In a preceding chapter we discussed man as an organism reacting
against an outside world and spurred on by internal activities
and needs. We discussed stimulation, reflexes, inhibition, choice
and the organizing activity, memory and habit, consciousness and
subconsciousness, all of which are primary activities of the
organism. But these are mere theories of function, for the
activities we are interested in reside in more definite
reactions, of which the foregoing are parts.
We see a dreaded object on the horizon or foresee a
calamity,--and we fear. That state of the organism (note I do not
say that STATE OF MIND) resulting from the vision is an emotion.
We fly at once, we hide, and the action is in obedience to an
instinct. But ordinarily we do not fly or hide haphazard; we
think of ways and means, if only in a rudimentary fashion; we
shape plans, perhaps as we fly; we pick up a stick on the run,
hoping to escape but preparing for the reaction of fight if
cornered. "What shall I do--what shall I do? finds no conscious
answer if the emotion is overwhelming or the instinctive flight a
pell-mell affair; but ordinarily memories of other experiences or
of teaching come into the mind and some effort is made to meet
the situation in an "intelligent" manner.
Here, then, is a response in which three cardinal reactions have
occurred and are blended,--the emotion, the instinctive action,
and the intelligent action; or to make abstractions, emotion,
instinct and intelligence. (Personally, I think half the trouble
with our thought is that, we abstract from our experiences a
common group of associations and believe that the abstraction has
some existence outside our thoughts.) Thus there arise in us, as
a result of things experienced, curious feelings and we speak of
the feelings as emotions; we make a race-old response to a
situation,--an instinctive reaction; our memories, past
experiences and present purposes are stirred into activity, and
we plan and scheme, and this is an intelligent reaction, but
there is in reality no metaphysical entity Emotion, Instinct,
Intelligence. I believe that here the philosophers whose mental
activities are essentially in the direction of forming abstract
ideas have misled us.
What I wish to point out is this: that to any situation all three
reactions may take place and modify one another. We are
insulted--some one slaps our face--the fierce emotion of anger
arises and through us surge waves of feeling manifested on the
motor side by tensed muscles, rapid heart, harsh breathing,
perhaps a general reddening of face and eyes. Instinctively our
fists are clenched, a part of the reaction of fight, and it needs
but the slightest increase of anger to send us leaping on the
aggressor, to fight him perhaps to the death. But no,--the
situation has aroused certain memories and certain inhibitions:
the one who struck us has been our friend and we can see that he
is acting under a mistaken impression, or else we perceive that
he is right, that we have done him a wrong for which his blow is
a sort of just reaction. We are checked by these cerebral
activities, we choose some other reaction than fight; perhaps we
prevent him from further assault, or we turn and walk away, or we
start to explain, to mollify and console, or to remonstrate and
reprove. In other words, "intelligence" steps in to inhibit, to
bring to the surface the possibilities, to choose, and thus
overrides the emotional instinctive reaction. It may not succeed
in the overriding; we may hesitate, inhibit, etc., for only a
second or so, before hot anger overcomes us, and the instinctive
response of fight and retaliation takes place.
These examples might be multiplied a thousandfold. Every day of
our lives situations come up in which there is a blending or an
antagonism between emotional, instinctive and intelligent
responses. In fact, very few acts of the organized human being
are anything else. For every emotion awakens memories of past
emotions and the consequences; every instinct is hampered by
other instincts or by the inhibitions aroused by obstacles; and
intelligence continually struggles against emotion and blind
instinct. Teaching, experience, knowledge, all modify emotional
and instinctive responses so that sometimes they are hardly
recognizable as such. On the other hand, though intelligence
normally occupies the seat of power, it is easily ousted and in
reality only steers and directs the vehicle of life, choosing not
the goal but the road by which the goal can safely be reached.
In general terms we shall define emotions, instincts and
intelligence as follows:
1. For emotions we shall accept a modified James-Lange theory,
supplementing it by the developments of science since their day.
