05 0^ 1 01 6^ 61 91 61 7| 1 THE ENERGIES OF MEN ODD By WILLIAM JAMES 1 i PLEA t c =l DO NOT REMOVE THIS DOCK CARD! i University Research Library 7? 1 | o ; -+" TO ! d This book is DUE on the last date stamped below NOV 1 5 1927 JAN 3 192? MAR 5 lb2b OCT 2 1S3C OCT 3 1942 1 194JU 5 1931 ;.*> 1 lU > T .U " MAP 20 1933 Form L-9-15i)-10,'25 * ts ^ 7 194 MR Z 5 1947 SEP 101m J/l/V 6 /953 OCT 1 iooe MA) ? iS63 1 fire?? mi. JAN 12 1976 APR15197G 3 RENEWAL n e 19T7 THE ENERGIES OF MEN *. u The Energies of Men By WILLIAM JAMES PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY A Neio Edition NEW YORK MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 1914 JAN 19]/ Copyright 1907, bt THE AMERICAN MAGAZINE Reprinted by Permission T 4-00 INTRODUCTORY. THOUGH it would seem that the sane and simple message of this essay could not be misconstrued, the fact that it has been wholly misunderstood in newspaper comment warns us that it is necessary to preface it by stating that it does not counsel all persons to drive themselves at all times beyond the limits of ordinary endur- ance, that it is not a gospel of overstrain nor an advocate of the use of alcohol and opium as stim- ulants in emergencies. It states that "second wind" is a reality in the mental as in the physical realm and that it can be found and used when needed nothing more. The Energies of Men EVERYONE knows what it is to start a piece of work, either intellectual or mus- cular, feeling stale or oold, as an Adirondack guide once put it to me. And everybody knows what it is to " warm up" to his job. The process of warming up gets particularly striking in the phenomenon known as "second wind." On usual occasions we make a practice of stopping an oc- cupation as soon as we meet the first effective layer (so to call it) of fatigue. We have then walked, played, or worked " enough," so we de- sist. That amount of fatigue is an efficacious ob- struction on this side of which our usual life is cast. But if an unusual necessity forces us to press onward, a surprising thing occurs. The fatigue gets worse up to a certain critical point, when gradually or suddenly it passes away, and we are fresher than before. We have evidently tapped a level of new energy, masked until then by the fatigue-obstacle usually obeyed. There may be layer after layer of this experience. A third and a fourth "wind" may supervene. Men- tal activity shows the phenomenon as well as physical, and in exceptional cases we may find, [7] THE ENERGIES OF MEN beyond the very extremity of fatigue-distress, amounts of ease and power that we never dreamed ourselves to own, sources of strength habitually not taxed at all, because habitually we never push through the obstruction, never pass those early critical points. Getting One's Second Wind. For many years I have mused on the phenome- non of second wind, trying to find a physiological theory. It is evident that our organism has stored-up reserves of energy that are ordinarily not called upon, but that may be called upon: deeper and deeper strata of combustible or explosible material, discontinuously arranged, but ready for use by anyone who probes so deep, and repairing themselves by rest as well as do the superficial strata. Most of us con- tinue living unnecessarily near our surface. Our energy-budget is like our nutritive budget. Physiologists say that a man is in "nutritive equilibrium" when day after day he neither gains nor loses weight. But the odd thing is that this condition may obtain on astonishingly different amounts of food. Take a man in nutritive equilibrium, and systematically increase or les- [8] THE ENERGIES OF MEN sen his rations. In the first case he will begin to gain weight, in the second case to lose it. The change will be greatest on the first day, less on the second, less still on the third; and so on, till he has gained all that he will gain, or lost all that he will lose, on that altered diet. He is now in nutritive equilibrium again, but with a new weight ; and this neither lessens nor increases be- cause his various combustion-processes have ad- justed themselves to the changed dietary. He gets rid, in one way or another, of just as much N, C, H, etc., as he takes in per diem. Just so one can be in what I might call "effi- ciency-equilibrium" (neither gaining nor losing power when once the equilibrium is reached) on astonishingly different quantities of work, no matter in what direction the work may be meas- ured. It may be physical work, intellectual work, moral work, or spiritual work. Keeping Up a Faster Pace. Of course there are limits: the trees don't grow into the sky. But the plain fact remains that men the world over possess amounts of re- source which only very exceptional individuals push to their extremes of