CLASS EXERCISES

[2]Pyle’sOutlines of Educational Psychology, pp. 84–86.

Imitation.One of the fundamental original traits of human nature is the tendency to imitate. Imitation is not instinctive in the strict meaning of the word. Seeing a certain act performed does not, apart from training and experience, serve as a stimulus to make a child perform a similar act. Hearing a certain sound does not serve as a stimulus for the production of the same sound. Nevertheless, there is in the human child a tendency or desire to do what it sees others doing.

A few hours spent in observing children ought to convince any one of the universality and of the strength of this tendency. As our experience becomes organized, the idea of an act usually serves as the stimulus to call it forth. However, this is not because the idea of an act, of necessity, always produces the act. It is merely a matter of the stimulus and the responsebecoming connected in that wayas the result of experience. Our meaning is that an act can be touched off or prompted by any stimulus. Our nervous organization makes this possible. The particular stimulus that calls forth a particular response depends upon how we have been trained, how we have learned. In most cases ouracts are coupled up with the ideas of the acts. We learn them that way.

In early life particularly, the connection between stimulus and response is very close. When a child gets the idea of an act, he immediately performs the act, if he knows how. Now, seeing another perform an act brings the act clearly into the child’s consciousness, and he proceeds to perform it. But the act must be one which the child already knows how to perform, otherwise his performance of it will be faulty and incomplete. If he has never performed the particular act, seeing another perform the act sets him to trying to do it and he may soon learn it. If he successfully performs an act when he sees it done by another, the act must be one which he already knows how to perform, and for whose performance the idea has already served as a stimulus. Now if imitation were instinctive in the strict sense, one could perform the act for the first time merely from seeing another do it, without any previous experience or learning. It is doubtful whether there are any such inherited connections. It is, however, true that human beings are of such a nature that, particularly in early life, theyliketo do andwantto do what they see others doing. This is one of the most important aspects of human nature, as we shall see.

Function and Importance of Imitation in Life.Natural selection has developed few aspects of human nature so important for survival as the tendency to imitate, for this tendency quickly leads to a successful adjustment of the child to the world in which he lives. Adult men and women are successfully adjusted to their environment. Their adjustment might be better, but it is good enough to keep them alive for a time.Now, if children do as they see their parents doing, they will reach a satisfactory adjustment. We may, therefore, say that the tendency to imitate serves to adjust the child to his environment. It is for this reason that imitation has been called anadaptive instinct. It would perhaps be better to say merely that thetendencyto imitate is part of theoriginal equipment of man.

Imitation is distinctively a human trait. While it occurs in lower animals it is probably not an important factor in adjusting them to their environment. But in the human race it is one of the chief factors in adjustment to environment. Imitation is one of the main factors in education. Usually the quickest way to teach a child to do a thing is to show him how.

Through imitation we acquire our language, manners, and customs. Ideals, beliefs, prejudices, attitudes, we take on through imitation. The tendency to imitate others coupled with the desire to be thought well of by others is one of the most powerful factors in producing conformity. They are the whips which keep us within the bounds of custom and conventionality. The tendency to imitate is so strong that its results are almost as certain as are those of inherited tendencies. It is almost as certain that a child will be like his parents in speech, manners, customs, superstitions, etc., as it is that he will be like them in form of body. He not only walks and talks and acts like his parents, but he thinks as they do. We, therefore, have the termsocial heredity, meaning the taking on of all sorts of social habits and ideals through imitation.

The part that imitation plays in the education of a child may be learned by going to a country home andnoting how the boy learns to do all the many things about the farm by imitating his father, and how the girl learns to do all the housework by imitating her mother. Imitation is the basis of much of the play of children, in that their play consists in large part of doing what they see older people doing. This imitative play gives them skill and is a large factor in preparing for the work of life.

Dramatization.Dramatization is an aspect of imitation, and is a means of making ideas more real than they would otherwise be. There is nothing that leads us so close to reality as action. We never completely know an act till we have done it. Dramatization is a matter of carrying an idea out into action. Ideas give to action its greatest fullness of meaning.

Dramatic representation should, therefore, have a prominent place in the schools, particularly in the lower grades. If the child is allowed to mimic the characters in the reading lesson, the meaning of the lesson becomes fuller. Later on in the school course, dramatic representation of the characters in literature and history is a means of getting a better conception of these characters. In geography, the study of the manners and customs and occupations of foreign peoples can be much facilitated through dramatic representation. Children naturally have the dramatic tendency; it is one aspect of the tendency to imitate. We have only to encourage it and make use of it throughout the school course.

