FOOTNOTES:[5]FromThe Story of Paper-making, Chapter V.J.W. Butler Paper Company, Chicago, 1901.
FOOTNOTES:
[5]FromThe Story of Paper-making, Chapter V.J.W. Butler Paper Company, Chicago, 1901.
[5]FromThe Story of Paper-making, Chapter V.J.W. Butler Paper Company, Chicago, 1901.
I wish in the following hour to take certain psychological doctrines and show their practical applications to mental hygiene,—to the hygiene of our American life more particularly. Our people, especially in academic circles, are turning towards psychology nowadays with great expectations; and, if psychology is to justify them, it must be by showing fruits in the pedagogic and therapeutic lines.
The reader may possibly have heard of a peculiar theory of the emotions, commonly referred to in psychological literature as the Lange-James theory. According to this theory, our emotions are mainly due to those organic stirrings that are aroused in us in a reflex way by the stimulus of the exciting object or situation. An emotion of fear, for example, or surprise, is not a direct effect of the object's presence on the mind, but an effect of that still earlier effect, the bodily commotion which the object suddenly excites; so that, were this bodily commotion suppressed, we should not so muchfeelfear as call the situation fearful; we should not feel surprise, but coldly recognize that the object was indeed astonishing. One enthusiast has even gone so far as to say that when we feel sorry it is because we weep, when we feel afraid it is because we run away, and not conversely. Some of you may perhaps be acquainted with the paradoxical formula. Now, whatever exaggeration may possibly lurk in this account of our emotions (and I doubt myself whether the exaggeration be very great), it is certain that the main core of it is true, and that the mere giving way to tears, for example, or to the outward expression of an anger-fit, will result for the moment in making the inner grief or anger more acutely felt. There is, accordingly, no better known or more generally useful precept in the moral training of youth, or in one's personal self-discipline, than that which bids us pay primary attention to what we do and express, and not to care too much for what we feel. If we only check a cowardly impulse in time, for example, or if we onlydon'tstrike the blow or rip out with the complaining or insulting word that we shall regret as long as we live, our feelings themselves will presently be the calmer and better, with no particular guidance from us on their own account. Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.
Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can. So to feel brave, act as if wewerebrave, use all our will to that end, and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear. Again, in order to feel kindly toward a person to whom we have been inimical, the only way is more or less deliberately to smile, to make sympathetic inquiries, and to force ourselves to say genial things. One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling. To wrestle with a bad feeling only pins our attention on it, and keeps it still fastened in the mind; whereas, if we act as if from some better feeling, the old bad feeling soon folds its tent like an Arab, and silently steals away.
The best manuals of religious devotion accordingly reiterate the maxim that we must let our feelings go, and pay no regard to them whatever. In an admirable and widely successful little book calledThe Christian's Secret of a Happy Life, by Mrs. Hannah Whitall Smith, I find this lesson on almost every page.Actfaithfully, and you really have faith, no matter how cold and even how dubious you may feel. "It is your purpose God looks at," writes Mrs. Smith, "not your feelings about that purpose; and your purpose, or will, is therefore the only thing you need attend to.... Let your emotions come or let them go, just as God pleases, and make no account of them either way.... They really have nothing to do with the matter. They are not the indicators of your spiritual state, but are merely the indicators of your temperament or of your present physical condition."
But you all know these facts already, so I need no longer press them on your attention. From our acts and from our attitudes ceaseless inpouring currents of sensation come, which help to determine from moment to moment what our inner states shall be: that is a fundamental law of psychology which I will therefore proceed to assume.
A Viennese neurologist of considerable reputation has recently written about theBinnenleben,as he terms it, or buried life of human beings. No doctor, this writer says, can get into really profitable relations with a nervous patient until he gets some sense of what the patient'sBinnenlebenis, of the sort of unuttered inner atmosphere in which his consciousness dwells alone with the secrets of its prison-house. This inner personal tone is what we can't communicate or describe articulately to others; but the wraith and ghost of it, so to speak, are often what our friends and intimates feel as our most characteristic quality. In the unhealthy-minded, apart from all sorts of old regrets, ambitions checked by shames and aspirations obstructed by timidities, it consists mainly of bodily discomforts not distinctly localized by the sufferer, but breeding a general self-mistrust and sense that things are not as they should be with him. Half the thirst for alcohol that exists in the world exists simply because alcohol acts as a temporary anaesthetic and effacer to all these morbid feelings that never ought to be in a human being at all. In the healthy-minded, on the contrary, there are no fears or shames to discover; and the sensations that pour in from the organism only help to swell the general vital sense of security and readiness for anything that may turn up.
Consider, for example, the effects of a well-tonedmotor-apparatus,nervous and muscular, on our general personal self-consciousness, the sense of elasticity and efficiency that results. They tell us that in Norway the life of the women has lately been entirely revolutionized by the new order of muscular feelings with which the use of theski, or long snow-shoes, as a sport for both sexes, has made the women acquainted. Fifteen years ago the Norwegian women were even more than the women of other lands votaries of the old-fashioned ideal of femininity, "the domestic angel," the "gentle and refining influence" sort of thing. Now these sedentary fireside tabby-cats of Norway have been trained, they say, by the snow-shoes into lithe and audacious creatures, for whom no night is too dark or height too giddy, and who are not only saying good-bye to the traditional feminine pallor and delicacy of constitution, but actually taking the lead in every educational and social reform. I cannot but think that the tennis and tramping and skating habits and the bicycle-craze which are so rapidly extending among our dear sisters and daughters in this country are going also; to lead to a sounder and heartier moral tone, which will send its tonic breath through all our American life.
I hope that here in America more and more the ideal of the well-trained and vigorous body will be maintained neck by neck with that of the well-trained and vigorous mind as the two coequal halves of the higher education for men and women alike. The strength of the British Empire lies in the strength of character of the individual Englishman, taken all alone by himself. And that strength, I am persuaded, is perennially nourished and kept up by nothing so much as by the national worship, in which all classes meet, of athletic outdoor life and sport.
