities for its occurrence4 ,i hope that you appreciate this now without any further explanation4 ,i have been accused of holding up before you1 in the course of these talks1 a mechanical and even a materialistic view of the mind4 ,i have called it an organism and a machine4 ,i have spoken of its reaction on the environment as the essential thing about it2 and ,i have referred this1 either openly or implicitly1 to the construction of the nervous system4 ,i have1 in consequence1 received notes from some of you1 begging me to be more explicit on this point2 and to let you know frankly whether ,i am a complete materialist1 or not4 ,now in these lectures ,i wish to be strictly practical and useful1 and to keep free from all speculative complications4 ,nevertheless1 ,i do not wish to leave any ambiguity about my own position2 and ,i will therefore say1 in order to avoid all misunderstanding1 that in no sense do ,i count myself a materialist4 ,i cannot see how such a thing as our consciousness can possibly be produced by a nervous machinery1 though ,i can perfectly well see how1 if 'ideas' do accompany the workings of the machinery1 the order of the ideas might very well follow exactly the order of the machine's operations4 ,our habitual associations of ideas1 trains of thought1 and sequences of action1 might thus be consequences of the succession of currents in our nervous systems4 ,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 brain4 ,if this were all1 we might indeed adopt the fatalist conception which ,i sketched for you but a short while ago4 ,our ideas would be determined by brain currents1 and these by purely mechanical laws4 ,but1 after what we have just seen1--namely1 the part played by voluntary attention in volition1--a belief in free will and purely spiritual causation is still open to us4 ,the duration and amount of this attention seem within certain limits indeterminate4 ,we feel as if we could make it really more or less1 and as if our free action in this regard were a genuine critical point in nature1--a point on which our destiny and that of others might hinge4 ,the whole question of free will concentrates itself1 then1 at this same small point3 ,is or is not the appearance of indetermination at this point an illusion8 ,it is plain that such a question can be decided only by general analogies1 and not by accurate observations4 ,the free-willist believes the appearance to be a reality3 the determinist believes that it is an illusion4 ,i myself hold with the free-willists1--not because ,i cannot conceive the fatalist theory clearly1 or because ,i fail to understand its plausibility1 but simply because1 if free will were true1 it would be absurd to have the belief in it fatally forced on our acceptance4 ,considering the inner fitness of things1 one would rather think that the very first act of a will endowed with freedom should be to sustain the belief in the freedom itself4 ,i accordingly believe freely in my freedom2 ,i do so with the best of scientific consciences1 knowing that the predetermination of the amount of my effort of attention can never receive objective proof1 and hoping that1 whether you follow my example in this respect or not1 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 materialist4 ,let me say one more final word now about the will1 and therewith conclude both that important subject and these lectures4 ,there are two types of will4 ,there are also two types of inhibition4 ,we may call them inhibition by repression or by negation1 and inhibition by substitution1 respectively4 ,the difference between them is that1 in the case of inhibition by repression1 both the inhibited idea and the inhibiting idea1 the impulsive idea and the idea that negates it1 remain along with each other in consciousness1 producing a certain inward strain or tension there3 whereas1 in inhibition by substitution1 the inhibiting idea supersedes altogether the idea which it inhibits1 and the latter quickly vanishes from the field4 ,for instance1 your pupils are wandering in mind1 are listening to a sound outside the window1 which presently grows interesting enough to claim all their attention4 ,you can call the latter back again by bellowing at them not to listen to those sounds1 but to keep their minds on their books or on what you are saying4 ,and1 by thus keeping them conscious that your eye is sternly on them1 you may produce a good effect4 ,but it will be a wasteful effect and an inferior effect2 for the moment you relax your supervision the attractive disturbance1 always there soliciting their curiosity1 will overpower them1 and they will be just as they were before3 whereas1 if1 without saying anything about the street disturbances1 you open a counter-attraction by starting some very interesting talk or demonstration yourself1 they will altogether forget the distracting incident1 and without any effort follow you along4 ,there are many interests that can never be inhibited by the way of negation4 ,to a man in love1 for example1 it is literally impossible1 by any effort of will1 to annul his passion4 ,but let 'some new planet swim into his ken1' and the former idol will immediately cease to engross his mind4 ,it is clear that in general we ought1 whenever we can1 to employ the method of inhibition by substitution4 ,he whose life is based upon the word 'no1' who tells the truth because a lie is wicked1 and who has constantly to grapple with his envious and cowardly and mean propensities1 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 outset1 and he felt no inferior temptations4 ,your born gentleman is certainly1 for this world's purposes1 a more valuable being than your ,crump1 with his grunting resistance to his native devils1 even though in ,god's sight the latter may1 as the ,catholic theologians say1 be rolling up great stores of 'merit4' ,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 good4 ,he who habitually acts sub specie mali1 under the negative notion1 the notion of the bad1 is called a slave by ,spinoza4 ,to him who acts habitually under the notion of good he gives the name of freeman4 ,see to it now1 ,i beg you1 that you make freemen of your pupils by habituating them to act1 whenever possible1 under the notion of a good4 ,get them habitually to tell the truth1 not so much through showing them the wickedness of lying as by arousing their enthusiasm for honor and veracity4 ,wean them from their native cruelty by imparting to them some of your own positive sympathy with an animal's inner springs of joy4 ,and1 in the lessons which you may be legally obliged to conduct upon the bad effects of alcohol1 lay less stress than the books do on the drunkard's stomach1 kidneys1 nerves1 and social miseries1 and more on the blessings of having an organism kept in lifelong possession of its full youthful elasticity by a sweet1 sound blood1 to which stimulants and narcotics are unknown1 and to which the morning sun and air and dew will daily come as sufficiently powerful intoxicants4 ,i have now ended these talks4 ,if to some of you the things ,i have said seem obvious or trivial1 it is possible that they may appear less so when1 in the course of a year or two1 you find yourselves noticing and apperceiving events in the schoolroom a little differently1 in consequence of some of the conceptions ,i have tried to make more clear4 ,i cannot but think that to apperceive your pupil as a little sensitive1 impulsive1 associative1 and reactive organism1 partly fated and partly free1 will lead to a better intelligence of all his ways4 ,understand him1 then1 as such a subtle little piece of machinery4 ,and if1 in addition1 you can also see him sub specie boni1 and love him as well1 you will be in the best possible position for becoming perfect teachers4 ,,talks ,,to ,,students ,i4 ,,the ,,gospel ,,of ,,relaxation ,i wish in the following hour to take certain psychological doctrines and show their practical applications to mental hygiene1--to the hygiene of our ,american life more particularly4 ,our people1 especially in academic circles1 are turning towards psychology nowadays with great expectations2 and1 if psychology is to justify them1 it must be by showing fruits in the pedagogic and therapeutic lines4 ,the reader may possibly have heard of a peculiar theory of the emotions1 commonly referred to in psychological literature as the ,lange-,james theory4 ,according to this theory1 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 situation4 ,an emotion of fear1 for example1 or surprise1 is not a direct effect of the object's presence on the mind1 but an effect of that still earlier effect1 the bodily commotion which the object suddenly excites2 so that1 were this bodily commotion suppressed1 we should not so much feel fear as call the situation fearful2 we should not feel surprise1 but coldly recognize that the object was indeed astonishing4 ,one enthusiast has even gone so far as to say that when we feel sorry it is because we weep1 when we feel afraid it is because we run away1 and not conversely4 ,some of you may perhaps be acquainted with the paradoxical formula4 ,now1 whatever exaggeration may possibly lurk in this account of our emotions 7and ,i doubt myself whether the exaggeration be very great71 it is certain that the main core of it is true1 and that the mere giving way to tears1 for example1 or to the outward expression of an anger-fit1 will result for the moment in making the inner grief or anger more acutely felt4 ,there is1 accordingly1 no better known or more generally useful precept in the moral training of youth1 or in one's personal self-discipline1 than that which bids us pay primary attention to what we do and express1 and not to care too much for what we feel4 ,if we only check a cowardly impulse in time1 for example1 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 live1 our feelings themselves will presently be the calmer and better1 with no particular guidance from us on their own account4 ,action seems to follow feeling1 but really action and feeling go together2 and by regulating the action1 which is under the more direct control of the will1 we can indirectly regulate the feeling1 which is not4 ,thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness1 if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost1 is to sit up cheerfully1 to look round cheerfully1 and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there4 ,if such conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful1 nothing else on that occasion can4 ,so to feel brave1 act as if we were brave1 use all our will to that end1 and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear4 ,again1 in order to feel kindly toward a person to whom we have been inimical1 the only way is more or less deliberately to smile1 to make sympathetic inquiries1 and to force ourselves to say genial things4 ,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 feeling4 ,to wrestle with a bad feeling only pins our attention on it1 and keeps it still fastened in the mind3 whereas1 if we act as if from some better feeling1 the old bad feeling soon folds its tent like an ,arab1 and silently steals away4 ,the best manuals of religious devotion accordingly reiterate the maxim that we must let our feelings go1 and pay no regard to them whatever4 ,in an admirable and widely successful little book called ',the ,christian's ,secret of a ,happy ,life1' by ,mrs4 ,hannah ,whitall ,smith1 ,i find this lesson on almost every page4 ,act faithfully1 and you really have faith1 no matter how cold and even how dubious you may feel4 ,it is your purpose ,god looks at1 writes ,mrs4 ,smith1 not your feelings about that purpose2 and your purpose1 or will1 is therefore the only thing you need attend to4444 ,let your emotions come or let them go1 just as ,god pleases1 and make no account of them either way4444 ,they really have nothing to do with the matter4 ,they are not the indicators of your spiritual state1 but are merely the indicators of your temperament or of your present physical condition4 ,but you all know these facts already1 so ,i need no longer press them on your attention4 ,from our acts and from our attitudes ceaseless inpouring currents of sensation come1 which help to determine from moment to moment what our inner states shall be3 that is a fundamental law of psychology which ,i will therefore proceed to assume4 99 99 99 99 99 ,a ,viennese neurologist of considerable reputation has recently written about the ,binnenleben1 as he terms it1 or buried life of human beings4 ,no doctor1 this writer says1 can get into really profitable relations with a nervous patient until he gets some sense of what the patient's ,binnenleben is1 of the sort of unuttered inner atmosphere in which his consciousness dwells alone with the secrets of its prison-house4 ,this inner personal tone is what we can't communicate or describe articulately to others2 but the wraith and ghost of it1 so to speak1 are often what our friends and intimates feel as our most characteristic quality4 ,in the unhealthy-minded1 apart from all sorts of old regrets1 ambitions checked by shames and aspirations obstructed by timidities1 it consists mainly of bodily discomforts not distinctly localized by the sufferer1 but breeding a general self-mistrust and sense that things are not as they should be with him4 ,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 all4 ,in the healthy-minded1 on the contrary1 there are no fears or shames to discover2 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 up4 ,consider1 for example1 the effects of a well-toned motor-apparatus1 nervous and muscular1 on our general personal self-consciousness1 the sense of elasticity and efficiency that results4 ,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 ski1 or long snow-shoes1 as a sport for both sexes1 has made the women acquainted4 ,fifteen years ago the ,norwegian women were even more than the women of other lands votaries of the old-fashioned ideal of femininity1 'the domestic angel1' the 'gentle and refining influence' sort of thing4 ,now these sedentary fireside tabby-cats of ,norway have been trained1 they say1 by the snow-shoes into lithe and audacious creatures1 for whom no night is too dark or height too giddy1 and who are not only saying good-bye to the traditional feminine pallor and delicacy of constitution1 but actually taking the lead in every educational and social reform4 ,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 tone1 which will send its tonic breath through all our ,american life4 ,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 alike4 ,the strength of the ,british ,empire lies in the strength of character of the individual ,englishman1 taken all alone by himself4 ,and that strength1 ,i am persuaded1 is perennially nourished and kept up by nothing so much as by the national worship1 in which all classes meet1 of athletic outdoor life and sport4 ,i recollect1 years ago1 reading a certain work by an ,american doctor on hygiene and the laws of life and the type of future humanity4 ,i have forgotten its author's name and its title1 but ,i remember well an awful prophecy that it contained about the future of our muscular system4 ,human perfection1 the writer said1 means ability to cope with the environment2 but the environment will more and more require mental power from us1 and less and less will ask for bare brute strength4 ,wars will cease1 machines will do all our heavy work1 man will become more and more a mere director of nature's energies1 and less and less an exerter of energy on his own account4 ,so that1 if the homo sapiens of the future can only digest his food and think1 what need will he have of well-developed muscles at all8 ,and why1 pursued this writer1 should we not even now be satisfied with a more delicate and intellectual type of beauty than that which pleased our ancestors8 ,nay1 ,i have heard a fanciful friend make a still further advance in this 'new-man' direction4 ,with our future food1 he says1 itself prepared in liquid form from the chemical elements