Imitation in Ideals.Imitation is of importance not only in acquiring the actions of life but also in getting our ideals. Habits of thinking are no less an aspect of our lives than are habits of acting. Our attitudes, our prejudices, our beliefs, our moral, religious, and politicalideals are in large measure copied from people about us. The family and social atmosphere in which one lives is a mold in which one’s mind is formed and shaped. We cannot escape the influence of this atmosphere if we would. One takes on a belief that his father has, one clings to this belief and interprets the world in the light of it. This belief becomes a part of one’s nature. It is a mental habit, a way of looking at the world. It is as much a part of one as red hair or big feet or a crooked nose. Probably no other influence has so much to do with making us what we are as social beings as the influence of imitation.

Play.Play is usually considered to be a part of the original equipment of man. It is essentially an expression of the ripening instincts of children, and not a specific instinct itself. It is rather a sort of make-believe activity of all the instincts. Kittens and dogs may be seen in play to mimic fighting. They bite and chew each other as in real fighting, but still they are not fighting.

As the structures and organs of children mature, they demand activity. This early activity is called play. It has several characteristics. The main one is that it is pleasurable. Play activity is pleasurable in itself. We do not play that we may get something else which we like, as is the case with the activity which we call work. Play is an end in itself. It is not a means to get something else which is intrinsically valuable.

One of the chief values of play comes from its activity aspect. We are essentially motor beings. We grow and develop only through exercise. In early life we do not have to exert ourselves to get a living. Play is nature’s means of giving our organs the exercise which they must have to bring them to maturity. Playis an expression of the universal tendency to action in early life. Without play, the child would not develop, would not become a normal human being.

All day long the child is ceaselessly active. The value of this activity can hardly be overestimated. It not only leads to healthy growth, but is a means through which the child learns himself and the world. Everything that the child sees excites him to react to it or upon it. He gets possession of it. He bites it. He pounds it. He throws it. In this way he learns the properties of things and the characteristics of forces. Through play and imitation, in a very few years the child comes to a successful adjustment in his world.

Play and imitation are the great avenues of activity in early life. Even in later life, we seldom accomplish anything great or worth while until the thing becomes play to us, until we throw our whole being into it as we do in play, until it is an expression of ourselves as play is in our childhood. The proper use of play gives us the solution of many of the problems of early education.

Play has two functions in the school: (1) Motor play is necessary to growth, development, and health. The constant activity of the child is what brings about healthy growth.

In the country it is not difficult for children to get plenty of the proper kind of exercise, but in the larger cities it is difficult. Nevertheless, opportunity for play should be provided for every child, no matter what the trouble or expense, for without play children cannot become normal human beings. Everywhere parents and teachers should plan for the play life of the children.

(2) In the primary grades play can have a large place in the actual work of the school. The early work of education is to a large extent getting the tools ofknowledge and thought and work—reading, spelling, writing, correct speech, correct writing, the elementary processes of arithmetic, etc. In many ways play can be used in acquiring these tools.

One aspect of play particularly should have a large place in education; namely, the manipulative tendencies of children. This is essentially play. Children wish to handle and manipulate everything that attracts their attention. They wish to tear it to pieces and to put it together. This is nature’s way of teaching, and by it children learn the properties and structures of things. They thereby learn what things do and what can be done with them. Teachers and parents should foster these manipulative tendencies and use them for the child’s good. These tendencies are an aspect of curiosity. We want to know. We are unhappy as long as a thing is before us which we do not understand, which has some mystery about it. Nature has developed these tendencies in us, for without a knowledge of our surroundings we could not live. The child therefore has in his nature the basis of his education. We have but to know this nature and wisely use and manipulate it to achieve the child’s education.

Summary.Instincts are inherited tendencies to specific actions. They fall under the heads: individualistic, socialistic, environmental, adaptive, sexual or mating instincts. These inherited tendencies are to a large extent the foundation on which we build education. The educational problem is to control and guide them, suppressing some, fostering others. In everything we undertake for a child we must take into account these instincts.

Make a study of the instincts of several animals, such as dogs, cats, chickens. Make a list showing the stimuli and the inherited responses.

