-iUjaviMi ''•jaa/wiH ai**- 'uvaiiv^av- >- ' -^m ^ *w ^ ^OUQNV-SOV^ ^/JJGAINa-aViV 1/ CO SIS ■^ i3 i li— ' ^ -5^1UBRARYQ<- c- ■ " — (-9 AV\M1NIV£R5//^ ^l ^•tfOJITVOJO^ ^iJOJnVJJO^ ^iTiUDNYSOl^ % ^OFCAUFOftij^ ^OFCAllFOff;!^ so £- ^\EUNIVER%. ^lOSANCHG^ ^OFCAUFOR^ ^OFCAUFOI?/ O O. r< iy '^J'iuoNvsoi^ "^saaAiNfl-mv^ ^(?Aavaan#' ^^o-mrn^ ^OFCAUFO^ -i^tUBRARYOc. ^OFCAUFOJiJ^ «^^WEl)NIVER% ^lOSANCElfi f ^<.OFCAIIFO^^ %33NVS(n^ %a3AINn-3V5 .^EUNIVERJ/A AicUBANCElfi RATIONAL LIVING SOME PRACTICAL INFERENCES FROM MODERN PSYCHOLOGY BY HENRY CHURCHILL KING PKESIDENT OF OBERLIN COLLEGE; AUTHOR OF " RECONSTRUCTION IN THEOLOGY' "theology ANP THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS," "PERSONAL AND IDEAL ELEMENTS IN EDUCATION" 2J?In fork THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. I9I2 41X rigntt reitrvet Copyright, 1905, By the macmillan company. Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1905. Reprinted December, 1905; March, 1906; April, June, October, November, 1906; February, August, 1907 ; January, 1908 ; February, June, 1908; February, 1912. PREFACE It is with considerable hesitancy that one undertakes to point out the practical sugges- tions of modern psychological investigations. Scientific workers in this field have a natural prejudice against attempts to make their science quickly useful; and this feeling is so strong on the part of many, that one almost seems to proclaim himself to such as a char- latan at once, if he attempts to draw prac- tical inferences from this study, and to make these inferences generally available. But is it not possible that we might well heed just here Hilty's illuminating word? "Truth, wherever it may be sought, is, as a rule, so simple that it often does not look learned enough." It is true that the full significance of the inferences will hardly be felt apart from a reasonable presentation of their psychological grounds; and it is also true that many attempts so practically to use psychological results have been fanciful and extravagant, (v) PREFACE and have tended to lay extreme emphasis upon the least assured results of recent inves- tigations. Still, it were extraordinary if such extended and thorough study of human nature as the recent years have shown had no valuable suggestions for living, that all men would do well to heed ; and James and Sully and Baldwin and Royce — to mention no others — have certainly left us no room for doubt upon that point. And it ought not to be impossible to present the psychological facts, even in somewhat popular form, with sufficient accuracy and fullness to give weight and point to the practical suggestions in- volved, provided these practical inferences are drawn with sanity and moderation, and from assured results. And it is only with such inferences that this book intends to deal. It makes no appeal to the mere love of novelty or mystery. It intends to build soberly upon the whole broad range of psy- chological investigation. If I may be allowed frankly to express in these introductory words my personal feeling and conviction, I should say that I have not been able to doubt the seriousness and value of the counsels lying back of this modern psychological study. Even where the coun- PREFACE vil sel is not new, it comes with fresh force, when its psychological justification can be clearly shown. Manifold as, no doubt, the shortcomings of this book are, it is still no hasty compilation, but embodies those sug- gestions which, through a number of years, have appealed both to myself and to many others as of interest and importance. I have found myself using so often, in practical counsel and in ethical and theological in- quiry, the psychological principles here ap- pealed to, that it has seemed reasonable to hope that the book might have some real service to render to others. For it is but too obvious, on the one hand, that many students complete their courses in psychology with but small sense of its direct bearing on life, and so fail to grasp its real signifi- cance, through the very lack of application of its principles; and, on the other hand, that men generally need, and are able intel- ligently to receive, much of the best that psychology has to give, but that it is difficult to find in any fullness except in more or less technical treatises. There seemed, there- fore, to be a place and a need for the attempt here made. While, then, the book does not aim to vm PREFACE be a technical treatise upon psychology, nor profess to embody the results of original psychological investigation, it does distinctly aim to make generally available the most valuable suggestions for living that can be drawn from the results of the best workers in this field. I have, consequently, quoted freely and sometimes at length, both to give the reader immediate access to the original authority for the psychological facts, and to give him opportunity to judge of the just- ness of the inference drawn in any given case. For I, of course, do not mean to hold those from whom I quote responsible for all my inferences, though I have meant that these should be reached with scrupulous care. The very plan of the book makes my indebtedness to others very large — an in- debtedness which I have intended to recog- nize in each case by specific reference. At the same time, it is hoped that the book does not lack the original suggestive- ness and the unity that should give added significance to the individual suggestions. The grouping of the material, and some of the indicated ethical, religious, and generally practical applications and implications of psychological principles, it is hoped, may not PREFACE IX be without interest even to those who have given considerable attention to psychological study. The discussion aims to give in the field of practical living something of that sense of unity and sureness that the investi- gator in natural science has, and that can come only from a knowledge of the laws involved. In this aim it joins hands with all those writings — much more numerous of late — that have sought to give to both ethics and religion a true psychological basis. The material is gathered under four great and closely ! interwoven inferences from modern psychology. These constitute the four main divisions of the book. Under each division an attempt is made to give briefly but sufficiently the psychological basis, and then to point out the most important derived practical suggestions. Even in the statement of the psychological facts, how- ever, it will be seen — in order to save repe- tition — the practical has not been entirely excluded. The title of the book, thus, grows directly out of its precise aims. At the same time, it has not seemed wise to exclude all consideration of the broader philosophical bearings of the discussions ; and at certain points their consideration has X PREFACE seemed almost required for a really satis- factory result, especially in parts of the last two divisions of the book. These parts are necessarily somewhat more difficult reading ; but they will be readily recognized, and may be, perhaps, well enough omitted by those who are seeking only practical results. For the more philosophically inclined, it is hoped that these brief philosophical digressions may add somewhat to the value and suggestive- ness of the book. HENRY CHURCHILL KING. Oberlin College, June, 19051 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION PAGE The Four Great Inferences From Modern Psychology . . i rilE COMPLEXITY OF LIFE: THE MULTIPLICITY AND INTRICACY OF RELATIONS INTRODUCTION Not Confusion, but Greater Richness CHAPTER I The Psychological Grounds for the Recognition of the Complexity of Life „ 7 I. The Evidence of the Different Departments of Psy- chology 7 1. Physiological Psychology , . 7 2. Race Psychology 7 3. Pathological Psychology . , 7 4. Comparative Psychology , 8 5. Experimental Method in , . . » . 8 II. The Need of a Wide Range of Interests .....„<, 9 III, The Relatedness of All 14 1. Recognition of Relatedness of All . 14 2. Human Nature Avenges Itself for Disregard of the Range of Its Interests 15 3. The Denial of the Possible Separation of the Sacred and the Secular 17 4. Absorption in the Lower Defeats Itself , 20 (xi) Xll CONTENTS CHAPTER II PAGE Recognition of the Paradoxes of Life — Opposing Rela- tions 22 I. The All-Inclusive Paradox of Ends and Means .... 22 II. The Paradoxes of the Different Spheres of Life .... 23 1. Paradoxes in the Physical Life 23 2. Paradoxes in the Intellectual Life 24 3. Paradoxes in the Mora! Life 26 4. Paradoxes in the Religious Life 31 5. Choosing One's Lifework and Abiding Character — The "Hierarchy of Mes" 31 6. The Fundamental Paradox of Life. Docility and Initiative 32 CHAPTER III The Emphasis of Psychology on Conditions 39 I. The Lessons of Natural Science 40. II. The Significance of Common Work and Duties .... 42 III. No Magical Inheritance 44 IV. No Conditions in General 45 THE UNITY OF MAN CHAPTER IV The Unity of Mind and Body — Introduction 47 I. Ascetic Treatment of Bodily Conditions 47 II. Not a Materialistic Position ^ ..... , 49 CHAPTER V The Unity of Mind and Body — The Psychological Evi- dence , 55 I. The Law of Diffusion 55 CONTENTS XUl PAGE II. Psychical Effects of Bodily Training 57 III, The Close Connection of the Will and Muscular Activity 58 IV. The Physical Basis of Habit 61 V. The Evidence of Hypnotism o 63 CHAPTER VI The Unity of Mind and Body — Suggestions for Living. . 64. I. The Body Influences the Mind 64 1. The Need of Weil -Oxygenated Blood 64 2. The Need of Surplus Nervous Energy. Effects of Fatigue 67 (i) The Effects of Fatigue on Attention and Self- Control 67 (2) Direct Effect of Fatigue on Nerve Conditions 70 (3) The Consequent Effects of Fatigue on All Perceptions and Activities 71 (4) The Need of Physical Training 77 II. The Influence of Mind on Body 78 1. Power of Self-Control Even in the Insane .... 79 2. The Will in Determining Conditions of Health » . 80 (i) In Achieving Rest 80 (2) In Avoiding Hurry 81 (3) In Meeting the Special Conditions of Surplus Nervous Energy , 82 (4) In Control of the Emotions ... o .... . 82 3. Self-Control Positive, not Negative 83 III. Mutual Influence of Body and Mind — Habits .... 85 1. The Significance of Habit for Mental Life .... 86 2. Opportunities for Will Training in Formation of Habits in Education . . . . „ 88 3. James* Maxims on Habit „ . 90 (i) Launch Yourself with Decided Initiative . . 91 (2) Allow no Exceptions 91 (3) Seize the First Opportunity to Act ..... 92 (4) Gratuitous Exercise of Effort 93 XIV CONTENTS PAGE IV. The True Place of Asceticism 93 1. The Body not Evil per se 94 2. Asceticism, As Negative, No Full Goal of Life . . 95 3. Not Two Kinds of Christianity 96 4. The True Asceticism 99 CHAPTER VII The Unity of the Mind — The Psychological Evidence . . 103 I. Interdependence of All Intellectual Functions 103^ II. Interdependence of Intellect, Feeling, and Will .... 106 III. Trend Toward the Denial of Abstract Elements in the Mind 108 IV. The Mind's Constant Search for Unity 108 CHAPTER VIII The Unity of the Mind — Suggestions for Liv:ng iii I. The Intellectual Conditions 113 1. Intellectual Helps . 113 (i) A Wide Circle of Permanent Interests ... 114 (2) Knowledge of Oneself 114 (3) Discernment of What Moral Progress Is . . . 118 (4) Particularly, Clearness and Definiteness in Memory, Imagination, and Thinking . . . 120 2. Intellectual Hindrances 124 (i) Premature Multiplication of Many Points of View. "Truth-hunting" 124 (2) "Over-sophistication" 127 (3) Making Insights Take the Place of Doing. . 128 (4) Intellectual Vagueness 130 (5) Dangers in Habits of Study 133 II. Emotional Conditions 135-. 1. The Stimulating Effect of Joyful Emotions .... 135 2. The Danger of Strained and Sham Emotions . . . 138 3. The Influence of Moods on Willing 140 4. The Danger of Passive Emotion 141 5. The Need of Power to Withstand Strong Emotion, 142 CONTENTS XV THE CENTRAL IMPORTANCE OF WILL AND ACTION CHAPTER IX Page Fhe Central Importance of Will and Action — The Psy- chological Evidence . . . . . = . . « 145 I. The Suggestion of Evolution . ..o ..... o .. . 146 II. Impulse to Action, Fundamental 146 III. The Natural Terminus of Every Experience is Action , 149 1. The Body Organized for Action 149 (i) The Circulation of the Blood ........ 149 (2) The Nervous System , . 150 (3) The Muscular System 150 (4) In the Human Body as a Whole ...... 152 2. The Mind Organized for Action 153 IV, For the Very Sake of Thought and Feeling, One Must Act 154 V. The Will in Attention 159 VI, The Preeminent Influence of Practical Interests in All Consciousness 161 1. In Conceiving and Naming Things . 162 2. In Reasoning 163 3. In Our Philosophical Solutions . . . . 163 (i) Influence of Practical Interests ....... 163 (2) Philosophy Depends on Practical Considera- tions 165 (3) Convictions Must be Wrought out in Action . 165 4. Using One's Powers 166 VIL Some Current Psychological Emphases 171 CHAPTER X Fhe Central Importance of Will and Action — Sugges- tions for Living 176 I. The Enormous Place of Will and Action in Life . . . 176 II. The Fundamental Character of Self-Control 180 I. Self-Control Fundamental to a Moral and Reli- gious Character 180 XVI CONTENTS rAGi 2. Self-Control Fundamental to Happiness . . „ . . 182 3. Self-Control Fundamental to Influence 185 4. Self-Control Positive, not Negative 186 (i) Object Must Continually Change for Us . . . 191 (2) The Possession of a Large Circle of Interests . 191 (3) Persistent Staying in the Presence of the Best . 192 III. Objectivity a Prime Condition of Character, and Happi- ness, and Influence 192 IVc Work a Chief Means to Character, and Happiness, and Influence . . . . « • « iq8 THE CONCRETENESS OF THE REAL — THE INTER-RELATEDNESS OF ALL CHAPTER XI The Concreteness of the Real — The Psychological Evi- dence, Confirmed by the History of Thought . . aio I. The General Trend in Psychology Toward Recogni- tion of this Concreteness 210 II. The Mind Made for Relations 213 III. One Reason for the Place and Power of Art and Literature 214 IV. The Influence of the Idea of the Organism in the His- tory of Thought 215 1. The Idea of the Organism Before Hegel 216 2. The Idea of the Organism in Hegel 216 3. The Idea of the Organism Since Hegel ..... 218 V. A New Protest Constantly Needed in the Interest of the Whole Man ^ . . » 220 1. The Protest in the History of Literature 222 2. The Protest in Philosophy 223 3. The Pretest in History 224 4. The Protest in Education 227 VI. The Emphasis on Persons and Personal Relations — The Social Self 228 I. The Human Body Looks to Personal Association . 229 CONTENTS XVll PAGE 2. The Witness of Infancy 230 3. The Witness of the Moral History of the Race . . 231 4. The Witness of Philosophy 232 5. The Whole Man, Revealed only in Personal Rela- tions . . o 233 CHAPTER XII The Concreteness of the Real — Suggestions for Living . 236 I. Respect for the Liberty and the Personality of Others . 236 1. Recognition of the Moral Freedom of Others . . . 236 2. Recognition of the Sacredness of the Person .... 239 (i) Every Person is an End Tn Himself 239 (2) A Prime Condition in All Friendship .... 244 (3) A Test of Moral Progress 245 II. The Power of Personal Association ... c .... . 246 1. Influence of Imitation 246 2. One Must be Won to Character ......... 247 3. We are Made for Personal Relations 248 4. One Cannot Learn to Love Alone 249 5. Personal Association the Greatest Means . « o . • 249 RATIONAL LIVING INTRODUCTION 2.3334 THE FOUR GREAT INFERENCES FROM MODERN PSYCHOLOGY One of the marked characteristics of this realistic age of ours is the enormous amount of investigation that has been given in the last thirty years to empirical psychology. Wundt's epoch-making Outlines of Physio- logical Psychology was published as late as 1874, and his Leipsic psychological laboratory — the first in the world — was not founded until 1879. No other department of study directly connected with philosophy has had anything like equal attention, or made anything like equal growth. And in no other department has America had so noteworthy a share, as the literature of the subject clearly shows. Such extended and thorough-going study of the nature of man, ought certainly to have some meaning for practical living. It con- A (0 RATIONAL LIVING cerns, therefore, every intelligent man to ask what the significance of this movement is. It should be remembered from the be- ginning, how^ever, that, although modern psychology has been specially characterized by emphasis upon the physiological and experimental sides, these lines of investiga- tion by no means exhaust the meaning of this later psychological movement. For, as Royce says, " One must insist that the study of neurological facts has, although very great, still only relative value for the psy- chologist. For one thing, what the psycholo- gist wants to understand is mental life, and to this end he uses all his other facts only as means; and, for the rest, any physical ex- pression of mental life which we can learn to interpret becomes as genuinely interesting to the psychologist as does a brain function."^ The experimental method, too, it should be noted, is no attack on the methods previously employed. Most sober psychologists would agree with Kiilpe — himself a most able worker in experimental psychology — that ^^ experiment can no more take the place of introspection in psychology than it can that of observation in physics. It is only able, as ^Outlines of Psychology, p. 12. INTRODUCTION 3 it is only intended, to supplement the pre- vious method by filling the gaps which remain when introspection is employed alone, by checking its descriptions, and by making it generally more reliable."^ Using the term modern psychology, then, to cover the trend of all later psychological investigations, and not merely those of ex- perimental or physiological psychology, what are the most important inferences from modern psychology? What does it mean? The answer can be given very compactly. There seem to the writer to be four great inferences from modern psychology, and each with suggestions for life and charac- ter — that is, with direct suggestion of the conditions of growth, of character, of happi- ness, and of influence. These four infer- ences are: Life is complex; man is a unity; will and action are of central importance ; and the real is concrete. In other words, modern psychology has four great emphases; for it may be said to urge upon us the recognition of the multiplicity and intricacy of the relations everywhere confronting us ; of the essential unity of the relations involved in our own nature; of the fact that this * Outlines of Psychology, p. 10. 