Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN -4 THE LIBRARY OF USEFUL STORIES. THE STORY OF THE MIND BY JAMES MARK BALDWIN WITH ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON: GEORGE NEWNES, LTD. SOUTHAMPTON STREET, STRAND otack Annex SF PREFACE IN this little book I have endeavoured to main tain the simplicity which is the ideal of this series. It is more difficult, however, to be simple in a topic which, even in its illustrations, demands of the reader more or less facility in the explora- tion of his own mind. I am persuaded that the attempt to make the matter of psychology more elementary than is here done, would only result in making it untrue and so in defeating its own object. In preparing the book I have secured the right and welcomed the opportunity to include certain more popular passages from earlier books and articles. It is necessary to say this, for some people are loath to see a man repeat himself. When one has once said a thing, however, about as well as he can say it, there is no good reason that he should be forced into the pretence of saying something different simply to avoid using the same form of words a second time. The question, of course, is as to whether he should not then resign himself to keeping still, and letting others do the further speaking. There is much to be said for such a course. But if one have the right to print more severe and difficult things, and think he really has something V> say 6 PREFACE. which would instruct the larger audience, it would seem only fair to allow him to speak in the simpler way also, even though all that he says may not have the merit of escaping the charge of infringing his own copyrights ! I am indebted to the proprietors of the follow- ing magazines for the use of such passages : The Popular Science MonUily, The Century Magazine, The Inland Educator ; and with them I also wish to thank The Macmillan Company and the owners of " Johnson's Universal Cyclopaedia." As to the scope and contents of the Story, I have aimed to include enough statement of methods and results in each of the great depart- ments of psychological research to give the reader an intelligent idea of what is being done, ana to whet his appetite for more detailed information. In the choice of materials I have relied frankly on my own experience and in debatable matters given my own opinions. This gives greater reality to the several topics, besides making it possible, by this general statement, at once to acknowledge it, and also to avoid discussion and citation of authorities in the text. At the same time, in the exposition of general principles I have endeavoured to keep well within the accepted truth and terminology of psychology. It will be remarked that in several passages the evolution theory is adopted in its application to the mind. While this great theory cannot be discussed in these pages, yet I may say that, in my opinion, the evidence in favour of it is about the same, and about as strong, as in biology, where it is now made a presupposition of scien- PREFACE. / tific explanation. So far from being unwelcome, I find it in psychology no less than in biology a great gain, both from the point of view of scien- tific knowledge and from that of philosophical theory. Every great law that is added to our store adds also to our conviction that the universe is run through with Mind. Even so-called Chance, which used to be the " bogie " behind Natural Selection, has now been found to illustrate in the law of Probabilities the absence of Chance. As Professor Pearson has said: "We recognise that our conception of Chance is now utterly different from that of yore. . . . What we are to understand by a chance distribution is one in accordance with law, and one the nature of which can, for all practical purposes, be closely pre- dicted." If the universe be pregnant with pur- pose, as we all wish to believe, why should not this purpose work itself out by an evolution pro- cess under law 1 and if under law, why not the law of Probabilities? We who have our lives insured provide for our children through our knowledge and use of this law; and our plans for their welfare, in most of the affairs of life, are based upon the recognition of it. Who will deny to the Great Purpose a similar resource in pro- ducing the universe and in providing for us all ] I add in a concluding section on Literature some references to various books in English, classified under the headings of the chapters of the text. These works will further enlighten the reader, and, if he persevere nnssibly make a psychologist of him. J. MARK BALDWIN. CONTENTS. OBAPTKK ' Aack of the details. But in all this period there is germinating in his consciousness and this very uncertainty is an important element of it the seed of a far- reaching thought. His sense of persons moving, pleasure-or-pain-giving, uncertain but self-direct- ing persons is now to become a sense of agency, of power, which is yet not the power of the regular-moving door on its hinges or the rhythmic swinging of the pendulum of the clock. The sense of personal agency is now forming, and it again is potent for still further development of the social consciousness. It is just here, I think, that imitation becomes so important in the child's life. This is imitation's opportunity. The infant watches to see how others act, because his own weal and woe depends upon this " how " ; and inasmuch as he knows not what to anticipate, his mind is open to every suggestion of movement. So he falls to imitating. His attention dwells upon details, and by the principle of adaptation which imitation expresses, it acts out these details for himself. It is an interesting detail, that at this stage the child begins to grow capricious himself ; to feel that he can do whatever he likes. Sugges- tion begins to lose the regularity of its working, THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 101 for it meets the child's growing sense of his own agency. The youthful hero becomes "contrary." At this period it is that obedience begins to grow hard, and its meaning begins to dawn upon the child as the great reality. For it means the subjection of his own agency, his own liberty to be capricious, to the agency and liberty of someone else. 3. With all this, the child's distinction between and among the persons who constantly come into contact with him grows on apace, in spite of the element of irregularity of the general fact of personality. As he learned before the difference between one presence and another, so now he learns the difference between one character and another. Every character is more or less regular in its irregularity. It has its tastes and modes of action, its temperament and type of command. This the child learns late in the second year and thereafter. He behaves differently when the father is in the room. He is quick to obey one person, slow to obey another. He cries aloud, pulls his companions, and behaves reprehensibly generally, when no adult is present who has authority or will to punish him. This stage in his " knowledge of man " leads to very marked differences of conduct on his part. 4. He now goes on to acquire real self-conscious- ness and social feeling. This stage is so important that we may give to it a separate heading below. It may not be amiss to sum up what has beer, said about Personality-Suggestion. It is a general term for the information which the child gets about persons. It develops through three or foiK 102 THE STORY OF THE MIND. roughly distinguished stages, all of which illus- trate what is called the "projective" sense of personality. 1 There is, 1. A bare distinction of persons from things on the ground of peculiar pain- movement-pleasure experiences. 2. A sense of the irregularity or capriciousness of the behaviour of these persons, which suggests personal agency. 3. A distinction, vaguely felt perhaps, but wonderfully reflected in the child's actions, be- tween the modes of behaviour or personal characters of different persons. 4. After his sense of his own agency arises by the process of imitation, he gets what is really self-consciousness and social feeling. Self-consciousness. So far as we have now gone the child has only a very dim distinction between himself as a person and the other persons who move about him. The persons are " projective " to him, mere bodies or external objects of a peculiar sort classed together because they show common marks. Yet in the sense of agency, he has already begun, as we saw, to find in himself a mental nucleus, or centre. This comes about 1 It is very remarkable that in the child's bashfulness we find a native nervoua response to the presence of persons. And it is curious to note that, besides the general gregariousness which many animals have, they show in many instances special responses of the presence of creatures of their own kind or of other kinds. Dogs seem to recognise dogs by smell. So with cats, which also respond instinctively with strong repulsion to the smell of dogs. Horses seem to be guided by sight. Fowls are notoriously blind to shapes of fowls, but depend on hearing the cries of their kind or their young. THE liIKD OF THE CHILD. 103 from his tendency to fall into the imitation of the acts of others. Now as he proceeds with these imitations of others, he finds himself gradually understanding the others, by coming, through doing the same actions with them, to discover what they are feeling, what their motives are, what the laws of their behaviour. For example, he sees his father handle a pin, then suddenly make a face as he pricks himself, and throws the pin away. All this is simply a puzzle to the child ; his father's conduct is capricious, " projective." But the child's curiosity in the matter takes the form of imitation ; he takes up the pin himself and goes through the same manipulation of it that his father did. Thus he gets himself pricked, and with it has the impulse to throw the pin away. By imitating his father he has now discovered what was inside the father's mind, the pain and the motive of the action. This way of proceeding in reference to the actions of others, of which many examples might be given, has a twofold significance in the de- velopment of the child ; and because of this twofold significance it is one of the most im- portant facts of psychology. Upon it rest, in the opinion of the present writer, correct views of ethics and social philosophy. 1. By such imitation the child learns to as- sociate his own sense of physical power, together with his own private pleasures and pains, with the personal actions which were before observed, it is true, in other persons but not understood. The act of the fathor has now become his own. 104 THE STORY OF THE MIND. So one by one the various attributes which he has found to be characteristic of the persons of his social circle, become his, in his own thought. He is now for himself an agent who has the marks of a Person or a Self. He now under- stands from the inside all the various personal suggestions. "What he saw persons do is now no longer "projective" simply there, outside, in the environment ; it has become what we call " subjective." The details are grouped and held together by the sense of agency working itself out in his imitative struggles. This is what we mean by Self-consciousness. It is not an inborn thing with the child. He gradually acquires it. And it is not a sense of a distinct and separate self, first known and then compared with other persons. On the contrary, it is gradually built up in the child's mind from the same material exactly as that of which lie makes up his thought of other persons. The deeds he can do he first sees others doing ; only then can he imitate them and find out that he also is a being who can perform them. So it goes all through our lives. Our sense of Self is constantly changing, constantly being en- riched. We have not the same thought of self two days in succession. To-day I think of myself as something to be proud of, to-morrow as some- thing to be ashamed of. To-day I learn something from you, and the thought that it is common to you and to me is the basis of my sympathy with you. To-morrow I learn to commit the un- worthy act which Mr. A. commits, and tho thought that he and I are so far the same is the THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 105 basis of the common disapproval which I feel of him and me. 2. The second result of this imitative learning about personality is of equal importance. "NVhen the child has taken up an action by imitation and made it subjective, finding out that personality has an inside, something more than the mere physical body, then he reads this fact back into the other persons also. He says to himself: " He, too, my little brother, must have in him a sense of agency similar to this of mine. He acts imitatively, too ; he has pleasures and pains ; he shows sympathy for me, just as I do for him. So do all the persons with whom I have become BO far acquainted. They are, then, ' subjects ' as I am something richer than the mere ' projects ' which I had supposed." So other persons become essentially like himself ; and not only like him- self, but identical with himself so far as the particular marks are concerned which he has learned from them. For it will be remembered that all these marks were at first actually taken up by imitation from these very persons. The child is now giving back to his parents, teachers, etc., only the material which he himself took from them. He has enriched it, to be sure ; with it he now reads into the other persons the great fact of subjective agency; but, still, whatever he thinks of them has come by way of his thought of himself, and that in turn vas made up from them. This view of the other person as being the same in the main as the self who thinks of the other person, is what psychologists mean when lOd THE STORY OF THE MIND. they speak of the " ejective " self. It is the self of someone else as I think of it ; in other words, it is myself " ejected " out by me and lodged in him. The Social and Ethical Sense. From this we sec what the Social Sense is. It is the feeling which arises in the child or man of the real iden- tity, through its imitative origin, of all possible thoughts of self, whether yourself, myself, or someone else's self. The bond between you and me is not an artificial one ; it is as natural as is the recognition of personal individuality. And it is doing violence to this fundamental fact to say, as social science so often assumes, that the individual naturally separates himself or his in- terests from the self or the interests of others. He is, on the contrary, bound up with others from the start by the very laws of his growth. His social action and feeling are natural to him. The child cannot be selfish only nor generous only; he may seem to be this or that, in this circumstance or that, but he is really social all the time. Furthermore, his sense of right and wrong, his Ethical Sense, grows up upon this sense of the social bond. This I cannot stop to explain further. But it is only when social relationships are recognised as essential in the child's growth that we can understand the mutual obligations and duties which the moral life imposes upon us all. How to Observe Children, with Especial Referent* to Observations of Imitation. There are one or two considerations of such practical importance to all THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 107 those who wish to observe children that I venture to throw them together only saying, by way of introduction, that nothing less than the child's personality is at stake in the method and matter of its imitations. The Self is really the form in which the personal influences surrounding the child take on their new individuality. 1. No observations are of much importance which are not accompanied by a detailed state- ment of the personal influences which have affected the child. This is the more important since the child sees few persons, and sees them constantly. It is not only likely it is inevitable that he make up his personality, under limita- tions of heredity, by imitation, out of the "copy" set in the actions, temper, emotions, of the per- sons who build around him the social enclosure of his childhood. It is only necessary to watch a two-year-old closely to see what members of the family are giving him his personal " copy " to find out whether he sees his mother constantly and his father seldom ; whether he plays much with other children, and what in some degree their dispositions are ; whether he is growing to be a person of subjection, equality, or tyranny ; whether he is assimilating the elements of some low, unorganised social personality from his foreign nurse. The boy or girl is a social " monad," to use Leibnitz's figure in a new con- text, a little world, which reflects the whole system of influences coming to stir his sensibility. And just in so far as his sensibilities are stirred, he imitates, and forms habits of imitating ; and habits ? they are character ! 108 THE STORY OF THE MIND. 2. A point akin to the first is this : the obser- vation of each child should describe with great accuracy the child's relations to other children. Has he brothers or sisters 1 how many of each, and of what age 1 Does he sleep in the same bed or room with them ? Do they play much with one another alone ? The reason is very evident. An only child has only adult " copy." He cannot interpret his father's actions, or his mother's, oftentimes. He imitates very blindly. He lacks the more childish example of a brother or sister near himself in age. And this differ- ence is of very great importance to his develop- ment. He lacks the stimulus, for example, of games in which personification is a direct tutor to selfhood, as I shall remark further on. And while he becomes precocious in some lines of in- struction, he fails in variety of imagination, in richness of fancy, at the same time that his imaging processes are more wild and uncontrolled. The dramatic, in his sense of social situations, is largely hidden. It is a very great mistake to isolate children, especially to separate off one or two children. One alone is perhaps the worse, but two alone are subject to tlie other element of social danger which I may mention next. 3. Observers should report with especial care all cases of unusually close relationship between children in youth, such as childish favouritism, " platonic friendships," "chumming," in school or home, etc. We have in these facts and there is a very great variety of them an exaggeration of the social or imitative tendency, a narrowing down of the personal sensibility to a peculiar line THE MIND OF THE CHILD. 109 of well-formed influences. It has never been studied by writers either on the genesis of social emotion, or on the practice of education. To be sure, teachers have been alive to the pros and cons of allowing children and students to room together ; but that has been with view to the possibility of direct immoral or unwholesome contagion. This danger is certainly real ; but we, as psychological observers, and, above all, as teachers and leaders of our children, must go deeper than that. Consider, for example, the possible influence of a school chum and room-mate upon a girl in her teens ; for this is only an evi- dent case of what all isolated children are subject to. A sensitive nature, a girl whose very life is a branch of a social tree, is placed in a new en- vironment, to engraft upon the members of her mutilated self her very personality ; it is noth- ing less than that utterly new channels of supply. The only safety possible, the only way to conserve the lessons of her past, apart from the veriest chance, and to add to the structure of her present character, lies in securing for her the greatest possible variety of social influences. Instead of this, she is allowed to meet, eat, walk, talk, lie down at night, and rise in the morning, with one other person, a " copy " set before her, as immature in all likelihood as herself, or, if not so, yet a single personality, put there to wrap around her growing self the confining cords of unassimilated and foreign habit. Above all things, fathers, mothers, teachers, elders, give the children room ! They need all that they can get, and their personalities will grow to fill it 110 THE STORY OP THE MIND. Give them plenty of companions, fill their livea with variety ; variety is the soul of originality, and its only source of supply. The ethical life itself, the boy's, the girl's, conscience, is born in the stress of the conflicts of suggestion, born right out of his imitative hesitations , and just this is the analogy which he must assimilate and depend upon in his own conflicts for self-control and social continence. So impressively true is this from the human point of view that, in my opinion formed, it is true, from the very few data accessible on such points, still a positive opinion friendships of a close, exclusive kind should be discouraged or broken up, except when under the immediate eye of the wise parent or guardian ; and even when allowed, these relation- ships should, in all cases, be used to entrain the sympathetic and moral sentiments into a wider field of social exercise. One of the merits of the great English schools and of the free schools of America is that in them the "boys acquire, from necessity, the inde- pendence of sturdy character, and the self- restraint which is self-imposed. The youth brought up to mind a tutor often fails of the best discipline. 4. The remainder of this section may be de- voted to the further emphasis of the need of close observation of children's games, especially those which may be best described as "society games." All those who have given even casual observation to the doings of the nursery have been impressed with the extraordinary facility of the child's mind, from the second year onward, in imagining THE MIND OF THE CHILD. Ill and plotting social and dramatic situations. It has not been so evident, however, to these casual observers, nor to many really more skilled, that they were observing in these fancy plays the putting together anew of fragments, or largei pieces, of the adult's mental history. Here, in these games, we see the actual use which our children make of the personal " copy " material which they get from you and me. If a man study these games patiently in his own children, and analyze them out, he gradually sees emerge from within the inner consciousness a picture of the boy's own father, whom he aspires to be like, and whose actions he seeks to generalise and apply. The picture is poor, for the child takes only what he is sensible to. And it does seem often, as Sighele pathetically notices on a large social scale, and as the Westminster divines have urged without due sense of the pathetic and home-coming point of it, that he takes more of the bad in us for reproduction than of the good ! But, be this as it may, what we give him is all he gets. Heredity does not stop with birth ; it is then only beginning. And the pity of it is that this element of heredity, this reproduction of the fathers in the children, which might be used to redeem the new-forming personality from the heritage of past commonness or impurity, is simply left to take its course for the further establishing and confirmation of it. "Was there ever a group of school children who did not leave the real school to make a play school, setting up a box for one of their number to sit on and " take off" the teacher ? "Was there ever a child 112 THE STORY OF THE MIND. who did not play " church," and force the impro- vised " papa " into the pulpit ? "Were there ever children who did not " buy " things from fancied stalls in every corner of the nursery, after they had once seen an elder drive a trade in the market ? The point is this : the child's per- sonality grows ; growth is always by action ; he clothes upon himself the scenes of the parent's life and acts them out ; so he grows in what he is, what he understands, and what he is able to perform. In order to be of more direct service to observers of games of this character, let me give a short account of an observation of the kind made some time ago one of the simplest of many actual situations which my two little girls, Helen and Elizabeth, have acted out together. It is a very commonplace case, a game the ele- ments of which are evident in their origin ; but T choose this rather than one more complex, since observers are usually not psychologists, and they find the elementary the more instruc- tive. On May 2nd I was sitting on the porch alone with the children the two mentioned above Aged respectively four and a half and two and a half years. Helen, the elder, told Elizabeth that she was her little baby ; that is, Helen became "mamma," and Elizabeth the "baby." The younger responded by calling her sister "mamma," and the play began. " You have been asleep, baby. Now it is time to get up," said mamma. Baby rose from the floor first falling down in order to rise ! waa THE MIND OF THE GUILD. 113 seized upon by " mamma," taken to the railing to an imaginary washstand, and her face washed by rubbing. Her articles of clothing were then named in imagination, and put on, one by one, in the most detailed and interesting fashion. During all this "mamma" kept up a stream oi baby talk to her infant : "Now your stockings, my darling ; now your skirt, sweetness ! no not yet your shoes first," etc., etc. Baby acceded to all the details with more than the docility which real infants usually show. When this was done "Now we must go and say good- morning to papa, dearie," said mamma. " Yes, mamma," came the reply; and hand in hand they started to find papa. I, the spectator, care- fully read my newspaper, thinking, however, that the reality of papa, seeing that he was so much in evidence, would break in upon the imagined situation. But not so. Mamma led her baby uirectly past me to the end of the piazza, to a column in the corner. "There's papa," said mamma ; " now say him good-morning." "Good- morning, papa ; I am very well," said baby, bowing low to the column. " That's good," said mamma, in a gruff, low voice, which caused in the real papa a thrill of amused self-consciousness most difficult to obtain. " Now you must have your breakfast," said mamma. The seat of a chair was made a breakfast-table, the baby's feigned bib put on, and her porridge carefully administered, with all the manner of the nurse who usually directs their breakfast. " Now " (after the meal, which suddenly became dinner instead of breakfast), "you must take your nap," H 114 THE STORY OF THE MIND. said mamma. " No, mamma ; I don't want to," said baby. "But you must." "No, you be baby, and take the nap." " But all the other children have gone to sleep, dearest, and the doctor says you must," said mamma. This convinced baby, and she lay down on the floor. " But I haven't undressed you." So then came all the detail of undressing ; and mamma carefully covered her up on the floor with a light shawl, saying : " Spring is coming now ; that'll be enough. Now shut your eyes, and go to sleep." "But you haven't kissed me, mamma," said the little one. " Oh, of course, my darling ! " so a long siege of kissing ! Then baby closed her eyes very tight, while mamma went on tiptoe A way to the end of the porch. " Don't go away, mamma," said baby. " No ; mamma wouldn't leave her darling," came the reply. So this went on. The nap over, a walk was proposed, hats put on, etc., the mamma exercis- ing great care and solicitude for her baby. One further incident to show this : when the baby's hat was put on the real hat mamma tied the strings rather tight. " Oh ! you hurt, mamma," said baby. " No ; mamma wouldn't draw the strings too tight. Let mamma kiss it. There, is that better, my darling ? " all comically true to a certain sweet maternal tenderness which I had no difficulty in tracing. Now in such a case what is to be reported, of course, is the facts. Yet knowledge of more than the facts is necessary, as I have said above, in order to get the full psychological lesson. We need just the information which concerns the TilE MIND OF THE CHILD. 115 rest of the family and the social influences of tho children's lives. I recognised at once every phrase which the children used in this play, where they got it, what it meant in its origin;d context, and how far its meaning had been modi- fied in this process, called in a figure " social heredity." But as that story is reported to strangers who have no knowledge of the children's social antecedents, how much beyond the mere facts of imitation and personification do they get from it ? And how much the more is this true when we examine those complex games of the nursery which show the brilliant fancy for situa- tion and drama of the wide-awake four-year-old ? Yet we psychologists are free to interpret ; and how rich the lessons even from such a simple scene as this ! As for Helen, what could be a more direct lesson a lived-out exercise in sym- pathy, in altruistic self-denial, in the healthy elevation of her sense of self to the dignity of kindly offices, in the sense of responsibility and agency, in the stimulus to original effort and the designing of means to ends and all of it with the best sense of the objectivity which is quite lost in wretched self-consciousness in us adults, when we personate other characters 1 "\Vhat could further all this highest mental growth better than the game by which the lessons of her mother's daily life are read into the child's little self ? Then, in the case of Elizabeth also, certain things appear. She obeys without command or sanction, she takes in from her sister the elements of personal suggestion in their simpler childish forms. Certainly such scenes, repeated every 116 THE STORt' OF THE MIND. day with such variation of detail, must giv something of the sense of variety and social equality which real life afterward confirms and proceeds upon ; and lessons of the opposite character are learned by the same process. All this exercise of fancy must strengthen the imaginative faculty also. The prolonged situa- tions, maintained sometimes whole days, or pos- sibly weeks, give strength to the imagination and train the attention. I think, also, that the sense of essential reality, and its distinction from the unreal, the merely imagined, is helped by this sort of symbolic representation. Play has its dangers also very serious ones. The adults sometimes set bad examples. The game gives practice in cunning no less than in forbearance, i'ossibly the best service of observation just now is to gather tho facts with a view to the proper recognition and avoidance of the dangers. Finally, I may be allowed a word to interested parents. You can be of no use whatever to psychologists to say nothing of the actual damage you may be to the children unless you know your baties through and through. Especially the fathers ! They are willing to study every- thing else. They know every corner of the ^ouse familiarly, and what is done in it, except the nursery. A man labours for his children ten hours a day, gets his life insured for their support after his death, and yet he lets their mental growth, the formation of their characters, the evolution of their personality, go on by absorp- tion if no worse from common, vulgar, im- ported and changing, often immoral attendant* ! THE CONNECTION OF BODY \VITH MIND. 117 Plato said the State should train the children ; and added that the wisest man should rule the State. This is to say that the wisest man should tend his children ! Hugo gives us, in Jean Yaljean and Cosette, a picture of the true paternal relationship. "NVe hear a certain group of studies called the humanities, and it is right. But the best school in the humanities for every man is in his own house. With this goes, finally, the highest lesson of sport, drama, make-believe, even when we traco it up into the art-impulse the lesson of personal freedom. The child himself sets the limitations of the game, makes the rules, and subjects him- self to them, and then in time pierces the bubble for himself, saying, " I will play no more." All this is the germ of self-regulation, of the control of the impulses, of the voluntary adoption of the ideal, which becomes in later life if so be that he cling to it the pearl of great price. CHAPTER V. THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND PHYSIO- LOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY MENTAL DISEASES. IN the foregoing pages we have had intimations of some of the most important questions which arise about the connection of mind with body. The avenues of the senses are the normal ap- proaches to the mind through the body; and, taking advantage of this, experiments are made 118 THE STORY OF THE MIND. upon the senses. This gives rise to Experimental Psychology, to which the chapter after this is devoted. Besides this, however, we find the general fact that a normal body must in all cases be present with a normal mind, and this makes it possible to arrange so to manipulate the body that changes may be produced in the mind in other ways than through the regular channels of sense. For example, we influence the mind when we drink too much tea or coffee, not to mention the greater changes of the same kind which are produced in the mind of the drinker of too much alcohol or other poisonous substances. All the methodical means of procedure by which the psychologist produces effects of this kind by changing the condition or functions of the body within itself belong to Physiological Psychology. So he modifies the respiration, changes the heart beat, stimulates or slows the circulation of the blood, paralyses the muscles, etc. The ways of procedure may be classified under a few heads, each called a method. 