of the atmosphere1 pepsinated or half-digested in advance1 and sucked up through a glass tube from a tin can1 what need shall we have of teeth1 or stomachs even8 ,they may go1 along with our muscles and our physical courage1 while1 challenging ever more and more our proper admiration1 will grow the gigantic domes of our crania1 arching over our spectacled eyes1 and animating our flexible little lips to those floods of learned and ingenious talk which will constitute our most congenial occupation4 ,i am sure that your flesh creeps at this apocalyptic vision4 ,mine certainly did so2 and ,i cannot believe that our muscular vigor will ever be a superfluity4 ,even if the day ever dawns in which it will not be needed for fighting the old heavy battles against ,nature1 it will still always be needed to furnish the background of sanity1 serenity1 and cheerfulness to life1 to give moral elasticity to our disposition1 to round off the wiry edge of our fretfulness1 and make us good-humored and easy of approach4 ,weakness is too apt to be what the doctors call irritable weakness4 ,and that blessed internal peace and confidence1 that acquiescentia in seipso1 as ,spinoza used to call it1 that wells up from every part of the body of a muscularly well-trained human being1 and soaks the indwelling soul of him with satisfaction1 is1 quite apart from every consideration of its mechanical utility1 an element of spiritual hygiene of supreme significance4 ,and now let me go a step deeper into mental hygiene1 and try to enlist your insight and sympathy in a cause which ,i believe is one of paramount patriotic importance to us ,yankees4 ,many years ago a ,scottish medical man1 ,dr4 ,clouston1 a mad-doctor as they call him there1 or what we should call an asylum physician 7the most eminent one in ,scotland71 visited this country1 and said something that has remained in my memory ever since4 ,you ,americans1 he said1 wear too much expression on your faces4 ,you are living like an army with all its reserves engaged in action4 ,the duller countenances of the ,british population betoken a better scheme of life4 ,they suggest stores of reserved nervous force to fall back upon1 if any occasion should arise that requires it4 ,this inexcitability1 this presence at all times of power not used1 ,i regard1 continued ,dr4 ,clouston1 as the great safeguard of our ,british people4 ,the other thing in you gives me a sense of insecurity1 and you ought somehow to tone yourselves down4 ,you really do carry too much expression1 you take too intensely the trivial moments of life4 ,now ,dr4 ,clouston is a trained reader of the secrets of the soul as expressed upon the countenance1 and the observation of his which ,i quote seems to me to mean a great deal4 ,and all ,americans who stay in ,europe long enough to get accustomed to the spirit that reigns and expresses itself there1 so unexcitable as compared with ours1 make a similar observation when they return to their native shores4 ,they find a wild-eyed look upon their compatriots' faces1 either of too desperate eagerness and anxiety or of too intense responsiveness and good-will4 ,it is hard to say whether the men or the women show it most4 ,it is true that we do not all feel about it as ,dr4 ,clouston felt4 ,many of us1 far from deploring it1 admire it4 ,we say3 ,what intelligence it shows6 ,how different from the stolid cheeks1 the codfish eyes1 the slow1 inanimate demeanor we have been seeing in the ,british ,isles6 ,intensity1 rapidity1 vivacity of appearance1 are indeed with us something of a nationally accepted ideal2 and the medical notion of 'irritable weakness' is not the first thing suggested by them to our mind1 as it was to ,dr4 ,clouston's4 ,in a weekly paper not very long ago ,i remember reading a story in which1 after describing the beauty and interest of the heroine's personality1 the author summed up her charms by saying that to all who looked upon her an impression as of 'bottled lightning' was irresistibly conveyed4 ,bottled lightning1 in truth1 is one of our ,american ideals1 even of a young girl's character6 ,now it is most ungracious1 and it may seem to some persons unpatriotic1 to criticise in public the physical peculiarities of one's own people1 of one's own family1 so to speak4 ,besides1 it may be said1 and said with justice1 that there are plenty of bottled-lightning temperaments in other countries1 and plenty of phlegmatic temperaments here2 and that1 when all is said and done1 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 life1 and not worth solemn treatment at a time when agreeable rather than disagreeable things should be talked about4 ,well1 in one sense the more or less of tension in our faces and in our unused muscles is a small thing3 not much mechanical work is done by these contractions4 ,but it is not always the material size of a thing that measures its importance3 often it is its place and function4 ,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 ago4 ,there is very little difference between one man and another1 he said1 when you go to the bottom of it4 ,but what little there is1 is very important4 ,and the remark certainly applies to this case4 ,the general over-contraction may be small when estimated in foot-pounds1 but its importance is immense on account of its effects on the over-contracted person's spiritual life4 ,this follows as a necessary consequence from the theory of our emotions to which ,i made reference at the beginning of this article4 ,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 up2 and the sultry1 threatening1 exhausting1 thunderous inner atmosphere never quite clears away4 ,if you never wholly give yourself up to the chair you sit in1 but always keep your leg- and body-muscles half contracted for a rise2 if you breathe eighteen or nineteen instead of sixteen times a minute1 and never quite breathe out at that1--what mental mood can you be in but one of inner panting and expectancy1 and how can the future and its worries possibly forsake your mind8 ,on the other hand1 how can they gain admission to your mind if your brow be unruffled1 your respiration calm and complete1 and your muscles all relaxed8 ,now what is the cause of this absence of repose1 this bottled-lightning quality in us ,americans8 ,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 thermometer1 coupled with the extraordinary progressiveness of our life1 the hard work1 the railroad speed1 the rapid success1 and all the other things we know so well by heart4 ,well1 our climate is certainly exciting1 but hardly more so than that of many parts of ,europe1 where nevertheless no bottled-lightning girls are found4 ,and the work done and the pace of life are as extreme an every great capital of ,europe as they are here4 ,to me both of these pretended causes are utterly insufficient to explain the facts4 ,to explain them1 we must go not to physical geography1 but to psychology and sociology4 ,the latest chapter both in sociology and in psychology to be developed in a manner that approaches adequacy is the chapter on the imitative impulse4 ,first ,bagehot1 then ,tarde1 then ,royce and ,baldwin here1 have shown that invention and imitation1 taken together1 form1 one may say1 the entire warp and woof of human life1 in so far as it is social4 ,the ,american over-tension and jerkiness and breathlessness and intensity and agony of expression are primarily social1 and only secondarily physiological1 phenomena4 ,they are bad habits1 nothing more or less1 bred of custom and example1 born of the imitation of bad models and the cultivation of false personal ideals4 ,how are idioms acquired1 how do local peculiarities of phrase and accent come about8 ,through an accidental example set by some one1 which struck the ears of others1 and was quoted and copied till at last every one in the locality chimed in4 ,just so it is with national tricks of vocalization or intonation1 with national manners1 fashions of movement and gesture1 and habitual expressions of face4 ,we1 here in ,america1 through following a succession of pattern-setters whom it is now impossible to trace1 and through influencing each other in a bad direction1 have at last settled down collectively into what1 for better or worse1 is our own characteristic national type1--a type with the production of which1 so far as these habits go1 the climate and conditions have had practically nothing at all to do4 ,this type1 which we have thus reached by our imitativeness1 we now have fixed upon us1 for better or worse4 ,now no type can be wholly disadvantageous2 but1 so far as our type follows the bottled-lightning fashion1 it cannot be wholly good4 ,dr4 ,clouston was certainly right in thinking that eagerness1 breathlessness1 and anxiety are not signs of strength3 they are signs of weakness and of bad co-ordination4 ,the even forehead1 the slab-like cheek1 the codfish eye1 may be less interesting for the moment2 but they are more promising signs than intense expression is of what we may expect of their possessor in the long run4 ,your dull1 unhurried worker gets over a great deal of ground1 because he never goes backward or breaks down4 ,your intense1 convulsive worker breaks down and has bad moods so often that you never know where he may be when you most need his help1--he may be having one of his 'bad days4' ,we say that so many of our fellow-countrymen collapse1 and have to be sent abroad to rest their nerves1 because they work so hard4 ,i suspect that this is an immense mistake4 ,i suspect that neither the nature nor the amount of our work is accountable for the frequency and severity of our breakdowns1 but that their cause lies rather in those absurd feelings of hurry and having no time1 in that breathlessness and tension1 that anxiety of feature and that solicitude for results1 that lack of inner harmony and ease1 in short1 by which with us the work is so apt to be accompanied1 and from which a ,european who should do the same work would nine times out of ten be free4 ,these perfectly wanton and unnecessary tricks of inner attitude and outer manner in us1 caught from the social atmosphere1 kept up by tradition1 and idealized by many as the admirable way of life1 are the last straws that break the ,american camel's back1 the final overflowers of our measure of wear and tear and fatigue4 ,the voice1 for example1 in a surprisingly large number of us has a tired and plaintive sound4 ,some of us are really tired 7for ,i do not mean absolutely to deny that our climate has a tiring quality72 but far more of us are not tired at all1 or would not be tired at all unless we had got into a wretched trick of feeling tired1 by following the prevalent habits of vocalization and expression4 ,and if talking high and tired1 and living excitedly and hurriedly1 would only enable us to do more by the way1 even while breaking us down in the end1 it would be different4 ,there would be some compensation1 some excuse1 for going on so4 ,but the exact reverse is the case4 ,it is your relaxed and easy worker1 who is in no hurry1 and quite thoughtless most of the while of consequences1 who is your efficient worker2 and tension and anxiety1 and present and future1 all mixed up together in our mind at once1 are the surest drags upon steady progress and hindrances to our success4 ,my colleague1 ,professor ,muensterberg1 an excellent observer1 who came here recently1 has written some notes on ,america to ,german papers4 ,he says in substance that the appearance of unusual energy in ,america is superficial and illusory1 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 people4 ,i think myself that it is high time for old legends and traditional opinions to be changed2 and that1 if any one should begin to write about ,yankee inefficiency and feebleness1 and inability to do anything with time except to waste it1 he would have a very pretty paradoxical little thesis to sustain1 with a great many facts to quote1 and a great deal of experience to appeal to in its proof4 ,well1 my friends1 if our dear ,american character is weakened by all this over-tension1--and ,i think1 whatever reserves you may make1 that you will agree as to the main facts1--where does the remedy lie8 ,it lies1 of course1 where lay the origins of the disease4 ,if a vicious fashion and taste are to blame for the thing1 the fashion and taste must be changed4 ,and1 though it is no small thing to inoculate seventy millions of people with new standards1 yet1 if there is to be any relief1 that will have to be done4 ,we must change ourselves from a race that admires jerk and snap for their own sakes1 and looks down upon low voices and quiet ways as dull1 to one that1 on the contrary1 has calm for its ideal1 and for their own sakes loves harmony1 dignity1 and ease4 ,so we go back to the psychology of imitation again4 ,there is only one way to improve ourselves1 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 west4 ,some of us are in more favorable positions than others to set new fashions4 ,some are much more striking personally and imitable1 so to speak4 ,but no living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody4 ,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 expense2 and1 surely1 there is no human being whose example doesn't work contagiously in some particular4 ,the very idiots at our public institutions imitate each other's peculiarities4 ,and1 if you should individually achieve calmness and harmony in your own person1 you may depend upon it that a wave of imitation will spread from you1 as surely as the circles spread outward when a stone is dropped into a lake4 ,fortunately1 we shall not have to be absolute pioneers4 ,even now in ,new ,york they have formed a society for the improvement of our national vocalization1 and one perceives its machinations already in the shape of various newspaper paragraphs intended to stir up dissatisfaction with the awful thing that it is4 ,and1 better still than that1 because more radical and general1 is the gospel of relaxation1 as one may call it1 preached by ,miss ,annie ,payson ,call1 of ,boston1 in her admirable little volume called ',power through ,repose1' a book that ought to be in the hands of every teacher and student in ,america of either sex4 ,you need only be followers1 then1 on a path already opened up by others4 ,but of one thing be confident3 others still will follow you4 ,and this brings me to one more application of psychology to practical life1 to which ,i will call attention briefly1 and then close4 ,if one's example of easy and calm ways is to be effectively contagious1 one feels by instinct that the less voluntarily one aims at getting imitated1 the more unconscious one keeps in the matter1 the more likely one is to succeed4 ,become the imitable thing1 and you may then discharge your minds of all responsibility for the imitation4 ,the laws of social nature will take care of that result4 ,now the psychological principle on which this precept reposes is a law of very deep and wide-spread importance in the conduct of our lives1 and at the same time a law which we ,americans most grievously neglect4 ,stated technically1 the law is this3 that strong feeling about one's self tends to arrest the free association of one's objective ideas and motor processes4 ,we get the extreme example of this in the mental disease called melancholia4 ,a melancholic patient is filled through and through with intensely painful emotion about himself4 ,he is threatened1 he is guilty1 he is doomed1 he is annihilated1 he is lost4 ,his mind is fixed as if in a cramp on these feelings of his own situation1 and in all the books on insanity you may read that the usual varied flow of his thoughts has ceased4 ,his associative processes1 to use the technical phrase1 are inhibited2 and his ideas stand stock-still1 shut up to their one monotonous function of reiterating inwardly the fact of the man's desperate estate4 ,and this inhibitive influence is not due to the mere fact that his emotion is painful4 ,joyous emotions about the self also stop the association of our ideas4 ,a