4 RATIONAL LIVING unity demands action and is best expressed in action; and that we are, thus, everywhere shut out from resting in abstractions and must find reality only in the concrete. Manifestly these contentions are all closely interwoven, and they may even be regarded as all summed up in the last — as asserting the inter-relatedness of all. For if only the concrete is real, then life is, in the first place, no abstraction or series of abstractions, but rich and complex beyond all formulation. In this complexity, secondly, no sharp lines can be drawn, all is inter- woven; the life of man, therefore, is a unity — body and mind. But all experiences, bodily and mental, tend to terminate in action, in which alone the whole man is seen ; will and action, then, are of central importance. The four propositions tend thus to fall together. It is these four propositions which form the subjects of the main divisions of our entire inquiry. THE COMPLEXITY OF LIFE: THE MULTIPLICITY AND INTRICACY OF RELATIONS INTRODUCTION NOT CONFUSION, BUT GREATER RICHNESS Psychology's first emphasis is naturally upon the complexity of life — the multipli- city and intricacy of the relations every- where confronting us. For the first effect of the study of this later psychology, it must be confessed, is likely to prove confusing and even bewildering; the old familiar land- marks seem all gone. There are no sharp distinctions, no hard and fast classifications, no short and simple formulas. The old way in which, without hesita- tion or misgiving, we built up the structure of our mental life — combining simple atomic sensations into perceptions, percep- tions into conceptions, conceptions into judg- ments, and judgments into syllogisms — is suddenly closed for us. We are forced to question the truth of such a process at every stage. As we face the facts of modern psy- (s) RATIONAL LIVING chological investigation, it is not the simple, the direct, the abstract, that we see, but the necessity rather for what James calls " the reinstatement of the vague and inarticulate to its proper place in our mental life."^ It is characteristic, indeed, of the modern point of view that James should begin his psycho- logical inquiry, not with assumed simple sensations, but with the attempt to point out only the chief characters of the whole concrete stream of consciousness.^ The prob- lem is complex and intricate. Life seems to have overflowed its banks, and we wonder if it can ever be brought under rule again. But we need not resist this trend of the newer psychology. For it is only the refusal to make the 'formulation of life simple by ignoring many of its facts. It does not mean final confusion, but only greater rich- ness. Indeed, it may be doubted if there is anything that the health of the whole life — physical, intellectual, and spiritual — needs more, or more continuously, than a strong conviction of the complexity of life. We may well heed, therefore, this insistence of modern psychology. ^ Psychtlegy, Vol. I, p. 254. ' Psychology, Vol. I, Chap. IX ; Ctr. Kulpe, op. cit., p. 32. CHAPTER I THE PSYCHOLOGICAL GROUNDS FOR THE RECOGNI- TION OF THE COMPLEXITY OF LIFE I. THE EVIDENCE OF THE DIFFERENT DEPART- MENTS OF PSYCHOLOGY Every one of the departments of psycho- logical investigation serves to emphasize this complexity. Even in the field of the older psychology — the study of the normal mind of the adult civilized man — it is now^ recog- nized that the facts are far less simple than they at first seemed. The immense emphasis now^ laid on the accurate study of the simpler phenomena of child life — itself seen to have wonderful variety — is evidence of this felt complexity. Physiological psychology emphasizes the complex intertwining at every point of the physical and the psychical, especially the correlation of psychical with brain processes. Race psychology adds the study of national traits, and of the relations of all minds, civilized and barbarous. Patho- logical psychology affirms the essential unity (7) RATIONAL LIVING of normal and abnormal minds, that insanity itself only carries to extremes tendencies which lie in us all. Comparative psychology goes a step farther and calls attention to the many likenesses between human and animal minds. Finally the felt need in psychology of the experimental method that has so largely characterized the recent advances in the subject, is itself a further recognition of the complexity of the psychical phenomena. It is not strange, then, that the results of such varied investigations, every one of which has something vital to contribute to the understanding of this enigma of our life, should, at first sight, seem bewildering. "What is man?" It is this question, in all its complexity of meaning, that modern psychology seeks to answer. And modern philosophy confirms, here, the psychological trend. For man, Erdmann says, is the great subject of modern philos- ophy — but man in all the fullness of his concrete existence; man, body and spirit; man, intellect, feeling, and will; man, as world in little and God in little ; man, as summing up all in a complexity of being, rich past tracing out. For modern philos- ophy begins, like the Reformation it reflects, THE COMPLEXITY OF LIFE 9 in protest — protest against the narrowing of the interests of man, protest against the separation of sacred and secular, protest against the denial of legitimate worldly in- terests ; and among all the heresies of the age it counts none so great as the heresy of denying the complexity of the life of man, and of removing from religion the most of life. II. THE NEED OF A WIDE RANGE OF INTERESTS Psychology speaks here with no uncertain sound. It knows well that a man^s world is no greater than the number of objects to which he can attend with interest; this is his world — the only world in which he really lives. He moves among many other things, but so far as they are ignored, they practically do not exist for him. Psychology knows, too, that the meaning of experience^ itself, is what we attend to; that the envi- ronment that really makes us is not, as is so often said, all that surrounds us, but only those parts of our surroundings to which we attend; that a man's life is measured, there- fore, by the interests to which he can respond; and that his growth depends on lO RATIONAL LIVING the enlarging of this circle of interests. So James says: "A man's empirical thought de- pends on the things he has experienced, but what these shall be is to a large extent determined by his habits of attention. A thing may be present to him a thousand times, but, if he persistently fails to notice it, it cannot be said to enter into his experi- ence. We are all seeing flies, moths, and beetles by the thousand, but to whom, save an entomologist, do they say anything dis- tinct? On the other hand, a thing met only once in a lifetime may leave an indelible experience in the memory. Let four men make a tour in Europe. One will bring home only picturesque impressions — costumes and colors, parks and views and works of archi- tecture, pictures and statues. To another all this will be non-existent ; and distances and prices, populations and drainage - arrange - ments, door- and window -fastenings, ^nd other useful statistics will take their place. A third will give a rich account of the theaters, restaurants, and public balls, and naught besides ; whilst the fourth will per- haps have been so wrapped in his own sub- jective broodings as to tell little more than a few names of places through which he THE COMPLEXITY OF LIFE II passed. Each has selected out of the same mass of presented objects those which suited his private interest, and has made his experi- ence thereby."^ Moreover, one's possible influence over others depends, in no small degree, upon the range of his interests ; for influence normally requires sympathetic understand- ing, and sympathetic understanding means the ability to enter into the interests of the other man — to see the matter from his point of view. Here lies a main task of every teacher, and of every leader of men, who does not mean to be a mere demagogue. If one cares to exert the highest influence, then, — not merely to dominate another's choices — he must seek such an influence as the other shall be able to recognize as simply the demand of his own sanest and best self. That influence is possible only to the man who has sufficient breadth of in- terests to enter into another's life with understanding, respect, and sympathy. For breadth and depth of influence, one needs especially to be always attuned to the "ever- recurring fundamental characteristics of human life" — the common, simple, large, ^Psychology, Vol. I, pp. 286-287. 12 RATIONAL LIVING and deep interests of the race. Only so can one carry something of the appeal made, for example, by a great work of art. And the highly educated man needs to be carefully on his guard just here. He must not be- come a mere member of a clique. Psychology knows, moreover, that what- ever /r^^^/o/w a man possesses — the condition of the very possibility of character — depends on his having more than one interest to which he can attend. Moral victory requires the power to attend to something else than the temptation which threatens completely to engross one. It is often, thus, a vital matter, for the very sake of one's freedom, that he should have more than one absorbing interest. Even sanity requires a reasonable breadth of interests. Peary has borne witness out of his long Arctic experience, that the educated man, even if other things were not wholly equal, showed greater capacity than the uneducated for endurance of the privation and hardship of Arctic exploration and the Arctic night, for the very reason that he had more things in which he could be interested. One of the chief marks of insanity, indeed, is the all-absorbing, single "insistent idea.'* THE COMPLEXITY OF LIFE 13 A "store of permanent and valuable interests" is, therefore, both a sign and a guard of sanity. For all these reasons psychology knows that the acquisition of a considerable number of permanent and valuable interests is one of the prime objects of education, and one of the main factors in a "reasonable char- acter." A chief test of one's education, there- fore, is the question whether it has awakened in one's mind some permanent and valuable interests. So Sully says: "The teacher should regard it as an important part of the training of the attention to arouse interest, to deepen and fix it in certain definite directions, and gradually to enlarge its range. Volkmann remarks that the older pedagogic had as its rule: 'Make your instruction interesting'; whereas, the newer has the precept, 'Instruct in such a way that an interest may awake and remain active for life'."^ A similar aim every thoughtful man must have in mind in his own self -training. And it needs hardly to be pointed out how imperative is time in the building up of a wide range of inter- ests. As Royce says: "It is the leisurely traveler who finds time to cultivate new ^ Outlines of Psychology, p. 105. 14 RATIONAL LIVING habits, and thus gradually to see the wonders as they are."^ III. THE RELATEDNESS OF ALL Psychology's emphasis upon the com- plexity of life — the multiplicity and intricacy of the relations involved — implies the recog- nition of the relatedness of all, and so sug- gests at once that the degree in which any interest exists for us depends upon the degree in which we have brought it into connection with the rest of life. We are awake to the full significance of any idea only when we see it in all its varied bearings. There are, thus, widely different ^^ degrees of wakefulness'''' to even the highest interests. When one feels the difference between a dead and a live truth — a truth that he took by rote and the same truth born again within him, — he may well wonder if he were wholly awake before. To feel the same thing continuously, Hobbes long ago saw, is practically to feel nothing at all. "A completely uniform and unchanged condition," says Hofifding, "has a tendency to arrest consciousness."^ ^ Outlines of Psychology^ p. 228. * Outlines of Psychology, p. 45. THE COMPLEXITY OF LIFE 15 So Lotze says : "By attention we gain some- thing merely in case the content mentally represented gives occasion for its work to our relating and comparing faculty of knowledge. Even an altogether simple content is at least compared by us with other simple contents, or with itself at different moments of its dura- tion. If we disregard this fact, then the mere persistence of the content, with whatever intensity it may occur, is of absolutely no help to us. It is understood, finally, that this relating of one content to another can be carried further at pleasure. We can there- fore certainly distinguish yet other different degrees of consciousness concerning the con- tent of an idea ; — and this according as we mentally represent the idea itself and its own nature, or its connection with other ideas, or, finally, its value and significance for the totality of our personal life."^ Only in the last case does the idea or interest have for us its full value ; and this evidently requires the com- pletest recognition of the relatedness of all. It is, indeed, not too much to say, that human nature everywhere avenges itself for any lack of reasonable regard for the wide range of its interests. Many illustrations will suggest ^Outlines of Psychology, pp. 45-46. 1 6 RATIONAL LIVING themselves. The Cavalier needs the correc- tion of the Puritan; and the Puritan the correction of the Cavalier. Oberlin couldn't paint all its buildings red in the early days, though it was proved conclusively that red was the cheapest and most durable paint, and therefore ought to be used ; human nature was too much for it. It is a genuine touch of nature that makes Mrs. Ward's Marcella rightly but iilogically retain a rich rug for her bare lodging, even when she has left all the world behind for her work among the poor. The_Jack of a sense of humor has turned many a wise man into a fool. The conscientious denial by a man of the value of the beautiful has more than once wrought disastrously in the character of his children. The endeavor rigorously to rule out the simply recreative has, in whole lives and generations, brought speedy punishment. The attempt to annihilate the physical in him has, for many a monk of the desert, kept his attention fixed the more fatally on the physical. The distrust of truth in all but one direction has made possible for the Church its not wholly creditable history in relation to science. This exclusive attitude is nowhere justified. THE COMPLEXITY OF LIFE 1 7 And one can hardly fail to see that this recognition of the relatedness of all neces- sarily carries with it a denial of the possible separation of the sacred and the secular. What has already been said concerning the need of a wide range of interests shows that the very constitution of the mind demands, for the sake of the higher interests themselves, that they do not receive exclusive attention. A broad and sane view of even the highest interest requires sympathetic understanding of many other interests. The reaction, too, in one's own case, which is certain to follow exclusive attention to any subject, is most disastrous to the interests which it was sought thus exclusively to conserve. More- over, if one wishes to make some higher in- terest prevail with others, he must fulfil the conditions of influence, and these, again, we have seen, demand a broad range of interests. From every point of view, therefore, it is seen that no ideal interest can conquer by simple negation, and that no idea! interest has anything to gain by mere exclusiveness. For the denial of legitimate worldly interests only narrows the possible sphere of both morals and religion ; it makes the ethical and the religious life less, not more, signifi- RATIONAL LIVING cant. For it is the glory of religion not to be set apart from life, but to permeate it powerfully. So, too, in the supposed interests of re- ligion, we too often lay exclusive emphasis on certain specific channels of revelation, and virtually deny that God is creator of any but a small part of his world, and thereby shut ourselves up against all other channels by which he might speak to us. This is no mean and narrow world in which we live, no cribbed and confined existence to which we are called. God made us complex, and there is no single avenue of approach to our being that he does not know, and through which he would not speak. The history of philosophy corroborates the witness of psychology here with telling effect. Religion's most dangerous enemies have been nourished in its own fold, in this very spirit of exclusiveness. The mystics of the seventeenth century, for example, with their denial of the trustworthiness of the reason, which was made for the sake of exalting faith, definitely prepared the way for a sensationalism which ended logically in the French Enlightenment, with its attempt to sweep not only historic Christianity, but THE COMPLEXITY OF LIFE IQ all religion and even morality from the earth. ^ So, too, the weapon that in the years just past has been used most effectively against revealed religion — the doctrine of the rela- tivity of human knowledge — was forged by Hamilton and Mansell in defense of Chris- tianity. And to-day, no possible attacks upon Christianity from without are half so dan- gerous as the still too common assumption within of the actual and natural antagonism of faith and reason, of religion and science, of religion and morality, of the sacred and the secular. For the sake of exalting religion, we treat it as something utterly apart, only to pay the penalty of finding it, in the end, put utterly aside from the real life of man. And the true significance, on the other hand, of some of the most hopeful religious movements of our time, is to be found in a genuine, even where half-unconscious, effort to bring religion everywhere into touch with life, and with all of life, to make man's relation to God a reality. This is the religious significance of such phenomena as the higher criticism, the greatly increasing reverence of men of science for religion, the growing * Cf. Erdmann, History of Philosophy, Vol. II, pp. 99 ff. 20 RATIONAL LIVING insistence that all things are to be so used as to minister to the spirit, — that the whole world, according to Canon Fremantle's con- ception, is "the subject of redemption." It follows that, just as exclusive atten- tion to the higher interests has its inevitable reaction, so, too, the absorption in the lower defeats itself. A man's life can be no larger than the objects to which it is given. Things pass away, and even the desire for them fails. It is only he that does the will of God, St. John reminds us, and so gives him- self to the really permanent, who abides for- ever. His life is poor indeed who has not gained a store of valuable and permanent interests. Without these, even the lower interests themselves must fail to give their full contribution. The full pulse of life can- not be felt without a wide range of interests, and a thoughtful relating of each to the rest of life. We are learning to recognize, we may hope, the complexity of life. It means much for rational living when the complexity of life has been fairly recog- nized with its logical consequences. For this implies that there can be no rule-of- thumb methods, no "patent process" char- THE COMPLEXITY OF LIFE 21 acter, no magical inheritance of results. In particular, this assertion of the complexity of life involves recognition of the paradoxes of life and emphasis on conditions. Both have direct suggestions for living, and may be made