I recollect, years ago, reading a certain work by an American doctor on hygiene and the laws of life and the type of future humanity. I have forgotten its author's name and its title, but I remember well an awful prophecy that it contained about the future of our muscular system. Human perfection, the writer said, means ability to cope with the environment; but the environment will more and more require mental power from us, and less and less will ask for bare brute strength. Wars will cease, machines will do all our heavy work, man will become more and more a mere director of nature's energies, and less and less an exerter of energy on his own account. So that, if thehomo sapiensof the future can only digest his food and think, what need will he have of well-developed muscles at all? And why, pursued this writer, should we not even now be satisfied with a more delicate and intellectual type of beauty than that which pleased our ancestors? Nay, I have heard a fanciful friend make a still further advance in this "new-man" direction. With our future food, he says, itself prepared in liquid form from the chemical elements of the atmosphere, pepsinated or half-digested in advance, and sucked up through a glass tube from a tin can, what need shall we have of teeth, or stomachs even? They may go, along with our muscles and our physical courage, while, challenging even more and more our proper admiration, will grow the gigantic domes of our crania, arching over our spectacled eyes, and animating our flexible little lips to those floods of learned and ingenious talk which will constitute our most congenial occupation.
I am sure that your flesh creeps at this apocalyptic vision. Mine certainly did so; and I cannot believe that our muscular vigor will ever be a superfluity. Even if the day ever dawns in which it will not be needed for fighting the old heavy battles against Nature, it will still always be needed to furnish the background of sanity, serenity, and cheerfulness to life, to give moral elasticity to our disposition, to round off the wiry edge of our fretfulness, and make us good-humored and easy to approach. Weakness is too apt to be what the doctors call irritable weakness. And that blessed internal peace and confidence, thatacquiescentia in seipso, as Spinoza used to call it, that wells up from every part of the body of a muscularly well-trained human being, and soaks the indwelling soul of him with satisfaction, is, quite apart from every consideration of its mechanical utility, an element of spiritual hygiene of supreme significance.
And now let me go a step deeper into mental hygiene, and try to enlist your insight and sympathy in a cause which I believe is one of paramount patriotic importance to us Yankees. Many years ago a Scottish medical man, Dr. Clouston, a mad-doctor as they call him there, or what we should call an asylum physician (the most eminent one in Scotland), visited this country, and said something that has remained in my memory ever since. "You Americans," he said, "wear too much expression on your faces. You are living like an army with all its reserves engaged in action. The duller countenances of the British population betoken a better scheme of life. They suggest stores of reserved nervous force to fall back upon, if any occasion should arise that requires it. This inexcitability, this presence at all times of power not used, I regard," continued Dr. Clouston, "as the great safeguard of our British people. The other thing in you gives me a sense of insecurity, and you ought somehow to tone yourselves down. You really do carry too much expression, you take too intensely the trivial moments of life."
Now Dr. Clouston is a trained reader of the secrets of the soul as expressed upon the countenance, and the observation of his which I quote seems to me to mean a great deal. And all Americans who stay in Europe long enough to get accustomed to the spirit, that reigns and expresses itself there, so unexcitable as compared with ours, make a similar observation when they return to their native shores. They find a wild-eyed look upon their compatriots' faces, either of too desperate eagerness and anxiety or of too intense responsiveness and good-will. It is hard to say whether the men or the women show it most. It is true that we do not all feel about it as Dr. Clouston felt. Many of us, far from deploring it, admire it. We say: "What intelligence it shows! How different from the stolid cheeks, the codfish eyes, the slow, inanimate demeanor we have been seeing in the British Isles!" Intensity, rapidity, vivacity of appearance, are indeed with us something of a nationally accepted ideal; and the medical notion of "irritable weakness" is not the first thing suggested by them to our mind, as it was to Dr. Clouston's. In a weekly paper not very long ago I remember reading a story in which, after describing the beauty and interest of the heroine's personality, the author summed up her charms by saying that to all who looked upon her an impression as of "bottled lightning" was irresistibly conveyed.
Bottled lightning, in truth, is one of our American ideals, even of a, young girl's character! Now it is most ungracious, and it may seem to some persons unpatriotic, to criticise in public the physical peculiarities of one's own people, of one's own family, so to speak. Besides, it may be said, and said with justice, that there are plenty of bottled-lightning temperaments in other countries, and plenty of phlegmatic temperaments here; and that, when all is said and done, the more or less of tension about which I am making such a fuss is a small item in the sum total of a nation's life, and not worth solemn treatment at a time when agreeable rather than disagreeable things should be talked about. Well, in one sense the more or less of tension in our faces and in our unused musclesisa small thing: not much mechanical work is done by these contractions. But it is not always the material size of a thing that measures its importance: often it is its place and function. One of the most philosophical remarks I ever heard made was by an unlettered workman who was doing some repairs at my house many years ago. "There is very little difference between one man and another," he said, "when you go to the bottom of it. But what little there is, is very important." And the remark certainly applies to this case. The general over-contraction may be small when estimated in foot-pounds, but its importance is immense on account of itseffects on the over-contracted person's spiritual life. This follows as a necessary consequence from the theory of our emotions to which I made reference at the beginning of this article. For by the sensations that so incessantly pour in from the over-tense excited body the over-tense and excited habit of mind is kept up; and the sultry, threatening, exhausting, thunderous inner atmosphere never quite clears away. If you never wholly give yourself up to the chair you sit in, but always keep your leg- and body-muscles half contracted for a rise; if you breathe eighteen or nineteen instead of sixteen times a minute, and never quite breathe out at that,—what mental moodcanyou be in but one of inner panting and expectancy, and how can the future and its worries possibly forsake your mind? On the other hand, how can they gain admission to your mind if your brow be unruffled, your respiration calm and complete, and your muscles all relaxed?
