for the promotion of pupils, or by State boards whose function it is
to license persons to teach or preach, to practise law, medicine, or
dentistry, or to test the fitness of applicants for some branch of civil
or military service. Examiners are often responsible for the failure
of those whom they examine. If the first questions arouse the fear of
failure, causing the mind to picture the disappointment and displeasure
of parents and teachers and friends, and the other evils which result
from a loss of class standing, the resulting emotions hinder effective
thinking and thus prevent the pupil from doing justice to himself and
his teachers. The expert seeks to lift those whom he examines above all
feelings of embarrassment. With a friendly smile, a kind word, and a few
easy questions he puts the mind at ease, dissipates the dread of failure,
and gets results which are an agreeable surprise to all concerned. If he
cannot otherwise make those before him work to the best advantage, he
will even sacrifice his dignity by the use of a good-natured joke which
turns the laugh upon himself or upon some other member of the board of
examiners. Jokes at the expense of any one of those examined are a
species of cruelty which cannot be too severely condemned, to say nothing
of the effect upon the results of the examination.
[Sidenote: Speculative thinking.]
[Sidenote: Darwin’s experience.]
Within certain limits thinking begets feeling, and feeling stimulates
thinking. Beyond these limits each interferes with the other. When
feeling rises to the height of passion it beclouds the judgment and
prevents reflection. Certain kinds of speculative thinking leave the
heart cold and ultimately destroy the better emotions and the warmer
affections. “It is terrible,” said the daughter of a voluminous writer
on theology, “when a man feels a perpetual impulse to write. It makes
him a stranger in his own house, and deprives wife and children of
their husband and father.” Abstract thinking may be indulged in to the
exclusion of the tastes and emotions which help to make life worth
living. The oft-quoted experience of Darwin is a case in point. In
his autobiography he gives his experience, showing the effect of his
exclusive devotion to scientific pursuits upon his ability to enjoy
poetry, music, and pictures. “Up to the age of thirty and beyond it
poetry of many kinds gave me great pleasure, and even as a school-boy I
took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays.
I have also said that pictures formerly gave me considerable and music
very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a
line of poetry. I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so
intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste
for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically
on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure.... My mind
seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of
large collections of facts; but why this should have caused the atrophy
of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I
cannot conceive.... If I had to live my life again, I would have made a
rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week;
for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been
kept alive through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness,
and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the
moral character by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.”[53]
[Sidenote: The sight of an audience.]
Every teacher has both felt and witnessed the effect of embarrassment
upon ability to think. To face an audience of a thousand people was
embarrassing to some excellent thinkers like Melanchthon and Washington.
On the other hand, the sight of a multitude of listening, upturned faces
stimulates natures and temperaments like that of Martin Luther and
Patrick Henry, causing them to think more vigorously and to feel more
deeply.
[Sidenote: Great thoughts.]
Great thoughts spring from the heart. This is certainly true of thoughts
which have lifted men to higher planes of effort. And it is true of the
best thoughts and volitions which a pupil puts forth. The desire for
knowledge may develop into the love of truth. The student is half made as
soon as he seeks knowledge for its own sake and values the possession of
truth above all other worldly possessions.
[Sidenote: Interest.]
The Herbartians deserve praise for the attention they have given the
doctrine of interest. The older text-books on psychology seldom refer
to interest as an important element in the education of the child. The
greatest boon which can come to a child is happiness, and this was
impossible in the days when fear of the rod held sway in the school-room.
Then children looked forward to the school with feelings of dread; they
went with fear and trembling. From the day that the children became
interested in their lessons the rod was no longer required. Instead of
crying because they must go to school, they now cry because they cannot
go. Through interest the school becomes the place to which children best
like to go.
[Sidenote: Interest in a clock.]