to include the most important, practi- cal inferences from psychology's first great insistence — the complexity of life. CHAPTER II RECOGNITION OF THE PARADOXES OF LIFE- OPPOSING RELATIONS One cannot face the problem set by the compHcated relations of his existence without finding himself confronted again and again with the necessity of fulfilling relations seemingly opposed. Life constantly makes paradoxical demands upon us. And we have not admitted the complexity of life to much purpose if we have not seen, and in part, at least, solved the paradoxes that meet us in every sphere of our being. I. THE ALL-INCLUSIVE PARADOX OF ENDS AND MEANS Life itself is a paradox. Means seem often at war with ends, mechanism, with the ideals for which alone it exists. Only the ends are of absolute value, yet the means are indispensable to their attainment. The actual and necessary are not the ideal ; the (22) THE PARADOXES OF LIFE 23 n and the must cannot give us the ought \ and yet only through the use of the actual and necessary can anything ideal be achieved. And the question of the final harmony of mechanical means and ideal ends — the final harmony of the /j, the must^ and the ought — is for us all the question of questions. Its complete answer would be a final philosophy. So Lotze can make it the thesis of his entire philosophical system to " show how absolutely universal is the extent, and at the same time how completely subordinate the significance of the mission which mechanism has to fulfil in the structure of the world. "^ II. THE PARADOXES OF THE DIFFERENT SPHERES OF LIFE In the physical realm, as has been often noted, the paradox remains. The great hin- drance to all motion is friction, yet with- out friction there can be no motion. There is an abiding animal body, yet every ele- ment of it is in flux. In our own physical life, there is a peculiar paradox; it is con- tained in the not infrequent phrase of our time — " power through repose." Physical ^ Microcosmus, p. xvi. 24 RATIONAL LIVING relaxation is necessary to sustained energy ; it is much to have learned really to relax strained muscles and nerves — to let go of oneself; yet relaxation may become nerve- less, spineless flabbiness. We must learn to meet the paradox. In the intellectual life no characteristic of consciousness is more marked than its selective nature, which contains in itself a paradox — the power to attend and the power to ignore ; and the two most fundamental functions of intellectual activity are seemingly opposed — discrimination and assimilation — the discernment of likenesses and the dis- cernment of differences. Sully suggests, after Aristotle, that the best mental habits are usually means between extremes, a com- bining of opposites. Thus a " skilful man- agement of the memory" demands forgetting as well as remembering, " detecting what is important and overlooking what is unimpor- tant." In the proper training of the imagi- nation there must be both restraint and stimulation — restraint of immoderate fancy through developing judgment and reason, stimulus through furnishing materials and motive.^ ^ Sully, Outlines of Psychology, 1889, pp. 297, 326. THE PARADOXES OF LIFE 25 Our intellectual life is a constant struggle, too, between what Professor James calls "genius and old-fogyism" — between open- mindedness and conservatism, between per- ceiving the new as new and assimilating the new to the old ; and neither factor can be given up. In James' words : "There is an everlasting struggle in every mind between the tendency to keep unchanged, and the tendency to ren- ovate, its ideas. Our education is a ceaseless compromise between the conservative and the progressive factors." "Hardly any one of us can make new heads easily when fresh ex- periences come. Most of us grow more and more enslaved to the stock conceptions with which we have once become familiar, and less and less capable of assimilating impres- sions in any but the old ways. Old-fogyism, in short, is the inevitable terminus to which life sweeps us on." On the other hand, "genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way."^ An evident paradox confronts us here. We must seek to relate new knowl- edge to that already gained ; but we must, at the same time, if there is to be any growth at all, be sure to recognize what is really ^Psychology, Vol. II, pp. 109, no. 26 RATIONAL LIVING new, as new. So Sully says: "Excellence of judgment in this respect lies between two extremes of instability and obstinacy." "A sound judgment, too, combines a measure of intellectual independence with a due re- gard for the claims of others' convictions."^ The ideal is, while fully recognizing the new as new, to connect all new acquisitions logically with the old, making all needful re- adjustments to that end, and so to be able to command the whole store. This ideal is rarely fulfilled. It often happens that our ideas for a long time seem hardly to have met at all, and we wake up after some sudden bringing of them face to face, to find that we have been holding in our minds, with comfor- table unconcern, ideas actually irreconcilable. Such a discovery may be epoch-making in a man's intellectual growth. In moral life and influence, paradoxes repeatedly recur. In decision a double demand is constantly laid upon us : make deliberation habitual, yet decide promptly when the evidence is once in. Great differences of temperament are to be recognized here; some children find it almost impossible to decide anything, while ^ op. cit., p. 410. THE PARADOXES OF LIFE 27 Others are uniformly precipitate in their deci- sions. Grizel, it will be remembered, said, "It is so easy to make up one's mind"; while "sentimental Tommy" replied, "It's easy to you that has just one mind, but if you had as many minds as I have !" One needs to take these temperamental differences into account for himself and others ; but the goal to be aimed at is clear. There must be neither the rash judgment that jumps at conclusions, nor the ever -hesitating judg- ment that finds decision almost impossible. There are circumstances in life when almost any prompt decision is of far more conse- quence than the best decision reached too late. "The ideal of a good character," an- other says, "is a combination of promptitude in following the right when the right is manifest, with wariness and a disposition to reflect and choose rationally and rightly whenever the right course is not at first apparent."^ Professor Palmer puts a similar paradox in his own way, when he says: "It is mean- ingless, then, to ask whether we should be intuitive and spontaneous, or considerate and deliberate. There is no such alternative. 1 Sully, op. cit., p. 667. 28 RATIONAL LIVING We need both dispositions. We should seek to attain a condition of swift spontaneity, of abounding freedom, of the absence of all restraint, and should not rest satisfied with the conditions in which we were born. But we must not suffer that even the new nature should be allowed to become altogether natural. It should be but the natural engine for spiritual ends, itself repeatedly scrutinized with a view to their better fulfilment."^ This view of the moral life is allied not only with the paradox in decision, but even more closely with the fundamental paradox of the moral life in self-assertion and self-surrender, considered a little later. In the moral life, too, quietism wars with enthusiasm — the mood of the East with the mood of the West — and yet we can spare neither. To feel oneself in the grasp of a "vast and predestined order" stifles human initiative; but, on the other hand, to lose all sense of any plan larger than our own, — any on-working of universal forces, in line with which we may do our work, is to take the heart out of our work, and to make a life-calling impossible. A true quietism is, thus, the very root of a genuine enthusiasm. ^ The Nature of Goodness, p. 240. THE PARADOXES OF LIFE 29 We must be able to reach Browning's "All's love, yet all's law." In this very conviction of the complexity of life which we have been considering, there is a particularly difficult paradox to be faced. With this broad conviction of the essential complexity of life, how are we to combine a true simplicity F What is the real demand of the simple life? Does it mean cutting off or ignoring any sides of our being? We have already seen that ideal interests cannot gain by a spirit of exclusiveness. But the true breadth is not lack of discrimination. It is but a poor and illogical protest against the Puritan's indiscriminate condemnation of much that was good, to react to an equally indiscriminate acceptance either of good and bad alike, or of all goods as of equal value. A self-indulgent and merely sporting people cannot be a great people. But a true sim- plicity and a reasonable recognition of the complexity of life alike call for a discrimi- nation that can both recognize all goods as goods, and yet see and rigorously treat the lesser goods as lesser; and that means, if need be, the sacrifice of the lesser unhesi- tatingly to the greater. This is both the broad and the simple life. 30 RATIONAL LIVING So, too, there is the further paradox of emotion to be shunned, and emotion to be welcomed. The false emotion that exhausts, — the strain that is drain, the forced, the high-strung, the hysterical, — is at perpetual war with the true emotion that invigorates, that comes, that is not manufactured, and that is the sign of reserved power. And one of the great weaknesses, as we shall see, both in friendship and in religion, is failure to dis- criminate clearly these two kinds of emotions. Even in influence there is a paradox, and the solution is not so easy as is often assumed ; for there are two kinds of "weaker brethren"; — not only those for whom eating flesh is sin and whom you stumble by eating, but also those for whom it is no sin, and whom you stumble by making it a sin. Between these two classes one has always to guide his course ; both are to be regarded ; both lay duties upon us. And the duty of develop- ing a proper conscience in another may often be as imperative as the duty of removing all possible temptation from his path. It is often very difficult to decide which duty is para- mount in a given case. One needs, at the very least, to be sure that his decision is not determined by his own selfish desire. THE PARADOXES OF LIFE 31 Religion^ too, has to steer between a super- stitiousness that sees the magically supernat- ural everywhere, and a materialistic realism that sees God nowhere. It must have a firm hold on ideals, on the spiritual world, or lose its very existence; but it must believe as well that these ideals can be realized through mechanical means, or give up any power in actual life. The religious man must be "hum- bly-proud," as Erdmann says, — humble in view of the "=;ternal and infinite plans of God; proud, as called to a possible and an "imperishable work in the world." In similar fashion, religion has to find its way between rationalism and mysticism. It can have no war with reason; but it must insist that the true reason must take account of all the data — emotional and volitional as well as intellectual — that a man can feel and do and experience more than he can tell. It must deny, therefore, both a narrow intel- lectualism and an irrational mysticism. To keep the two tendencies in proper balance is one of the pressing problems of a man's personal religious life. The choosing of one^ s lifework and one^s abiding character^ again, is a choice among several possible mesy which, however good 32 RATIONAL LIVING separately, cannot possibly coexist. "Not that I would not, if I could," says James, "be both handsome and fat and well-dressed, and a great athlete, and make a million a year, be a wit, a bon-vivant^ and a lady-killer as well as a philosopher ; a philanthropist, states- man, warrior, and African explorer, as well as a 'tone-poet' and saint. But the thing is simply impossible. The millionaire's work would run counter to the saint's ; the bon- vivant and the philanthropist would trip each other up ; the philosopher and the lady-killer could not well keep house in the same tene- ment of clay. ... So the seeker of his truest, strongest, deepest self must review the list carefully and pick out the one on which he is to stake his salvation."^ But this one "me" being chosen, even then the future potential better self is always at war with the present, however good. One can build only on the present self, yet he must leave it behind. He must both deny it and affirm it. The ideal potential self passes continual judgment on the present self. The problem of life becomes, thus, everywhere a paradox, which can be defi- nitely stated. A fundamental paradox is ^Psyckology, Vol. I, pp. 309, 310. THE PARADOXES OF LIFE 33 involved in our very natures, as is perhaps indicated most clearly by Professor Royce's classification of mental phenomena\ He denotes two of the three fundamental heads of his classification as docility and initiative^ and defines these terms as follows: "By the docility of an animal we mean the capacity shown in its acts to adjust these acts not merely to a present situation, but to the rela- tion between this present situation and what has occurred in the former life of this organ- ism. . . . The term ' docility ' is chosen as a convenient name both for the physical manifestation of the animal's power to profit by experience, and for the mental processes that accompany this same power." In this sense, docility gives us the law of habit. "Its interpretation in terms of consciousness is, that any conscious process which is of a type that has occurred before tends to recur more readily, up to the point where the limit of training has been reached, and to displace rival conscious processes, according as its type has frequently occurred." And the law of habit involves the law of association, "the assimila- tion of new habits to old ones," and, in the social life, the constant influence of imitation. ^Outlines of Psychology y pp. viii, x, 38, 53, 198, 234, 279, etc. C 34 RATIONAL LIVING On the other hand, " The sort of mental initiative which is especially in question in the present discussion is that which appears when already acquired, and intelligent habits are decidedly altered, or are decidedly recombined, in such fashion as to bring to pass a novel readjustment to our environ- ment." This is the recognition of "critical points" in our development. Now, our men- tal life and growth manifestly require both docility and initiative ; each must have its due place and recognition. And this funda- mental paradox involves many lesser ones. It appears, as has been already seen, in the intellectual life ; it appears also in character, and in any large and wise management of life. Character^ in the large sense, requires both self-assertion and self-surrender, both indi- viduality and deference, both the assertion of a law for oneself and the reasonable yield- ing to others, both loyalty to conviction and open-mindedness, both free independence and obedience. "In brief," says Royce, "the preservation of a happy balance between the imitative functions and those that emphasize social contrasts and oppositions forms the basis for every higher type of mental activity. And the entire process of conscious educa- IHE PARADOXES OF LIFE 35 tion involves the deliberate appeal to the docility of these tvv^o types of social instincts.^ For, whatever else we teach to a social being, we teach him to imitate ; and whatever use we teach him to make of his social imitations in his relations with other men, we are obliged at the same time to teach him to assert himself, in some sort of way, in con- trast with his fellows, and by virtue of the arts which he possesses." No wonder the child is often honestly perplexed, and not a little dazed, at times, to find himself blamed for disobedience, where he felt hirnse^f: really standing for principle. Yet it is" certain that without a good large admixture of self-assertion to give him back- bone, the child will be mere clay under the influence of his surroundings and can never form character.^ No wonder the grown man, too, frequently mistakes. Lecky gives a particular illustration of this paradox in character, in speaking of ^ I cannot help thinking that it would have been more logical for Professor Royce to have regarded these two contrasted instincts as illustrations respectively of his two fundamental contrasts of '^docility" and "initiative"; and I have here so treated them. After the great emphasis of his fundamental classification of mental phenomena, his actual treatment of "initiative" seems needlessly d sappointing. * Cf. King, The Appeal of the Child, p. 48. 36 RATIONAL LIVING the difficulties of "parliamentary government w^orked upon party lines." "It needs," he says, "a combination of independence and discipline which is not common, and where it does not exist parliaments speedily de- generate either into an assemblage of puppets in the hands of party leaders or into disinte- grated, demoralized, insubordinate groups."^ The same paradoxical combination of quali- ties is indicated again by Lecky as necessary, when he says: "One of the worst moral evils that grow up in democratic countries is the excessive tendency to time-serving and popu- larity-hunting, and the danger is all the greater because in a certain sense both of these things are a necessity and even a duty. Their moral quality depends mainly on their motive."^ This problem is thus a perpetual one. The solution cannot be easy for child or parent, for student or teacher, for citizen or government. Kindly, patient suggestion, which is reverent of the individual person, earnest seeking of the best that is attainable in the circumstances, and honest cooperation are needed. So, too, a similar paradox confronts us in ^ The Map oj Life, p. 183. * Op. cit., p. 141. THE PARADOXES OF LIFE 37 the general conduct of our lives. In Lecky's words, "To maintain in their due proportion in our nature the spirit of content and the desire to improve, to combine a realized appreciation of the blessings we enjoy with a healthy and well-regulated ambition, is no easy thing, but it is the problem which all who aspire to a perfect life should set before themselves."^ The final solution of this fundamental paradox of self-surrender and self-assertion for a finite being would apparently be reached only when one had found a self-surrender, which Included all lesser surrenders, and was, at the same time, the completest self- assertion — a yielding which should be, also, the boldest "claim on life." Such a solution, Christ evidently believes that he finds in his recurring paradox of saving the life by losing it — denying the narrow, merely individual self, like the grain of wheat In the ground, to rise to the life of the larger self. Every surrender to a high friendship is, as Ritschl has pointed out, "not a weakening denial of self, but a strengthening affirmation of self," for love itself is life, the largest life. But in the supreme surrender to the will of God, ^ op, cit., p. 28. 