Foreword

Men and women everywhere show a universal interest in the power of mind to affect the body and material conditions, which is the warrant for this introduction to the study of psychology. Inexperienced adventurers in this new world of mental activities are constantly asking for some safe guidance so that their feet shall tread the highway rather than the byways. We have presented enough of the principles of academic psychology that the student may feel assured that the later studies in applied psychology rest upon a sound basis.

The author presented these lessons as lectures during the period 1902 to 1922. Much of the illustrative material is left out. Occasionally we repeat an idea, but it is necessary in making a full statement of the case for a specific application.

We make no claim to originality for any of the matter here presented. Much has come through reading, more from years of practice, and some from within. We have seen it work often, and it will work for anyone who has the application to learn it and the patience and skill to apply it. This is just a beginning. It points out the Mental Highway. The journey is yours and it is before you. Go forth and find.

 

Chapter 1

First Steps in Mental Life

Psychology is the science of the mind. It begins with the soul, the ego, and proceeds to distinguish between that which is self and that which is not self. It defines the self as that which thinks, feels and wills. From the beginning, we direct bodily vision outward, and so does the soul move outward, away from itself. We can study mental movements and states by certain records of acts and facts, which the soul leaves.

The body’s eye is set for the vanishing point of vision. The nearer the object of vision, the more pronounced the strain upon the eye. The bodily eye can see itself only by roundabout means, as for instance a mirror. So, too, the mind directs its activities more easily to things away from itself. Mind is concerned with the external objects entering the struggle for existence rather than with studying the method of their perception. We act before we theorize. We adjust the mind to find rest at the farthest distance of thought from itself. Just as mind comes to rest trying to think of space as topless, bottomless and endless, so it finds complete rest in contemplating Infinity.

We take our expressions for mental phenomena from the material world. Thus, we developed language. We represent the inner world of mind by symbols we borrow from the outer world of space. For instance, we call the affectional, emotional side of the mental life the "heart," and speak of emotion as "feeling."

We cannot exactly determine just when we begin to distinguish between the self and the not-self. Some think it is before birth, arguing a dim and hazy sense of consciousness.

The new born child’s cry does not clearly have any element of conscious activity, but we regard it as the first step of conscious life. The second step is that the child notices the light, usually on the second day. The light attracts him if it is not too strong, but if too strong, he tries to hide from it. The child can fix his gaze on what attracts him after the third week. Then he begins to notice sounds, and recognizes his mother as the source of nutrition at two or three months. Until he recognizes his mother, we call the steps of his conscious life "sense-perceptions." Yet that experience brings a series of advanced steps of past sense-perceptions, and this stream of memory-images furnishes material for comparison with the present sense-perception and enables him to recognize them as caused by the same object.

This comparison of his memory-images with sense-perception, leads to a third step of conscious development, for it produces the idea of her as the source of nutrition. From this develops the pleasure in having his stomach filled, and of pain if deprived of her presence too long. As the conscious life develops more rapidly, he discovers that he has hands, and that he can use them to draw things to him or push them away.

Then the personifying faculty becomes active. Often he conceives that his hands or feet are beings apart from him, so that he will offer to share his bread with his foot even after a year. This personifying faculty, coupled with a vivid imagination, makes his world of mental images and ideas a world of reality to him. He lies normally and without moral turpitude. His mind follows his mental images much as a dog chases his tail. For the time being, it is a thing apart from his own personality.

These first steps in the development of conscious life in the child are, in a word, the psychology of humanity. We may sum the life of primitive peoples in the simple elements of the struggle for existence, as eating, drinking, sleeping and reproduction.

Here the personifying faculty is also very active. They dreamed of people, dream-people who were gods of good or evil — mostly the latter, to whom they attributed more strength of character than the dreamers themselves possessed. Darwin records the case of a savage who beheld himself for the first time in a mirror, and remarked: "I see the world’s spirit." To his simple mental processes, it was not a reflection, but a real spiritual thing.

As the child or the primitive human begins to know himself as a rational being, he recognizes other people like him.

He knows that they have minds, feelings, thoughts, and sensations, by analogy with his own. He can formulate certain laws of the mind, and definite relationships between the mind and the body by comparing their experiences with his own. Later he discovers the difference between the conscious and unconscious activities of the mind, and finally formulates the psychological elements, or Cognition, Feeling, and Will.

The study of the mind is difficult because mental states are so changeable, nor can we reproduce exactly any mental state or experience. Even the same object does not always appear the same on any two days, just as a photographer will not take an identical picture on successive days though he uses the same camera and light.

Our mental outlook is constantly changing, and determining the exact reliability of any individual’s observations is difficult. For instance, one person hears a voice when no objective speaker is near. To him it is a voice from the spirit-world. Another will report the same experience as the voice of his inner self. Either may be correct, but both are unreliable, since conveying just what the phenomenon was is difficult, and because the interpretation of it biases the impression. For these reasons, both objective and subjective experiences are often useless as working material in the study of mental operations.

Using the law of relativity, we test our mental states and experiences by those of others, and so prevent one-sidedness due to personal peculiarity. Our natural temperament, our conditions of life, and our special experiences direct the stream of our conscious life. If our experiences vary radically on some given point, we may need help to compare our ideas and experiences with others’, with our other experiences, and with the facts as they are.

One woman had lived for years with the sense of impending disaster, and had been expecting to die for years. Her recovery began with facing the fact that not one of her forebodings had ever happened, and by showing her that humanity’s organized experience is summed up in the words: "I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God." Romans 8:38-39.

The study of mental phenomena calls for us to exercise that faculty of the mind by which we consider a proposition from all sides and form an opinion in harmony with all the facts. It uses not only one’s own experiences but the experiences of others and the current working facts in the case and can forecast the outcome of an adventure or the solution of a problem.

 

Chapter 2

Mind and Body

We draw all of our knowledge of mental and physical states from two distinct sources, mind and body, which seem to overlap each other. Some things are purely material in character, as for instance, the patella reflex, which makes the toe kick upward when the tendon is struck just below the knee. No mental action seems to cause this movement whatever, as no physical action may be involved in the mental process of recalling a past sensation.

Yet we cannot always trust physical action and sensation to report facts as they are, any more than the mind can depend upon its report of facts. For instance, gallstones can cause referred pain below the shoulder blade. Seeing an optical illusion is merely projecting a purely mental state into visual form. We need to closely scrutinize the facts of the mind and the body before we accept and interpret them as realities.

Usually we see the distinction between material and mental things in that all material things appear in space. They have the dimensions of length, breadth and thickness, and we may trace them to a movement in space.

Mental states have no such relationship. We cannot think of a state of consciousness having connection with space, save perhaps in a symbolical way.

Inertia is a basic law of matter in motion, without which natural science would be impossible. We must explain every material movement by another material movement. For instance, a point in space cannot get up and move about of its own accord. Some material movement is in the background to explain every other physical movement.

A second law of matter in motion, called the conservation of energy, says that matter is not destroyed. The form changes but the sum of the material is not lost. The next step is that the energy bound up in or represented by matter is similarly conserved. The fine form of the energy in a steel spring represents the lower form of energy in pig iron, together with heat and hammering.