saint in ecstasy is as motionless and irresponsive and one-idea'd as a melancholiac4 ,and1 without going as far as ecstatic saints1 we know how in every one a great or sudden pleasure may paralyze the flow of thought4 ,ask young people returning from a party or a spectacle1 and all excited about it1 what it was4 ,oh1 it was fine6 it was fine6 it was fine6 is all the information you are likely to receive until the excitement has calmed down4 ,probably every one of my hearers has been made temporarily half-idiotic by some great success or piece of good fortune4 ,good6 ,,good6 ,,good6 is all we can at such times say to ourselves until we smile at our own very foolishness4 ,now from all this we can draw an extremely practical conclusion4 ,if1 namely1 we wish our trains of ideation and volition to be copious and varied and effective1 we must form the habit of freeing them from the inhibitive influence of reflection upon them1 of egoistic preoccupation about their results4 ,such a habit1 like other habits1 can be formed4 ,prudence and duty and self-regard1 emotions of ambition and emotions of anxiety1 have1 of course1 a needful part to play in our lives4 ,but confine them as far as possible to the occasions when you are making your general resolutions and deciding on your plans of campaign1 and keep them out of the details4 ,when once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day1 dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome4 ,unclamp1 in a word1 your intellectual and practical machinery1 and let it run free2 and the service it will do you will be twice as good4 ,who are the scholars who get 'rattled' in the recitation-room8 ,those who think of the possibilities of failure and feel the great importance of the act4 ,who are those who do recite well8 ,often those who are most indifferent4 ,their ideas reel themselves out of their memory of their own accord4 ,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 world8 ,to what is the fact1 if fact it be1 due unless to the over-active conscience of the people1 afraid of either saying something too trivial and obvious1 or something insincere1 or something unworthy of one's interlocutor1 or something in some way or other not adequate to the occasion8 ,how can conversation possibly steer itself through such a sea of responsibilities and inhibitions as this8 ,on the other hand1 conversation does flourish and society is refreshing1 and neither dull on the one hand nor exhausting from its effort on the other1 wherever people forget their scruples and take the brakes off their hearts1 and let their tongues wag as automatically and irresponsibly as they will4 ,they talk much in pedagogic circles to-day about the duty of the teacher to prepare for every lesson in advance4 ,to some extent this is useful4 ,but we ,yankees are assuredly not those to whom such a general doctrine should be preached4 ,we are only too careful as it is4 ,the advice ,i should give to most teachers would be in the words of one who is herself an admirable teacher4 ,prepare yourself in the subject so well that it shall be always on tap3 then in the classroom trust your spontaneity and fling away all further care4 ,my advice to students1 especially to girl-students1 would be somewhat similar4 ,just as a bicycle-chain may be too tight1 so may one's carefulness and conscientiousness be so tense as to hinder the running of one's mind4 ,take1 for example1 periods when there are many successive days of examination impending4 ,one ounce of good nervous tone in an examination is worth many pounds of anxious study for it in advance4 ,if you want really to do your best in an examination1 fling away the book the day before1 say to yourself1 ,i won't waste another minute on this miserable thing1 and ,i don't care an iota whether ,i succeed or not4 ,say this sincerely1 and feel it2 and go out and play1 or go to bed and sleep1 and ,i am sure the results next day will encourage you to use the method permanently4 ,i have heard this advice given to a student by ,miss ,call1 whose book on muscular relaxation ,i quoted a moment ago4 ,in her later book1 entitled ',as a ,matter of ,course1' the gospel of moral relaxation1 of dropping things from the mind1 and not 'caring1' is preached with equal success4 ,not only our preachers1 but our friends the theosophists and mind-curers of various religious sects are also harping on this string4 ,and with the doctors1 the ,delsarteans1 the various mind-curing sects1 and such writers as ,mr4 ,dresser1 ,prentice ,mulford1 ,mr4 ,horace ,fletcher1 and ,mr4 ,trine to help1 and the whole band of schoolteachers and magazine-readers chiming in1 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 strong4 ,worry means always and invariably inhibition of associations and loss of effective power4 ,of course1 the sovereign cure for worry is religious faith2 and this1 of course1 you also know4 ,the turbulent billows of the fretful surface leave the deep parts of the ocean undisturbed1 and to him who has a hold on vaster and more permanent realities the hourly vicissitudes of his personal destiny seem relatively insignificant things4 ,the really religious person is accordingly unshakable and full of equanimity1 and calmly ready for any duty that the day may bring forth4 ,this is charmingly illustrated by a little work with which ,i recently became acquainted1 ,the ,practice of the ,presence of ,god1 the ,best ,ruler of a ,holy ,life1 by ,brother ,lawrence1 being ,conversations and ,letters of ,nicholas ,herman of ,lorraine1 ,translated from the ,french4,c ,i extract a few passages1 the conversations being given in indirect discourse4 ,brother ,lawrence was a ,carmelite friar1 converted at ,paris in #afff4 ,he said that he had been footman to ,m4 ,fieubert1 the ,treasurer1 and that he was a great awkward fellow1 who broke everything4 ,that he had desired to be received into a monastery1 thinking that he would there be made to smart for his awkwardness and the faults he should commit1 and so he should sacrifice to ,god his life1 with its pleasures2 but that ,god had disappointed him1 he having met with nothing but satisfaction in that state4444 ,c ,fleming ,h4 ,revell ,company1 ,new ,york4 ,that he had long been troubled in mind from a certain belief that he should be damned2 that all the men in the world could not have persuaded him to the contrary2 but that he had thus reasoned with himself about it3 ,i engaged in a religious life only for the love of ,god1 and ,i have endeavored to act only for ,him2 whatever becomes of me1 whether ,i be lost or saved1 ,i will always continue to act purely for the love of ,god4 ,i shall have this good at least1 that till death ,i shall have done all that is in me to love ,him4444 ,that since then he had passed his life in perfect liberty and continual joy4 ,that when an occasion of practising some virtue offered1 he addressed himself to ,god1 saying1 ',lord1 ,i cannot do this unless thou enablest me'2 and that then he received strength more than sufficient4 ,that1 when he had failed in his duty1 he only confessed his fault1 saying to ,god1 ',i shall never do otherwise1 if ,you leave me to myself2 it is ,you who must hinder my failing1 and mend what is amiss4' ,that after this he gave himself no further uneasiness about it4 ,that he had been lately sent into ,burgundy to buy the provision of wine for the society1 which was a very unwelcome task for him1 because he had no turn for business1 and because he was lame1 and could not go about the boat but by rolling himself over the casks4 ,that1 however1 he gave himself no uneasiness about it1 nor about the purchase of the wine4 ,that he said to ,god1 ',it was his business he was about1' and that he afterward found it well performed4 ,that he had been sent into ,auvergne1 the year before1 upon the same account2 that he could not tell how the matter passed1 but that it proved very well4 ,so1 likewise1 in his business in the kitchen 7to which he had naturally a great aversion71 having accustomed himself to do everything there for the love of ,god1 and with prayer upon all occasions1 for his grace to do his work well1 he had found everything easy during fifteen years that he had been employed there4 ,that he was very well pleased with the post he was now in1 but that he was as ready to quit that as the former1 since he was always pleasing himself in every condition1 by doing little things for the love of ,god4 ,that the goodness of ,god assured him he would not forsake him utterly1 and that he would give him strength to bear whatever evil he permitted to happen to him2 and1 therefore1 that he feared nothing1 and had no occasion to consult with anybody about his state4 ,that1 when he had attempted to do it1 he had always come away more perplexed4 ,the simple-heartedness of the good ,brother ,lawrence1 and the relaxation of all unnecessary solicitudes and anxieties in him1 is a refreshing spectacle4 99 99 99 99 99 ,the need of feeling responsible all the livelong day has been preached long enough in our ,new ,england4 ,long enough exclusively1 at any rate1--and long enough to the female sex4 ,what our girl-students and woman-teachers most need nowadays is not the exacerbation1 but rather the toning-down of their moral tensions4 ,even now ,i fear that some one of my fair hearers may be making an undying resolve to become strenuously relaxed1 cost what it will1 for the remainder of her life4 ,it is needless to say that that is not the way to do it4 ,the way to do it1 paradoxical as it may seem1 is genuinely not to care whether you are doing it or not4 ,then1 possibly1 by the grace of ,god1 you may all at once find that you are doing it1 and1 having learned what the trick feels like1 you may 7again by the grace of ,god7 be enabled to go on4 ,and that something like this may be the happy experience of all my hearers is1 in closing1 my most earnest wish4 ,,ii4 ,,on ,a ,,certain ,,blindness ,,in ,,human ,,beings ,our judgments concerning the worth of things1 big or little1 depend on the feelings the things arouse in us4 ,where we judge a thing to be precious in consequence of the idea we frame of it1 this is only because the idea is itself associated already with a feeling4 ,if we were radically feelingless1 and if ideas were the only things our mind could entertain1 we should lose all our likes and dislikes at a stroke1 and be unable to point to any one situation or experience in life more valuable or significant than any other4 ,now the blindness in human beings1 of which this discourse will treat1 is the blindness with which we all are afflicted in regard to the feelings of creatures and people different from ourselves4 ,we are practical beings1 each of us with limited functions and duties to perform4 ,each is bound to feel intensely the importance of his own duties and the significance of the situations that call these forth4 ,but this feeling is in each of us a vital secret1 for sympathy with which we vainly look to others4 ,the others are too much absorbed in their own vital secrets to take an interest in ours4 ,hence the stupidity and injustice of our opinions1 so far as they deal with the significance of alien lives4 ,hence the falsity of our judgments1 so far as they presume to decide in an absolute way on the value of other persons' conditions or ideals4 ,take our dogs and ourselves1 connected as we are by a tie more intimate than most ties in this world2 and yet1 outside of that tie of friendly fondness1 how insensible1 each of us1 to all that makes life significant for the other6--we to the rapture of bones under hedges1 or smells of trees and lamp-posts1 they to the delights of literature and art4 ,as you sit reading the most moving romance you ever fell upon1 what sort of a judge is your fox-terrier of your behavior8 ,with all his good will toward you1 the nature of your conduct is absolutely excluded from his comprehension4 ,to sit there like a senseless statue1 when you might be taking him to walk and throwing sticks for him to catch6 ,what queer disease is this that comes over you every day1 of holding things and staring at them like that for hours together1 paralyzed of motion and vacant of all conscious life8 ,the ,african savages came nearer the truth2 but they1 too1 missed it1 when they gathered wonderingly round one of our ,american travellers who1 in the interior1 had just come into possession of a stray copy of the ,new ,york ,commercial ,advertiser1 and was devouring it column by column4 ,when he got through1 they offered him a high price for the mysterious object2 and1 being asked for what they wanted it1 they said3 ,for an eye medicine1--that being the only reason they could conceive of for the protracted bath which he had given his eyes upon its surface4 ,the spectator's judgment is sure to miss the root of the matter1 and to possess no truth4 ,the subject judged knows a part of the world of reality which the judging spectator fails to see1 knows more while the spectator knows less2 and1 wherever there is conflict of opinion and difference of vision1 we are bound to believe that the truer side is the side that feels the more1 and not the side that feels the less4 ,let me take a personal example of the kind that befalls each one of us daily3-- ,some years ago1 while journeying in the mountains of ,north ,carolina1 ,i passed by a large number of 'coves1' as they call them there1 or heads of small valleys between the hills1 which had been newly cleared and planted4 ,the impression on my mind was one of unmitigated squalor4 ,the settler had in every case cut down the more manageable trees1 and left their charred stumps standing4 ,the larger trees he had girdled and killed1 in order that their foliage should not cast a shade4 ,he had then built a log cabin1 plastering its chinks with clay1 and had set up a tall zigzag rail fence around the scene of his havoc1 to keep the pigs and cattle out4 ,finally1 he had irregularly planted the intervals between the stumps and trees with ,indian corn1 which grew among the chips2 and there he dwelt with his wife and babes--an axe1 a gun1 a few utensils1 and some pigs and chickens feeding in the woods1 being the sum total of his possessions4 ,the forest had been destroyed2 and what had 'improved' it out of existence was hideous1 a sort of ulcer1 without a single element of artificial grace to make up for the loss of ,nature's beauty4 ,ugly1 indeed1 seemed the life of the squatter1 scudding1 as the sailors say1 under bare poles1 beginning again away back where our first ancestors started1 and by hardly a single item the better off for all the achievements of the intervening generations4 ,talk about going back to nature6 ,i said to myself1 oppressed by the dreariness1 as ,i drove by4 ,talk of a country life for one's old age and for one's children6 ,never thus1 with nothing but the bare ground and one's bare hands to fight the battle6 ,never1 without the best spoils of culture woven in6 ,the beauties and commodities gained by the centuries are sacred4 ,they are our heritage and birthright4 ,no modern person ought to be willing to live a day in such a state of rudimentariness and denudation4 ,then ,i said to the mountaineer who was driving me1 ,what sort of people are they who have to make these new clearings8 ,all of us1 he replied4 ,why1 we ain't happy here1 unless we are getting one of these coves under cultivation4 ,i instantly felt that ,i had been losing the whole inward significance of the situation4 ,because to me the clearings spoke of naught but denudation1 ,i thought that to those whose sturdy arms and obedient axes had made them they could tell no other story4 ,but1 when they looked on the hideous stumps1 what they thought of was personal victory4 ,the chips1 the girdled trees1 and the vile split rails spoke of honest sweat1 persistent toil and final reward4 ,the cabin was a warrant of safety for self and wife and babes4 ,in short1 the clearing1 which to me was a mere ugly picture on the retina1 was to them a symbol redolent with moral memories and sang a very paean of duty1 struggle1 