When a thing is seen or heard (or smelled or tasted or thought),
it arouses an emotion; that emotion consists of at least three
parts. First, the arousal of memories and experiences that give
it a value to the individual, make it a desired object or a
dreaded, distasteful object. Second, at the same time, or shortly
preceding or succeeding this, a great variety of changes takes
place in the organism, changes that we shall call the
vaso-visceral-motor changes. This means merely that there is a
series of reactions set up in the sympathetic nervous system, in
the blood vessels and bodily structures they control and in the
glands of internal secretion,--changes which include the blush or
the pallor, the rapid heartbeat, the quickened or labored
breathing, the changes in the digestive tract which include the
vomiting of disgust and the diarrhoea of fear; the changes that
passion brings in the male and the female and many other
alterations to be discussed again. Third, there is then the
feeling of these coenaesthetic changes,--a feeling of
pleasantness, unpleasantness mingled with the basic feeling of
excitement, and from then on that situation is linked in memory
with the feeling that we usually call the emotion but which is
only a part of it. Nevertheless, it becomes the part longed for
or thereafter avoided; it is the value of the emotion to us, as
conscious personalities, although it may be a false, disastrous,
dangerous value. Excitement is the generalized mood change that
results in consciousness in consequence of the
vaso-visceral-motor changes of emotion; it is therefore based on
bodily changes as is the feeling, pleasant or unpleasant, that
also occurs. William James said that we laugh and are therefore
happy; we weep and are therefore sad; the bodily changes are
primary and the feeling secondary. We do not accept this dictum
entirely, but we say that the organism reacts in a complicated
way and that the feeling--sadness, disgust, anger, joy--springs
from the memories and past experiences aroused by a situation as
well as from the widespread bodily excitement also so aroused.
For the neurologist both the cerebral and the sympathetic-
endocrinal components of emotion are important.
For the moment we turn to instinct and instinctive reactions.
2. Man has always wondered that things can be known without
teaching. So slow and painful is the process of mastering a
technique, whether of handicraftsmanship or of art, so imbued are
we with the need of education for the acquirement of knowledge,
that we are taken aback by the realization that all around us are
creatures carrying on the most elaborate technique, going through
the most complicated procedures and apparently possessed of the
surest knowledge without the possibility of teaching. The flight
of birds, the obstetric and nursing procedures of all animals,
and especially the complicated and systematized labors of bees,
ants and other insects, have aroused the wonder, admiration and
awe of scientists. A chick pecks its way out of its egg and
shakes itself,--then immediately starts on the trail of food and
usually needs no instruction as to diet. The female insect lays
its eggs, the male insect fertilizes them, the progeny go through
the states of evolution leading to adult life without teaching
and without the possibility of previous experience. Since the
parent never sees the progeny, and the progeny assume various
shapes and have very varied capacities at these times, there can
be no possible teaching of what is remarkably skillful and
marvelously adapted conduct.[1]
[1] The nature of instinct has been a subject of discussion for
centuries, but it is only within the last fifty years or
thereabouts that instinctive actions have really been studied. I
refer the reader to the works of Darwin, Romanes, Lloyd Morgan,
the Peckhams, Fabre, Hobhouse, and McDougall for details as to
the controversies and the facts obtained.
Herbert Spencer considered the instinct as a series of inevitable
reflexes. The carrion fly, when gravid, deposits her eggs in
putrid meat in order that the larvae may have appropriate food,
although she never sees the larvae or cannot know through
experience their needs. "The smell of putrid meat attracts the
gravid carrion fly. That is, it sets up motions of the wings
which bring the fly to it, and the fly having arrived, the smell,
and the contact combined stimulate the functions of
oviposition."[1] But as all the critics have pointed out, the
theory of compound reflex action leaves out of account that there
are any number of stimuli pouring in on the carrion fly at the
same time that the meat attracts her. The real mystery lies in
that internal condition which makes the smell of the meat act so
inevitably.
[1] Hobhouse.
In fact, it is this internal condition in the living creature
that is the most important single link in instinct. In the
non-mating season the sight of the female has no effect on the
male. But periodically his internal organs become tense with
procreative cells; these change his coenaesthesia; that starts
desire, and desire sets going the mechanisms of search,
courtship, the sexual act and the care of the female while she is
gravid. All instinctive acts have back of them either a tension
or a deficit of some kind or other, brought about by the
awakening of function of some glandular structure, so that the
organism becomes ready to respond to some appropriate outside
stimulus and inaccessible to others. During the mating season,
with certain animals, the stimulus of food has no effect until
there is effected the purposes of the sexual hunger. Changes in
the body due to the activity of sex glands or gastric juices or
any other organic product have two effects. They increase the
stimulation that comes from the thing sought and decrease the
stimulation that comes from other things. In physiological
language, the threshold for the first is lowered and for the
other it is raised.