Every movement upward calls for the outlay of energy, compensated for by the higher form attained. This principle applies in all the physical processes. In the higher and more complex forms of material activity, as when the mental life and its instrument, the nervous system, influences the material energies, we find a gradual emergence into a field where we must keep relative values clearly in mind.

A nervous system in embryonic form exists in plant life, is definite in animal life, and fully developed in human beings. This system is the instrument by which we pass from purely material energy to mental energy.

The lowest form of nervous activity is the reflex, as when an afferent nerve carries a pin prick to a nerve bunch, called a ganglia, from which returns an impulse by a motor nerve, causing the contraction of a muscle and movement of the part. The mind has no part in this action. For that reason, those animals with the least cerebral power are most richly endowed with reflexes.

The smaller the cerebral or thinking power, the greater the reflex activity. The converse is true — the greater the brain power, the less the reflex activity, which marks the measure of a cuttlefish and a human. Likewise the organs of the body, such as the heart and stomach, profusely supplied from the sympathetic nervous system and the least under the control of the conscious mind, are equipped with reflexes, while the organs innervated from the cerebrospinal system have few or none of the reflexes.

The cerebrum elaborates, assorts and determines the values of these reflexes. In other words, the reason, seated in the brain, monitors incoming body sensations, determines their values, controls their reflexes, and decides the values of the impressions and illusions of the mind arising from them.

One can easily inhibit the reflexes of sneezing, blushing, fainting, weeping or laughing, by simply diverting the attention to another idea or sensation. The cure of a facial tic is a process of suppressing the reflex actions of muscles that should move only under motived impulse. The cure of most mental obsessions consists in replacing them with deliberate ideas.

Every reflex must rest periodically. A constantly stimulated reflex will wear out, and not respond. A monotonous physical action or mental process will eventually result in the loss of power to continue that action. Consciousness becomes less active as we hold the mind to one monotonous idea or problem. Just as monotonous sensation or sound tends to put the body to sleep, so monotony of idea tends to put the mind to sleep. All sorts of cranks and partisans are born of such a mental process, to say nothing of the more pronounced abnormal types of mental life.

Variety in food, etc., is essential to the highest physical activity and health. The change of ideas, the recognition of change, and the ability to see the difference between one experience and another, is essential to mental health. Also, we must be able to recall and reproduce yesterday’s experiences so that we may compare them with today’s. Finally we must be able to recognize the unity of our mental life — to know, to know that we know, to know what we know, to know ourselves as knowing beings. A unity in consciousness exists, which must include all life’s experiences if we would remain in both mental and physical health.

We may clearly distinguish between the body and the mind, yet they are so intimately united that we may hypothesize that they are the dual expression of a being in the background. This being partakes of what we call the spiritual nature, which whether it first expresses itself in one, invariably finds expression in other, body or mind. Our mental activities take on corresponding physical form, while the mind reflects our physical conditions.

We may spend our lives curing the mind so that we may in turn cure the body, or doctoring the body to heal the mind. The logical thing is to heal and set in harmony the real spiritual being back of them so that it will express health through them.

Chapter 3

Conscious, Subconscious and Superconscious

The mind in action is conscious, subconscious and superconscious. We are aware of all conscious activity. We are aware of some subconscious activities expressed in our dreams, mingled with our conscious mentation, and in the functional operations of our bodies. The vast part of subconscious activity never rises to the plane of consciousness.

We know superconscious activity as it expresses in our dreams, in a vision, and consciously as a special illumination. The superconscious must express all its operations in symbolism, symbols created by the conscious and subconscious. Apart from these symbols, we cannot intelligibly describe the things known in superconscious.

We may cease to be conscious of the feelings and experiences of life anytime because of the weakness of their individual elements, because the connection between them ceases, or because sleep or some artificial hypnotic inhibits them. They continue unconsciously until the inhibition passes or else the activities of life break down the body because of lack of conscious oversight. A physical stimulus may take effect without any sensation, as when food arrives in the stomach, exciting the flow of gastric juice, starting peristaltic motion, and starting the liver and pancreas. Yet we are aware only of the mechanical part of this process, the chewing and swallowing, and the general feeling of satisfaction that results. We may have ideas and experiences of which we are, at the time, largely unconscious. For instance you may be unconsciously in love. You do not know it. However, everyone else does, and eventually it emerges into your consciousness.

Memory furnishes another field in which to observe the action of the conscious and the subconscious. Memory reproduces mental images of experiences and ideas. These seem to be lost, but we store up their impressions. Often they spring up spontaneously, at other times we recall them by a little conscious effort and association, while very often they refuse to come into consciousness no matter how much we may try to recall them. Then we resort to the time-honored device of turning the attention to other things, and a subconscious trigger causes the memory-image to emerge into mental view.

We often study some problem, gather a mass of facts about it, attempt to set them in order, and the conscious effort ends in confusion and disorder. When we abandon the conscious effort, the subconscious, which has been at work all the time, has a chance to project into consciousness a perfect plan or outline of the subject, which is a logical deduction from the main facts. If we fail to solve a problem, we lie down to sleep, and in the dream state the subconscious can reveal the solution, which it has already grasped.

In the act of hearing, the passing of the vibration through the half dozen steps of transmission to the brain are all unconscious, yet they are an integral part of the process of hearing and classifying of sound, which is a conscious action.

We never really become aware of many subconscious links in all conscious work. A proposition, which we learned to understand by means of proof, remains long after we forget the proof itself. Most of the things we believe are bare outlines, the reasons for which we have forgotten, if we ever knew them.

Many conscious ideas arise from some subconscious decision as, for instance, those qualities classed as instinct, tact, etc. Selfish tendencies often persist after the first causes have passed away. A person begins to drink to drown trouble and continues drinking, unaware that his motive has subconsciously shifted. His only possibility for a cure will be by discovering a motive powerful enough to hold him, and by arousing his will power to carry that motive into effect.

Conscious motives pass, but their effects remain in the subconscious. Instinct acts for ends of which we are not conscious at all. Conscious efforts leave behind them subconscious effects. Four hundred years of the spirit of Egypt had so permeated the subconscious life of Israel that it required generations to eradicate it. It takes more than one generation to erase the effects of slavery from the consciousness so that one will not wince at the crack of the whip.

It is also true that what one does mechanically may eventually gain complete control over the conscious and the subconscious, and he will do the thing wholeheartedly. Take a person whose whole habit of life has been pessimistic and depressed, and who is accustomed consequently to being weak and ill. Let him start in the most mechanical way to affirm the positive side of life (joy, hope, and love), and very soon it will sink into his conscious and subconscious. The new habit will change his whole mental and physical condition.

We may also conceive and carry conscious and subconscious processes simultaneously. We can do any automatic task while carrying on a totally different mental process, and be totally oblivious to what our fingers are doing. Knitting is a good example.

This interplay of conscious and subconscious is ever present in our life of thought, emotion and action. Things that move us profoundly have large elements of subconscious ideation in them. Much of the emotional activities like love, hope, and faith, is subconscious. The subconscious facts and processes lie below all the sharply defined conscious processes, merely waiting some shock or movement to project them into full consciousness.