and success4 ,i had been as blind to the peculiar ideality of their conditions as they certainly would also have been to the ideality of mine1 had they had a peep at my strange indoor academic ways of life at ,cambridge4 99 99 99 99 99 ,wherever a process of life communicates an eagerness to him who lives it1 there the life becomes genuinely significant4 ,sometimes the eagerness is more knit up with the motor activities1 sometimes with the perceptions1 sometimes with the imagination1 sometimes with reflective thought4 ,but1 wherever it is found1 there is the zest1 the tingle1 the excitement of reality2 and there is 'importance' in the only real and positive sense in which importance ever anywhere can be4 ,robert ,louis ,stevenson has illustrated this by a case1 drawn from the sphere of the imagination1 in an essay which ,i really think deserves to become immortal1 both for the truth of its matter and the excellence of its form4 ,toward the end of ,september1 ,stevenson writes1 when school-time was drawing near1 and the nights were already black1 we would begin to sally from our respective villas1 each equipped with a tin bull's-eye lantern4 ,the thing was so well known that it had worn a rut in the commerce of ,great ,britain2 and the grocers1 about the due time1 began to garnish their windows with our particular brand of luminary4 ,we wore them buckled to the waist upon a cricket belt1 and over them1 such was the rigor of the game1 a buttoned top-coat4 ,they smelled noisomely of blistered tin4 ,they never burned aright1 though they would always burn our fingers4 ,their use was naught1 the pleasure of them merely fanciful1 and yet a boy with a bull's-eye under his top-coat asked for nothing more4 ,the fishermen used lanterns about their boats1 and it was from them1 ,i suppose1 that we had got the hint2 but theirs were not bull's-eyes1 nor did we ever play at being fishermen4 ,the police carried them at their belts1 and we had plainly copied them in that2 yet we did not pretend to be policemen4 ,burglars1 indeed1 we may have had some haunting thought of2 and we had certainly an eye to past ages when lanterns were more common1 and to certain story-books in which we had found them to figure very largely4 ,but take it for all in all1 the pleasure of the thing was substantive2 and to be a boy with a bull's-eye under his top-coat was good enough for us4 ,when two of these asses met1 there would be an anxious ',have you got your lantern8' and a gratified ',yes6' ,that was the shibboleth1 and very needful1 too2 for1 as it was the rule to keep our glory contained1 none could recognize a lantern-bearer unless 7like the polecat7 by the smell4 ,four or five would sometimes climb into the belly of a ten-man lugger1 with nothing but the thwarts above them1--for the cabin was usually locked1--or chose out some hollow of the links where the wind might whistle overhead4 ,then the coats would be unbuttoned1 and the bull's-eyes discovered2 and in the chequering glimmer1 under the huge1 windy hall of the night1 and cheered by a rich steam of toasting tinware1 these fortunate young gentlemen would crouch together in the cold sand of the links1 or on the scaly bilges of the fishing-boat1 and delight them with inappropriate talk4 ,woe is me that ,i cannot give some specimens6444 ,but the talk was but a condiment1 and these gatherings themselves only accidents in the career of the lantern-bearer4 ,the essence of this bliss was to walk by yourself in the black night1 the slide shut1 the top-coat buttoned1 not a ray escaping1 whether to conduct your footsteps or to make your glory public1--a mere pillar of darkness in the dark2 and all the while1 deep down in the privacy of your fool's heart1 to know you had a bull's-eye at your belt1 and to exult and sing over the knowledge4 ,it is said that a poet has died young in the breast of the most stolid4 ,it may be contended rather that a 7somewhat minor7 bard in almost every case survives1 and is the spice of life to his possessor4 ,justice is not done to the versatility and the unplumbed childishness of man's imagination4 ,his life from without may seem but a rude mound of mud3 there will be some golden chamber at the heart of it1 in which he dwells delighted2 and for as dark as his pathway seems to the observer1 he will have some kind of bull's-eye at his belt4 444 ,there is one fable that touches very near the quick of life1--the fable of the monk who passed into the woods1 heard a bird break into song1 hearkened for a trill or two1 and found himself at his return a stranger at his convent gates2 for he had been absent fifty years1 and of all his comrades there survived but one to recognize him4 ,it is not only in the woods that this enchanter carols1 though perhaps he is native there4 ,he sings in the most doleful places4 ,the miser hears him and chuckles1 and his days are moments4 ,with no more apparatus than an evil-smelling lantern1 ,i have evoked him on the naked links4 ,all life that is not merely mechanical is spun out of two strands1--seeking for that bird and hearing him4 ,and it is just this that makes life so hard to value1 and the delight of each so incommunicable4 ,and it is just a knowledge of this1 and a remembrance of those fortunate hours in which the bird has sung to us1 that fills us with such wonder when we turn to the pages of the realist4 ,there1 to be sure1 we find a picture of life in so far as it consists of mud and of old iron1 cheap desires and cheap fears1 that which we are ashamed to remember and that which we are careless whether we forget2 but of the note of that time-devouring nightingale we hear no news4 444 ,say that we came in such a realistic romance on some such business as that of my lantern-bearers on the links1 and described the boys as very cold1 spat upon by flurries of rain1 and drearily surrounded1 all of which they were2 and their talk as silly and indecent1 which it certainly was4 ,to the eye of the observer they are wet and cold and drearily surrounded2 but ask themselves1 and they are in the heaven of a recondite pleasure1 the ground of which is an ill-smelling lantern4 ,for1 to repeat1 the ground of a man's joy is often hard to hit4 ,it may hinge at times upon a mere accessory1 like the lantern2 it may reside in the mysterious inwards of psychology4444 ,it has so little bond with externals 444 that it may even touch them not1 and the man's true life1 for which he consents to live1 lie together in the field of fancy4444 ,in such a case the poetry runs underground4 ,the observer 7poor soul1 with his documents67 is all abroad4 ,for to look at the man is but to court deception4 ,we shall see the trunk from which he draws his nourishment2 but he himself is above and abroad in the green dome of foliage1 hummed through by winds and nested in by nightingales4 ,and the true realism were that of the poets1 to climb after him like a squirrel1 and catch some glimpse of the heaven in which he lives4 ,and the true realism1 always and everywhere1 is that of the poets3 to find out where joy resides1 and give it a voice far beyond singing4 ,for to miss the joy is to miss all4 ,in the joy of the actors lies the sense of any action4 ,that is the explanation1 that the excuse4 ,to one who has not the secret of the lanterns the scene upon the links is meaningless4 ,and hence the haunting and truly spectral unreality of realistic books4444 ,in each we miss the personal poetry1 the enchanted atmosphere1 that rainbow work of fancy that clothes what is naked and seems to ennoble what is base2 in each1 life falls dead like dough1 instead of soaring away like a balloon into the colors of the sunset2 each is true1 each inconceivable2 for no man lives in the external truth among salts and acids1 but in the warm1 phantasmagoric chamber of his brain1 with the painted windows and the storied wall4,d ,d ',the ,lantern-bearers1' in the volume entitled ',across the ,plains4' ,abridged in the quotation4 ,these paragraphs are the best thing ,i know in all ,stevenson4 ,to miss the joy is to miss all4 ,indeed1 it is4 ,yet we are but finite1 and each one of us has some single specialized vocation of his own4 ,and it seems as if energy in the service of its particular duties might be got only by hardening the heart toward everything unlike them4 ,our deadness toward all but one particular kind of joy would thus be the price we inevitably have to pay for being practical creatures4 ,only in some pitiful dreamer1 some philosopher1 poet1 or romancer1 or when the common practical man becomes a lover1 does the hard externality give way1 and a gleam of insight into the ejective world1 as ,clifford called it1 the vast world of inner life beyond us1 so different from that of outer seeming1 illuminate our mind4 ,then the whole scheme of our customary values gets confounded1 then our self is riven and its narrow interests fly to pieces1 then a new centre and a new perspective must be found4 ,the change is well described by my colleague1 ,josiah ,royce3-- ,what1 then1 is our neighbor8 ,thou hast regarded his thought1 his feeling1 as somehow different from thine4 ,thou hast said1 ',a pain in him is not like a pain in me1 but something far easier to bear4' ,he seems to thee a little less living than thou2 his life is dim1 it is cold1 it is a pale fire beside thy own burning desires4444 ,so1 dimly and by instinct hast thou lived with thy neighbor1 and hast known him not1 being blind4 ,thou hast made of him a thing1 no ,self at all4 ,have done with this illusion1 and simply try to learn the truth4 ,pain is pain1 joy is joy1 everywhere1 even as in thee4 ,in all the songs of the forest birds2 in all the cries of the wounded and dying1 struggling in the captor's power2 in the boundless sea where the myriads of water-creatures strive and die2 amid all the countless hordes of savage men2 in all sickness and sorrow2 in all exultation and hope1 everywhere1 from the lowest to the noblest1 the same conscious1 burning1 wilful life is found1 endlessly manifold as the forms of the living creatures1 unquenchable as the fires of the sun1 real as these impulses that even now throb in thine own little selfish heart4 ,lift up thy eyes1 behold that life1 and then turn away1 and forget it as thou canst2 but1 if thou hast known that1 thou hast begun to know thy duty4,e ,e ,the ,religious ,aspect of ,philosophy1 pp4 #aeg-afb 7abridged74 99 99 99 99 99 ,this higher vision of an inner significance in what1 until then1 we had realized only in the dead external way1 often comes over a person suddenly2 and1 when it does so1 it makes an epoch in his history4 ,as ,emerson says1 there is a depth in those moments that constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences4 ,the passion of love will shake one like an explosion1 or some act will awaken a remorseful compunction that hangs like a cloud over all one's later day4 ,this mystic sense of hidden meaning starts upon us often from non-human natural things4 ,i take this passage from ',obermann1' a ,french novel that had some vogue in its day3 ,paris1 ,march #g4--;,it was dark and rather cold4 ,i was gloomy1 and walked because ,i had nothing to do4 ,i passed by some flowers placed breast-high upon a wall4 ,a jonquil in bloom was there4 ,it is the strongest expression of desire3 it was the first perfume of the year4 ,i felt all the happiness destined for man4 ,this unutterable harmony of souls1 the phantom of the ideal world1 arose in me complete4 ,i never felt anything so great or so instantaneous4 ,i know not what shape1 what analogy1 what secret of relation it was that made me see in this flower a limitless beauty4444 ,i shall never enclose in a conception this power1 this immensity that nothing will express2 this form that nothing will contain2 this ideal of a better world which one feels1 but which it would seem that nature has not made4,f ,f ,de ,senancour3 ,obermann1 ,lettre ,,xxx4 ,wordsworth and ,shelley are similarly full of this sense of a limitless significance in natural things4 ,in ,wordsworth it was a somewhat austere and moral significance1--a 'lonely cheer4' ,to every natural form1 rock1 fruit1 or flower1 ,even the loose stones that cover the highway1 ,i gave a moral life3 ,i saw them feel ,or linked them to some feeling3 the great mass ,lay bedded in some quickening soul1 and all ,that ,i beheld respired with inward meaning4,g ,g ,the ,prelude1 ,book ,,iii4 ,authentic tidings of invisible things6 ,just what this hidden presence in nature was1 which ,wordsworth so rapturously felt1 and in the light of which he lived1 tramping the hills for days together1 the poet never could explain logically or in articulate conceptions4 ,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 authority3-- ,magnificent ,the morning rose1 in memorable pomp1 ,glorious as ere ,i had beheld4 ,in front ,the sea lay laughing at a distance2 near ,the solid mountains shone1 bright as the clouds1 ,grain-tinctured1 drenched in empyrean light2 ,and in the meadows and the lower grounds ,was all the sweetness of a common dawn1-- ,dews1 vapors1 and the melody of birds1 ,and laborers going forth to till the fields4 ,ah6 need ,i say1 dear ,friend1 that to the brim ,my heart was full2 ,i made no vows1 but vows ,were then made for me2 bond unknown to me ,was given1 that ,i should be1 else sinning greatly1 ,a dedicated ,spirit4 ,on ,i walked1 ,in thankful blessedness1 which yet survives4,h ,h ,the ,prelude1 ,book ,,iv4 ,as ,wordsworth walked1 filled with his strange inner joy1 responsive thus to the secret life of nature round about him1 his rural neighbors1 tightly and narrowly intent upon their own affairs1 their crops and lambs and fences1 must have thought him a very insignificant and foolish personage4 ,it surely never occurred to any one of them to wonder what was going on inside of him or what it might be worth4 ,and yet that inner life of his carried the burden of a significance that has fed the souls of others1 and fills them to this day with inner joy4 ,richard ,jefferies has written a remarkable autobiographic document entitled ,the ,story of my ,heart4 ,it tells1 in many pages1 of the rapture with which in youth the sense of the life of nature filled him4 ,on a certain hill-top he says3-- ,i was utterly alone with the sun and the earth4 ,lying down on the grass1 ,i spoke in my soul to the earth1 the sun1 the air1 and the distant sea1 far beyond sight4444 ,with all the intensity of feeling which exalted me1 all the intense communion ,i held with the earth1 the sun and sky1 the stars hidden by the light1 with the ocean1--in no manner can the thrilling depth of these feelings be written1--with these ,i prayed as if they were the keys of an instrument4444 ,the great sun1 burning with light1 the strong earth1--dear earth1--the warm sky1 the pure air1 the thought of ocean1 the inexpressible beauty of all filled me with a rapture1 an ecstasy1 an inflatus4 ,with this inflatus1 too1 ,i prayed4444 ,the prayer1 this soul-emotion1 was in itself1 not for an object3 it was a passion4 ,i hid my face in the grass4 ,i was wholly prostrated1 ,i lost myself in the wrestle1 ,i was rapt and carried away4444 ,had any shepherd accidentally seen me lying on the turf1 he would only have thought ,i was resting a few minutes4 ,i made no outward show4 ,who could have imagined the whirlwind of passion that was going on in me as ,i reclined there6,i ,i ,op4 cit41 ,boston1 ,roberts1 #ahhc1 pp4 #e1 #f4 ,surely1 a worthless hour of life1 when measured by the usual standards of commercial value4 ,yet in what other kind of value can the preciousness of any hour1 made precious by any standard1 consist1 if it consist not in feelings of excited significance like these1 engendered in some one1 by what the hour contains8 ,yet so blind and dead does the clamor of our own practical interests make us to all other things1 that it seems almost as if it were necessary to become worthless as a practical being1 if one is to hope to attain to any breadth of insight into the impersonal world of worths as such1 to have any perception of life's meaning on a large