What Is Man? and Other Essays
vaporized condition, and turn the jet upon the ingot, will there be an
instantaneous result?
Y.M. No.
O.M. The _quicksilver _is an outside influence which gold (by its
peculiar nature—say _temperament, disposition) cannot be indifferent
to. _It stirs up the interest of the gold, although we do not perceive
it; but a _single _application of the influence works no damage. Let us
continue the application in a steady stream, and call each minute a
year. By the end of ten or twenty minutes—ten or twenty years—the
little ingot is sodden with quicksilver, its virtues are gone, its
character is degraded. At last it is ready to yield to a temptation
which it would have taken no notice of, ten or twenty years ago. We
will apply that temptation in the form of a pressure of my finger. You
note the result?
Y.M. Yes; the ingot has crumbled to sand. I understand, now. It is not
the _single _outside influence that does the work, but only the _last
_one of a long and disintegrating accumulation of them. I see, now, how
my _single _impulse to rob the man is not the one that makes me do it,
but only the _last _one of a preparatory series. You might illustrate
with a parable.
_A Parable_
O.M. I will. There was once a pair of New England boys—twins. They were
alike in good dispositions, feckless morals, and personal appearance.
They were the models of the Sunday—school. At fifteen George had the
opportunity to go as cabin-boy in a whale-ship, and sailed away for the
Pacific. Henry remained at home in the village. At eighteen George was
a sailor before the mast, and Henry was teacher of the advanced Bible
class. At twenty-two George, through fighting-habits and
drinking-habits acquired at sea and in the sailor boarding-houses of
the European and Oriental ports, was a common rough in Hong-Kong, and
out of a job; and Henry was superintendent of the Sunday-school. At
twenty-six George was a wanderer, a tramp, and Henry was pastor of the
village church. Then George came home, and was Henry’s guest. One
evening a man passed by and turned down the lane, and Henry said, with
a pathetic smile, “Without intending me a discomfort, that man is
always keeping me reminded of my pinching poverty, for he carries heaps
of money about him, and goes by here every evening of his life.” That
_outside influence _—that remark—was enough for George, but _it _was
not the one that made him ambush the man and rob him, it merely
represented the eleven years’ accumulation of such influences, and gave
birth to the act for which their long gestation had made preparation.
It had never entered the head of Henry to rob the man—his ingot had
been subjected to clean steam only; but George’s had been subjected to
vaporized quicksilver.
V
More About the Machine
Note.—When Mrs. W. asks how can a millionaire give a single dollar to
colleges and museums while one human being is destitute of bread, she
has answered her question herself. Her feeling for the poor shows that
she has a standard of benevolence; there she has conceded the
millionaire’s privilege of having a standard; since she evidently
requires him to adopt her standard, she is by that act requiring
herself to adopt his. The human being always looks down when he is
examining another person’s standard; he never find one that he has to
examine by looking up.
_The Man-Machine Again_
Young Man. You really think man is a mere machine?
Old Man. I do.
Y.M. And that his mind works automatically and is independent of his
control—carries on thought on its own hook?
O.M. Yes. It is diligently at work, unceasingly at work, during every
waking moment. Have you never tossed about all night, imploring,
beseeching, commanding your mind to stop work and let you go to
sleep?—you who perhaps imagine that your mind is your servant and must
obey your orders, think what you tell it to think, and stop when you
tell it to stop. When it chooses to work, there is no way to keep it
still for an instant. The brightest man would not be able to supply it
with subjects if he had to hunt them up. If it needed the man’s help it
would wait for him to give it work when he wakes in the morning.
Y.M. Maybe it does.
O.M. No, it begins right away, before the man gets wide enough awake to
give it a suggestion. He may go to sleep saying, “The moment I wake I
will think upon such and such a subject,” but he will fail. His mind
will be too quick for him; by the time he has become nearly enough
awake to be half conscious, he will find that it is already at work
upon another subject. Make the experiment and see.
Y.M. At any rate, he can make it stick to a subject if he wants to.
O.M. Not if it find another that suits it better. As a rule it will
listen to neither a dull speaker nor a bright one. It refuses all
persuasion. The dull speaker wearies it and sends it far away in idle
dreams; the bright speaker throws out stimulating ideas which it goes
chasing after and is at once unconscious of him and his talk. You
cannot keep your mind from wandering, if it wants to; it is master, not
you.
_After an Interval of Days_
O.M. Now, dreams—but we will examine that later. Meantime, did you try
commanding your mind to wait for orders from you, and not do any
thinking on its own hook?
Y.M. Yes, I commanded it to stand ready to take orders when I should
wake in the morning.
O.M. Did it obey?
Y.M. No. It went to thinking of something of its own initiation,
without waiting for me. Also—as you suggested—at night I appointed a
theme for it to begin on in the morning, and commanded it to begin on
that one and no other.
O.M. Did it obey?
Y.M. No.
O.M. How many times did you try the experiment?
Y.M. Ten.
O.M. How many successes did you score?
Y.M. Not one.
O.M. It is as I have said: the mind is independent of the man. He has
no control over it; it does as it pleases. It will take up a subject in
spite of him; it will stick to it in spite of him; it will throw it
aside in spite of him. It is entirely independent of him.
