In all the apperceptive operations of the mind, a certain general law makes itself felt, — the law of economy. In admitting a new body of expe- rience, we instinctively seek to disturb as little as possible our pre-existing stock of ideas. We always try to name a new experience in some way which will assimilate it to what we already know. We hate anything absolutely new, any- thing without any name, and for which a new name must be forged. So we take the nearest name, even though it be inappropriate. A child 160 TALKS TO TEACHERS will call snow, when he sees it for the first time, sugar or white butterflies. The sail of a boat he calls a curtain; an egg in its shell, seen for the first time, he calls a pretty potato; an orange, a ball; a folding corkscrew, a pair of bad scissors. Caspar Hauser called the first geese he saw horses, and the Polynesians called Captain Cook's horses pigs. Mr. Rooper has written a little book on apperception, to which he gives the title of "A Pot of Green Feathers," that being the name applied to a pot of ferns by a child who had never seen ferns before.
In later life this economical tendency to leave the old undisturbed leads to what we know as 'old fogyism.' A new idea or a fact which would entail extensive rearrangement of the pre- vious system of beliefs is always ignored or ex- truded from the mind in case it cannot be sophis- tically reinterpreted so as to tally harmoniously with the system. We have all conducted discus- sions with middle-aged people, overpowered them with our reasons, forced them to admit our con- tention, and a week later found them back as secure and constant in their old opinion as if they had never conversed with us at all. We call them old fogies; but there are young fogies, too. Old NTJMBERLESS TYPES OF APPERCEPTION 161 fogyism begins at a younger age than we think. I am almost afraid to say so, but I believe that in the majority of human beings it begins at about twenty-five.
In some of the books we find the various forms of apperception codified, and their subdivisions numbered and ticketed in tabular form in the way so delightful to the pedagogic eye. In one book which I remember reading there were sixteen dif- ferent types of apperception discriminated from each other. There was associative apperception, subsumptive apperception, assimilative appercep- tion, and others up to sixteen. It is needless to say that this is nothing but an exhibition of the crass artificiality which has always haunted psy- chology, and which perpetuates itself by lingering along, especially in these works which are adver- tised as 'written for the use of teachers.' The flowing fife of the mind is sorted into parcels suitable for presentation in the recitation-room, and chopped up into supposed 'processes' with long Greek and Latin names, which in real life have no distinct existence.
There is no reason, if we are classing the dif- ferent types of apperception, why we should stop at sixteen rather than sixteen hundred. There 162 TALKS TO TEACHERS are as many types of apperception as there are pos- sible ways in which an incoming experience may be reacted on by an individual mind. A little while ago, at Buffalo, I was the guest of a lady who, a fortnight before, had taken her seven-year- old boy for the first time to Niagara Falls. The child silently glared at the phenomenon until his mother, supposing him struck speechless by its sublimity, said, "Well, my boy, what do you think of it?" to which, "Is that the kind of spray I spray my nose with?" was the boy's only reply. That was his mode of apperceiving the spectacle. You may claim this as a particular type, and call it by the Greek name of rhinothera- peutical apperception, if you Uke; and, if you do, you will hardly be more trivial or artificial than are some of the authors of the books.
M. Perez, in one of his books on childhood, gives a good example of the different modes of apper- ception of the same phenomenon which are pos- sible at different stages of individual experience. A dwelling-house took fire, and an infant in the family, witnessing the conflagration from the arms of his nurse, standing outside, expressed nothing but the liveliest delight at its brilliancy. But, when the bell of the fire engine was heard TOO FEW HEADS OF CLASSIFICATION 163 approaching, the child was thrown by the sound into a paroxysm of fear, strange sounds being, as you know, very alarming to young children. In what opposite ways must the child's parents have apperceived the burning house and the engine re- spectively!
The self-same person, according to the line of thought he may be in, or to his emotional mood, will apperceive the same impression quite dif- ferently on different occasions. A medical or en- gineering expert retained on one side of a case will not apperceive the facts in the same way as if the other side had retained him. When people are at loggerheads about the interpretation of a fact, it usually shows that they have too few heads of classification to apperceive by; for, as a gen- eral thing, the fact of such a dispute is enough to show that neither one of their rival interpreta- tions is a perfect fit. Both sides deal with the matter by approximation, squeezing it under the handiest or least disturbing conception: whereas it would, nine times out of ten, be better to en- large their stock of ideas or invent some altogether new title for the phenomenon.