A boy who was pronounced incorrigible, and who had been transferred
from school to school because he could not get along with his teachers,
at last met a teacher who discovered that he could take apart and put
together watches and clocks. She allowed him to fix her clock, and thus
won his heart. She asked him to explain to the school the mechanism of
instruments for keeping time. His interest in clocks she connected with
the numbers twelve and sixty, then with the time-table, with denominate
numbers, and finally with the whole subject of arithmetic. Interest
in the exercises of the school converted the incorrigible boy into an
obedient and studious pupil.[54]
There is no more important element of emotion for teachers to cultivate
than that which enters into the feeling of interest. Interest sustains
the power of thought, diminishes the need of effort in the direction of
voluntary attention, and lies at the basis of all successful teaching,
book-making, and public speaking. The teacher, the writer, the speaker
who wearies us has lost his power over us. The lesson, the book, the
sermon that interests us has found an entrance to our minds; the greater
the interest the more potent and profound the influence upon the inner
life.
[Sidenote: Interest conditions ability to think.]
The moment a teacher begins to lose interest in a subject, that moment
he begins to lose his ability to teach that subject. From this point of
view the recent graduate has a manifest advantage over the old pedagogue
whose interest in the subjects of instruction has been dulled by frequent
repetition. The latter can keep himself from reaching the dead-line
by keeping up his studies in the allied departments of knowledge, and
by watching the growth of mind and heart in his pupils,—a growth that
always reveals something new and interesting by reason of the boundless
possibilities that slumber in every human being. The interest in the
growing mind is spontaneously transferred to the branches of knowledge
which stimulate that growth, and, in ways that no one can explain, the
interest which the teacher feels is communicated to the pupils whose
minds are prepared to grasp his instruction.
[Sidenote: Fiction.]
By far the larger proportion of books taken from our free libraries are
books of fiction,—books which appeal to our emotional life. It shows
that even those who are habitual readers can be best reached through the
emotions. Of course, the act of reading proves that their feelings are
reached through the intellect; yet it cannot be denied that emotion is
the element of their inner life which sustains the interest in the novel.
Appeals to the intellect which do not touch the heart fail to reach the
deepest depths of our being, and hence fail to stimulate in others the
productive powers of the soul. Only thoughts which come from the heart
can reach the heart. This is true of the child and the adult, of the
reader and the listener, of the scientist and the man of affairs, of the
author and the editor, of the orator and the philosopher, of the teacher,
and, in short, of all whose duty it is to stimulate the thinking and to
influence the conduct of their fellow-men.
XIX
THINKING AND WILLING
Strong reasons make strong actions.
SHAKESPEARE.
Bad thoughts quickly ripen into bad actions.
BISHOP PORTENS.
The man of thought strikes deepest, and strikes safely.
SAVAGE.
Reason is the director of man’s will, discovering in action
what is good; for the laws of well-doing are the dictates of
right reason.
HOOKER.
XIX
THINKING AND WILLING
Much thinking is spontaneous, in the sense that there is no conscious
effort of the will to direct and control the activity of the mind. Under
normal conditions the stream of thought flows onward, like the current
of water in the bed of a river. When the onward movement is interrupted,
an act of volition may be needed to bring the mind back to the regular
channel. There are forms of intellectual activity called dreaming,
reverie, and meditation, in which the ideas follow each other without
any effort to regulate them. Often they are fanciful, incoherent, and
illogical; they are suggested by passing objects, by musical sounds,
perhaps by the stimulating influence of a drug or narcotic. Few can
start a train of thought, winding up their minds as they would a clock,
and then letting it run down until the discourse, lecture, or newspaper
article is complete, no conscious effort of the will being required to
keep the mind from wandering. This may be partly a gift of nature, but
mostly it is the result of discipline.
[Sidenote: Discipline.]
[Sidenote: Mental discipline.]
What is discipline? We speak of mental discipline, of military
discipline, of family discipline. What is the element which all these
have in common? An army is under discipline when every soldier and every
officer is subject to the will of his superior, so that the entire
body of men can be moved against the foe at the will of the commanding
general. A family is under discipline when the entire household is under
the control of the head of the house. The school is under discipline when
all the pupils are subject to the will of the teacher, and to the rules
which he has laid down for the regulation of conduct. The mind is under
discipline when its powers are under the control of the will, and its
activities are in accord with the laws of thought. It is important to
ascertain the laws of thought which underlie correct thinking. These are
developed and discussed in treatises on logic,—a science that should be
mastered not only by those who must meet others in the field of argument
and controversy, but by all who seek to regulate the thinking of their
own minds, or to aid others in the formation of correct habits of thought.