Make a study of the instincts of a baby. See how many inherited responses you can observe. The simpler inherited responses are known asreflexes. The closing of the eyelids mentioned in the text is an example. How many such reflexes can you find in a child?

Make a special study of the fears of very young children. How many definite situations can you find which excite fear responses in all children? Each member of the class can make a list of his own fears. It may then be seen whether any fears are common to all members of the class and whether there are any sex differences.

Similarly, make a study of anger and fighting. What situations invariably arouse the fighting response? In what definite, inherited ways is anger shown? Do your studies and observations convince you that the fighting instinct and other inherited responses concerned with individual survival are among the strongest of inherited tendencies? Can the fighting instinct be eliminated from the human race? Is it desirable to eliminate it?

Make a study of children’s collections. Take one of the grades and find what collections the children have made. What different objects are collected?

Outline a plan for using the collecting instinct in various school studies.

With the help of the principal of the school make a study of some specific cases of truancy. What does your finding show?

Make a study of play by watching children of various ages play. Make a list of the games that are universal for infancy, those for childhood, and those for youth. (Consult Johnson’sPlays and Games.)

What are the two main functions of play in education? Why should we play after we are mature?

Study imitation in very young children. Do this by watching the spontaneous play of children under six. What evidences of imitation do you find?

Outline the things we learn by imitation. What is your opinion of the place which imitation has in our education?

Make a study of imitation as a factor in the lives of grown people. Consider styles, fashions, manners, customs, beliefs, prejudices, religious ideas, etc.

On the whole, is imitation a good thing or a bad thing?

Make a plan of the various ways in which dramatization can be profitably used in the schools.

Make a study of your own ideals. What ideals do you have? Where did you get them? What ideals did you get from your parents? What from books? What from teachers? What from friends?

Show that throughout life inherited tendencies are the fundamental bases from which our actions proceed, on which our lives are erected.

Make a complete outline of the chapter.

The Feelings.Related to the instincts on one side and to habits on the other are the feelings. In ChapterIIIwe discussed sensation, and in the preceding chapter, the instincts, but when we have described an act in terms of instinct and sensation, we have not told all the facts.

For example, when a child sees a pretty red ball of yarn, he reaches out to get it, then puts it into his mouth, or unwinds it, and plays with it in various ways. It is all a matter of sensation and instinctive responses. The perception of the ball—seeing the ball—brings about the instinctive reaching out, grasping the ball, and bringing it to the mouth. But to complete our account, we must say that the child ispleased. We note a change in his facial expression. His eyes gleam with pleasure. His face is all smiles, showing pleasant contentment. Therefore we must say that the child not only sees, not only acts, but the seeing and acting arepleasant. The child continues to look, he continues to act, because the looking and acting bring joy.

This is typical of situations that bring pleasure. We want them continued; we act in a way to make them continue.We go out after the pleasure-giving thing.

But let us consider a different kind of situation. Achild sees on the hearth a glowing coal. It instinctively reaches out and grasps it, starts to draw the coal toward it, but instinctively drops it. This is not, however, the whole story. Instead of the situation being pleasant, it is decidedly unpleasant. The child fairly howls with pain. His face, instead of being wreathed in smiles, is covered with tears. He did not hold on to the coal. He did not try to continue the situation. On the contrary, he dropped the coal, and withdrew the hand. The body contracted and shrank away from the situation.

These two cases illustrate the two simple feelings, pleasantness and unpleasantness. Most situations in life are either pleasant or unpleasant. Situations may sometimes be neutral; that is, may arouse neither the feeling of pleasantness or unpleasantness. But usually a conscious state is either pleasant or unpleasant. A situation brings us life, joy, happiness. We want it continued and act in a way to bring about its continuance. Or the situation tends to take away our life, brings pain, sorrow, grief, and we want it discontinued, and act in a way to discontinue it.

These two simple forms of feeling perhaps arose in the beginning in connection with the act of taking food. It is known that if a drop of acid touches an amœba, the animal shrinks, contracts, and tries to withdraw from the death-bringing acid. On the other hand, if a particle of a substance that is suitable for food touches the animal, it takes the particle within itself. The particle is life-giving and brings pleasure.

The Emotions.Pleasure and displeasure are the simple feelings. Most situations in life bring about very complex feeling states known asemotions. The emotions are made up of pleasure or displeasure mixedor compounded with the sensations from the bodily reactions.