Now what is the cause of this absence of repose, this bottled-lightning quality in us Americans? The explanation of it that is usually given is that it comes from the extreme dryness of our climate and the acrobatic performances of our thermometer, coupled with the extraordinary progressiveness of our life, the hard work, the railroad speed, the rapid success, and all the other things we know so well by heart. Well, our climate is certainly exciting, but hardly more so than that of many parts of Europe, where nevertheless no bottled-lightning girls are found. And the work done and the pace of life are as extreme in every great capital of Europe as they are here. To me both of these pretended causes are utterly insufficient to explain the facts.
To explain them, we must go not to physical geography, but to psychology and sociology. The latest chapter both in sociology and in psychology to be developed in a manner that approaches adequacy is the chapter on the imitative impulse. First Bagehot, then Tarde, then Royce and Baldwin here, have shown that invention and imitation, taken together, form, one may say, the entire warp and woof of human life, in so far as it is social. The American over-tension and jerkiness and breathlessness and intensity and agony of expression are primarily social, and only secondarily physiological, phenomena. They arebad habits, nothing more or less, bred of custom and example, born of the imitation of bad models and the cultivation of false personal ideals. How are idioms acquired, how do local peculiarities of phrase and accent come about? Through an accidental example set by some one, which struck the ears of others, and was quoted and copied till at last every one in the locality chimed in. Just so it is with national tricks of vocalization or intonation, with national manners, fashions of movement and gesture, and habitual expressions of face. We, here in America, through following a succession of pattern-setters whom it is now impossible to trace, and through influencing each other in a bad direction, have at last settled down collectively into what, for better or worse, is our own characteristic national type,—a type with the production of which, so far as these habits go, the climate and conditions have had practically nothing at all to do.
This type; which we have thus reached by our imitativeness, we now have fixed upon us, for better or worse. Now no type can bewhollydisadvantageous; but, so far as our type follows the bottled-lightning fashion, it cannot be wholly good. Dr. Clouston was certainly right in thinking that eagerness, breathlessness, and anxiety are not signs of strength: they are signs of weakness and of bad co-ordination. The even forehead, the slab-like cheek, the codfish eye, may be less interesting for the moment; but they are more promising signs than intense expression is of what we may expect of their possessor in the long run. Your dull, unhurried worker gets over a great deal of ground, because he never goes backward or breaks down. Your intense, convulsive worker breaks down and has bad moods so often that you never know where he may be when you most need his help,—he may be having one of his "bad days." We say that so many of our fellow-countrymen collapse, and have to be sent abroad to rest their nerves, because they work so hard. I suspect that this is an immense mistake. I suspect that neither the nature nor the amount of our work is accountable for the frequency and severity of our breakdowns, but that their cause lies rather in those absurd feelings of hurry and having no time, in that breathlessness and tension, that anxiety of feature and that solicitude for results, that lack of inner harmony and ease, in short, by which with us the work is so apt to be accompanied, and from which a European who should do the same work would nine times out of ten be free. These perfectly wanton and unnecessary tricks of inner attitude and outer manner in us, caught from the social atmosphere, kept up by tradition, and idealized by many as the admirable way of life, are the last straws that break the American camel's back, the final overflowers of our measure of wear and tear and fatigue.
The voice, for example, in a surprisingly large number of us has a tired and plaintive sound. Some of us are really tired (for I do not mean absolutely to deny that our climate has a tiring quality); but far more of us are not tired at all, or would not be tired at all unless we had got into a wretched trick of feeling tired, by following the prevalent habits of vocalization and expression. And if talking high and tired, and living excitedly and hurriedly, would only enable us todomore by the way, even while breaking us down in the end, it would be different. There would be some compensation, some excuse, for going on so. But the exact reverse is the case. It is your relaxed and easy worker, who is in no hurry, and quite thoughtless most of the while of consequences, who is your efficient worker; and tension and anxiety, and present and future, all mixed up together in our mind at once, are the surest drags upon steady progress and hindrances to our success. My colleague, Professor Münsterberg, an excellent observer, who came here recently, has written some notes on America to German papers. He says in substance that the appearance of unusual energy in America is superficial and illusory, being really due to nothing but the habits of jerkiness and bad co-ordination for which we have to thank the defective training of our people. I think myself that it is high time for old legends and traditional opinions to be changed; and that, if any one should begin to write about Yankee inefficiency and feebleness, and inability to do anything with time except to waste it, he would have a very pretty paradoxical thesis to sustain, with a great many facts to quote, and a great deal of experience to appeal to in its proof.
Well, my friends, if our dear American character is weakened by all this over-tension,—and I think, whatever reserves you may make, that you will agree as to the main facts,—where does the remedy lie? It lies, of course, where lay the origins of the disease. If a vicious fashion and taste are to blame for the thing, the fashion and taste must be changed. And, though it is no small thing to inoculate seventy millions of people with new standards, yet, if there is to be any relief, that will have to be done. We must change ourselves from a race that admires jerk and snap for their own sakes, and looks down upon low voices and quiet ways as dull, to one that, on the contrary, has calm for its ideal, and for their own sakes loves harmony, dignity, and ease.
So we go back to the psychology of imitation again. There is only one way to improve ourselves, and that is by some of us setting an example which the others may pick up and imitate till the new fashion spreads from east to west. Some of us are in more favorable positions than others to set new fashions. Some are much more striking personally and imitable, so to speak. But no living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody. Thackeray somewhere says of the Irish nation that there never was an Irishman so poor that he didn't have a still poorer Irishman living at his expense; and, surely, there is no human being whose example doesn't work contagiously insomeparticular. The very idiots at our public institutions imitate each other's peculiarities. And, if you should individually achieve calmness and harmony in your own person, you may depend upon it that a wave of imitation will spread from you, as surely as the circles spread outward when a stone is dropped into a lake.
Fortunately, we shall not have to be absolute pioneers. Even now in New York they have formed a society for the improvement of our national vocalization, and one perceives its machinations already in the shape of various newspaper paragraphs intended to stir up dissatisfaction with the awful thing that it is. And, better still than that, because more radical and general, is the gospel of relaxation, as one may call it, preached by Miss Annie Payson Call, of Boston, in her admirable little volume calledPower Through Repose, a book that ought to be in the hands of every teacher and student in America of either sex. You need only be followers, then, on a path already opened up by others. But of one thing be confident: others still will follow you.