[Sidenote: Habit.]
Fortunately, the law of habit here comes into play to lighten the
conscious effort of the will. When the intellect, through the guidance of
a conscious will, has acted according to the forms of thought in which
the logician can find no fallacies, it tends to act again in that way,
and the next time a less expenditure of conscious effort is required. The
thinking of the teacher, if correct and logical, tends to beget correct
and logical habits of thought on the part of the pupil. It is a piece
of good fortune to fall under the dominating influence of a towering
intellect. For a time the growing mind that is engaged in thinking
the thoughts, and mastering the speculations, the reflections, the
reasonings, of a master who is such not merely in name, but also in fact,
may be in a subjection very like unto intellectual slavery. Sooner or
later the day of emancipation arrives; and those who were not under the
invigorating tuition of such an intellectual giant are surprised at the
thought-power developed by the youth whose equal they hitherto fancied
themselves to be.
[Sidenote: Volitional control.]
Those who expect to spend their days in teaching, lecturing, preaching,
pleading, or writing have great reason to strive after the discipline
which results in placing all the powers of mind and heart under the
control of the will. The feelings which interfere with reflection should
be repressed and expelled by strenuous effort. The emotions which
stimulate thinking should be cherished and fostered. The inner nexus,
which binds ideas in logical trains of thought, should be followed until
the habit becomes second nature.
Thinking which goes forward according to some established habit
requires less effort than intellectual work that is accompanied with
much volitional effort. This fact serves as a valuable indication to
men who must do intellectual work for the press or the pulpit or the
lecture-room. Perhaps no one is better qualified to speak on this point
than Dr. Carpenter, who studied mental action from the physiological
point of view, and whose publications show the quality, as well as the
quantity, of his intellectual labor. He says,—
[Sidenote: Dr. Carpenter.]
“To individuals of ordinary mental activity who have been trained in the
habit of methodical and connected thinking, a very considerable amount
of _work_ is quite natural; and when such persons are in good bodily
health, and the subject of their labor is congenial to them,—especially
if it be one that has been chosen by themselves, as furnishing a
centre of attraction around which their thoughts spontaneously tend to
range themselves,—their intellectual operations require but little of
the controlling or directing power of the will, and may be continued
for long periods together without fatigue. But from the moment when
an indisposition is experienced to keep the attention fixed upon the
subject, and the thoughts wander from it unless coerced by the will, the
mental activity loses its spontaneous or automatic character; and (as in
the act of walking) more effort is required to maintain it volitionally
during a brief period, and more fatigue is subsequently experienced from
such exertion than would be involved in the continuance of an automatic
operation through a period many times as long. Hence he has found it
practically the greatest economy of mental labor to work vigorously when
he feels disposed to do so, and to refrain from exertion, so far as
possible, _when it is felt to be an exertion_. Of course, this rule is by
no means universally applicable; for there are many individuals who would
pass their whole time in listless inactivity if not actually spurred
on by the feeling of necessity. But it holds good for those who are
sufficiently attracted by objects of interest before them, or who have in
their worldly position a sufficiently strong motive to exertion to make
them feel that they _must_ work; the question with them being, _how_ they
can attain their desired results with the least expenditure of mental
effort.”[55]
[Sidenote: Jokes.]
There is a danger to which public speakers are exposed, against which
the efforts of a resolute will are not too potent. To capture a crowd
that is more easily moved by jokes than by argument, the speaker resorts
to sallies of wit and humor and turns the laugh upon an opponent. The
temptation to cultivate one’s gifts in this direction is very strong,
and when yielded to, it destroys the powers of logical reflection and
consecutive thought. Wit is illogical, because it introduces into
the current of thought what is foreign to the subject in hand, the
incongruity giving rise to the laughter. Wit and humor serve a useful
purpose in acting as a safety-valve to let off the discontent which
accumulates in the human breast, and may be used for that purpose with
great effect. But they should never be allowed to divert the stream
of thought from its logical channel. The reputation for wit and humor
may dispose people to laugh at everything a man says. It destroys their
respect for his judgment and impairs his power to follow a line of
thought to its legitimate conclusion. The ability to discuss a theme in
all its bearings and details implies the power to investigate a subject
in its essence and relations, to resolve an idea into its elements, and
to present these in the form most easily understood,—an object which
is as far from the purposes of the funny man as the poles are from the
equator.