The circulatory system, the respiratory system, and nearly all the involuntary organs of the body form a great sounding board which instantly responds in various ways to the situations of life. When the youth sees the pretty maiden and when he touches her hand, his heart pumps away at a great rate, his cheeks become flushed, his breathing is paralyzed, his voice trembles. He experiences the emotion of love. The state is complex indeed. There is pleasantness, of course, but there is in addition the feeling of all the bodily reactions.

When the mother sees her dead child lying in its casket, her head falls over on her breast, her eyes fill with tears, her shoulders droop, her chest contracts, she sobs, her breathing is spasmodic. Nearly every organ of the body is affected in one way or another. The state isunpleasant, but there is also the feeling of the manifold bodily reactions.

So it is always. The biologically important situations in life bring about, through hereditary connections in the nervous system, certain typical reactions. These reactions are largely the same for the same type of situation, and they give the particular coloring to each emotion. It is evident that the emotions are closely related to the instincts. The reflexes that take place in emotions are of the same nature as the instincts. Each instinctive act has its characteristic emotion. There are fear instincts and fear emotions. Fear is unpleasant. In addition to its unpleasantness there is a multitude of sensations that come from the body. The hair stands on end, the heart throbs, the circulation is hastened, breathing is interrupted, the muscles aretense. This peculiar mass of sensations, blended with the unpleasantness, gives the characteristic emotion of fear. But we need not go into an analysis of the various emotions of love, hate, envy, grief, jealousy, etc. The reader can do this for himself.[3]

[3]See James’Psychology, Briefer Course, Chapter XXIV.

Nearly every organ of the body plays its part in the emotions: the digestive organs, the liver, the kidneys, the throat and mouth, the salivary glands, the eyes and tear glands, the skin muscles, the facial muscles, etc. And every emotion is made up of pleasantness or unpleasantness and the sensations produced by some combination of bodily reactions.

It is well for us to remember the part that bodily conditions and states play in the emotional life. The emotional state of a man depends upon whether he has had his dinner or is hungry, whether the liver is working normally, and upon the condition of the various secreting and excreting organs and glands. In a word, it is evident that our emotions fall within a world of cause and effect.Our feeling states are caused.

Importance in Life.Our feelings and emotions are the fountains from which nearly all our volitional actions flow. Feeling is themainspringof life. Nearly everything we do is prompted by love, or hate, or fear, or jealousy, or rivalry, or anger, or grief. If the feelings have such close relation to action, then the schools must take them into account, for by education we seek to control action. If the feelings control action, then we must try to control the feelings. We must get the child into a right state of mind toward the school, toward his teacher, and toward his work. The child must like the school, like the teacher, andwantto learn.

Moreover, we must create the right state of mind inconnection with each study, each task. The child must come to feel the need and importance of each individual task as well as of each subject. The task is then desirable, it is to be sought for and worked at, it is important for life.

This is merely enlisting the child’s nature in the interest of his education. For motive, we must always look to the child’s nature. The two great forces which pull and drive arepleasureandpain. Nature has no other methods. Formerly the school used pain as its motive almost exclusively. The child did his tasks to escape pain. For motive we now use more often the positive influences which give pleasure, which pull instead of drive. What will one not doforthelovedone? What will one not dotothehatedone? The child who does not love his teacher gets little good from school while under that teacher. Moreover, school work is often a failure because it is so unreal, has so little relation to an actual world, and seems foreign to any real needs of the child. No one is going to work very hard unless the work is prompted by desire. Our desires come from our needs. Therefore, if we are to enlist the child’s feelings in the service of his education, we must make the school work vital and relate it, if possible, to the actual needs of the child.

It must not be forgotten, however, that we must build up permanent attitudes of respect for authority, obedience, and reverence for the important things of life. Neither must it be forgotten that we can create needs in the child. If in the education of the child we follow only such needs as he has, we will make a fine savage of him but nothing else. It is the business of the school to create in the child the right kind of needs. As was pointed out in our study of the instincts, we mustmake the child over again into what he ought to be. But this cannot be a sudden process. One cannot arouse enthusiasm in a six-year-old child over the beauties of higher mathematics. It takes ten or fifteen years to do that, and it must be done little by little.