1. Method of Extirpation. This means simply the cutting away of a part of the body, so that any effect which the loss of the part makes upon the mind may be noted. It is used especially upon the brain. Pieces of the brain, great or small indeed, practically the whole brain mass may be removed in many animals without destroying life. Either of the cerebral hemi- spheres entire, together with large portions of the other, may be taken from the human brain without much effect upon the vital processes considered as a whole ; the actual results being THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. 119 the loss of certain mental functions, such as sight, hearing, power of movement of particular limbs, etc., according to the location of the part which is removed. Many of the facts given below under the heading of Localisation were discovered in this way, the guiding principle being that if the loss of a function follows the removal of a certain piece of the brain, then that portion of the brain is directly concerned in the healthy performance of that function. 2. Method of Artificial Stimulation. As the term indicates, this method proceeds by finding f-ome sort of agent by which the physiological processes may be started artificially ; that is, without the usual normal starting of these pro- cesses. For example, the physician who stimu- lates the heart by giving digitalis pursues this method. For psychological purposes this method lias also been fruitful in studying the brain, and electricity is the agent customarily used. The brain is laid bare by removing part of the skull of the animal, and the two electrodes of a battery are placed upon a particular point of the brain whose function it is wished to determine. The current passes out along the nerves which are normally set in action from this particular region, and movements of the muscles follow in certain definite parts and directions. This is an indica- tion of the normal function of the part of the brain which is stimulated. Besides this method of procedure a new one, also by brain stimulation, has recently been em- ployed. It consists in stimulating a spot of the brain as before, but instead of observing the 120 THE STORY OF THE MIND. character of the movement which follows, the observer places galvanometers in connection with various members of the body and observes in which of the galvanometers the current cornea out of the animal's body (the galvanometer being a very delicate instrument for indicating the presence of an electric current). In this way it is determined along what pathways and to what organs the ordinary vital stimulation passes from the brain, provided it be granted that the electric current takes the same course. 3. Method of Intoxication called the " Toxic Method." The remarks above may suffice for a description of this method. The results of the administration of toxic or poisonous agents upon the mind are so general and serious in their character, as readers of De Quincy know, that very little precise knowledge has been acquired by their use. 4. Method of Degeneration. This consists in observing the progress of natural or artificially produced disease or damage to the tissues, mainly the nervous tissues, with a view to discovering the directions of pathways and the locations of connected functions. The degeneration or decay following disease or injury follows the path of normal physiological action, and so discloses it to the observer. This method is of importance to psychology as affording a means of locating and following up the course of a brain injury which accompanies this or that mental disease or defect. Results Localisation of Brain Functions. The mora detailed results of this sort of study, when THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH sniKD. 21 considered on the side of the nervous organism, may be thrown together under the general head of Localisation. The greatest result of all is just the discovery that there is such a thing as localisation in the nervous system of the different mental functions of sensation and movement. We find particular parts of the nervous organism contributing each its share, in a more or less in- dependent way, to the whole flow of the mental life ; and in cases of injury or removal of this part or that, there is a corresponding impairment of the mind. First of all, it is found that the nervous system has a certain up-and-down arrangement from the segments of the spinal cord up to the grey matter of the rind or "cortex" of the large masses or hemispheres in the skull, to which the word brain is popularly applied. This up-and-down arrange- ment shows three so-called " levels " of function. Beginning with the spinal cord, we find the simplest processes, and they grow more complex as we go up toward the brain. The lowest, or "third level," includes all the functions which the spinal cord, and its upper termination, called the "medulla," are able to perform alone that is, without involving neces- sarily the activity of the nervous centres and brain areas which lie above them. Such " thinl- level " functions are those of the life-sustaining processes generally : breathing, heart-beat, vaso- motor action (securing the circulation of the blood), etc. These are all called Automatic processes. They go on regularly from day to day, being constantly stimulated by the normal 122 THE STORY OF THE MIND. changes in the physiological system itself, and having no need of interference from the mind oi the individual. In addition to the automatic functions, there is a second great class of processes which are also managed from the third level ; that is, by the discharge of nervous energy from particular jiru-ts of the spinal cord. These are the so-called Reflex functions. They include all those re- s]K>nses which the nervous system makes to stimulations from the outside, in which the mind has no alternative or control. They happen whether or no. For example, when an object comes near the eye, the lid flies to reflexly. If a tap be made upon the knee while one sits with the legs crossed, the foot flies up reflexly. Various reflexes may be brought out in a sleeper by slight stimulations to this or that region of his body. Furthermore, each of the senses has its own set of reflex adjustments to the stimulations which come to it. The eye accommodates itself in the most delicate way to the intensity of the light, the distance of the ob- ject, the degree of elevation, and the angular dis- placement of what one looks at. The taking of food into the mouth sets up all sorts of reflex movements which do not cease until the food is safely lodged in the stomach, and so on through a series of physiological adaptations which are simply marvellous in their variety and extent. These processes belong to the third level ; and it may surprise the uninitiated to know that not only is the mind quite " out of it," so far as these functions are concerned, but that the brain proper THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. 123 is "out of it" also. Most of these reflexes not only go on when the brain is removed from the skull, but it is an interesting detail that they are generally exaggerated under these conditions. This shows that while the third or lowest level does its own work, it is yet in a sense under the weight what physiologists call the inhibiting action of the higher brain masses. It is not allowed to magnify its part too much, nor to work out of its proper time and measure. The nervous apparatus involved in these " thiid-level " func- tions may be called the "reflex circuit" (see Fig. 2), the path being from the sense organ up to the centre by a " sensory " nerve, and then out by a " motor " nerve to the muscle. Going upward in the nervous system, we next find a certain group of bodies within the gross mass of the brain, certain centres lying between the hemispheres above and the medulla and spinal cord below, and in direct connection by nervous tracts with both of these. The technical names of the more important of these organs are these : the " corpora striata," or striped bodies, of which there are two, the " optic thalami," also two in number, and the "cerebellum," or little brain, situated behind. These make up what is called the " second level " in the system. They seem to be especially concerned with the life of sensa- tion. When the centres lying above them, the hemispheres, are removed, the animal is still able to see, hear, etc., and still able to carry out his well-knit habits of action in response to what he sees and hears. But that is about all. A bird treated thus, for example, these second-level cen- 124 THE STORY OF THE MIND. tres being still intact while the hemispheres arc removed, retains his normal appearance, being quite able to stand upon his feet, to fly, walk, etc. His reflexes are also unimpaired and his inner physiological processes; but it soon becomes noticeable that his mental operations are limited very largely to sensations. He sees his food as usual, but does not remember its use, and makes no attempt to eat it. He sees other birds, but does not respond to their advances. He seems to have forgotten all his education, to have lost all the meanings of things, to have practically no intelligence. A dog in this condition no longer fears the whip, no longer responds to his name, no longer steals food. On the side of his conduct we find that all the actions which he had learned by training now disappear ; the trick dog loses all his tricks. What was called Apperception in the earlier chapter seems to have been taken away with the hemispheres. Coming to the "first level," the highest of all, both in anatomical position and in the character of the functions over which it presides, we see at once what extraordinary importance it has. It comprises the cortex of the hemispheres, which taken together are called the cerebrum. It con- sists of the parts which we supposed cut out of the pigeon and dog just mentioned ; and when we re- member what these animals lose by its removal, we see what the normal animal or man owes to the integrity of this organ. It is above all the organ of mind. If we had to say that the mind as such is located anywhere, we should say in the gray matter of the cortex of the hemispheres of THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. 125 the brain. For although, as we saw, animals with- out this organ can still see and hear and feel, yet we also saw that they could do little else and could learn to do nothing more. All the higher operations of mind come back only when we think of the animal as having normal brain hemispheres. Further, we find this organ in some degree duplicating the function of the second-level cen- tres, for fibres go out from these in- termediate masses to certain areas of the hemispheres, which reproduce locally the senses of hearing, sight, etc. By these fibres the functions of the senses are "pro- jected " out to the surface of the sense organ brain, and the term FIG. *. j cmt = reflex circuit ; i c "projection fibres" *P m P mt = votary circuit, is applied to the nerves which make these connections. Tae hemi- spheres are not content even with the most im- portant of all functions the strictly intelligent but they are jealous, so to speak, of the simple sensations which the central brain masses are capable of awaking. And in the very highest ani- mals, probably only monkeys and man, we find 126 THE STORY OF THE MIND. that the hemispheres have gone so far with thoii jealousy as to usurp the function of sensation. This is seen in the singular fact that with a monkey or man the removal of the cortical cen- tres makes the animal permanently blind or deaf, as the case may be, while in the lower animals such removal does not have this result, so long as the " second-level " organs are unimpaired. The brain paths of the functions of the second and first levels taken together constitute the so-called " voluntary circuit " (see Fig. 2). In addition to this general demarcation of functions as higher and lower first, second, and third level in their anatomical seat, many inter- esting discoveries have been made in the localisa- tion of the simpler functions in the cortex itself. The accompanying figures (Figs. 3 and 4) will show the principal centres which have been deter- mined; and it is not necessary to dwell upon additional details which are still under discussion. The areas marked out are in general the same on both hemispheres, and that is to say that most of the centres are duplicated. The speech centres, however, are on one side only. And in certain cases the nervous fibres which connect the cortex with the body-organs cross below the brain to the opposite side of the body. This is always true in cases of muscular movement ; the movements of the right side of the body are controlled by the left hemisphere, and vice versa The stimulations coming in from the body to the brain generally travel on the same side, although in certain cases parallel impulses are also sent over to the other hemisphere as well. For example, the very im- THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. 127 portant optic nerve, which is necessary to vision, comes from each eye separately in a large bunch of fibres, and divides at the base of the brain, so that each eye sends impulses directly to the visual centres of both hemispheres. Of all the special questions which have arisen about the localisation of functions in the nervous Flo. 3. Outer surface of left hemisphere of the brain (modified from Exner) : a, fissure of Rolando ; 6, fissure of Sylvius. system, that of the function of certain areas known as " motor centres " has been eagerly dis- cussed. The region on both sides of the fissure of Rolando in Fig. 3 contains a number of areas which give, when stimulated with electricity, very definite and regular movements of certain 128 THE STORY OF THE MIND. muscles on the opposite side of the body. By careful exploration of these areas the principal muscular combinations those for facial move- ments, neck movements, movements of the arm, trunk, legs, tail, etc. have been very precisely ascertained. It was concluded from these facts that these areas were respectively the centres for the discharge of the nervous impulses run- ning in each case to the muscles which were moved. The evidence recently forthcoming, however, is leading investigators to think that there is no cortical centre for the " motor " or outgoing processes properly so called, and that these Eolandic areas, although called " motor," are really centres for the incoming reports of the movements of the respective muscles after the movements take place, and also for the preserva- tion of the memories of movement which the mind must have before a particular movement can be brought about (the mental images of movement which we called on an earlier page Kinsesthetic Equivalents). These centres being aroused in the thought of the movement desired, which is the necessary mental preparation for the movement, they in turn stimulate the real motor centres which lie below the cortex at the second level. This is in the present writer's judgment the preferable interpretation of the evidence which we now have. The Speech Zone. Many interesting facts of the relation of body and mind have come to light in connection with the speech functions. Speech is complex, both on the psychological and also on the physiological side, and easily deranged in THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. 129 ways that take on such remarkable variety that they are a source of very fruitful indications to the inquirer. It is now proved that speech is not a faculty, a single definite capacity which a man either has or has not. It is rather a com- plex thing resulting from the combined action of uiany brain centres, and, on the mental side, of FIG. 4. Inner (mesial) surface of the right hemisphere of the brain (modified from Schafer and Horsiey). In both figures the shaded area is the motor zone. many so-called faculties or functions. In order to speak, a man normally requires what is called a " zone " in his brain, occupying a large portion of the outside lateral region (see Fig. 5). It ex- tends, as in the figure, from the Rolandic region (K), where the kinsesthetic lip-and-tongue memo- ries of words are aroused, backward into the temporal region (A), where the auditory memo- 130 THE STORY OF THE MIND. rics of words spring up ; then upward to the angalar gyrus in the rear or occipital region (V), where in turn the visual pictures of the written or printed words rise to perform their part in the performance ; and with all this combination there is associated the centre for the movements of the hand and arm employed in writing, an area higher up in the Rolandic region (above K). In the same general zone we also find the music function located, the musical sounds being re- ceived in the auditory centre very near the area for words heard (A), while the centre for musical expression is also in the Rolandic region. Furthermore, as may be surmised, the reading of musical notation requires the visual centre, just as does the reading of words. In addition to this, we find the curious fact that the location of the whole speech zone is in one hemisphere only. Its location on the left or the right, in particular cases, is also an indication as to whether the per- son is right- or left-handed ; this means that the process which makes the individual either right- or left-handed is probably located in the speech zone, or near it. A large majority of persons have the speech zone in the left hemisphere, and are right-handed; it Avill be seen that the figure (5) shows the left hemisphere of the brain, and with it the right hand holding the pen. Defects of Speech Aphasia. The sorts of in- jury which may befall a large zone of the brain arc so many that weil-nigh endless forms of speech defect occur. All impairment of speech is called Aphasia, and it is called Motor Aphasia THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. 131 FIG. 5. The speech zone (after Collins ; . 132 XII E STORY OF THE MIND. when the apparatus is damaged on the side of movement. If the fibres coming out from the speech zone be impaired, so that the impulses cannot go to the muscles of articulation and breathing, we have Subcortical Motor Aphasia. Its peculiarity is that the person knows perfectly what he wants to say, but yet cannot speak the words. He is able to read silently, can understand the speech of others, and can remember music ; but, with his inability to speak, he is generally also unable to write or to perform on a musical instrument (yet this last is not always the case). Then we find new variations if his " lesion " as all kinds of local nervous defects are called is in tho brain centre in the Rolandic region, where arise the memories of the movements required. In this latter case the aphasic patient can readily imitate speech so long as he hears it, can imitate writing so long as it lies before him, but cannot do any independent speaking or writing for him- self. With this there goes another fact which characterises this form of aphasia, and which is called Cortical, as opposed to the Subcortical Motor Aphasia described above, that the person may not be able even to think of the words which are appropriate to express his meaning. Vhis is the case when those persons who depend upon the memories of the movements of lip and tongue in their normal speech are injured as described. Besides the two forms of Motor Aphasia now spoken of, there are certain other speech defects which are called Sensory Aphasia. When a THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. 133 lesion occurs in one of the areas of the brain in the speech zone in which the requisite memories of words seen or heard have their seat as when a ball player is struck over the sight centre in the back of the head special forms of sensory aphasia show themselves. The ball player will, in this case, have Visual Aphasia, being unable to speak in proportion as he is accustomed in his speaking to depend upon the images of written or printed words. He is quite unable to read or write from a copy which he sees ; but he may be able, nevertheless, to write from dictation, and also to repeat words which are spoken to him. This is because in these latter performances ho uses his auditory centre, and not the visual. There are, indeed, some persons who are so independent of vision that the loss of the visual centre does not much impair their normal speech. When, again, an injury comes to the auditory centre in the temporal region, we find the con- verse of the case just described ; the defect is then called Auditory Aphasia. The patient can- not now speak or write words which he hears, and cannot speak spontaneously in proportion as he is accustomed to depend upon his memories of the word sounds. But in most cases he can still both speak and write printed or written words which he sees before him. These cases may serve to give the reader an idea of the remarkable delicacy and complexity of the function of speech. It becomes more evident when, instead of cases of gross lesion, which destroy a whole centre, or cut the connec- 134 THE STORY OF THE MIND. tions between centres, we have disease of the brain which merely destroys a few cells in the gray matter here or there. We then find partial loss of speech, such as is seen in patients who lack only certain classes of words ; perhaps the verbs, or the conjunctions, or proper names, etc. ; or in the patients who speak, but yet do not say what they mean ; or, again, in persons who have two verbal series going on at once, one of which they cannot control, and which they often attri- bute to an enemy inside them, in control of the vocal organs, or to a persecutor outside whose abuse they cannot avoid hearing. In cases of violent sick headache we often miscall objects without detecting it ourselves, and in delirium the speech mechanism works from violent organic discharges altogether without control. The senile old man talks nonsense so-called gibberish thinking he is discoursing properly. In the main cases of Aphasia of distinct sen- sory and motor types psychological analysis is now so adequate and the anatomical localisa- tion so far advanced that the physicians have sufficient basis for their diagnosis, and make in- ferences looking toward treatment. Many cases of tumour, of clot on the brain, of local pressure from the skull, and of hsemorrhage or stopping up of the blood vessels in a limited area, have been cured through the indications given by the particu- lar forms and degrees of aphasia shown by the pa- tients. The skull is opened at the place indicated by the defect of speech, the lesion found where the diagnosis suggested, and the cause removed. This account of Localisation will suggest to THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. 135 ihe reader the truth that there is no science of Phrenology. No progress has been made in local- ising the intelligence ; and the view is now very general that the whole brain, with all its inter- change of impulses from part to part, is involved in thinking. As for locating particular emotions and qualities of temperament, it is quite absurd. Furthermore, the irregularities of the skull do not indicate local brain differences. It is thought that the relative weight of the brain may be an indica- tion of intellectual endowment, especially when the brain weight is compared with the weight of the rest of the body, and that culture in particu- lar lines increases the surface of the cortex by deepening and multiplying the convolutions. But these statements cannot be applied off-hand to individuals, as the practice of phrenology would require. Defects of Memory Amnesia. The cases given just above, where the failure of speech was seen to be due to the loss of certain memories of words, illustrate also a series of mental defects, which are classed together as Amnesias. Any failure in mem- ory, except the normal lapses which we call for- getfulness, is included under this term. Just as the loss of word memories occasions inability to speak, so that of other sorts of memories occa- sions other functional disturbances. A patient may forget objects, and so not know how to use his penknife or to put on his shoes. He may for- get events, and so give false witness as to the past. One may forget himself also, and so have, in eome degree, a different character, as is seen, in an exaggerated way, in persons who Have so- 136 THE STORY OF THE MIND. called Dual Personality. These patients suddenly fall into a secondary state, in which they forget all the events of their ordinary lives, but remem- ber all the events of the earlier periods of the sec- ondary personality. This state may be described as " general " amnesia, in contrast to the " par- tial " amnesia of the other case given, in which only particular classes of memories are impaired. The impairment of memory with advancing years also illustrates both " general " and " par- tial " Amnesia. The old man loses his memory of names, then of other words, then of events, and so gradually becomes incapable of much retention of any sort. Defects of Will Aboulia. A few words may suffice to characterise the great class of mental defects which arise on the side of action. All in- ability to perform intentional acts is called Abou- lia, or Lack of Will. Certain defects of speech mentioned above illustrate this : cases in which the patient knows what he wishes to say and yet cannot say it. This is the type of all the " par- tial " Aboulias. There may be no lack in deter- mination and effort, yet the action may be impos- sible. But, in contrast with this, there is a more grave defect called " general " Aboulia. Here we find a weakening of resolution, of determination, associated with some lack of self-control, showing itself frequently by a certain hesitation or indeci- sion. The patient says : " I cannot make up my mind," " I cannot decide." In exaggerated cases it becomes a form of mania called " insanity of doubt." The patient stands before a door for an hour hesitating as f^ whether he can open it or THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. 