38 RATIONAL LIVING we welcome and share the supreme and all' sufficing life ; and here, as Professor Everett contended against Nietsche's position, one finds in truth his own highest and strongest self-assertion. "Religion," in Biedermann's language, "is the lifting of life out of de- pendence on its circumstances into the free- dom which comes from absolute dependence." But a paradox is not solved by stating it, or even by indicating the ideal combination. There must be a tracing out of the actual relations involved, a discerning of the mul- tiplied conditions upon which the solution depends. Psychology can be a science only so far as it is actually able to discover these conditions. And the emphasis of psychology on the complexity and paradox of life means, therefore, at the same time, emphasis on conditions. CHAPTER III THE EMPHASIS OF PSYCHOLOGY ON CONDITIONS The insistence of psychology on the com- plexity and paradox of life means emphasis on conditions; for if all life is so inter-related, and so puzzlingly complex, we can make progress in the knowledge and in the living of it, only in so far as we regard these ac- tual relations and fulfil these matter-of-fact conditions. Something like this is attempted by Lecky in his very suggestive book, The Map of Life^ already quoted. Perhaps the most striking thing in the book is its insis- tence upon what the author calls " the importance of compromise in practical life." This might, perhaps, better be called the intelligent, practical, and detailed recognition of the complexity oi life; for no real compro- mise of principle is anywhere involved. But Lecky's main thought is certainly justified, and is an immediate inference from the conviction of the complexity of life, as is indicated by his own statement : ^' Life is a (39) 40 RATIONAL LIVING scene in which different kinds of interest not only blend but also modify and in some degree counterbalance one another, and it can only be carried on by constant compro- mises in which the lines of definition are seldom very clearly marked, and in which even the highest interest must not altogether absorb or override the others."^ And he discusses with great care and insight the necessity of such "compromise" in war, in the law, in politics, and in the Church. Certainly the problem of the practical solution of the complexity of life through recognition of the precise relations and con- ditions involved cannot be escaped by any man who wishes to live a wise and righteous life. There must be both the knowledge and the fulfilment of precise conditions. I. THE LESSONS OF NATURAL SCIENCE This is the lesson of the marvelous growth of the natural sciences: unwearied study of minute details; patient search for the law underlying the phenomena investigated, and for the exact conditions involved; pre- cise and persistent fulfilment of these condi- ^Op. ciL, pp. 90, 91. THE EMPHASIS ON CONDITIONS 41 tions. So science grows, and so its problems are solved. It discerns law, and hence possible achievement. That is, wc accomplish nothing except through the forces of nature. We can use these only so far as we see their laws and fulfil the conditions required; and this fulfilment requires time. Law, conditions, time ! So and so only has man's dominion over nature come about; so and so only can dominion over one's own nature be achieved, and life's problem solved. Because the problem of life is complex, we must attack it as the scientist attacks his problem, with a definite conviction of law and with consequent hope. Drummond's greatest contribution to his generation lay in this insistence upon law in the moral and spiritual world. This conviction withdraws the moral and spiritual from the realm of the magical and brings in hope of real achievement. So believing, we may set the laws of the world and of the mind working for us, and have patience with ourselves and with others. There are laws in the spiritual world ; we can find them out ; we can know their implied conditions ; these conditions we can fulfil ; and we can so count confidently upon results. Otherwise, 42 RATIONAL LIVING the perception of the complexity of life could bring only baffling confusion. There must be definite conditions of growth, of character, of happiness, of influence. And it is psychology's highest task to instruct us as to these conditions of our own life. II. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF COMMON WORK AND DUTIES And just here lie, too, for practical liv- ing, the seriousness and value of common every-day work and of prosaic duties, as the clearest-sighted have always seen. It is in these that the actual essential conditions come out most clearly. It is interesting to notice that the very language of our most wise and useful proverbs shows that they have been wrought out in the realm of common toil of various kinds. We shall certainly not solve our greater and more distant problems by ignoring those smaller and more imme- diate. Because of the complex intertwining of things, as in science, so in life, we can never safely slight small matters. Our prin- ciples never so plainly rule as when they lead us to care in their slighter, more delicate, and more thoughtful manifestations. THE EMPHASIS ON CONDITIONS 43 It is true that in sight of the infinite goal, the exercises and aims and discords of our daily living may seem petty enough, — "and yet," as Lotze says — and I know no nobler passage in all his writing — "and yet we must continue these exercises, devote to these contracted aims all the ardor of our souls, painfully feel these discords, and again and again renew the conflict concerning them ; our life would not be ennobled by depre- ciation of its conditions, and of the stage which it oflfers to our struggling energy." We get control of the principles of life only by some real working of them out, — only by the laboratory method. Here lies the significance of Lowell's "work done squarely and unwasted days"; of Gannett's new beatitude, "Blessed be drudgery"; of the Bishop of Exeter's state- ment, that "of all work that produces re- sults, nine -tenths must be drudgery." And there is to be, too, no "blue-rose melancholy," that thinks it could do great things if con- ditions were altogether otherwise — if the roses were only blue. We are called to face the exact circumstances in which we are, and faithfully to fulfil the conditions there demanded. 44 RATIONAL LIVING III. NO MAGICAL INHERITANCE In the best things, then, there can be no short-cuts, no sudden leaps, no transcenden- tal flights, no magical inheritance in vision. Long periods of gradual growth precede the harvest. Steady fulfilment of conditions — daily, hourly, detailed, faithful — can alone bring great hours of vision, and can alone make great hours of vision fruitful. The vision of the goal is inspiring, but it must not make us discontented with the road thereto. Dreaming of the goal is not attain- ment of it, nor is working oneself up to belief in a goal already attained. It is far safer for us to say with one of the world's best fighters, "I count not myself yet to have apprehended," than to sing with the modern religionist, "I've reached the land of corn and wine." Character and acquaintance — the two best things in the gift of life, and the very essence of religion — are both growths and active achievements, never a magical inheritance. They are not given outright, and God him- self cannot so create them. They can only become in time and under conditions; but this time given and these conditions fulfilled, you THE EMPHASIS ON CONDITIONS 45 can count on results. This is the point of that remarkable modern stanza of E. R. Sill: "Forenoon, and afternoon, and night; — Forenoon, And afternoon, and night; Forenoon, and — what? The empty song repeats itself. No more ? Yea, that is life ; make this forenoon sublime, This afternoon a psalm, this night a prayer, And time is conquered, and thy crown is won." IV. NO CONDITIONS IN GENERAL But — and we need to heed it — there are no conditions in general, only conditions in particular. We develop power or character not by a general striving, not by resolving in general, but only by definite, concrete applications in definite relations. This ignor- ing of the particular is one of the great errors, both of common asceticism and of common mysticism. General self-denial and general surrender to God that involve no particulars in actual life are fruitless enough. On the contrary, general forms or types of activity, "a given 'set' of the brain as a whole," may result from repeated particular associated acts. So Royce says: "It is known, for instance, that 'fickleness' of conduct, irra- tional change of^ plan of behavior, can itself 46 RATIONAL LIVING become a hopelessly fixed habit in a given brain. "^ There is the more need of insistence upon the careful pointing out of the precise particular conditions in the moral and spirit- ual life, both because of the marked scien- tific temper of our times, and because the natural temperament of the reformer or the religious worker, with its emphasis upon ideals, is often accompanied by theoretical vagueness and an unwillingness to use practi- cal means, and so tends to make him neglect- ful of accurate study of the precise conditions for the attainment of these ideals. It is a great thing for a man to combine vision of the ideal with the scientific method ; this calls for the best in two opposing tempera- ments — the sentimental and the choleric. What answer, now, has psychology to make to the inquiry for the exact conditions on which growth depends? Our second great inference from psychology should suggest the actual conditions — bodily and mental; for modern psychology emphasizes the unity of man — the unity of mind and body, and the unity of the mind itself. 1 Outlines of Psychology, p, 69 ; cf. also James' Psychology, Vol. I, p. 126. THE UNITY OF MAN CHAPTER IV THE UNITY OF MIND AND BODY— INTRODUCTION It is the unity of mind and body which it has been the special mission of physiologi- cal psychology to bring out. And the asser- tion of such unity certainly means, to begin with, that, for the present world at least, the intellectual and moral and spiritual life has its bodily conditions. This is to be said neither boastingly nor cynically. It is to be faced as a simple fact. We have bodies, and we cannot set ourselves free from them. I. ASCETIC TREATMENT OF BODILY CONDITIONS The long sad history of asceticism in all lands shows how real the religious life has felt this connection with the body to be, and at the same time how fiercely it has resented it. Men have remained, in this question of asceticism, quite too largely on the mythologi- cal plane, without any clear sense of a real nature and unity of things. The scientific (47) 48 RATIONAL LIVING spirit, which demands a careful study of de- tailed connections and conditions, has had little enough to do with this blind, fierce struggle; and, in consequence, the ascetic has every- where, on the one hand, failed to take any sensible account of the effects of ordinary bodily conditions; and, on the other hand, paradoxically enough, has exalted the effects of certain abnormal bodily conditions into higher spiritual attainments/ These histori- cal results of religious asceticism certainly cannot be held to commend the method of ignoring bodily conditions. The plain lesson of modern science here would seem to be, that, if the spirit is ever to master the body, it must know its laws and take account of its conditions ; these are the very instru- ments of its mastery. So, and only so, has science made nature serve it. One can quite understand the reluctance of the spiritual life to admit the closeness of its connection v^^ith the physical. It seems itself to be lowered thereby. But it gets no freedom and power by vehemently denying the fact, and ignoring the resulting condi- tions. Rather, its superiority must be shown, its freedom and power declared, as has been 1 Cf. Royce, Op. cit., pp. 125, 126. THE UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 4Q implied, by patient study of the laws of this body and of its connection with the spirit, and by steady fulfilment of the conditions by which alone mastery can come. It is a false and abstract spiritualism, therefore, that hesitates clearly to recognize or to affirm the bodily conditions of the spiritual life. Let us frankly admit that much of the dissatisfaction of the moral and spiritual life results from a wholly unnecessary and sense- less disregard of bodily conditions. The emphasis of modern psychology upon the close connection of body and mind, thus, compels the thoughtful man to a study of the bodily conditions of true living. II. NOT A MATERIALISTIC POSITION But, from the religious point of view, it is exactly this emphasis of modern psychology and of allied views in biology which seems to many to make impossible any independent or enduring life of the spirit at all. A gen- uinely religious view of the world seems to them precluded by the known facts of biology and of physiological psychology. The diffi- culty is a very real one to-day, in the case of hundreds of students and of many others. 50 RATIONAL LIVING If, therefore, we leave aside for the present the deeper question of a final idealistic view of the world, we shall still need to show that this bodily connection and its implied condi- tions involve no denial of the spiritual life itself. The precise difficulty felt is this: the affirmation of bodily conditions for the spiritual life seems to many, even of those uninfluenced by modern psychological views, virtually to assert that the material facts are primary, the spiritual secondary ; that the body is the real independent variable, and that psychical states are in truth but results of bodily or brain states, and hence, that at least no continued life of the spirit could be affirmed after the destruction of the brain. In answer to the difficulty, one might content himself with simply calling attention to the fact that so distinguished a psycholo- gist, for example, as Professor James, with all that modern biology and psychology have to say distinctly in mind, expressly asserts that not only is there no scientific reason for denying the independent reality of the spirit now, but there is also none for denying the possibility of its continued existence after the body. The spiritual life is certainly not pre- THE UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 51 eluded, then, by modern psychology \ And it is a misconception of its teachings that asserts this. But the difficulty is for many so serious, that it is probably worth while to see for ourselves just where the misconception lies. And, fortunately, some present general admis- sions of scientists make the way here much shorter, even from a dualistic point of view, than it could have been some years ago. It is a most noteworthy fact that materialism as a philosophical theory has practically van- ished even from the ranks of natural scien- tists; that modern science expressly denies that it is materialistic. It has been driven to take this position, not because it could not show how brain states could pass into psy- chical states, for it cannot be said to under- stand the final how anywhere; but becau:.e, to affirm that brain states were the true causes of psychical states, would deny its fundamental doctrine of the conservation of energy ^ It would be to affirm that what was simply a mode of motion in the brain disappeared as such altogether, and reap- peared as something not at all a mode of ^ See James, Human Immortality, pp. 7-30. *See Paulsen, Introduction to Philosophy, pp. 74 ff. 52 RATIONAL LIVING motion. This would involve an absolute break in the physical series, an annihilation of motion, and a virtual creation of some- thing else. A completer denial of the con- servation of energy could not be made. The natural scientist, therefore, has quite aban- doned, on grounds that for him are impera- tive, the old position that the brain states are the cause of psychical states. From the present standpoint of the nat- ural scientist, therefore, we may not only say with Professor James, ^ that we have no need to assert a ^^ productive function" of the brain in its relation to the psychical states, since we may equally well assume a "per- missive" or "transmissive function"; but we may say, we cannot admit the possibility of a productive function of the brain, since it would deny the conservation of energy. To the strict logic of the position involved in the doctrine of the conservation of energy, naturalism must be held. That position only allows it to recognize two continuous mutu- ally independent series — the one physical, the other psychical — equally justified as facts. And this necessary admission is quite suffi- cient for our present purpose, which was 1 Human Immortality, p. 15. THE UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 53 simply to show that physiological psychology does not preclude the conviction of a real and independent spiritual life. That there are many reasons for question- ing the absolute dualism of this conception of the relation of the physical and the psychical; that naturalism is itself most inconsistent in carrying out its position, since, as Ward points out, "though rejecting materialism" it "abandons neither the ma- terialistic standpoint nor the materialistic endeavor to colligate the facts of life, mind and history with a mechanical scheme";^ that the whole philosophy underlying it is hardly capable of any final defense; — all this need not now concern us. It is enough for the present that we are at liberty to speak in ordinary terms of the bodily conditions of the spiritual life, without any logically im- plied denial of the independent reality and significance of that spiritual life. Returning, then, from this long digression, let us notice that these modern investigations do not allow us to forget that man — mind and body — is a real unity, two-sided and complex enough it may be, yet one and not two ; they leave us no room to doubt the ^Naturalism and Agnosticism, Vol. I, p. viii. 54 RATIONAL LIVING mysterious intimacy of the connection of the physical and the psychical. It is more than alliteration when HofTding^ insists on "the parallelism and proportionality," and Sully' insists on "the concomitance and covariation" of the nervous and mental processes. 1 Outlines of Psychology, pp. 50 flf. *0p. «/.,p. 4. I I* I i CHAPTER V THE UNirr OF MIND AND BODY— THE PSTCHOLOGICAL EVIDENCE I. THE LAW OF DIFFUSION One of the clearest proofs of this intimate connection of the psychical with the physical — not in the case of the brain only, but in the whole body — is contained in what Bain has called the law of diffusion, and which James thus states: "Using sweeping terms, and ignoring exceptions, we might say that every possible feeling produces a movement, and that movement is a movement of the entire organism, and of each and all its parts. What happens patently when an explosion or a flash of lightning startles us, or when we are tickled, happens latently with every sensation we receive."