Control of the Emotions.Without training, we remain at the mercy of our baser emotions. The child must be trained to control himself. Here is where habit comes in to modify primitive action. The child can be trained to inhibit or prevent the reactions that arise in hatred, envy, jealousy, anger, etc. For a fuller discussion of this point we must wait till we come to the discussion of habit and moral training.

Mood and Temperament.A mood is a somewhat extended emotional state continuing for hours or days. It is due to a continuance of the factors which cause it. The state of the liver and digestive organs may throw one for days into a cross and ugly mood. When the body becomes normal, the mood changes or disappears. Similarly, one may for hours or days be overjoyed, or depressed, or morose, or melancholy. Parents and teachers should look well to the matter of creating and establishing continuous and permanent states of feeling that are favorable to work and development.

Some people are permanently optimistic, others pessimistic. Some are always joyful, others as constantly see only the dark side of life. Some are always serious and solemn, others always gay, even giddy. These permanent emotional attitudes constitute temperament, and are due to fundamental differences within the body that are in some cases hereditary. Crossness and moroseness, for example, may be due to a dyspeptic condition and a chronically bad liver. The happy dispositions belong to bodies whose organs are functioning properly, in which assimilation is good—all the parts of the body doing their proper work.

Poor eyes which are under a constant strain, through the reflex effects upon various organs of the body, are likely to develop a permanently cross and irritable disposition. Through the close sympathetic relation of the various organs, anything affecting one organ and interfering with its proper action is likely to affect many other organs and profoundly influence the emotional states of the body. In growing children particularly, there are many influences which affect their emotions, things of which we seldom think, such as the condition of vision and hearing, the condition of the teeth, nose, and throat, and the condition of all the important vital organs of the body. When a child’s disposition is not what we think it ought to be, we should try to find out the causes.

Training the Emotions.The emotions are subject to training. The child can be taught control. Moreover, he can be taught to appreciate and enjoy higher things than mere animal pleasure; namely, art, literature, nature, truth. The child thereby becomes a spiritual being instead of a mere pig. The ideal of the school should be to develop men and women whose baser passions are under control, who are calm, self-controlled, and self-directed, and who get their greatest pleasure from the finer and higher things of life, such as the various forms of music, the songs of birds, the beauties and intricate workings of nature.

This is a wonderful world and a wonderful life, but the child may go through the world without seeing it, and live his life without knowing what it is to live. His eyes must be opened, he must be trained to see and to feel. It is not the place here to tell how this is to bedone. This is not a book on methods of teaching. We can only indicate here that the business of the school is not merely to teach people how to make a living, but to teach them how to enjoy the living. There are many avenues from which we get the higher forms of pleasure. There are really many different worlds which we may experience: the world of animals, the world of plants, the mechanical world, the chemical world, the world of literature and of art, the world of music. It is the duty of the schools to open up these worlds to the children, and make them so many possibilities of joy and happiness.

The emotions and feelings, then, are not lawless and causeless, but are a part of a world of law and order. They are themselves caused and therefore subject to control and modification.

Attention.Attention, too, is related to inherited tendencies on the one side and to habits on the other. If one is walking in the woods and catches a glimpse of something moving in the trees, the eyesinstinctivelyturn so that the person can get a better view of the object. If one hears a sudden sound, the head is instinctively turned so that the person can hear better. One stops, the body is held still and rigid, breathing is slow and controlled—all to favor better hearing.

The various acts of attention are reflex and instinctive. But what is attention? By attention we meansensory clearness. When we say we are attentive to a thing or subject, we mean that perceptions or ideas of that thing or subject areclearas compared to other perceptions and ideas that are in consciousness at the same time. The contents of one’s consciousness, the perceptions and ideas that constitute one’s mind at any one moment are always arranged in anattentivepattern,some being clear, others unclear. The pattern constantly changes and shifts. What is now clear and in the focus of consciousness, presently is unclear and may in a moment disappear from consciousness altogether, while other perceptions or ideas take its place.

The first question that arises in connection with attention is, What are the causes of attention? The first group of causes are hereditary and instinctive. The child attends to loud things, bright things, moving things, etc. But as we grow older, the basis of attention becomes more and morehabit. An illustration will make this clear. I once spent a day at a great exposition with a machinist. He was constantly attending to things mechanical, when I would not even see them. He had spent many years working with machinery, and as a result, things mechanical at once attracted him. Similarly, if a man and a woman walk along a street together and look in at the shop windows, the woman sees only hats, dresses, ribbons, and other finery, while the man sees only cigars, pipes, and automobile supplies. Every day we live, we are building up habits of attending to certain types of things. What repeatedly comes into our experience, easily attracts our attention to the exclusion of other things.