objective scale4 ,only your mystic1 your dreamer1 or your insolvent tramp or loafer1 can afford so sympathetic an occupation1 an occupation which will change the usual standards of human value in the twinkling of an eye1 giving to foolishness a place ahead of power1 and laying low in a minute the distinctions which it takes a hard-working conventional man a lifetime to build up4 ,you may be a prophet1 at this rate2 but you cannot be a worldly success4 ,walt ,whitman1 for instance1 is accounted by many of us a contemporary prophet4 ,he abolishes the usual human distinctions1 brings all conventionalisms into solution1 and loves and celebrates hardly any human attributes save those elementary ones common to all members of the race4 ,for this he becomes a sort of ideal tramp1 a rider on omnibus-tops and ferry-boats1 and1 considered either practically or academically1 a worthless1 unproductive being4 ,his verses are but ejaculations--things mostly without subject or verb1 a succession of interjections on an immense scale4 ,he felt the human crowd as rapturously as ,wordsworth felt the mountains1 felt it as an overpoweringly significant presence1 simply to absorb one's mind in which should be business sufficient and worthy to fill the days of a serious man4 ,as he crosses ,brooklyn ferry1 this is what he feels3-- ,flood-tide below me6 ,i watch you1 face to face2 ,clouds of the west6 sun there half an hour high6 ,i see you also face to face4 ,crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes6 how curious you are to me6 ,on the ferry-boats1 the hundreds and hundreds that cross1 returning home1 are more curious to me than you suppose2 ,and you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence1 are more to me1 and more in my meditations1 than you might suppose4 ,others will enter the gates of the ferry1 and cross from shore to shore2 ,others will watch the run of the flood-tide2 ,others will see the shipping of ,manhattan north and west1 and the heights of ,brooklyn to the south and east2 ,others will see the islands large and small2 ,fifty years hence1 others will see them as they cross1 the sun half an hour high4 ,a hundred years hence1 or ever so many hundred years hence1 others will see them1 ,will enjoy the sunset1 the pouring in of the flood-tide1 the falling back to the sea of the ebb-tide4 ,it avails not1 neither time or place--distance avails not4 ,just as you feel when you look on the river and sky1 so ,i felt2 ,just as any of you is one of a living crowd1 ,i was one of a crowd2 ,just as you are refresh'd by the gladness of the river and the bright flow1 ,i was refresh'd2 ,just as you stand and lean on the rail1 yet hurry with the swift current1 ,i stood1 yet was hurried2 ,just as you look on the numberless masts of ships1 and the thick-stemmed pipes of steamboats1 ,i looked4 ,i too many and many a time cross'd the river1 the sun half an hour high2 ,i watched the ,twelfth-month sea-gulls--,i saw them high in the air1 with motionless wings1 oscillating their bodies1 ,i saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies1 and left the rest in strong shadow1 ,i saw the slow-wheeling circles1 and the gradual edging toward the south4 ,saw the white sails of schooners and sloops1 saw the ships at anchor1 ,the sailors at work in the rigging1 or out astride the spars2 ,the scallop-edged waves in the twilight1 the ladled cups1 the frolicsome crests and glistening2 ,the stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer1 the gray walls of the granite store-houses by the docks2 ,on the neighboring shores1 the fires from the foundry chimneys burning high 444 into the night1 ,casting their flicker of black 444 into the clefts of streets4 ,these1 and all else1 were to me the same as they are to you4,j ,j ',crossing ,brooklyn ,ferry' 7abridged74 ,and so on1 through the rest of a divinely beautiful poem4 ,and1 if you wish to see what this hoary loafer considered the most worthy way of profiting by life's heaven-sent opportunities1 read the delicious volume of his letters to a young car-conductor who had become his friend3-- ,,new ,,york1 ,oct4 #i1 #ahfh4 ,dear ,pete1--,it is splendid here this forenoon--bright and cool4 ,i was out early taking a short walk by the river only two squares from where ,i live4444 ,shall ,i tell you about my life just to fill up8 ,i generally spend the forenoon in my room writing1 etc41 then take a bath fix up and go out about twelve and loafe somewhere or call on someone down town or on business1 or perhaps if it is very pleasant and ,i feel like it ride a trip with some driver friend on ,broadway from #bcrd ,street to ,bowling ,green1 three miles each way4 7,every day ,i find ,i have plenty to do1 every hour is occupied with something47 ,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 way4 ,you see everything as you pass1 a sort of living1 endless panorama--shops and splendid buildings and great windows3 on the broad sidewalks crowds of women richly dressed continually passing1 altogether different1 superior in style and looks from any to be seen anywhere else--in fact a perfect stream of people--men too dressed in high style1 and plenty of foreigners--and then in the streets the thick crowd of carriages1 stages1 carts1 hotel and private coaches1 and in fact all sorts of vehicles and many first class teams1 mile after mile1 and the splendor of such a great street and so many tall1 ornamental1 noble buildings many of them of white marble1 and the gayety and motion on every side3 you will not wonder how much attraction all this is on a fine day1 to a great loafer like me1 who enjoys so much seeing the busy world move by him1 and exhibiting itself for his amusement1 while he takes it easy and just looks on and observes4,k ,k ,calamus1 ,boston1 #ahig1 pp4 #da1 #db4 ,truly a futile way of passing the time1 some of you may say1 and not altogether creditable to a grown-up man4 ,and yet1 from the deepest point of view1 who knows the more of truth1 and who knows the less1--,whitman on his omnibus-top1 full of the inner joy with which the spectacle inspires him1 or you1 full of the disdain which the futility of his occupation excites8 ,when your ordinary ,brooklynite or ,new ,yorker1 leading a life replete with too much luxury1 or tired and careworn about his personal affairs1 crosses the ferry or goes up ,broadway1 his fancy does not thus 'soar away into the colors of the sunset' as did ,whitman's1 nor does he inwardly realize at all the indisputable fact that this world never did anywhere or at any time contain more of essential divinity1 or of eternal meaning1 than is embodied in the fields of vision over which his eyes so carelessly pass4 ,there is life2 and there1 a step away1 is death4 ,there is the only kind of beauty there ever was4 ,there is the old human struggle and its fruits together4 ,there is the text and the sermon1 the real and the ideal in one4 ,but to the jaded and unquickened eye it is all dead and common1 pure vulgarism1 flatness1 and disgust4 ,hech6 it is a sad sight6 says ,carlyle1 walking at night with some one who appeals to him to note the splendor of the stars4 ,and that very repetition of the scene to new generations of men in secula seculorum1 that eternal recurrence of the common order1 which so fills a ,whitman with mystic satisfaction1 is to a ,schopenhauer1 with the emotional anaesthesia1 the feeling of 'awful inner emptiness' from out of which he views it all1 the chief ingredient of the tedium it instils4 ,what is life on the largest scale1 he asks1 but the same recurrent inanities1 the same dog barking1 the same fly buzzing1 forevermore8 ,yet of the kind of fibre of which such inanities consist is the material woven of all the excitements1 joys1 and meanings that ever were1 or ever shall be1 in this world4 ,to be rapt with satisfied attention1 like ,whitman1 to the mere spectacle of the world's presence1 is one way1 and the most fundamental way1 of confessing one's sense of its unfathomable significance and importance4 ,but how can one attain to the feeling of the vital significance of an experience1 if one have it not to begin with8 ,there is no receipt which one can follow4 ,being a secret and a mystery1 it often comes in mysteriously unexpected ways4 ,it blossoms sometimes from out of the very grave wherein we imagined that our happiness was buried4 ,benvenuto ,cellini1 after a life all in the outer sunshine1 made of adventures and artistic excitements1 suddenly finds himself cast into a dungeon in the ,castle of ,san ,angelo4 ,the place is horrible4 ,rats and wet and mould possess it4 ,his leg is broken and his teeth fall out1 apparently with scurvy4 ,but his thoughts turn to ,god as they have never turned before4 ,he gets a ,bible1 which he reads during the one hour in the twenty-four in which a wandering ray of daylight penetrates his cavern4 ,he has religious visions4 ,he sings psalms to himself1 and composes hymns4 ,and thinking1 on the last day of ,july1 of the festivities customary on the morrow in ,rome1 he says to himself3 ,all these past years ,i celebrated this holiday with the vanities of the world3 from this year henceforward ,i will do it with the divinity of ,god4 ,and then ,i said to myself1 ',oh1 how much more happy ,i am for this present life of mine than for all those things remembered6',l ,l ,vita1 lib4 #b1 chap4 iv4 ,but the great understander of these mysterious ebbs and flows is ,tolstoi4 ,they throb all through his novels4 ,in his ',war and ,peace1' the hero1 ,peter1 is supposed to be the richest man in the ,russian empire4 ,during the ,french invasion he is taken prisoner1 and dragged through much of the retreat4 ,cold1 vermin1 hunger1 and every form of misery assail him1 the result being a revelation to him of the real scale of life's values4 ,here only1 and for the first time1 he appreciated1 because he was deprived of it1 the happiness of eating when he was hungry1 of drinking when he was thirsty1 of sleeping when he was sleepy1 and of talking when he felt the desire to exchange some words4444 ,later in life he always recurred with joy to this month of captivity1 and never failed to speak with enthusiasm of the powerful and ineffaceable sensations1 and especially of the moral calm which he had experienced at this epoch4 ,when at daybreak1 on the morrow of his imprisonment1 he saw ,i abridge here ,tolstoi's description the mountains with their wooded slopes disappearing in the grayish mist2 when he felt the cool breeze caress him2 when he saw the light drive away the vapors1 and the sun rise majestically behind the clouds and cupolas1 and the crosses1 the dew1 the distance1 the river1 sparkle in the splendid1 cheerful rays1--his heart overflowed with emotion4 ,this emotion kept continually with him1 and increased a hundred-fold as the difficulties of his situation grew graver4444 ,he learnt that man is meant for happiness1 and that this happiness is in him1 in the satisfaction of the daily needs of existence1 and that unhappiness is the fatal result1 not of our need1 but of our abundance4444 ,when calm reigned in the camp1 and the embers paled1 and little by little went out1 the full moon had reached the zenith4 ,the woods and the fields roundabout lay clearly visible2 and1 beyond the inundation of light which filled them1 the view plunged into the limitless horizon4 ,then ,peter cast his eyes upon the firmament1 filled at that hour with myriads of stars4 ',all that is mine1' he thought4 ',all that is in me1 is me6 ,and that is what they think they have taken prisoner6 ,that is what they have shut up in a cabin6' ,so he smiled1 and turned in to sleep among his comrades4,m ,m ,la ,guerre et la ,paix1 ,paris1 #ahhd1 vol4 iii4 pp4 #bfh1 #bge1 #caf4 ,the occasion and the experience1 then1 are nothing4 ,it all depends on the capacity of the soul to be grasped1 to have its life-currents absorbed by what is given4 ,crossing a bare common1 says ,emerson1 in snow puddles1 at twilight1 under a clouded sky1 without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune1 ,i have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration4 ,i am glad to the brink of fear4 ,life is always worth living1 if one have such responsive sensibilities4 ,but we of the highly educated classes 7so called7 have most of us got far1 far away from ,nature4 ,we are trained to seek the choice1 the rare1 the exquisite exclusively1 and to overlook the common4 ,we are stuffed with abstract conceptions1 and glib with verbalities and verbosities2 and in the culture of these higher functions the peculiar sources of joy connected with our simpler functions often dry up1 and we grow stone-blind and insensible to life's more elementary and general goods and joys4 ,the remedy under such conditions is to descend to a more profound and primitive level4 ,to be imprisoned or shipwrecked or forced into the army would permanently show the good of life to many an over-educated pessimist4 ,living in the open air and on the ground1 the lop-sided beam of the balance slowly rises to the level line2 and the over-sensibilities and insensibilities even themselves out4 ,the good of all the artificial schemes and fevers fades and pales2 and that of seeing1 smelling1 tasting1 sleeping1 and daring and doing with one's body1 grows and grows4 ,the savages and children of nature1 to whom we deem ourselves so much superior1 certainly are alive where we are often dead1 along these lines2 and1 could they write as glibly as we do1 they would read us impressive lectures on our impatience for improvement and on our blindness to the fundamental static goods of life4 ,ah6 my brother1 said a chieftain to his white guest1 thou wilt never know the happiness of both thinking of nothing and doing nothing4 ,this1 next to sleep1 is the most enchanting of all things4 ,thus we were before our birth1 and thus we shall be after death4 ,thy people1444 when they have finished reaping one field1 they begin to plough another2 and1 if the day were not enough1 ,i have seen them plough by moonlight4 ,what is their life to ours1--the life that is as naught to them8 ,blind that they are1 they lose it all6 ,but we live in the present4,n ,n ,quoted by ,lotze1 ,microcosmus1 ,english translation1 vol4 ii4 p4 #bdj4 ,the intense interest that life can assume when brought down to the non-thinking level1 the level of pure sensorial perception1 has been beautifully described by a man who can write1--,mr4 ,w4,h4 ,hudson1 in his volume1 ,idle ,days in ,patagonia4 ,i spent the greater part of one winter1 says this admirable author1 at a point on the ,rio ,negro1 seventy or eighty miles from the sea4 444 ,it was my custom to go out every morning on horseback with my gun1 and1 followed by one dog1 to ride away from the valley2 and no sooner would ,i climb the terrace1 and plunge into the gray1 universal thicket1 than ,i would find myself as completely alone as if five hundred instead of only five miles separated me from the valley and river4 ,so wild and solitary and remote seemed that gray waste1 stretching away into infinitude1 a waste untrodden by man1 and where the wild animals are so few that they have made no discoverable path in the wilderness of thorns4444 ,not once nor twice nor thrice1 but day after day ,i returned to this solitude1 going to it in the morning as if to attend a festival1 and leaving it only when hunger and thirst and the westering sun compelled me4 ,and yet ,i had no object in going1--no motive which could be put into words2 for1 although ,i carried a gun1 there was nothing to shoot1--the shooting was all left behind in the valley4444 ,sometimes ,i would pass a whole day without seeing one mammal1 and perhaps not more than a dozen birds of any size4 ,the weather at that time was cheerless1 generally with a gray film of cloud spread over the sky1 and a bleak wind1 often cold enough to make my bridle-hand quite numb4444 ,at a slow pace1 which would have seemed intolerable under other circumstances1 ,i would ride about for hours together at a stretch4 ,on arriving at a hill1 ,i would slowly ride to its summit1 and stand there