XMental Hygiene
AS the Vicar, the Physician, and I entered Professor Maturin’s study, after dinner, the Vicar sank into his chair with a deep sigh. “Is it so bad as that?” queried Professor Maturin, as he passed the cigars. “I beg a general pardon,” replied the Vicar. “To-day has quite tired me out, although I am just back from a vacation.” The Physician gazed at him professionally for a moment, and then said: “A clear case for the Book of Mental Hygiene.” As we turned, expectant, Professor Maturin, after some hesitation, took a portfolio from his desk, saying: “The Physician refers to a collection of memoranda, drawn from my experience and reading, during a series of years, but recently put into something like order. They are semi-personal in substance, and quite staccato in form, but I am very willing to read them if you will agree to stop me when you have had enough.” Accepting our assent, he began:
“Now that science can cause the Ethiopian to change his skin and the leopard his spots,—that is, can modify the color of rabbits and multiply the toes of guinea-pigs, or graft new characteristicson cattle or on grain,—it is high time to take thought for the efficient and economic working of that intellectual machinery which is not only the means to all such progress, but the fundamental condition of our mental being. Even if we do not accept Professor Lankester’s view that man has produced such a special state for himself that he must either acquire firmer hold of the conditions, or perish, we must agree with Professor James that the problem of access to different kinds of power is a practical issue of supreme importance.
“Physical conditions, of course, are the basis of all mental hygiene. Whatever may be the relation between body and mind, no one can doubt its intimacy. Many persons, like Wordsworth and Lowell, suffer physical prostration after mental exertion; nor does Dr. Johnson need to tell us that ‘ill-health makes every one a scoundrel.’ Habits of confinement or exercise mean so much that we might almost know from their work that Balzac and Poe wrote in closed rooms; but that Wordsworth and Browning composed in the open air, Burns and Scott on horseback, Swinburne while swimming. It is true that, as Roger Ascham said, ‘walking alone into the field hath no token of courage in it,’ and that the horsemanship commendedby Erasmus is expensive; but there are countless forms of physical exercise, some suitable to each. George Sand set a standard of wisdom in increasing her exercise when under especial strain. Food and sleep also influence mental life tremendously. Whether we eat one simple meal a day with Kant, or many varied ones with Goethe, we must remember the laws of nutrition and Carlyle’s warning that indigestion comprises all of the ills of life.
“The criteria for sleep likewise are wholly individual so long as we do not drowse on other people’s hearth-rugs like De Quincey; or, like Rossetti, entertain our callers by taking naps. Some think it impossible to get too much sleep. Kant limited his for the sake of soundness; he, moreover, carefully tranquillized his mind before going to bed, not by a total exclusion of ideas but by a selection. Some forms of analysis and combination appear to continue during sleep. Gray had a friend who made verses in his dreams, and Bancroft’s bedtime problems were often solved when he awoke. The time to sleep and the time to wake must be left to individual instinct and social sanction. The doctrine of deliberate rising—dear to Lamb and Hazlitt, Thackeray and Lowell—has recently been reinforced bya French savant’s declaration that getting up quickly leads to madness.
“Again, mental life is so conditioned by sensations that every man should ask himself Professor Dowden’s list of questions concerning them. What did not Tennyson owe to his hearing, Keats to his taste and smell? Has anything ever affected human character more than the present eye-mindedness due to printing and artificial lighting? We have recently been shown the relation between thought and the jerks of the eye in reading, and even between pessimism and eye-strain. What might not be explained by nervous tension or arterial pressure, in Dr. Holmes’s ‘bulbous-headed men’ or Donizetti’s creative headaches. The very posture of the body is important in mental labor—many books are cramped from being bent over. Writers in bed have scientific endorsement for their approach to the horizontal. Yet, as this is hard on the eyes, a reclining-chair like Milton’s seems better. But no habit should be too rigid. It is unwise to risk Kant’s distress at the loss of the weather-vane he gazed at While pondering; and one doubts whether Schiller’s odor of rotten apples, or Gautier’s cat in his lap, or Marryat’s lion-skin table were worth the trouble.
“Accommodation must be practiced also with regard to youth and age. Whether through cellular differentiation or bacteria, age so profoundly affects the mind that books might almost be classified according to the productive ages of their authors.
“The influence of climate on mental life is beyond control, except as we may choose our place of residence and vary our occupation according to the season or the weather. Days vary according to the ebb and flow of the vitality stored at week-ends—Monday often wasting energy that is much missed by Friday. Deliberation and determination can do much to increase efficiency and well-being by employing one’s best times appropriately: prizing the cumulative value of unbroken hours,—of morning concentration, afternoon acquisition, and evening meditation. Those who cannot control the day must use the night—a French scientist even advocates a watch in the middle of the night. There are no rules of universal applicability, but study of the characteristics and circumstances of our best moments may make possible their easy and frequent duplication. That was Pater’s recipe for successful living.