The Function of Attention.Attention is the unifying aspect of consciousness. There are always many things in consciousness, and we cannot respond to all at once. The part of consciousness that is clear and focal brings about action. The things to which we attend are the things that count.

In later chapters we shall learn that in habit-formation, attention is an importantfactor.We must attend to the acts we are trying to make habitual. In getting knowledge, we must attend to what we are tryingto learn. In committing to memory, we must attend to the ideas that we are trying to fix and make permanent. In thinking and reasoning, those ideas become associated together that are together in attention.

Attention is therefore the controlling aspect of consciousness. It is the basis of what we callwill. The ideas that are clear and focal and that persist in consciousness are the ideas that control our action. When one says he has made up his mind, he has made a choice; that merely means that a certain group of ideas persist in consciousness to the exclusion of others. These are the ideas which ultimately produce action. And it is our past experience that determines what ideas will become focal and persist.

Training the Attention.There are two aspects of the training of attention. (1) We can learn to hold ourselves to a task. When we sit down to a table to study, there may be many things that tend to call us away. There lies a magazine which we might read, there is a play at the theater, there are noises outside, there is a friend calling across the street. But we must study. We have set ourselves to a task and we must hold fast to our purpose.

The young child cannot do this. He must be trained to do it. The instruments used to train him are pleasure and pain, rewards and punishments that come from parents. Gradually, slowly, the child gains control over himself. No one ever amounts to anything till he can hold himself to a task, to a fixed purpose. One must learn to form plans extending over weeks, months, and years, and to hold unflinchingly to them, just as one must hold himself to his study table and allow nothing to distract or to interfere. No training a child can receive is more important than this, for itgives him control over his life, it gives him control over the ideas that are to become focal and determine action. It is for this reason that we call such training a training of attention. It might perhaps better be called a training of the will. But the will is only the attentive consciousness. The idea that is clear, that holds its own in consciousness, is the idea that produces action. When we say that wewillto do a certain thing, all we can mean is that theidea of this actis clearest and holds its focal place in consciousness to the exclusion of other ideas. It therefore goes over into action.

(2) The training just discussed may be called a general training of attention giving us a general power and control over our lives, but there is another type of training which is specific. As with the machinist mentioned above, so with all of us; we attend to the type of thing that we have formed a habit of attending to. Continued experience in a certain field makes it more and more easy to attend to things in that field. One can take a certain subject and work at it day after day, year after year. By and by, the whole world takes on the aspect of this chosen subject. The entomologist sees bugs everywhere, the botanist sees only plants, the mechanic sees only machines, the preacher sees only the moral and religious aspects of action, the doctor sees only disease, the mathematician sees always the quantitative aspect of things. Ideas and perceptions related to one’s chosen work go at once and readily to the focus of consciousness; other things escape notice.

It is for this reason that we become “crankier” every year that we live. We are attending to only one aspect of the world. While this blinds us to other aspects of the world, it brings mastery in our individualfields. We can, then, by training and practice, get a general control over attention, and by working in a certain field or kind of work, we make it easy to attend to things in that field or work. This to an extent gives us control of our lives, of our destiny.

Interest.The essential elements of interest are attention and feeling. When a person is very attentive to a subject and gets pleasure from experience in that subject, we commonly say that he isinterestedin that subject.

Since the importance of attention and feeling in learning has already been shown and will be further developed in the chapters which follow in connection with the subjects of habit, memory, and thinking, little more need be said here.

The key to all forms of learning isattention. The key to attention isfeeling. Feeling depends upon the nature of the child, inherited and acquired. In our search for the means of arousing interest, we look first to the original nature of the child, to the instincts and the emotions. We look next to the acquired nature, the habits, the ideals, the various needs that have grown up in the individual’s life. Educational writers have overemphasized the original nature of the child as a basis of interest and have not paid enough attention to acquired nature. We should not ask so much what a child’s needs are, but what theyoughtto be. Needs can be created. The child’s nature to some extent can be changed. The problem of arousing interest is therefore one of finding in the child’s nature a basis for attention and pleasure. If the basis is not to be found there, then it must be built up. How this can be done, how human nature can be changed, is to some extent the main problem of psychology. Every chapter inthis book, it is hoped, will be found to throw some light on the problem.