Thus, in biology, we used to have interminable discussion as to whether certain single-celled or- 164 TALKS TO TEACHERS ganisms were animals or vegetables, until Haeckel introduced the new apperceptive name of Protista, which ended the disputes. In law courts no tertium quid is recognized between insanity and sanity. If sane, a man is punished: if insane, acquitted; and it is seldom hard to find two experts who will take opposite views of his case. All the while, nature is more subtle than our doctors. Just as a room is neither dark nor light absolutely, but might be dark for a watch- maker's uses, and yet light enough to eat in or play in, so a man may be sane for some purposes and insane for others, — sane enough to be left at large, yet not sane enough to take care of his financial affairs. The word 'crank,' which be- came famihar at the time of Guiteau's trial, ful- filled the need of a tertium quid. The foreign terms 'desequilibre,' 'hereditary degenerate,' and 'psychopathic' subject, have arisen in response to the same need.
The whole progress of our sciences goes on by the invention of newly forged technical names whereby to designate the newly remarked aspects of phenomena, — phenomena which could only be squeezed with violence into the pigeonholes of the earUer stock of conceptions. As time goes THE APPERCEIVING IDEA 165 on, our vocabulary becomes thus ever more and more voluminous, having to keep up with the ever-growing multitude of our stock of apperceiv- ing ideas.
In this gradual process of interaction between the new and the old, not only is the new modified and determined by the particular sort of old which apperceives it, but the apperceiving mass, the old itself, is modified by the particular kind of new which it assimilates. Thus, to take the stock German example of the child brought up in a house where there are no tables but square ones, 'table' means for him a thing in which square corners are essential. But, if he goes to a house where there are round tables and still calls them tables, his apperceiving notion 'table' acquires immediately a wider inward content. In this way, our conceptions are constantly dropping characters once supposed essential, and including others once supposed inadmissible. The exten- sion of the notion 'beast' to porpoises and whales, of the notion 'organism' to society, are familiar examples of what I mean.
But be our conceptions adequate or inadequate, and be our stock of them large or small, they are all we have to work with. If an educated man is, 166 TALKS TO TEACHERS as I said, a group of organized tendencies to con- duct, what prompts the conduct is in every case the man's conception of the way in which to name and classify the actual emergency. The more adequate the stock of ideas, the more 'able' is the man, the more uniformly appropriate is his be- havior likely to be. When later we take up the subject of the will, we shall see that the essential preliminary to every decision is the finding of the right names under which to class the proposed alternatives of conduct. He who has few names is in so far forth an incompetent deliberator. The names — and each name stands for a conception or idea — are our instruments for handling our problems and solving our dilemmas. Now, when we think of this, we are too apt to forget an im- portant fact, which is that in most human beings the stock of names and concepts is mostly ac- quired during the years of adolescence and the earliest years of adult life. I probably shocked you a moment ago by saying that most men begin to be old fogies at the age of twenty-five. It is true that a grown-up adult keeps gaining well into middle age a great knowledge of details, and a great acquaintance with individual cases con- nected with his profession or business life. In OLD FOGYISM SETS IN EARLY 167 this sense, his conceptions increase during a very- long period; for his knowledge grows more exten- sive and minute. But the larger categories of conception, the sorts of thing, and wider classes of relation between things, of which we take cog- nizance, are all got into the mind at a compara- tively youthful date. Few men ever do acquaint themselves with the principles of a new science after even twenty-five. If you do not study pohti- cal economy in college, it is a thousand to one that its main conceptions will remain unknown to you through life. Similarly with biolog}^, similarly with electricity. What percentage of persons now fifty years old have any definite conception whatever of a dynamo, or how the trolley-cars are made to run? Surely, a small fraction of one per cent. But the boys in colleges are all acquiring these conceptions.
There is a sense of infinite potentiality in us all, when young, which makes some of us draw up lists of books we intend to read hereafter, and makes most of us think that we can easily ac- quaint ourselves with all sorts of things which we are now neglecting by studying them out hereafter in the intervals of leisure of our business lives. Such good intentions are hardly ever car- 168 TALKS TO TEACHERS ried out. The conceptions acquired before thirty remain usually the only ones we ever gain. Such exceptional cases of perpetually self-renovating youth as Mr. Gladstone's only prove, by the admiration they awaken, the universality of the rule. And it may well solemnize a teacher, and confirm in him a healthy sense of the importance of his mission, to feel how exclusively dependent upon his present ministrations in the way of im- parting conceptions the pupil's future life is prob- ably bound to be.