And this brings me to one more application of psychology to practical life, to which I will call attention briefly, and then close. If one's example of easy and calm ways is to be effectively contagious, one feels by instinct that the less voluntarily one aims at getting imitated, the more unconscious one keeps in the matter, the more likely one is to succeed.Become the imitable thing,and you may then discharge your minds of all responsibility for the imitation. The laws of social nature will take care of that result. Now the psychological principle on which this precept reposes is a law of very deep and widespread importance in the conduct of our lives, and at the same time a law which we Americans most grievously neglect. Stated technically, the law is this: thatstrong feeling about one's self tends to arrest the free association of one's objective ideas and motor processes.We get the extreme example of this in the mental disease called melancholia.
A melancholic patient is filled through and through with intensely painful emotion about himself. He is threatened, he is guilty, he is doomed, he is annihilated, he is lost. His mind is fixed as if in a cramp on these feelings of his own situation, and in all the books on insanity you may read that the usual varied flow of his thoughts has ceased. His associative processes, to use the technical phrase, are inhibited; and his ideas stand stock-still, shut up to their one monotonous function of reiterating inwardly the fact of the man's desperate estate. And this inhibitive influence is not due to the mere fact that his emotion ispainful. Joyous emotions about the self also stop the association of our ideas. A saint in ecstasy is as motionless and irresponsive and one-idea'd as a melancholiac. And, without going as far as ecstatic saints, we know how in every one a great or sudden pleasure may paralyze the flow of thought. Ask young people returning from a party or a spectacle, and all excited about it, what it was. "Oh, it wasfine!it wasfine!it wasfine!" is all the information you are likely to receive until the excitement has calmed down. Probably every one of my hearers has been made temporarily half-idiotic by some great success or piece of good fortune. "Good!GOOD! GOOD!" is all we can at such times say to ourselves until we smile at our own very foolishness.
Now from all this we can draw an extremely practical conclusion. If, namely, we wish our trains of ideation and volition to be copious and varied and effective, we must form the habit of freeing them from the inhibitive influence of reflection upon them, of egoistic pre-occupation about their results. Such a habit, like other habits, can be formed. Prudence and duty and self-regard, emotions of ambition and emotions of anxiety, have, of course, a needful part to play in our lives. But confine them as far as possible to the occasions when you are making your general resolutions and deciding on your plan of campaign, and keep them out of the details. When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome.Unclamp, in a word, your intellectual and practical machinery, and let it run free; and the service it will do you will be twice as good. Who are the scholars who get "rattled" in the recitation-room? Those who think of the possibilities of failure and feel the great importance of the act. Who are those who do recite well? Often those who are most indifferent.Theirideas reel themselves out of their memory of their own accord. Why do we hear the complaint so often that social life in New England is either less rich and expressive or more fatiguing than it is in some other parts of the world? To what is the fact, if fact it be, due unless to the over-active conscience of the people, afraid of either saying something too trivial and obvious, or something insincere, or something unworthy of one's interlocutor, or something in some way or other not adequate to the occasion? How can conversation possibly steer itself through such a sea of responsibilities and inhibitions as this? On the other hand, conversation does flourish and society is refreshing, and neither dull on the one hand nor exhausting from its efforts on the other, wherever people forget their scruples and take the brakes off their hearts, and let their tongues wag as automatically and irresponsibly as they will.
They talk much in pedagogic circles to-day about the duty of the teacher to prepare for every lesson in advance. To some extent this is useful. But we Yankees are assuredly not those to whom such a general doctrine should be preached. We are only too careful as it is. The advice I should give to most teachers would be in the words of one who is herself an admirable teacher. Prepare yourself in thesubject so well that it shall be always on tap: then in the class-room trust your spontaneity and fling away all further care.
My advice to students, especially to girl-students, would be somewhat similar. Just as a bicycle-chain may be too tight, so may one's carefulness and conscientiousness be so tense as to hinder the running of one's mind. Take, for example, periods when there are many successive days of examination pending. One ounce of good nervous tone in an examination is worth many pounds of anxious study for it in advance. If you want really to do your best at an examination, fling away the book the day before, say to yourself, "I won't waste another minute on this miserable thing, and I don't care an iota whether I succeed or not." Say this sincerely and feel it; and go out and play, or go to bed and sleep, and I am sure the results next day will encourage you to use the method permanently. I have heard this advice given to a student by Miss Call, whose book on muscular relaxation I quoted a moment ago. In her later book, entitledAs a Matter of Course, the gospel of moral relaxation, of dropping things from the mind, and not "caring," is preached with equal success. Not only our preachers, but our friends the theosophists and mind-curers of various religious sects are also harping on this string. And with the doctors, the Delsarteans, the various mind-curing sects, and such writers as Mr. Dresser, Prentice Mulford, Mr. Horace Fletcher, and Mr. Trine to help, and the whole band of schoolteachers and magazine-readers chiming in, it really looks as if a good start might be made in the direction of changing our American mental habit into something more indifferent and strong.
Worry means always and invariably inhibition of associations and loss of effective power. Of course, the sovereign cure for worry is religious faith; and this, of course, you also know. The turbulent billows of the fretful surface leave the deep parts of the ocean undisturbed, and to him who has a hold on vaster and more permanent realities the hourly vicissitudes of his personal destiny seem relatively insignificant things. The really religious person is accordingly unshakable and full of equanimity, and calmly ready for any duty that the day may bring forth. This is charmingly illustrated by a little work with which I recently became acquainted, "The Practice of the Presence of God, the Best Ruler of a Holy Life, by Brother Lawrence, being Conversations and Letters of Nicholas Herman of Lorraine, Translated from the French."[7]I extract a few passages, the conversations being given in indirect discourse. Brother Lawrence was a Carmelite friar, converted at Paris in 1666. "He said that he had been footman to M. Fieubert, the Treasurer, and that he was a great awkward fellow, who broke everything. That he had desired to be received into a monastery, thinking that he would there be made to smart for his awkwardness and the faults he should commit, and so he should sacrifice to God his life, with its pleasures; but that God had disappointed him, he having met with nothing but satisfaction in that state....