Summary.The two elementary feeling states are pleasantness and unpleasantness. The emotions are complex mental states composed of feeling and the sensations from bodily reactions to the situations. Feeling and emotion are the motive forces of life, at the bottom of all important actions. The bodily reactions of emotions are reflex and instinctive. Attention is a matter of the relative clearness of the contents of consciousness. The function of attention is to unify thought and action. It is the important factor in all learning and thinking, for it is only the attentive part of consciousness that is effective.

Make out a complete list of the more important emotions.

Indicate the characteristic expression of each emotion in your list.

Can you have an emotion without its characteristic expression? If, for example, when a situation arises which ordinarily arouses anger in you, you inhibit all the usual motor accompaniments of anger, are you really angry?

Are the expressions of the same emotion the same for all people?

Try to analyze some of your emotional states: anger, or fear, or grief. Can you detect the sensations that come from the bodily reactions?

Try to induce an emotional state by producing its characteristic reactions.

Try to change an emotional state to an opposite emotion; for example, grief to joy.

Try to control and change emotional states in children.

Name some sensations that for you are always pleasant, others that are always unpleasant—colors, sounds, tastes, odors, temperatures.

Confirm by observation the statement of the text as to the importance of emotions in all the important actions of life.

To what extent do you have control of your emotional states? What have you observed about differences in expression of deep emotions by different people? In case of death in thefamily, some people wail and moan and express their grief in the most extreme manner, while others do not utter a sound and show great control. Why the difference?

Make an introspective study of your conscious states to note the difference in clearness of the different processes that are going on in consciousness. Do you find a constant shifting?

Perform experiments to show the effects of attention in forming habits and acquiring knowledge.

Perform tests in learning, using substitution tests as described in ChapterX. Use several different keys. In some experiments have no distractions, in others, have various distracting noises. What differences do you find in the results?

Try learning nonsense syllables, some lists with distractions, others without distractions.

Try getting the ideas from stories read to you, as in the logical memory experiment described in ChapterX. Some stories should be read without distractions, others with distractions.

Why are you unable to study well when under the influence of some strong emotion?

Are you trained to the extent that you can concentrate on a task and hold yourself to it for a long time?

Do you see that as far as will and attention and the emotions are concerned, your life and character are in large measure in your own hands?

Make a complete outline of the chapter.

The Nature of Habit.We now turn from man’s inherited nature to his acquired nature. Inherited tendencies to action we have called instincts; acquired tendencies to action we shall call habits. We can best form an idea of the nature of habit by considering some concrete cases.

Let us take first the case of a man forming the habit of turning out the basement light. It usually happens that when a man has an electric light in the basement of his house, it is hard for him at first to think to turn out the light at night when he retires, and as a consequence the light often burns all night. This is expensive and unnecessary, so there is a strong incentive for the man to find a plan which will insure the regular turning-off of the light at bedtime. The plan usually hit upon is the following: The electric switch that controls the basement light is beside the basement stairway. The man learns to look at the switch as he comes up the stairs, after preparing the furnace fire for the night, and learns to take hold of the switch when he sees it and turn off the light. Coming up the stairs means to look at the switch. Seeing the switch means to turn it. Each step of the performance touches off the next. The man sees that in order to make sure that the light will always be turned off, the acts must allbe made automatic, and each step must touch off the next in the series. At first, the man leaves the light burning about as often as he turns it off. After practicing for a time on the scheme, the different acts become so well connected that he seldom leaves the light burning. We say that he has formed thehabitof turning off the light.

For a second illustration, let us take the process of learning that nine times nine equals eighty-one. At first, one does not say or write “eighty-one” when one sees “nine times nine,” but one can acquire the habit of doing so. It does not here concern us how the child learns what the product of nine times nine is. He may learn it by counting, by being told, or by reading it in a book. But however he first learns it, he fixes it and makes it automatic and habitual bycontinuingto say or to write, “nine times nine equals eighty-one.” The essential point is that at first the child does not know what to say when he hears or sees the expression “nine times nine,” but after long practice he comes to give automatically and promptly the correct answer. For the definite problem “nine times nine” there comes the definite response “eighty-one.”