to survey the prospect4 ,on every side it stretched away in great undulations1 wild and irregular4 ,how gray it all was6 ,hardly less so near at hand than on the haze-wrapped horizon where the hills were dim and the outline obscured by distance4 ,descending from my outlook1 ,i would take up my aimless wanderings again1 and visit other elevations to gaze on the same landscape from another point2 and so on for hours4 ,and at noon ,i would dismount1 and sit or lie on my folded poncho for an hour or longer4 ,one day in these rambles ,i discovered a small grove composed of twenty or thirty trees1 growing at a convenient distance apart1 that had evidently been resorted to by a herd of deer or other wild animals4 ,this grove was on a hill differing in shape from other hills in its neighborhood2 and1 after a time1 ,i made a point of finding and using it as a resting-place every day at noon4 ,i did not ask myself why ,i made choice of that one spot1 sometimes going out of my way to sit there1 instead of sitting down under any one of the millions of trees and bushes on any other hillside4 ,i thought nothing about it1 but acted unconsciously4 ,only afterward it seemed to me that1 after having rested there once1 each time ,i wished to rest again1 the wish came associated with the image of that particular clump of trees1 with polished stems and clean bed of sand beneath2 and in a short time ,i formed a habit of returning1 animal like1 to repose at that same spot4 ,it was1 perhaps1 a mistake to say that ,i would sit down and rest1 since ,i was never tired2 and yet1 without being tired1 that noon-day pause1 during which ,i sat for an hour without moving1 was strangely grateful4 ,all day there would be no sound1 not even the rustling of a leaf4 ,one day1 while listening to the silence1 it occurred to my mind to wonder what the effect would be if ,i were to shout aloud4 ,this seemed at the time a horrible suggestion1 which almost made me shudder4 ,but during those solitary days it was a rare thing for any thought to cross my mind4 ,in the state of mind ,i was in1 thought had become impossible4 ,my state was one of suspense and watchfulness2 yet ,i had no expectation of meeting an adventure1 and felt as free from apprehension as ,i feel now while sitting in a room in ,london4 ,the state seemed familiar rather than strange1 and accompanied by a strong feeling of elation2 and ,i did not know that something had come between me and my intellect until ,i returned to my former self1--to thinking1 and the old insipid existence again4 ,i had undoubtedly gone back2 and that state of intense watchfulness or alertness1 rather1 with suspension of the higher intellectual faculties1 represented the mental state of the pure savage4 ,he thinks little1 reasons little1 having a surer guide in his mere sensory perceptions4 ,he is in perfect harmony with nature1 and is nearly on a level1 mentally1 with the wild animals he preys on1 and which in their turn sometimes prey on him4,o ,o ,op4 cit41 pp4 #baj-bbb 7abridged74 ,for the spectator1 such hours as ,mr4 ,hudson writes of form a mere tale of emptiness1 in which nothing happens1 nothing is gained1 and there is nothing to describe4 ,they are meaningless and vacant tracts of time4 ,to him who feels their inner secret1 they tingle with an importance that unutterably vouches for itself4 ,i am sorry for the boy or girl1 or man or woman1 who has never been touched by the spell of this mysterious sensorial life1 with its irrationality1 if so you like to call it1 but its vigilance and its supreme felicity4 ,the holidays of life are its most vitally significant portions1 because they are1 or at least should be1 covered with just this kind of magically irresponsible spell4 99 99 99 99 99 ,and now what is the result of all these considerations and quotations8 ,it is negative in one sense1 but positive in another4 ,it absolutely forbids us to be forward in pronouncing on the meaninglessness of forms of existence other than our own2 and it commands us to tolerate1 respect1 and indulge those whom we see harmlessly interested and happy in their own ways1 however unintelligible these may be to us4 ,hands off3 neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer1 although each observer gains a partial superiority of insight from the peculiar position in which he stands4 ,even prisons and sick-rooms have their special revelations4 ,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 blessings1 without presuming to regulate the rest of the vast field4 ,,iii4 ,,what ,,makes ,a ,,life ,,significant ,in my previous talk1 ',on a ,certain ,blindness1' ,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 view4 ,the meanings are there for the others1 but they are not there for us4 ,there lies more than a mere interest of curious speculation in understanding this4 ,it has the most tremendous practical importance4 ,i wish that ,i could convince you of it as ,i feel it myself4 ,it is the basis of all our tolerance1 social1 religious1 and political4 ,the forgetting of it lies at the root of every stupid and sanguinary mistake that rulers over subject-peoples make4 ,the first thing to learn in intercourse with others is non-interference with their own peculiar ways of being happy1 provided those ways do not assume to interfere by violence with ours4 ,no one has insight into all the ideals4 ,no one should presume to judge them off-hand4 ,the pretension to dogmatize about them in each other is the root of most human injustices and cruelties1 and the trait in human character most likely to make the angels weep4 ,every ,jack sees in his own particular ,jill charms and perfections to the enchantment of which we stolid onlookers are stone-cold4 ,and which has the superior view of the absolute truth1 he or we8 ,which has the more vital insight into the nature of ,jill's existence1 as a fact8 ,is he in excess1 being in this matter a maniac8 or are we in defect1 being victims of a pathological anaesthesia as regards ,jill's magical importance8 ,surely the latter2 surely to ,jack are the profounder truths revealed2 surely poor ,jill's palpitating little life-throbs are among the wonders of creation1 are worthy of this sympathetic interest2 and it is to our shame that the rest of us cannot feel like ,jack4 ,for ,jack realizes ,jill concretely1 and we do not4 ,he struggles toward a union with her inner life1 divining her feelings1 anticipating her desires1 understanding her limits as manfully as he can1 and yet inadequately1 too2 for he is also afflicted with some blindness1 even here4 ,whilst we1 dead clods that we are1 do not even seek after these things1 but are contented that that portion of eternal fact named ,jill should be for us as if it were not4 ,jill1 who knows her inner life1 knows that ,jack's way of taking it--so importantly--is the true and serious way2 and she responds to the truth in him by taking him truly and seriously1 too4 ,may the ancient blindness never wrap its clouds about either of them again6 ,where would any of us be1 were there no one willing to know us as we really are or ready to repay us for our insight by making recognizant return8 ,we ought1 all of us1 to realize each other in this intense1 pathetic1 and important way4 ,if you say that this is absurd1 and that we cannot be in love with everyone at once1 ,i merely point out to you that1 as a matter of fact1 certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people's lives2 and that such persons know more of truth than if their hearts were not so big4 ,the vice of ordinary ,jack and ,jill affection is not its intensity1 but its exclusions and its jealousies4 ,leave those out1 and you see that the ideal ,i am holding up before you1 however impracticable to-day1 yet contains nothing intrinsically absurd4 ,we have unquestionably a great cloud-bank of ancestral blindness weighing down upon us1 only transiently riven here and there by fitful revelations of the truth4 ,it is vain to hope for this state of things to alter much4 ,our inner secrets must remain for the most part impenetrable by others1 for beings as essentially practical as we are are necessarily short of sight4 ,but1 if we cannot gain much positive insight into one another1 cannot we at least use our sense of our own blindness to make us more cautious in going over the dark places8 ,cannot we escape some of those hideous ancestral intolerances and cruelties1 and positive reversals of the truth8 ,for the remainder of this hour ,i invite you to seek with me some principle to make our tolerance less chaotic4 ,and1 as ,i began my previous lecture by a personal reminiscence1 ,i am going to ask your indulgence for a similar bit of egotism now4 ,a few summers ago ,i spent a happy week at the famous ,assembly ,grounds on the borders of ,chautauqua ,lake4 ,the moment one treads that sacred enclosure1 one feels one's self in an atmosphere of success4 ,sobriety and industry1 intelligence and goodness1 orderliness and ideality1 prosperity and cheerfulness1 pervade the air4 ,it is a serious and studious picnic on a gigantic scale4 ,here you have a town of many thousands of inhabitants1 beautifully laid out in the forest and drained1 and equipped with means for satisfying all the necessary lower and most of the superfluous higher wants of man4 ,you have a first-class college in full blast4 ,you have magnificent music--a chorus of seven hundred voices1 with possibly the most perfect open-air auditorium in the world4 ,you have every sort of athletic exercise from sailing1 rowing1 swimming1 bicycling1 to the ball-field and the more artificial doings which the gymnasium affords4 ,you have kindergartens and model secondary schools4 ,you have general religious services and special club-houses for the several sects4 ,you have perpetually running soda-water fountains1 and daily popular lectures by distinguished men4 ,you have the best of company1 and yet no effort4 ,you have no zymotic diseases1 no poverty1 no drunkenness1 no crime1 no police4 ,you have culture1 you have kindness1 you have cheapness1 you have equality1 you have the best fruits of what mankind has fought and bled and striven for tinder the name of civilization for centuries4 ,you have1 in short1 a foretaste of what human society might be1 were it all in the light1 with no suffering and no dark corners4 ,i went in curiosity for a day4 ,i stayed for a week1 held spell-bound by the charm and ease of everything1 by the middle-class paradise1 without a sin1 without a victim1 without a blot1 without a tear4 ,and yet what was my own astonishment1 on emerging into the dark and wicked world again1 to catch myself quite unexpectedly and involuntarily saying3 ,ouf6 what a relief6 ,now for something primordial and savage1 even though it were as bad as an ,armenian massacre1 to set the balance straight again4 ,this order is too tame1 this culture too second-rate1 this goodness too uninspiring4 ,this human drama without a villain or a pang2 this community so refined that ice-cream soda-water is the utmost offering it can make to the brute animal in man2 this city simmering in the tepid lakeside sun2 this atrocious harmlessness of all things1--,i cannot abide with them4 ,let me take my chances again in the big outside worldly wilderness with all its sins and sufferings4 ,there are the heights and depths1 the precipices and the steep ideals1 the gleams of the awful and the infinite2 and there is more hope and help a thousand times than in this dead level and quintessence of every mediocrity4 ,such was the sudden right-about-face performed for me by my lawless fancy6 ,there had been spread before me the realization--on a small1 sample scale of course--of all the ideals for which our civilization has been striving3 security1 intelligence1 humanity1 and order2 and here was the instinctive hostile reaction1 not of the natural man1 but of a so-called cultivated man upon such a ,utopia4 ,there seemed thus to be a self-contradiction and paradox somewhere1 which ,i1 as a professor drawing a full salary1 was in duty bound to unravel and explain1 if ,i could4 ,so ,i meditated4 ,and1 first of all1 ,i asked myself what the thing was that was so lacking in this ,sabbatical city1 and the lack of which kept one forever falling short of the higher sort of contentment4 ,and ,i soon recognized that it was the element that gives to the wicked outer world all its moral style1 expressiveness and picturesqueness1--the element of precipitousness1 so to call it1 of strength and strenuousness1 intensity and danger4 ,what excites and interests the looker-on at life1 what the romances and the statues celebrate and the grim civic monuments remind us of1 is the everlasting battle of the powers of light with those of darkness2 with heroism1 reduced to its bare chance1 yet ever and anon snatching victory from the jaws of death4 ,but in this unspeakable ,chautauqua there was no potentiality of death in sight anywhere1 and no point of the compass visible from which danger might possibly appear4 ,the ideal was so completely victorious already that no sign of any previous battle remained1 the place just resting on its oars4 ,but what our human emotions seem to require is the sight of the struggle going on4 ,the moment the fruits are being merely eaten1 things become ignoble4 ,sweat and effort1 human nature strained to its uttermost and on the rack1 yet getting through alive1 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 us1 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 suggest4 ,at ,chautauqua there were no racks1 even in the place's historical museum2 and no sweat1 except possibly the gentle moisture on the brow of some lecturer1 or on the sides of some player in the ball-field4 ,such absence of human nature in extremis anywhere seemed1 then1 a sufficient explanation for ,chautauqua's flatness and lack of zest4 ,but was not this a paradox well calculated to fill one with dismay8 ,it looks indeed1 thought ,i1 as if the romantic idealists with their pessimism about our civilization were1 after all1 quite right4 ,an irremediable flatness is coming over the world4 ,bourgeoisie and mediocrity1 church sociables and teachers' conventions1 are taking the place of the old heights and depths and romantic chiaroscuro4 ,and1 to get human life in its wild intensity1 we must in future turn more and more away from the actual1 and forget it1 if we can1 in the romancer's or the poet's pages4 ,the whole world1 delightful and sinful as it may still appear for a moment to one just escaped from the ,chautauquan enclosure1 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 scale4 ,was im ,gesang soll leben muss im ,leben untergehn4 ,even now1 in our own country1 correctness1 fairness1 and compromise for every small advantage are crowding out all other qualities4 ,the higher heroisms and the old rare flavors are passing out of life4,p ,p ,this address was composed before the ,cuban and ,philippine wars4 ,such outbursts of the passion of mastery are1 however1 only episodes in a social process which in the long run seems everywhere tending toward the ,chautauquan ideals4 ,with these thoughts in my mind1 ,i was speeding with the train toward ,buffalo1 when1 near that city1 the sight of a workman doing something on the dizzy edge of a sky-scaling iron construction brought me to my senses very suddenly4 ,and now ,i perceived1 by a flash of insight1 that ,i had been steeping myself in pure ancestral blindness1 and looking at life with the eyes of a remote spectator4 ,wishing for heroism and the spectacle of human nature on the rack1 ,i had never noticed the great fields of heroism lying round about me1 ,i had failed to see it present and alive4 ,i could only think of it as dead and embalmed1 labelled and costumed1 as it is in the pages of romance4 ,and yet there it was before me in the daily lives of the laboring classes4 ,not in clanging fights and desperate marches only is heroism to be looked for1 but on every railway bridge and fire-proof building that is going up to-day4 ,on freight-trains1 on the decks of vessels1 in cattle-yards