“In the matter of environment, congenial surroundingsmeans spontaneous action. Yet lack of harmony may stimulate: pastoral poetry and landscape painting are the work of men weary of towns. Both town stimulus and country composure have corresponding values. Many realistic and introspective writers agree with Poe that circumscription of space aids concentration of attention: Pope worked best in his grotto, Montaigne in his tower, and many great books have been written in prisons. Many romanticists and philosophers, on the other hand, prefer wide views from hills or mountains, or to be beside or upon the sea. There are similar differences with regard to tidiness or disorder among scholarly paraphernalia and personal belongings. Both efficiency and happiness depend upon a nice individual balance of habit and variety, freedom and restraint. Flaubert used the same study for forty years, and Lecky could think only when perfectly tranquil; but William Morris and Anthony Trollope liked to write on railway trains.
“As for mental society or solitude, there has been, as Edmund Gosse puts it, ‘a strong sentiment of intellectual comradeship in every age of real intellectual vitality.’ Philip Gilbert Hamerton was probably right in saying that intellectual traditions persist more through coteries thanthrough books. Some general society is necessary to cultivate tolerance and sympathy. One must also come to some adjustment with democracy—its freedom and unrest, its ideal foundation and materialistic structure, its lack of prejudice and its inexperience—we cannot rest in Socrates’ opinion that the majority is merely a heap of bad pennies. After the demands of social service are arranged for, however, the intellect must look through and beyond popular standards, and purchase independence at whatever cost. Much seclusion is essential for knowledge, some solitude for wisdom. Both independence and sympathy are attained through an inner circle of select companions, kept in what Dr. Johnson called repair, by Emerson’s plan of allowing the less interested to fall away and be replaced by choice additions.
“Mental health, moreover, demands some conscious agreement with one’s income, and some mastery of expenditure. Too much money is as bad as too little. A generous amount insures free activity and rich material, but it relaxes determination and demands discrimination. Wealth is essential for works of great accumulation in history, or of fine appreciation in the arts. But humanists appear to be none the worse for poverty—Cervantes was a public letter-writer, andhis family took in washing. It is well, in any case, to learn with Socrates how many things one does not need, and to remember that there are uses even for adversity.
“From physical foundation and social setting we approach personality:—that something peculiarly our own which, in the words of Petrarch, ‘it is both easier and wiser to cultivate and to correct than to alter;’ that something within us which, in the words of Emerson, ‘accepts and disposes of impressions after a native, individual law.’ We grow in wisdom as we grow in the knowledge of such inner laws. They are fundamental and inevitable. They control mental life and are not to be controlled save through much self-realization. Is a man instinctively active, or does he love contemplation and the forsaking of works? Is he single-minded, identified with his occupation, or does he work merely for bread and live, for himself alone, in some dear avocation? The single-minded may look forward to the perfection that comes from practice—and toward becoming subdued to what he works in. Hence Charles Lamb on the melancholy of tailors and Dr. Robertson Nicoll on Matthew Arnold as ever the inspector of schools. Other men show their spontaneity and genuineness in their avocations—witnessMichael Angelo’s sonnets and Victor Hugo’s sketches. Little intentional literature has charmed the world like the amateur quatrains of Omar the astronomer, translated by Fitzgerald the dilettante.
“Is a man an idealist or a realist? Let him ponder Don Quixote’s impracticality and Sancho Panza’s aimlessness, following inner impulse or outward stimulus, denying the world or losing his own soul. Let him ponder, moreover, Rembrandt’s struggle to serve both at the same time. The pitfalls of the realist are proverbial, but ideals, also, may be dangerous, through mistaken selection, partial generalization, or imperfect adjustment to the facts in hand.
“What, again, are our innate or acquired interests and desires? Does their vision of the future help or hinder our realization of the present? Do we aspire after the impossible, expecting precision or clarity, brevity or completeness, where they cannot or should not be? Do we apprehend the unlikely? ‘If anything external vexes you,’ says Marcus Aurelius, ‘take notice that it is not the thing which disturbs you, but your notion about it, which notion you may dismiss at once if you please.’ Disappointment, says Dr. Johnson, ‘you may easily compensate by enjoiningyourself some particular study, or opening some new avenue to information.’ If we cannot attain, like Lamb, to hissing our failures, let us, like La Motte, retire to a Trappist monastery, and drown consciousness in study. Let us not expect ideal conditions—Spencer and Huxley could work but three hours a day. Let us look, if necessary, to our compensations. Napoleon had satisfactions in spite of his standing forty-second at military school. Darwin’s inability to master languages and his loss of pleasure in poetry, painting, music, and natural scenery were more than made up for. Let us hope for no ‘simple, plausible, easy solution of life that will free us from all responsibility;’ but endeavor to apprehend and ennoble our practical religion, that scale of values according to which we spend our hoard of life.