The study of the dream state, intermediate between the conscious and the subconscious, is instructive. Dreams may reveal the connection between our sleeping and waking states, and the relations of the conscious and subconscious. In all our dreams we may usually discover some relation between the substance of our dream and the facts of the waking state, either recent or remote.

The subconscious is always connected with the conscious world by touch, sound and the other senses. A soldier can sleep in the midst of a battle, yet will awaken at a whispered signal. A mother will sleep soundly, yet will awaken at the first movement of her child. We may set our mind to awaken at a certain hour, and sleep undisturbed until then. These all illustrate the interplay of conscious and subconscious activity in our waking and sleeping states.

Analyzing a person’s dreams will often detect the presence of a hatred for or fear of some person or thing, or the unsuspected influence of some past act, which fills the life with disharmony, bringing ills to both body and mind.

Expecting very much improvement will be useless until they consciously remember these secret states and acts; the very explanation of such conditions will often begin the cure. We need to address any idea that begins to assume prominence in sleeping or waking states, at once.

 

Chapter 4

Elements of Consciousness

All states of consciousness contain the same elements. The difference in the quality of these states arises from the quantity of one element of consciousness, for instance the elements of thinking occupy a larger place than those of feeling. Knowing the elements and their combinations that make up the various states of consciousness is vital. We may isolate and analyze any single experience to learn just what factors of the mind are most prominent.

The generally accepted classifications are cognition, feeling, and will. Cognition includes sensations, representations, and thoughts. Will includes impulse, purpose, and resolve. The two denote the conscious sides of life, which we turn toward the outer world. Cognition enables us to form an image of the external world and of ourselves as a part of it, while Will enables us to react on that world.

Feeling is the side that faces the inner and unseen factors of experience. It cannot become an element of a percept or image. Feeling may rise to become an inner illumination on the stream of ideas and sensations. The feeling elements, as contrasted with the other conscious elements, act independently. For instance, feeling does not necessarily accompany any definite condition.

In the maturity of a normal life, cognition and will assert themselves to balance feeling, but activity is free from feeling. Neither is cognition separate from will. The rule is that the fewer elements of cognition and will, the more feeling, sensation and passion.

A state of life where the struggle for existence is not immediate is the only condition under which a definite distinction between the various elements of consciousness is possible. The psychological elements are not isolated, since we must react perpetually and instantaneously upon the external world, where our position in the universe determines our life, and where we must bring our surroundings into harmony with ourselves, or ourselves with them. Science and art do not develop, and the shady sides of consciousness, such as depression and sentimentality do not appear. In the "simple life" people are not "nervous."

A certain mood or feeling always accompanies thought. Activity of thought does not exist apart from feeling.

Knowledge becomes a power in the mind because of this feeling. A form of feeling, beyond the immediate control of cognition and will, is present in the passions associated with self preservation and the propagation of the race. Yet usually all memory and synthesis reveal activity, just as in the use of the eye, we must will to see if we would see aright.

An analysis of the lower life forms shows the primitive consciousness embraces not only feelings of pleasure and pain, but also motor-sensations by which these lead to movement, as in the Monera which expands for food purposes and contracts for defense. Others show the power to apprehend the difference between the stimulus of that which is food and that which is non-food.

A fundamental frame of mind, called the vital feeling, is the result of the general state of the organism as influenced by the normal or abnormal consciousness of the vital processes. It is an obscure mood of whose causes we are not at once conscious, for we are not always able to localize the stimuli that produce the feeling.

In some forms of heart disease and some mental diseases that produce disquiet and melancholy, the sufferer does not discover the causes of these frames of mind. Obscure impulses and vague desires arise at puberty the menopause, yet it is all beyond his comprehension.

We see the close relation between feeling and will in the fact that only a strong and lively feeling serves as a motive to the will. Cognitive elements do not in themselves lead to action. Both feeling and will are necessary.

We may take action with little or no apparent feeling back of the movement itself. So some movements arise out of Feeling, as in the heart, lungs, alimentary tract, and vascular system. Even the muscles and organs, usually under the control of the will, may be set in motion by strong emotion. Some of our involuntary movements, as shrinking from an attack, striking in anger, or reaching out the arms in sympathy, are probably involuntary emotional movements that were once purposive voluntary movements.

The law of the persistence of energy causes the contrast between the elements of consciousness. The more energy an individual spends on one form of reaction the less he can spend on another. He who expresses greatest emotion has least energy for action, since the voluntary control decreases as the involuntary action increases. Instinct is the primitive form of consciousness, and in this, the element of will is evidently the strongest.

 

Chapter 5

Cognition

The first of the psychological elements is cognition — the power to know, which we may think of as a series of sensations. These sensations are so complex that we can never be sure of a final possible analysis. Their apparent simplicity is really the result of previous combinations below the threshold of consciousness. For instance, the pleasantness of food depends on the delicate skin of the palate and is largely a matter of touch. Smell and sight also play a part, so that taste is a very complex sensation. Analysis of the sensations of hearing and sight reveal the same truth as to their complex nature.

Some mental elements are simpler than those distinctly received through the sensations. So that consciousness is the sum of sensations whose units themselves are not absolutely simple, but have arisen by a synthesis of still simpler elements.

As we consider the relative independence of sensation, we observe a far greater elasticity in some sense organs than others. Touch can distinguish a thousand distinct sensations per minute. We can distinguish thirty-five to forty electric shocks in the same length of time. Sight stands lowest in this respect. A swinging torch loses its identity in a circle of fire. Rapid visual images prevent the optic nerve from adjusting.

So, for a sensation to arise, the sensation must stand out from some background. An interval of time and a contrast between the present and the preceding sensation must exist. If we experience a strong electric shock, we will not notice a weaker one. We do not feel two pains in the same region. Producing temporary sensation in a given region suspends the previous sensation.

In a highly excited state of consciousness, even strong impressions get little hold. The ecstasy of hysteria does also.

The threshold of consciousness is not always at the same level. Contrast with preceding or simultaneous sensations raise it, and custom or accommodation lowers it. As in watching a bird’s flight into the distance, we can discern it long after we look for it for the first time or can possibly see it. That which appears as pleasure today may report as pain tomorrow, and vice versa.

The law of relativity is that a sensation’s relation to other sensations determines the existence and properties of it. Sensation arises from within and from without, as the sensation of effort and muscular sensation such as tension, fatigue and cramp. In all special sensations the movements of the organism play an important part, as in taste in connection with the movements of the tongue. The delicacy of touch in different parts of the body stands in definite relation to the mobility of those parts, being greater in the tongue, lips, and fingers, and least in the chest and back.

Sensation is influenced not only by preceding and simultaneous sensations, but by the idea of a sensation. Conscious life would be impossible without the repetitions of idea sensations. Not that we can exactly recall the sensation, however, we at once fuse the idea with the given sensation, and so it does not stand as a free and independent representation. We involuntarily classify it, and reference the sensation to previous ones of like kind.