and mines1 on lumber-rafts1 among the firemen and the policemen1 the demand for courage is incessant2 and the supply never fails4 ,there1 every day of the year somewhere1 is human nature in extremis for you4 ,and wherever a scythe1 an axe1 a pick1 or a shovel is wielded1 you have it sweating and aching and with its powers of patient endurance racked to the utmost under the length of hours of the strain4 ,as ,i awoke to all this unidealized heroic life around me1 the scales seemed to fall from my eyes2 and a wave of sympathy greater than anything ,i had ever before felt with the common life of common men began to fill my soul4 ,it began to seem as if virtue with horny hands and dirty skin were the only virtue genuine and vital enough to take account of4 ,every other virtue poses2 none is absolutely unconscious and simple1 and unexpectant of decoration or recognition1 like this4 ,these are our soldiers1 thought ,i1 these our sustainers1 these the very parents of our life4 ,many years ago1 when in ,vienna1 ,i had had a similar feeling of awe and reverence in looking at the peasant-women1 in from the country on their business at the market for the day4 ,old hags many of them were1 dried and brown and wrinkled1 kerchiefed and short-petticoated1 with thick wool stockings on their bony shanks1 stumping through the glittering thoroughfares1 looking neither to the right nor the left1 bent on duty1 envying nothing1 humble-hearted1 remote2--and yet at bottom1 when you came to think of it1 bearing the whole fabric of the splendors and corruptions of that city on their laborious backs4 ,for where would any of it have been without their unremitting1 unrewarded labor in the fields8 ,and so with us3 not to our generals and poets1 ,i thought1 but to the ,italian and ,hungarian laborers in the ,subway1 rather1 ought the monuments of gratitude and reverence of a city like ,boston to be reared4 99 99 99 99 99 ,if any of you have been readers of ,tolstoi1 you will see that ,i passed into a vein of feeling similar to his1 with its abhorrence of all that conventionally passes for distinguished1 and its exclusive deification of the bravery1 patience1 kindliness1 and dumbness of the unconscious natural man4 ,where now is our ,tolstoi1 ,i said1 to bring the truth of all this home to our ,american bosoms1 fill us with a better insight1 and wean us away from that spurious literary romanticism on which our wretched culture--as it calls itself--is fed8 ,divinity lies all about us1 and culture is too hidebound to even suspect the fact4 ,could a ,howells or a ,kipling be enlisted in this mission8 or are they still too deep in the ancestral blindness1 and not humane enough for the inner joy and meaning of the laborer's existence to be really revealed8 ,must we wait for some one born and bred and living as a laborer himself1 but who1 by grace of ,heaven1 shall also find a literary voice8 ,and there ,i rested on that day1 with a sense of widening of vision1 and with what it is surely fair to call an increase of religious insight into life4 ,in ,god's eyes the differences of social position1 of intellect1 of culture1 of cleanliness1 of dress1 which different men exhibit1 and all the other rarities and exceptions on which they so fantastically pin their pride1 must be so small as practically quite to vanish2 and all that should remain is the common fact that here we are1 a countless multitude of vessels of life1 each of us pent in to peculiar difficulties1 with which we must severally struggle by using whatever of fortitude and goodness we can summon up4 ,the exercise of the courage1 patience1 and kindness1 must be the significant portion of the whole business2 and the distinctions of position can only be a manner of diversifying the phenomenal surface upon which these underground virtues may manifest their effects4 ,at this rate1 the deepest human life is everywhere1 is eternal4 ,and1 if any human attributes exist only in particular individuals1 they must belong to the mere trapping and decoration of the surface-show4 ,thus are men's lives levelled up as well as levelled down1--levelled up in their common inner meaning1 levelled down in their outer gloriousness and show4 ,yet always1 we must confess1 this levelling insight tends to be obscured again2 and always the ancestral blindness returns and wraps us up1 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 merits4 ,and then always some new leveller in the shape of a religious prophet has to arise--the ,buddha1 the ,christ1 or some ,saint ,francis1 some ,rousseau or ,tolstoi--to redispel our blindness4 ,yet1 little by little1 there comes some stable gain2 for the world does get more humane1 and the religion of democracy tends toward permanent increase4 ,this1 as ,i said1 became for a time my conviction1 and gave me great content4 ,i have put the matter into the form of a personal reminiscence1 so that ,i might lead you into it more directly and completely1 and so save time4 ,but now ,i am going to discuss the rest of it with you in a more impersonal way4 ,tolstoi's levelling philosophy began long before he had the crisis of melancholy commemorated in that wonderful document of his entitled ',my ,confession1' which led the way to his more specifically religious works4 ,in his masterpiece ',war and ,peace1'--assuredly the greatest of human novels1--the role of the spiritual hero is given to a poor little soldier named ,karataieff1 so helpful1 so cheerful1 and so devout that1 in spite of his ignorance and filthiness1 the sight of him opens the heavens1 which have been closed1 to the mind of the principal character of the book2 and his example evidently is meant by ,tolstoi to let ,god into the world again for the reader4 ,poor little ,karataieff is taken prisoner by the ,french2 and1 when too exhausted by hardship and fever to march1 is shot as other prisoners were in the famous retreat from ,moscow4 ,the last view one gets of him is his little figure leaning against a white birch-tree1 and uncomplainingly awaiting the end4 ,the more1 writes ,tolstoi in the work ',my ,confession1' the more ,i examined the life of these laboring folks1 the more persuaded ,i became that they veritably have faith1 and get from it alone the sense and the possibility of life4444 ,contrariwise to those of our own class1 who protest against destiny and grow indignant at its rigor1 these people receive maladies and misfortunes without revolt1 without opposition1 and with a firm and tranquil confidence that all had to be like that1 could not be otherwise1 and that it is all right so4444 ,the more we live by our intellect1 the less we understand the meaning of life4 ,we see only a cruel jest in suffering and death1 whereas these people live1 suffer1 and draw near to death with tranquillity1 and oftener than not with joy4444 ,there are enormous multitudes of them happy with the most perfect happiness1 although deprived of what for us is the sole good of life4 ,those who understand life's meaning1 and know how to live and die thus1 are to be counted not by twos1 threes1 tens1 but by hundreds1 thousands1 millions4 ,they labor quietly1 endure privations and pains1 live and die1 and throughout everything see the good without seeing the vanity4 ,i had to love these people4 ,the more ,i entered into their life1 the more ,i loved them2 and the more it became possible for me to live1 too4 ,it came about not only that the life of our society1 of the learned and of the rich1 disgusted me--more than that1 it lost all semblance of meaning in my eyes4 ,all our actions1 our deliberations1 our sciences1 our arts1 all appeared to me with a new significance4 ,i understood that these things might be charming pastimes1 but that one need seek in them no depth1 whereas the life of the hard-working populace1 of that multitude of human beings who really contribute to existence1 appeared to me in its true light4 ,i understood that there veritably is life1 that the meaning which life there receives is the truth2 and ,i accepted it4,q ,q ,my ,confession1 ,x4 7condensed74 ,in a similar way does ,stevenson appeal to our piety toward the elemental virtue of mankind4 ,what a wonderful thing1 he writes1,r is this ,man6 ,how surprising are his attributes6 ,poor soul1 here for so little1 cast among so many hardships1 savagely surrounded1 savagely descended1 irremediably condemned to prey upon his fellow-lives1--who should have blamed him1 had he been of a piece with his destiny and a being merely barbarous8 444 ,yet it matters not where we look1 under what climate we observe him1 in what stage of society1 in what depth of ignorance1 burdened with what erroneous morality2 in ships at sea1 a man inured to hardship and vile pleasures1 his brightest hope a fiddle in a tavern1 and a bedizened trull who sells herself to rob him1 and he1 for all that1 simple1 innocent1 cheerful1 kindly like a child1 constant to toil1 brave to drown1 for others2444 in the slums of cities1 moving among indifferent millions to mechanical employments1 without hope of change in the future1 with scarce a pleasure in the present1 and yet true to his virtues1 honest up to his lights1 kind to his neighbors1 tempted perhaps in vain by the bright gin-palace1444 often repaying the world's scorn with service1 often standing firm upon a scruple2444 everywhere some virtue cherished or affected1 everywhere some decency of thought and courage1 everywhere the ensign of man's ineffectual goodness1--ah6 if ,i could show you this6 ,if ,i could show you these men and women all the world over1 in every stage of history1 under every abuse of error1 under every circumstance of failure1 without hope1 without help1 without thanks1 still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue1 still clinging to some rag of honor1 the poor jewel of their souls4 ,r ,across the ,plains3 ,pulvis et ,umbra 7abridged74 ,all this is as true as it is splendid1 and terribly do we need our ,tolstois and ,stevensons to keep our sense for it alive4 ,yet you remember the ,irishman who1 when asked1 ,is not one man as good as another8 replied1 ,yes2 and a great deal better1 too6 ,similarly 7it seems to me7 does ,tolstoi overcorrect our social prejudices1 when he makes his love of the peasant so exclusive1 and hardens his heart toward the educated man as absolutely as he does4 ,grant that at ,chautauqua there was little moral effort1 little sweat or muscular strain in view4 ,still1 deep down in the souls of the participants we may be sure that something of the sort was hid1 some inner stress1 some vital virtue not found wanting when required4 ,and1 after all1 the question recurs1 and forces itself upon us1 ,is it so certain that the surroundings and circumstances of the virtue do make so little difference in the importance of the result8 ,is the functional utility1 the worth to the universe of a certain definite amount of courage1 kindliness1 and patience1 no greater if the possessor of these virtues is in an educated situation1 working out far-reaching tasks1 than if he be an illiterate nobody1 hewing wood and drawing water1 just to keep himself alive8 ,tolstoi's philosophy1 deeply enlightening though it certainly is1 remains a false abstraction4 ,it savors too much of that ,oriental pessimism and nihilism of his1 which declares the whole phenomenal world and its facts and their distinctions to be a cunning fraud4 99 99 99 99 99 ,a mere bare fraud is just what our ,western common sense will never believe the phenomenal world to be4 ,it admits fully that the inner joys and virtues are the essential part of life's business1 but it is sure that some positive part is also played by the adjuncts of the show4 ,if it is idiotic in romanticism to recognize the heroic only when it sees it labelled and dressed-up in books1 it is really just as idiotic to see it only in the dirty boots and sweaty shirt of some one in the fields4 ,it is with us really under every disguise3 at ,chautauqua2 here in your college2 in the stock-yards and on the freight-trains2 and in the czar of ,russia's court4 ,but1 instinctively1 we make a combination of two things in judging the total significance of a human being4 ,we feel it to be some sort of a product 7if such a product only could be calculated7 of his inner virtue and his outer place1--neither singly taken1 but both conjoined4 ,if the outer differences had no meaning for life1 why indeed should all this immense variety of them exist8 ,they must be significant elements of the world as well4 ,just test ,tolstoi's deification of the mere manual laborer by the facts4 ,this is what ,mr4 ,walter ,wyckoff1 after working as an unskilled laborer in the demolition of some buildings at ,west ,point1 writes of the spiritual condition of the class of men to which he temporarily chose to belong3-- ,the salient features of our condition are plain enough4 ,we are grown men1 and are without a trade4 ,in the labor-market we stand ready to sell to the highest bidder our mere muscular strength for so many hours each day4 ,we are thus in the lowest grade of labor4 ,and1 selling our muscular strength in the open market for what it will bring1 we sell it under peculiar conditions4 ,it is all the capital that we have4 ,we have no reserve means of subsistence1 and cannot1 therefore1 stand off for a 'reserve price4' ,we sell under the necessity of satisfying imminent hunger4 ,broadly speaking1 we must sell our labor or starve2 and1 as hunger is a matter of a few hours1 and we have no other way of meeting this need1 we must sell at once for what the market offers for our labor4 ,our employer is buying labor in a dear market1 and he will certainly get from us as much work as he can at the price4 ,the gang-boss is secured for this purpose1 and thoroughly does he know his business4 ,he has sole command of us4 ,he never saw us before1 and he will discharge us all when the debris is cleared away4 ,in the mean time he must get from us1 if he can1 the utmost of physical labor which we1 individually and collectively1 are capable of4 ,if he should drive some of us to exhaustion1 and we should not be able to continue at work1 he would not be the loser2 for the market would soon supply him with others to take our places4 ,we are ignorant men1 but so much we clearly see1--that we have sold our labor where we could sell it dearest1 and our employer has bought it where he could buy it cheapest4 ,he has paid high1 and he must get all the labor that he can2 and1 by a strong instinct which possesses us1 we shall part with as little as we can4 ,from work like ours there seems to us to have been eliminated every element which constitutes the nobility of labor4 ,we feel no personal pride in its progress1 and no community of interest with our employer4 ,there is none of the joy of responsibility1 none of the sense of achievement1 only the dull monotony of grinding toil1 with the longing for the signal to quit work1 and for our wages at the end4 ,and being what we are1 the dregs of the labor-market1 and having no certainty of permanent employment1 and no organization among ourselves1 we must expect to work under the watchful eye of a gang-boss1 and be driven1 like the wage-slaves that we are1 through our tasks4 ,all this is to tell us1 in effect1 that our lives are hard1 barren1 hopeless lives4 ,and such hard1 barren1 hopeless lives1 surely1 are not lives in which one ought to be willing permanently to remain4 ,and why is this so8 ,is it because they are so dirty8 ,well1 ,nansen grew a great deal dirtier on his polar expedition2 and we think none the worse of his life for that4 ,is it the insensibility8 ,our soldiers have to grow vastly more insensible1 and we extol them to the skies4 ,is it the poverty8 ,poverty has been reckoned the crowning beauty of many a heroic career4 ,is it the slavery to a task1 the loss of finer pleasures8 ,such slavery and loss are of the very essence of the higher fortitude1 and are always counted to its credit1--read the records of missionary devotion all over the world4 ,it is not any one of these things1 then1 taken by itself1--no1 nor all of them