But this does not explain HOW the changes in glands MAKE the
animal seek this or that, except by saying that the animal has
hereditary structures all primed to explode in the right way. We
may fall back on Bergson's mystical idea that all life is a
unity, and that instinct, which makes one living thing know what
to do with another--to kill it in a scientific way for the good
of the posterity of the killer--is merely the knowledge,
unconscious, that life has of life. That pleasant explanation
projects us back to a darker problem than ever: how life knows
life and why one part of life so obviously seeks to circumvent
the purpose of another part of life.
For us it is best to say that instinct arises out of the racial
and individual needs; that physically there occur changes in the
glands and tissues; that these set up desires which arouse into
action simple or elaborate mechanisms which finally satisfy the
need of the organs and tissues.[1]
[1] Kempf in his book on the vegetative nervous system goes into
great detail the way the visceral needs force the animal or human
to satisfy them. Life is a sort of war between the vegetative and
the central nervous system. There is just enough truth in this
point of view to make it very entertaining.
Even in the low forms of life instincts are not perfect at the
start, or perfect in details, and almost every member of a
species will show individuality in dealing with an obstacle to an
instinctive action. In other words, though there is instinct and
this furnishes the basis for action in the lowest forms of life,
there is also the capacity for learning by experience,--and this
is Intelligence. "The basis of instinct is heredity and we can
impute an action to pure instinct only if it is hereditary. The
other class of actions are those devised by the individual animal
for himself on the basis of his own experience and these are
called generally intelligent. Of intelligence operating within
the sphere of instinct there is ample evidence. There are
modifications of instinctive action directly traceable to
experience which cannot be explained by the interaction of purely
hereditary tendencies and there are cases in which the whole
structure of the instinct is profoundly modified by the
experience of the individual." Hobhouse, whom I quote, goes on to
give many examples of instinctive action modified by experience
and intelligence in the insect and lower animal world.
What I wish especially to point out is that man has many
instinctive bases for conduct, but instincts as such are not
often seen in pure form in man. They are constantly modified by
other instincts and through them runs the influence of
intelligence. The function of intelligence is to control
instincts, to choose ways and means for the fulfillment of
instincts that are blocked, etc. Moreover, the effects of
teachings, ethics, social organization and tradition, operating
through the social instincts, are to repress, inhibit and whip
into conformity every mode of instinctive conduct. The main
instincts are those relating to nutrition and reproduction, the
care of the young, to averting danger or destroying it, to play
and organized activity, to acquiring, perhaps to teaching and
learning and to the social relations generally. But manners creep
in to regulate our methods of eating and the things we shall eat;
and we may not eat at all unless we agree to get the things to
eat a certain way. We may not cohabit except under tremendous
restriction, and marriage with its aims and purposes is sexual in
origin but modified largely and almost beyond recognition by
social consideration, taste, esthetic matters, taboos and
economic conditions. We may not treat our enemy as instinct bids
us do,--for only in war may one kill and here one kills without
any personal purpose or anger, almost without instinct. We may be
compelled through social exigencies to treat our enemy politely,
eat with him, sleep with him and help him out of difficulties and
thus completely thwart one instinctive set of reactions. Play
becomes regulated by rules and customs, becomes motivated by the
desire for superiority, or the desire for gain, and may even
leave the physical field entirely and become purely mental. And
so on. It does no special practical good to discuss instincts as
if they operated in man as such. They become purposes. Therefore
we shall defer the consideration of instincts and purposes in
detail until later chapters of this book.
Since instincts are too rigid to meet the needs of the social and
traditional life of man, they become intellectualized and
socialized into purposes and ambitions, sometimes almost beyond
recognition. Nevertheless, the driving force of instinct is
behind every purpose, every ambition, even though the individual
himself has not the slightest idea of the force that is at work.
This does not mean that instinct acts as a sort of cellar-
plotter, roving around in a subconsciousness, or at least no such
semi-diabolical personality need be postulated, any more than it
need be postulated for the automatic mechanism that regulates
heartbeat or digestion. The organic tensions and depressions that
constitute instinct are not conscious or subconscious; they
affect our conscious personalities so that we desire something,
we fit that desire in with the rest of our desires, we seek the
means of gratifying that desire first in accordance with means
that Nature has given us and second in accordance with social
teaching and our intelligence. If the desire brings us sharply in
contact with obstacles imposed either by circumstances or more
precious desire, we inhibit that desire,--and thus the instinct.