137 not, or carries to its extreme the experience we all sometimes have of finding it necessary to re- turn again and again to make sure that we have locked the door or shut the draught of tho furnace. With these illustrations our notice of mental defects may terminate. The more complex troubles, the various insanities, manias, phobias, etc., cannot be briefly described. Moreover, they arc still wrapped in the profoundest obscurity. To the psychologist, however, there are certain guiding principles through the maze of facts, and I may state them in conclusion. First, all mental troubles involve diseases of the brain and can be cured only as the brain is cured. It does not follow, of course, that in certain cases treatment by mental agencies, such as suggestion, arousing of expectation, faith, etc., may not be more helpful here, when wisely employed, than in troubles which do not involve the mind ; but yet the end to be attained is a physical as well as mental cure, and the means in the present state of knowledge, at any rate, are mainly physical means. The psychologist knows practically nothing about the laws which govern the influence of mind on body. The principle of Suggestion is so obscure in its concrete work- ing that the most practised and best-informed operators find it impossible to control its use or to predict its results. To give countenance, in this state of things, to any pretended system or practice of mind cure, Christian science, spiritual healing, etc., which leads to the neglect of ordin- ary medical treatment, is to discredit the legiti 138 THE STORY OF THE MIND. mate practice of medicine and to let loose an enemy dangerous to the public health. Moreover, such things produce a form of hysterical subjectivism which destroys sound judgment, and dissolves the sense of reality which it has taken modern science many genera- tions to build up. Science has all along had to combat such wresting of its more obscure and unexplained facts into alliance with the ends of practical quackery, fraud, and superstition; and psychologists need just now to be especially alive to their duty of combating the forms of this alliance which arise when the newer results of psychology are so used, whether it be to sup- plement the inadequate evidence of " thought- transference," to support the claims of spiritual- ism, or to justify in the name of " personal liberty " the substitution of a " healer " for the trained physician. The parent who allows his child to die under the care of a " Christian Science healer" is as much a criminal from neglect as the one who, going but a step further in precisely the same direction, brings his child to starvation on a diet of faith. In France and Russia experimenting in hypnotism on healthy persons has been restricted by law to licensed experts ; what, compared with that, shall we say to this wholly amateurish experimenting with the diseased 1 Let the " healer " heal all he can, but let him not experiment to the extremity of life and death with the credulity and superstition of the people who think one " doctor " is as good as another. Second, many experts agree that diseases of THE CONNECTION OF BODY WITH MIND. 139 the mind, whatever their brain seat may be, all involve impairment of the Attention. This, at any rate, is a general mark of a deranged or defective mind. The idiot lacks power of atten- tion. The maniac lacks control of his attention. The deluded lacks grasp and flexibility of atten- tion. The crank can only attend to one thing. The old man is feeble in the attention, having lost his hold. So it goes. The attention is the instrument of the one sort of normal mental activity called Apperception, and so impairment of the attention shows itself at once in some particular form of defect. Third, it is interesting to know that in pro- gressive mental failure the loss of the powers of the mind takes place in an order which is the reverse of that of their original acquisition. The most complex functions, which are acquired last are the first to show impairment. In cases of general degeneration, softening of the brain, etc., the intelligence and moral nature are first affected, then memory, association, and acquired actions of all sorts, while there remain, latest of all, actions of the imitative kind, most of the deep-set habits, and the instinctive reflex, and automatic functions. This last condition is seen in the wretched victim of dementia and in the congenital idiot. The latter has, in addition to his life processes and instincts, little more than the capacity for parrot-like imitation. By this he acquires the very few items of hia education. The recovery of the patient shows the same stages again, but in the reversed direction: he 140 THE STORY OF THE MIND. pursues the order of the original acquisition, a process which physicians call Re-evolution. CHAPTER VI. HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND EXPERI- MENTAL PSYCHOLOGY. IN recent years the growth of the method of experimenting with bodies in laboratories in the different sciences has served to raise the question whether the mind may not be experimented with also. This question has been solved in so far that psychologists produce artificial changes in the stimulations to the senses and in the arrangements of the objects and conditions existing about a person, and so secure changes also in his mental states. What we have seen of Physiological Psychology illustrates this general way of pro- ceeding, for in such studies, changes in the physio- logical processes, as in breathing, etc., are con- sidered as causing changes in the mind. In Experimental Psychology, however, as distin- guished from Physiological Psychology, we agree to take only those influences which are outside the body, such as light, sound, temperature, etc., keeping the subject as normal as possible in all respects. A great many laboratories have now been es- tablished in connection with the universities in Germany, France, and the United States. They differ very much from one another, but their nun wE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 141 common purpose is so to experiment upon the mind, through changes in the stimulations to which the individual is subjected, that tests may be made of his sensations, his ability to re- member, the exactness and kind of movements, etc. The working of these laboratories and the sort of research carried out in them may be illustrated best, perhaps, by a description of some of the results, apparatus, methods, etc., employed in my own laboratory during the past year. The end in view will, I trust, be considered sufficient justification for the degree of personal reference which this occasions, since greater concreteness and reality attach to definite descriptions such as this. Other laboratories, as those at Harvard and Columbia Universities, take up similar pro- blems by similar methods. I shall therefore go on to describe some recent work in the Princeton laboratory. Of the problems taken up in the laboratory, certain ones may be selected for somewhat detailed explanation, since they are from widely different spheres and illustrate different methods of procedure. I. Experiments on the Temperature Sense. For a score of years it has been suspected that we have a distinct sense, with a nerve apparatus of its own, for the feeling of different temperatures on the skin. Certain investigators found that this was probably true ; it is proved by the fact that certain drugs alter the sensibility of the skin to hot and cold stimulations. Another advance was made when it was found 142 THE STORY OF THE MIND. that sensations of either hot or cold may be had from regions which are insensible at the same time to the other sort of stimulation, cold or hot. Certain minute points were discovered which re- port cold when touched Avith a cold point, but give no feeling from a hot object ; while other points would respond only with a sensation from heat, never giving cold. It was concluded that we have two temperature senses, one for hot and the other for cold. Taking the problem at this point, Mr. C. 1 wished to define more closely the relation of the two sorts of sensation to each other, and thought he could do so by a method by which he might repeat the stimulation of a series of exact spots, very minute points on the skin, over and over again, thus eacuring a number of records of the results for both hot and cold over a given area. He chose an area of skin on the forearm, shaved it carefully, and proceeded to explore it with the smallest points of metals which could be drawn along the skin without pricking or tearing. These points were attached to metallic cylinders, and around the cylinders rubber bands were placed ; the cylinders were then thrust in hot or cold water kept at certain regular temperatures, and lifted by the rubber bands. They were placed point down, with equal pressure, upon the points of the skin in the area chosen. In this way, points which responded only to hot, and also those re- sponding only to cold, were found, marked with delicate ink marks in each case, until the whole area was explored and marked in different colours 1 Mr. J. F Crawford, graduate student. HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 143 This had often been done before. It remained to devise a way of keeping these records, so that the markings might all be removed from the skin, and new explorations made over the same surface. This was necessary in order to see whether the results secured were always the same. The theory that there were certain nervous endings in the skin corresponding to the little points required that each spot should be in exactly the same place whenever the experiment was re peated. Mr. C. made a number of so-called "trans parent transfer frames." They are rectangular pieces of cardboard, with windows cut in them. The windows are covered with thin architect's paper, which is very transparent. This frame is put over the forearm in such a way that the paper in the window comes over the markings made on the arm. The markings show through very clearly, and the points are copied on the paper. Then certain boundary marks at the corners are made, both on the paper and on the arm, at ex- actly the same places, the frame is removed, and all the markings on the arm are erased except the boundary points. The result is that at any time the frames can be put over the arm again by matching the boundary points, and then the original temperature spots on the skin will be shown by the markings on the paper window. Proceeding to repeat the exploration of the same area in this way, Mr. C. makes records of many groupings of points for both hot and cold sensations on the same area ; he then puts the frames one upon another, holds them up before 144 THK ATORY OF 1HE MIND. a window so that they have a bright background, and is thus able to see at a glance how nearly the results of the different sittings correspond. His results, put very briefly, fail to confirm the theory that the sense of temperature has an apparatus of fixed spots for heat and other fixed spots for cold. For when he puts the different markings for heat together he finds the spots are not the same, but that those of one frame fall between those of another, and if several are put together the points fill up a greater or smaller area. The same for the cold spots ; they fill a continuous area. He finds, however, as other investigators have found, that the heat areas are generally in large measure separate from the cold areas, only to a certain extent overlapping here and there, and also that there are regions of the skin where we have very little sense of either sort of temperature. The general results will show, therefore, if they should be confirmed by other investigators, that our temperature sense is located in what might be called somewhat large blotches on the skin, and not in minute spots ; while the evidence still remains good, however, to show that we have two senses for temperature, one for cold and the other for hot. II. Reaction-Time Experiments. Work in so- called "reaction times" constitutes one of the most important and well-developed chapters in experimental psychology. In brief, the experi- ment involved is this : To find how long it takes a person to receive a sense impression of any kind for example, to hear a sound-signal and HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 145 to move his hand or other member in response to the impression. A simple arrangement is as follows : Sit the subject comfortably, tap a bell in such a way that the tapping also makes an electric current and starts a clock, and instruct the subject to press a button with his finger as soon as possible after he hears the bell. The pressing of the button by him breaks the current and stops the clock. The dial of the clock in- dicates the actual time which has elapsed between the bell (signal) and his response with his finger (reaction). The clock used for exact work is likely to be the Hipp chronoscope, which gives on its dials indications of time intervals in thousandths of a second. For the sake of keep- ing the conditions constant and preventing dis- turbance, the wires are made long, so that the clock and the experimenter may be in one room, while the bell, the punch key, and the subject are in another, with the door closed. This method of getting reaction times has been in use for a number of years, especially by the astrono- mers who need to know, in making their obser- vations, how much time is taken by the observer in recording a transit or other observation. It is part of the astronomer's " personal equation." Proceeding with this " simple reaction " experi- ment as a basis, the psychologists have varied the instructions to the subject so as to secure from him the different times which he takes for more complicated mental processes, such as distinguish- ing between two or more impressions, counting, multiplying, dividing, etc., before reacting ; or they have him wait for an associated idea to K 146 THE STORY OF THE MIND. come up before giving his response, with many other variations. By comparing these different times among themselves, interesting results are reached concerning the mental processes involved and also about the differences of different in- dividuals in the simpler operations of their daily lives. The following research carried out by Mr. B. x serves to illustrate both of these asser- tions. Mr. B. wished to inquire further into a fact found out by several persons by this method : the fact that there is an important difference in the length of a person's reaction time according to the direction of his attention during the ex- periment. If, for example, Mr. X. be tested, it is possible that he may prefer to attend strictly to the signal, letting his finger push the key without direct care and supervision. If this be true, and we then interfere with his way of pro- ceeding, by telling him that he must attend to his finger, and allow the signal to take care of itself, we find that he has great difficulty in doing so, grows embarrassed, and his reaction time becomes very irregular and much longer. Yet another person, say Y., may show just the opposite state of things ; he finds it easier to pay attention to his hand, and when he does so he gets shorter and also more regular times than when he attends to the signal-sound. It occurred to Mr. B. that the striking differ- ences given by different persons in this matter of the most favourable direction of the attention might be connected with the facts brought out 1 The writer. HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 147 by the physiological psychologists in connection with speech ; namely, that one person is a "visual," in speaking, using mainly sight images of words, while another is a "motor," using mainly muscular images, and yet another an "auditive," using mainly sound images. If the differences are so marked in the matter of speech, it seemed likely that they might also extend to other functions, and the so-called " type " of a person in his speech might show itself in the relative lengths of his reaction times according as he attended to one class of images or another. Calling this the "type theory" of reaction times, and setting about testing four different persons in the laboratory, the problem waa divided into two parts ; first, to direct all tho individuals selected to find out, by examining their mental preferences in speaking, reading, writing, dreaming, etc., the class of images which they ordinarily depended most upon ; and then to see by a series of experiments whether their reaction times to these particular classes of images were shorter than to others, and especially whether the times were shorter when attention was given to these images than when it was given to the muscles used in the reactions. The mean- ing of this would be that if the reaction should be shorter to these images than to the corre- sponding muscle images, or to the other classes of images, then the reaction time of an individual would show his mental type, and be of use in testing it. This would be a very important matter if it should held, seeing that many ques- tions bota in medicine and in education, which 148 THE STORY OF THE MIND. involve the ascertaining of the mental character of the individual person, would profit by such an exact method. The results on all the subjects confirmed the supposition. For example, one of them, Mr. C., found from an independent examination of him- self, most carefully made, that he depended very largely upon his hearing in all the functions mentioned. When he thought of words, he re- membered how they sounded ; when he dreamed, his dreams were full of conversation and other sounds. When he wrote, he thought continually of the way the words and sentences would sound if spoken. Without knowing of this, many series of reaction experiments were made on him ; the result showed a remarkable difference between the lengths of his reactions, according as he directed his attention to the sound or to his hand ; a difference showing his time to be one half shorter when he paid attention to the sound. The same was seen when he reacted to lights ; the attention went preferably to the light, not to the hand ; but the difference was less than in the case of sounds. So it was an unmistakable fact in his case that the results of the reaction experi- ments agreed with his independent decision as to his mental type. In none of the cases did this correspondence fail, although all were not so pronounced in their type preferences as was Mr. C. The second part of the research had in view the question whether reaction times taken upon speech would show the same thing; that is, whether in Mr. C.'s case, for example, it would HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 149 be found that his reaction made by speaking, as soon as he heard the signal or saw the light, would be shorter when he paid attention to the signal than when he gave attention to his mouth and lips. For this purpose a mouth key waa used which made it possible for the subject, FlO. 6. Mouth-key (Isometric drawing). The metallic tongue E swings over the mercury H, making or breaking the circuit AHEDBor CEHA. The tongue is moved by a puff ol air through the funnel F. (Devised by Prof. W. Libbey.) simply by emitting a puff of breath from his lips, to break an electric current and thus stop the chronoscope as soon as possible after hearing the signal. The mouth key is figured herewith (Fig. 6). 150 THE STORY OF THE MIND. This experiment was also carried out on all the subjects, none of them having any know- ledge of the end in view, and the experimenters also not having, as yet, worked out the results of the earlier research. In all the cases, again, the results showed that, for speech, the same thing held as for the hand namely, that the shortest reaction times were secured when the subject paid attention to the class of images for which he had a general preference. In Mr. C.'s case, for example, it was found that the time it took him to speak was much shorter when he paid strict attention to the expected sound than when he attended to his vocal organs. So for the other cases. If the individual's general preference is for muscular images, we find that the quickest time is made when attention is given to the mouth and lips. Such is the case with Mr. B. The general results go to show, therefore and four cases showing no exception, added to the indications found by other writers, make a general conclusion very probable that in the ifferences in reaction times, as secured by giving the attention this way or that, we have general indications of the individual's temperament, or at least of his mental preferences as set by his education. These indications agree with those found in the cases of aphasia known as "motor," "visual," "auditory," etc., already mentioned. The early examination of children by this method would probably be of great service in determin- ing proper courses of treatment, subjects ol study, modes of discipline, tendencies to fatigue HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 151 and embarrassment, and the direction of best progress in education. This research may be taken to illustrate the use of the reaction-time method in investigating such complex processes as attention, tempera- ment, etc. The department which includes the various time measurements in psychology is now called Mental Chronometry ; the older term, Psychometry, being less used on account of its ambiguity. III. An Optical Illusion. In the sphere of vision many very interesting facts are constantly coming to light. Sight is the most complex of the senses, the most easily deranged, and, withal, the most necessary to our normal existence. The report of the following experimental study will have the greater utility, since, apart from any intrinsic novelty or importance the results may prove to have, it shows some of the general bearings of the facts of vision in relation to ^Esthetics, to the theory of Illusions, and to the function of Judgment. Illusion of the senses is due either to purely physiological causes or to the operation of the principle of Assimilation, which has already been remarked upon. In the latter case it illustrates the fact that at any time there is a general dis- position of the mind to look upon a thing under certain forms, patterns, etc., to which it has grown accustomed ; and to do this it is led sometimes to distort what it sees or hears uncon- sciously to itself. So it falls into errors of judg- ment, through the trap which is set by its own manner of working. Nowhere is the matter 152 THE STORY OF THE MIND. better illustrated than in the sphere of vision. The number of illusions of vision is remarkable. "NVe are constantly taking shapes and forms for something slightly different from what, by measurement, we actually find them to be. And psychologists are attempting with rather poor success so far to find some general principles of the mechanism of vision which will account for the great variety of its illusions. Among these principles one is known as Con- trast. It is hardly a principle as yet. It is rather a word used to cover all illusions which spring up when surfaces of different sizes and shapes, looked at together or successively, are misjudged with reference to one another. Wishing to investigate this in a simple way, the following experiment was planned and carried out by Mr. B. He wished to find out whether, if two de- tached surfaces of different sizes be gazed at together, the linear distances of 'the field of vision (the whole scene visible at once) would be at all misjudged. To test this, he put in the window (W) x of the dark room a filling of white cardboard in which two square holes had been cut (S S'). The sides of the squares were of certain very unequal lengths. Then a slit was made between the middle points of the sides of the squares next to each other, so that there was a narrow path or trough joining the squares between their adjacent sides. Inside the dark room he arranged a bright light so that it would 1 This and the following letters ID parentheses refer tc Fig. 7. HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 153 illuminate this trough, but not be seen by a person seated some distance in front of the win- dow in the next room. A needle (D) was hung on a pivot behind the cardboard, so that its point could move along the bright trough in either direction ; and on the needle was put the arma- ture (A) of an electro-magnet which, when a current passed, would be drawn instantly to the magnet (E), and so stop the needle exactly at the point which it had then reached. A clock motor (Cm) was arranged in such a way as to carry the needle backwards and forwards regularly over the slit; and the electro-magnet was connected by wires with a punch key (K) on a table beside the sub- ject in the next room. All being now ready, the subject, Mr. S., is told to watch the needle which appears as a bead of light travelling along the slit, and stop it when it conies to the middle point of the line, by pressing the electric key. The experimenter, who stands behind the window in the dark room, reads on a scale (mm.) marked in millimetres the exact point at which the needle stops, releases the needle by breaking the current, thus allowing it to return slowly over the line again. This gives the subject another opportunity to stop it at what he judges to be the exact middle of the line, and so on. The accompanying figure (Fig. 7) shows the entire arrangement. A great many experiments performed in this way, with the squares set both vertically and horizontally, and with several persons, brought a striking and very uniform result. The point selected by the subject as the middle is regularly 154 THE STORY OF THE MIND. too far toward the smaller square. Not a little, indeed, but a very appreciable amount. The HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 155 amount of the displacement, or, roughly speak- ing, of the illusion, increases as the larger square is made larger and the smaller one smaller ; or, put in a sentence, the amount varies directly with the ratio of the smaller to the larger square tide. Finding such an unmistakable illusion by this method, Mr. B. thought that if it could be tested by an appeal to people generally, it would be of great gain. It occurred to him that the way to do this would be to reverse the conditions of the experiment in the following way : He prepared the figures given on p. 156, in which the two squares are made of suitable relative size, a line is drawn between them, and a point on the line is plainly marked. This he had printed in a weekly journal, and asked the readers of the journal to get their friends, after merely looking at the figure (i.e., without knowing the result to be expected), to say as the reader may now do before reading further whether the point on the line (see p. 156) is in the middle or not; and if not, in which direction from the true middle it lies. The results from hundreds of persons of all manner of occupations, ages, and of both sexes, agree in saying that the point lies too far toward the larger square. In reality it is in the exact middle. This is just the opposite of the result of the experiments in the laboratory, where the conditions were the reverse, i.e., to find the middle as it appears to the eye. Here, there- fore, we have a complete confirmation of the illusion ; and it is now fully established that in all cases in which the conditions of this experi- HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 157 ment are realised we make a constant mistake in estimating distances by the eye. * For instance, if a town committee wish to erect a statue to their local hero in the public square, and if on two opposite sides of the square there are buildings of very different heights, the statue should not be put in the exact middle of the square, if it is to give the best effect from a dis- tance. It should be placed a little toward the smaller building. A colleague of the writer found, when this was first made public, that the pictures in his house had actually been hung in such a way as to allow for this allusion. Whenever a picture was to be put up between two others of consider- able difference of size, or between a door (large) and a window (small), it had actually been hung a little nearer to the smaller toward the small picture or toward the window and not in the true middle. It is probable that interesting applications of this illusion may be discovered in aesthetics. For wherever in drawing or painting itr is wished to indicate to the observer that a point is midway between two lines of different lengths, we should find that the artist, in order to produce this effect most adequately, deviates a little from the true middle. So in architecture, the effect of a con- trast of masses often depends upon the sense of bilateral balance, symmetry, or equality, in 1 In redrawing the figure on a larger sheet (which ii recommended), the connecting line may be omitted, only the mid-point being marked. Some get a better effect with two circles, the intervening distance being divided midway by a dot, as on p. 158. o HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 159 which this visual error would naturally come into play. Indeed, it is only necessary to recall to mind that one of the principal laws of aesthetic effect in the matter of right line proportion is the relation of " one to one," as it is called, or equal division, to see the wide sphere of application of this illusion. In all such cases the mistake of judgment would have to be allowed for if masses of unequal size lie at the ends of the line which is to be divided. IV. The Accuracy of Memory. Another in- vestigation may be cited to illustrate quite a different department. It aimed to find out some- thing about the rate at which memory fades with the lapse of time. Messrs. W., S., and B. 1 began by formulating the different ways in which tests may be made on individuals to see how accurate their memories are after different periods of time. They found that three different tests might be employed, and called them "methods" of investi- gating memory. These are, first, the method of Reproduction. The individual is asked to repro- duce, as in an oral or written examination, what he remembers of something told him a certain time before. This is the ordinary method of the schools and colleges, of civil-service examinations, etc. Second, the method of Identification, which calls upon the person to identify a thing, sentence, report, etc., a second or third time, as being the same in all respects as that which he experienced the first time it appeared. Third, the method of Selection, in which we show to the person a number of things, sentences, reports, descriptions 1 Prof. H. C. Warren, Mr. W. J. Shaw, and the writer. 