For a third illustration, let us take the case of a man tipping his hat when he meets a lady. A young boy does not tip his hat when he meets a lady until he has been taught to do so. After he learns this act of courtesy he does it quite automatically without thinking of it. For the definite situation, meeting a lady of his acquaintance, there comes to be established the definite response, tipping the hat. A similar habit is that of turning to the right when we meet a person. For the definite situation, meeting a person on the road or street or sidewalk, there is established the definite response, turning to the right. The response becomes automatic, immediate, certain.

There is another type of habit that may properly be called an intellectual habit, such as voting a certain party ticket, say the Democratic. When one is a boy, one hears his father speak favorably of the Democratic party. His father says, “Hurrah for Bryan,” so he comes to say, “Hurrah for Bryan.” His father says, “I am a Democrat,” so he says he is a Democrat. He takes the side that his father takes. In a similar way we take on the same religious notions that our parents have. It does not always happen this way, but this is the rule. But no matter how we come to do it, we do adopt the creed of some party or some church. We adopt a certain way of looking at public questions, and a certain way of looking at religious questions. For certain rather definite situations, we come to take definite stands. When we go to the booth to vote, we look at the top of the ballot to find the column marked “Democratic,” and the definite response is to check the “Democrat” column. Of course, some of us form a different habit and check the “Republican” column, but the psychology of the act is the same. The point is that we form the Democratic habit or we form the Republican habit; and the longer we practice the habit, the harder it is to change it.

In the presidential campaign of 1912, Roosevelt “bolted” from the Republican party. It was hard for the older Republicans to follow him. While one occasionally found a follower of Roosevelt who was gray, one usually found the old Republicans standing by the old party, the younger ones joining the Progressive party. It is said that when Darwin published “The Origin of Species,” very few old men accepted the doctrine of evolution. The adherents of the new doctrine were nearly all young men. So there is such a thing as an intellectual habit. One comes to take a definite stand when facing certain definite intellectual situations.

Similar to the type of habits which we have called intellectual is another type which may be called “moral.” When we face the situation of reporting an occurrence, we can tell the truth or we can lie. We can build up the habit of meeting such situations by telling the truth on all occasions. We can learn to follow the maxim “Tell the truth at all times, at all hazards.” We can come to do this automatically, certainly, and without thought of doing anything else.

Most moral situations are fairly definite and clear-cut, and for them we can establish definite forms of response. We can form the habit of helping a person in distress, of helping a sick neighbor, of speaking well of a neighbor; we can form habits of industry, habits of perseverance. These and other similar habits are the basis of morality.

The various kinds of habits which we have enumerated are alike in certain fundamental particulars. In all of them there is a definite situation followed by a definite response. One sees the switch and turns off the light; he sees the expression “nine times nine” and says “eighty-one”; he sees a lady he knows and tips his hat; in meeting a carriage on the road, he turns to the right; when he has to vote, he votes a certain ticket; when he has to report an occurrence, he tells it as it happened. There is, in every case, a definite situation followed by a definite response.

Another characteristic is common to all the cases mentioned above,i.e.the response is acquired, it does not come at first. In every instance we mighthave learned to act differently. We could form the habit of always leaving the light burning; could just as easily say “nine times nine equals forty”; we could turn to the left; we could vote the Republican ticket. We can form bad moral habits as well as good ones, perhaps more easily. The point is, however, that we acquire definite ways of acting for the same situations, and these definite ways of acting are called habits.

Habit and Nerve-Path.It has already been stated that a habit is a tendency toward a certain type of action in a certain situation. The basis of this tendency is in the nervous system. In order to understand it we must consider what the nervous system is like. Nerves terminate at one end in a sense organ and at the other end ultimately in a muscle.

In FigureII, A is a sense organ, B a nerve going from the sense organ to the brain C. D, E, F, G, and H are motor nerves going from the brain to the muscles. Now, let us show from the diagram what organization means and what tendency means. At first when the child sees the expression “nine times nine,” he does not say “eighty-one.” The stimulus brings about no definite action. It is as likely to go out through E or F as through D. But suppose we can get the child to say “nine times nine equals eighty-one.” We can write the expression on the blackboard and have the child look at it and say “nine times nine equals eighty-one.” Suppose the act of saying “eighty-one” is brought about by the nerve-current going out through nerve-chain D. By repetition, we establish a bond. A stimulus of a particular kind comes through A, goes over B to C, and out over D, making muscles at M bring about a very definite action in saying “eighty-one.”

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