Because organic tensions and depressions are periodic and are
dependent upon the activities of glands and tissues not within
our control, the desires may never be completely squelched and
may arise as often as some outer stimulus brings them into
activity, to plague and disorder the life of the conscious
personality.
3. With this preliminary consideration of instinct, we pass on to
certain of the phases of intelligence. How to define intelligence
is a difficulty best met by ignoring definition. But this much is
true: that the prime function of intelligence is to store up the
past and present experiences so that they can be used in the
future, and that it adds to the rigid mechanism of instinct a
plastic force which by inhibiting and exciting activity according
to need steers the organism through intricate channels.
Instinct, guided by a plan, conveniently called Nature's plan, is
not itself a planner. The discharge of one mechanism discharges
another and so on through a series until an end is reached,--an
end apparently not foreseen by the organism but acting for the
good of the race to which the organism belongs. Intelligence,
often enough not conscious of the plans of Nature,[1] indeed,
decidedly ignorant of these plans, works for some good
established by itself out of stimuli set up by the instincts. It
plans, looks backward and forward, reaches the height of
reflecting on itself, gets to recognize the existence of instinct
and sets itself the task of controlling instinct. Often enough it
fails, instinct breaks through, takes possession of the means of
achievement, accomplishes its purpose--but the failure of
intelligence to control and the misguided control it attempts and
assumes are merely part of the general imperfections of the
organism. A perfect intelligence would be clearly able to
understand its instincts, to give each of them satisfaction by a
perfect compromise, would pick the methods for accomplishment
without error, and storing up the past experiences without loss,
would meet the future according to a plan.
[1] We are at this stage in a very dark place in human thought.
We say that instincts seek the good of the race, or have some
racial purpose, as the sexual instinct has procreation as its
end. But the lover wooing his sweetheart has no procreation plan
in his mind; he is urged on by a desire to win this particular
girl, a desire which is in part sexual, in part admiration of her
beauty, grace, and charm; again it is the pride of possession and
achievement; and further is the result of the social and romantic
ideals taught in books, theaters, etc. He may not have the
slightest desire for a child; as individual he plans one
thing,--but we who watch him see in his approach the racial urge
for procreation and even disregard his purposes as unimportant.
Who and what is the Race, where does it reside, how can it have
purposes? Call it Nature, and we are no better off. We must fall
back on an ancient personalization of forces, and our minds rest
easier when we think of a Planner operating in all of us and
perhaps smiling as He witnesses our strivings.
As we study the nervous systems of animals, we find that with the
apparent growth of intelligence there is a development of that
part of the brain called the cerebrum. In so far as certain other
parts of the brain are concerned--medulla, pons, mid-brain, basal
ganglia cerebellum--we who are human are not essentially superior
to the dog, the cow, the elephant or the monkey. But when the
neopallium, or the cerebrum, is considered, the enormous
superiority of man (and the superiority of the higher over the
lower animals) becomes striking. Anatomically the cerebrum is a
complex elaboration of cells and fibers that have these main
purposes: First, to record in perfect and detailed fashion the
EXPERIENCES of the organism, so that here are memory centers for
visual and auditory experiences, for skin, joint and bone
experiences of all kinds, speech memories, action memories, and
undoubtedly for the recording in some way not understood of the
pleasure-pain feelings. Second, it has a hold, a grip on the
motor mechanism of the body, on the muscles that produce action,
so that the intelligence can nicely adapt movement to the
circumstances, to purpose, and can inhibit the movements that
arise reflexly. Thus in certain diseases, where the part of the
brain involved in movement is injured, voluntary movement
disappears but reflex action is increased. Third, the neopallium,
or cerebrum, is characterized by what are known as association
tracts, i.e., connections of intricate kinds which link together
areas of the brain having different functions and thus allow for
combinations of activity of all kinds. The brain thus acts to
increase the memories of the past, and, as we all know, man is
probably the only animal to whom the past is a controlling force,
sometimes even an overpowering force. It acts to control the
conduct of the individual, to delay or to inhibit it, and it acts
to increase in an astonishing manner the number of reactions
possible. One stimulus arousing cerebral excitement may set going
mechanisms of the brain through associated tracts that will
produce conduct of one kind or another for years to come.