XV.
THE WILL Since mentality terminates naturally in out- ward conduct, the final chapter in psychology has to be the chapter on the will. But the word 'will' can be used in a broader and in a narrower sense. In the broader sense, it designates our entire capacity for impulsive and active life, including our instinctive reactions and those forms of behavior that have become secondarily automatic and semi-unconscious through frequent repetition. In the narrower sense, acts of will are such acts only as cannot be inattentively per- formed. A distinct idea of what they are, and a deliberate fiat on the mind's part, must precede their execution.
Such acts are often characterized by hesitation, and accompanied by a feeling, altogether peculiar, of resolve, a feeling which may or may not carry with it a further feeling of effort. In my earlier talks, I said so much of our impulsive tendencies that I will restrict myself in what follows to voli- tion in this narrower sense of the term.
170 TALKS TO TEACHERS All our deeds were considered by the early psychologists to be due to a peculiar faculty called the will, without whose fiat action could not occur. Thoughts and impressions, being intrinsi- cally inactive, were supposed to produce conduct only through the intermediation of this superior agent. Until they twitched its coat-tails, so to speak, no outward behavior could occur. This doctrine was long ago exploded by the discovery of the phenomena of reflex action, in which sen- sible impressions, as you know, produce movement immediately and of themselves. The doctrine may also be considered exploded as far as ideas go.
The fact is that there is no sort of consciousness whatever, be it sensation, feeling, or idea, which does not directly and of itself tend to discharge into some motor effect. The motor effect need not always be an outward stroke of behavior. It may be only an alteration of the heart-beats or breathing, or a modification in the distribution of blood, such as blushing or turning pale; or else a secretion of tears, or what not. But, in any case, it is there in some shape when any consciousness is there; and a belief as fundamental as any in modern psychology is the belief at last attained that conscious processes of any sort, conscious processes merely as such, must pass over into motion, open or concealed.
The least complicated case of this tendency is the case of a mind possessed by only a single idea. If that idea be of an object connected with a native impulse, the impulse will immediately pro- ceed to discharge. If it be the idea of a move- ment, the movement will occur. Such a case of action from a single idea has been distinguished from more complex cases by the name of 'ideo- motor' action, meaning action without express decision or effort. Most of the habitual actions to which we are trained are of this ideo-motor sort. We perceive, for instance, that the door is open, and we rise and shut it; we perceive some raisins in a dish before us, and extend our hand and carry one of them to our mouth without in- terrupting the conversation; or, when lying in bed, we suddenly think that we shall be late for breakfast, and instantly we get up with no par- ticular exertion or resolve. All the ingrained procedures by which Ufe is carried on — the man- ners and customs, dressing and undressing, acts of salutation, etc. — are executed in this semi-auto- matic way unhesitatingly and efficiently, the very 172 TALKS TO TEACHERS outermost margin of consciousness seeming to be concerned in them, while the focus may be occu- pied with widely different things.
But now turn to a more complicated case. Suppose two thoughts to be in the mind together, of which one, A, taken alone, would discharge itself in a certain action, but of which the other, B, suggests an action of a different sort, or a consequence of the first action calculated to make us shrink. The psychologists now say that the second idea, B, will probably arrest or inhibit the motor effects of the first idea, A. One word, then, about 'inhibition' in general, to make this particular case more clear.
One of the most interesting discoveries of physi- ology was the discovery, made simultaneously in France and Germany fifty years ago, that nerve currents do not only start muscles into action, but may check action already going on or keep it from occurring as it otherwise might. Nerves of arrest were thus distinguished alongside of motor nerves. The pneumogastric nerve, for example, if stimu- lated, arrests the movements of the heart: the splanchnic nerve arrests those of the intestines, if already begun. But it soon appeared that this THE FUNCTION OF INHIBITION 173 was too narrow a way of looking at the matter, and that arrest is not so much the specific function of certain nerves as a general function which any part of the nervous system may exert upon other parts under the appropriate conditions. The higher centres, for example, seem to exert a con- stant inhibitive influence on the excitability of those below. The reflexes of an animal with its hemispheres wholly or in part removed become exaggerated. You all know that common reflex in dogs, whereby, if you scratch the animal's side, the corresponding hind leg will begin to make scratching movements, usually in the air. Now in dogs with mutilated hemispheres this scratch- ing reflex is so incessant that, as Goltz first de- scribed them, the hair gets all worn off their sides. In idiots, the functions of the hemispheres being largely in abeyance, the lower impulses, not inhibited, as they would be in normal human beings, often express themselves in most odious ways. You know also how any higher emotional tendency will quench a lower one. Fear arrests appetite, maternal love annuls fear, respect checks sensuality, and the like; and in the more subtile manifestations of the moral life, whenever an ideal stirring is suddenly quickened into inten- 174 TALKS TO TEACHERS sity, it is as if the whole scale of values of our motives changed its equiUbrium. The force of old temptations vanishes, and what a moment ago was impossible is now not only possible, but easy, because of their inhibition. This has been well called the 'expulsive power of the higher emotion.'