160 THE STORY OF THE MIND. of objects, etc., and require him to select from them the ones which are exactly the same as those he has had before. These methods \vill be better understood from the account now to be given of the way they were carried out on a large number of students. The first experiments were made by Messrs. S. and B. in the University of Toronto on a class of students numbering nearly three hundred, of whom about one-third were women. The in- structors showed to the class certain squares of cardboard of suitable size, and asked them to do the following three things on different days: First, to reproduce from memory, with pencil on paper, squares of the same size as those shown, after intervals of one, ten, twenty, and forty minutes (this gives results by the method of Reproduction) ; second, to say whether a new set of squares, which were shown to them after the same intervals, were the same in size as those which they had originally seen, smaller, or larger, (illustrating the method of Identification ) ; third, they were shown a number of squares of slightly different sizes, again at the same intervals, and asked to select from them the ones which they found to be the same size as those originally seen (method of Selection). The results from all these experiments were combined with those of another series, secured from a large class of Princeton students ; and the figure (Fig. 8) shows by curves something of the result. The figure is given in order that the reader may understand by its explanation the "graphic method" of plotting statistical results, HOW WE EXPERIMENT OX THE MIND. 1G1 which, with various complications, is now employed in psychology as well as in the other positive sciences. Briefly described in words, it was found that the three methods agreed (the curves are parallel) 1 in showing that during the first ten minutes there was a great falling off in the accuracy of memory (slant in the curves from to 10) ; that then, be- tween ten and twenty minutes, memory remained relatively faithful (the curves are nearly level from 10 to 20), and that a rapid falling off in ao- Fio. 8. Memory curves : I. Method of Selection. II. Method of Identification. curacy occurred after twenty minutes (shown by the slant in the lines from 20 to 40). Further, the different positions of the curves show certain things when properly understood. The curve secured by the method of Reproduction (not given in the figure) shows results which are least accurate, because most variable. The reason of this is that in drawing the squares to reproduce the one remembered, the student is in- 1 This figure shows curves for two of the methods only, Selection and Identification. L 102 THE STORY OF THE MIND. fluenced by the size of the paper he uses, by tad varying accuracy of his control over his hand a ud arm (the results vary, for example, according as he uses his right or left hand), and by all sorts oi associations with square objects which may at the time be in his mind. In short, this method gives his memory of the square a chance to be fully assimilated to his current mental state during the interval, and there is no corrective outside of him to keep him true. That this difficulty is a real one no one who has examined students will be disposed to deny, When we ask them to reproduce what the text- book or the professor's lectures have taught, we also ask them to express themselves accurately. Now the science of correct expression is a thing in which the average student has had no training. With his difficulty in remembering is connected his difficulty of expression ; and with it all goes a certain embarrassment, due to responsibility, psr- sonal fear, and dread of disgrace. So the results finally obtained by this method are really very complex. One of the curves, that given by the method of Selection, (I.), also shows memory to be interfered with by a certain influence. We saw in conn ec- tion with the experiments reported above thftt, even in the most elementary arrangements oi squares in the visual fields, an element of contr ast comes in to interfere with our judgment of size. This we find confirmed in these experiments wh ei the method of Selection is used. By this methixi we show a number of squares side by side, asking the individual to select the one he saw befora HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 163 All the squares, being shown at once, come into contrast with one another on the background; and so his judgment of the size of the one he re- members is distorted. This, again, is a real influence in our mental lives, leading to actual illusion. An unscrupulous lawyer may gradually modify the story which his client or a witness tells by constantly adding to what is really remembered, other details so expertly contrasted with the facts, or so neatly interposed among them, that the witness gradually incorporates them in his memory and so testifies more nearly as the lawyer desires. In our daily lives another element of contrast is also very strong that due to social opinion. "SVe constantly modify our memories to agree more closely with the truths of social belief, paring down unconsciously the differ- ence between our own and others' reports of things. If several witnesses of an event be allowed to compare notes from time to time, they will gradually come to tell more nearly the same story, The other curve (II.) in the figure, that secured by the method of Identification, seemed to the investigators to be the most accurate. It is not subject to the errors due to expression and to contrast, and it has the advantage of allowing the subject the right to recognise the square. It is shown to him again, with no information that it is the same, and he decides whether, from his re- membrance of the earlier one, it is the same or not. The only objection to this method is that it re- quires a great many experiments in order to get an average result. To be reliable, an average 1G4 THE STORY OF THE MIND. must be secured, seeing that, for one or two or * few trials, the student may guess right without remembering the original square at all. By taking a large number of persons, such as the three hun- dred students, this objection may be overcome. Comparing the averages, for example, of the re- sults given by the men and women respectively, we found practically no difference between 'hem. This last point may serve to introduce a dis- tinction which is important in all work in ex- perimental psychology, and one which is recog- nised also in many other sciences the distinction between results obtained respectively from one individual and from many. Very often the only way to learn truth about a single individual is to investigate a number together. In all large classes of things, especially living things, there are great individual differences, and in any particular case this personal variation may be so large that it obscures the real nature of the normal. For ex- ample, three large sons may be born to two small parents ; and from this case alone it might be in- ferred that all small parents have large sons. Or three girls might have better memories than three boys in the same family or school, and from this it might be argued that girls are better endowed in this direction than boys. In all such cases the proper thing to do is to get a large number of cases and combine them ; then the preponderance which the first cases examined may have shown, in one direction or the other, is corrected. This gives rise to what is called the statistical method : it is used in many practical matters, such as life HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 165 insurance, but its application to the facts of life, mind, variation, evolution, etc., is only begun. Its neglect in psychology is one of the crying defects of much recent work Its use in complicated problems involves a mathematical training which people generally do not possess ; and its misuse through lack of exactness of observation or ignorance of the requirements is worse than its neglect. Another result came out in connection with these experiments on memory, which, apart from its practical interest, may serve to show an addi- tional resource of experimental psychology. In making up the results of a series of experiments it is very important to observe the way in which the different cases differ from one another. Some cases may be so nearly alike that the most extreme of them are not far from the average of them all ; as we find, for example, if we measure a thousand No 10 shot. But now suppose we mix in with the No. 10 some No. 6 and some No. 14, and then take the average size ; we may now get just the same average, and we can tell that this pile is different from the other only by observing the individual measurements of the single shot and setting down the relative frequency of each particular size. Or, again, we may get a different average size in ono of two ways : either by taking another lot of uni- form No. 14 shot, let us say, or by mixing with the No. 10 a few very large bullets. Which is actually the case would be shown only by the examination of the individual cases. This is usually done by comparing each case with the average of the whole lot, and taking the average of the 166 THE STORY OF THE MIND. differences thus secured a quantity called the " mean variation." In the case of the experiments with the squares, the errors in the judgments of the students were found to lie always in one direction. The answers all tended to show that they took, for the one originally shown, a square which was really too large. Casting about for the reason of this, it was considered necessary to explain it by the supposi- tion that the square remembered had in the in- terval become enlarged in memory. The image was larger when called up after ten or twenty minutes than it was before. This might be due to a purely mental process ; or possibly to a sort of spreading out of the brain process in the visual *ntre, giving the result that whenever, by the revival of the brain process, the mental image is brought back again to mind, this spreading out shows itself by an enlargement of the memory image. However it may be explained, the indi- cations of it were unmistakable unless, of course, some other reason can be given for the uniform direction of the errors ; and it is further seen in other experiments carried out by Messrs. "W. and B. and by Dr. K. 1 at a later date. If this tendency to the enlargement of our memories with the lapse of time should be found to be a general law of memory, it would have in- teresting bearings. It would suggest, for instance, an explanation of the familiar fact that the scenes of the past seem to us, when we return to them, altogether too small. Our childhood home, the 1 Dr. F. Kennedy, demonstrator, now professor in th University of Colorado (results not yet published). HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 167 old flower garden, the height of house and trees, and even that of our hero uncle, all seem to the returning traveller of adult life ridiculously small. That we expect them to be larger may result from the fact that the memory images have undergone change in the direction of enlargement. V. Suggestions. Space permits only the mention of another research, which, however, should not be altogether omitted, since it illustrates yet other problems and the principles of their solution. This is an investigation by Messrs. T. and H., 1 which shows the remarkable influence of mental suggestions upon certain bodily processes which have always been considered purely physiological. These investigators set out to repeat certain ex- periments of others which showed that if two points, say those of a pair of compasses, be some- what separated and put upon the skin, two sen- sations of contact come from the points. But if while the experiment is being performed the points be brought constantly nearer to each other, a time arrives when the two are felt as only one, although they may be still some distance apart. The physiologist argued from this that there were minute nerve endings in the skin at least so far apart as the least distance at which the points were felt as two ; and that when the points were so close together that they only touched one of these nerve endings, only one sensation was pro- duced. Mr. T. had already found, working in Germany, that, with practice, the skin gradually became more and more able to discriminate the 1 G. A. Tawny, now professor in Beloit College, aaii C. W. Hodge, now professor in Lafayette College. 168 THE STORY OF THE MIND. points that is, to feel the two at smallei distances ; and, further, that the exercise of the skin in this way on one side of the body not only made that locality more sensitive to minute differ- ences, but had the same effect, singularly, on the corresponding place on the other side of the body. This, our experimenters inferred, could only be due to the continued suggestion in the mind of the subject that he should feel two points, the result being an actual heightening of the sensi- bility of the skin. When he thought that he was becoming more sensitive on one side and really was this sense or belief of his took effect in some way in both hemispheres of his brain, and so both sides of the body were alike affected. This led to other experiments in Princeton in which suggestions were actually made to the sub- jects that they were to become more or less sensi- tive to distance and direction between the points on the skin, with the striking result that these suggestions actually took effect all over the body. This was so accurately determined that from the results of the experiments with the compasses on the skin in this case or that, pretty accurate in- ferences could be made as to what mental sugges- tions the subject was getting at the time. There was no chance for deception in the results, for the experiments were so controlled that the sub- ject did not know until afterward of the cor- respondences actually reached between his states of mind and the variations in sensibility of the skin. This slight report of the work done in one laboratory in about two sessions, involving a con- HOW WE EXPERIMENT ON THE MIND. 169 eiderable variety of topics, may give an idea, so far as it goes, of the sort of work which experi- mental psychology is setting itself to do. It will be seen that there is as yet no well-knit body of results on which new experiments may proceed, and no developed set of experimental arrange- ments, such as other positive sciences show. The procedure is, in many important matters, still a matter of the individual worker's judg- ment and ability. Even for the demonstrations attempted for undergraduate students, good and cheap apparatus is still lacking. For these reasons it is premature as yet to expect that this branch of the science will cut much of a figure in education. There can be no doubt, however, that it is making many interesting contributions to our knowledge of the mind, and that when it is more adequately organised and developed in its methods and apparatus, it will become the basis of discipline of a certain kind lying between that of physical science and that of the humani- ties, since it will have features in common with the biological and natural sciences. Its results may be expected also to lead to better results than we now have in the theory and practice of educatioa 170 THE STORY OF THE MIXD. CHAPTER VII. SUGGESTION IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS HYPNOTISM. IN an earlier place certain illustrations of Sug- gestion have been given. By Suggestion wa mean the fact that all sorts of hints from with- out disturb and modify the beliefs and actions of the individual. Certain cases from my own observation may be given which will make the matter clear. Physiological Suggestion. Observation of an infant for the first month or six weeks after birth leads to the conviction that his life is mainly physiological. When the actions which are purely reflex, together with certain random impulsive movements, are noted, we seem to ex- haust the case. Yet even at this remarkably early stage H. was found to be in some degree receptive to cer tain Suggestions conveyed by repeated stimula- tion under uniform conditions. In the first place, the suggestions of sleep began to tell upon her before the end of the first month. Her nurse put her to sleep by laying her face down and patting gently upon the end of her spine. This position soon became itself not only sugges- tive to the child of sleep, but sometimes necessary to sleep, even when she was laid across the SUGGESTION IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS. 171 nurse's lap in what seemed to be an uncomfort- able position. This case illustrates what may be called Physiological Suggestion. It shows the law of physiological habit as it borders on the conscious. The same sort of phenomena appear also in adult life. Positions given to the limbs of a sleeper lead to movements ordinarily associated with these positions. The sleeper defends him- self, withdraws himself from cold, etc. Children learn gradually to react upon conditions of posi- tion, lack of support, etc., of the body, with those actions necessary to keep from falling, which adults have so perfectly. All secondary automatic reactions may be classed here ; the sensations coming from one action, as in walking, being suggestions to the next movement, uncon- sciously acted upon. The consciousness at any stage in the chain of movements, if present at all, must be similar to the baby's in the case above a mere internal glimmering. The most we can say of such physiological suggestion is, that there is probably some consciousness, and that the ordinary reflexes seem to be abbreviated and improved. Subconscious Adult Suggestion. There are cer- tain phenomena of a rather striking kind coming under this head whose classification is so evident that we may enumerate them without discussion of the general principles which they involve. Tune Suggestion. It has been pointed out recently that dream states are largely indebted for their visual elements what we see in our dreams to accidental lines, patches, etc., >n the 172 THE STORY OF THE MIND. field of vision when the eyes are shut, due to the distended blood vessels of the cornea and lids, to changes in the external illumination, to the presence of dust particles of different configura- tion, etc. The other senses also undoubtedly contribute to the texture of our dreams by equally subconscious suggestions. There is no doubt, further, that our waking life is constantly influenced by such trivial stimulations. I have tested in detail, for example, the con ditions of the rise of so-called " internal tunes ' we speak of " tunes in our head " or " in our ears " and find certain suggestive influences which in most cases cause these tunes to rise and take their course. Often, when a tune springs up " in my head," the same tune has been lately sung or whistled in my hearing, though quite un- noticed at the time. Often the tunes are those heard in church the previous day or earlier. Such a tune I am entirely unable to recall volun- tarily ; yet when it comes into the mind's ear, so to speak, I readily recognise it as belonging to an earlier day's experience. Other cases show various accidental suggestions, such as the tune Mozart suggested by the composer's name, the tune Gentle Annie suggested by the name Annie, etc. In all these cases it is only after the tune has taken possession of consciousness and after much seeking that the suggesting influence is discovered. Closer analysis reveals certain additional facts : The " time " of such internal tunes is usually dic- tated by some rhythmical subconscious occur- rence. After hearty meals it is always the time SUGGESTION IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS. 173 of the heart beat, unless there be " in the air " some more impressive stimulus ; as, for example, when on shipboard, the beat is with me invari- ably that of the engine throbs. When walking it is the rhythm of the footfall. On one occasion a knock of four beats on the door started the Marseillaise in my ear ; following up this clue, I found that at any time different divisions of musical time being struck on the table at will by another person, tunes would spring up and run on, getting their cue from the measures sug- gested. Further, when a tune dies away, its last notes often suggest, some time after, another having a similar movement just as we pass from one tune to another in a " medley." It may also be noted that in my case the tune memories are auditive : they run in my head when I have no words for them and have never sung them an experience which is consistent with the fact that these " internal tunes " arise in childhood before the faculty of speech. They also have distinct pitch. For example, I once found a tune " in my head " which was perfectly familiar, but for which I could find no words. Tested on the piano, the pitch was F-sharp and the time was my heart beat. Finally, after much effort, I got the un- worthy words, " Wait till the clouds roll by " by humming the tune over repeatedly. The pitch is determined probably by the accidental condi- tion of the auditory centre in the brain or by the pitch of the external sound which serves as stimulus to the tune. Normal Auto-Suggestion. A further class of Suggestions, which fall under the general phrase 174 THE STOhf OF THE MIND. Auto-suggestion, or Self-suggestion of a normal type, may be illustrated. In experimenting upon the possibility of suggesting sleep to another I have found certain strong reactive influences upon my own mental condition. Such an effort, which involves the picturing of another as asleep, is a strong Auto-suggestion of sleep, taking effect in my own case in about five minutes if the condi- tions be kept constant. The more clearly the patient's sleep is pictured, the stronger becomes the subjective feeling of drowsiness. After about ten minutes the ability to give strong concentra- tion seems to disintegrate, attention is renewed only by fits and starts and in the presence of great mental inertia, and the oncoming of sleep is almost overpowering. An unfailing cure for insomnia, spealang for myself, is the persistent effort to put someone else asleep by hard think- ing of the end in view, with a continued gentle movement, such as stroking the other with the hand. On the other hand, it is impossible to bring on a state of drowsiness by imagining myself asleep. The first effort at this, indeed, is promising, for it leads to a state of restfulness and ease akin to the mental composure which is the usual pre- liminary to sleep ; but it goes no further. It is succeeded by a state of steady wakef ulness, which effort of attention or effort not to attend only in- tensifies. If the victim of insomnia could only forget that he is thus afflicted, could forget him- self altogether, his case would be more hopeful. The contrast between this condition and that already described shows that it is the Self -idea, SUGGESTION IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS. 175 with the emotions it awakens, 1 which prevents the suggestion from realising itself, and probably accounts for many cases of insomnia. Sense Exaltation. Recent discussions of Hyp- notism have shown the remarkable " exaltation " which the senses may attain in somnambulism, together with a corresponding refinement in the interpretative faculty. This is described more fully below. Events, etc., quite subconscious, usually become suggestions of direct influence upon the subject. Unintended gestures, habitual with the experimenter, may suffice to hypnotise his accustomed subject. The possibility of such training of the senses in the normal state has not had sufficient emphasis. The young child's subtle discriminations of facial and other personal indi- cations are remarkable. The prolonged experi- ence of putting H. to sleep extending over a period of more than six months, during which I slept beside her bed served to make me alive to a certain class of suggestions other wise quite beyond notice. It is well known that mothers are awake to the needs of their infants when they are asleep to everything else. In the first place, we may note the intense auto-suggestion of sleep already pointed out, under the stimulus of repeated nursery rhymes or other regular devices regularly resorted to in putting the child asleep. Second, surprising progressive exaltation of the hearing and inter- pretation of sounds coming from her in a dark 1 A friend informs me that when he pictures himself dead he cannot help feeling gratified that he makes so handsome a corpse. 176 THE STORY OF THE MIND. room. At the end of four or five months, hor movements in bed awoke me or not according as she herself was awake or not. Frequently after awaking I was distinctly aware of what move- ments of hers had awaked me. 1 A movement of her head by which it was held up from the pillow was readily distinguished from the restless move- ments of her sleep. It was not so much, there- fore, exaltation of hearing as exaltation of the function of the recognition of sounds heard and of their discrimination. Again, the same phenomenon to an equally marked degree attended the sound of her breath- ing. It is well enough known that the smallest functional bodily changes induce changes in both the rapidity and the quality of the respiration. In sleep the muscles of inhalation and exhalation are relaxed : inhalation becomes long and deep, exhalation short and exhaustive, and the rhythmic intervals of respiration much lengthened. Now degrees of relative wakefulness are indicated with surprising delicacy by the slight respiration sounds given forth by the sleeper. Professional nurses learn to interpret these indications with great skill. This exaltation of hearing became f ery pronounced in my operations with the child. After some experience the peculiar breathing of advancing or actual wakefulness in her was suffi- cient to wake me. And when awake myself the change in the infant's respiration sounds to those indicative of oncoming sleep was sufficient to 1 This fact is analogous to our common experience of being awaked by a loud noise and then hearing it after we awake ; yet the explanation b not tb san- SUGGESTION IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS. 177 suggest or bring on sleep in myself. In the dark, also, the general character of her breathing sounds was interpreted with great accuracy in terms of her varied needs, her comfort or discomfort, etc. The same kind of suggestion from the respiration sounds now troubles me whenever one of the children is sleeping within hearing distance. x The reactions in movement upon these sug- gestions are very marked and appropriate, in customary or habitual lines, although the stimu- lations are quite subconscious. The clearest illustrations in this body of my experiences were afforded by my responses in crude songs to the infant's waking movements and breathing sounds. I have often waked myself by myself singing one of two nursery rhymes, which by endless repeti- tion night after night had become so habitual as to follow in an automatic way upon the stimulus from the child. It is certainly astonishing that among the things which one may get to do auto- matically, ws should find singing ; but writers on the subject have claimed that the function of musical or semi-musical expression may be reflex. 1 This 13 an unpleasant result which is confirmed by professional infants' nurses. They complain of loss of sleep when off duty. Mrs. James Murray, an infants' nurse in Toronto, informs me that she timls it impossible to sleep when she has no infant in hearing distance, and for that reason she never asks for a vacation. Her normal sleep has evidently come to depend upon continu- ous soporific suggestions from a child. In another point, also, her experience confirms my observations, t'z., the child's movements, preliminary to waking, awake her, when no other movements of the child do so the conse- quence being that she is ready for ths -n^ant when it gets fully awake and ories out. M 178 THE STORV OF THE MIND. The principle of subconscious suggestion, of which these simple facts are less important illus- trations, has very interesting applications in the higher reaches of social, moral, and educational theory. Inhibitory Suggestion. An interesting class of phenomena which figure perhaps at all the levels of nervous action now described, may be known as Inhibitory Suggestions. The phrase, in its broadest use, refers to all cases in which the sug- gesting stimulus tends to suppress, check, or inhibit movement. We find this in certain cases just as strongly marked as the positive movement- bringing kind of suggestion. The facts may be put under certain heads which follow. Pain Suggestion. Of course, the fact that pain inhibits movement occurs at once to the reader. So far as this is general, and is a native inherited thing, it is organic, and so falls under the head of Physiological Suggestion of a negative sort. The child shows contracting movements, crying move- ments, starting and jumping movements, shortly after birth, and so plainly that we need not hesi- tate to say that these pain responses belong purely to his nervous system ; and that, in general, they are inhibitory and contrary to those other native reactions which indicate pleasure. The influence of pain extends everywhere through mental development, however. Its general effect is to dampen down or suppress the function which brings the pain ; and in this its action is just the contrary to that of pleasure, which furthers the pleasurable function. Control Suggestion. This covers all cases which SUGGESTION IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS. 179 show any kind of restraint set upon the move- ments of the body short of that which comes from voluntary intention. The infant brings the move- ments of his legs, arms, head, etc., gradually into some sort of order and system. It is accom- plished by a system of organic checks and counter- checks, by which associations are formed between muscular sensations on the one hand and certain other sensations, as of sight, touch, hearing, etc., on the other hand. The latter serve as sugges- tions to the performance of these movements, and these alone. The infant learns to balance his head and trunk, to direct his hands, to grasp with thumb opposite the four fingers all largely by such control suggestions, aided, of course, by his native reflexes. Contrary Suggestion. By this is meant a tend- ency of a very striking kind observable in many children, no less than in many adults, to do the contrary when any course is suggested. The very word " contrary " is used in popular talk to describe an individual who shows this type of conduct. Such a child or man is rebellious whenever rebellion is possible : he seems to Lick constitutionally against the pricks. The fact of " contrariness " in older children especially boys is so familiar to all who have observed school children with any care that I need not cite further details. And men and women often become so enslaved to suggestions of the contrary that they seem only to wait for indications of the wishes of others in order to oppose and thwart them. Contrary suggestions are to be explained a* 180 THE STORY OF THE MIXD. exaggerated instances of control. It is easy to Bee that the checks and counter-checks already spoken of as constituting the method of control of muscular movement may themselves become so habitual and intense as to dominate the re- actions which they should only regulate. The associations between the muscular series and the visual series, let us say, which controls it, comes to work backward, so that the drift of the organic processes is toward certain contrary reverse movements. In the higher reaches of conduct and life we find interesting cases of very refined contrary suggestion. In the man of ascetic temperament, the duty of self-denial takes the form of a regu- lar contrary suggestion in opposition to every invitation to self-indulgence, however innocent. The over-scrupulous mind, like the over-precise, is a prey to the eternal remonstrances from the contrary which intrude their advice into all his decisions. In matters of thought and belief also cases are common of stubborn opposition to evi- dence, and persistence in opinion, which are in no way due to the cogency of the contrary argu- ments or to real force of conviction. Hypnotic Suggestion. The facts upon which the current theories of hypnotism are based may be summed up under a few headings, and the recital of them will serve to bring this class of phenomena into the general lines of classification drawn out in this chapter. The Facts. When by any cause the attention is held fixed upon an object, say a bright button, {or a sufficient time without distraction, the sub- SUGGESTION IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS. 181 ject begins to lose consciousness in a peculiar way. Generalizing this simple experiment, we may say that any method or device which serves to secure undivided and prolonged attention to any sort of Suggestion be it object, idea, any- thing that is clear and striking brings on what is called Hypnosis to a person normally consti- tuted. The Paris school of interpreters find three stages of progress in the hypnotic sleep : First, Catalepsy, characterized by rigid fixity of the muscles in any position in which the limbs may be put by the experimenter, with great Suggesti- bility on the side of consciousness, and Anoesthe- sia (lack of sensation) in certain areas of the skin and in certain of the special senses; second, Leth- argy, in which consciousness seems to disappear entirely ; the subject not being sensitive to any stimulations by eye, ear, skin, etc., and the body being flabby and pliable as in natural sleep ; third, Somnambulism, so called from its analogies to the ordinary sleep-walking condition to which many persons are subject. This last covers the phe- nomena of ordinary mesmeric exhibitions at which travelling mesmerists "control" persons before audiences, and make them obey their commands. While other scientists properly deny that these three stages are really distinct, they may yet be taken as representing extreme in- stances of the phenomena, and serve as points of departure for further description. On the mental side the general characteristics of hypnotic Somnambulism are as follows : 1. 'ITu impairment of memory in a peculiar way. In 182 THE STORY OF THE MIND. the hypnotic condition all affairs of the ordinary life are forgotten ; on the other hand, after wak- ing the events of the hypnotic condition are for- gotten. Further, in any subsequent period of Hypnosis the events of the former similar periods are remembered. So a person who is fre- quently hypnotized has two continuous memories : one for the events of his normal life, exercised only when he is normal ; and one for the events of his hypnotic periods, exercised only when he is hypnotized. 2. Suggestibility to a remarkable degree. By this is meant the tendency of the subject to have in reality any mental condition which is suggested to him. He is subject to suggestions both on the side of his sensations and ideas, and also on the side of his actions. He will see, hear, remember, believe, refuse to see, hear, etc., anything, with some doubtful exceptions, which may be sug- gosted to him by word or deed, or even by the slightest and perhaps unconscious indications of those about him. On the side of conduct his suggestibility is equally remarkable. Not only will he act in harmony with the illusions of sight, etc., into which he is led, but he will carry out, like an automaton, the actions suggested to him. Further, pain and pleasure, with their organic accompaniments, may be produced by suggestion. The skin may be actually scarred with a lead pencil if the patient be told that it is red-hot iron. The suggested pain brings about vasomotor and other bodily changes that prove, as similar testa in the other cases prove, that simulation is im- possible nnd the phenomena are real. These SUGGESTION IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS. 183 truths and those given below are no longer based on the mere reports of the "mesmerists," but are the recognised property of legitimate psychology. Again, such suggestions may be for a future time, and be performed only when a suggested interval has elapsed ; they are then called De- ferred or Post-hypnotic Suggestions. Post-hyp- notic Suggestions are those which include the command not to perform them until a certain time after the subject has returned to his normal condition ; such suggestions if of reasonably trifling character are actually carried out after- ward in the normal state, although the person is conscious of no reason why he should act in such a way, having no remembrance whatever that he has received the suggestion when hypnotized. Such post-hypnotic performances may be deferred by suggestion for many months. 