^ These effects of feel- ing, even of the simplest kind, on the body, have been experimentally traced in the modi- fication of the circulation of the blood, of respiration, of the activity of the sweat ' op. cit.. Vol. II, p. 372. (55) 56 RATIONAL LIVING glands, and of the voluntary muscles, and less accurately in movements of the viscera. To take but a single instance, the effect on circulation: every least mental activity — feeling or thought — affects the circulation of the blood. This is particularly striking in the brain. Mosso's ingenious experiments here^ make the connection of thought and circula- tion of blood in the brain incontest- able. He placed his subjects upon a table so carefully balanced that the slightest in- crease of weight at either extremity would turn the scale. He found that any active thinking by the subject, like the solving of a j problem, would at once cause the head end of the table to go down, in consequence of the influx of blood to the head. Sometimes the subject went to sleep on this "scientific cradle," and it was found that even in sleep so slight a disturbance as the moving of a chair was enough to cause brain activity sufficient to call for such influx of blood as to make the head end of the table go down. Henle has shown, also, that the depress- ing emotions increase the contraction of the 1 Cf., e. g., James, Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 98; Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. II, p. 12. EVIDENCES FOR UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 57 smooth unstriped muscles of the arteries, skin, and bronchial tubes, while exciting emotions make them relax, and so believes himself able to trace even the *^^ natural history of the sigh."^ 11. PSYCHICAL EFFECTS OF BODILY TRAINING The influence of bodily training on mind and morals is another indication of the close relation of body and mind. The localiza- tion of the centers of motion in the brain make it natural to expect that all definitely directed movements will directly affect the brain, and so mental development. Du Bois Reymond" says explicitly that ^'it is easy to demonstrate that such bodily exercises as gymnastics, fencing, swimming, riding, danc- ing and skating are much more exercises of the central nervous system, of the brain and spinal marrow" than of the muscles. These theoretical anticipations are abundantly con- firmed by the facts. The success of the experiments of Dr. Sequin in the training of idiots, beginning with a year's training devoted mainly to the hand, is one such fact. * James, Psychology, Vol. II, p. 445. ^Popular Science Monthly, Vol. XXI, p. 325. 58 RATIONAL LIVING Such results as those attained in the physical training department of the New York State Reformatory, at Eimira, furnish further evi- dence in the same direction. The careful records kept of the men in this prison, in shop work, in school work, and in conduct, make these experiments peculiarly valuable; and these records show incontestable mental and moral gain from physical training/ The Director testified, after several years of direct experiment and observation, that "physical education inculcates habits of obedience, mental concentration, and applica- tion, and forces into the background the former man." III. THE CLOSE CONNECTION OF THE WILL AND MUSCULAR ACTIVITY The ethical life with its center in the will is particularly interested in the close connec- tion between muscular activity and the will, which modern psychology is asserting. Sully puts the principle clearly and briefly: "On the one side," he says, "attention in- volves a certain amount of motor innervation and muscular activity. On the other side, ^ Cf. entire article, Muscle and Mind, F. E. White, Popular Science Monthly, Vol. XXXV, pp. 377 ff. I EVIDENCES FOR UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 59 all voluntary movement involves attention." "All practice in doing things, then, what- ever its primary object may be, is, to some extent, a strengthening of volitional power." So Stanley Hall urges: "Few realize . , . how impossible healthful energy of will is without strong muscles which are its organ, or how endurance and self-control, no less than great achievement, depend on muscle- habits."^ In confirmation of this principle, it is particularly worth noting that in Dr. Mac- laren's inquiry of the men of the Cambridge and Oxford University crews of many years, it was found that the benefits from their training, which the men made most of, were "increase of stamina, of energy, enterprise, and executive power, and of fortitude in endurance of trials, privations, and disappoint- ments" — all distinctly volitional gains. Most men of much less specialized physical training, who have given the matter thought, can similarly bear witness to an influx of volitional energy from reasonable muscular activity. Definite bodily exercise seems often as distinctly volitional as physical in its effects. There is a close connection between muscular tone and will-power, which the man who ^Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. II, p. 75. 6o RATIONAL LIVING seeks complete self-control will do well to heed. James carries the suggestion a step further, when he says: "And that blessed internal peace and confidence, that acquies- centia in se ipso, as Spinoza used to call it, that wells up from every part of the body of a muscularly well-trained human being, and soaks the indwelling soul of him with satisfaction, is, quite apart from every con- sideration of its mechanical utility, an element of spiritual hygiene of supreme significance."^ We have no right to ignore the bodily conditions of a rational life here implied. The greatly increased interest on all sides in bodily exercise has a plain and genuine contribution to make, even to the spiritual life. And the passing of some morbid reli- gious questionings, too, has in this fact, I suspect, a practical explanation. I have, my- self, a good deal of faith in the value of the coming muscular minister. The increasingly certain outcome of the concentrated observation and experiment of the last thirty years, by physiological psychol- ogy in this field, confirmed by most varied practical application, is that all real training is training, whether it be of the whole body, ^ Talks on Psychology and Lifers Ideals, p. 207. EVIDENCES FOR UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 6l manual, industrial, purely mental, or moral ; that man is so far one that real training any- where helps training everywhere, and con- sequently, also, that neglect anywhere means something of loss everywhere. IV, THE PHYSICAL BASIS OF HABIT But nowhere are the psychical and physi- cal so completely interwoven as in the phenomena of habit. The mind's initiative constantly comes in, but it is as constantly seconded by the nervous system. The physio- logical basis of habit consists in the plasticity of the nerve substance, and in the capacity of nerve substance to receive and retain impressions. There results the certainty that the nervous system will act again more easily in those ways in which it has already acted. The nervous system behaves here with dread- ful impartiality. Habits man must have, but it is for him to choose what they shall be, provided he chooses quickly. The time-limit in habits is one of the strong evidences of the close connection of body and mind. It is a start- ling fact to face, that a man's personal habits are largely fixed before he is twenty ; the 62 RATIONAL LIVING chief lines of his future growth and acquain- tance before he is twenty-five, and his pro- fessional habits before he is thirty ; yet to something like this, James believes, physio- logical psychology points.^ Our intellectual as well as our moral day of grace is limited. It is of no use to rebel at the facts, it is folly unspeakable to ignore them. We are becom- ing bundles of habits. With every young person one must, therefore, continually urge : Are you willing to retain just the personal habits you have now? You cannot too quickly change them if you wish to make thorough work. From your early morning toilet, through the care of your clothing and the order of your room, table manners, breathing, tone of voice, manner of talking, pronunci- ation, gesture, motion, address, study, to your very way of sleeping at night — all your habits are setting like plaster of Paris. Do you wish them to set as they are ? But this insistence upon a general time- limit in habits must not be pressed unduly. As Royce says, "the cortex remains, to a remarkably late period in life, persistently sensitive to a great variety of new impressions, and capable of forming at least a certain ^ op. Cit.t pp. 121, 122. EVIDENCES FOR UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 63 number of specialized new habits — such as are involved whenever we learn to recognize and name a new acquaintance, or to carry out a new business enterprise."^ V. THE EVIDENCE OF HYPNOTISM The facts concerning hypnotism may be taken as a final evidence of the exceeding closeness of the relation of mind and body. The marked effect of the hypnotic sleep upon memory, and the well-nigh incredible susceptibility to suggestion which it produces, are among the facts which show, as Baldwin says, "an intimacy of interaction between mind and body, to which current psychology in its psycho-physical theories is only begin- ning to do justice."^ ^Outlines of Psychology, p. 66. * Mental Development, Methods and Processes, p. 165. CHAPTER VI THE UNITY OF MIND AND BODY — SUGGESTIONS FOR LIVING What suggestions, now, has this unity of man — -mind and body — for wise living? This mysterious unity of man is a reminder that no conditions are really trivial, that no member of this unity can suffer alone, and that character has bodily conditions as well as psychical, that may not be ignored. These physical conditions, it may be repeated, are only conditions, not causes; but they are conditions. I. THE BODY INFLUENCES THE MIND There is no help for it. However it may Jj be in the future, one is not yet a disem- " bodied spirit. One must face present condi- tions. What does this mean? The Need of Well -oxygenated Blood.— -It means, for one thing, that one must plan for blood, good blood, enough blood, and well-oxygenated blood. And this not simply (64) SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 65 for physical comfort, but for the sake of rational thinking and righteous living. The facts already given as to the law of dif- fusion should prove this. One of the first authorities in the country on nervous dis- eases asserts that many forms of insanity are not due to organic lesions of the brain, but are probably to be attributed to a "functional change in the brain due to dis- ordered nutrition or circulation."^ Coming's experiments in artificially hindering the flovv^ of blood to the head tend to the same conclusion.^ Still later investigations of Mosso on the phenomena of fatigue,^ as well as those of LaGrange on the physiology of bodily exer- cise, emphasize the fact that the quality of the blood is an equally necessary condition of normal brain activity. " The substances produced by overworking the brain and all other organs," Mosso says in effect, " are drosses," the great part of which ought to be burned up by aid of the oxy- gen of the blood. " Fatigue, thus, bodily and mental, is a sort of poisoning by the * Starr, Diseases of the Mind, p. 27. ^ Cf. Corning, Brain Exhaustion, pp. 37 ff. ^See Pedagogical Seminary, Vol, II, pp. 267, 268. B 66 RATIONAL LIVING chemical products of decomposition." La- Grange/ lays emphasis on the fact that the great gain of exercise is that a man "lays up a provision of oxygen" and so produces what he calls "m.ore living blood." And the feeling of drowsiness — brain-workers should note — often means need of oxygen rather than need of sleep. This is no matter of mere bodily hygiene ; it is quite certain to become a question of morals. The influence of brain-congestion or anasmia (and only in less degree of the supply of vitiated blood to the brain) upon the tem- per and disposition is immediate and marked. The language of specialists upon this point is so strong that it would seem to you ex- travagant if I should quote it. Thus Ham- mond speaks of the "whole character changed by a slight attack of cerebral congestion." This means, then, that a man has no business to be too lazy to breathe, and breathe deeply, or to exercise sufficiently, or to fulfil any of the conditions for enough good oxygenated living blood. One may well be reminded that the authorities agree that feeling is no safe test as to the amount of exercise needed. It should not be for- * The Physiology of Bodily Exercise. SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 67 gotten, on the other hand, as Corning sug- gests,^ that there may be excessive devel- opment and use of the muscular system, especially in people with limited digestive power; but the temptation of brain-workers is, doubtless, not generally in that direction. Because of the "close analogy between the effects of mental fatigue and those of mus- cular fatigue," LaGrange speaks of "the dangers of mere physical exercise without diminution of brain work," and expressly recommends simple exercises as best for brain-workers.^ Temptations enough we are certain to meet ; we have no right needlessly to increase them. Yet blood is not the first and chief factor in attention, Mosso says, but nerve power. The Need of Surplus Nervous Energy. Effects of Fatigue.^ — Particularly important, therefore, in the bearing on both intellec- tual and moral efficiency, are the facts as to fatigue. The Effect of Fatigue on Attention and ^ Brain Exhaustion, jip. 47, 188 ff, "^ Op cii., pp. 351, 339 ff., 379 ff. ^ Cf. on the whole, Burnham, School Hygiene ; Dresslar, Fatigue; and Chamberlain on Mosso, Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. II, pp. 9 ff., 102 ff., 267 ff.; and, for many illustrations, Coe, The Spiritual Life, pp. 71 ff. 68 RATIONAL LIVING Self- Control. — The facts as to fatigue are important, for one reason, because scien- tific observation seems to show that natural power of self-control is directly proportioned to the amount of surplus nervous energy. "The phenomena of inhibition are the stronger," says Hoffding, "the fuller the organism is of life, and weaker when the organism is in a state of fatigue." "In this respect the condition of the central organ is of decisive influence."^ All self-control seems to involve the use of the higher brain centers which are first affected by fatigue or any abuse, and self-control becomes increas- ingly dilBcult as these centers are overtasked. Brain-fag, Beard says, brings inability to bear responsibility, defective and uncertain will, lack of power to inhibit, while "perfect Inhi- bition is the sign of perfect health." But power of self-control lies at the foun- dation of all intellectual attainment and of any possible character. Control of appetites and passions, even the lowest degree of pru- dence, to say nothing of unselfish subordina- tion of one's own interests, rests directly upon the power of self-control. There can be no growth in practical wisdom, or progress ^ op. cit., p. 44. SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 69 toward a better self — mental or moral — for one who cannot hold the present in abey- ance to the future. The cardinal difference between the sane and the insane, even, lies in self-control. Dr. Starr says, "its deficiency is vmiversally regarded as evidence of mental instability." It is, therefore, of no small moral interest to 'determine the bodily conditions of self-control. In a general way, every one knows from experience that when he is tired it is harder to be decent. But the more recent investiga- tions of physiological psychologists into the phenomena of fatigue give needed emphasis and point to this observation. Psychologically, the pov/er of self-control consists chiefly in the power of attention, the power to hold steadily before one the future advantage, the reasons for the better course, the broader wisdom, in spite of the incitements of pres- ent impulse. Now, the most careful observa- tions yet made, — those of Mosso, — show that "attention is the chief condition of mental fatigue," and this means that fatigue directly hinders the power of attention and conse- quently the power of self-control. That is, We are dealing here with the immediate phys- ical conditions of will-power. What, then, 70 RATIONAL LIVING are the facts about fatigue, what are its conditions and signs? T)irect Effect of Fatigue on Nerve Con- ditions. — The importance of surplus nervous energy is emphasized by all specialists in this field. Dr. Clouston says, "Exhaustion of ner- vous energy always lessens the inhibitory power" and speaks of "reserve brain-power — that most valuable of all brain qualities." Dr. J. M. Granville says: "The part which ^a stock of energy' plays in brain work can scarcely be exaggerated."