use. But the very same [9] THE ENERGIES OF MEN individual, pushing his energies to their extreme, may in a vast number of cases keep the pace up day after day, and find no "reaction" of a bad sort, so long as decent hygienic conditions are preserved. His more active rate of energizing does not wreck him; for the organism adapts it- self, and as the rate of waste augments, aug- ments correspondingly the rate of repair. I say the rate and not the time of repair. The busiest man needs no more hours of rest than the idler. Some years ago Professor Patrick, of the Iowa State University, kept three young men awake for four days and nights. When his ob- servations on them were finished, the subjects were permitted to sleep themselves out. All awoke from this sleep completely refreshed, but the one who took longest to restore himself from his long vigil only slept one-third more time than was regular with him. If my reader will put together these two con- ceptions, first, that few men live at their maxi- mum of energy, and second, that anyone may be in vital equilibrium at very different rates of energizing, he will find, I think, that a very pretty practical problem of national economy, as [10] THE ENERGIES OF MEN well as of individual ethics, opens upon his view. In rough terms, we may say that a man who en- ergizes below his normal maximum fails by just so much to profit by his chance at life; and that a nation filled with such men is inferior to a na- tion run at higher pressure. The problem is, then, how can men be trained up to their most useful pitch of energy? And how can nations make such training most accessible to all their sons and daughters. This, after all, is only the general problem of education, formulated in slightly different terms. "Rough" terms, I said just now, because the words "energy" and "maximum" may easily sug- gest only quantity to the reader's mind, whereas in measuring the human energies of which I speak, qualities as well as quantities have to be taken into account. Everyone feels that his total power rises when he passes to a higher qualitative level of life. Saying "Yes" and Saying "No." Writing is higher than walking, thinking is higher than writing, deciding higher than think- ing, deciding "no" higher than deciding "yes" at least the man who passes from one of THE ENERGIES OF MEN these activities to another will usually say that each later one involves a greater ele- ment of inner work than the earlier ones, even though the total heat given out or the foot- pounds expended by the organism, may be less. Just how to conceive this inner work physiologi- cally is as yet impossible, but psychologically we all know what the word means. We need a par- ticular spur or effort to start us upon inner work ; it tires us to sustain it ; and when long sustained, we know how easily we lapse. When I speak of "energizing," and its rates and levels and sources, I mean therefore our inner as well as our outer work. Saying "Peace! Be Still" Let no one think, then, that our problem of in- dividual and national economy is solely that of the maximum of pounds raisable against gravity, the maximum of locomotion, or of agitation of any sort, that human beings can accomplish. That might signify little more than hurrying and jumping about in inco-ordinated ways; whereas inner work, though it so often reinforces outer work, quite as often means its arrest. To relax, to say to ourselves (with the "new thoughters") [12] THE ENERGIES OF MEN "Peace! be still!" is sometimes a great achieve- ment of inner work. When I speak of human energizing in general, the reader must therefore understand that sum-total of activities, some outer and some inner, some muscular, some emo- tional, some moral, some spiritual, of whose wax- ing and waning in himself he is at all times so well aware. How to keep it at an appreciable maximum? How not to let the level lapse? That is the great problem. But the work of men and women is of innumerable kinds, each kind being, as we say, carried on by a particular faculty ; so the great problem splits into two sub- problems, thus : (1.) What are the limits of human faculty in various directions ? (2.) By what diversity of means, in the dif- fering types of human beings, may the faculties be stimulated to their best results ? Read in one way, these two questions sound both trivial and familiar : there is a sense in which we have all asked them ever since we were born. Yet as a methodical programme of scientific in- quiry, I doubt whether they have ever been seri- ously taken up. If answered fully, almost the [13] THE ENERGIES OF MEN whole of mental science and of the science of con- duct would find a place under them. I propose, in what follows, to press them on the reader's attention in an informal way. Failing to Do All that We Can. The first point to agree upon in this enterprise is that as a rule men habitually use only a small part of the powers which they actually possess and which they might use under appropriate con- ditions. Every one is familiar with the phenomenon of feeling more or less alive on different days. Every one knows on any given day that there are energies slumbering in him which the incitements of that day do not call forth, but which he might display if these were greater. Most of us feel as if a sort of cloud weighed upon us, keeping us below our highest notch of clearness in discern- ment, sureness in reasoning, or firmness in de- ciding. