PSYCHOLOGICAL
The psychologist is so insistent in proclaiming his doctrine of
negative self-feeling and positive self-feeling that one is impelled
to listen out of curiosity, if nothing else. Then, just as you are
beginning to get a little glimmering as to his meaning, another one
begins to assail your ears with a deal of sesquipedalian English
about the emotion of subjection and the emotion of elation. Just as
I began to think I was getting a grip of the thing a college chap
came in and proceeded to enlighten me by saying that these two
emotions may be generated only by personal relations, and not by
relations of persons and things. I was thinking of my emotion of
subjection in the presence of an original problem in geometry, but
this college person tells me that this negative self-feeling,
according to psychology, is experienced only in the presence of
another person. Well, I have had that experience, too. In fact, my
negative self-feeling is of frequent occurrence. Jacob must have had
a rather severe attack of the emotion of subjection when he was
trying to escape from the wrath of Esau. But, after his experience
at Bethel, where he received a blessing and a promise, there was a
shifting from the negative self-feeling to the positive--from the
emotion of subjection to that of elation.
The stone which Jacob used that night as a pillow, so we are told, is
called the Stone of Scone, and is to be seen in the body of the
Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey. The use of that stone as a
part of the chair might seem to be a psychological coincidence,
unless, indeed, we can conceive that the fabricators of the chair
combined a knowledge of psychology and also of the Bible in its
construction. It is an interesting conceit, at any rate, that the
stone might bring to kings and queens a blessing and a promise, as it
had done for Jacob, averting the emotion of subjection and
perpetuating the emotion of elation.
Now, there's Hazzard, the big, glorious Hazzard. I met him first on
the deck of the S. S. _Campania_, and I gladly agreed to his proposal
that we travel together. He is a large man (one need not be more
specific) and a veritable steam-engine of activity and energy. It
was altogether natural, therefore, that he should assume the
leadership of our party of two in all matters touching places, modes
of travel, hotels, and other details large and small, while I trailed
along in his wake. This order continued for some days, and I, of
course, experienced all the while the emotion of subjection in some
degree. When we came to the Isle of Man we puzzled our heads no
little over the curious coat of arms of that quaint little country.
This coat of arms is three human legs, equidistant from one another.
At Peel we made numerous inquiries, and also at Ramsey, but to no
avail. In the evening, however, in the hotel at Douglas I saw a
picture of this coat of arms, accompanied by the inscription,
_Quocumque jeceris stabit_, and gave some sort of translation of it.
Then and there came my emancipation, for after that I was consulted
and deferred to during all the weeks we were together. It is quite
improbable that Hazzard himself realized any change in our relations,
but unconsciously paid that subtle tribute to my small knowledge of
Latin. When we came to Stratford I did not call upon Miss Marie
Corelli, for I had heard that she is quite averse to men as a class,
and I feared I might suffer an emotional collapse. I was so
comfortable in my newly acquainted emotion of elation that I decided
to run no risks.
When at length I resumed my schoolmastering I determined to give the
boys and girls the benefit of my recent discovery. I saw that I must
generate in each one, if possible, the emotion of elation, that I
must so arrange school situations that mastery would become a habit
with them if they were to become "masters in the kingdom of life," as
my friend Long says it. I saw at once that the difficulties must be
made only high enough to incite them to effort, but not so high as to
cause discouragement. I recalled the sentence in Harvey's Grammar:
"Milo began to lift the ox when he was a calf." After we had
succeeded in locating the antecedent of "he" we learned from this
sentence a lesson of value, and I recalled this lesson in my efforts
to inculcate progressive mastery in the boys and girls of my school.
I sometimes deferred a difficult problem for a few days till they had
lifted the growing calf a few more times, and then returned to it.
Some one says that everything is infinitely high that we can't see
over, so I was careful to arrange the barriers just a bit lower than
the eye-line of my pupils, and then raise them a trifle on each
succeeding day. In this way I strove to generate the positive
self-feeling so that there should be no depression and no white flag.
And that surely was worth a trip to the Isle of Man, even if one
failed to see one of their tailless cats.