We spoke in a previous chapter of choice as an integral function
of the organism. While choice, when two competing stimuli awake
competing mechanisms, may be non-cerebral in its nature, largely
speaking it is a function of the cerebrum, of the intelligence.
To choose is a constant work of the intelligence, just as to
doubt is an unavailing effort to find a choice. Choice blocked is
doubt, one of the unhappiest of mental states. I shall not
pretend to solve the mystery of WHO chooses,--WHAT chooses;
perhaps there is a constant immortal ego; perhaps there is built
up a series of permanently excited areas which give rise to ego
feeling and predominate in choice; perhaps competing mechanisms,
as they struggle (in Sherrington's sense) for motor pathways,
give origin to the feeling of choice. At any rate, because we
choose is the reason that the concept of will has arisen in the
minds of both philosopher and the man in the street, and much of
our feeling of worth, individuality and power--mental factors of
huge importance in character--arises from the power to choose.
Choice is influenced by--or it is a net result of--the praise and
blame of others, conscience, memory, knowledge of the past, plans
for the future. It is the fulcrum point of conduct!
That animals have intelligence in the sense in which I have used
the term is without doubt. No one who reads the work of Morgan,
the Peckhams, Fabre, Hobhouse and other recent investigators of
the instincts can doubt it. Whether animals think in anything
like the form our thought takes is another matter. We are so
largely verbal in thought that speech and the capacity to speak
seem intimately related to thought. For the mechanics of thought,
for the laws of the association of ideas, the reader is referred
to the psychologists. That minds differ according to whether they
habitually follow one type of associations or another is an old
story. The most annoying individual in the world is the one whose
associations are unguided by a controlling purpose, who rambles
along misdirected by sound associations or by accidental
resemblances in structure of words, or by remote meanings,--who
starts off to tell you that she (the garrulous old lady) went to
the store to get some eggs, that she has a friend in the country
whose boy is in the army (aren't the Germans dreadful, she's glad
she's born in this country), city life is very hard, it isn't so
healthy as the country, thank God her health is good, etc.,
etc.," and she never arrives at the grocery store to buy the
eggs. The organizing of the associations through a goal idea is
part of that organizing energy of the mind and character
previously spoken of. The mind tends automatically to follow the
stimuli that reach it, but the organizing energy has as one of
its functions the preventing of this, and controlled thinking
follows associations that are, as it were, laid down by the goal.
In fatigue, in illness, in certain of the mental diseases, the
failure of the organizing energy brings about failure "to
concentrate" and the tyranny of casual associations annoys and
angers. The stock complaint of the neurasthenic that everything
distracts his attention is a reversion back to the unorganized
conditions of childhood, with this essential difference: that the
neurasthenic rebels against his difficulty in thinking, whereas
the child has no rebellion against that which is his normal
state. Minds differ primarily and hugely in their power of
organizing experience, in so studying and recording the past that
it becomes a guide for the, future. Basic in this is the power of
resisting the irrelevant association, of checking those automatic
mental activities that tend to be stirred up by each sound, each
sight, smell, taste and touch. The man whose task has no appeal
for him has to fight to keep his mind on it, and there are other
people, the so-called absent-minded, who are so over-
concentrated, so wedded to a goal in thought, that lesser matters
are neither remembered nor noticed. In its excess
overconcentration is a handicap, since it robs one of that
alertness for new impressions, new sources of thought so
necessary for growth. The fine mind is that which can pursue
successfully a goal in thought but which picks en route to that
goal, out of the irrelevant associations, something that enriches
its conclusions.
Not often enough is mechanical skill, hand-mindedness, considered
as one of the prime phases of intelligence. Intelligence, en
route to the conquest of the world, made use of that marvelous
instrument, the human hand, which in its opposable thumb and
little finger sharply separates man from the rest of creation.