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources. In some persons this sense of being cut off from their rightful resources is extreme, [14] THE ENERGIES OF MEN and we then get the formidable neurasthenic and psychasthenic conditions, with life grown into one tissue of impossibilities, that so many medical books describe. Stating the thing broadly, the human individ- ual thus lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habit- ually fails to use. He energizes below his maximum, and he behaves below his optimum. In elementary faculty, in co-ordination, in power of inhibition and control, in every conceivable way, his life is contracted like the field of vision of an hysteric subject but with less excuse, for the poor hysteric is diseased, while in the rest of us it is only an inveterate habit the habit of in- feriority to our full self that is bad. Going Over the Dam. Admit so much, then, and admit also that the charge of being inferior to their full self is far truer of some men than of others ; then the prac- tical question ensues: to what do the better men owe their escape? and, in the fluctuations which all men feel in their own degree of energizing, to what are the improvements due, when they occur? [i5l THE ENERGIES OF MEN In general terms the answer is plain : Either some unusual stimulus fills them with emotional excitement, or some unusual idea of necessity induces them to make an extra effort of will. Excitements j ideas, and efforts, in a word, are what carry us over the dam. In those "hyperesthetic" conditions which chronic invalidism so often brings in its train, the dam has changed its normal place. The slight- est functional exercise gives a distress which the patient yields to and stops. In such cases of "habit-neurosis" a new range of power often comes in consequence of the "bully ing-treat- ment," of efforts which the doctor obliges the patient, much against his will, to make. First comes the very extremity of distress, then fol- lows unexpected relief. There seems no doubt that we are each and all of us to some extent vic- tims of habit-neurosis. We have to admit the wider potential range and the habitually narrow actual use. We live subject to arrest by degrees of fatigue which we have come only from habit to obey. Most of us may learn to push the bar- rier farther off, and to live in perfect comfort on much higher levels of power. [16] THE ENERGIES OF MEN The Energies of Roosevelt. Country people and city people, as a class, illustrate this difference. The rapid rate of life, the number of decisions in an hour, the many things to keep account of, in a busy city man's or woman's life, seem monstrous to a country brother. He doesn't see how we live at all. A day in New York or Chicago fills him with ter- ror. The danger and noise make it appear like a permanent earthquake. But settle him there, and in a year or two he will have caught the pulse-beat. He will vibrate to the city's rhythms ; and if he only succeeds in his avocation, what- ever that may be, he will find a joy in all the hurry and the tension, he will keep the pace as well as any of us, and get as much out of him- self in any week as he ever did in ten weeks in the country. The stimuli of those who successfully respond and undergo the transformation here, are duty, the example of others, and crowd-pressure and contagion. The transformation, moreover, is a chronic one: the new level of energy becomes permanent. The duties of new offices of trust are constantly producing this effect on the hu- [17] THE ENERGIES OF MEN man beings appointed to them. The physiolo- gists call a stimulus "dynamogenic" when it in- creases the muscular contractions of men to whom it is applied; but appeals can be dynamo- genic morally as well as muscularly. We are witnessing here in America to-day the dynamo- genic effect of a very exalted political office upon the energies of an individual who had already manifested a healthy amount of energy before the office came. The Sublime Heroism of Women. Humbler examples show perhaps still better what chronic effects duty's