In studying the mechanism of thought, sensation and perception appear to be associated with different brain centers. Sensation is possible in an animal deprived of the cerebrum, while perception can take place only when the cerebrum is intact. These centers are always connected. In cases of great mental shock from grief or of long continued mental strain, we see a functional disturbance called dissociation of ideas. The patient loses the power to combine sensations with corresponding reproductions, and in extreme cases produces a condition of dual personality in which the subject sees his friends and surroundings but fails to recognize them as such.

We may lose the power to understand written or spoken words, although the sight and hearing are unimpaired. The path from the concept to the word is open, but the path from the word to the concept is closed. We see the same difficulty occasionally in some diseases as in the after effects of paralysis in which the patient speaks an utterly different word from that which he intended or that which fits the occasion.

Not only can we recall and recognize single sensations, but whole groups of them, causing a complex perception, and most of our perceptions are complex. Thus consciousness has at its disposal a content that makes it independent of the influences of the moment. One may pass a life in memory, a life of thought, not merely a life of sensation and perception. One may perpetuate a state of pleasant melancholia indefinitely without reference to the present realities. We cannot, of course, completely isolate ourselves from the world.

There are two streams in consciousness, one being determined by the sensation present then, the ideas it tends to excite, and the other composed of a series of free ideas which previous sensation has aroused. Between these there is an inverse ratio. They try to suppress each another. They battle for the attention, sensation first having the upper hand, then representation. One moment we are under the control of sensation, reflection and deep thought bury us in the next.

There are three possible fields of conscious living. One is to give up wholly to the play of sensations (musical and artistic natures). Another is to value sensations only as they may be recognized and classified (observers and naturalists). The third is to live mainly in the realm of free ideas, in memory, imagination, and abstract thought.

The distinction between the free flow of ideas and the actual percepts of consciousness is that we come to recognize one as possibility and the other as reality. The distinction is possible because we have the power of becoming conscious that the elements produced were experienced in time past. Every state of consciousness has two poles.

Through one it is associated with preceding, through the other with succeeding elements of consciousness. Memory provides the connection with the past, but hope with the future. Life struggles forever forward and is moved to look backward only by experiencing check.

We gather the unity of conscious life from these facts about cognition. While we may never be fully conscious of ourselves, we may know that we know, what we know, and ourselves as knowing beings. Self is the sum of all consciousness. This synthesis of consciousness is always relative and struggling. If the contrasts in the content of consciousness are too great, the mold breaks.

The disquiet at puberty and the menopause are difficult to formulate into the unity of consciousness, but if we can hold them until they are fully incorporated into the content of conscious unity, we can probably recognize that the transition is continuous and consequent. The failure to synthesize any new or strange element in the content of consciousness marks the beginning of the dissolution of conscious unity.

The process begins with a disturbance of the vital feeling, which the patient cannot understand. The effects of existence are new and interrupted. The fundamental experiences do not repeat themselves. He begins to doubt his own existence and that of others. The things that happen to him are distant and shadowy. He becomes estranged from himself. He refers his experiences to another. Sometimes memory connection is lost and he is in a stage of double consciousness. Two states succeed each other and he appears a different person in each. When he reaches the stage where the different states and periods are lacking in common elements, the conscious life is in dissolution.

An illusion is an inaccurate perception, while an hallucination is an imaginary perception, or a perception without an object. Illusions of any of the senses may occur in normal people, while hallucinations are usually indicative of abnormal conditions. Goethe was able to produce hallucinations at will. When the subject recognizes the hallucination as such there is no serious reaction. For a complete understanding of these phases of consciousness see any standard work on psychiatry, or abnormal psychology.

 

Chapter 6

Memory

Memory connects every state of consciousness with every previous element of consciousness. It consists in the power to make ideas reappear in consciousness by their connection with other ideas, as well as the recall of an idea by virtue of its own power, as soon as we clear the hindrances out of the way.

Usually, we remember by noting the combination and connection of individual ideas, although some experiences impress themselves so strongly upon our attention that they arise apparently spontaneously. However, real memory images always arise from some experiences, while hallucinations emerge into consciousness without external conscious association. So much is this true that distinguishing them from actual percepts is often difficult. Usually the subject of hallucinations will stoutly maintain their reality, although occasionally ‘he can discern their unreality. They seem to arise from the same psychological basis as the dream image, namely, the action of the altered condition of the blood on the sensory brain centers. We may produce hallucinations voluntarily.

General conditions for clearness of memory images are as follows: First, they are clearer when the general vital process is fresh and energetic. Fatigue and exhaustion inhibit clearness of the impression of the image and of its recall. Second, time and repetitions of the thing to be recalled are factors in clear memory images. Third, we member ideas better if we put them into words, either written or spoken. Fourth, the simpler the ideas and experiences are, the more easily we recall them. Fifth, attention is the greatest factor in memory, for by it the mental images are so deeply impressed that they may be recalled at will.

The first general rule of memory is the association of ideas by similarity. Similarity means that there is a point of attachment in consciousness so that we instinctively recognize and recall by the similarity in sound, form or substance. We form associations by the more remote similarity expressed in analogies, parallels, metaphors, and allegories. We associate ideas by the relation between the whole and a part. We may call up an entire group of related ideas by the similarity of a present percept to one of the group, as a figure of a globe may call up the planetary system, and that in turn brings the law of gravitation into mind. Similarly, the end may call up the means, or the idea of a kitchen may call up that of a dwelling.

We also associate ideas by external connection, and in a sense we associate everything by external connection. We recall by similarity and by contrasts of the idea with us and the idea apart from us. Some sensations always rise together, as color, smell, touch and taste ideas, as for instance an apple leads to the idea of smoothness, of taste and smell, plus color. Or the idea of a friend brings up her house, her friends, etc. The idea of a wreck arouses the idea of a coast. A natural connection exists between an event, and the time and place of its occurrence.

An important instance of association is by outward connection with a thing and the sign of the thing. We naturally associate an emotion and its outward expression in idea. The sound of weeping, the shriek of terror are difficult to counterfeit, and we cannot misunderstand them. Sounds, articulate or otherwise, are the universal sign of all sensations and feelings because they command the greatest wealth of shades to express feeling. Its symbol, its word recalls an idea, or in a child, its signs. With many people, real thought is a sort of inner speech that will make them hoarse.

One person, in listening to a speaker and following closely his thought, would often have a spasm of the throat muscles followed by coughing. It is the instinctive impulse to put the idea in the universal sign of sound, for all ideas to be recalled readily ought to be written or spoken to form a symbol. This also fixes the attention upon it critically, and attention is the secret of memory.

Briefly the following memory rules will, if practiced, give one a perfect working memory: Repetition: Say it repeatedly again. Write it. Form a distinct mental picture of it. Contiguity: Relate the matter to be remembered to other things occurring simultaneously. Correlation: Attempt to link each thing to be remembered with an old idea of a similar nature. Bind new facts to old facts by relations of similarity, cause and effect, by whole and part, and other forms of association. Comparison: Note how the facts to be remembered compare with other facts on similar subjects already stored in the memory.