Studying causes and effects, experimenting to produce effect, the
hand became the principal instrument in investigation, and the
prime verifier of belief. "Seeing is believing" is not nearly so
accurate as "Handling is believing," for there is in touch, and
especially in touch of the hands and in the arm movements, a
Reality component of the first magnitude. But not only in
touching and investigating, but in pushing and pulling and
striking, IN CAUSING CHANGE, does the hand become the symbol and
source of power and efficiency. Undoubtedly this phase of the
hands' activities remained predominant for untold centuries,
during which man made but slow progress in his career toward the
leadership of the world. Then came the phase of tool-making and
using and with that a rush of events that built the cities,
bridged the waters, opened up the Little and the Big as sources
of knowledge and energy for man and gave him the power which he
has used,--but poorly. It is the skill of human hands upon which
the mind of man depends; though we fly through the air and speed
under water, some one has made the tools that made the machine we
use. Therefore, the mechanical skill of man, the capacity to
shape resisting material to purpose, the power of the detailed
applications of the principles of movement and force are high,
special functions of the intelligence. That people differ
enormously in this skill, that it is not necessarily associated
with other phases of intelligence are commonplaces. The dealer in
abstract ideas of great value to the race may be unable to drive
a nail straight, while the man who can build the most intricate
mechanism out of crude iron, wood and metal may be unable to
express any but the commonplaces of existence. Intelligence,
acting through skill, has evolved machinery and the industrial
evolution; acting to discover constant principles operating in
experience, it has established science. Seeking to explain and
control the world of unknown forces, it has evolved theory and
practice. A very essential division of people is on the one hand
those whose effort is to explain things, and who are called
theorists, and those who seek to control things, the practical
persons. There is a constant duel between these two types of
personalities, and since the practical usually control the power
of the world, the theorists and explainers have had rather a hard
time of it, though they are slowly coming into their own.
Another difference between minds is this: that intelligence deals
with the relations between things (this being a prime function of
speech), and intelligence only becomes intellect when it is able
to see the world from the standpoint of abstract ideas, such as
truth, beauty, love, honor, goodness, evil, justice, race,
individual, etc. The wider one can generalize correctly, the
higher the intellect. The practical man rarely seeks wide
generalizations because the truth of these and their value can
only be demonstrated through the course of long periods of time,
during which no good to the individual himself is seen. Besides
which, the practical man knows that the wide generalization may
be an error. Practical aims are usually immediate aims, whereas
the aims of intellect are essentially remote and may project
beyond the life of the thinker himself.
We speak of people as original or as the reverse, with the
understanding that originality is the basis of the world's
progress. To be original in thought is to add new relationships
to those already accepted, or to substitute new ones for the old.
The original person is not easily credulous; he applies to
traditional teaching and procedure the acid test of results. Thus
the astronomers who rejected the theological idea that the earth
was the center of the universe observed that eclipses could not
be explained on such a basis, and Harvey, as he dissected
bullocks' hearts and tied tourniquets around his arms, could not
believe that Galen's teaching on circulation fitted what he saw
of the veins and valves of his arm. The original observer refuses
to slide over stubborn facts; authority has less influence with
him than has an apple dropping downward. In another way the
original thinker is constantly taking apart his experiences and
readjusting the pieces into new combinations of beauty,
usefulness and truth. This he does as artist, inventor and
scientist. Most originality lies in the rejection of old ideas
and methods as not consonant with results and experience; in the
taking apart and the isolation of the components of experience
(analysis) and in their reassemblage into new combinations
(synthesis). The organizing activity of the original mind is
high, and curiosity and interest are usually well maintained.
Unless there is with these traits the quality called good
judgment (i.e., good choice), the original is merely one of those
"pests" who launch half-baked reforms and projects upon a weary
world.
We have spoken of intelligence as controlling and directing
instinct and desire, as inhibiting emotion, as exhibiting itself
in handicraftsmanship, as the builder up of abstractions and the
principles of power and knowledge; we have omitted its
relationship to speech. Without speech and its derivatives, man
would still be a naked savage and not so well off in his struggle
for existence as most of the larger animals. It is possible that
we can think without words, but surely very little thinking is
possible under such circumstances. One might conduct a business
without definite records, but it would be a very small one.
Speech is a means not only of designating things but of the
manifest relations between things. It "short-cuts" thought so
that we may store up a thousand experiences in one word. But its
stupendous value and effects lie in this, that in words not only
do we store up ourselves (could we be self-conscious without
words?) and things, but we are able to interchange ourselves and
our things with any one else in the world who understands our
speech and writings. And we may truly converse with the dead and
be profoundly changed by them. If the germ plasm is the organ of
biological heredity, speech and its derivatives are the organs of
social heredity!