3. So-called Exaltation of the mental faculties, especially of the senses : increased acuteness of vision, hearing, touch, memory, and the mental functions generally. By reason of this great "ex- altation," hypnotized patients may get suggestions from the experimenters which are not intended, and discover their intentions when every effort is made to conceal them. Often emotional changes in expression are discerned by them ; and if it be admitted that their power of logical and imagina- tive insight is correspondingly exalted, there is hardly a limit to the patient's ability to read, simply from physical indications, the mental states of those who experiment with him. 4. So-called Rapport. This term covers all the facts known, before the subject was scientifically 134 THE STORY OF THE MIND. investigated, by such expressions as "personal magnetism," " will power over the subject," etc. It is true that one particular operator alone may be able to hypnotize a particular patient ; and in this case the patient is, when hypnotized, open to suggestions from that person only. He is deaf and blind to everything enjoined by anyone else. It is easy to see from what has already been said that this does not involve any occult nerve influ- ence or mental pqwer. A sensitive patient any- body can hypnotize, provided only that the patient have the idea or conviction that the ex- perimenter possesses such power. Now, let a patient get the idea that only one man can hyp- notize him, and that is the beginning of the hyp- notic suggestion itself. It is a part of the suggestion that a certain personal Rapport is necessary ; so the patient must have this Rapport. This is shown by the fact that when such a patient is hypnotized, the operator en rapport with him can transfer the so-called control to any- one else simply by suggesting to the patient that this third party can also hypnotize him. Rapport, therefore, and all the amazing claims of charla- tans to powers of charming, stealing another's personality, controlling his will at a distance all such claims are explained, so far as they have anything to rest upon, by suggestion under con- ditions of mental hyperaesthesia or exaltation. I may now add certain practical remarks on the subject. In general, any method which fixes the atten- tion upon a single stimulus long enough is prob- ably sufficient to produce Hypnosis ; but the re- SUGGESTION IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS. 185 suit is quick and profound in proportion as tha patient has the idea that it is going to succeed, i.e., gets the suggestion of sleep. It may be said, therefore, that the elaborate performances, such as passes, rubbings, mysterious incantations, etc., often resorted to, have no physiological effect whatever, and only serve to work in the way of suggestion upon the mind of the subject. In view of this it is probable that any person in normal health can be hypnotised, provided he is not too sceptical of the operator's knowledge and power; and, on the contrary, any one can hyp- notize another, provided he do not arouse too great scepticism, and is not himself wavering and clumsy. It is probable, however, that suscepti- bility varies greatly in degree, and that race ex- erts an important influence. Thus in Europe the French seem to be most susceptible, and the English and Scandinavians least so. The im- pression that weak-minded persons are most available is quite mistaken. On the contrary, patients in the insane asylums, idiots, etc., are the most refractory. This is to be expected, from the fact that in these cases power of strong, steady attention is wanting. The only class of pathological cases which seem peculiarly open to the hypnotic influence is that of the hystero- epileptics, whose tendencies are toward extreme suggestibility. Further, one may hypnotize him- self what we have called above Auto-suggestion especially after having been put into the trance more than once by others. When let alone after being hypnotized, the patient usually passes into a normal sleep and wakes naturally. 186 THE STORY OF THE MIND. It is further evident that frequent hypnotiza- cion is very damaging if done by the same opera- tor, since then the patient contracts a habit of responding to the same class of suggestions ; and this may influence his normal life. A further danger arises from the possibility that all sug- gestions have not been removed from the patient's mind before his awaking. Competent scientific observers always make it a point to do this. It is possible also that damaging effects result directly to a man from frequent hypnotizing ; and this is in some degree probable, simply from the fact that, while it lasts, the state is abnormal. Consequently, all general exhibitions in public, as well as all individual hypnotizing by amateurs, should be prohibited by law, and the whole practical application as well as observation of Hypnosis should be left in the hands of physicians or experts who have proved their fitness by an examination, and secured a certificate of licence. In Russia a decree (summer, 1893) permits physicians to practise hypnotism for purposes of cure under official certificates. In France public exhibitions are forbidden. So-called Criminal Suggestions may be made, with more or less effect, in the hypnotic state. Cases have been tried in the French courts, in which evidence for and against such influence of a third person over the criminal has been admitted. The reality of the phenomenon, however, is in dispute. The Paris school claim that criminal acts may be suggested to the hypnotised subject, which are just as certain to be performed by him as any other acts. Such a subject will discharge SUGGESTION IN CHILDREN AND ADULTS. 187 a blank-loaded pistol at one, when tolA to do so, or stab him with a paper dagger. While admit- ting the facts, the Nancy theorists claim that the subject knows the performance to be a farce; gets suggestions of the unreality of it from the ex- perimenters, and so acquiesces. This is probably true, as is seen in frequent cases in which patients have refused, in hypnotic sleep, to perform sug- gested acts which shocked their modesty, veracity, etc. This goes to show that the Nancy school are right in saying that while in Hypnosis suggesti- bility is exaggerated to an enormous degree, still it has limits in the more well-knit habits, moral sentiments, social opinions, etc., of the subject. And it further shows that Hypnosis is probably, as they claim, a temporary disturbance, rather than a pathological condition of mind or body. There have been many remarkable and sensa- tional cases of cure of disease by hypnotic sug- gestion, reported especially in France. That hysteria in many of its manifestations has been relieved is certainly true ; but that any organic, structural disease has ever been cured by hypno- tism is unproved. It is not regarded by medical authorities as an agent of much therapeutic value, and is rarely employ edj but it is doubtful, in view of the natural prejudice caused by the pre- tensions of charlatans, whether its merits have been fairly tested. On the European Continent it has been successfully applied in a great variety of cases ; and Bernheim has shown that minor ner- vous troubles, insomnia, migraines, drunkenness, lighter cases of rheumatism, sexual and digestive disorders, together with a host of smaller tempo- 188 THE STORY OF THE MIND rary causes of pain corns, cricks in back and side, etc. may be cured or very materially alle- viated by suggestions conveyed in the hypnotic Btate. In many cases such cures are permanently effected with aid from no other remedies. In a number of great city hospitals patients of recog- nised classes are at once hypnotised, and sugges- tions of cure made. Liebeault, the founder of the Nancy school, has the credit of having first made use of hypnosis as a remedial agent. It is also becoming more and more recognised as a method of controlling refractory and violent pa tients in asylums and reformatory institutions. It must be added, however, that psychological theory rather than medical practice is seriously concerning itself with this subject. Theory. Two rival theories are held as to the general character of Hypnosis. The Paris school already referred to, led by the late Dr. Charcot, hold that it is a pathological condition which is most readily induced in patients already mentally diseased or having neuropathic tendencies. They claim that the three stages described above are a discovery of great importance. The so-called Nancy school, on the other hand, led by Bern- heim, deny the pathological character of Hypnosis altogether, claiming that the hypnotic condition is nothing more than a special form of ordinary sleep brought on artificially by suggestion. Hyp- notic suggestion, say they, is only an exaggeration of an influence to which all persons are nor- mally subject. All the variations, stages, curious phenomena, etc., of the Paris school, they claim, can be explained by this " suggestion " hypothe- THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 189 sis. The Nancy school must be considered com- pletely victorious apart from some facts which no theory has yet explained. Hypnotism shows an intimacy of interaction between mind and body to which current psycho- logy is only beginning to do justice ; and it is thia aspect of the whole matter which should be em- phasised in this connection. The hypnotic con- dition of consciousness may be taken to represent the working of Suggestion most remarkably. CHAPTER VIII. THE TRAINING OF THE MIND EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY. A GREAT deal has been said and written about the physical and mental differences shown by the young; and one of the most oft-repeated of all the charges which we hear brought against the current methods of teaching is that all children are treated alike. The point is carried so far that a teacher is judged from the way he has or has not of getting at the children under him as indi- viduals. All this is a move in the right direction ; and yet the subject is still so vague that many of the very critics who declaim against the similar treatment which diverse pupils get at school have no clear idea of what is needed; they merely make demands that the treatment shall suit the child. How each child is to be suited, and the inquiry still back of that, what peculiarity it is in 190 THE STORY OF TIIE MIND. this child or that which is to be " suited " these things are left to settle themselves. It is my aim in this chapter to indicate some of the variations which are shown by different children ; and on the basis of such facts to en- deavour to arrive at a more definite idea of what variations of treatment are called for in the sev- eral classes into which the children are divided. I shall confine myself at first to those differences which are more hereditary and constitutional. First Period Early Childhood. The first and most comprehensive distinction is that based on the division of the life of man into the two great spheres of reception and action. The "sensory" and the " motor " are becoming the most common descriptive terms of current psychology. We hear all the while of sensory processes, sensory contents, sensory centres, sensory attention, etc.; and, on the other hand, of motor processes, motor centres, motor ataxy, motor attention, motor con- sciousness, etc. And in the higher reaches of mental function, the same antithesis comes out in the contrast of sensory and motor aphasia, alexia, sensory and motor types of memory and imagina- tion, etc. Indeed the tendency is now strong to think that when we have assigned a given func- tion of consciousness to one or other side of tho nervous apparatus, making it either sensory or motor, then our duty to it is done. Be that as it may, there is no doubt that the distinction is throwing great light on the questions of mind which involve also the correlative questions of the nervous system. This is true of all questions of educational psychology. THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 191 This first distinction between children aa having general application is that which I may cover by saying that some are more active, or motile, while others are more passive, or recep- tive. This is a common enough distinction ; but possibly a word or two on its meaning in the con- stitution of the child may give it more actuaJ value. The "active" person to the psychologist ia one who is very responsive to what we have called Suggestions. Suggestions may be described in most general terms as any and all the influences from outside, from the environment, both physi- cal and personal, which get a lodgment in con- sciousness and lead to action. A child who is " suggestible " to a high degree shows it in what we call " motility." The suggestions which take hold of him translate themselves very directly into action. He tends to act promptly, quickly, unreflectively assimilating the newer elements of the suggestions of the environment to the ways of behaviour fixed by his earlier habits. Generally such a person, child or adult, is said to " jump " at conclusions ; he is anxious to know in order to act ; he acts in some way on all events or sug- gestions, even when no course of action is ex- plicitly suggested, and even when one attempts to keep him from acting. Psychologically such a person is dominated by habit. And this means that his nervous sys- tem sets, either by its hereditary tendencies or by the undue predominance of certain elements in his education, quickly in the direction of motor discharge. The great channels of readiest out- 192 THE STORY OF THE MIND. pouring from the brain into the muscles have become fixed and pervious ; it is hard for the pro- cesses once started in the sense centres, such as those of sight, hearing, etc., to hold in their ener gies. They tend to unstable equilibrium in the direction of certain motor combinations, which in their turn represent certain classes of acts. This is habit ; and the person of the extreme motor type is always a creature of habit. Now what is the line of treatment that such a child should have ? The necessity for getting an answer to this question is evident from what was said above i.e., that the very rise of the condi- tion itself is due, apart from heredity, oftener than not to the fact that he has not had proper treatment from his teachers. The main point for a teacher to have in mind in dealing with such a boy or girl the impulsive, active one, always responsive, but almost always in error in what he says and does is that here is a case of habit. Habit is good ; indeed, if we should go a little further we should see that all education is the forming of habits ; but here, in this case, what we have is not habits, but habit. This child shows a tendency to habit as such : to habits of any and every kind. The first care of the teacher in order to the control of the forma- tion of habits is in some way to bring about a little inertia of habit, so to speak a short period of organic hesitation, during which the reasons pro and con for each habit may be brought into the consciousness of the child. The means by which this tendency to crude, inconsiderate action on the part of the child is to THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. be controlled and regulated is one of the most typical questions for the intelligent teacher. Its answer must be different for children of different ages. The one thing to do, in general, however, from the psychologist's point of view, is in some way to bring about greater complications in the motor processes which the child uses most habitu- ally, and with this complication to get greater inhibition along the undesirable lines of his ac- tivity. Inhibition is the damming up of the pro- cesses for a period, causing some kind of a " set- back" of the energies of movement into the sensory centres, or the redistribution of this en- ergy in more varied and less habitual discharges. With older children a rational method is to analyse for them the mistakes they have made, showing the penalties they have brought upon themselves by hasty action. This requires great watchfulness. In class work, the teacher may profitably point out the better results reached by the pupil who " stops to think." This will bring to the reform of the hasty scholar the added motive of semi-public comparison with the more deliberate members of the class. Such procedure is quite unobjectionable if made a recognised part of the class method ; yet care should be taken that no scholar suffer mortification from such comparisons. The matter may be " evened up " by dwelling also on the merit of promptness which the scholar in question will almost always be found to show. For younger pupils as well as older more in- direct methods of treatment are more effective. The teacher should study the scholar to find the 194 TUB STORY OF THE MIND. general trend of his habits. Then oversight should be exsrcissd over both his tasks and his sports with certain objects in view. His habitual actions should be made as complicated as his ability can cope with ; this in order to educate his habits and keep them from working back into mere mechanism. If he shows his fondness for drawing by marking his desk, see that he has drawing materials at hand and some intelligent tasks in this line to do; not as tasks, but for himself. Encourage him to make progress always, not simply to repeat himself. If he has awkward habits of movement with his hands and feet, try to get him interested in games that exercise these members in regular and skilful ways. Furthermore, in his intellectual tasks such a pupil should be trained, as far as may be, on the more abstract subjects, which do not give imme- diate openings for action. Mathematics is the best possible discipline for him. Grammar also is good ; it serves at once to interest him, if it is well taught, in certain abstract relationships, and also to send out his motor energies in the exer- cise of speech, which is the function which always needs exercise, and which is always under the observation of the teacher. Grammar, in fact, is one of the very best of primary-school subjects, because instruction in it issues at once in the very motor functions which embody the t elationships which the teacher seeks to impress. The teacher has in his ear, so to speak, the evi- dence as to whether his instruction is understood or not. This gives him a valuable opportunity THE TRAIiNING OF THE MIND. 195 to keep his instruction well ahead of its motor expression thus leading the pupil to think rather than to act without thinking and at the same time to point out the errors of performance which follow from haste in passing from thought to action. These indirect methods of reaching the impul- sive pupil should never be cast aside for the direct effort to "control" such a scholar. The very worst thing that can be done to such a boy or girl is to command him or her to sit still or not to act j and a still worse thing to make a comparative again on the head of the superlative is to affix to the command painful penalties. This is a direct violation of the principle of Suggestion. Such a command only tends to empty the pupil's mind of other objects of thought and interest, and so to keep his atten- tion upon his own movements. This, then, amounts to a continual suggestion to him to do just what you want to keep him from doing. On the contrary, unless you give him suggestions and interests which lead his thought away from his acts, it is impossible not to aggravate his bad tendencies by your very efforts. This is the way, as I intimated above, that many teachers create or confirm bad habits in their pupils, and so render any amount of well-intended positive instruction abortive. It seems well established that a suggestion of the negative that is, not to do a thing has no negative force ; but, on the contrary, in the early period, it amounts only to a stronger suggestion in the positive sense, since it adds emphasis to the thing which is forbiddea 196 THE STORY OF THE MIND. The " not " in a prohibition is no addition to the pictured course to which it is attached, and the physiological fact that the attention tends to set up action upon that which is attended to cornea in to put a premium on disobedience. Indeed, the philosophy of all punishment rests on this consideration, i.e., that unless the penalty tends to fill the mind with some object other than the act punished, it does more harm than good. The punishment must be actual and its nature divert- ing ; never a threat which terminates there, nor a penalty which fixes the thought of the offence more strongly in mind. This is to say, that the permanent inhibition of a movement at this period is best secured by establishing some different movement. The further consideration of the cases of great motility would lead to the examination of the kinds of memory and imagination and their treat- ment ; to that we return below. We may now take up the instances of the sensory type con- sidered with equal generality. The sensory children are in the main those which seem more passive, more troubled with physical inertia, more contemplative when a little older, less apt in learning to act out new move- ments, less quick at taking a hint, etc. These children are generally further distin- guished as being and here the antithesis to the motor ones is very marked much less suggestible. They seem duller when young. Boys often get credit for dulness compared with girls on this account. Even as early as the second year can this distinction among children be readily ob- THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 197 served in many instances. The motor child will show sorrow by loud crying and vigorous action, while the sensory child will grieve in quiet, and continue to grieve when the other has forgotten the disagreeable occurrence altogether. The motor one it is that asks a great many questions and seems to learn little from the answers ; while the sensory one learns simply from hearing the ques- tions of the other and the answers given to them. The motor child, again, gets himself hurt a great many times in the same way, without developing enough self-control to restrain himself from the same mistake again and again j the sensory child tends to be timid in the presence of the unknown and uncertain, to learn from one or a few experi- ences, and to hold back until he gets satisfactory assurances that danger is absent. The former tends to be more restless in sitting, standing, etc., more demonstrative in affection, more impulsive in action, more forgiving in disposition. As to the treatment of the sensory child, it is a problem of even greater difficulty and danger than that of his motor brother. The very nature of the distinction makes it evident that while the motor individual "gives himself away," so to' speak, by constantly acting out his impressions, and so revealing his progress and his errors, with the other it is not so. All knowledge that we are ever able to get of the mental condition of another individual is through his movements, ex- pressive, in a technical sense, or of other kinds, such as his actions, attitudes, lines of conduct, etc. We have no way to read thought directly. So just in so far as the sensory individual is les 198 THE STORY OF THE MIND. active, to that degree he is less expressive, less self-revealing. To the teacher, therefore, he is more of an enigma. It is harder to tell in his case what instruction he has appreciated and made his own ; and what, on the other hand, has been too hard for him ; what wise, and what unwise. Where the child of movement speaks out his im- pulsive interpretations, this one sinks into himself and gives no answer. So we are deprived of the best way of interpreting him that afforded by his own interpretation of himself. A general policy of caution is therefore strovigiy to be recommended. Let the teacher wait in every case for some positive indication of the child's real state of mind. Even the directions given the child may not have been understood, or the quick word of admonition may have wounded him, or a duty which is so elementary as to be a commonplace in the mental life of the motor child may yet be so vaguely apprehended that to insist upon its direct performance may cost the teacher all his influence with the pupil of this type. It is better to wait even at the apparent risk of losing valuable days than to proceed a single step upon a mistaken estimate of the child's measure of assimilation. And, further, the effect of wrong treatment upon this boy or girl is very different from that of a similar mistake in the other case. He becomes more silent, retired, even secretive, when once an unsympathetic relationship is sug- gested between him and his elder. Then more positively his instruction should be well differentiated. He should in every pos- sible case be given inducements to express him THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 199 self. Let him recite a great deal. Give him simple verses to repeat. Keep him talking all you can. Show him his mistakes with the utmost deliberation and kindliness of manner; and induce him to repeat his performances in your hearing after the correction has been suggested. Culti- vate the imitative tendency in him ; it is the hand- maid to the formation of facile habits of action. In arranging the children's games, see that he gets the very active parts, even though he be backward and hesitating about assuming them. Make him as far as possible a leader, in order to cultivate his sense of responsibility for the doing of things, and to lead to the expression of his understanding of arrangements, etc. In it all, the essential thing is to bring him out in some kind of expression ; both for the sake of the improved balance it gives himself, and as an indication to the observant teacher of his progress and of the next step to be taken in his development. It is for the sensory child, I think, that the kindergarten has its great utility. It gives him facility in movement and expression, and also some degree of personal and social confidence. But for the same reasons the kindergarten over- stimulates the motor scholars at the correspond- ing age. There should really be two kindergarten methods one based on the idea of deliberation, the other on that of expression. The task of the educator here, it is evident, is to help nature correct a tendency to one-sided development ; just as the task is this also in the former case ; but here the variation is on the side of idiosyncrasy ultimately, and of genius immed 200 THE STORY OF THE MIND. ately. For genius, I think, is the more often developed from the contemplative mind, with the relatively dammed-up brain, of this child, than from the smooth-working machine of the motor one. But just for this reason, if the damming- np be liberated, not in the channels of healthy assimilation, and duly correlated growth, but in the forced discharges of violent emotion, fol- lowed by conditions of melancholy and by certain unsocial tendencies, then the promise of genius ripens into eccentricity, and the blame is possibly ours. It seems true although great caution is neces- sary in drawing inferences that here a certain distinction may be found to hold also between the sexes. It is possible that the apparent precocious alertness of girls in their school years, and earlier, may be simply a predominance among them of the motor individuals. This is borne out by the examination of the kinds of performance in which they seem to be more forward than boys. It re- solves itself, so far as my observation goes, into greater quickness of response and greater agility in performance ; not greater constructiveness, nor greater power of concentrated attention. The boys seem to need more instruction because they do not learn as much for themselves by acting upon what they already know. In later years, the distinction gets levelled off by the common agen- cies of education, and by the setting of tasks re- quiring more thought than the mere spontaneities of either type avail to furnish. Yet all the way through, I think there is something in the ordinary belief that woman is relatively more impulsive THE TRAINING OF THE MIND 201 and more prone to the less reflective forms of action. What has now been said may be sufficient to give some concrete force to the common opinion that education should take account of the indi- vidual character at this earliest stage. Tho general distinction between sensory and motor has, however, higher application in the matter of memory and imagination at later stages of growth, to which we may now turn. Second Period. The research is cf course more difficult as the pupil grows older, since the in- fluences of heredity tend to become blurred by the more constant elements of the child's home, school, and general social environment. The child whom I described just above as sensory in his type is constantly open to influences from the stimulating behaviour of his motor companion, as well as from the direct measures which parent and teacher take to overcome his too-decided tendencies, and to prevent one-sided develop- ment. So, too, the motor child tends to find correctives in his environment. The analogy, however, between the more organ- ic and hereditary differences in individuals, and the intellectual and moral variations which they tend to develop with advance in school age, is very marked; and we find a similar series of distinc- tions in the latter period. The reason that there is a correspondence between the variations given in heredity and those due in the main to the educative influences of the single child's social environment is in itself very suggestive, but space does not permit its exposition here. 202 THE STORY OF THE MIND. The fact is this : the child tends, under the in- fluence of his home, school, social surroundings, etc., to develop a marked character either in the sensory or in the motor direction, in his memory, imagination, and general type of mind. Taking up the "motor" child first, as before, we find that his psychological growth tends to confirm him in his hereditary type. In all his social dealing with other children he is more or lesa domineering and self-assertive ; or at least his conduct leads one to form that opinion of him. He seems to be constantly impelled to act so as to show himself off. He "performs" before people, shows less modesty than may be thought desirable in one of his tender years, impresses the forms of his own activity upon the other children, who come to stand about him with minds constrained to follow him. He is an object lesson in both the advantages and the risks of an aggressive life policy. Ho has a suggestion to make in every emergency, a line of conduct for each of his company, all marked out or supplied on the spur of the moment by his own quick sense of appropriate action ; and for him, as for no one else, to hesitate is to be lost. Now what this general policy or method of growth means to his consciousness is becoming more and more clear in the light of the theory of mental types. The reason a person is motor is that his mind tends always to be filled up most easily with memories or revived images of the twitchings, tensions, contractions, expansions, of the activities of the muscular system. He is a motor because the means of his thought generally, THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 203 the mental coins which pass current in his thought exchange, are muscular sensations or the traces which such sensations have left in his memory. The very means by which he thinks of a situation, an event, a duty, is not the way it looked, or the way it sounded, or the way it smelt, tasted, or felt to the touch in any of the experiences to which these senses are involved but the means, the representatives, the instruments of his thought, are the feelings of the way he has acted. He has a tendency and he comes to have it more and more to get a muscular representation of every- thing; and his gauge of the value of this or that is this muscular measure of it, in terms of tho action which it is calculated to draw out. It is then this preference for one particular kind of mental imagery, and that the motor, or muscular kind, which gives this type of child hia peculiarity in this more psychological period. When we pass from the mere outward and organic description of his peculiarities, attempted above in the case of very young children, and aim to ascertain the mental peculiarity which accom- panies it and carries on the type through the individual's maturer years, we see our way to its meaning. The fact is that a peculiar kind of mental imagery tends to swell up in conscious- ness and monopolise the theatre of thought. This is only another way of saying that the attention is more or less educated in the direction repre- sented by this sort of imagery. Every time a movement is thought of, in preference to a sound or a sight which is also available, the habit of giving the attention to the muscular equivalents 204 THE STORY OF THE MIND. of things becomes more firmly fixed. This con- tinues until the motor habit of attention becomes the only easy and normal way of attending ; and then the person is fixed in his type for one, many, or all of his activities of thinking and action. So now it is no longer difficult to see, I trust, why it is that the child or youth of this sort has the characteristics which he has. It is a familiar principle that attention to the thought of a move- ment tends to start that very movement. I defy any of my readers to think hard and long of winking the left eye and not have an almost irresistible impulse to wink that eye. There is no better way to make it difficult for a child to sit still than to tell him to sit still ; for your words fill up his attention, as I had occasion to say above, with the thought of movements, and these thoughts bring on the movements, despite the best inten- tions of the child in the way of obedience. Watch an audience of little children and children of an older growth will also do when an excited speaker harangues them with many gestures, and see the comical reproduction of the gestures by the children's hands. They picture the move- ments, the attention is fixed on them, and ap- propriate actions follow. It is only the generalizing of these phenomena that we find realized in the boy or girl of the motor type. Such a child is constantly thinking of things by their movement equivalents. Muscu- lar sensations throng up in consciousness at every possible signal, and by every train of association ; so it is not at all surprising that all informations, instructions, warnings, reproofs, suggestions, pass THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 205 right through such a child's consciousness, and ex- press themselves by the channels of movement. Hence the impulsive, restless, domineering, un- meditative character of the child. We may now endeavour to describe a little more closely his higher mental traits. 