The law of recall: Simply say to yourself, "I want that name" or fact of any sort. Command it. If it does not come up into memory at once, turn the mind away from it and let the command work in your subconscious; often it will flash up in a few moments.

The alphabet: If you remember the first letter, start as if to speak words beginning with that letter, taking up the vowel sounds in turn and then combining them. As you use any of these rules, your memory will steadily develop until you will see what you wish to see, and hear what you wish to hear, and can recall their impressions with ease.

The art of forgetting is as great as that of remembering, and here the attention is the chief agent, just as it is in remembering. We forget by abstracting the attention away from the strong or obsessing idea to another. You must replace the troublesome idea by another of greater power; you must fill your mind with greater ideas of a different sort. If you have a vicious circle of ideas, then you must fill your mind with a circle of good ideas. Many afflicted people would be well and happy if someone could divert their attention from themselves for a short time. We may not easily obey the injunction to "forget it," but we can bring our will into action, direct our attention to other things and our troubles cease at once. This is the secret of the cure for many.

Logically following memory as a factor in cognition, the method of apprehending time and space arises. Mental phenomena make their appearance in the form of time, while physical phenomena appear in the form of space. That which is constant gives the sensation of time while that which is variable gives the idea of time. The idea of time involves the consciousness of change, and the repetition of certain states that we recognize. If we concentrate the attention and so prevent the notice of a succession of experiences, we will shorten both the time of the experience and the memory of it, as with Jacob to whom seven years seemed as no time because he so perfectly loved Rachel.

We apprehend space by three dimensions, length, breadth and thickness. We may reduce these to two or increase them to a fourth possible one. Sight and touch are the two senses with which the form of space plays an important part. We take the true measure of an object by touch, but estimate by sight.

As the final study in cognition, we come to the apprehension of things as real. How can we distinguish between mental health and mental disease, between hallucinations and reality? No single perception can decide it, nor can many percepts and their associated memories in the same individual determine it. Consciousness recognizes a reality independent of itself. All the sensations are those of resistance, and resistance brings the not-self in view. We must test a present perception by our other perceptions and those of others under similar conditions. We can apprehend the real only in this way. We cannot correct our illusions if we depend on ourselves alone, for there is no absolute continuity in experience, nor absolute repetition. We cannot exactly recall or completely explain any single phenomena.

The law of relativity applies here, for we determine every experience by another experience. Comparison is the fundamental form of cognitive activity at all stages of development. All proof is from several given premises. Little can be inferred from a single experience or premise. Time and space are always relative. Every experience that is on one side, as effect, is on the other side, as cause. All knowledge rests on the relation between the knowing subject and the object known.

The criterion of proving truth by the agreement of reality with knowledge seems impossible, and so we have to seek it in the world of consciousness and not outside. The criterion of reality is nothing else than the inner harmony and consistency of all thoughts and experiences. Therefore, the idea or experience that will not harmonize and be consistent with the trend of all one’s thoughts and experiences, must be set down as an illusion. If it shall usurp the place of and practically dispossess the usual ideas and experiences, it becomes marked as an hallucination. An illusion may not be serious in its effects, if we recognize and treat it as such, and do not take it seriously.

 

Chapter 7

The Psychology of Feeling

The second psychological element is feeling, which we shall study under the divisions of feeling and sensation and ideation. We have to distinguish between the two, for while the elements of feeling always predominate in the primitive stage, the cognitive elements are also present.

Strong contrast between pleasure and pain marks every feeling, and such a contrast would not be possible without some memory of a pleasant or unpleasant sensation. Contrast or associations in memory produce the very intensity of pleasure and of pain. Real feeling is mental.

Even physical pain is possible only after some form of mental activity. A pin prick is a sensation carried to the brain and associated with present or past experiences of similar kind to detect whether it is pleasant or otherwise. An elemental form of pain, like the toothache, as compared with the pain that arises out of sorrow, has this distinction: Sorrow involves memories and association with the past in the sense of something lost that cannot be returned, and from which there is no reaction. We react from the toothache, and no particular central process or thought is passing through the brain.

Central processes in the brain itself generally play a large part with sorrow and trouble. Sensation itself may be perfectly simple, but the feeling that arises from it may be complex and be produced later. For example a person puts his hand suddenly into hot or cold water.

First is the sensation of touch, sensation then recedes, and the feeling of heat or cold arises. The element of time must separate sensation and feeling, or else what we call feeling would probably not exist. It follows that we could feel no pain without memory. No sensation would be reported as pain unless it is associated with the same sort of memory. Pain, to be noticed as such, must spread and it must have duration. The previous illustration of the hand in hot or cold water includes all these conditions.

We have studied the psychology of pain more than we have the psychology of pleasure. Few people become introspective concerning their pleasures, while the vast majority become introspective concerning their troubles and pains. Exuberance marks the experience of joy or pleasure, but pain or trouble causes us to dig into it to find the cause. We often become morbid and say, "If I had only done it this other way."

The absence of any individual local sensations marks general sensations of comfort or discomfort, and we call the result the vital feeling. Hope and fear is bound up in the vital feeling. If the general vital feeling is comfort, attended by the mental feeling of ease and pleasure, then hope is in the forefront. If the general vital feeling is of discomfort, then a sense of being ill at ease comes, bringing fear, despondency and despair.

General sensations develop into specific ones. The general sensation of hunger at first is not localized, but later a sensation of oppression arises, then the stomach growls, the mouth dries, we distinctly sense the need of food and water. We thus pass from general to particular sensation and have localized pain and discomfort. Our self-preservation instinct is aroused, prompting us to secure relief.

Similarly, the general sensations of touch and movement may easily become particular distinct sensations of comfort or discomfort. Touching soft velvet produces a sense of smoothness, while the other gives the sense of roughness. In either case, the sensation is carried out of its original class.

Other sensations, such as taste and smell, pass easily from the character of general to particular sensations, and by so doing they preserve the individual welfare. For instance, we may eat without any particular sensation, delight or otherwise, until we taste something bitter or unusual, then self preservation immediately calls the taste sense into its service. Smell is also a general sensation that protects and preserves the welfare of the body.

Sight and hearing serve the purpose of self preservation, too. Yet since the things we see or hear may also introduce either pleasurable or unpleasant elements, we class them in a higher order of sensations than smell and taste, etc. The special forms of sound, silence, light and darkness exercise a finer play of feelings than just the preservation of life. We relate them to the vital feelings, as we see in the pleasure we experience in the light, the play of colors, etc.

The effect of light is to increase activity. The impulse to act is a first form of the impulses of life. Plants in a room turn toward the side that provides the strongest light. Mental and physical activities are more pronounced in the light than in the darkness. Light stimulates the activity of the body and mind, while darkness lowers their activity. Too much light during sleeping time is not good. Some people would sleep better if they wore a mask over the eyes.

This leads to the psychology of color. Reds, purples, orange and yellows are all stimulating colors, while blue is cooler and subduing. Yellow and dark blue are the two opposite poles in the psychology of color. Green produces the impression of great repose without the cold of blue or the excitement of red. ("He makes me to lie down in green pastures.") Violet has more soberness and depression than the blues, and more liveliness than the reds. We distinguish red in its greater restlessness and force in its influence on the feelings. One "red room" may be permissible in a home, but only the phlegmatic should frequent it. A general red scheme of color will affect a family as a red rag does a bull! The color irritates the path through the nerves of the eye, thence to the feelings and emotions, people "see red," and go on the rampage.