appeal may produce in chosen individuals. John Stuart Mill some- where says that women excel men in the power of keeping up sustained moral excitement. Every case of illness nursed by wife or mother is a proof of this ; and where can one find greater examples of sustained endurance than in those thousands of poor homes, where the woman successfully holds the family together and keeps it going by taking all the thought and doing all the work nursing, teaching, cooking, washing, sewing, scrubbing, saving, helping neighbors, "choring" outside where does the catalogue end? If she [18] THE ENERGIES OF MEN does a bit of scolding now and then who can blame her? But often she does just the reverse; keeping the children clean and the man good tempered, and soothing and smoothing the whole neighborhood into finer shape. Eighty years ago a certain Montyon left to the Academie Francaise a sum of money to be given in small prizes, to the best examples of "virtue" of the year. The academy's committees, with great good sense, have shown a partiality to vir- tues simple and chronic, rather than to her spas- modic and dramatic flights; and the exemplary housewives reported on have been wonderful and admirable enough. In Paul Bourget's report for this year we find numerous cases, of which this is a type; Jeanne Chaix, eldest of six children; mother insane, father chronically ill. Jeanne, with no money but her wages at a pasteboard-box factory, directs the household, brings up the chil- dren, and successfully maintains the family of eight, which thus subsists, morally as well as ma- terially, by the sole force of her valiant will. In some of these French cases charity to outsiders is added to the inner family burden; or helpless relatives, young or old, are adopted, as if the [19] THE ENERGIES OF MEN strength were inexhaustible and ample for every appeal. Details are too long to quote here; but human nature, responding to the call of duty, appears nowhere sublimer than in the person of these humble heroines of family life. Buried Coal Miner's Great Achievement. Turning from more chronic to acuter proofs of human nature's reserves of power, we find that the stimuli that carry us over the usually effective dam are most often the classic emotional ones, love, anger, crowd-contagion or despair. De- spair lames most people, but it wakes others fully up. Every siege or shipwreck or polar expedi- tion brings out some hero who keeps the whole company in heart. Last year there was a terrible colliery explosion at Courrieres in France. Two hundred corpses, if I remember rightly, were ex- humed. After twenty days of excavation, the rescuers heard a voice. "Me voici," said the first man unearthed. He proved to be a collier named Nemy, who had taken command of thirteen others in the darkness, disciplined them and cheered them, and brought them out alive. Hardly any of them could see or speak or walk when brought into the day. Five days later, a [20] THE ENERGIES OF MEN different type of vital endurance was unexpect- edly unburied in the person of one Berton who, isolated from any but dead companions, had been able to sleep away most of his time. How a Soldier Survived an Awful Siege. A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed. Cromwell's and Grant's careers are the stock examples of how war will wake a , man up. I owe to Professor C. E. Norton, my colleague, the permission to print part of a pri- vate letter from Colonel B air d- Smith, written shortly after the six weeks' siege of Delhi, in 1857, for the victorious issue of which that excel- lent officer was chiefly to be thanked. He writes as follows : "... My poor wife had some reason to think that war and disease between them had left very little of a husband to take under nursing when she got him again. An attack of camp- scurvy had filled my mouth with sores, shaken every joint in my body, and covered me all over with sores and livid spots, so that I was marvel- ously unlovely to look upon. A smart knock on the ankle-joint from the splinter of a shell that burst in my face, in itself a mere bagatelle of a [21] THE ENERGIES OF MEN wound, had been of necessity neglected under the pressing and incessant calls upon me, and had grown worse and worse till the whole foot below the ankle became a black mass and seemed to threaten mortification. I insisted, however, on being allowed to use it till the place was taken, mortification or no; and though the pain was sometimes horrible, I carried my point and kept up to the last. On the day after the assault I had an unlucky fall on some bad ground, and it was an open question for a day or two whether I hadn't broken my arm at the elbow. For- tunately it turned out to be only a severe sprain, but I am still conscious of the wrench it