The power of expressing thought in words, of compressing
experiences into spoken and written symbols, of being eloquent or
convincing either by tongue or pen, is thus a high function of
intelligence. The able speaker and writer has always been
powerful, and he has always found a high social value in
promulgating the ideas of those too busy or unfitted for this
task, and he has been the chief agent in the unification of
groups.
The danger that lies in words as the symbols of thought lies in
the fact pointed out by Francis Bacon[1] (and in our day by Wundt
and Jung) that words have been coined by the mass of people and
have come to mean very definitely the relations between things as
conceived by the ignorant majority, so that when the philosopher
or scientist seeks to use them, he finds himself hampered by the
false beliefs inherent in the word and by the lack of precision
in the current use of words. Moreover, words are also a means of
stirring up emotions, hate, love, passion, and become weapons in
a struggle for power and therefore obscure intelligence.
[1] This is Bacon's "Idols of the Market Place."
Words, themselves, arise in our social relations, for the
solitary human would never speak, and the thought we think of as
peculiarly our own is intensely social. Indeed, as Cooley pointed
out, our thought is usually in a dialogue form with an auditor
who listens and whose applause we desire and whose arguments we
meet. In children, who think aloud, this trend is obvious, for
they say, "you, I, no, yes, I mustn't, you mustn't," and terms of
dialogue and social intercourse appear constantly. Thought and
words offer us the basis of definite internal conflict: one part
of us says to the other, "You must not do that," and the other
answers, "What shall I do?" Desire may run along smoothly without
distinct, internal verbal thought until it runs into inhibition
which becomes at once distinctly verbal in its, "No! You musn't!"
But desire obstructed also becomes verbal and we hear within us,
"I will!"
We live secure in the belief that our thoughts are our own and
cannot be "read" by others. Yet in our intercourse we seek to
read the thoughts of others--the real thoughts--recognizing that
just as we do not express ourselves either accurately or
honestly, so may the other be limited or disingenuous. Whenever
there occurs a feeling of inferiority, the face is averted so the
thoughts may not be read, and it is very common for people
mentally diseased to believe that their thoughts are being read
and published. Indeed, the connection between thoughts and the
personality may be severed and the patient mistakes as an outside
voice his own thoughts.
A large part of ancient and modern belief and superstition hinges
on the feeling of power in thought and therefore in words.
Thought CAUSES things as any other power does. Think something
hard, use the appropriate word, and presto,--what you desire is
done. "Faith moves mountains," and the kindred beliefs of the
magic in words have plunged the world into abysses of
superstition. Thought is powerful, words are powerful, if
combined with the appropriate action, and in their indirect
effects. All our triumphs are thought and word products; so, too,
are our defeats.
It is not profitable for us at this stage to study the types of
intelligence in greater detail. In the larger aspects of
intelligence we must regard it as intimately blended with
emotions, mood, instincts, and in its control of them is a
measurement of character. We may ask what is the range of memory,
what is the capacity for choosing, how good is the planning
ability, how active is the organizing ability, what is the type
of associations that predominate and how active is the stream of
thought? What is the skill of the individual? How well does he
use words and to what end does he use them? Intelligence deals
with the variables of life, leaving to instinct the basic
reactions, but it is in these variables that intelligence meets
situations that of themselves would end disastrously for the
individual.
Not a line, so far, on Will. What of the will, basic force in
character and center of a controversy that will never end? Has
man a free will? does his choice of action and thought come from
a power within himself? Is there a uniting will, operating in our
actions, a something of an integral indivisible kind, which is
non-material yet which controls matter?
Taking the free-will idea at its face value leads us nowhere in
our study of character. If character in its totality is organic,
so is will, and it therefore resides in the tissues of our
organism and is subject to its laws. In some mental diseases the
central disturbance is in the will, as Kraepelin postulates in
the disease known as Dementia Praecox. The power of choice and
the power of acting according to choice disappear gradually,
leaving the individual inert and apathetic. The will may alter
its directions in disease (or rather be altered) so that BECAUSE
of a tumor mass in the brain, or a clot of blood, or the
extirpation of his testicles, he chooses and acts on different
principles than ever before in his life. Or you get a man drunk,
introduce into his organism the soluble narcotic alcohol, and you
change his will in the sense that he chooses to be foolish or
immoral or brutal, and acts accordingly. When from Philip drunk
we appeal to Philip sober, we acknowledge that the two Philips
are different and will different things. And the will of the
child is not the will of the adult, nor is that the will of the
old man. If will is organic it cannot be free, but is conditioned
by health, glandular activity, tissue chemistry, age, social
setting, education, intelligence.