Sound affords pleasure because it stimulates activity. Nothing is more depressing than a soundproof place, for mentation comes to a standstill, and sensation eventually ceases. Sounds are pleasant or unpleasant, as they combine in one way or another. Coming from silence, any sort of noise is a relief, but soon one develops a desire for more harmony and less noise. We can stand total silence less than anything else. Heaven itself could stand only half an hour of it.

From this analysis, we may conclude that activity in the sensations is bound to cause a corresponding rise in the feelings. So we may trace a gradual rise of the general sensations into the particular, and in harmony with it, a series of stages of the vital feeling, up to the finer shades of feelings in the higher senses. The rule is that the higher the feeling element becomes, the more the sensation and cognitive elements disappear. What the sensation loses in strength, it gains in richness of feeling.

Feeling and Ideation: Sensations, and ideas develop feelings. Without ideas, feeling has no direction, that is, it is not about some particular thing. Pain becomes, for instance, aversion when associated with its cause. The next step in the development of feeling after aversion is anger, then hatred. A child cries at the sight of a cup from which he has tasted nasty medicine. That is a form of sorrow, determined by the idea of cause, and the contemplation of its possible repetition.

The psychology of love is the development of a general feeling of pleasure. It is inseparable from impulse or desire. Desire is impulse directed by ideas. We first find pleasure in the presence of another. We probably cannot define it, but we find an egotistic desire to continue that pleasure. The next step is to possess the cause of the pleasure to prolong that pleasure. The sense of a proprietorship arises, then responsibility and protection, as the process grows into what we know as love. Anyone who "falls in love at first sight" passes through these same steps quickly, although most of them are intuitive.

Feelings arise more slowly than ideas. Having the feeling of sorrow is much easier than it is to conjure up what the feeling of sorrow is like. You can recall the fact of sorrow a great deal easier than you can recall the exact feeling.

We develop hope and fear in the same way. Hope is based on certain expectations from which basis it reaches a certainty of things that are not yet in sight. Fear grows from the idea that we will be unable to meet certain contingencies, then resignation and despair follow.

Sometimes, when hope and fear alternate, they produce a mental state called melancholy. It may have a very pleasing side to it, so that arousing the person is often difficult. The delight is not in the fact that they are miserable and making all around them miserable, but in the contemplation of the character and good points of the person or thing lost, and the hope of possessing, of being with him again.

We come to the egoistic or personal and sympathetic. Pleasure and pain depend very much on whether the experience favors our self-preservation or not. That seems to make life a quite selfish thing, but we cannot eliminate it from the equation. The sense of personal power is essentially the sense of self-assertion, the conscious ability to achieve. That is the egoistic feeling, which enters all life. It furnishes the measure of love for our neighbor, and is to some a sufficient motive for enduring a cross.

Sympathy is a feeling based on memories of experiences, good or bad, which comes up when we find another having a parallel experience. We commiserate with them. Empathy is a sort of transition by which we place ourselves in the other person’s condition. From this arises one of the higher feelings, classed as altruistic, such as compassion. An effort to understand another’s trouble may lead to sympathy, and empathy arises from that. Sympathy leads to idealistic love, from which all the social instincts grow, the impulse to feel, and suffer, and rejoice with our kind. Those who give feel sympathy much more quickly than those who receive benefits. A nurse usually has more sympathy for a patient than a doctor, because she gives more.

Sharing sorrow is a more primitive form of sympathy than sharing joy. Sympathy is idealized in social, family, and patriotic directions, its one impulse being to embrace the object and protect it from further trouble, or to serve in official capacity, or to fight for the benefit of the State.

Sympathy delights in dwelling on adversity with all it causes. Empathy is exactly the reverse, for it objectifies any fact, good or bad, looks it over, and determines whether it has a right to call upon our higher feelings or not. While we cannot safely feel sympathy, anger, or love without in some sense expressing it, hating or loving without any thought of reward or return is possible.

This brings us to what we call ethical feeling, which consists in considering what is the effect of sympathy. How does sympathy advance the public welfare, justice, righteousness and the comfort of the few or many? Conscience, which we call the ethical memory, is the next step in this development. It weighs facts solely concerning their worth from the highest standpoint. From this ethical feeling grows the religious feeling and the religious feeling primarily produces fear. Fear created the first wrong notions of God. The Bible begins with a question of fear, "Where art thou?" This fear takes on the form of reverence when we discover that God is interested in our welfare and is working with us. Finally we reach the conception that God is Love. The first question of the New Testament is, "Where is he?"

All of the forms of feeling are traceable to the sense of self preservation, which is served when the general vital feeling is normal.

Abnormal feelings and mental states are merely the misguided efforts of the sense of self preservation to right that which is wrong, while all normal development of feeling psychologically tends toward the personal knowledge of the God of Love.

 

Chapter 8

Physiology and Biology of Feeling

The psychological elements, which we separate for the purposes of study, are in fact inseparable both in psychology and physiology. They are not centered in different parts of the body. Plato placed thought in the head, feelings like honor and courage in the breast, and the sensations, impulses, and passions in the lower part of the body. Aristotle attributed all sensation to the heart, while pure reason was not united in the corporeal functions at all. Descartes placed the phenomena of consciousness in the brain. Bell and Gall were the first psychologists of the 19th Century who placed all consciousness, whether it is cognition, feeling, or will, in the brain. Apart from the fact that certain sections of the brain influence certain parts of the body, very little basis seems to exist for the claims of phrenology, which determines one’s various tendencies and dispositions by the shape of the head.

Feeling, which is represented by greater extension of the nerve processes in the brain substance, seems to rise more slowly than cognition. However certain elementary feelings like fear and pain may arise without cerebral action. A rat, having the higher parts of his brain removed, will display signs of fear at the cry of a cat, showing that while no apparent connection with the brain exists, the vegetative organs, the viscera, still exercise a very important influence on the feelings. Doubtless the observation of these influences led to the idea of a conflict between feelings and cognition, between the heart and the brain, and placed humanity in warfare between the "law of his mind and the law of his members."

Feeling makes a greater demand on the nerve centers than does cognition. Cognition concentrates the energy in the brain, while feeling distributes its energy to every part of the body, especially the visceral tract. The sympathetic system furnishes their energy, and through its action sudden violent emotions, like sorrow or joy, may react on the heart and cause death. It may seem strange that two opposite feelings should produce the same result, but the strongest element in the feeling takes effect, not the nature of the feeling itself.

These effects are due to the influence of feeling on the vasomotor nerves, which close the arteries under the influence of sudden emotion, and drive the blood to the heart or brain with fatal results. The face turns pale under fright because the blood is driven to the heart. In blushing produces the opposite movement. A similar movement is apparent in sorrow, which produces tears. It is a question whether we weep because we are sorry, or are sorry because we weep.