I had occasion or, rather, I took occasion at one time to punish a
boy with a fair degree of severity (may the Lord forgive me), and
now. I know that in so doing I was guilty of a grave error. What I
interpreted as misconduct was but a straining at his leash in an
effort to extricate himself from the incubus of the negative
self-feeling. He was, and probably is, a dull fellow and realized
that he could not cope with the other boys in the school studies, and
so was but trying to win some notice in other fields of activity. To
him notoriety was preferable to obscurity. If I had only been wise I
would have turned his inclination to good account and might have
helped him to self-mastery, if not to the mastery of algebra. He
yearned for the emotion of elation, and I was trying to perpetuate
his emotion of subjection. If Methuselah had been a schoolmaster he
might have attained proficiency by the time he reached the age of
nine hundred and sixty-eight years if he had been a close observer, a
close student of methods, and had been willing and able to profit by
his own mistakes.
Friend Virgil says something like this: "They can because they think
they can," and I heartily concur. Some one tells us that Kent in
"King Lear" got his name from the Anglo-Saxon word can and he was
aptly named, in view of Virgil's statement. But can I cause my boys
and girls to think they can? Why, most assuredly, if I am any sort
of teacher. Otherwise I ought to be dealing with inanimate things
and leave the school work to those who can. I certainly can help
young folks to shift from the emotion of subjection to the emotion of
elation. I had a puppy that we called Nick and thought I'd like to
teach him to go up-stairs. When he came to the first stair he cried
and cowered and said, in his language, that it was too high, and that
he could never do it. So, in a soothing way, I quoted Virgil at him
and placed his front paws upon the step. Then he laughed a bit and
said the step wasn't as high as the moon, after all. So I patted him
and called him a brave little chap, and he gained the higher level.
Then we rested for a bit and spent the time in being glad, for Nick
and I had read our "Pollyanna" and had learned the trick of gladness.
Well, before the day was over that puppy could go up the stairs
without the aid of a teacher, and a gladder dog never was. If I had
taken as much pains with that boy as I did with Nick I'd feel far
more comfortable right now, and the boy would have felt more
comfortable both then and after. O schoolmastering! How many sins
are committed in thy name! I succeeded with the puppy, but failed
with the boy. A boy does not go to school to study algebra, but
studies algebra to learn mastery. I know this now, but did not know
it then, more's the pity!
I had another valuable lesson in this phase of pedagogy the day my
friend Vance and I sojourned to Indianapolis to call upon Mr.
Benjamin Harrison, who had somewhat recently completed his term as
President of the United States. We were fortified with ample and
satisfactory credentials and had a very fortunate introduction; but
for all that we were inclined to walk softly into the presence of
greatness, and had a somewhat acute attack of negative self-feeling.
However, after due exchange of civilities, we succeeded somehow in
preferring the request that had brought us into his presence, and Mr.
Harrison's reply served to reassure us. Said he: "Oh, no, boys, I
couldn't do that; last year I promised Bok to write some articles for
his journal, and I didn't have any fun all summer." His two words,
"boys" and "fun," were the magic ones that caused the tension to
relax and generated the emotion of elation. We then sat back in our
chairs and, possibly, crossed our legs--I can't be certain as to
that. At any rate, in a single sentence this man had made us his
co-ordinates and caused the negative self-feeling to vanish. Then
for a good half-hour he talked in a familiar way about great affairs,
and in a style that charmed. He told us of a call he had the day
before from David Starr. Jordan, who came to report his experience
as a member of the commission that had been appointed to adjudicate
the controversy between the United States and England touching
seal-fishing in the Behring Sea. It may be recalled that this
commission consisted of two Americans, two Englishmen, and King Oscar
of Sweden. Mr. Harrison told us quite frankly that he felt a mistake
had been made in making up the commission, for, with two Americans
and two Englishmen on the commission, the sole arbiter in reality was
King Oscar, since the other four were reduced to the plane of mere
advocates; but, had there been three Americans and two Englishmen, or
two Americans and three Englishmen, the function of all would have
been clearly judicial. Suffice it to say that this great man made us
forget our emotion of subjection, and so made us feel that he would
have been a great teacher, just as he was a great statesman. I shall
always be grateful for the lesson he taught me and, besides, I am
glad that the college chap came in and gave me that psychological
massage.