"That he had long been troubled in mind from a certain belief that he should be damned; that all the men in the world could not have persuaded him to the contrary; but that he had thus reasoned with himself about it:I engaged in a religious life only for the love of God, and I have endeavored to act only for Him; whatever becomes of me, whether I be lost or saved, I will always continue to act purely for the love of God. I shall have this good at least, that till death I shall have done all that is in me to love Him ...That since then he had passed his life in perfect liberty and continual joy.
"That when an occasion of practicing some virtue offered, he addressed himself to God, saying, 'Lord, I cannot do this unless Thou enablest me'; and that then he received strength more than sufficient. That, when he had failed in his duty, he only confessed his fault, saying to God, 'I shall never do otherwise, if You leave me to myself: it is You who must hinder my failing, and mend what is amiss.' That after this he gave himself no further uneasiness about it.
"That he had been lately sent into Burgundy to buy the provision of wine for the society, which was a very unwelcome task for him, because he had no turn for business, and because he was lame, and could not go about the boat but by rolling himself over the casks. That, however, he gave himself no uneasiness about it, nor about the purchase of the wine. That he said to God, 'It was his business he was about,' and that he afterward found it well performed. That he had been sent into Auvergne, the year before, upon the same account; that he could not tell how the matter passed, but that it proved very well.
"So, likewise, in his business in the kitchen (to which he had naturally a great aversion), having accustomed himself to do everything there for the love of God, and with prayer upon all occasions, for his grace to do his work well, he had found everything easy during fifteen years that he had been employed there.
"That he was very well pleased with the post he was now in, but that he was as ready to quit that as the former, since he was always pleasing himself in every condition, by doing little things for the love of God.
"That the goodness of God assured him He would not forsake him utterly, and that He would give him strength to bear whatever evil He permitted to happen to him; and, therefore, that he feared nothing, and had no occasion to consult with anybody about his state. That, when he had attempted to do it, he had always come away more perplexed."
The simple-heartedness of the good Brother Lawrence, and the relaxation of all unnecessary solicitudes and anxieties in him is a refreshing spectacle.
The need of feeling responsible all the livelong day has been preached long enough in our New England. Long enough exclusively, at any rate,—and long enough to the female sex. What our girl-students and women-teachers most need nowadays is not the exacerbation, but rather the toning-down of their moral tensions. Even now I fear that some one of my fair hearers may be making an undying resolve to become strenuously relaxed, cost what it will, for the remainder of her life. It is needless to say that that is not the way to do it. The way to do it, paradoxical as it may seem, is genuinely not to care whether you are doing it or not. Then, possibly, by the grace of God, you may all at once find that youaredoing it, and, having learned what the trick feels like, you may (again by the grace of God) be enabled to go on.
And that something like this may be the happy experience of all my hearers is, in closing, my most earnest wish.
FOOTNOTES:[6]FromTalks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Problems. Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1902.[7]Fleming H. Revell Company, New York (AUTHOR).
FOOTNOTES:
[6]FromTalks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Problems. Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1902.
[6]FromTalks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Problems. Henry Holt and Company, New York, 1902.
[7]Fleming H. Revell Company, New York (AUTHOR).
[7]Fleming H. Revell Company, New York (AUTHOR).
The problem of religion—that is, of the relations of man with the supernatural, with God and immortality, with the soul, our personality or the ego, and its existence or nonexistence after death—is the greatest and deepest which ever confronted mankind. In the present state of human knowledge, science can give no definite and final conclusions on these subjects, because of the limitations inherent in science.
We must realize that all our knowledge and information and the entire structure of science are ultimately derived from the perceptions of our senses and thereby limited in the same manner and to the same extent as our sense perceptions and our intellect are limited. The success or failure of scientific achievement largely depends on the extent to which we can abstract—that is, make our observations and conclusions independent of the limitations of the human mind. But there are limitations inherent in the human mind beyond which our intellect cannot reach, and therefore science does not and cannot show us the world as it actually is, with its true facts and laws, but only as it appears to us within the inherent limitations of the human mind.
The greatest limitation of the human mind is that all its perceptions are finite, and our intellect cannot grasp the conception of infinity. The same limitation therefore applies to the world as it appears to our reasoning intellect, and in the world of science there is no infinity, and conceptions such as God and the immortality of the ego are beyond the realm of empirical science. Science deals only with finite events in finite time and space, and the farther we pass onward in space or time, the more uncertain becomes the scientific reasoning, until, in trying to approach the infinite, we are lost in the fog of unreasonable contradiction, "beyond science"—that is, "transcendental".
Thus, we may never know and understand the infinite, whether in nature, in the ultimate deductions from the laws of nature in time and in space, or beyond nature, on such transcendental conceptions as God and immortality. But we may approach these subjects as far as the limitations of our mind permit, reach the border line beyond which we cannot go, and so derive some understanding of how far these subjects may appear nonexisting or unreasonable, merely because they are beyond the limitations of our intellect.
There appear to me two promising directions of approach—first, from the complex of thought and research, which in physics has culminated in the theory of relativity; and, second, in a study of the gaps found in the structure of empirical science and what they may teach us.
All events of nature occur in space and in time. Whatever we perceive, whatever record we receive through our senses, always is attached to, and contained in, space and time. But are space and time real existing things? Have they an absolute reality outside of our mind, as a part or framework of nature, as entities—that is, things that are? Or are they merely a conception of the human mind, a form given by the character of our mind to the events of nature—that is, to the hypothetical cause of our sense perceptions? Kant, the greatest and most critical of all philosophers, in hisCritique of Pure Reason (Kritik der Reinen Vernunft), concludes that space and time have no absolute existence, but are categories—that is, forms in which the human mind conceives his relation to nature. The same idea is expressed by the poet-philosopher Goethe in his dramatic autobiographyFaust(in the second part), when he refers to the "Mütter," to the marriage of Achilles and Helena "outside of all time." It is found in ancient time. So Revelation speaks of "there should be time no longer" (ὅτι χρόνος οὐκέτι ἔσται[Transliterated: hoti chronos ouketi estai]).