The effect of fear on the bowels and kidneys shows that the emotions do affect the organs. Anger contracts the liver, and one gasps for breath when terribly startled. Thus it appears that the emotions decidedly influence the bodily functions, but it is not pronounced enough to claim a correspondence between every ill in the various parts of the body and some specific emotion. When the feelings are pleasurable, our muscles are firm and vigorous, our bearing is upright, our glance is frank, and our face is open. On the other hand, if the feelings are unpleasant, the muscles loosen, bearing shrinks, the step shuffles, we look downhearted, and downcast.

The vasomotor nerves arise in the sympathetic system, and in the cerebrum, which explains the tremendous influence of the emotions. The vasomotor nerves furnish nerve impulses to the blood vessels’ walls, causing them to contract and expand, and are in direct contact with both the cerebral and sympathetic systems. Thus, it becomes clear why every emotion like hope or joy or love makes for health while fear, anger, and hatred make for disease. If the emotions’ effect on the sympathetic system can stimulate the circulation and produce a sensation of health or disease, then the organ may get out of order, and affect the emotions adversely. If mental strain, and depression can produce constipation, then constipation arising from other causes may and does produce mental depression and nervousness. In fact, such a vicious circle as this is present in most nervous disorders. [In physiology, this is called a positive feedback loop.]

As a rule, things that we understand to contribute to our general well being are pleasurable. Sugar is a large nutritional factor, and its pleasurable sweet taste is based upon that instinctive feeling that it contributes to the general vital feeling of welfare. Some things that are pleasant momentarily are harmful, while substances bitter to the taste are helpful. We must judge by the outcome, not by the momentary impression. Pleasure evokes cognition, from which springs the desire to secure that which gives pleasure. This calls forth the will to make the object a permanent possession. Pain follows the same method. We recognize by a mental process that a certain thing is harmful and call the will into action to push it away. Pleasure and pain are educative. The first appearance of pain warns us that the body is on the retrograde, while the feeling of pleasure tells us that things are moving along favorably.

The law of relativity for the feelings states that the value of a thing is determined by its relation to the individual’s interest. A fortune left to a person with millions already will not be as valued as a $5000 bequest would to a person who has lived in the clutches of debt. As we distinguish between the various shades of a color, so we can take pleasure and pain, which are fixed forms of feeling, and determine them by their contrasts, one with the other. By contrasting the various shades, we may see a person’s disposition, his attitude toward the various shades of pleasure and pain, which is a sort of regulator. If we drop below the usual level of feeling, our disposition tends to rise again, while if our pleasure rises above a certain level, our regulator will soon bring us to the normal.

Heredity, experiences of life, and the circumstances under which we live determine our disposition. If the shift between pleasure and pain is great enough to break the unity of conscious experience, and reaches beyond what seems normal for the disposition to grasp, we lose our regulator and have a divided personality. Many such cases occur from shock or grief, and unless they can reassociate the personality, and weld the stream into one again, the consciousness is in danger of ruin.

We express feeling fully only when we contrast it with another feeling. Feeling general moves from one strong feeling to its opposite. "If you laugh before you eat, you will cry before you sleep." Often, peace of mind comes to a person only when they have expended tremendous passions or emotions. Many people cannot overcome temptation at first, but only when it reaches great heights. Conscience awakens in some criminals only after they have committed a heinous crime. Religious conversion often occurs after working conscience-stricken feeling up to exhaustion, followed with emotionally setting the ideas of peace and forgiveness. The swing of the feelings gives that spectacular exhibition its emotional fervor.

Underlying all such experiences is the fact that continued action tends to exhaust any sort of feeling. A person may suffer until he loses the power to suffer. Then he may rest and gather himself up for more suffering. Our capacity for constant suffering or pain is therefore limited. Happiness, through its very excess, may lead to unhappiness, while pain may exhaust itself and end in pleasure.

The ancients considered wonder to be the beginning of wisdom because it set new currents of feeling in motion, keeping life fresh and pleasure unalloyed. The person who knew how to find new inspiration for his wonder would come to know the secret of all living experiences. The constant repetition of any act or feeling weakens the freshness of its experience unless enough time elapses to let wonder enter again. By adding wonder, each repetition enlarges the capacity for enjoyment.

Emotion is a sudden burst of feeling, a storm of feeling, while passion is a continual steady stream of feeling. Feeling begins in emotion, and if sufficiently fed, ends in passion. Anger and sorrow are emotions that develop into the passions of revenge and depression. The law of relativity applies here: Repeating an emotion weakens it, while repeating a passion steadily strengthens it. Some formerly thought that reason and passion were in conflict, but they are not. Reason cannot and need not try to suppress any sort of passion. Reason can affect passion only by producing another passion and holding it before the mind as a substitute for the original.

The criterion of feeling well or ill is the vital feeling. If the vital feeling is lowered, then physical and mental depression is apt to be present. If the vital feeling is raised, then mental and physical exhilaration results. Pleasure, to grow, does not need pain in the background.

The greatest pleasures often have their source another pleasure that is relatively of the same class, though weaker in feeling. All pleasure is a positive state. It does not matter whether a sensuous joy is based on fact, illusion, or chimera. It is joy for all that, and a real thing. Likewise the hallucination of pain is just as real as if it were based on a physical lesion. The hypochondriac does feel real physical discomfort, and we cannot argue him out of the experience. His experiences are as real as if they had physical foundation.

We can draw a median line between the strongest pain and highest pleasure. Approached as pain, it becomes pleasure, while approached as pleasure, it becomes pain. So that the fact and the degree of pleasure or pain are determined quite largely by the mental approach to the experience. We find pleasure in many things because we expect to find it, while we experience pain very often because we expect it to hurt.

 

Chapter 9

The Will

Will power or the action of the will is a conscious choice between two or more alternatives. A choice implies that a content may be chosen, and this content must acquire a value in consciousness. Volitional choice is a result of certain developments of cognitive feeling and does not exist in the lower stages of consciousness.

The simplest organisms have the power to set up movement independent of an external stimulus. Internal changes in the organism, in which potential energy is set free, cause this automatic movement. We see an example in the function of nourishment, which is a fundamental organic process. The range of automatic movement is limited, for life depends upon a definite relation of reciprocity between the organism and its environment. To live entirely separate from environment would involve absolute spontaneity, acting without any outer influence or impulse whatever, and the effect would be similar to that of an animal living on its own fat. They soon exhaust the supply.

Automatic ideas may also arise from chemical changes in the blood, in which carbonic acid and other poisons directly affect the higher nerve centers, causing what we know as automatic ideas such as dreams, images, hallucinations and other mental movements. Movement precedes or acts before sensuous perceptions and is at first independent of all outer stimuli. Fichte said that "the most natural thing in us is the impulse to action." The impulse to action arises before consciousness of the actual world and is not derived from it. However, the independence of sense perceptions indicated by these spontaneous movements cannot be absolute.

We class the next step in movement as reflex. It is the effort to adapt the organism to the external conditions and to decide its activity by the nature of its surroundings. We see an illustration in the action of the foetus: In responding to pressure from outside, it does not show conscious deliberation, but a reflex or mechanical movement, which is an advance from the automatic-toward-actual volition and the motived action growing out of it.