1. In the first place the motor mind tends to very quick generalization. Every teacher knows the boys in school who anticipate their conclusions, on the basis of a single illustration. They reach the general notion which is most broad in extent, in application, but most shallow in intent, in rich- ness, in real explaining or descriptive meaning. For example, such a boy will hear the story of Napoleon, proceed to define heroism in terms of military success, and then go out and try the Napoleon act upon his playfellows. This tendency to generalize is the mental counterpart of the tendency to act seen in his conduct. The reason he generalizes is that the brain energies are not held back in the channels of perception, but pour them- selves right out toward the motor equivalents of former perceptions which were in any way simi- lar ; then the present perceptions are lost in the old ones toward which attention is held by habit, and action follows. To the child all heroes are Napoleons because Napoleon was the first hero, and the channels of action inspired by him suffice now for the appropriate conduct. 2. Such a scholar is very poor at noting and re- membering distinctions. This follows naturally from the hasty generalizations which he makes. Hav- ing once identified a new fact as the same as an old one- and having so reached a defective sense 206 THE STORY OF THE MIND. of the general class, it is then more and more hard for him to retrace his steps and sort out the ex- periences more carefully. Even when he discovers his mistake, his old impulse to act seizes him again, and he rushes to some new generalization where- with to replace the old, again falling into error by his stumbling haste to act. The teacher is oftener perhaps brought to the verge of impatience by scholars of this class than by any others. 3. Following, again, from these characteristics, there is a third remark to be made about the youth of this type ; and it bears upon a peculiarity which it is very hard for the teacher to estimate and con- trol. These motor boys and girls have what I may characterise as fluidity of the attention. By this is meant a peculiar quality of mind which all ex- perienced teachers are in some degree familiar with, and which they find baffling and unmanageable. By " fluidity " of the attention I mean the state of hurry, rush, inadequate inspection, quick transi- tion, all-too-ready assimilation, hear-but-not-heed, in-one-ear-and-out-the-other habit of mind. The best way to get an adequate sense of the state is to recall the pupil who has to the most marked degree, and picture his mode of dealing with your instructions. Such a pupil hears your word, says "yes," even acts appropriately so far as your im- mediate instructions go ; but when he comes to the same situation again, he is as virginly inno- cent of your lesson as if his teacher had never been born. Psychologically, the state differs from preoccupation, which characterises quite a differ- ent type of mind. The motor boy is not preoccu- pied. Far from that, he is quite ready to attend to THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 207 you. But when he attends, it is with a momentary concentration with a rush like the flow of a mountain stream past the point of the bank on which you sit. His attention is flowing, always in transition, leaping from "it to that," with su- perb agility and restlessness. But the exercise it gains from its movements is its only reward. Its acquisitions are slender in the extreme. It illus- trates, on the mental plane, the truth of the " roll- ing stone." It corresponds as a mental charac- ter to the muscular restlessness which the same type of child shows in the earlier period previously spoken of. The psychological explanation of this " fluid attention " is more or less plain, but I cannot take space to expound it. Suffice it to say that the attention is itself, probably, in its brain seat, a matter of the motor centres ; its physical seat both "gives and takes" in co-operation with the pro- cesses which shed energy out into the muscles. So it follows that, in the ready muscular revivals, discharges, transitions, which we have seen to be prominent in the motor temperament, the atten- tion is carried along, and its "fluidity" is only an incident to the fluidity of the motor symbols of which this sort of a mind continually makes use. Coming a little closer to the pedagogical pro- blems which this type of pupil raises before us, we find, in the first place, that it is excessively difficult for this scholar to give continuous or ade- quate attention to anything of any complexity. The movements of attention are so easy, the out- lets of energy, to use the physical figure, so large and well used, that the minor relationships of the 208 THE STORY OF THE MIND. hing are passed over. The variations of the ob- ;sct from its class are swept away in the onrush of his motor tendencies. He assumes the facts which he does not understand, and goes right on to express himself in action on these assumptions. So while he seems to take in what is told him, with an intuition that is surprisingly swift, and a personal adaptation no less surprising, the disap- pointment is only the more keen when the in- structor finds the next day that hB has not pene- trated at all into the inner current of this scholar's mental processes. Again, as marked as this is in its early stages, the continuance of it leads to results which are nothing short of deplorable. When such a student has gone through a preparatory school without overcoming this tendency to " fluid attention " and comes to college, the instructors in the higher institutions are practically helpless before him. We say of him that "he has never learned to study," that he does not know " how to apply himself," that he has no " power of assimilation." All of which simply means that his channels of reaction are so formed already that no instruc- tion can get sufficient lodgment in him to bring about any modification of his " apperceptive sys- tems." The embarrassment is the more marked because such a youth, all through his education period, is willing, ready, evidently receptive, prompt, and punctual in all his tasks. Now what shall be done with such a student in his early school years 1 This is a question for the secondary teacher especially, apart from the more primary measures recommended above. It THE TRAINING OF TTTE MIND. 20S is in the years between eight and fifteen that this type of mind has its rapid development ; before that the treatment is mainly preventive, and con- sists largely in suggestions which aim to make the muscular discharges more deliberate and the general tone less explosive. But when the boy or girl comes to school with the dawning capa- city for independent self-direction and personal application, then it is that the problem of the motor scholar becomes critical. The "let-alone" method puts a premium upon the development of his tendencies and the eventual playing out of his mental possibilities in mere motion. Certain positive ways of giving some indirect discipline to the mind of this type may be suggested. Give this student relatively difficult and com- plex tasks. There is no way to hinder his ex- uberant self-discharges except by measures which embarrass and baffle him. We cannot " lead him into all truth " ; we have to drive him back from all error. The lessons of psychology are to the effect that the normal way to teach caution and deliberation is the way of failure, repulse, and unfortunate, even painful, consequences. Per- sonal appeals to him do little good, since it is a part of his complaint that he is too ready to hear all appeals ; and also, since he is not aware of his own lack nor able to carry what he hears into effect. So keep him in company of scholars a little more advanced than he is. Keep him out of the concert recitations, where his tendency to haste would work both personal and social harm. Refrain from giving him assistance in his tasks until he has learned from them something of the O 210 THE STORY OF THE MIND. real lesson of discouragement, and then help him only by degrees, and by showing him one step at a time, with constant renewals of his own efforts. Shield him with the greatest pains from distrac- tions of all kinds, for even the things and events about him may carry his attention off at the most critical moments. Give him usually the second- ary parts in the games of the school, except when real planning, complex execution, and more or less generalship are required ; then give him the leading parts : they exercise his activities in new ways not covered by habit, and if he do not rise to their complexity, then the other party to the sport will, and his haste will have its own punish- ment, and so be a lesson to him. Besides these general checks and regulations, there remains the very important question as to what studies are most available for this type of mind. I have intimated already the general answer that ought to be given to this question. The aim of the studies of the motor student should bo discipline in the direction of correct generaliza- tion, and, as helpful to this, discipline in careful observation of concrete facts. On the other hand, the studies which involve principles simply of a descriptive kind should have little place in his daily study. They call out largely the more mechanical operations of memory, and their com- mand can be secured for the most part by mere repetition of details all similar in character and of equal value. The measure of the utility to him of the different studies of the school-room is found in the relative demand they make upon him to modify his hasty personal reactions, to THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 211 suspend his thoughtless rush to general results, and back of it all, to hold the attention long enough upon the facts as they arise to get some sense of the logical relationships which bind them together. Studies which do not afford any logical relationships, and which tend, on the contrary, to foster the habit of learning by repetition, only tend to fix the student in the quality of attention which I have called " fluidity." In particular, therefore, give this student all the mathematics he can absorb, and pass him from arithmetic into geometry, leaving his algebra till later. Give him plenty of grammar, taught in- ductively. Start him early in the elements of physics and chemistry. And as opposed to this, keep him out of the classes of descriptive botany and zoology. Rather let him join exploring parties for the study of plants, stones, and animals. A few pet animals are a valuable adjunct to any school museum. If there be an industrial school or machine shop near at hand, try to get him in- terested in the way things are made, and encour- age him to join in such employments. A false generalization in the wheels of a cart supplies its own corrective very quickly, or in the rigging and sails of a toy boat. Drawing from models is a fine exercise for such a youth, and drawing from life, as soon as he gets a little advanced in the control of his pencil. All this, it is easy to see, trains his impulsive movements into some degree of subjection to the deliberative processes. With this general line of treatment in mind, the details of which the reader will work out in the light of the boy's type, space allows me only 212 THE STORY OF THE MIND. two more points before I pass to the sensory scholar. First, in all the teaching of the type of mind now in question, pursue a method which proceeds from the particular to the general. The discus- sion of pedagogical method with all its ins and outs needs to take cognizance of the differences of students in their type. The motor student should never, in normal cases, be given a general formula and told to work out particular instances; that is too much his tendency already to ap- proach facts from the point of view of their re- semblances. What he needs rather is a sense of the dignity of the single fact, and of the necessity of giving it its separate place, before hastening on to lose it in the flow of a general statement. So whether the teacher have in hand mathematics, grammar, or science, let him disclose the prin- ciples only gradually, and always only so far as they are justified by the observations which the boy has been led to make for himself. For the reason that such a method is practically im- possible in the descriptive sciences, and some other branches, as taught in the school books botany, zoology, and, worse than all, history and eography we should restrict their part in the iscipline studies of such a youth. They require simple memory, without observation, and put a premium on hasty and temporary acquisition. As I have said, algebra should be subordinated to geometry. Algebra has as its distinctive method the principle of substitution, whereby symbols of equal and, for the most part, absolute generality are substituted for one another, and the THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 213 results stand for one fact as well as for another, in disregard of the worth of the particular in the scheme of nature. For the same reason, deduc- tive logic is not a good discipline for these students ; empirical psychology, or political economy, is a better introduction to the moral sciences for them when they reach the high school. This explains what was meant above in the remark as to the method of teaching grammar. As to language study generally, I think the value of it, at this period, and later, is extraordinarily overrated. The proportion of time given to language study in our secondary schools is nothing short of a public crime in its effect upon students of this type and indeed of any type. This, however, is a matter to which we return below. The average student comes to college with his sense of ex- ploration, his inductive capacity, stifled at its birth. He stands appalled when confronted with the un- assimilated details of any science which does not give him a " key " in the shape of general for- mulas made up beforehand. Were it not that his enlarging experience of life is all the while running counter to the trend of his so-called education, he would probably graduate ready for the social position in which authority takes the place of evidence, and imitation is the method of life. Second, the teacher should be on the look-out for a tendency which is very characteristic of a student of this type, the tendency, i.e., to fall into elaborate guessing at results. Take a little child of about seven or eight years of age, espe- cially one who has the marks of motor heredity, 214 THE STORY OF THE MIND. and observe the method of his acquisition of new words in reading. First he speaks the word which his habit dictates, and, that being wrong, he rolls his eyes away from the text and makes a giiess of the first word that comes into his mind ; this he keeps up as long as the teacher persists in ask- ing him to try again. Here is the same tendency that carries him later on in his education to a general conclusion by a short cut. He has not learned to interpret the data of a deliberate judg- ment, and his attention does not dwell on the necessary details. So with him all through his training ; he is always ready with a guess. Here, again, the teacher can do him good only by pa- tiently employing the inductive method. Lead him back to the simplest elements of the problem in hand, and help him gradually to build up a re- sult step by step. I think in this, as in most of the work with these scholars, the association with children of the opposite type is one of the best correctives, provided the companionship is not made alto- gether one-sided by the motor boy's perpetual monopolizing of all the avenues of personal ex- pression. When he fails in the class, the kind of social lesson which is valuable may be taught him by submitting the same question to a pupil of the plodding, deliberate kind, and waiting for the latter to work it out. Of course, if the teacher have any supervision over the playground, similar treatment can be employed there. Coming to consider the so-called " sensory " youth of the age between eight, let us say, and sixteen the age during which the training of the THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 215 secondary school presents its great problems wa find certain interesting contrasts between this type and that already characterized as "motor." The study of this type of youth is the more press- ing for reasons which I have already hinted in considering the same type in the earlier childhood period. It is necessary, first, to endeavour to get a fairly adequate view of the psychological char- acteristics of this sort of pupil. The current psychological doctrine of mental " types " rests upon a great mass of facts, drawn in the first instance from the different kinds of mental trouble, especially those which involve derangements of speech the different kinds of Aphasia. The broadest generalization which is reached from these facts is that which marks the distinction, of which I have already said so much between the motor and the sensory types. But besides this general distinction there are many finer ones; and in considering the persons of the sensory type, it is necessary to inquire into these finer distinctions. Not only do men and children differ in the matter of the sort of mental material which they find requisite, as to whether it is pic- tures of movements on the one hand, or pictures from the special senses on the other hand ; but they differ also in the latter case with respect to which of the special senses it is, in this case or that, which gives the particular individual his necessary cue, and his most perfect function. So we find inside of the general group called "sen- sory " several relatively distinct cases, all of which the teacher is likely to come across in varying numbers in a class of pupils. Of these the 210 THE STORY OF THE MIND. "visual" and the "auditory" are most impor- tant. There are certain aspects of the case which arc so common to all the cases of sensory mindSj whether they be visual, auditory, or other, that I may set them out before proceeding further. First, in all these matters of type distinction, one of the essential things to observe is the be- haviour of the Attention. We have already seen that the attention is implicated to a remarkable degree in what I called " fluid attention " above in the motor scholar. The same implication of the attention occurs in all the sensory cases, but presents very different aspects ; and the common fact that the attention is directly involved affords us one of the best rules of judgment and distinc- tion. "We may say, generally, of the sensory children, that the attention is best, most facile, most interest-carrying for some one preferred sense, leading for this sense into preoccupation and ready distraction. This tendency manifests itself, as we saw above, in the motor persons also, taking effect in action, speed, vivacity, hasty generalization, etc. ; but in the sensory one it takes on varying forms. This first aspect of our typical distinction of minds we may call "the relation of the ' favoured function ' to the atten- tion." Then, second, there is another and somewhat contrasted relation which also assumes impor- tance when we come to consider individual cases; and that is the relation of the " favoured func- tion" say movement, vision, hearing, etc. to Habit It is a common enough observation, THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 21? that habit renders functions easy, and that habits are hard to break; indeed, all treatment of habits is likely to degenerate into the common- place. But, when looked at as related to the attention, certain truths emerge from the con- sideration of habit. In general, we may say that habit bears a two- fold relation to attention : on the one hand, facile attention shows the reign of habit. The solid acqui- sitions are those with which attention is at home, and which are therefore more or less habitual. But, on the other hand, it is equally true that at- traction is in inverse ratio to habit. We need to at- tend least to these functions which are most habitual, and we have to attend most to those which are novel and only half acquired. AVe get new acquisitions mainly, indeed, by strained at- tention. So we have a contrast of possible in- terpretations in all cases of sharp and exclusive attention by the children : does the attention repre- sent a Habit in this particular action of the child ? or, does it represent the breaking up of a habit, an ad of Accommodation 1 In each case these questions have to be intelligently considered. The motor person, usually, when uninstructed and not hold back, uses his attention under the lead of habit. It is largely the teacher's business in his case, as we saw, to get him to hold, conserve, and direct his attention steadily to the novel and the com- plex. The sensory person, on the other hand, shows the attention obstructed by details, hin- dered by novelties, unable to pass smoothly over its acquisitions, and in general lacking the regu- lar influence of habit in leading him to sum- 218 THE STORY OF THE MIND. marize and utilize his mental store in general ways. The third general aspect of the topic is this : the person of the sensory type is more likely to be the one in whom positive derangement occurs in the higher levels, and in response to the more refined social and personal influences. This, for the reason that this type represents brain pro- cesses of greater inertia and complexity, with greater liability to obstruction. They are slower, and proceed over larger brain areas. With these general remarks, then, on the wider aspects of the distinction of types, we may now turn to one of the particular cases which occurs among sensory individuals. This is all that our space will allow. The Visual Type. The so-called "visuals" or " eye-minded " people among us, are numerically the largest class of the sensory population. They resort to visual imagery whenever possible, either because that is the prevailing tendency with them, or because, in the particular function in question in any special act, the visual material comes most readily to mind. The details of fact regarding the " visuals " are very interesting ; but I shall not take space to dwell upon them. The sphere in which the facts regarding the pupil of this type are important to the teacher is that of language, taken with the group of problems which arise about instruction in language. The question of his symbolism, and its relation to mathematics, logic, etc., is important. And finally, the sphere of the pupil's expression in all its forms. Then, from all his discoveries in these THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 219 things, the teacher is called upon to make his method of teaching and his general treatment suitable to this student. The visual pupil usually shows himself to be so predominately in his speech and language functions ; he learns best and fastest from copies which he sees. He delights in illustrations put in terms of vision, as when actually drawn out on the blackboard for him to see. He understands what he reads better than what he hears ; and he uses his visual symbols as a sort of common coin into which to convert the images which come to him through his other senses. In regard to the movements of attention, we may say that this boy or girl illustrates both the aspects of the attention- function which I pointed out above ; he attends best that is, most effectively to visual instruc- tion provided he exert himself ; but, on the other hand, it is just here that the drift of habit tends to make him superficial. As attention to the visual is the most easy for him, and as the details of his visual stock are most familiar, so he tends to pass too quickly over the new matters which are presented to him, assimilating the details to the old schemes of his habit. It is most important to observe this distinction, since it is analogous to the " fluid attention " of the motor scholar ; and some of the very important questions regard- ing correlation of studies, the training of atten- tion, and the stimulation of interest depend upon its recognition. Acquisition best just where it is most likely to go wrong ; that is the state of things. The voluntary use of the visual function gives the best results; but the habitual, involuntary, 220 THE STORY OF THE MIND. slipshod use of it gives bad results, and tends to the formation of injurious habits. For example, I set a strongly visual boy a " copy " to draw. Seeing this visual copy he will quickly recognise it, take it to be very easy, dash it off quickly, all under the lead of habit ; but his result is poor, because his habit has taken the place of effort. Once get him to make effort upon it, however, and his will be the best result of all the scholars, perhaps, just because the task calls him out in the line of his favoured function. The same antithesis comes out in connection with other varieties of sensory scholars. We may say, therefore, in regard to two of the general aspects of mental types the relation of the favoured function to attention, on the one hand, and to habit, on the other that they both find emphatic illustration in the pupil of the visual type. He is, more than any other sensory pupil, a special case. His mental processes set de- cidedly toward vision. He is the more important, also, because he is so common. Statistics are lack- ing, but possibly half of the entire human family in civilised life are visual in their type for most of the language functions. This is due, no doubt to the emphasis that civilisation puts upon sight as the means of social acquisition generally, and to our predominantly visual methods of instruction. The third fact mentioned is also illustrated by this type; the fact that mental instruction and derangement may come easily, through the stress laid upon vision in the person's mental economy. I need not enlarge upon the different forms of special defect which come through impairment of THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 221 sight by central lesion or degeneration of the visual centres and connections. Suffice it to say that they are very common, and very difficult of recovery. The visual person is often so com- pletely a slave to his sight that when that fails either in itself or through weakness of attention he becomes a wreck off the shore of the ocean of intellect. When we consider the large proportion just mentioned of pupils of this type, the care which should be exercised by the school authori- ties in the matter of favourable conditions of light, avoidance of visual fatigue, proper distance- adjustments in all visual application &s regarda focus, symmetry, size of objects, copies, prints, etc., becomes at once sufficiently evident to the thoughtful teacher, as it should be still earlier to the parent. There should be a medical examina- tion, by a competent oculist, before the child foes to school, and regular tests afterward, chool examiners and boards should have quali- fications for reporting on the hygienic conditions of the school as regards lighting. The bright glare of a neighbouring wall before a window toward which children with weak eyes face when at their desks may result not only in common defects of vision but also in resulting mental and moral damage ; and the results are worse to those who depend mainly on vision for the food, drink, and exercise, so to speak, of their growing minds. As to the methods of teaching these and also the other sensory pupils, the indications already given must suffice. The statement of some of these far-reaching problems of educational psy- chology, and of the directions in which their 222 THE STORY OF THE MIND. answers are to be sought, exhausts the purpose oi this chapter. In general it may be said that the recommendations made for the treatment of sen- sory children at the earlier stage may be extended to later periods also, and that the treatment should be, for the most part, in intelligent con- trast to that which the motor pupils receive. Language Study. From this general considera- tion of the child's training it becomes evident that the great subjects which are most useful for dis- cipline in the period of secondary education are the mathematical studies on the one hand, which exercise the faculty of abstraction, and the positive sciences, which train the power of observation and require truth to detail. If we should pursue the subject into the collegiate period, we should find mental and moral science, literature, and history coming to their rights. If this be in the main psychological, we see that language study, as such, shc'ild have no great place in secondary education. The study of grammar, as has been already said, is very useful in the early periods of development if taught vocally ; it brings the child out in self-expression, and carries its own correctives, from the fact that its results are al- ways open to social control. These are, in my mind, the main functions of the study of lan- guage. What, then, is the justification for devoting ten or twelve years of the youth's time to study of a dead language, as is commonly done in the case of Latin? The utility of expression does not enter into it, and the discipline of truth to elegant literary copy can be even so well attained from the THE TRAINING OF THE MIND. 223 study of our own tongue, which is lamentably neglected. In all this dreary language study, the youth's interest is dried up at its source. He is fed on formulas and rules ; he has no outlet for invention or discovery ; lists of exceptions to the rules destroy the remnant of his curiosity and incentive ; even reasoning from analogy is strictly forbidden him ; he is shut up from Nature as in a room with no windows ; the dictionary is his authority as absolute and final as it is flat and sterile. His very industry, being forced rather than spontaneous, makes him mentally, no less than physically, stoop-shouldered and near-sighted. It seems to be one of those mistakes of the past still so well lodged in tradition and class rivalry that soundness of culture is artificially identified with its maintenance. Yet there is no reason that the spirit of classical culture and the durable elements of Greek and Roman life should not be as well acquired nay, better from the study of history, archaeology, and literature. For this language work is not study of literature. Not one in one hundred of the students who are forced through the periodical examinationsin these languages ever gets any insight into their aesthetic quality or any inspiration from their form. But more than this. At least one positively vicious effect follows from language study with grammar and lexicon, no matter what the language be. The habit of intellectual guessing grows with the need of continuous effort in putting together elements which go together for no particular reason. When a thing cannot be reasoned out, it may just as well be guessed out. The guess ia 224 THE STORY OF THE MIND. always easier than the dictionary, and, if success- ful, it answers just as well. Moreover, the teacher has no way of distinguishing the pupil's replies which are due to the guess from those due to honest work. I venture to say, from personal experience, that no one who has been through the usual classical course in college and before it has not more than once staked his all upon the happy guess at the stubborn author's meaning. This shallow device becomes a substitute for honest struggle. And it is more than shallow ; to guess is dishonest. It is a servant to unworthy inertia ; and worse, it is a cloak to mental unreadiness and to conscious moral cowardice. The guess is a bluff to fortune when the honest gauntlet of ignorance should be thrown down to the issue. The effects of this show themselves in a habit of mind tolerated in persons of a literary bent, which is a marked contrast to that demanded and exemplified by science. I think that much of our literary impressionism and sentimentalism reveal the guessing habit. Yet why guess ? Why be content with an im- pression ? Why hint of a " certain this and a certain that " when the "certain," if it mean any- thing, commonly means the uncertain ? Things worth writing about should be formulated clearly enough to be understood. Why let the personal reaction of the individual's feeling suffice ? Our youth need to be told that the guess is immoral, that hypothesis is the servant of research, that the private impression instructs nobody, that presentiment is usually wrong, that science is the best antidote to the fear of ghosts, and that the THE INDIVIDUAL MIND AND SOCIETY. 