^ Dr. W. H. Burn- ham, after reviewing all the recent impor- tant investigations of this kind in the world, emphasizes the fact that in the nervous sys- tem "only a limited amount of energy is available at any moment"; and "the one essential thing in economic brain action is the maintenance of the proper balance be- tween the storage and expenditure of energy." Fatigue is the sign that the reserve stock is being drawn upon, that one has begun to consume his principal. To continue work in. spite of warnings of weariness is simply to drug the watchman of the treasury. Direct experiment in electrical stimulation of the nerve-cells of frogs and cats shows a "remark- ^ Popular Science Monthly, Vol. XX, p, 104. SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 7 1 able shrinking of the nerve-cells, particularly of the nuclei." After five hours' continuous work, the cell nucleus is only half its normal size, and twenty-four hours of rest are neces- sary for complete restoration to its normal state. But half the amount of work, it is particularly worth noting, does not require nearly half the amount of time for recovery. In experiments by Dr. Hodge on nerve-cells of animals, Burnham says that a remarkable difference was found between the condition of the cells in the morning and at night; "for example, in the brain-cells of honey- bees taken at night the nuclei had shrunken about a third." "Of course," he adds, "we cannot apply just the same figures to the cells of the human brain; but we must sup- pose that something similar occurs during nervous activity. Mental work exhausts the ner-^^e-cells and they recover slowly." The Consequent Effects of Fatigue on all Perceptions and Activities. — Direct observa- tion upon man makes practically certain the foregoing conclusion of Dr. Burnham's. A postman, for example, can tell far more ac- curately in the morning than at night the weight of a letter. Our sense perceptions of all kinds are far acuter in the morning. It 72 RATIONAL LIVING is literally true that the world looks brighter in the morning. The carefully observed re- sults of fatigue in man all emphasize the wisdom of prompt heeding of the warnings of weariness, and the necessity of alternating periods of work and rest for both mental and moral health. Mosso's observations showed that "fatigue causes m.any strange phenomena: color-blindness, involuntary movements, hysterical symptoms, amorous- ness, hallucinations, prolonged after-images, and almost every kind of subjective and objective symptoms, suggesting the weaker parts of body or mind." The mental symp- toms in normal fatigue, as noted by Dr. Cowles, are "loss of power of memory^; sense of perception less acute ; association centers less spontaneous, and therefore slower^; the vocabulary diminishes ; lowering of emotional tone ; the attention unstable and flickering." These are the symptoms which the rational man ought to note as indicating that he is falling below his best, and he ought to plan to get back as promptly as possible to that best. The secret of the finest and the largest ^ Corning says that the fluctuations of memory may be taken as a kind of barometer of the sanitary condition of the mind. Brain Ex- haustion, p. 71. =* Cf. Royce, Op. cit., p. 217. SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 73 work is to keep persistently at one's best. "Renewed power comes after rest and sleep." "But when the process of restoration is con- tinuously incomplete, pathological fatigue or neurasthenia is the result." Fatigue is, therefore, not merely physi- cally uncomfortable ; it is intellectually and morally dangerous, and it makes temptations possible that have cost many a man his char- acter. The record of Saturday nights in this world of ours would make tragic reading. Germany may be said to have a practically national problem, that turns on the use of Saturday night. These facts help one to see why Mosso should insist that "the work done by a fatigued muscle (and the same law seems to hold for brain action) injures it far more than the same work under normal con- ditions"; for '^half of a given quantity of work does not require half of a given time for rest." "A man's efficiency, then, depends upon his habits of mental thrift." Men evi- dently vary considerably in the promptness with which the nerve - cells recover from fatigue. Every man must find for himself his best periods of work and rest; but hav- ing found his individual law, he should remember that there is no gain but only 74 RATIONAL LIVING loss in work undertaken contrary to that law. In a word, self-control lies at the very basis of character, and of all achievement, intellectual or moral; the chief psychical condition of self-control is power of atten- tion ; attention is the chief factor in mental fatigue ; the chief bodily condition of power of attention is, therefore, surplus nervous energy; and the conditions of surplus ner- vous energy are plain — food, rest, recreation, sleep, and especially avoidance of every spe- cies of excess, particularly emotional excess. And these conditions are largely within our control. Even sleep is largely under control of the will, and the world's best workers know this. Bodily conditions rightly observed can mightily help both intellectual and moral efficiency. The religious life, least of all, with its belief in God as creator of both body and mind and expressing himself in their laws, can ignore these facts. While recognizing clearly that these are not all, nor the most important conditions, it will still, in subor- dination to the higher interests, be loyally obedient to these lesser laws. The spirit of obedience is best seen, often, in fidelity in SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 75 the littles. How dear a price, in the spiritual life, has often been paid for the ignoring of this first plain physical condition of self- control ! We must persistently aim, then, at surplus nervous energy, at what Emerson calls "/>/wj health." And in no calling is this more im- perative than in teaching, especially in the teaching of little children. It is the special prerogative of the child to see things freshly. If one is to be able to put himself at the child's point of view and see for him, one requires, above all, freshness — freshness of body, mind, and spirit. He must be neither strained nor fagged. This demands plus health. Dr. Munger makes the same sug- gestion for the ministry in the order of the words in the felicitous title of an important address to theological students, ^^ Healthy Vi- tality^ Inspiration. '^'^ "If ye know these things happy are ye if ye do them." As Dr. Gulick says of his "Ten Minutes' Exercise for Busy Men": "Exer- cise every day. If you don't you cannot say that it is a failure, you are the failure." Her- bert Spencer, broken down with nervous exhaustion, made his farewell address to Americans on "The Gospel of Recreation." 76 RATIONAL LIVING Sydenham, author of a valuable treatise on gout, Lagrange says, "suffered from his first attack immediately on finishing his book." Knowing the truth, unfortunately, is not doing it. Americans, especially, need Spencer's warnings, since no nation so persistently disregards these facts. For neurasthenia is a peculiarly American disease ; some have even ventured to call it Americanitis . There are natural reasons for this condition, indeed, but they do not lessen the danger. One factor — that is at the same time both cause and symptom — is our nervous over-activity and tendency to repeated changes of occupa- tion. But it should not be forgotten that this persistent disregard of nervous condi- tions both makes impossible our intellectual supremacy as a nation and increases enor- mously the difficulties of our moral problems. The greatest things cannot be possible to a people that is living on its nerves. Intellec- tual supremacy and moral leadership for a people requires long- continued labor on the part of many individuals. There is incalcu- lable loss in the constant changing of intel- lectual leaders. We may well wonder if we are not attempting to live at a pace that gives SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 77 US not only small time to think, but threatens seriously our power of normal feeling, our power to work, and our power to live righteously, to say nothing of our power greatly to lead in the highest things. Let us make it unmistakably clear to ourselves that no fagged man can be at his best. He dooms himself thereby to inferior work, inferior living, and inferior influence. If we are to see conditions normally, and face them with hope and courage, we need to escape fag. The Need of Physical Training. — The psychical effects of bodily training, already referred to, are not only strong evidence of the influence of bodily conditions on mind and character, but urge most decisively the great importance of such training for the entire higher life of man. The effect of physical exercise upon organic feelings may be referred to here as an additional illustra- tion of this importance ; for, in Sully's words, "the organic feelings have a far-reaching effect on the higher emotional lifco"^ The almost immediate effect of deep breathing in helping to do away with pathological fears is a closely related phenomenon.^ ^Op. cit., p. 477. ^Cf. James, Op. cit., Vol. II, p. 459. 78 RATIONAL LIVING But there is another side of the matter. The close connection of body and mind means constant mutual interaction ; not only the influence of the body on mind, but also the influence of mind on body. II. THE INFLUENCE OF MIND ON BODY Bodily conditions, correctly considered, must be viewed not as limitations, but as directions for the accomplishment of our ends, just as in the external world, we can accomplish our ends by observing nature's laws and fulfilling the implied conditions. There are conditions, but they may be made means of power. I have nothing to say here of the mysteries of Christian Science or metaphysical healing, or occultism in any of its forms, but mean to keep close to recog- nized scientific facts. For, as Professor Jas- trow says, "the legitimate recognition of the importance of mental conditions in health and disease is one of the results of the union of modern psychology and modern medicine. An exaggerated and extravagant, as well as pretentious and illogical overstatement and misstatement of this principle, may properly be considered as occult."^ The facts are, that ^Fact and Fable in Psychtlogy, p. 26. SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 79 self-control is made vastly easier by right bodily conditions, and the normal way to self- control is through fulfilment of those con- ditions ; but the mind may directly affect the body; and to the disciplined will, self-control is possible far beyond the limits of natural physical endurance. Bodily conditions are not omnipotent. "One of the most seductive and mischievous of errors," says Dr. Mortimer Granville, "is the practice of giving way to inertia, weakness, and depression. . . . Those who desire to live should settle this well in their minds, that nerve power is the force of life, and that the will has a won- drously strong and direct influence over the body, through the brain and nervous system."^ Power of Self-control even in the Insane. — The enormous power of self-control which even the insane (whose very condition is one of abnormal lack of self-control) are able at times to exert, is evidence of this fact. Thus, "a patient," Hoffding relates, "once strove for twenty-seven years against hallucinations, which tempted him to attack others. Even his best friends suspected nothing until the day he declared himself vanquished and took * Quoted by Lccky, Op. cii., p. i8. 80 RATIONAL LIVING refuge in a lunatic asylum."^ The result showed, of course, a long-continued and serious diseased condition; but the fact that that condition could be faced and mastered so long, shows what the will can do even in seriously abnormal conditions. The Will in 'Determining Conditions of Health. — Moreover, the very beginning of improved nervous conditions often lies in the will itself, and in the will alone. Very much can be accomplished by persistent volition. In Achieving Rest. — " Rest, " Miss Brackett justly contends, "cannot be pasted on to one."^ It is an active achievement. Rational living must often begin with a declaration of independence — a persistent lessening of one's pretensions — a steadfast refusal to undertake more than one can do without strain. For many of us there can be no rational living, except by a somewhat rigorous practice of Dr. Trumbull's "duty of refusing to do good." We have assumed too many duties that were not duties for us, and are attempting to do too many things at a time. The burden is never off, the strain ^Outlines of Psychology, p. 330. Cf. a similar case in James, Op. cit.. Vol. II, p. 542, * Tht Technique of Rest, p. 19. SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 8 1 never remitted. We must resist "the devas- tator of the day." I am coming quite to believe in the almost inspired wisdom of an old "second reader" saw of my boyhood: " One thing at a time and that done well Is a very good rule, as many can tell ; So work while you work, and play while you play, For that is the way to be cheerful and gay." The poetry was not sublime, but the sense was good. The persistent practice of that principle made possible the enormous amount of work accomplished by Kingsley and still accomplishing by Edward Everett Hale. In Avoiding Hurry. — Haste literally makes waste. Few things more certainly and thoroughly muddle the brain than a sense of hurry. One can work rapidly and still with complete self-possession and without hurry. But the peculiar sense of being hurried has a direct physical effect that may often be felt in the brain, and is distinctly confusing. To get on with one's work at all, one must often, by direct effort of the will, resist hurrying, recover his self-possession, and drive his work, instead of being driven by it. There is, sometimes, "possibility of great virtue in simply standijig still." Work done in a hurry is work done poorly and at great F 82 RATIONAL LIVING loss. Miss Call quotes to the same effect Ruskin's "not great effort but great power," which recalls Dr. Bushnell's saying that, if he had his life to live over, he would "push less." This wearing sense of hurry, of effort, of push, is wholly within the power of one's will, and needs to be resisted especially by Americans. In Meeting the Special Conditions of Sur- plus Nervous Knergy . — Dr. Coming's rules for those of scanty mental reserve power en- join avoidance of " (i) excessive emotion, (2) of frantic attempts to accomplish in one hour work appropriate to two, (3) of every species of excess which experience has proved leads to general constitutional drain, (4) of attempting to do two things at one and the same time, (5) of petty engagements v/hich interfere with sleep." But every one of these rules calls for the exercise of will power. So do the positive conditions of surplus nervous energy already discussed. In Control of the Emotions. — No single result of the study of nervous diseases seems to me more significant than that nerve spe- cialists generally recognize, as one of the main factors in nervous health, the necessity of the proper and habitual limitation of the SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 83 emotions; especially, Richardson says, "those most destructive passions — anger, hate, and fear," and worry may well be added to the list. "Brain-work," Dr. Granville says, "in the midst of worry is carried on in the face of ceaseless peril." And Miss Call lays spe- cial emphasis on the "nervous strain from sham emotions."^ It is a specialist on brain exhaustion who writes, "Habits of consistent intellectual supervision of the emotions when once formed are one of the most precious acquisitions of life."^ But this requires habit- ual volitional control in a particularly difficult field. It is possible, however, and not only mental health but bodily health requires it. The antithesis of this volitional self-control is letting oneself go, which means wreck — bodily and mental. But power of self-con- trol is a fact, and a fact which physiological psychology makes as clear as bodily influence on the mind. No weakling can legitimately quote physiological psychology in his defense. " The physiological effect of faith " is to be directly connected with this control of the emotions. As Dr. George E. Gorham says,' ^ Poiver Through Repose, pp. 57 ff. * Corning, Brain Exhaustion, p. 178. ^The Outlook, Aug. 19, 1899. 84 RATIONAL LIVING ^'the functional activities of the unconscious life are not under control of the will, save as the emotions are affected by will." "One cannot will the heart to cease or increase its regular beat. One cannot will that the pro- cess of digestion shall not go on." "The pro- cesses of unconscious life are under control of the sympathetic nervous system, and most of them go on independent of thought and unrecognized by it." As fear especially inter- feres with the normal on-going of these pro- cesses, so a faith that expels fear promotes them. "Suppose," Dr. Gorham says, "one comes into the presence of a sympathizing friend who excites all the ennobling emotions of love, trust, hope, and courage. None of the crippling ef^fect of fear is in the body, but the whole life is stimulated by the faith and trust one has in the friend. Thoughts come quickly and freely. The body is at ease and its functions go on steadily and well. The unconscious processes of the body are only doing their best when they feel the throb of a great faith, a great hope, love and courage." By rational control of the emotions, thus, through putting ourselves in the presence of the great objective inter- ests and personalities that naturally call out SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 85 faith and hope and love, we may profoundly afifect even the unconscious bodily functions. This means that control of the emotions must be indirect and objective, not direct and subjective. And this suggests, w^hat should be always in mind, that control of the body, like all self-control, must be positive in its method, not negative — fear and worry, for example, expelled by bringing in faith. This emphasis upon the necessary positive character of self- control is most important, especially in the emotional life, and will be more fully con- sidered later. III. MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF BODY AND MIND- HABITS We have been considering phenomena, that led us to think now of the influence of body on mind, and now of the influence of mind on body; but the very idea of the unity of man in mind and body — the indis- soluble way in which they are knit up together — indicates that the influence in every case is, at least, to some degree, mutual. Each constantly affects the other. And the phenomena of habit especially enforce this 86 RATIONAL LIVING view. For, manifest as the physical basis of habit is, it is still a basis which it is quite possible for us to use in different lines, according to the direction of our attention. And, while there are natural time-limits in the formation of habits, within these limits we have the power to determine what our habits shall be. The nervous system simply comes in to second powerfully whatever we do, and to make it more certain that we shall do it again. The mind as certainly af]fects the body here, as the body the mind. The Significance of Habit for Mental Life. — It surely is not necessary to dwell at length upon the significance of habit for the entire intellectual, moral, and spiritual life — its enormous hindrance or help throughout. Professor James puts the heart of the matter in these few sentences: "The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our ner- vous system our ally instead of our enemy. It is to fund and capitalize our acquisi- tions, and live at ease upon the interest of the fund. For this we must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can, and guard against the growing into ways that are likely to be disadvantageous to us, as we should guard SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 87 against the plague. The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work."^ We are not likely to give too earnest heed to the law of habit, with its physical basis, in facing the problem of living. To forget these facts of habit may be to leave our whole higher life to darkness and defeat. Increas- ingly we must be able to hand over to habit earlier and lower problems, that we may give ourselves the more fully to the deepening problems of the spiritual life. And that this is often not done is one of the fruitful causes of small attainment in the higher ranges of our being. James also brings home with a vividness that cannot be escaped, the certainty with which habit works in the various spheres of our life. "Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson's play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, T won't count this time.' Well! he may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none ^Psychology, Vol. I, p. 122. 88 RATIONAL LIVING the less. Down among the nerve-cells and fibers the molecules are counting it, register- ing and storing it up, to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. Of course this has its good side as well as its bad one. As we become perma- nent drunkards by so many separate drinks, so we become saints in the moral, authorities and experts in the practical and scientific spheres, by so many separate acts and hours of work. Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working-day, he may safely leave the final result to itself."^ Opportunities for Will Traifiing in For- mation of Habits in Education. — And one can hardly help emphasizing here the great op- portunities of will training, in the formation of good habits, that his educational environ- ment affords the student. The person who means to grow, we have seen, must, as early as possible, "make automatic and habitual as many useful habits as he can." And the opportunity for this, quite apart from all in- tellectual advantage, is enough to make one's 'O/). cit.. Vol. I, p. 127. SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 89 Student days priceless. Let the college stu- dent, for example, face his environment, not to chafe under it or against it, but to submit himself loyally to its discipline, or rather to discipline himself under it, and he will have no reason to complain of the result. Here is opportunity — but only opportunity — for training to those conditions of surplus ner- vous energy that guard the sources of one's best mental work, to promptness in meeting engagements and promptness in work, to constancy and perseverance in work, to that "patience that is almost power," to superiority to moods — working because the work is to be done, and not because one feels like it, to regularity and system in work, to self-control and self-denial, to abso- lute honesty with oneself and others as against the fatal facility in making excuses, to power of attention, to simple will-power. It is a great opportunity to learn steady fidelity; but it is only an opportunity. Zeller was one of the greatest historians of philosophy, but Zeller said with manifest pride, when he laid down his work in the University of Berlin, that for eighty semesters he had not omitted a single lecture. One point deserves special emphasis — • 90 RATIONAL LIVING the great danger or the great opportunity for will training, in the multiplied occasions in one's educational life, which call for attention. The habits of continuous inattention which some students form in recitation, lecture, and church service are nothing short of deadly. I am not likely to speak too strongly here. The power of attention is the very center of will. Habits of continuous inattention and mind- wandering, therefore, mean the sap- ping of the sources of will-power. It is largely one's own miserable inattention which makes it possible for him to speak so contemptuously of what he hears ; but were all he says true, it would still be a gigantic wrong against himself to use these occasions only to tear himself down. There are times, no doubt, when one's bodily presence is required on an occasion, but when his con- dition makes it unwise to attempt close attention. At such times, one should guard himself against habits of inattention by de- liberately settling it with himself that he is not now to attend, and makes no attempt to do so. But if one is intending to attend, let him attend. James^ Maxims on Habit. — For the rest, Professor James has made this subject of SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND AND BODY QI habit so much his own by his incomparable chapter on the subject, that one is almost forced to quote from him his statement of the maxims for the forming of new habits or the breaking of old, without which any dis- cussion of habit for practical ends would be quite incomplete. (i) Launch yourself with "as strong and decided an initiative as possible. Accumulate all the possible circumstances which shall reinforce the right motives ; put yourself assiduously in conditions that encourage the new way; make engagements incompatible with the old ; take a public pledge, if the case allows ; in short, envelope your resolu- tion with every aid you know." To similar import, John Foster, in his famous essays, On 'Decision of Character^ says: "If once his judgment is really decided, let him commit himself irretrievably, by doing something which shall oblige him to do more, which shall lay on him the necessity of doing all." This is really to cross the Rubicon, to burn behind one every bridge that may allow any way of retreat from his purpose, and to burn his boats as well. (2) The second maxim is: "Never suffer an exception to occur until the new habit 92 RATIONAL LIVING is securely rooted in your life. Each lapse is like the letting fall of a ball of string which one is carefully winding up ; a single slip undoes more than a great many turns will wind again." Nathan Sheppard gives a char- acteristic illustration of this maxim, when he says to public speakers: "Dash cold water on the throat every morning when you wash, for 365, not 364, mornings of the year." (3) "Seize the very first possible oppor- tunity to act on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain." It is action alone that fixes the habit. "Let the expression," James adds, "be the least thing in the world — speaking genially to one's grandmother, or giving up one's seat in a horse-car, if nothing more heroic offers — but let it not fail to take place." (4) "Keep the faculty of effort alive in you by a little gratuitous exercise every day. That is, be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unnecessary points, do every day or two something for no other reason than that you would rather not do it, so that when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 93 Stand the test." Daily inure yourself "to habits of concentrated attention, energetic volition, and self - denial in unnecessary things."^ IV. THE TRUE PLACE OF ASCETICISM This last maxim of James may sound, to some alert Protestant, too Catholic, too much like an advocacy of the doctrine of the vir- tue of self-sacrifice for its own sake, of judg- ing that a thing is "your duty because you hate it so." Yet the advice is, I believe, on the v^hole, so sound and so important, that it leads one to ask. What is the truth as to asceticism? The religious life, especially, has always recognized its necessary connection with the body, in its attempt to solve this question of asceticism. For this reason, too, therefore, in considering the bodily condi- tions of true living, one can hardly shirk a frank facing of the vexed question, What is the true place of asceticism ? Has it a right- ful place at all? Has the Protestant reaction from the Catholic position here been ex- treme? Has the "new Puritanism" lost some- thing of the strength of the old? ^Psychology, Vol. I, pp. 122-127. 94 RATIONAL LIVING The ^ody Not Evil Per se. — In the first place, we can probably agree that asceticism is not to be defended so far as it is based upon the belief that matter and body are evil per se, and opposed to the life of the spirit. We are not Parsees nor Manichaeans. Abuse of the body can help no virtue. Disregarding nervous conditions which are a part of God's own ordainment cannot help to obedience in other things. It was this aspect of asceticism, that seems to delight in limitation for its own sake, which Goethe so abhorred and which he so constantly fought. The Gospel gives no sanction to the principle that the good things of life are from the devil rather than from God. But still it understands clearly that bodily goods are subordinate and relative. Obviously, the demands of duty in a given case may require the complete subordination of bodily interests, even of any possible health; but in no case is this to be recklessly assumed; and even where it is necessary, it is still a manifest evil, and gives no excuse for any voluntary abuse of the body. Any asceticism that lowers bodily vitality is just so far not a help but a hindrance to self- control. The only safe asceticism is one that makes us more, not less, careful of the con- SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 95 ditions of the highest bodily health. As Presi- dent Stanley Hall says, "Even will training does not reach its end till it leads the young up to taking an intelligent, serious and life- long interest in their own physical culture and development."^ A true asceticism, then, may not fight the body, as evil per se. Asceticism^ as Negative ^ No Full Goal of Life. — We may, perhaps, also agree, in the second place, that asceticism can never be the price of any real salvation or that salva- tion itself. Necessarily negative, it cannot furnish in itself a positive goal of abundant life. This was the view against which the Reformer^ warred, and which Paul charac- terized as only a "show of wisdom." Ascet- icism is not a good in itself; at its best it is good only as means, as moral gymnastic. No rational being can take pleasure in pain as such, or regard asceticism as at all meeting the requirements of virtue. One might go the whole length of the most absolute asceti- cism, and not yet have begun to love. The preeminent importance of self-control to the moral life, it should be noted, lies not in itself, nor in the mere casting off of the lower goods, but in its making possible the ^Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. II, p. 75. 96 RATIONAL LIVING positive attainment of the greater goods, for the sake of which the lower are sacrificed. It looks to growth, to the constantly enlarging life. Moreover, It should not be forgotten that, psychologically, self-control itself, in spite of its seemingly negative name, is always positive ; though the vast army of ascetics have too often overlooked this fact, and so have failed the more disastrously. We con- quer the tempting thought only by positively replacing it by something else. No man has attained real freedom from the domination of evil or from the domination of the lesser goods, until a sense of the great realities and values has taken hold upon him. The deliv- erance which the Gospel seeks is always of this positive kind, not merely negative. Mere flight from the world is cowardly, narrow, selfish, and self -contradictory. To cut one- self off from all possible relations can be no good training to a love that involves relations. Life is far richer and more complex than an ascetic morality can ever know. We are to be in the world, though not of the world. Not Two Kinds of Christianity. — Once more, in this attempt to determine the true place of asceticism, we must be on our guard SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 97 that we do not virtually fall back into the self -contradictory, despairing solution of Catholicism, to which Harnack calls atten- tion, which, while teaching "that it is only in the form of monasticism that true Chris- tian life finds its expression," still "admits a Mower' kind of Christianity without ascet- icism as 'sufficient.'"^ There is a subtle temptation which besets us here. When we speak of taking on what we call unnecessary self-denials, of being rigorous with ourselves in "unnecessary" things; when we hunt out for ourselves "unnecessary" sacrifices, not naturally involved in the highest conception of our duty, are we not really adopting this old idea of two kinds of Christianity, and creating again the notion of works of supere- rogation, outside of what could be rightly required of us, and upon which, therefore, we may justly pride ourselves ? The ambi- guity of that word "unnecessary," it is to be feared, makes possible here a quite mistaken over-estimation of asceticism and so, of course, an entire misconception of its true place. In what sense are these proposed meas- ures of self - discipline "unnecessary"? Un- necessary, truly, in the sense that they are ^ IV hat is Christianity^ P- 79- G gS RATIONAL LIVING not compelled by circumstances or by the will of another; unnecessary also, perhaps, in the sense that another, looking over the situation, would not feel justified in laying these things upon us as duties; but not un- necessary in the sense that ave did not fsel that, for the sake either of others or of our own later higher efficiency and victory, we would better do them. We believed they had a real and valuable contribution to make, either to ourselves or to others, and therefore we did them. If this was not true, and no one was to gain in any degree by our small asceticisms, if they had positively no contribution to make, then they were in truth not only unnecessary, but utterly value- less and unreasonable, without justification of any kind, except on the doctrine that the painful is to be chosen for its own sake, that a thing is a duty simply because one hates it so. From either point of view, it must be seen that asceticism, as self -dis- cipline, is no reason for great pride. For, as Pfleiderer remarked in one of his lectures, this is only to be proud of one's need of discipline, since the only rational justification of asceticism is that one needs it. In truth, in ingeniously hunting out these SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND AND BODY 99 new, supposedly "unnecessary" and supere- rogatory spheres of "will -worship," have men not with practical uniformity left be- hind many plain common duties? They have at best but tithed the mint and anise and caraway-seed, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faith. ^ Are we sure that there are any such "unnecessary" valuable exer- cises? And, if there are, are not most of us so far in arrears in those countless oppor- tunities of plainly valuable self-sacrifices for others, and in equally plainly needed self- disciplines for ourselves, that we may dismiss the question as purely academic — never occurring in actual life ? The True Asceticism. — Abandoning, then, all idea of some separate, superior virtue of "unnecessary" asceticism, we may still feel that there is a real place, and a psy- chological basis and need for a personal, private, humble, unblinded, sweet, and rea- sonable mental and moral hygiene, which is at the same time quite consistent with bodily hygiene, and which Paul advised, when he said, "So run that ye may obtain." "All things are lawful for me ; but all things are iMatt. 23:23. lOO RATIONAL LIVING not expedient. All things are lawful for me ; but I will not be brought under the power of any." Paul's principle is that final victory requires self-control, all along the way; that those conditions, above all, must be fulfilled that mean winning in the race. And that will mean holding in stern abeyance the appe- tites and passions, and the giving up often of many pleasant things. The relative goods are nowhere to be allowed to jeopardize the highest goods. But to get a shattered nervous system, and thin and vitiated blood, we may be sure, is no "laying aside every weight." The true aim should be to make one's body the best possible instrument, medium, and founda- tion for the spirit — to seek not only the "grace of a blameless body," but the grace of a positively helpful body. And this is no lackadaisical purpose. It takes far less will to violate the conditions of health in the doing of worthy work, than to fulfil them, as the number of manifestly fagged men in places of responsibility shows. And few things are a severer test or better training of the will-power of a man than fidelity to this trust of his body. To be truly temperate and fully to meet the requirements of health SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND AND BODY lOI of body gives an ample field for will training — an ampler field, it is to be feared, than most of as are cultivating. But for the sake of body and mind — for the very existence of a true spiritual life — we shall never be set free from fighting against what John Rae regards as the peculiar temptation of our time, — "M^ passion for material comfort.^'' In spite of grievous mistakes, the long history of asceticism has been right in its fundamental protest, — that the greatest things of the spirit cannot come to the ease -loving and self-indulgent, and that no price is too great to pay for the attainment of the highest. Bishop Westcott's suggestion in his posthumous book, that, though we were not to return to a confrater- nity of monks, we might well look to con- fraternities of families pledged to plain living and high thinking, at least points out one of the gravest dangers of our time for a rigorous spiritual life. And asceticism will always find its true place in the steady fight to maintain all the positive bodily conditions of the highest spiritual life, and rigorously to subordinate the lower goods to the highest. That much, we may be sure, is needed all along the line. I02 RATIONAL LIVING Our study of the unity of mind and body seems, then, to make it clear that, for the sake of the higher interests themselves, we may not neglect the body. Browning's words come to us, thus, not as a skeptical question, but as an inspiring challenge : "To man, propose this test — Thy body at its best, How far can that project thy soul on its lone way ? " But psychology's emphasis on the unity of man means not only the unity of mind and body, but also the special unity of the mind in all its functions. CHAPTER VII THE UNITY OF THE MIND — THE PSYCHOLOGICAL EVIDENCE Modern psychologists agree in emphasiz- ing the unity of the mind. Insistence on the interdependence of all the phases of the mind has become, indeed, one of the common- places of the schools, and is one of the chief points of difference from the older psychol- ogy. Isolated faculties are denied. I. INTERDEPENDENCE OF ALL INTELLECTUAL FUNCTIONS It is recognized that no hard and fast lines can be drawn between the various intel- lectual activities, that each activity involves the germ of the later developing activities, and that there is always reciprocal aid. Judg- ment and inference, for example, are seen to be already active in the simplest perception. The danger of all exclusive tendencies is felt. Starr can even say: "All imperfect edu- (103) 104 RATIONAL LIVING cational methods which hinder an harmo- nious development of mental traits and fail to develop character, act as predisposing causes to insanity." ^ Every activity must have its appropriate development for the sake of the whole. Thus Sully says: "An eye unculti- vated in a nice detection of form means a limitation of all after-knowledge. Imagination will be hazy, thought loose and inaccurate where the preliminary stage of perception has been hurried over." So, too, as to think- ing and imagining, "even when the concepts have been properly formed, they can only be kept distinct, and consequently accurate, by going back again and again to the concrete objects, out of which they have, in a manner, been extracted." "Thinking is not the same thing as imagining, yet it is based on it and cannot safely be divorced from it."" Royce says still more broadly: "Sensory experience plays its part, and its essential part, in the very highest of our spiritual existence. ^Diseases of the Mind, p. 46. ^ Op. cit., pp. 213, 372. These two inferences, it may be said in passing, constitute a considerable part of the psychological basis of the kindergarten. In training both the senses and the imagination, it should also be noticed, room should be left for a child's own imagination, freedcm and ac- tivity. A rag-baby, thus, may be better than a full-fledged French doll.