It is easy to apply this notion of inhibition to the case of our ideational processes. I am lying in bed, for example, and think it is time to get up; but alongside of this thought there is present to my mind a realization of the extreme coldness of the morning and the pleasantness of the warm bed. In such a situation the motor consequences of the first idea are blocked; and I may remain for half an hour or more with the two ideas oscillat- ing before me in a kind of deadlock, which is what we call the state of hesitation or delibera- tion. In a case like this the deliberation can be resolved and the decision reached in either of two ways: — (1) I may forget for a moment the thermomet- ric conditions, and then the idea of getting up will immediately discharge into act: I shall sud- denly find that I have got up — or (2) Still mindful of the freezing temperature, ANY IDEA MAY BE INHIBITORY 175 the thought of the duty of rising may become so pungent that it determines action in spite of in- hibition. 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 dehberation, 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 inhibi- tive machinery. A strong and urgent motor idea in the focus may be neutralized and made inopera- tive by the presence of the very faintest contradic- tory 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 pulhng 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?
176 TALKS TO TEACHERS 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 rein- forcement from my attention, suffices to the in- hibitive 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 con- sciousness are always so complex that the inhibit- ing 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 be- havior, 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.'
man's conduct as a eesultant 177 If you are struck by the materialistic or fatal- istic doctrines which seem to follow this concep- tion, 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 fatahstic 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. Feel- ings aroused and ideas suggested by objects sway us one way and another: emotions complicate the game by their mutual inhibitive effects, the higher aboUshing the lower or perhaps being it- self swept away. The life in all this becomes pru- dential 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 'char- acter' 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 'as- sociationist ' psychology, brought down to its rad- 178 TALKS TO TEACHERS ical 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 be- lief; 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 advan- tages in the way of exposition.
Voluntary action, then, is at all times a resultant of the compounding of our impulsions with our inhi- bitions.
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 rap- idly, his associative processes are so extravagantly lively, that inhibitions have no time to arrive, and THE TWO EXTREME TYPES OF WILL 179 he says and does whatever pops into his head without a moment of hesitation.
Certain melanchoUacs furnish the extreme ex- ample of the over-inhibited type. Their minds are cramped in a fixed emotion of fear or helpless- ness, their ideas confined to the one thought that for them life is impossible. So they show a con- dition of perfect 'abulia,' or inability to will or act. They cannot change their posture or speech or execute the simplest coixmaand.
The different races of men show different tem- peraments 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, ab- stractly considered, must be full of scruples and inhibitions. But action, in such a character, far from being paralyzed, will succeed in energet- ically 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 180 TALKS TO TEACHERS 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 THE BALKY WILL 181 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 ma- chinery, 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 famUiar example of the paralyzing power of scruples is the inhibitive effect of conscientious- ness upon conversation. Nowhere does conversa- tion 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, ob- scenity, and malignity find unhampered expression, talk can be brilliant indeed. But its flame waxes dim where the mind is stitched all over with con- scientious fear of violating the moral and social proprieties.
The teacher often is confronted in the school- room 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, 182 TALKS TO TEACHERS remain completely inhibited in regard to it: it becomes literally impossible for them to under- stand it if it be an intellectual problem, or to do it if it be an outward operation, as long as this par- ticular 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 de- veloped, 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 THE teachers' mSAL 183 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 associa- tion, 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 gen- eral 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. Psy- chology 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 184 TALKS TO TEACHERS 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 con- sciousness; 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 characteris- tically 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 ideas with action or inaction respectively. How is it when an alternative is presented to you for choice, and you are uncertain what you ought to do? You first hesitate, and then you deliberate. And in what does your deliberation consist? It