225 reply " I guess so " betrays itself, whether it arise from bravado, from cowardice, or from literary finesse ! I think that the great need of our life is honesty, that the bulwark of honesty in educa- tion is exact knowledge with the scientific habit of mind, and, furthermore, that the greatest hindrance to these things is the training which does not, with all the sanctions at its command distinguish the real, with its infallible tests, from the shadowy and vague, but which contents itself with the throw of the intellectual dice box. Any study which tends to make the difference between truth and error pass with the throwing of a die, and which leads the student to be content with a result he cannot verify, has somewhat the function in his education of the puzzle in our society amusements or the game of sliced animals in the nursery. CHAPTER IX. THE INDIVIDUAL MIND AND SOCIETY SOCIAI PSYCHOLOGY. THE series of questions which arise when we consider the individual as a member cf society fall together under the general theory of what has been called, in a figure, Social Heredity. The treatment of this topic will show some- thing of the normal relation of the individual's mind to the social environment ; and the chapter following will give some hints as to the nature p 226 THE STORY OF THE MIND. and position of that exceptional man in whom we are commonly so much interested the Genius. The theory of social heredity has been worked up through the contributions, from different points of view, of several authors. What, then, is social heredity ? This is a very easy question to answer, since the group of facts which the phrase describes are extremely familiar so much so that the reader may despair, from such a commonplace beginning, of getting any novelty from it. The social heri- tage is, of course, all that a man or woman gets from the accumulated wisdom of society. All that the ages have handed down the literature, the art, the habits of social conformity, the experi- ence of social ills, the treatment of crime, the re- lief of distress, the education of the young, the provision for the old all, in fact, however described, that we men owe to the ancestors whom we reverence, and to the parents whose presence with us perhaps we cherish still. Their struggles, the orator has told us, have bought our freedom ; we enter into the heritage of their thought and wisdom and heroism. All true ; we do. We all breathe a social atmosphere ; and our growth is by this breathing in of the tradition and example of the past. Now, if this be the social heritage, we may go on to ask : Who are to inherit it ? To this we may again add the further question : How does the one who is born to such a heritage as this come into his inheritance 1 And with this yet again : How may he use his inheritance to what end and under what limitations? These THE INDIVIDUAL MIND AND SOCIETY. 227 questions come so readily into the mind that we naturally wish the discussion to cover them. Generally, then, who is eligible for the social inheritance ? This heir to society we are, all of us. Society does not make a will, it is true ; nor does society die intestate. To say that it is we who inherit the riches of the social past of the race, is to say that we are the children of the past in a sense which comes upon us with all the force that bears in upon the natural heir when he finds his name in will or law. But there are exceptions. And before we seek the marks of the legitimacy of our claim to be the heirs of the hundreds of years of accumulated thought and action, it may be well to advise ourselves as to the poor crea- tures who do not enter into the inheritance with us. They are those who people our asylums, our reformatories, our jails and penitentiaries ; those who prey upon the body of our social life by demands for charitable support, or for the more radical treatment by isolation in institu- tions; indeed, some who are born to fail in this inheritance are with us no more, even though they were of our generation ; they have paid the penalty which their effort to wrest the inherit- ance from us has cost, and the grave of the mur- derer, the burglar, the suicide, the red-handed rebel against the law of social inheritance, is now their resting-place. Society then is, when taken in the widest sense, made up of two classes of people the heirs who possess and the delin- quents by birth or conduct who have forfeited the inheritance. We may get a clear idea of the wey a man 228 THE STORY OF THE MIND. attains his social heritage by dropping figure for the present and speaking in the terms of plain natural science. Ever since Darwin propounded the law of Natural Selection the word Variation has been current in the sense explained on an earlier page. The student in natural science has come to look for variations as the necessary preliminary to any new step of progress and adaptation in the Bphere of organic life. Nature, we now know, is fruitful to an extraordinary degree. She pro- duces many specimens of everything. It is a general fact of reproduction that the offspring of plant or animal is quite out of proportion in num- bers to the parents that produce them, and often also to the means of living which await them. One plant produces seeds which are carried far and near to the ocean and to the desert rocks, no less than to the soil in which they may take root and grow. Insects multiply at a rate which is simply inconceivable to our limited capacity for thinking in figures. Animals also produce more abundantly, and man has children in numbers which allow him to bury half his offspring yearly and yet increase the adult population from year to year. This means, of course, that whatever the inheritance is, all do not inherit it ; some must go without a portion whenever the resources of na- ture, or the family, are in any degree limited and when competition is sharp. Now Nature solves the problem among the animals in the simplest of ways. All the young born in the same family are not exactly alike ; " variations " occur. There are those that are THE INDIVIDUAL MIND AND SOCIETY. 229 better nourished, those that have larger muscles, those that breathe deeper and run faster. So the question who of these shall inherit the earth, the fields, the air, the water this is left to itself. The best of all the variations live, and the others die. Those that do live have thus, to all intents and purposes, been "selected" for the inherit- ance, just as really as if the parents of the species had left a will and had been able to enforce it. This is the principle of "Natural Selection." Now, this way of looking at problems which involve aggregates of individuals and their distri- bution is becoming a habit of the age. Wherever the application of the principles of probability do not explain a statistical result that is, wherever there seem to be influences which favour particu- lar individuals at the expense of others men turn at once to the occurrence of Variations for the justification of this seeming partiality of Na- ture. And what it means is that Nature is partial to individuals in making them, in their natural heredity, rather than after they are born. The principle of heredity with variations is a safe assumption to make also in regard to man- kind ; and we see at once that in order to come in for a part in the social heritage of our fathers we must be born fit for it. We must be born so endowed for the race of social life that we assimi- late, from our birth up, the spirit of the society into which we are reared. The unfittest, socially, are suppressed. In this there is a distinction be- tween this sphere of survival and that of the ani- mal world. In it the fittest survive, the ctherf 230 THE STORY OF THE MIND. are lost ; but in society the unfittest are lost, all the others survive. Social selection weeds out the unfit, the murderer, the most unsocial man, and says to him : " You must die " ; natural selection seeks out the most fit and says : " You alone are to live." The difference is important, for it marks a prime series of distinctions, when the conceptions drawn from biology are applied to social phenomena ; but for the understanding of variations we need not now pursue it further. The contrast may be put, however, in a sentence : in organic evolution we have the natural selection of the fit ; in social progress we have the social suppression of the unfit. Given social variations therefore, differences among men, what becomes of this man or that ? We see at once that if society is to live there must be limits set somewhere to the degree of variation which a given man may show from the standards of society. And we may find out something of these limits by looking at the evi- dent and marked differences which actually appear about us. First, there is the idiot. He is not available, from a social point of view, because he varies too much on the side of defect. He shows from in- fancy that he is unable to enter into the social heritage because he is unable to learn to do social things. His intelligence does not grow with his body. Society pities him if he be without natural protection, and puts him away in an institution. So of the insane, the pronounced lunatic; he varies too much to sustain in any way the wide system of social relationships which society re- THE INDIVIDUAL MIND AND SOCIETY. 23i quires of each individual. Either he is unable tc take care of himself, or he attempts the life of some one else, or he is the harmless, unsocial thing that wanders among us like an animal or stands in his place like a plant. He is not a factor in social life ; he has not come into the in- heritance. Then there is the extraordinary class of people whom we may describe by a stronger term than those already employed. We find not only the unsocial, the negatively unfit, those whom society puts away with pity in its heart ; there are also the antisocial, the class whom we usually desig- nate as criminals. These persons, like the others, are variations ; but they seem to be varia- tions in quite another way. They do not repre- sent lack on the intellectual side always or alono, but on the moral side, on the social side, as such. The least we can say of the criminals is that they tend, by heredity or by evil example, to violate the rules which society has seen fit to lay down for the general security of men living together in the enjoyment of the social heritage. So far, then, they are factors of disintegration, of de- struction; enemies of the social progress which proceeds from generation to generation by just this process of social inheritance. So society says to the criminal also: "You must perish/' We kill off the worst, imprison the bad for life, attempt to reform the rest. They, too, then, ars excluded from the heritage of the past. So our lines of eligibility get more and more narrowly drawn. The instances of exclusion now cited serve to xnve us some insight into the real 232 THE STORY OF THE MIXD. qualities of the man who lives a social part, and the way he comes to live it. Passing on to take up the second of the in- formal topics suggested, we have to find the best description that we can of the social man the one who is fitted for the social life. This ques- tion concerns the process by which anyone of us comes into the wealth of relationships which the social life represents. For to say that a man does this is in itself to say that he is the man society is looking for. Indeed this is the only way to de- scribe the man to actually find him. Society is essentially a growing, shifting thing. It changes from age to age, from country to country. The Greeks had their social conditions, and the Romans theirs. Even the criminal lines are drawn dif- ferently, somewhat, here and there ; and in a low stage of civilization a man may pass for normal who, in our time, would be described as weak in mind. This makes it necessary that the standards of judgment of a given society should be deter- mined by an actual examination of the society, and forbids us to say that the limits of varia- tion which society in general will tolerate must be this or that. We may say, then, that the man who is fit for Social life must be born to learn. The need of learn- ing is his essential need. It comes upon him from his birth. Speech is the first great social function which he must learn, and with it all the varieties of verbal accomplishment reading and writing. This brings to the front the great method of all his learn'ng icr 'tation. In order to be social he must be imitative, imitative, imitative. He must THE INDIVIDUAL MIND AND SOCIETY. 233 realize for himself by action the forms, conven- tions, requirements, co-operations of his social group. All is learning ; and learning not by himself and at random, but under the leading of the social conditions which surround him. Plas- ticity is his safety and the means of his progress. So he grows into the social organization, takes his place as a Socius in the work of the world, and lays deep the sense of values, upon the basis of which his own contributions if he be destined to make contributions to the wealth of the world are to be wrought out. This great fact that he is open to the play of the personal influences which are about him is just the " suggestibleness " which we have already described in an earlier chapter ; and the influences themselves are " suggestions " social suggestions. These influences differ in different communities, as we so often remark. The Turk learns to live in a very different system of relations of " give and take " from ours, and ours differ as much from those of the Chinese. All that is characteristic of the race or tribe or group or family all this sinks into the child and youth by his simple presence there in it, with the capacity to learn by imitation. He is suggest- ible, and here are the suggestions ; he is made to inherit, and he inherits. So it makes no differ- ence what his tribe or kindred be ; let him be a learner by imitation, and he becomes in turn pos- sessor and teacher. The case becomes more interesting still when we give the matter another turn, and say that in this learning all the members of society agree; all must be born to learn the same things. They 234 THE STORY OF THE MIND. enter, if so be they do, into the same social inheritance. This again seems like a very com- monplace remark ; but certain things flow from it. Each member of society gives and gets the same set of social suggestions; the differences being the degree of progress each has made, and the degree of variation which each one gives to what he has before received. This last difference is treated below where we consider the genius. There grows up, in all this give and take, in all the interchange of suggestions among you, me, and the other, an obscure sense of a certain social understanding about ourselves generally a Zeitgeist, an atmosphere, a taste, or, in minor matters, a style. It is a very peculiar thing, this social spirit. The best way to understand that you have it, and something of what it is, is to get into a circle in which it is different. The com- mon phrase " fish out of water " is often heard in reference to it. But that does not serve for science. The next best thing that I can do in the way of rendering it is to appeal to another word which has a popular sense, the word Judgment. Let us say that there exists in every society a general system of values, found in social usages, conventions, institutions, and formulas, and that our judgments of social life are founded on our habitual recognition of these values, and of the arrangement of them which has become more or less fixed in our society. For example, to be cor- dial to a disagreeable neighbour shows good social judgment in a small matter ; not to quarrel with the homoeopathic enthusiast who meets you in the street and wishes to doctor your rheuma- THE INDIVIDUAL MIND AND SOCIETY. 235 tism out of a symptom book that is good judg- ment. In short, the man gets to show more and more, as he grows up from childhood, a certain good judgment ; and his good judgment is also the good judgment of his social set, community, or nation. The psychologist might prefer to say that a man " feels " this ; perhaps it would be better for psychological readers to say simply that he has a "sense" of it ; but the popular use of the word "judgment" fits so accurately into the line of distinction we are now making that we may adhere to it. So we reach the general position that the eligible candidate for social life must have good judgment as represented by the common standards of judgment of his people. It may be doubted, however, by some of my readers, whether this sense of social values called judgment is the outcome of suggestions operating throughout the term of one's social education. This is an essential point, and I must just assume it. It follows from what we said in an earlier chapter to be the way of the child's learning by imitation. It will appear true, I trust, to anyone who may take the pains to observe the child's ten- tative endeavours to act up to social usages in the family and school. One may then actually see the growth of the sort of judgment which I am describing. Psychologists are coming to see that even the child's sense of his own personal self is a gradual attainment, achieved step by step through his imitative responses to his personal environment. His thought of himself is an in- terpretation of his thought of others, and hi* thought of another is due to further accommo 236 THE STORY OF THE MIND. dation of his active processes to changes in tiia thought of a possible self. Around this funda- mental movement in his personal growth all the values of his life have their play. So I say that his sense of truth in the social relationships of his environment is the outcome of his very gradual learning of his personal place in these relation- ships. We reach the conclusion, therefore, from this part of our study, that the socially unfit person is the person of poor judgment. He may have learned a great deal ; he may in the main repro- duce the activities required by his social tra- dition ; but with it all he is to a degree out of joint with the general system of estimated values by which society is held together. This may be shown to be true even of the pronounced types of unsocial individuals of whom we had occasion to speak at the outset. The criminal is, socially considered, a man of poor judgment. He may be more than this, it is true. He may have a bad strain of heredity, what the theologians call "original sin"; he then is an "habitual criminal " in the current distinction of criminal types ; and his own sense of his failure to accept the teach- ings of society may be quite absent, since crime is so normal to him. But the fact remains that in his judgment he is mistaken ; his normal is not society's normal. He has failed to be educated in the judgments of his fellows, however besides and however more deeply he may have failed. Or, again, the criminal may commit crime simply becuuse he is carried away in an eddy of good companionship, which represents a temporary THE ONIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 237 current of social life ; or his nervous energies may be overtaxed temporarily or drained of their strength, so that his education in social judg- ment is forgotten : he is then the " occasional " criminal. It is true of the man of this type also that while he remains a criminal he has lost his balance, has yielded to temptation, has gratified private impulse at the expense of social sanity; all this shows the lack of that sustaining force of moral consciousness which represents the level of social Tightness in his time and place. Then, as to the idiot, the imbecile, the insane, they, too, have no good judgment, for the very adequate but pitiful reason that they have no judgment at all. This, then, is the doctrine of Social Heredity; it illustrates the side of conformity, of personal acquiescence on the part of the individual in the rules of social life. Another equally important side, that of the personal initiative and influence of the individual mind in society, remains to be spoken of in the next chapter. Social Heredity emphasises Imitation; the Genius, to whom we now turn, illustrates Invention. CHAPTER X. THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. THE facts concerning the genius seem to indicate that he is a being somewhat exceptional and apart. Common mortals stand about him with 238 THE STORY OF THE MIND. expressions cf awe. The literature of him ia embodied in the alcoves of our libraries most accessible to the public, and even the wayfaring man, to whom life is a weary round, and his con- quests over nature and his fellows only the divi- sion of honours on a field that usually witnesses drawn battles or" bloody defeats, loves to stimulate his courage by hearing of the lives of those who put nature and society so utterly to rout. He hears of men who swayed the destinies of Europe, who taught society by outraging her conventions, whose morality even was reached sometimes by scorn of the peccadilloes which condemn the ordinary man. Every man has in him in some degree the hero worshipper, and gets inflamed somewhat by reading Carlyle's Frederick the Great. Of course, this popular sense cannot be wholly wrong. The genius does accomplish the world movements. Napoleon did set the destiny of Europe, and Frederick did reveal, in a sense, a new phase of moral conduct. The truth of these things is just what makes the enthusiasm of the common man so healthy and stimulating. It is not the least that the genius accomplishes that he thus elevates the traditions of man and inspires the literature that the people read. He sows the seeds of effort in the fertile soil of the newborn of his own kind, while he leads those who do not have the same gifts to rear and tend the growing plant in their own social gardens. This is true ; and a philosophy of society should not overlook either of the facts the actual deeds of the great man with h?.s peculiar influence upon his own THE GErtiUS AND HJS ENVIRONMENT. 239 time, and his lasting place in the more inspiring social tradition which is embodied in literature and art. Yet the psychologist has to present just the opposite aspect of these apparent exceptions to the canons of our ordinary social life. He has to oppose the extreme claim made by the writers who attempt to lift the genius quite out of the normal social movement. For it only needs a moment's consideration to see that if the genius has no reasonable place in the movement of social progress in the world, then there can be no possible doctrine or philosophy of such progress. To the hero worshipper his hero conies in simply to " knock out," so to speak, all the regular move- ment of the society which is so fortunate, or so unfortunate, as to have given him birth ; and by his initiative the aspirations, beliefs, struggles of the community or state get a push in a new direction a tangent to the former movement or a reversal of it. If this be true, and it be further true that no genius who is likely to appear can be discounted by any human device before his abrupt appearance upon the stage of action, then the history of facts must take the place of the science or philosophy of them, and the chronicler become the only histon'an with a right tc be. For of what value can we hold the contribution which the genius makes to thought if this con- tribution runs so across the acquisitions of the earlier time and the contributions of earlier genius that no line of common truth can be dis- covered between him and them ? Then each 240 THE STORY OF THE MIND. society would have its own explanation of itself, and that only so long as it produced no new genius. It may be, of course, that society is so constituted or, rather, so lacking in constitution that simple variations in brain physiology are the sufficient reason for its cataclysms ; but a great many efforts will be made to prove the contrary before this highest of all spheres of human activity is declared to have no meaning no thread which runs from age to age and links mankind, the genius and the man who plods, in a common and significant development. In undertaking this task we must try to judge the genius with reference to the sane social man, the normal Socius. What he is we have seen. He is a person who learns to judge by the judgments of society. What, then, shall we say of the genius from this point of view ? Can the hero worshipper be right in saying that the genius teaches society to judge ; or shall we say that the genius, like other men, must learn to judge by the judgments of society 1 The most fruitful point of view is, no doubt, that which considers the genius a variation. And unless we do this it is evidently impossible to get any theory which will bring him into a general scheme. But how great a variation ? And in what direction ? these are the questions. The great variations found in the criminal by heredity, the insane, the idiotic, etc., we have found ex- cluded from society ; so we may well ask why the genius is not excluded also. If our deter- mination of the limits within which society decides who is to be excluded is correct, then the THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 241 genius must come within these limits. He can not escape them and live socially. The Intelligence of the Genius. The directions in which the genius actually varies from the average man are evident as a matter of fact. He is, first of all, a man of great power of thought, of great "constructive imagination," as the psy- chologists say. So let us believe, first, that a genius is a man who has occasionally greater thoughts than other men have. Is this a reason for excluding him from society 1 Certainly not ; for by great thoughts we mean true thoughts, thoughts which will work, thoughts which will bring in a new area in the discovery of principles, or of their application. This is just what all development depends upon, this attainment of novelty, which is consistent with older knowledge and supplementary to it. But suppose a man have thoughts which are not true, which do not fit the topic of their application, which contradict established knowledges, or which result in bizarre and fanciful combinations of them ; to that man we deny the name genius : he is a crank, an agitator, an anarchist, or what not. The test, then, which we bring to bear upon the intellectual variations which men show is that of truth, prac- tical workability in short, to sum it up, " fitness." Any thought, to live and germinate, must be a fit thought. And the community's sense of the fitness of the thought is their rule of judg ment. Now, the way the community got this sense that is the great result we have reached above. Their sense of fitness is just what I called above Q 242 THE STORY OF THE MIND. their judgment. So far, at least, as it relates to matters of social import, it is of social origin. It reflects the outcome of all social heredity, tradi- tion, education. The sense of social truth is their criterion of social thoughts, and unless the social reformer's thought be in some way fit to go into the setting thus made by earlier social development, he is not a genius but a crank. I may best show the meaning of the claim that society makes upon the genius by asking in how far in actual