gave me. To crown the whole pleasant catalogue, I was worn to a shadow by a constant diarrhoea, and consumed as much opium as would have done credit to my father-in-law (Thomas De Quin- cey) . However, thank God, I have a good share of Tapleyism in me and come out strong under difficulties. I think I may confidently say that no man ever saw me out of heart, or ever heard one croaking word from me even when our pros- pects were gloomiest. We were sadly scourged by the cholera, and it was almost appalling to me to find that out of twenty-seven officers present, I could only muster fifteen for the operations of the attack. However, it was done, and after it was done came the collapse. Don't be horrified [22] THE ENERGIES OF MEN when I tell you that for the whole of the actual siege, and in truth for some little time before, I almost lived on brandy. Appetite for food I had none, but I forced myself to eat just sufficient to sustain life, and I had an incessant craving for brandy as the strongest stimulant I could get. Strange to say, I was quite unconscious of its affecting me in the slightest degree. The excite- ment of the work was so great that no lesser one seemed to have any chance against it, and I cer- tainly never found my intellect clearer or my nerves stronger in my life. It was only my wretched body that was weak, and the moment the real work was done by our becoming complete masters of Delhi, I broke down without delay and discovered that if I wished to live I must continue no longer the system that had kept me up until the crisis was passed. With it passed away as if in a moment all desire to stimulate, and a perfect loathing of my late staff of life took possession of me." Such experiences show how profound is the alteration in the manner in which, under excite- ment, our organism will sometimes perform its physiological work. The processes of repair be- come different when the reserves have to be used, and for weeks and months the deeper use may go on. [23] THE ENERGIES OF MEN Morbid Cases of Women. Morbid cases, here as elsewhere, lay the nor- mal machinery bare. In the first number of Dr. Morton Prince's Journal of Abnormal Psycholo- gy,, Dr. Janet has discussed five cases of morbid impulse, with an explanation that is precious for my present point of view. One is a girl who eats, eats, eats, all day. Another walks, walks, walks, and gets her food from an automobile that es- corts her. Another is a dipsomaniac. A fourth pulls out her hair. A fifth wounds her flesh and burns her skin. Hitherto such freaks of impulse"^ have received Greek names (as bulimia, drom- omania, etc.) and been scientifically disposed of as "episodic syndromata of hereditary degenera- tion." But it turns out that Janet's cases are all what he calls psychasthenics, or victims of a chronic sense of weakness, torpor, "lethargy, fa- tigue, insufficiency, impossibility, unreality, and , powerlessness of will; and that in each and all of them the particular activity pursued, deleteri- ous though it be, has the temporary result of raising the sense of vitality and making the pa- tient feel alive again. These things reanimate: they would reanimate us; but it happens that in [24] THE ENERGIES OF MEN 1 1 each patient the particular freak-activity chosen; \s the only thing that does reanimate ; and therein lies the morbid state. The way to treat such per- sons is to discover to them more usual and useful ways of throwing their stores of vital energy into gear. Is a "Spree" Ever Good for You? Colonel B air d- Smith, needing to draw on al- together extraordinary si^res of energy, found that brandy and opium were ways of throwing them into gear. Such cases are humanly typical. We are alw to some degree oppressed, unfree. We don't* come to our own. It is there, but we don't get aty it. The threshold must be made to shift. Thent many o^ ; MS^no^|hat an eccentric activity go J^spree," say^-reueves. There is no doubt that t' |ome men sprees and excesses of almost any kin^ what the moralists and doctors say. But when the normal tasks and stimulations of life don't put a man's peeper levels of energy on tap, and he requires distinctly deleterious excite- ments, his constitution verges on the abnormal. The normal opener of deeper and deeper levels [25] THE ENERGIES OF MEN of energy is the will. The difficulty is to use it, to make the effort which the word volitkm im- plies. But if we do make it (or if a god, though he were only the god Chance, makes it through us), it will act dynamogenically on us for a month. It is notorious that a single successful effort of moral volition, such as saying "no" to some habitual temptation, or performing some courageous act, will launch a man on a higher level of energy for days and weeks, will give him a new