The work of the great mathematicians of the nineteenth century—Gauss, Riemann, Lobatschefsky, Bolyai—offered further evidence that space is not an empirical deduction from nature, but a conception of the mind, by showing that various forms of space can be conceived, differing from one another and from the form in which the mind has cast the events of nature (the "Euclidean" space). Finally, physical science, in the theory of relativity, has deduced the same conclusions: space and time do not exist in nature by themselves, as empty space and empty time, but their existence is only due to things and events as they occur in nature. They are relative in the relation between us and the events of nature, so much so that they are not fixed and invariable in their properties, but depend upon the observer and the conditions of observation.
We can get an idea of how utterly our perception of nature depends on the particular form of our time conception by picturing to ourselves how nature would look if our time perception were 100,000 times faster, or 100,000 times slower.
In the first case, with our sense perceptions 100,000 times faster, all events in nature would appear to us 100,000 times slower. This would then be a stationary and immovable world. The only motion which we could see with our eyes would be that of the cannon ball, which would crawl slowly along, at less than a snail's pace. The express train going at sixty miles per hour would appear to stand still, and deliberate experiment be required to discover its motion. By noting its position on the track, and noting it again after a period of time as long as five minutes appears to us now, we should find its position changed by three inches. It would be a dangerous world, as there would be many objects—not distinguishable to the senses from other harmless objects—contact with which would be dangerous, even fatal; and one and the same object (as the express train) might sometimes be harmless (when at rest), sometimes dangerous (when in motion), without our senses being able to see any difference.
On the other hand, with our sense perceptions 100,000 times slower, all events in nature would appear to us to occur 100,000 times faster. There would be little rest in nature, and we should see plants, and even stones, move. We should observe, in a period of time not longer than a minute or two appear to us now, a plant start from seed, grow up, flower, bring fruit, and die. Sun and moon would be luminous bands traversing the sky; day and night alternate seconds of light and darkness. Much of nature, all moving things, would be invisible to us. If I moved my arm, it would disappear, to reappear again when I held it still. It would be a usual occurrence to have somebody suddenly appear and just as suddenly disappear from our midst, or to see only a part of a body. The vanishing and the appearance of objects would be common occurrences in nature; and we should speak of "vanishing" and "appearing," instead of "moving" and "stopping." Collisions, usually harmless, with invisible objects would be common occurrences.
As seen, nature and its laws would appear to us very different from what we find them now, with our present time perception.
Thus philosophy, mathematics, and physical science agree that space and time cannot be entities, but are conceptions of the human mind in its relation to nature. But what does this mean, and what conclusions follow from it?
The space of our conception is three-dimensional—that is, extended in three directions. For instance, the north-south direction, the east-west direction, and the up-down direction. Any place or "point" in space thus is located, relative to some other point, by giving its three distances from the latter, in three (arbitrarily chosen) directions.
Time has only one dimension—that is, extends in one direction only, from the past to the future—and a moment or "point" in time thus is located, with reference to another point in time, by one time distance.
But there is a fundamental difference between our space conception and our time conception, in that we can pass through time only in one direction, from the past to the future, while we can pass through space in any direction, from north to south, as well as from south to north—that is, time is irreversible, flows uniformly in one direction, while space is reversible, can be traversed in any direction. This means that when we enter a thing in space, as a house, we can approach it, pass through it, leave it, come back to it, and the thing therefore appears permanent to us, and we know, even when we have left the house and do not see it any more, that it still exists, and that we can go back to it again and enter it. Not so with time. On approaching a thing in time, an event such as a human life, it extends from a point in time—birth—over a length of time—the life—to an end point in time—death—just as the house in space extends from a point in space—say the north wall—over a length of space—its extent—to an end point in space—say the south wall. But when we pass beyond the end point of an event in time—the death of a life—we cannot go back to the event any more; the event has ceased, ended, the life is extinct.
But let us imagine that the same irreversibility applied to the conception of space—that is, that we could move through space only from north to south, and not in the opposite direction. Then a thing in space, as a house, would not exist for us until we approached it. When we were approaching it, it would first appear indistinctly, and more and more distinctly the nearer we approached it, just as an event in time does not exist until we reach the point of its beginning, but may appear in anticipation, in time perspective, when we approach it, the more distinctly, the closer we approach it, until we reach the threshold of the time span covered by the event, and the event begins to exist, the life is born. So to us, if we could move only from north to south, the house would begin to exist only when we reached its north door. That point would be the "birth" of the house. Passing through the span of space covered by the house—this would for us be its existence, its "life," and when we stepped out of the south door the house would cease to exist for us, we could never enter it and turn back to it again—that is, it would be dead and extinct, just as the life when we pass beyond its end point in time. Thus birth and death, appearance and extinction of an event in time, as our life, are the same as the beginning and end point of a thing in space, like a house. But the house appears to us to exist permanently, whether we are in it, within the length between beginning and end point, or not; while the event in time, our life, appears to us to exist only during the length of time when we are between its beginning and its end point in time, and before and after it does not exist for us, because we cannot go back to it or ahead into it. But assume time were reversible, like space—that is, we could go through it in any direction. There would then be no such thing as birth or origin, and death or extinction, but our life would exist permanently, as a part or span of time, just as the house exists as a part or section of space, and the question of immortality, of extinction or nonextinction by death, would then be meaningless. We should not exist outside of the span of time covered by our life, just as we do not exist outside of the part of space covered by our body in space, and to reach an event, as our life, we should have to go to the part of space and to the part of time where it occurs; but there would be no more extinction of the life by going beyond its length in time as there is extinction of a house by going outside of its door, and everything, like a human being, would have four extensions or dimensions—three extensions in space and one in time.[9]
If space and time, and therefore the characteristics of space and time, are not real things or entities, but conceptions of the human mind, then those transcendental questions, as that of immortality after death and existence before birth, are not problems of fact in nature or outside of nature, but are meaningless, just as the question whether a house exists for an observer outside of the space covered by it. In other words, the questions of birth and death, of extinction or immortality, are merely the incidental results of the peculiarity of our conceptions of time, the peculiarity that the time of our conceptions is irreversible, flows continuously at a uniform rate in the same direction from the past to the future.