life he manages to escape this account of himself to society. The facts are very plain, and this is the class of facts which some writers urge, as supplying an adequate rule for the application of the principles of their social philosophy The simple fact is, say they, that without the consent of society the thoughts of your hero, whether he be genius or fool, are prac- tically valueless. The fulness of time must come ; and the genius before his time, if judged by his works, cannot be a genius at all. His thought may be great, so great that, centuries after, society may attain to it as its richest outcome and its profoundest intuition : but before that time, it is as bizarre as a madman's fancies and as useless. What would be thought, we might be asked by writers of this school, of a rat which developed upon its side the hand of a man, with all its mechanism of bone, muscle, tactile sensi- bility, and power of delicate manipulation, if the remainder of the creature were true to the pattern of a rat ? Would not the rest of the rat tribe be justified in leaving this anomaly behind to starve in the hole where bis singular appendage held THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 243 him fast ? Is such a rat any the less a monster because man finds use for his hands ? To a certain extent this argument is forcible and true. If social utility be our rule of defini- tion, then certainly the premature genius is no genius. And this rule of definition may be put in another way which renders it still more plausible. The variations which occur in intellectual endow- ment, in a community, vary about a mean ; there is, theoretically, an average man. The differences among men which can be taken account of in any philosophy of life must be in some way referable to this mean. The variation which does not find its niche at all in the social environment, but which strikes all the social fellows with dis- approval, getting no sympathy whatever, is thereby exposed to the charge of being the " sport " of Nature and the fruit of chance. The lack of hearing which awaits such a man sets him in a form of isolation, and stamps him not only as a social crank, but also as a cosmic tramp. Put in its positive and usual form, this view simply claims that man is always the outcome of the social movement. The reception he gets is a measure of the degree in which he adequately represents this movement. Certain variations are possible men who are forward in the legiti- mate progress of society and these men are the true and only geniuses. Other variations, which seem to discount the future too much, are " sports " ; for the only permanent discounting of the future is that which is projected from the ele- vation of the past. The great defects of this view is found in its 244 THE STORY OF THE MIND. definitions. We exclaim at once : who made the past the measure of the future ? and who made social approval the measure of truth ? What is there to eclipse the vision of the poet, the inven- tor, the seer, that he should not see over the heads of his generation and raise his voice for that jvhich, to all men else, lies behind the veil ? The social philosophy of this school cannot answer these questions, I think ; nor can it meet the ap- peal we all make to history when we cite the names of Aristotle, Pascal, and Newton, or of any of the men who single-handed and alone have set guide-posts to history, and given to the world large portions of its heritage of truth. What can set limit to the possible variations of fruitful in- tellectual power ? Rare such variations that is their law : the greater the variation, the more rare ! But so is genius : the greater, the more rare. As to the rat with the human hand, he \vould not be left to starve and decay in his hole; he would be put in alcohol when he died, and kept in a museum ! And the lesson which he would teach to the wise biologist would be that here in this rat Nature had shown her genius by discounting in advance the slow processes of evolution ! It is, indeed, the force of such considerations as these which have led to many justifications of the positions that the genius is quite out of con- nection with the social movement of his time. The genius brings his variations to society whether society will or no ; and as to harmony between them, that is a matter of outcome rather ;han of expectation or theory. We are told the THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 245 genius comes as a brain variation ; and between the physical heredity which produces him and the social heredity which'sets the tradition of his time there is no connection. But this is not tenable, as we have reason to think, from the interaction which actually takes place between physical and social heredity. To be sure, the heredity of the individual is a physio logical matter, in the sense that the son must in herit from his parents and their ancestors alone. But granted that two certain parents are his par- ents, we may ask how these two certain parents came to be his parents. How did his father como to many his mother, and the reverse ? This is distinctly a social question ; and to its solution all the currents of social influence and suggestion contribute. Who is free from social considera- tions in selecting his wife 1 Does the coachman have an equal chance to get the heiress, or the blacksmith the clergyman's daughter ? Do we find inroads made in West End society by the ranchman and the tradesman's clerk ? And are not the inroads which we do find, the inroads made by the earls and the marquises, due to influences which are quite social and psychological? Again, on the other hand, what leads the earl and the marquis to lay their titles at West End doors, while the ranchman and the tradesman's clerk keep away, but the ability of both these types of suitors to estimate their chances just on social and psychological grounds 1 Novelists have rung the changes on this intrusion of social influences into the course of physical heredity. Bourget's Cosmopolis is a picture of the influence of social 246 THE STORY OF THE MIND. race characteristics on natural heredity, with the reaction of natural heredity again upon the new social conditions. A speech of a character of Balzac's is to the point, as illustrating a certain appreciation of these social considerations which we all to a de- gree entertain. The Duchesse de Carigliano says to Madame de Sommervieux : " I know the world too well, my dear, to abandon myself to the dis- cretion of a too superior man. You should know that one may allow them to court one, but marry them that is a mistake ! Xever no, no. It is like wanting to find pleasure in inspecting the machinery of the opera instead of sitting in a box to enjoy its brilliant illusions." To be sure, we do not generally deliberate in this wise when we fall in love ; but that is not necessary, since our social environment sets the style by the kind of intangible deliberation which I have called judg- ment and fitness. Suppose a large number of Northern advocates of social equality should mi- grate to the Southern United States, and, true to their theory, intermarry with the blacks. Would it not then be true that a social theory had run athwart the course of physiological descent, lead- ing to the production of a legitimate mulatto so- ciety 1 A new race might spring from such a purely psychological or social initiation. While not agreeing, therefore, with the theory which makes the genius independent of the social movement least of all with the doctrine that physical heredity is uninfluenced by social condi- tions the hero worshipper is right, nevertheless, in saying that we can not set the limitations of the THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 247 genius on the side of variations toward high in- tellectual endowment. So if the general position be true that he is a variation of some kind, we must look elsewhere for the direction of those peculiar traits whose excess would be his condem- nation. This we can find only in connection with the other demand that we make of the ordinary man the demand that he be a man of good judg- ment. And to this we may now turn. The Judgment of the Genius. We should bear in mind in approaching this topic the result which follows from the reciprocal character of social relationships. No genius ever escapes the require- ments laid down for his learning, his social hered- ity. Mentally he is a social outcome, as well as are the fellows who sit in judgment on him. He must judge his own thoughts therefore as they do. And his own proper estimate of things and thoughts, his relative sense of fitness, gets applica- tion, by a direct law of his own mental processes, to himself and to his own creations. The limita- tions which, in the judgment of society, his vari- ations must not overstep, are set by his own judg- ment also. If the man in question have thoughts which are socially true, he must himself know that they are true. So we reach a conclusion regarding the selection of the particular thoughts which the genius may have : he and society must agree in regard to the fitness of them, although in particular cases this agreement ceases to be the emphatic- thing. The essential thing comes to be the reflection of the social standard in the thinker's own judgment ; the thoughts thought must always be critically judged by the thinker himself ; and for the 248 THE STORY OF THE MIND. most part his judgment is at once also the social judg- ment. This may be illustrated further. Suppose we take the man of striking thoughts and withal no sense of fitness none of the judg- ment about them which society has. He will go through a mighty host of discoveries every hour. The very eccentricity of his imaginations will only appeal to him for the greater admiration, lie will bring his most chimerical schemes out and air them with the same assurance with which the real inventor exhibits his. But such a man is not pro- nounced a genius. If his ravings about this and that are harmless, we smile and let him talk ; but if his lack of judgment extend to things of grave import, or be accompanied by equal illusions regarding himself and society in other relation- ships, then \ve classify his case and put him into the proper ward for the insane. Two of the com- monest forms of such impairment of judgment are seen in the victims of " fixed ideas " on the one hand, and the exaltes on the other. These men have no true sense of values, no way of selecting the fit combinations of imagination from the unfit ; and even though some transcendently true and original thought were to flit through the diseased mind of such a one, it would go as it came, and the world would wait for a man with a sense of fitness to arise and rediscover it. The other class, the exaltes, are somewhat the reverse ; the illusion of personal greatness is so strong that their thoughts seem to them infallible and their persons divine. Men of such perversions of judgment arc com- mon among us. We all know the man who seems THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 249 to be full of rich and varied thought, who holds us sometimes by the power of his conceptions or the beauty of his creations, but in whose thought we yet find some incongruity, some emineutly unfit element, some grotesque application, some elevation or depression from the level of common- place truth, some ugly strain in the aesthetic impression. The man himself does not know it, and that is the reason he includes it. His sense of fitness is dwarfed or paralysed. We in the community come to regret that he is so "visionary," with all his talent; so we accom- modate ourselves to his unfruitfulness, and at the best only expect r.n occasional hour's entertain- ment under the spell of hio presence. This certainly is not the man to produce a world movement. Most of the men we call "cranks" are of this type. They are essentially lacking in judgment, and the popular estimate of them is exactly right. It is evident, therefore, from this last explanar tion, that there is a second direction of variation among men : variation in their sense of the truth and value of their own tiuwyhts, and with them of tho thoughts of others. This is the great limitation which the man of genius shares with men gener- ally a limitation in the amount of variation which he may show in his social judgments, especially as these variations affect the claim which he makes upon society for recognition. It is evident that this must be an important factor in our estimate of the claims of the hero to our worship, especially since it is the more obscure side of his temper^ mcnt, and the side generally overlooked alto- 250 THE STORY OF THE MIND. gether. This lets us call in our further illustra- tions, the "social sanity " of the man of genius. The first indication of the kind of social variation which oversteps even the degree of indulgence society is willing to accord to the great thinker is to be found in the effect which education has upon character. The discipline of social development is, as we have seen, mainly conducive to the reduction of eccentricities, the levelling off of personal peculiarities. All who come into the social heritage learn the same great series of lessons derived from the past, and all get the sort of judgment required in social life from the common exercises of the home and school in the formative years of their education. So we should expect that the greater singularities of dis- position which represent insuperable difficulty in the process of social assimilation would show themselves early. Here it is that the actual con- flict comes the struggle between impulse and social restraint. Many a genius owes the redemp- tion of his intellectual gifts to legitimate social uses to the victory gained by a teacher and the discipline learned through obedience. And thus it is also that many who gave promise of great distinction in early life fail to achieve it. They run off after a phantom, and society pronounces them mad. In their case the personal factor has overcome the social factor ; they have failed in the lessons they should have learned, their own self- criticism is undisciplined, and they miss the mark. These two extremes of variation, however, do not exhaust the case. One of them tends in a measure to the blurring of the light of genius, THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT 251 and the other to the rejection of social restraint to a degree which makes the potential genius over into a crank. The average man is the mean. But the greatest reach of human attainment, and with it the greatest influence ever exercised by man, is yet more than either of these. It is not enough, the hero worshipper may still say, that the genius should have sane and healthy judgment, as society reckons sanity. The fact still remains that even in bis social judgments he may instruct society. He may stand alone and, by sheer might, lift his fel- low-men up to his point of vantage, to their eternal gain and to his eternal praise. Even let it be that he must have self-criticism, the sense of fit- ness you speak of, that very sense may transcend the vulgar judgment of his fellows. His judg- ment may be saner than theirs ; and as his intel- lectual creations are great and unique, so may his sense of their truth be full and unique. Wagner led the musical world by his single-minded devot- tion to the ideas of Wagner ; and Darwin had to be true to his sense of truth and to the formula- tions of his thought, though no man accorded him the right to instruct his generation either in the one or in the other. To be sure, this divine assurance of the man of genius may be counter- feited ; the vulgar dreamer often has it. But, nevertheless, when a genius has it, he is not a vulgar dreamer. This is true, I think, and the erplanation of it leads us to the last fruitful application of the doc- trine of variations. Just as the intellectual endowment of men may vary within very wide limits, so may the social qualifications of men. 252 THE STORY OF THE MIND. There are men who find it their meat to do society service. There are men so naturally born to take the lead in social reform, in executive matters, in organisation, in planning our social campaigns for us, that we turn to them as by instinct. They have a kind of insight to which we can only bow. They gain the confidence of men, win the support of women, and excite the acclamations of children. These people are the social geniuses. They seem to anticipate the discipline of social education. They do not need to learn the lessons of the social environment. Now, such persons undoubtedly represent a variation toward suggestibility of the most delicate and singular kind. They surpass the teachers from whom they learn. It is hard to say that they " learn to judge by the judgments of society." They so judge without seeming to learn, yet they differ from the man whose eccen- tricities forbid him to learn through the discipline of society. The two are opposite extremes of variation ; that seems to me the only possible construction of them. It is the difference between the ice boat which travels faster than the wind and the skater who braves the wind and battles up-current in it. The latter is soon beaten by the opposition ; the former outruns its ally. The crank, the eccentric, the enthusiast all these run counter to sane social judgment ; but the genius leads society to his own point of view, and interprets the social movement so accurately, sympathetically, and with such profound insight that his very singularity gives greater relief to his inspiration. THE GENIUS AND EIS ENVIRONMENT. 253 Now let a man combine with this insight this extraordinary sanity of social judgment the power of great inventive and constructive thought, and then, at last, we have our genius, our hero, and one that we well may worship ! To great thought he adds balance ; to originality, judg- ment. This is the man to start the world move- ments if we want a single man to start them. For as he thinks profoundly, so he discriminates his thoughts justly, and assigns them values. His fellows judge with him, or learn to judge after him, and they lend to him the motive forces of success enthusiasm, reward. He may wait for recognition, he may suffer imprisonment, he may be muzzled for thinking his thoughts, he may die and with him the truth to which he gave but silent birth. But the world comes, by its slower progress, to traverse the path in which he wished to lead it ; and if so be that his thought was recorded, posterity revives it in regretful sentences on his tomb. The two things to be emphasised, therefore, on the rational side of the phenomenally great man I mean on the side of our means of accounting for him in reasonable terms are these : first, his intellectual originality; and, second, the sanity of his judgment. And it is the variations in this second sort of endowment which give the ground which various writers have for the one-sided views now current in popular literature. We are told, on the one hand, that the genius is a "degenerate"; on another hand, that he is to be classed with those of "insane" temper; and yet again, that his main characteristic is his readiness 254 THE STORY OF THE MIND. to outrage society by performing criminal acts. All these so-called theories rely upon facts so far as they have any facts to rest upon which, if space permitted, we might readily estimate from our present point of view. In so far as a really great man busies himself mainly with things that are objective, which are socially and morally neu- tral such as electricity, natural history, mechani- cal theory, with the applications of these of course, the mental capacity which he possesses is the main thing, and his absorption in these things may lead to a warped sense of the more ideal and refined relationships which are had in view by the writer in quest for degeneracy. It will still be admitted, however, by those who are conversant with the history of science, that the greatest scien- tific geniuses have been men of profound quietness of life and normal social development. It is to the literary and artistic genius that the seeker after abnormality has to turn ; and in this field, again, the facts serve to show their own meaning. As a general rule, these artistic prodigies do not represent the union of variations, which we find in the greatest genius. Such men are often distinctly lacking in power of sustained construc- tive thought. Their insight is largely what is called intuitive. They have flashes of emotional experience which crystallize into single creations of art. They depend upon "inspiration " a word which is responsible for much of the overrating of such men, and for a good many of their illusions. Not that they do not perform great feats in the several spheres in which their several " inspira- tions" come; but with it all they often present the THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 255 sort of unbalance and fragmentary intellectual en- dowment which allies them, in particular instances, to the classes of persons whom the theories we are noticing have in view. It is only to be expected that the sharp jutting variation in the emotional and aesthetic realm which the great artist often shows should carry with it irregularities in heredity in other respects. Moreover, the very habit of living by inspiration brings prominently into view any half-hidden peculiarities which he may have in the remark of his associates, and in the conduct of his own social duties. But mark you, I do not discredit the superb art of many examples of the artistic "degenerate," so-called; that would be to brand some of the highest ministrations of genius, to us men, as random and illegitimate, and to con- sider impure some of our most exalting and intoxi- cating sources of inspiration. But I do still say that wherein such men move us and instruct us they are in these spheres above all things sane with our own sanity, and wherein they are insane they do discredit to that highest of all offices to which their better gifts make legitimate claim the in- struction of mankind. Again one of Balzac's characters hits the nail on the head. "My dear mother," says Augustine, in the " Sign of the Cat and Racket," "you judge superior people too severely. If their ideas were the same as other folks, they would not be men of genius." " Very well," replies Madame Guillaume, "then let men of genius stop at home and not get married. What ! A man of genius is to make his wife miserable ? And because he is a genius it is 256 THE STORY OF THE MIND. all right ! Genius ! genius ! It is not so very clever to say black one minute and white the next, as he does, to interrupt other people, to dance such rigs at home, never to let you know which foot you are to stand on, to compel his wife never to be amused unless my lord is in gay spirits, and to be dull when he is dull." " But his imaginations . . ." " What are such imaginations ? " Madame Guillaume went on, interrupting her daughter again. " Fine ones are his, my word ! What possesses a man, that all on a sudden, without consulting a doctor, he takes it into his head to eat nothing but vegetables ? There, get along ! if he were not so grossly immoral, he would be n't to shut up in a lunatic asylum." " mother, can you believe ? " " Yes, I do believe. I met him in the Champs Elysees. He was on horseback. Well, at one minute he was galloping as hard as he could tear, and then pulled up to a walk. I said to myself at that moment, 'There is a man devoid of judgment ! ' ' The main consideration which this chapter aims to present, that of the responsibility of all men, be they great or be they small, to the same standards of social judgment, and to the same philosophical treatment, is illustrated in the very man to whose genius we owe the principle upon which my remarks are based Charles Darwin; and it is singularly appropriate that we should also find the history of this very principle, that of varia- tions with the correlative principle of natural THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 257 selection, furnishing a capital illustration of our inferences. Darwin was, with the single excep- tion of Aristotle, possibly the man with the sanest judgment that the human mind has ever brought to the investigation of nature. He represented, in an exceedingly adequate way, the progress of scientific method up to his day. He was disciplined in all the natural science of his predecessors. His judgment was an epitome of the scientific insight of the ages which culminated then. The time was ripe for just such a great constructive thought as his ripe, that is, so far as the accumulation of scientific data was concerned. His judgment differed then from the judgment of his scientific contemporaries mainly in that it was sounder and safer than theirs. And with it Darwin was a great constructive thinker. He had the intellectual strength which put the judgment of his time to the strain everybody's but his own. This is seen in the fact that Darwin was not the first to speculate in the line of his great discovery, nor to reach formulas ; but with the others guessing took the place of induction. The formula was an un- criticised thought. The unwillingness of society to embrace the hypothesis was justified by the same lack of evidence which prevented the thinkers themselves from giving it proof. And if no Darwin had appeared, the problem of evolution would have been left about where it had been left by the speculations of the Greek mind. Darwin reached his conclusion by what that other great scientific genius in England, Newton, described as the essential of discovery, "patient thought"; and having reached it, he had no alternative 258 THE STOKV OF THE MIXD. but to judge it true and pronounce it to the world. But the principle of variations with natural selection had the reception which shows that good judgment may rise higher than the level of its own social origin. Even yet the principle of Darwin is but a spreading ferment in many spheres of human thought in which it is destined to bring the same revolution that it has worked in the sciences of organic life. And it was not until other men, who had both authority with the public and sufficient information to follow Dar- win's thought, seconded his judgment, that his formula began to have currency in scientific circles. Now we may ask : Does not any theory of man which loses sight of the supreme sanity of Darwin, and with him of Aristotle, and Angelo, and Leonardo, and Newton, and Leibnitz, and Shakespeare, seem weak and paltry ? Do not delicacy of sentiment, brilliancy of wit, fineness of rhythmical and aesthetic sense, the beautiful contributions of the talented special performer, sink into something like apologies something even like profanation of that name to conjure by, the name of genius 1 And all the more if the profanation is made real by the moral irregu- larities or the social shortcomings which give some colour of justification to the appellation "degenerate"! But, on the other hand, why run to the other extreme and make this most supremely human of all men an anomaly, a prodigy, a bolt from the blue, an element of extreme disorder, born to THE GENIUS AND HIS ENVIRONMENT. 259 further or to distract the progress of humanity by a chance which no man can estimate ? The resources of psychological theory are adequate, as I have endeavoured to show, to the construction of a doctrine of society which is based upon the individual, in all the possibilities of variation which his heredity may bring forth, and which yet does not hide nor veil those heights of human greatness on which the halo of genius is wont to rest. Let us add knowledge to our surprise in the presence of such a man, and respect to our knowledge, and worship, if you please, to our respect, and with it all we then begin to see that because of him the world is the better place for us to live and work in. We find that, after all, we may be social psy- chologists and hero worshippers as well. And by being philosophers we have made our worship more an act of tribute to human nature. The heathen who bows in apprehension or awe before the image of an unknown god may be rendering all the worship he knows ; but the soul that finds its divinity by knowledge and love has communion of another kind. So the worship which many render to the unexplained, the fantastic, the cataclysmal this is the awe that is born of ignorance. Given a philosophy that brings the great into touch with the commonplace, that delineates the forces which arise to their highest grandeur only in a man here and there, that enables us to contrast the best in us with the poverty of him, and then we may do intelligent homage. To know that the greatest men of earth are men who think as I do, but deeper, and see 260 THE STORY OF THE MIND. the real as I do, but clearer, who work to the foal that I do, but faster, and serve humanity as do, but better that may be an incitement to my humility, but it is also an inspiration to my life. LITER AT DEE. GENERAL PSYCHOLOGY SYSTEMATIC TREATISES. Bain, The Senses and the Intellect. , The Emotions and the Will. James, Principles of Psychology, 2 vols. Ladd, Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory. Stout, Analytic Psychology, 2 vols. Wundt, Lectures on Human and Animal Pfychology. Hbffding, Outlines of Psychology. Sterrett, The Power of Thought. Baldwin, Handbook of Psychology, 2 vols. PSYCHOLOGY OF THE CHILD. Preyer, The Mind of the Child, 2 vols. Compayre, Intellectual and Moral Development of the Chili 2 vols. Sully, Studies of Childhood. Baldwin, Mental Development in the Child and the Rate. PHYSIOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY. Ziehen, Introduction to Physiological Psychology. Ladd, Elements of Physiological Psychology. Donaldson, The Growth of the Brain. EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY. Kulpe, Outline of Psychology. Senford, Course in Experimental Psychology. Scripture, The New Psychology. ANIMAL AND EVOLUTION PSYCHOLOGY. Romanes, Mental Evolution in Animals and Man, , Animal Intelligence, , Darwin and after Darwin, 3 parts. 261 262 LITERATURE. C. Lloyd Morgan, Comparative Psychology. , Animal Life and Intelligence. , Habit and Instinct. Groos. The Play of Animals. Spencer, Principles of Psychology, z vols, Hudson, Tks Naturalist in La' Plata. Darwin, Descent of Man. , Origin of Species. Wallace, Darwinism, Stanley, The Evolutionary Psychology of Feeling. Baldwin, Mental Development in the Child and the Race, MENTAL DEFECT AND DISEASE. Maudsley, Pathology of Mind. Starr, Familiar Forms of Nervous Disease. Collins, The Faculty of Speech. Hirsch, Genius and Degeneration. Tuke, Dictionary of Psychological Medicine. HYPNOTISM AND ALLIED TOPICS. Moll, Hypnotism. Binct, Alterations of Personality. Parish, Hallucinations and Illusions. SOCIAL AND ETHICAL PSYCHOLOGY. Tarde, The Laws of Imitation. Le Bon, The Crowd. Royce, Studies in Good and Evil. Baldwin, Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental velopment. PHILOSOPHY. Paulsen, Introduction to Philosophy. Royce. The Spirit of Modern Philosophy. Ormond, Basal Concepts in Philosophy. James, The Will to Believe. PSYCHOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY. Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology. UNCLASSIFIED. Spencer, Principle; of Sociology. Giddings, Principles of Sociology. LITERATURE. 2C3 Mackensie, Introduction to Social Philosophy. Marshall, Pain, Pleasure, and (Esthetics. Gallon, Inquiries into Human Faculty. , Natural Inheritance. Pearson, The Chances of Death. Tke Psychological Review. The American Journal of Mind. TMK KND Printed by Ctnean & Co., Limit ti. Feri.i The Library of Useful Stories. PRICE ONE SHILLING EACH. Pott Svo, cloth. Post free is 2d. The Stars. Primitive Man. The Plants. 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