Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals
(2) Still mindful of the freezing temperature, the thought of the duty
of rising may become so pungent that it determines action in spite of
inhibition. In the latter case, I have a sense of energetic moral
effort, and consider that I have done a virtuous act.
All cases of wilful action properly so called, of choice after
hesitation and deliberation, may be conceived after one of these latter
patterns. So you see that volition, in the narrower sense, takes place
only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas, and
depends on our having a complex field of consciousness. The interesting
thing to note is the extreme delicacy of the inhibitive machinery. A
strong and urgent motor idea in the focus may be neutralized and made
inoperative by the presence of the very faintest contradictory idea in
the margin. For instance, I hold out my forefinger, and with closed eyes
try to realize as vividly as possible that I hold a revolver in my hand
and am pulling the trigger. I can even now fairly feel my finger
quivering with the tendency to contract; and, if it were hitched to a
recording apparatus, it would certainly betray its state of tension by
registering incipient movements. Yet it does not actually crook, and the
movement of pulling the trigger is not performed. Why not?
Simply because, all concentrated though I am upon the idea of the
movement, I nevertheless also realize the total conditions of the
experiment, and in the back of my mind, so to speak, or in its fringe
and margin, have the simultaneous idea that the movement is not to take
place. The mere presence of that marginal intention, without effort,
urgency, or emphasis, or any special reinforcement from my attention,
suffices to the inhibitive effect.
And this is why so few of the ideas that flit through our minds do, in
point of fact, produce their motor consequences. Life would be a curse
and a care for us if every fleeting fancy were to do so. Abstractly, the
law of ideo-motor action is true; but in the concrete our fields of
consciousness are always so complex that the inhibiting margin keeps the
centre inoperative most of the time. In all this, you see, I speak as if
ideas by their mere presence or absence determined behavior, and as if
between the ideas themselves on the one hand and the conduct on the
other there were no room for any third intermediate principle of
activity, like that called 'the will.'
If you are struck by the materialistic or fatalistic doctrines which
seem to follow this conception, I beg you to suspend your judgment for a
moment, as I shall soon have something more to say about the matter.
But, meanwhile yielding one's self to the mechanical conception of the
psychophysical organism, nothing is easier than to indulge in a picture
of the fatalistic character of human life. Man's conduct appears as the
mere resultant of all his various impulsions and inhibitions. One
object, by its presence, makes us act: another object checks our action.
Feelings aroused and ideas suggested by objects sway us one way and
another: emotions complicate the game by their mutual inhibitive
effects, the higher abolishing the lower or perhaps being itself swept
away. The life in all this becomes prudential and moral; but the
psychologic agents in the drama may be described, you see, as nothing
but the 'ideas' themselves,--ideas for the whole system of which what we
call the 'soul' or character' or 'will' of the person is nothing but a
collective name. As Hume said, the ideas are themselves the actors, the
stage, the theatre, the spectators, and the play. This is the so-called
'associationist' psychology, brought down to its radical expression: it
is useless to ignore its power as a conception. Like all conceptions,
when they become clear and lively enough, this conception has a strong
tendency to impose itself upon belief; and psychologists trained on
biological lines usually adopt it as the last word of science on the
subject. No one can have an adequate notion of modern psychological
theory unless he has at some time apprehended this view in the full
force of its simplicity.
Let us humor it for a while, for it has advantages in the way of
exposition.
_Voluntary action, then, is at all times a resultant of the compounding
of our impulsions with our inhibitions._
From this it immediately follows that there will be two types of will,
in one of which impulsions will predominate, in the other inhibitions.
We may speak of them, if you like, as the precipitate and the obstructed
will, respectively. When fully pronounced, they are familiar to
everybody. The extreme example of the precipitate will is the maniac:
his ideas discharge into action so rapidly, his associative processes
are so extravagantly lively, that inhibitions have no time to arrive,
and he says and does whatever pops into his head without a moment of
hesitation.
Certain melancholiacs furnish the extreme example of the over-inhibited
type. Their minds are cramped in a fixed emotion of fear or
helplessness, their ideas confined to the one thought that for them life
is impossible. So they show a condition of perfect 'abulia,' or
inability to will or act. They cannot change their posture or speech or
execute the simplest command.
The different races of men show different temperaments in this regard.
The Southern races are commonly accounted the more impulsive and
precipitate: the English race, especially our New England branch of it,
is supposed to be all sicklied over with repressive forms of
self-consciousness, and condemned to express itself through a jungle of
scruples and checks.
The highest form of character, however, abstractly considered, must be
full of scruples and inhibitions. But action, in such a character, far
from being paralyzed, will succeed in energetically keeping on its way,
sometimes overpowering the resistances, sometimes steering along the
line where they lie thinnest.