But if time has no reality, is not an existing entity, then these transcendental problems resulting from our time conception, of extinction or immortality, have no real existence, but are really phenomena of the human mind, and cease to exist if we go beyond the limitations of our mind, beyond our peculiar time conception.
It is interesting to realize that the modern development of science, in the relativity theory, has proved not only that time is not real, but a conception, but also has proved that the time of our conception does not flow uniformly at constant rate from past to future, but that the rate of the flow of time varies with the conditions; the rate of time flow of an event slows down with the motion relative to the event.
But the conception of a reversal of the flow of time is no more illogical than the conception of a change of the rate of the flow of time. It is inconceivable, because it is beyond the limitations of our mind.
Thus we see that the questions of life and death, of extinction and immortality, are not absolute problems, but merely the result of the limitations of our mind in its conception of time, and have no existence outside of us.
After all, to some extent we conceive time as reversible, in the conception of historical time. In history we go back in time at our will, and traverse with the mind's eye the times of the past, and we then find that death and extinction do not exist in history, but the events of history, the lives of those who made history, exist just as much outside of the span of time of their physiological life—that is, are immortal in historical time. They may fade and become more indistinct with the distance in time, just as things in space become more indistinct with the distance in space, but they can be brought back to full clearness and distinction by again approaching the things and events, the former moving through space, the latter moving through the historical time—that is, by looking up and studying the history of the time.
THE ENTITY "X"
Scientifically, life is a physico-chemical process. Transformations of matter, with which the chemist deals, and transformations of energy, with which the physicist deals, are all that is comprised in the phenomenon of life; and mind, intellect, soul, personality, the ego, are mere functions of the physico-chemical process of life, vanishing when this process ceases, but are not a part of the transformations of matter and of energy. If you thus speak of "mental energy," it scientifically is a misnomer, and mind is not energy in the physical sense. It is true that mental effort, intellectual work, is accompanied by transformations of matter, chemical changes in the brain, and by transformations of energy. But the mental activity is not a part of the energy or of the matter which is transformed, but the balance of energy and of matter closes.
In the energy transformations accompanying mental activity, just as much energy of one form appears as energy of some other form is consumed, and the mental activity is no part of the energy. In the transformations of matter accompanying mental activity, just as much matter of one form appears as matter of some other form is consumed, and the mental activity is no part of either—that is, neither energy nor matter has been transformed into mental activity, nor has energy or matter been produced by mental activity. All attempts to account for the mental activity as produced by the expenditure of physical energy, or as producing physical energy—that is, exerting forces and action—have failed and must fail, and so must any attempt to record or observe and measure mental activity by physical methods—that is, methods sensitive to the action of physical forces.
But what, then, is mind? Is it a mere phenomenon, accompanying the physico-chemical reactions of life and vanishing with the end of the reaction, just as the phenomenon of a flame may accompany a chemical reaction, and vanish when the reaction is completed? Or is mind an entity, just like the entity energy and the entity matter, but differing from either of them—in short, a third entity? We have compared mind with the phenomenon of a flame accompanying a chemical reaction; but, after all, the flame is not a mere phenomenon, but is an entity, is energy.
More than once, in the apparently continuous and unbroken structure of science, wide gaps have been discovered into which new sections of knowledge fitted, sections the existence of which had never been suspected. So in Mendelejeff'sPeriodic System of the Elementsall chemical elements fitted in without gaps—in a continuous series (except a few missing links, which were gradually discovered and filled in). Nevertheless, the whole group of six noble gases, from helium to emanium, were discovered and fitted into the periodic system at a place where nobody had suspected a gap.
One of the most interesting of such unsuspected gaps in the structure of science is the following, because of its pertinency to the subject of our discussion.
In studying the transformations of matter, the chemist records them by equations of the form:
(1) 2H2+ O2= 2H2O, which means:
Two gram molecules of hydrogen H2(2 X 2 = 4 grams) and 1 gram molecule of oxygen O2(1 X 32 grams), combine to 2 gram molecules of water vapor H2O (2 X 18 = 36 grams).
For nearly a hundred years chemists wrote and accepted this equation; innumerable times it has been experimentally proved by combining 4 parts of hydrogen and 32 parts of oxygen to 36 parts of water vapor; so that this chemical equation would appear as correct and unquestionable as anything can be.
Nevertheless, it is wrong, or rather incomplete. It does not give the whole event, but omits an essential part of it, and now we write it:
(2) 2H2+ O2= 2H2O + 293,000 J., which means:
The matterand energyof 2 gram molecules of hydrogen, and the matterand energyof 1 gram molecule of oxygen, combine to the matterand energyof 2 gram molecules of water vapor and 293,000 joules, or units, offree energy.
For a hundred years the chemists thus saw only the material transformation as represented by equation (1), but overlooked and did not recognize the energy transformation coincident with the transformation of matter, though every time the experiment was made, the 293,000 J. of energy in equation (2) made themselves felt as flame, as heat and mechanical force, sometimes even explosively shattering the container in which the experiment was made. But the flame and the explosion appeared only as an incidental phenomenon without significance, as it represents and contains no part of the matter, but equation (1) gives the complete balance of matter in transformation. It was much later that the scientists realized the significance of the flame accompanying the material transformation as not a mere incidental phenomenon, but as the manifestation of the entity energy, permanent and indestructible, like matter, and the complete equation (2) appeared, giving the balance of energy as well as the balance of matter—that is, coincident with the transformation of matter is a transformation of energy, and both are indissoluble from each other, either involves the other, and both may be called different aspects of the same phenomenon.