Y.M. Go on. Illustrate.
O.M. Do you know chess?
Y.M. I learned it a week ago.
O.M. Did your mind go on playing the game all night that first night?
Y.M. Don’t mention it!
O.M. It was eagerly, unsatisfiably interested; it rioted in the
combinations; you implored it to drop the game and let you get some
sleep?
Y.M. Yes. It wouldn’t listen; it played right along. It wore me out and
I got up haggard and wretched in the morning.
O.M. At some time or other you have been captivated by a ridiculous
rhyme-jingle?
Y.M. Indeed, yes!
“I saw Esau kissing Kate,
And she saw I saw Esau;
I saw Esau, he saw Kate,
And she saw—”
And so on. My mind went mad with joy over it. It repeated it all day
and all night for a week in spite of all I could do to stop it, and it
seemed to me that I must surely go crazy.
O.M. And the new popular song?
Y.M. Oh yes! “In the Swee-eet By and By”; etc. Yes, the new popular
song with the taking melody sings through one’s head day and night,
asleep and awake, till one is a wreck. There is no getting the mind to
let it alone.
O.M. Yes, asleep as well as awake. The mind is quite independent. It is
master. You have nothing to do with it. It is so apart from you that it
can conduct its affairs, sing its songs, play its chess, weave its
complex and ingeniously constructed dreams, while you sleep. It has no
use for your help, no use for your guidance, and never uses either,
whether you be asleep or awake. You have imagined that you could
originate a thought in your mind, and you have sincerely believed you
could do it.
Y.M. Yes, I have had that idea.
O.M. Yet you can’t originate a dream-thought for it to work out, and
get it accepted?
Y.M. No.
O.M. And you can’t dictate its procedure after it has originated a
dream-thought for itself?
Y.M. No. No one can do it. Do you think the waking mind and the dream
mind are the same machine?
O.M. There is argument for it. We have wild and fantastic day-thoughts?
Things that are dream-like?
Y.M. Yes—like Mr. Wells’s man who invented a drug that made him
invisible; and like the Arabian tales of the Thousand Nights.
O.M. And there are dreams that are rational, simple, consistent, and
unfantastic?
Y.M. Yes. I have dreams that are like that. Dreams that are just like
real life; dreams in which there are several persons with distinctly
differentiated characters—inventions of my mind and yet strangers to
me: a vulgar person; a refined one; a wise person; a fool; a cruel
person; a kind and compassionate one; a quarrelsome person; a
peacemaker; old persons and young; beautiful girls and homely ones.
They talk in character, each preserves his own characteristics. There
are vivid fights, vivid and biting insults, vivid love-passages; there
are tragedies and comedies, there are griefs that go to one’s heart,
there are sayings and doings that make you laugh: indeed, the whole
thing is exactly like real life.
O.M. Your dreaming mind originates the scheme, consistently and
artistically develops it, and carries the little drama creditably
through—all without help or suggestion from you?
Y.M. Yes.
O.M. It is argument that it could do the like awake without help or
suggestion from you—and I think it does. It is argument that it is the
same old mind in both cases, and never needs your help. I think the
mind is purely a machine, a thoroughly independent machine, an
automatic machine. Have you tried the other experiment which I
suggested to you?
Y.M. Which one?
O.M. The one which was to determine how much influence you have over
your mind—if any.
Y.M. Yes, and got more or less entertainment out of it. I did as you
ordered: I placed two texts before my eyes—one a dull one and barren of
interest, the other one full of interest, inflamed with it, white-hot
with it. I commanded my mind to busy itself solely with the dull one.
O.M. Did it obey?
Y.M. Well, no, it didn’t. It busied itself with the other one.
O.M. Did you try hard to make it obey?
Y.M. Yes, I did my honest best.
O.M. What was the text which it refused to be interested in or think
about?
Y.M. It was this question: If A owes B a dollar and a half, and B owes
C two and three-quarter, and C owes A thirty—five cents, and D and A
together owe E and B three-sixteenths of—of—I don’t remember the rest,
now, but anyway it was wholly uninteresting, and I could not force my
mind to stick to it even half a minute at a time; it kept flying off to
the other text.
O.M. What was the other text?
Y.M. It is no matter about that.
O.M. But what was it?
Y.M. A photograph.
O.M. Your own?
Y.M. No. It was hers.
O.M. You really made an honest good test. Did you make a second trial?
Y.M. Yes. I commanded my mind to interest itself in the morning paper’s
report of the pork-market, and at the same time I reminded it of an
experience of mine of sixteen years ago. It refused to consider the
pork and gave its whole blazing interest to that ancient incident.
O.M. What was the incident?
Y.M. An armed desperado slapped my face in the presence of twenty
spectators. It makes me wild and murderous every time I think of it.
O.M. Good tests, both; very good tests. Did you try my other
suggestion?
Y.M. The one which was to prove to me that if I would leave my mind to
its own devices it would find things to think about without any of my
help, and thus convince me that it was a machine, an automatic machine,
set in motion by exterior influences, and as independent of me as it
could be if it were in some one else’s skull. Is that the one?
O.M. Yes.
Y.M. I tried it. I was shaving. I had slept well, and my mind was very
lively, even gay and frisky. It was reveling in a fantastic and joyful