[Sidenote: Forms of thought-expression.]
[Sidenote: Thinking in action.]
All thinking tends towards the expression of thought. “Every expression
of thought,” says Tracy, “whether it be word, or mark, or gesture,
is the result of an active will, and as such may be classed among
the movements.” Word, mark, and gesture do not exhaust the list of
movements by which the mind expresses thought. Every handicraft is a
form of expressing thought quite as important as writing and speaking
and gesticulating. The fine arts and the useful arts are so many ways
through which the will passes into thinking and issues in the expression
of thought. Movements for reform are the intense expressions of great
thoughts which have their origin in the heart. The men who spend their
lives in the atmosphere of colleges and universities are apt to be
satisfied if they have expressed their thoughts in a lecture or on the
printed page. They live in books, and their thinking terminates in books.
The thinking which issues in getting things done, in deeds, actions,
achievements, is undervalued and too often ignored. University men are
waking up to this defect in their thinking. They are throwing themselves
into movements for reform and giving the world splendid examples of the
translation of thought into vigorous action. The effort to carry theory
into practice reacts powerfully upon the mind, forces the individual to
see things as they are, and saves him from the habit of looking only
for things which the schools have taught him to expect. When thinking
issues in doing, the process promotes intellectual honesty. This remark
is especially applicable to exercises in which the hand makes in wood,
metal, marble, or clay what the mind has conceived. The execution cannot
be accurate unless the thinking has been accurate and satisfactory.
Drawing is a universal language. It imposes upon the mind a degree of
accuracy which is wanting in the fleeting spoken word or even in the more
permanent printed or written sentences.
[Sidenote: Thinking in business.]
The movements in manual training are an excellent preparation for the
movements in the handicrafts and the daily occupations by which men gain
the necessaries and the comforts of life. Ten thousand men are active
in supplying our breakfast-table, and many thousand more in providing
clothing, shelter, light, heat, and the manifold necessities and luxuries
of modern society. All these involve thinking quite as useful, as
logical, and as effective as the thinking which ends in talk or printer’s
ink. The relation of thinking to doing and the reflex influence which the
latter exerts upon the former is seen in the solution of problems and in
all exercises involving the application of knowledge. Manual training
is really and primarily a training in thinking, but it is the kind of
thinking most closely related to thinking in things, and its value in
education is so great that it has led to the formulation of the maxim,
We learn to do by doing,—a maxim which deserves separate consideration,
because, as usually applied, it is taken to mean that doing by the hand
necessarily and inevitably leads to thinking and knowing.
[Sidenote: Growth of the will.]
Another aspect of the relation of thinking to willing claims our
attention. Thinking is an important element in the growth of the will.
The education of the will is coming to be recognized as a matter
of supreme importance. The development of character is everywhere
emphasized. No teacher in these days regards intellectual training
as the sole or chief aim of the school. The philosopher is no longer
regarded as the highest type of humanity. The age demands that thought
shall pass into volition, and that volition shall manifest itself in
action. The executive is not satisfied with the investigation of a
subject in its essence and relations, with the elaboration of thought
into a system; he must get things done. Mere thinking he despises. The
philosopher he regards as a man troubled with ideas, the poet as a man
troubled with fancies and rhymes; he hates men who let their minds “go
astray into regions not peopled with real things, animate or inanimate,
even idealized, but with personified shadows created by the illusions of
metaphysics or by the mere entanglement of words, and think these shadows
the proper objects of the highest, the most transcendental philosophy.”
And the sympathies of the multitudes are on the side of the executive in
his exaltation of the will as the chief element of utility and success.
The acts of the will should be guided by intelligence. The will is weak
and vacillating if the ends to be accomplished are not clearly conceived,
if the purposes to be accomplished are not definitely thought out.
Thinking is the guide to willing. Thought gives direction to volition.
[Sidenote: Self-gratification.]
[Sidenote: Self-denial.]
[Sidenote: The right.]