But we have seen, when mental activity occurs in our mind, chemical and physical transformations accompany it, are coincident with it, and apparently indissoluble from it. Does there possibly exist the same relation between mental activity and the transformations of energy and matter, as we have seen to exist between the latter two? Are mental activity, energy transformation, and transformation of matter three aspects of the same biochemical phenomenon?
If for nearly a hundred years equation (1) was considered complete, until we found that one side was incomplete, and arrived at the more complete equation (2), the question may well be raised: Is equation (2) complete, dealing as it does with two entities, matter and energy, or is it not possibly still incomplete, and a third entity should appear in the equation, an entity "X," as I may call it, differing from energy and from matter, just as energy and matter differ from each other, and therefore not recognizable and measurable by the means which measure energy or matter, just as energy cannot be measured by the same means as matter?
That is, the complete equation of transformation would read:
(3) 2H2+ O2= 2H2O + 293,000 J. + X, involving all three entities, matter, energy, and mind, pertaining, respectively, to the realm of chemistry, of physics, and of psychology, or possibly a broader science of which psychology is one branch.
There is no scientific evidence whatsoever of the existence of such a third entity, "X," but all our deductions have been by analogy, which proves nothing—that is, by speculation, dreaming, and unavoidably so—since in these conceptions we are close to the border line of the human mind where logical reasoning loses itself in the fog of contradiction. But at the same time there is no evidence against the conception of an entity "X"; it is not illogical, at least no more so than all such general conceptions, no more so than, for instance, that of energy or of matter. As empirical science deals with energy and matter, and entity "X" is neither, it could not be observed by any of the methods of experimental physics or chemistry.
If mind is a third entity, correlated with the entities of energy and of matter, we should expect that mental activity, or entity "X," should occur not only in the highly complex transformations of energy and of matter taking place in the brains of the highest orders of living beings, but that entity "X" should appear in all physico-chemical reactions, just as energy transformations always occur in transformations of matter, and inversely. But this seems not so, and in most of the transformations of energy and of matter entity "X" does not appear. However, we have no satisfactory means of recognizing entity "X," no methods of studying it. Therefore, it may well be that it is noticed only in those rare instances when it appears of high intensity, but in most reactions entity "X" may be so small or appear in such way as to escape observation by the means and by the methods now available. Like energy or matter, entity "X" may have many forms in which it is not recognized by us, just as for a long time the flame was not recognized as the entity energy.
To illustrate, again by analogy: In many transformations of matter, indeed, in most of the more complex ones of the organic world, the concurrent energy transformation is of such slowness and of such low intensity that it appears nonexisting, and can be discovered and measured only by the delicate experiments devised by science. Furthermore, the energy may appear in different forms. Thus the 293,000 J. of energy in equation (2) may appear as heat, or as electrical energy, or as a combination of heat, light, sound, and mechanical energy. Now assume that we could observe and notice only one of the forms of energy—for instance, only electrical energy. We should then find that in the equation (1) we only sometimes get energy—that is, electrical energy—under special peculiar conditions, but usually do not seem to get any of the entity energy, simply because we do not recognize it in the form in which it appears. Analogously, there might be a term of entity "X" in all transformations, even such simple ones as equation (3), but entity "X" may appear in a far different, simpler form. It would mean that "mind" is only one form of entity "X," perhaps the high-grade form, as it appears in highly complex reactions. In the simpler physico-chemical processes of nature, entity "X" also would appear, but in other, simpler forms. It would mean that things such as mind and intellect are not limited to the higher living beings, but characteristics akin thereto would be found grading down throughout all living and inanimate nature. This does not appear unreasonable when we consider that some characteristics of life are found throughout all nature, even in the crystal which, in its mother liquor, repairs a lesion, "heals a wound," or which, in the colloidal solution, may be "poisoned" by prussic acid.
Assume, then, that mind, intellect, personality, the ego, were forms of a third entity, an entity "X," correlated in nature with the entities energy and matter. Then, just as energy and matter continuously change their forms, so with the transformations of energy and of matter, entity "X" would continuously change, disappear in one form and reappear in another form. Entity "X" could therefore not exist permanently in one and the same form, and the permanency of the ego—that is, immortality—would still be illogical, would not exist within the realm of science, but would carry us beyond the limitations of the human mind into the unknowable. Permanency of the ego—that is, individual immortality—would require a form of entity "X," in which it is not further transformable. This would be the case if the transformations of entity "X" are not completely reversible, but tend one definite direction, from lower-grade to higher-grade forms, and the latter thus would gradually build up to increasing permanency. There is nothing unreasonable in this, but a similar condition—in the reverse direction—exists with the transformations of energy. They also are not completely reversible, but tend in a definite direction, from higher- to lower-grade form—unavailable heat energy (the increase of entropy by the second law of thermodynamics). Thus in infinite time the universe should come to a standstill, in spite of the law of conservation of energy, by all energy becoming unavailable for further transformation—that is, becoming dead energy. If entity "X" existed, could it not also have become unavailable for further transformation by reaching its maximum high-grade form and thus become not susceptible to further change—that is, "immortal"—just as the unavailable heat of the physicist is "immortal," and not capable of further transformation? Here we are again in the fog of illogic, beyond the limitations. However, it sounds familiar to the Nirvana of the Buddhist.
Physics and chemistry obviously could not deal with entity "X," and the most delicate and sensitive physical or chemical instruments could get no indication of it, and all attempts at investigation by physical or chemical means thus must be doomed to failure. But such investigations of entity "X" belong to the realm of the science of psychology, or, rather, a broader science, of which psychology is one branch dealing with one form of entity "X," mind, just as, for instance, electro-physics is one branch of the broader science of physics, dealing with electrical energy, while physics deals with all forms of energy.
In concluding, I wish to say that nothing in the preceding speculations can possibly encourage spiritism or other pseudo-science. On the contrary, from the preceding it is obvious that the alleged manifestations of spiritism must be fake or self-deception, since they are manifestations of energy. Entity "X," if it exists, certainly is not energy, and therefore could not manifest itself as such.