Just as our extensor muscles act most truly when a simultaneous
contraction of the flexors guides and steadies them; so the mind of him
whose fields of consciousness are complex, and who, with the reasons for
the action, sees the reasons against it, and yet, instead of being
palsied, acts in the way that takes the whole field into
consideration,--so, I say, is such a mind the ideal sort of mind that we
should seek to reproduce in our pupils. Purely impulsive action, or
action that proceeds to extremities regardless of consequences, on the
other hand, is the easiest action in the world, and the lowest in type.
Any one can show energy, when made quite reckless. An Oriental despot
requires but little ability: as long as he lives, he succeeds, for he
has absolutely his own way; and, when the world can no longer endure the
horror of him, he is assassinated. But not to proceed immediately to
extremities, to be still able to act energetically under an array of
inhibitions,--that indeed is rare and difficult. Cavour, when urged to
proclaim martial law in 1859, refused to do so, saying: "Any one can
govern in that way. I will be constitutional." Your parliamentary
rulers, your Lincoln, your Gladstone, are the strongest type of man,
because they accomplish results under the most intricate possible
conditions. We think of Napoleon Bonaparte as a colossal monster of
will-power, and truly enough he was so. But, from the point of view of
the psychological machinery, it would be hard to say whether he or
Gladstone was the larger volitional quantity; for Napoleon disregarded
all the usual inhibitions, and Gladstone, passionate as he was,
scrupulously considered them in his statesmanship.
A familiar example of the paralyzing power of scruples is the inhibitive
effect of conscientiousness upon conversation. Nowhere does conversation
seem to have flourished as brilliantly as in France during the last
century. But, if we read old French memoirs, we see how many brakes of
scrupulosity which tie our tongues to-day were then removed. Where
mendacity, treachery, obscenity, and malignity find unhampered
expression, talk can be brilliant indeed. But its flame waxes dim where
the mind is stitched all over with conscientious fear of violating the
moral and social proprieties.
The teacher often is confronted in the schoolroom with an abnormal type
of will, which we may call the 'balky will.' Certain children, if they
do not succeed in doing a thing immediately, remain completely
inhibited in regard to it: it becomes literally impossible for them to
understand it if it be an intellectual problem, or to do it if it be an
outward operation, as long as this particular inhibited condition lasts.
Such children are usually treated as sinful, and are punished; or else
the teacher pits his or her will against the child's will, considering
that the latter must be 'broken.' "Break your child's will, in order
that it may not perish," wrote John Wesley. "Break its will as soon as
it can speak plainly--or even before it can speak at all. It should be
forced to do as it is told, even if you have to whip it ten times
running. Break its will, in order that its soul may live." Such
will-breaking is always a scene with a great deal of nervous wear and
tear on both sides, a bad state of feeling left behind it, and the
victory not always with the would-be will-breaker.
When a situation of the kind is once fairly developed, and the child is
all tense and excited inwardly, nineteen times out of twenty it is best
for the teacher to apperceive the case as one of neural pathology rather
than as one of moral culpability. So long as the inhibiting sense of
impossibility remains in the child's mind, he will continue unable to
get beyond the obstacle. The aim of the teacher should then be to make
him simply forget. Drop the subject for the time, divert the mind to
something else: then, leading the pupil back by some circuitous line of
association, spring it on him again before he has time to recognize it,
and as likely as not he will go over it now without any difficulty. It
is in no other way that we overcome balkiness in a horse: we divert his
attention, do something to his nose or ear, lead him round in a circle,
and thus get him over a place where flogging would only have made him
more invincible. A tactful teacher will never let these strained
situations come up at all.
You perceive now, my friends, what your general or abstract duty is as
teachers. Although you have to generate in your pupils a large stock of
ideas, any one of which may be inhibitory, yet you must also see to it
that no habitual hesitancy or paralysis of the will ensues, and that the
pupil still retains his power of vigorous action. Psychology can state
your problem in these terms, but you see how impotent she is to furnish
the elements of its practical solution. When all is said and done, and
your best efforts are made, it will probably remain true that the
result will depend more on a certain native tone or temper in the
pupil's psychological constitution than on anything else. Some persons
appear to have a naturally poor focalization of the field of
consciousness; and in such persons actions hang slack, and inhibitions
seem to exert peculiarly easy sway.
But let us now close in a little more closely on this matter of the
education of the will. Your task is to build up a _character_ in your
pupils; and a character, as I have so often said, consists in an
organized set of habits of reaction. Now of what do such habits of
reaction themselves consist? They consist of tendencies to act
characteristically when certain ideas possess us, and to refrain
characteristically when possessed by other ideas.
Our volitional habits depend, then, first, on what the stock of ideas is
which we have; and, second, on the habitual coupling of the several