range of power. "In the act of uncorking the whiskey bottle which I had brought home to get drunk upon," said a man to me, "I suddenly found myself running out into the garden, where I smashed it on the ground. I felt so happy and uplifted after this act, that for two months I wasn't tempted to touch a drop." The emotions and excitements due to usual sit- uations are the usual inciters of the will. But. these act discontinuously ; and in the intervals thef shallower levels of life tend to close in and shut\ us off. Accordingly the best practical knowers of the human soul have invented the thing known as methodical ascetic discipline to keep the deeper [26] THE ENERGIES OF MEN levels constantly in reach. Beginning with easy- tasks, passing to harder ones, and exercising day by day, it is, I believe, admitted that disciples of asceticism can reach very high levels of freedom and power of will. Wonders of the Yoga System. Ignatius Loyola's spiritual exercises must have produced this result in innumerable de- votees. But the most venerable ascetic system, and the one whose results have the most volumi- nous experimental corroboration is undoubtedly the Yoga system in Hindustan. From time im- memorial, by Hatha Yoga, Raja Yoga, Karma Yoga, or whatever code of practise it might be, Hindu aspirants to perfection have trained them- selves, month in and out, for years. The result claimed, and certainly in.many cases accorded by impartial judges, is strength of character, per- sonal power, unshakability of soul. In an arti- cle in the Philosophical ReviPw for January last, from which I am largely copying here, I have quoted at great length the experience with "Hatha Yoga" of a very gifted European friend of mine who, by persistently carrying out for several months its methods of fasting from food [27] THE ENERGIES OF MEN and sleep, its exercises in breathing and thought- concentration, and its fantastic posture-gymnas- tics, seems to have succeeded in waking up deeper and deeper levels of will and moral and intellec- tual power in himself, and to have escaped from a decidedly menacing brain-condition of the "cir- cular" type, from which he had suffered for years. Judging by my friend's letters, of which the last I have is written fourteen months after the Yoga training began, there can be no doubt of his relative regeneration. He has undergone material trials with indifference, traveled third- class on Mediterranean steamers, and fourth- class on African trains, living with the poorest Arabs and sharing their unaccustomed food, all with equanimity. His devotion to certain inter- ests has been put to heavy strain, and nothing is more remarkable to me than the changed moral tone with which he reports the situation. A pro- found modification has unquestionably occurred in the running of his mental machinery. The gearing has changed, and his will is available otherwise than it was. My friend is a man of very peculiar tempera- [28] THE ENERGIES OF MEN ment. Few of us would have had the will to start upon the Yoga training, which, once started, seemed to conjure the further will-power needed out of itself. And not all of those who could launch themselves would have reached the same results. The Hindus themselves admit that in some men the results may come without call or bell. My friend writes to me: "You are quite right in thinking that religious crises, love-crises, indignation-crises may awaken in a very short time powers similar to those reached by years of patient Yoga-practice." Probably most medical men would treat this individual's case as one of what it is fashionable now to call by the name of "self-suggestion," or "expectant attention" as if those phrases were explanatory, or meant more than the fact that certain men can be influenced, while others can- not be influenced, by certain sorts of ideas. This leads me to say a word about ideas considered as dynamogenic agents, or stimuli for unlocking what would otherwise be unused reservoirs of in- dividual power. One thing that ideas do is to contradict other ideas and keep us from believing them. An idea [29I THE ENERGIES OF MEN that thus negates a first idea may itself in turn be negated by a third idea, and the first idea may thus regain its natural influence over our belief and determine our behavior. Our philosophic and religious development proceeds thus by cred- ulities, negations, and the negating of negations. Ideas Which Unlock Our Hidden Energies. But whether for arousing or for stopping be- lief, ideas may fail to be efficacious, just as a wire at one time alive with electricity, may at an- other time be dead. Here our insight into causes fails us, and we can only note results in general terms. In general, whether ^a given idea shall^' be a live idea