together1--that make such a life undesirable4 ,a man might in truth live like an unskilled laborer1 and do the work of one1 and yet count as one of the noblest of ,god's creatures4 ,quite possibly there were some such persons in the gang that our author describes2 but the current of their souls ran underground2 and he was too steeped in the ancestral blindness to discern it4 ,if there were any such morally exceptional individuals1 however1 what made them different from the rest8 ,it can only have been this1--that their souls worked and endured in obedience to some inner ideal1 while their comrades were not actuated by anything worthy of that name4 ,these ideals of other lives are among those secrets that we can almost never penetrate1 although something about the man may often tell us when they are there4 ,in ,mr4 ,wyckoff's own case we know exactly what the self-imposed ideal was4 ,partly he had stumped himself1 as the boys say1 to carry through a strenuous achievement2 but mainly he wished to enlarge his sympathetic insight into fellow-lives4 ,for this his sweat and toil acquire a certain heroic significance1 and make us accord to him exceptional esteem4 ,but it is easy to imagine his fellows with various other ideals4 ,to say nothing of wives and babies1 one may have been a convert of the ,salvation ,army1 and had a nightingale singing of expiation and forgiveness in his heart all the while he labored4 ,or there might have been an apostle like ,tolstoi himself1 or his compatriot ,bondareff1 in the gang1 voluntarily embracing labor as their religious mission4 ,class-loyalty was undoubtedly an ideal with many4 ,and who knows how much of that higher manliness of poverty1 of which ,phillips ,brooks has spoken so penetratingly1 was or was not present in that gang8 ,a rugged1 barren land1 says ,phillips ,brooks1 is poverty to live in1--a land where ,i am thankful very often if ,i can get a berry or a root to eat4 ,but living in it really1 letting it bear witness to me of itself1 not dishonoring it all the time by judging it after the standard of the other lands1 gradually there come out its qualities4 ,behold6 no land like this barren and naked land of poverty could show the moral geology of the world4 ,see how the hard ribs 444 stand out strong and solid4 ,no life like poverty could so get one to the heart of things and make men know their meaning1 could so let us feel life and the world with all the soft cushions stripped off and thrown away4444 ,poverty makes men come very near each other1 and recognize each other's human hearts2 and poverty1 highest and best of all1 demands and cries out for faith in ,god4444 ,i know how superficial and unfeeling1 how like mere mockery1 words in praise of poverty may seem4444 ,but ,i am sure that the poor man's dignity and freedom1 his self-respect and energy1 depend upon his cordial knowledge that his poverty is a true region and kind of life1 with its own chances of character1 its own springs of happiness and revelations of ,god4 ,let him resist the characterlessness which often goes with being poor4 ,let him insist on respecting the condition where he lives4 ,let him learn to love it1 so that by and by1 if he grows rich1 he shall go out of the low door of the old familiar poverty with a true pang of regret1 and with a true honor for the narrow home in which he has lived so long4,s ,s ,sermons4 #eth ,series1 ,new ,york1 #ahic1 pp4 #aff1 #afg4 ,the barrenness and ignobleness of the more usual laborer's life consist in the fact that it is moved by no such ideal inner springs4 ,the backache1 the long hours1 the danger1 are patiently endured--for what8 ,to gain a quid of tobacco1 a glass of beer1 a cup of coffee1 a meal1 and a bed1 and to begin again the next day and shirk as much as one can4 ,this really is why we raise no monument to the laborers in the ,subway1 even though they be our conscripts1 and even though after a fashion our city is indeed based upon their patient hearts and enduring backs and shoulders4 ,and this is why we do raise monuments to our soldiers1 whose outward conditions were even brutaller still4 ,the soldiers are supposed to have followed an ideal1 and the laborers are supposed to have followed none4 ,you see1 my friends1 how the plot now thickens2 and how strangely the complexities of this wonderful human nature of ours begin to develop under our hands4 ,we have seen the blindness and deadness to each other which are our natural inheritance2 and1 in spite of them1 we have been led to acknowledge an inner meaning which passeth show1 and which may be present in the lives of others where we least descry it4 ,and now we are led to say that such inner meaning can be complete and valid for us also1 only when the inner joy1 courage1 and endurance are joined with an ideal4 99 99 99 99 99 ,but what1 exactly1 do we mean by an ideal8 ,can we give no definite account of such a word8 ,to a certain extent we can4 ,an ideal1 for instance1 must be something intellectually conceived1 something of which we are not unconscious1 if we have it2 and it must carry with it that sort of outlook1 uplift1 and brightness that go with all intellectual facts4 ,secondly1 there must be novelty in an ideal1--novelty at least for him whom the ideal grasps4 ,sodden routine is incompatible with ideality1 although what is sodden routine for one person may be ideal novelty for another4 ,this shows that there is nothing absolutely ideal3 ideals are relative to the lives that entertain them4 ,to keep out of the gutter is for us here no part of consciousness at all1 yet for many of our brethren it is the most legitimately engrossing of ideals4 ,now1 taken nakedly1 abstractly1 and immediately1 you see that mere ideals are the cheapest things in life4 ,everybody has them in some shape or other1 personal or general1 sound or mistaken1 low or high2 and the most worthless sentimentalists and dreamers1 drunkards1 shirks and verse-makers1 who never show a grain of effort1 courage1 or endurance1 possibly have them on the most copious scale4 ,education1 enlarging as it does our horizon and perspective1 is a means of multiplying our ideals1 of bringing new ones into view4 ,and your college professor1 with a starched shirt and spectacles1 would1 if a stock of ideals were all alone by itself enough to render a life significant1 be the most absolutely and deeply significant of men4 ,tolstoi would be completely blind in despising him for a prig1 a pedant and a parody2 and all our new insight into the divinity of muscular labor would be altogether off the track of truth4 ,but such consequences as this1 you instinctively feel1 are erroneous4 ,the more ideals a man has1 the more contemptible1 on the whole1 do you continue to deem him1 if the matter ends there for him1 and if none of the laboring man's virtues are called into action on his part1--no courage shown1 no privations undergone1 no dirt or scars contracted in the attempt to get them realized4 ,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 admiration4 ,inner joy1 to be sure1 it may have1 with its ideals2 but that is its own private sentimental matter4 ,to extort from us1 outsiders as we are1 with our own ideals to look after1 the tribute of our grudging recognition1 it must back its ideal visions with what the laborers have1 the sterner stuff of manly virtue2 it must multiply their sentimental surface by the dimension of the active will1 if we are to have depth1 if we are to have anything cubical and solid in the way of character4 ,the significance of a human life for communicable and publicly recognizable purposes is thus the offspring of a marriage of two different parents1 either of whom alone is barren4 ,the ideals taken by themselves give no reality1 the virtues by themselves no novelty4 ,and let the orientalists and pessimists say what they will1 the thing of deepest--or1 at any rate1 of comparatively deepest--significance in life does seem to be its character of progress1 or that strange union of reality with ideal novelty which it continues from one moment to another to present4 ,to recognize ideal novelty is the task of what we call intelligence4 ,not every one's intelligence can tell which novelties are ideal4 ,for many the ideal thing will always seem to cling still to the older more familiar good4 ,in this case character1 though not significant totally1 may be still significant pathetically4 ,so1 if we are to choose which is the more essential factor of human character1 the fighting virtue or the intellectual breadth1 we must side with ,tolstoi1 and choose that simple faithfulness to his light or darkness which any common unintellectual man can show4 99 99 99 99 99 ,but1 with all this beating and tacking on my part1 ,i fear you take me to be reaching a confused result4 ,i seem to be just taking things up and dropping them again4 ,first ,i took up ,chautauqua1 and dropped that2 then ,tolstoi and the heroism of common toil1 and dropped them2 finally1 ,i took up ideals1 and seem now almost dropping those4 ,but please observe in what sense it is that ,i drop them4 ,it is when they pretend singly to redeem life from insignificance4 ,culture and refinement all alone are not enough to do so4 ,ideal aspirations are not enough1 when uncombined with pluck and will4 ,but neither are pluck and will1 dogged endurance and insensibility to danger enough1 when taken all alone4 ,there must be some sort of fusion1 some chemical combination among these principles1 for a life objectively and thoroughly significant to result4 ,of course1 this is a somewhat vague conclusion4 ,but in a question of significance1 of worth1 like this1 conclusions can never be precise4 ,the answer of appreciation1 of sentiment1 is always a more or a less1 a balance struck by sympathy1 insight1 and good will4 ,but it is an answer1 all the same1 a real conclusion4 ,and1 in the course of getting it1 it seems to me that our eyes have been opened to many important things4 ,some of you are1 perhaps1 more livingly aware than you were an hour ago of the depths of worth that lie around you1 hid in alien lives4 ,and1 when you ask how much sympathy you ought to bestow1 although the amount is1 truly enough1 a matter of ideal on your own part1 yet in this notion of the combination of ideals with active virtues you have a rough standard for shaping your decision4 ,in any case1 your imagination is extended4 ,you divine in the world about you matter for a little more humility on your own part1 and tolerance1 reverence1 and love for others2 and you gain a certain inner joyfulness at the increased importance of our common life4 ,such joyfulness is a religious inspiration and an element of spiritual health1 and worth more than large amounts of that sort of technical and accurate information which we professors are supposed to be able to impart4 ,to show the sort of thing ,i mean by these words1 ,i will just make one brief practical illustration and then close4 ,we are suffering to-day in ,america from what is called the labor-question2 and1 when you go out into the world1 you will each and all of you be caught up in its perplexities4 ,i use the brief term labor-question to cover all sorts of anarchistic discontents and socialistic projects1 and the conservative resistances which they provoke4 ,so far as this conflict is unhealthy and regrettable1--and ,i think it is so only to a limited extent1--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 half4 ,they miss the joys and sorrows1 they fail to feel the moral virtue1 and they do not guess the presence of the intellectual ideals4 ,they are at cross-purposes all along the line1 regarding each other as they might regard a set of dangerously gesticulating automata1 or1 if they seek to get at the inner motivation1 making the most horrible mistakes4 ,often all that the poor man can think of in the rich man is a cowardly greediness for safety1 luxury1 and effeminacy1 and a boundless affectation4 ,what he is1 is not a human being1 but a pocket-book1 a bank-account4 ,and a similar greediness1 turned by disappointment into envy1 is all that many rich men can see in the state of mind of the dissatisfied poor4 ,and1 if the rich man begins to do the sentimental act over the poor man1 what senseless blunders does he make1 pitying him for just those very duties and those very immunities which1 rightly taken1 are the condition of his most abiding and characteristic joys6 ,each1 in short1 ignores the fact that happiness and unhappiness and significance are a vital mystery2 each pins them absolutely on some ridiculous feature of the external situation2 and everybody remains outside of everybody else's sight4 ,society has1 with all this1 undoubtedly got to pass toward some newer and better equilibrium1 and the distribution of wealth has doubtless slowly got to change3 such changes have always happened1 and will happen to the end of time4 ,but if1 after all that ,i have said1 any of you expect that they will make any genuine vital difference on a large scale1 to the lives of our descendants1 you will have missed the significance of my entire lecture4 ,the solid meaning of life is always the same eternal thing1--the marriage1 namely1 of some unhabitual ideal1 however special1 with some fidelity1 courage1 and endurance2 with some man's or woman's pains4--,and1 whatever or wherever life may be1 there will always be the chance for that marriage to take place4 ,fitz-,james ,stephen wrote many years ago words to this effect more eloquent than any ,i can speak3 ,the ',great ,eastern1' or some of her successors1 he said1 will perhaps defy the roll of the ,atlantic1 and cross the seas without allowing their passengers to feel that they have left the firm land4 ,the voyage from the cradle to the grave may come to be performed with similar facility4 ,progress and science may perhaps enable untold millions to live and die without a care1 without a pang1 without an anxiety4 ,they will have a pleasant passage and plenty of brilliant conversation4 ,they will wonder that men ever believed at all in clanging fights and blazing towns and sinking ships and praying hands2 and1 when they come to the end of their course1 they will go their way1 and the place thereof will know them no more4 ,but it seems unlikely that they will have such a knowledge of the great ocean on which they sail1 with its storms and wrecks1 its currents and icebergs1 its huge waves and mighty winds1 as those who battled with it for years together in the little craft1 which1 if they had few other merits1 brought those who navigated them full into the presence of time and eternity1 their maker and themselves1 and forced them to have some definite view of their relations to them and to each other4,t ,t ,essays by a ,barrister1 ,london1 #ahfb1 p4 #cah4 ,in this solid and tridimensional sense1 so to call it1 those philosophers are right who contend that the world is a standing thing1 with no progress1 no real history4 ,the changing conditions of history touch only the surface of the show4 ,the altered equilibriums and redistributions only diversify our opportunities and open chances to us for new ideals4 ,but1 with each new ideal that comes into life1 the chance for a life based on some old ideal will vanish2 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 world4 ,i am speaking broadly1 ,i know1 and omitting to consider certain qualifications in which ,i myself believe4 ,but one can only make one point in one lecture1 and ,i shall be well content if ,i have brought my point home to you this evening in even a slight degree4 ,there are compensations3 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 hearts4 ,that is the main fact to remember4 ,if we could not only admit it with our lips1 but really and truly believe it1 how our convulsive insistencies1 how our antipathies and dreads of each other1 would soften down6 ,if the poor and the rich could look at each other in this way1 sub specie aeternatis1 how gentle would grow their disputes6 what tolerance and good humor1 what willingness to live and let live1 would come into the world6 ,,the ,,end4