Moreover, behind each choice and each act are motives set up by
the whole past of the individual, set up by heredity and
training, by the will of our ancestors and our contemporaries.
Logically and psychologically, we cannot agree that a free agent
has any conditions; and if it has any conditions, it cannot in
any phase be free. To set up an argument for free will one has to
appeal to the consciousness or have a deep religious motive. But
even the ecclesiastical psychologists and even so strong a
believer in free will as Munsterberg take the stand that we may
have two points of view, one--as religiously minded--that there
is a free will, and the other--as scientists--that will is
determined in its operations by causes that reach back in an
endless chain. The power to choose and the power to act may be
heightened by advice and admonitions. In this sense we may
properly tell a man to use his will, and we may seek to introduce
into him motives that will fortify his resolution, remove or
increase his inhibitions, make clearer his choice. But that will
is an entity, existing by itself and pulling at levers of conduct
without itself being organic, need not be entertained by any
serious-minded student of his kind.
Is there a unit, will? A will power? I can see no good evidence
for this belief except the generalizing trend of human thought
and the fallacy that raises abstractions into realities. Napoleon
had a strong will in regard to his battles and a weak one
regarding women. Pitt was a determined statesman but could not
resist the lure of drink. Socrates found no difficulty in dying
for his beliefs, but asked not to be tempted by a beautiful
youth. Francis Bacon took all knowledge to be his province, and
his will was equal to the task, but he found the desire for
riches too great for him. In reality, man is a mosaic of wills;
and the will of each instinct, each desire, each purpose, is the
intensity of that instinct, desire or purpose. In each of us
there is a clash of wills, as the trends in our character oppose
one another. The united self harmonizes its purposes and wills
into as nearly one as possible; the disunited self is standing
unsteadily astride two or more horses. We all know that it is
easy for us to accomplish certain things and difficult to make up
our minds to do others. Like and dislike, facility or difficulty
are part of each purpose and enter into each will as parts.
Such a view does not commit one to fatalism, at least in conduct.
Desiring to accomplish something or desiring to avoid doing
something, both of which are usually considered as part of
willing, we must seek to find motives and influences that will
help us. We must realize that each choice, each act, changes the
world for us and every one else and seek to harmonize our choice
and acts with the purposes we regard as our best. If we seek to
influence others, then this view of the will is the only hopeful
one, for if will is a free entity how can it possibly be
influenced by another agent? The very essence of freedom is to be
noninfluenced. Seeking to galvanize the will of another, there is
need to search for the influences that will increase the energy
of his better purposes, to "appeal to his better self," meaning
that the spurs to his good conduct are applied with greater
force, but that first the nature of the particular things that
spur him on must be discovered. Praise? Blame? Reward?
Punishment? Education? Authority? Logic? Religion? Emotional
appeal? Substitution of new motives and associations?
The will is therefore no unit, but a sum total of things
operating within the sphere of purpose. Purpose we have defined
as arising from instinct and desire and intellectualized and
socialized by intelligence, education, training, tradition, etc.
Will is therefore best studied under the head of purpose and is
an outgrowth of instinct. Each instinct, in its energy, its
fierceness, its permanence, has its will. He who cannot desire
deeply, in whom some powerful instinct does not surge, cannot
will deeply.
If we look at character from the standpoint of emotion, instinct,
purpose and intelligence, we find that emotion is an internal
discharge of energy, which being FELT by the individual becomes
an aim or aversion of his life; that instinctive action is the
passing over of a stimulus directly into hereditary conduct along
race-old motor pathways for purposes that often enough the
individual does not recognize and may even rebel against; that
instinct is without reflection, but that purpose, which is an
outgrowth of instinct guided and controlled by intelligence, is
reflective and self-conscious. Purpose seeks the good of the
individual as understood by him and is often against the welfare
of the race, whereas instinct seeks the good of the race, often
against the welfare of the individual. Intelligence is the path
of the stimulus or need cerebrally directed, lengthened out,
inhibited, elaborated and checked. Often enough faulty, it is the
chief instrument by which man has become the leading figure on
the world stage.