depends more on the person into whose mind it is injected than on the idea itself. Which is the suggestive idea for this person, and which for that one? Mr. Fletcher's disciples re- generate themselves by the idea (and the fact) that they are chewing, and -re-chewing, and super-chewing their food. Dr. Dewey's pupils regenerate themselves by going without their breakfast a fact, but also an ascetic idea. Not every one can use these ideas with the same suc- cess. But apart from such individually varying sus- [30] THE ENERGIES OF MM ceptibilities, there are common lines along which men simply as men tend to be inflammable by ideas. As certain objects naturally awaken love, anger, or cupidity, so certain ideas naturally awaken the energies of loyalty, courage, endur- ance, or devotion. When these ideas are effective in an individual's life, their effect is often very great indeed. They may transfigure it, unlock- ing innumerable powers which, but for the idea, would never have come into play. "Fatherland," "the Flag," "the Union," "Holy Church," "the Monroe Doctrine," "Truth," "Science," "Lib- erty," Garibaldi's phrase "Rome or Death," etc., are so many examples of energy-releasing ideas. The social nature of such phrases is an essential factor of their dynamic power. They are forces of detent in situations in which no other force produces equivalent effects, and each is a force of detent only in a specific group of men. The Power in a Temperance "Pledge." The memory that an oath or vow has been made will nerve one to abstinences and efforts other- wise impossible; witness the "pledge" in the his- tory of the temperance movement. A mere prom- ise to his sweetheart will clean up a youth's life all [31] THE ENERGIES OF MEN over at any rate for a time. For such effects an educated susceptibility is required. The idea of one's "honor," for example, unlocks energy only in those of us who have had the education of a "gentleman," so called. That delightful being, Prince Pueckler-Mus- kau, writes to his wife from England that he has invented "a sort of artificial resolution respecting things that are difficult of performance. My de- vice," he continues, "is this: I give my word of honor most solemnly to myself to do or to leave undone this or that. I am of course extremely cautious in the use of this expedient, but when once the word is given, even though I afterwards think I have been precipitate or mistaken, I hold it to be perfectly irrevocable, whatever incon- veniences I foresee likely to result. If I were capable of breaking my word after such mature consideration, I should lose all respect for my- self, and what man of sense would not prefer death to such an alternative? . . . When the mysterious formula is pronounced, no alteration in my own view nothing short of physical im- possibilities, must, for the welfare of my soul, alter my will. ... I find something very satis- [32] THE ENERGIES OF MEN factory in the thought that man has the power of framing such props and weapons out of the most trivial materials, indeed out of nothing, merely by the force of his will, which thereby truly deserves the name of omnipotent."* Conversions,, whether they be political, scien- tific, philosophic, or religious, form another way in which bound energies are let loose. They unify us, and put a stop to ancient mental interfer- ences. The result is freedom, and often a great enlargement of power. A belief that thus settles upon an individual always acts as a challenge to his will. But, for the particular challenge to op- erate, he must be the right challenge. In re- ligious conversions we have so fine an adjustment that the idea may be in the mind of the challen- gee for years before it exerts effects; and why it should do so then is often so far from obvious that the event is taken for a miracle of grace, and not a natural occurrence. Whatever it is, it may be a highwater mark of energy, in which "noes," once impossible, are easy, and in which a new range of "yeses" gains the right of way. * "Tour in England, Ireland and France," Philadelphia, 1833, p. 435. [33] THE ENERGIES OF MEN The Value of Christian Science. We are just now witnessing a very copious unlocking of energies by ideas in the persons of those converts to "New Thought," "Christian Science," "Metaphysical Healing," or other forms of spiritual philosophy, who are so numer- ous among us to-day. The ideas here are healthy- minded and optimistic; and it is quite obvious that a wave of religious activity, analogous in some respects to the spread of early Christianity, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism, is passing over our American world. The common feature of these optimistic faiths is that they all tend to the suppression of what Mr. Horace Fletcher calls "fearthought." Fearthought he defines as the "self-suggestion of inferiority" ; so that one may say that these systems all operate by the sug- gestion of power. And the power, small or great, comes in various shapes to the individual, power, as he will tell you, not to "mind" things that used to vex him, power to concentrate his mind, good cheer, good temper in short, to put it mildly, a firmer, more elastic moral tone. The most genuinely saintly person I have ever known is a friend of mine now suffering from [34] THE ENERGIES OF MEN cancer of the breast I hope that she may par- don my citing her here as an example of what ideas can do. Her ideas have kept her a practi- cally well woman for months after she should have given up and gone to bed. They have an- nulled all pain and weakness and given her a cheerful active life, unusually beneficent to others to whom she has afforded help. Her doctors, ac- quiescing in results they could not understand, have had the good sense to let her go her own way. How far the mind-cure movement is destined to extend its influence, or what intellectual modi- fications it may yet undergo, no one can foretell. It is essentially a religious movement, and to academically nurtured minds its utterances are tasteless and often grotesque enough. It also incurs the natural enmity of medical politicians, and of the whole trades-union wing of that pro- fession. But no unprejudiced observer can fail to recognize its importance as a social phenom- enon to-day, and the higher medical minds are already trying to interpret it fairly, and make its power available for their own therapeutic ends. [35] THE ENERGIES OF MEN Prayer as a Sleep-Producer. Dr. Thomas Hyslop, of the great West Rid- ing Asylum in England, said last year to the British Medical Association that the best sleep- producing agent which his practice had revealed to him, was prayer. I say this, he added (I am sorry here that I must quote from memory), purely as a medical man. The exercise of prayer, in those who habitually exert it, must be regarded by us doctors as the most adequate and normal of all the pacifiers of the mind and calmers of the nerves. But in few of us are functions not tied up by the exercise of other functions. Relatively few medical men and scientific men, I fancy, can pray. Few can carry on any living commerce with "God." Yet many of us are well aware of how much freer and abler our lives would be, were such important forms of energizing not sealed up by the critical atmosphere in which we have been reared. There are in every one po- tential forms of activity that actually are shunted out from use. Part of the imperfect vitality un- der which we labor can thus be easily explained. One part of our mind dams up even damns up ! the other parts. [36] THE ENERGIES OF MEN Trying to Work with One Finger. Conscience makes cowards of us all. Social conventions prevent us from telling the truth after the fashion of the heroes and heroines of Bernard Shaw. We all know persons who are models of excellence, but who belong to the ex- treme philistine type of mind. So deadly is their intellectual respectability that we can't converse about certain subjects at all, can't let our minds play over them, can't even mention them in their presence. I have numbered among my dearest friends persons thus inhibited intellectually, with whom I would gladly have been able to talk freely about certain interests of mine, certain authors, say, as Bernard Shaw, Chesterton, Ed- ward Carpenter, H. G. Wells, but it wouldn't do, it made them too uncomfortable, they wouldn't play, I had to be silent. An intellect thus tied down by literality and decorum makes on one the same sort of an impression that an able-bodied man would who should habituate himself to do his work with only one of his fingers, locking up the rest of his organism and leaving it unused. I trust that by this time I have said enough to convince the reader both of the truth and of the [371 THE ENERGIES OF MEN importance of my thesis. The two questions, first, that of the possible extent of our powers; and, second, that of the various avenues of ap- proach to them, the various keys for unlocking them in diverse individuals, dominate the whole problem of individual and national education. We need a topography of the limits of human power, similar to the chart which oculists use of the field of human vision. We need also a study of the various types of human being with refer- ence to the different ways in which their energy- reserves may be appealed to and set loose. Biog- raphies and individual experiences of every kind may be drawn upon for evidence here. [38] M 3 1158 00080 3808 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. I& -w-y ;aft Mar URL 2 19) 4 PSD 2338 9/77