— C/. Sully, Op. cit., p. 215. EVIDENCE FOR UNITY OF MIND 105 When we wish to cultivate processes of ab- stract thinking, our devices must, therefore, in- clude a fitting plan for the cultivation of the senses, and must not seek to exclude sense experience as such, but only to select among sensory experiences those that will prove useful for a purpose." "Whatever be the best form of religious training, it ought deliberately to make use of a proper appeal to the senses^ ^ Even modern logic follows here the trend of psychology, and refuses to isolate abstractly the processes of conception, judgment, and inference, or even the processes of induction and deduction ; it demands, instead, the recog- nition of the organic unity and continuity of all thinking.- Indeed, modern psychology may be said to affirm that the intellect has but one funda- mental function — the discernment of relation- ship. The one supreme counsel — consider relations — is counsel to fulfil every menta? function: concentrated attention, assimilation, discrimination, selection, and synthesis. For concentrated attention requires considering an object in its varied aspects and relations ; as- similation is only seeing the relations of like- ^ op. cit., pp. 128, 129. * C/. Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knoivledge, p. iii, e. g. I06 RATIONAL LIVING ness ; discrimination, those of difference; selection is choosing out the more significant relations ; and synthesis is but putting things in their relations to the whole. And it is by exactly theSi^ processes that we come to the mastery of any situation. To consider a thing in all its relations, it should be noted, more- over, carries with it deliberation, self-control, and open- mindedness, and is the secret of complete mental wakefulness. This is, then, in truth, not only the supreme intellectual counsel, but counsel for all living: — Consider relations. Our mistakes, in every line, are made through failing to preadjust attention, thought, or words to the coming circum- stances, overlooking some vital bearing of the matter in hand — forgetting some relation. What a recognition is this, both of the unity of the mind itself, and of its inevitable search for unity. II. INTERDEPENDENCE OF INTELLECT, FEELING AND WILL Modern psychologists are also agreed on the complete interdependence of intellect, feeling, and will; that they are, in fact, never separated ; that pure feeling, pure willing, EVIDENCE FOR UNITY OF MIND 107 I and pure thinking are abstractions ; that the whole mind acts in each; that there is, for example, no thought without some accom- panying feeling, and some impulse to action. So Royce speaks of "the persistent stress that I lay upon the unity of the intellectual and the voluntary processes, which, in popular treatises, are too often sundered and treated as if one of them could go on without the other. "^ This insistence cannot legitimately be made to mean that these three phases of the mind's life can be reduced to any one of the three ; they cannot be said in strict necessary logic to involve one another ; but so great is the real unity of the mind that, as a simple matter of fact, each phase is always accompanied by some activity of the other phases. The whole mind always acts." This is a commonplace of modern psychology, but of great practical significance. Now, this in- sistence upon unity even as regards these three great phases of the mind, logically carries with it, and with even greater reason, its full ad- mission elsewhere. If even these may not be separated, there is still less legitimacy in an- alyzing a single activity into mere elements. ^ op. cit., p. viii. ' C/". Lotzc, The Microcosmus, Vol. I, pp. 178-180. I08 RATIONAL LIVING III. TREND TOWARD THE DENIAL OF ABSTRACT ELEMENTS IN THE MIND And it is perhaps not too much to say, in spite of the real differences between schools of psychology upon just this point, that the keynote of much of the best and latest work in psychology — and that of more than one school — has been the revolt against the extreme individualism — the abstract atomism — which began with Berkeley and Hume; and a demand for a recognition of some- thing more than a sum of elements in mental processes, if we are really to meet the actual concrete facts and make knowledge possible at all.^ This consideration will occupy us more fully later, in the treatment of the fourth great inference from modern psy- chology. IV. THE MIND'S CONSTANT SEARCH FOR UNITY In most significant harmony with this trend of modern psychology, is the result of Lotze's painstaking inquiry in the Micro- cosmus,^ for the distinguishing characteristic ' C/. James, Op. cit., Vol. I, Chap. IX; Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knoivledge, Part I, Chapters II and III. 2 Vol. I, Book V. EVIDENCE FOR UNITY OF MIND lOQ of the human mind. This distinguishing endowment he finds in this very vision of unity, the power everywhere to see a whole, the capacity of endless progress toward the Infinite. The characteristic of human sense- perception, he believes, is that every con- tent has its place in a whole, and its intrinsic excellence as a part of that whole ; human language, he argues, bears the impress of a universal order; human intelligence has a clear consciousness of one universal truth ; and man has, besides, an ineradicable sense of duty that leads to a yet higher unity of the entire personal world. The unity of the mind itself is evidenced here, again, by its inevitable recognition of unity everywhere. James, even in the discussion of the percep- tion of space, speaks of "an ultimate law of our consciousness," "that we simplify, unify, and identify as much as we possibly can." It is this insatiable thirst of the mind for unity, which shows itself at its highest in the scientific and in the philosophic spirit, with their attempts to think the world through into unity. This deep trend of the mind may surely be taken as legitimate evidence of its own unity. And this unity will come out still more clearly in the con- no RATIONAL LIVING Crete facts involved in the practical sugges- tions w^hich follow. In general, this recognition of the unity of the mind implies that there are psychical as well as physical conditions of growth, of character, of happiness, and of influence. "There is a mental, just as much as a bodily hygiene," HofTding says.^ ^Outlines of Psychology, p. 33?, l^ CHAPTER VIII rUE UNITY OF THE MIND— SUGGESTIONS FOR LIVING In general, the unity of the mind impHes that there should be no ignoring of the psychical conditions of living; but rather, a practical recognition of the interdepen- dence of all the mental functions. It means that one may not use or treat his mind as made up of independent parts; that it is a vain delusion to think that one can toy with cynical opinions, and leave feeling and will still humane and sympathetic; that he can indulge in false emotions, and keep thought true and conduct unflecked ; that he can choose against reason, and not give his inner creed a twist, and not betray his deepest feel- ing. It means, on the other hand, that there can be no earnest and persistent search for the truth, that shall not blossom in truer and more delicate feeling, and fruit in nobler action ; that to have done once for all with wrong feeling and sham emotions, brings (ill) 112 RATIONAL LIVING more genuine insight into truth, and greater loyalty to it; that one cannot take upon him Hfe's supreme choices and not feel more deeply and think more clearly. It means that defeat in one sphere tends to defeat in all; but that conquest in one helps to conquest in all. It means that we may and must steadily count upon the unity of the mind. In particular, this unity of the mind im- plies that all true living has its intellectual^ emotional^ and volitional conditions. And it is no idle inquiry to ask how our thinking and feeling and choosing may affect our growth, whether in character, in happiness, or in influence. The most earnest- minded of all generations — Socrates, Paul, Augustine, Luther, — have felt that life was a battle, its fiercest and most critical engagements fought wholly within, with no observer to register the victory or defeat save God and the soul. With calm exterior, perhaps even with the every-day commonplaces on his lips, one may have seemed to go his usual way, while still within him there was waged a mortal com- bat. What is this inner battlefield, where man fights alone ? What are our available forces, what our most dangerous foes? This SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND II3 is the meaning of a careful inquiry into the intellectual, emotional, and volitional condi- tions of true living. The volitional conditions will be dealt w^ith in the consideration of the third great infer- ence from psychology — the central impor- tance of will and action. The present chapter is confined to the treatment of some of the more important intellectual and emotional conditions of sane and righteous living. I. THE INTELLECTUAL CONDITIONS The very idea of intellectual conditions ot true living implies that the habits of our thinking may either help or hinder us in our attainment of character and happiness and influence. And the relation of thinking to living may be, perhaps, made most clear by noting both the ways in which habits of thought may help, and the ways in which they may hinder life. Intellectual Helps. — The conviction of the unity of the mind forces us to believe that, if the mind is rightly trained in its intel- lectual functions, that training will contribute to the whole life. Right thinking affects the mind in most subtle and deep-going ways. H 114 RATIONAL LIVING ^ In the first place, as has already been pointed out, it must not be forgotten that wise conduct of life is greatly furthered by the possession of a considerable circle of perz manenf interests^ of a "store of stable and wortliy ends," that enlarge and deepen life, that make it sane and wholesome, that give some opportunity for freedom of choice, that continually serve both as standards of value, and as effective motives to action, and that give a man secure anchorage in time of storm. It must be one of the chief aims of edu- cation to give us such permanent interests. More need not be said upon this here\ In the second place, it must be mani- fest that a prime condition of steady growth into one's highest life is knowledge of oneself — rational taking account of one's own tempera- ment and tendencies and powers. One can hardly handle himself to best advantage if he does not thoroughly understand himself, especially his prevailing temperament. There is an old proverb which says that at forty every man is either a fool or a physician. And it holds for the mind as well as for the body. We ought to know ourselves and the conditions of our best living. ^ Cf. above, pp. 9 ff . SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND II5 Is one's temperament predominantly intel- lectual, or emotional, or volitional? It con- cerns him to know and *nto"~guard himself accordingly. The predominantly intellectual man is likely to find it almost impossible to fulfil some of the chief conditions of sym- pathy, and so to cut himself off from his fel- lows, to narrow his own life, to jeopardize his character, and to limit both his happiness and his influence. The predominantly emo- tional man is likely to relapse into simple sentimentalism, that neither thinks clearly nor puts the feeling into act; while the predominantly volitional man may attain merely an unreasoning, unfeeling obstinacy. "Woe to the man," says Murray, "who cul- tivates energy of will without the guidance of reason or without the amenity of genial sentiment."^ So, too, for guidance in con- duct, one needs to ask, in the intellectual sphere, Do I merely see things, or have I learned also really to think them ? As to feeling, is it the physical or the ideal that most appeals to me, the egoistic or the sym- pathetic? Am I most affected by pleasure or by pain? As to will, am I naturally im- pulsive or resolute? Is expression difficult ^Education of IFill, Educational Revieiv, Vol. II, pp. 57 ff. Il6 RATIONAL LIVING or easy for me? If difficult, is it from ex- cessive inhibition — the danger of Northern peoples — or from defective impulse? Well- warranted reserve may pass into practical inability to express our love for others at all. If expression is for me easy, is it from w^eak inhibition — the danger of Southern peoples — or from strong impulse?^ The method to be pursued in remedying the defect in one's char- acter, it is evident, must be very different in the different cases. And, in general, do I react strongly and quickly, or strongly and slowly, weakly and quickly, or weakly and slowly ? So, again, men differ greatly in their nat- uraFestimate of themselves. Some, of course, habitually overestimate themselves ; others — perhaps, on the whole, quite as numerous a class — are as habitually self-depreciative. Both need to take account of their tendency, if they are to live wisely and happily. Occa- sionally a man needs soberly and deliberately to form the habit of adding fifty per cent to his natural estimate of what he means to his friends. He is continually losing power and happiness through an underestimate of his own significance. The blunders of the self- conceited are even more obvious. -C/. James, Op. cit., Voi. II, pp. 537 ff, 546 ff. SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND II 7 Dangers and temptations plainly vary with temperament. As a single example, it is easy to see that it is well for a man to take account of his temperament as to the kind of memories ht has; for these come in directly to affect decision. It is a psychological fact that some men have good memories for joys and successes, and poor memories for in- juries and sorrows and difficulties. Of others, the reverse is true. The former are apt to be rash in their decisions and undertakings ; the latter to find both positive decision and undertaking difficult. Note, for example, the bearing of these kinds of memory upon the duty of forgiveness. Some of us simply can- not recall after a time how mean a man has been to us ; we cannot reproduce with any vividness the original situation ; it is com- paratively easy for such to forgive. Others can bring back the whole scene in detail, and powerfully feel it again ; for such, forgiveness is much harder. It should need no argument to prove, in particular, that this forgetting of differences of temperament is a most fruitful cause of the seeming unreality of the spiritual life. Men question their own spiritual insights and experiences because these do not come to Il8 RATIONAL LIVING them in the same way as those of others of quite different temperaments. Both need to take account of their temperaments, when decisions are to be made. More definitely, the intellect may help character, by giving a clear discernment of what moral progress is. Even this, however, is plainly not a purely intellectual problem, but a part of our moral conflict itself. But the intellect may contribute much. Even if it were true that a man's purpose at a given time were wholly right, yet progress would be possible to him. Clear thinking may show that progress is possible in steadiness of purpose, in the multiplication of motives to insure the persistent purpose, and in broader, deeper, more skilful and delicate application of the purpose. In the first place, growing insight should place before a man so clearly and completely the different rela- tions of his purpose to the well-being of himself and of others, as to put almost beyond desire any opposite course ; and the flickering, vacillating will becomes thus replaced by unshaken steadiness of purpose. Progress is also possible in the broader appli- cation of the right purpose. Nearly all men SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND II Q live in more or less constant blindness to certain spheres of moral conduct. In certain relations, the moral problem is never raised. The knights of the Middle Ages, for example, were, many of them, men of genuine and chivalrous Christian purpose, yet few recog- nized any large duty to their poorest depen- dents. One awakes at times with a kind of amazement to the recognition of a duty that has long stared him squarely in the face, but which nevertheless for him has not previously seemed to exist. Much of our moral growth consists in the broadening application of well- recognized principles, in the widening of the field of obligation. The awakening of our own generation to a new social con- sciousness is a marked example of such broadening of the moral life. But great progress is possible as well in the deeper application of the right purpose. Here belongs the growing discernment of the rich complexity and significance of life, of the destiny of man, of the worth of personality and of personal relations — a dis- cernment that makes a man's previous aims and achievements seem shallow and imperfect enough. Life means so much more to him, that his sense of obligation has deepened I20 RATIONAL LIVING proportionately. He cannot treat lightly his own life, or the life of another. And to come to such a sense of the sacredness of life's calling, is at the same time to see the possible progress in 7nore skilful and delicate application of the right purpose. Real tact implies moral advance- ment. One longs for an imagination more creative and profound, to present to himself adequately the circumstances of the other man ; a judgment more delicately sensitive to discern the precise forms in which his purpose should now be embodied. Such judgment and such imagination are no happy inheritance ; they come only from long moral experience and discipline. It is this skilful and delicate application which makes the highest attainment in morals — real beauty of character — the ideal embodi- ment of one's ideal — possible. But the most direct intcllect'aal help to a wise conduct of life comes from clearness and definiteness in memory^ imagination, and thinking. To remember with distinctness the entire and exact consequences of previous experiences, to be able to set before oneself with vivid and detailed imagination even the remote results of the action now con- SUGGESTIONS FROM UNITY OF MIND 121 templated — this is to be able to call to one's aid the strongest motives to righteousness. Clear and definite thinking, moreover, moves directly and unhesitatingly toward its goal, and for that very reason seems to be a dis- tinct help to decisive action. For all pur- poseful action involves the use of definite means to definite ends. Definiteness in thinking, thus, seems to be directly connected with decision in action, and vagueness of thinking with Indecision and weakness. It is therefore of great moral value to form a habit of requiring of oneself clearness and definiteness with reference to all with which one means seriously to deal — clearness and definiteness in the original impressions, in memories, in insights, in purposes, in state- ments. There