“Mental action varies with individuals, yet Emerson’s general statement is true—‘thought is a kind of reception uncontrolled by will; we can only open our senses and clear away obstructions; suddenly thought engages us; afterward we remember the process and its results.’ Attention, however, may be led, if not driven; sensibility may become dirigible; it is possible to learn how to keep a fresh eye. Observation of our reactions will make possible a wise selection among stimuli;so Gray learned to seek music, Darwin to avoid it, and many have come to some conscious relation between reading and writing. Experience will teach us how to free the mind from haunting suggestions by fixing and holding their values; how to recollect emotion in tranquillity; how to begin work slowly, and steadily, and then accelerate; how to value the process as well as the product of acquisition. We may learn, through the slowness of accumulation, that we retain only what we use, that a bad memory may be the best, because selective, that even leisure may be well employed. ‘Whatever I do or do not do,’ said Sainte-Beuve, ‘I cease not to learn from the book of life.’ Lope de Vega, sailing with the Armada, sacrificed all his manuscripts for gun-wads, but landed with eleven thousand new verses.
“With such realization of ends and calculation of means, production reduces itself largely to a matter of method. ‘The difference between persons,’ said Emerson, ‘is not in wisdom, but in the art of classifying and using facts.’ Each mind has some ways in which it works most easily and efficiently; let us discover and arrange for these, and reap the rewards. Then it is time to remember Dante’s saying that ‘sitting upon down one cometh not to fame,’ and Whistler’s that‘drudgery leads to felicity,’ and Emerson’s that ‘inspiration is the sister of daily labor.’ Newton made his discoveries ‘simply by always thinking about them.’ Darwin’s method was as elaborate as it was successful—with portfolios of abstracts, memoranda, and references; detailed, general, and classified indexes for books; brief, then full, then minute outlines before beginning to write. Concentration and intensity of thought come almost of themselves through such a system. Darwin’s practice, too, of writing rapidly and later correcting deliberately, reaped the reward of both states of mind without suffering the loss involved in continually changing from one adjustment to another,—that drain of energy which makes interruptions so wasteful, even to minds that focus quickly. Wisely controlled change combines the benefits of continuity and variety. The scientist, whose study requires muscular as well as mental activity, tires less easily than the scholar busied wholly with books. Varying the adjustment of the same part, or successively occupying different parts of the mechanism, is more refreshing than total relaxation.
“While thus adapted to the mental mechanism, a successful system must also be adjustable to the material in hand. Observation must be receptive,reading selective. Poets may harvest their dreams; historians must winnow their documents. Goethe’s ‘vast abundance of objects that must be before us ere we can think upon them,’ and Hawthorne’s ‘immense amount of history that it takes to make a little literature,’ must be provided for, along with Pater’s selection and rejection—‘all art does but consist in the removal of surplusage.’ Every system ought to provide, at any time and in any place, some form of record, careful enough to be permanent, yet so simple as not to be wasteful if never used—an envelope that can contain data or be written upon itself meets these needs. A system for preservation and arrangement must be comprehensive enough to include everything, accurate enough to make everything available, flexible enough to vary with any need, yet so simple as not to become a tax. Few devices are better than Darwin’s labelled portfolios, or smaller envelopes arranged alphabetically or logically. Note-books are useful only when abstracted or indexed. There are clergymen whose sermons write themselves as particular texts accumulate references in the interleaved Bibles in which they note what interests them. For coördination and organization few things equal a tabular abstract on a single sheetof paper large enough to show at a glance the nature of all the material. Such implements influence intellectual efficiency more than we suppose. Much crabbed writing is due to bad pens, much journalistic ease to soft pencils. Self-realization and the sense of life depend upon some form of diary; style varies with dictation and the typewriter.
“The chief criteria of mental efficiency, then,” read Professor Maturin, with a glance at the clock, “lie between Matthew Arnold’s definitions of genius—‘mainly an affair of energy’ and ‘an infinite capacity for taking pains.’ Professor James, holding that the average man uses only a small part of his energy, would have us persist through fatigue and ‘second wind,’ perhaps to a third and a fourth. Even if experiment, however, did not show that working beyond the fatigue point yields a rapidly decreasing product at a rapidly increasing cost, it would be uneconomic to attempt to increase our flow of energy so long as we waste so much of what we have in inefficient and unhygienic methods of work. Let us rather study the conditions of our best moments, clear away hindrances, and provide helps. Let us prize the spontaneous activity of each state, using fortunate moments for concentration, lessefficient periods for accumulation and selection, looking to future coördination. Let us follow natural rhythms of activity, relaxing primary activities by secondary functions useful also in themselves. Thus regularity and routine will develop speed; accumulation and economy end in ripeness. Quantity condenses into quality; selection and arrangement grow into judgment and intuition that may bear inspiration and vision. ‘A man’s vision,’ says Professor James, ‘is the great thing about him.’ The natural history of such vision, however, indicates that it is scarcely more than the synthetic apex of long and careful accumulation. The moment of the aperçu is so memorable that the conditions precedent are usually forgotten, but the precious brilliance of the diamond is merely the result of a happy crystallization of common elements.
“For all of which,” concluded Professor Maturin with a smile, as he closed his portfolio, “I bespeak your most esteemed consideration.”