When the cerebrum shares in determining movement by elaborating the impulse, we have a higher spontaneity called instinctive movement. Instinct requires a stimulus to set it to work, but the motor tendencies implanted in the individual determine the resultant action far more than the nature of the impulse itself. We might expect a certain stimulus to lead a person to do a certain thing, but his constitutional temperament may give the movement an entirely different direction. In other words, a sort of hereditary tendency seems to move in a certain direction upon the action of a certain stimulus. Science is still debating whether instinct is really linked to and located in the cerebrum, but it is a fact that in some animals, the removal of the cerebrum or parts of it, will destroy the feeding and sexual instincts, which seem to be centered there.

Having discussed the field of automatic, reflex and instinctive movements, we question what the exercise of the will really is. Science links volition to the cerebrum. The ideas of the end of the action, the means of its realization, and a vivid feeling of the worth of that end when we attain it characterize volition, so that actual volition comprehends cognition and feeling and its own action. The movement from automatic to volitional is parallel to the development from unconscious to conscious activities. Volition occurs when we are conscious of activity and are not entirely receptive. We would have no volition if we were absolutely receptive and passive, since cognition and feeling are synthetically bound up in the activity of the will, so that we base the existence of consciousness upon volition.

We know because we will to know, feel because we will to feel, and see because we will to see. The stronger the individual sensations and ideas are, the more volitional activity falls into the background. That means that more of the automatic and reflex are action involved in it. Automatic movements resulting from exclusive and repeated sensations all tend to produce hypnotic states.

Steadily stroking the fingers from the center of the forehead down to the bridge of the nose (in fact on any part of the body), constantly repeating a monotonous sound, or insistently repeating a single idea, all tend to inhibit volitional activity and produce hypnotic states.

Any single sensation of unvarying intensity, sustained for any length of time, tends to suspend the will and objective consciousness.

Our attention to any stimulus or excitation may be voluntary or involuntary. The stimulus itself causes the powers of the mind to turn in a certain direction in involuntary attention, while in voluntary attention the powers of the mind have already turned before the stimulus has reached us. Choice ranges from purely instinctive up to rational motived action of the volitional powers.

We see what we will to see, and usually only what we will to see. The inspiration of the prophet, and of genius overall, arises because the volition commands inner illumination. Daniel saw his great visions, after a few days’ fast. He knew that he could exercise vision power by means of fasting. That he was sick certain days afterward was a necessary reaction. This very same fact explains some farfetched forms of philosophy and mysticism.

The will actively retains the connection between ideas in all our thinking. An inner action precedes all outer action, the end of the action draws our attention, the means of securing it, and the value of it when realized. Cognition begins with excitation. Will power ends with the starting of the motor impulse. The moment that I will for my finger to move, the will power ends in the physiological process called the transmission of impulse, which causes muscular action.

Many of our actions are instinctive and involuntary because we act from a memory of movement under similar impulse without distinct volition. We really will movements when we make then with a distinct intention directed to a certain end. This is not so much a memory of our actions, but a racial memory, which is what instinct really is. We may distinguish impulse and desire from instinct: Impulse and desire always possess an idea of the end, while instinct leads to means applied to an unconscious end.

The pleasure we anticipate at the end of the action supplies the motive for that action, although the end is not always satisfactory. For instance, an alcoholic’s desire for a drink is motivated by the sensations he anticipates, which are greater that the sensations that actually result. As we study the motives to determine the true self, we find the criterion to be those facts and feelings which in the course of our life have taken the deepest root in us. Our ruling passion is not determined by a single action, but by that which expresses itself out of the main channels of our consciousness.

Resolution is the highest form of the will’s action, and is the result of thought and feeling, which forms the single motive. The will is not creative, but modifying and selective. It further influences our ideas by isolation and combination. Sequence of thought and firmness of character are closely related because they imply the steady pressure of the will toward a chosen end. The will reacts upon feeling by preventing it from spreading, by arguing with it, and by inhibiting the organic movements that would result otherwise. Self-control consists in developing the power to limit and inhibit the play of the feelings. It is not well to try entirely to suppress the feelings, and many neurotic conditions arise in the suppression of feeling. A better way to control the feelings with the will is to change the external conditions with the purpose of changing internal movements. This will often greatly alter the state of feeling.

We may easily eradicate a headache or mental depression, by the diversion of a walk outside, filling the lungs with fresh air, and diverting our attention to other things. Gaining a clear insight into the cause of feeling will often react upon and modify the feeling.

Often we can greatly modify sorrow by resolutely facing its cause as an inevitable thing, and reach a state of resignation, and of trust.

The will reacts upon itself. Our ideas and feelings furnish the motives of the will, but we may turn them around to become the objects of will. In other words we may will to will. We may will to have a strong will and actually produce it, just as we may will to have a strong memory and get it by following the laws of memory.

Our will is limited to a single thing as its object. To change this object tends to weaken it. The will is strongest when we fix it upon the ultimate thing. "If any man wills to do his will, he shall know of the doctrine" is another way of saying that if we would seek and find the largest happiness, let us not make happiness itself the end, but something else, external to happiness, by the carrying out of which we attain to happiness.

All real conscious life is individual. The form the personality takes depends on what elements predominate. If cognition predominates, we have the critical tendency of mind, if feeling predominates we have the emotional tendency, and if will predominates we have the dogmatic, and stubborn tendencies. These come under the heading of temperament, and the organic constitution, genetic stock determines that.

Physical, mental, social, and hereditary tendencies supply the elements that create personal character. Everything in human life is relative. Nothing is absolute. Nothing has an absolute beginning or ending. That which is perfectly unexplainable in the individual is explainable in the species. We may explain the world through humanity and we may explain humanity through the world. We can go no further back than the necessities of thought require, but we must go that far.

The psychological method is to find an understanding of purely mental processes by their relation to the physical, and finding an explanation of the physical by its relation and interaction with the mental. The relative and human life understand the Absolute Life and its activities, while the Absolute, of which the human life is a partaker, explains humanity’s activities.

 

Chapter 10

The Mind in Action

The elements of consciousness are themselves compounded of other elements. Other elements of intellection make up cognition. Various other sensations make up sensation. Feeling of any specific kind is a combination of simple elements that have developed a sort of unity. So likewise various elements make up will power, or volition. So back of all conscious knowing, feeling, and willing, we find simple elements, the beginnings of which we know nothing.

Having any conscious conception or perception that is not itself admixed with unconscious influences is impossible for us, so that all conscious processes lead back into the unconscious, and we cannot fix any limit at which they stop. The mind is therefore conscious and unconscious, outer and inner, objective and subjective, in its action.

We must conceive of the mind as a unity, facing in two directions. We must not think of a dividing line in consciousness, above which we notice all things and below which we do not consciously know them. For what we call the plane of consciousness rises and falls. We can follow a bird in flight long after we are unable to locate it. One may follow a sound and can distinguish it when another will be unable to do so. Similarly, we may follow our thought processes to the borderland of sleep, stop at the threshold of consciousness and