ee a a Pe, Le ee Pn ao Cp tA had: ra atid #9, i sete De, : - = Rei Sy : : ; sees Sep RES : mae S E porate “J sec pec re era pean ahi cy chat) Lit 1 if he i) CRY fate A hie y, t? *) i. ¥ Shc tenes Kha OF PRINGE Se 4 Q SYLUGIGAL SEWS BE pection ce Ake Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2022 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/practicalpsychol0Ofarn PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY FOR MEN AND WOMEN IN THE INDUSTRIES AND PROFESSIONS, AND FOR THE GENERAL READER. / a i # i By \y BURT BYRON FARNSWORTH™ 200 00 DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGIOUS EDUCATION, INTERNATIONAL Y. M. C. A, COLLEGE, SPRINGFIELD, MASS. AUTHOR OF “THE CHRISTIAN APPEAL,” “WHAT IS HAPPENING TO INDUSTRIAL AMERICA.” ‘LECTURER ON PSYCHOLOGY, ETC. NEW YORK GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY COPYRIGHT, 1923, By BURT B. FARNSWORTH All Rights Reserved COPYRIGHT, 1925, By GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY All Rights Reserved Printep 1n U. S. A, PREFACE It has been the aim of the author in writing Practical Psy- chology to make the principles so clear and to present them so interestingly that the reader may understand and enjoy the book. This should lead to his getting better acquainted with him- self and to become interested in applying the principles to his own development and to be able to recognize them when he sees them expressed in the conduct of others. It is hoped that as he reads he will discover something of the “how” of character development and also something of the “why” and so become a more capable individual and a more important factor for good in his social group and so come to realize in fuller measure the real joy of living. Burt Byron FARNSWORTH. Springfield, Mass., June I, 1925. 7 , oyit ihe ‘ MEAN WD le ae See te POU ous Ache Jha oe oe Med CHAPTER is Ue. Wee TV; CONTENTS WACHINEOW HICH THE MIND. USES di ture aaa t Applied psychology. Mental mastery. Relation of mind and body. Control of bodily activity. Ideas and bodily activity. Body a machine for doing work. Cell theory of life. The amceba. The amphioxus. Human nervous system. Cellular intelligence. Cerebrospinal nervous system. Sympathetic nervous system. Consciousness. SENGE-PERCEPTIVE UE ROCESSES/ ish ae roan: World of waves. Differentiation of function. Sensa- tion. Perception. What one can know. Interpreting impressions. Sense deception. Special senses, and what they furnish us. Sense limitations. MONCEPTS AND 9] UDGMENTS A) Pema rane ainen Opin aug Concepts. Formation of concepts. Relation of per- cepts to concepts. Analysis. Synthesis. Steps in con- cept formation. Value of clear concepts. Growth of intellect. Accuracy in generalization. Language and mental development. Judgment and judging. The raw material of judging. Training judgment. Judgment and progress. eae OVVORLD ON ACSOCLA TION ral jew in cai neuaN ke Myo ern, Association centers. Reaction time. Elements involved. Association areas. World of association. Idea does not ~ appear in mind without reason. What is association? Normal process. Cause. Contiguity. Similarity. Dis- tinguishing likenesses and differences. Power of associa- tion. Subconsciousness. Abnormal functioning. Dis- sociation. Time required to fix associations. Uncon- trolled associations. Association and vocations. M EM ORY e e ° e e e e e e ° e e Memory. Remembering. Good memory. Basis of memory. Brain change permanent. Memory or memo- ries. Types of memory. Retention. Recall. Recogni- tion. Replacement. Elements in memory. Intensity. PAGE 30 55 82 113 vi CHAPTER We MIT VIII. IX. CONTENTS Recency. Frequency. Primacy. False memories. Short memories. Children’s memories. Memory systems. How to remember. Intend to remember. Be interested. As- sociate logically. Understand material. Repetition and reviews. Concrete imagery. Ideas before words. Dor- mant memories. Limit of memory development. TACAGIN'A TION Cie Go real Gt OW a dito Dit ao ie ea aan Memory and material for imagination. Images, kinds of. Dalton’s questions. Ability to form image. Test for images. Imagination and beliefs. Bias or prejudice. Distinction between idea and image. Imagination and environment. Control of imagination. Constructive imagination. Mental vision. Power of imagination. Limits of imagination. REASON OR) HOW WE PLAIN EVN Ue oe eee Day dreaming. Choosing. Rationalization. Construc- tive thinking. Thinking of animals and of man. In- stinctive action. Experience. Information. Intelligence. Discovering relationships. Cause of inaccurate thinking. Cause of thought. Thought processes. Original thought. Dewey’s steps. Acquisitive and reflective powers. From particular to particular. From particular to general. Beginning of thought. Necessary beliefs. Inductive thinking. Deductive thinking. Judgment and thought. Laws of thought—parsimony, analogy, identity, contra- diction, excluded middle. Test for thinking, syllogism, arrested thinking. Why persons differ in thinking. Use of reason in acquiring knowledge. Logical powers new in race, not yet stable. WILTMAND) ELABIT etn ee CPE nO rh a Universe is under law. Actions. Will and action. Will and motive. Will and neuron patterns. Types of will. Habits. Habits and Will Forming habits. Econ- omy of habit. Habit formation is progressive. Open- mindedness. Fixity of habit and its handicap. Perse- verance. Second mental wind. Fatigue, its causes. Sleep. Incentives and their power. Lifting oneself to higher levels. Deliberation. Inhibition. Will and habit break- ing. Will and knowledge. Field of knowledge. Plan for reading. INTEREST (AND DATTENTIONI ieee cikihety els ante Arousing attention. Stimuli. Epiphenomenalism. Pur- pose in animals and in men. Things attended to at differ- PAGE 134 158 207 CHAPTER CONTENTS ent ages. Scope of attention. Attention and bodily accom- modation. Selective factors. Catching the attention. Voluntary and involuntary attention. Interest. Effort. Natural interests. Divided interests. Ends and means often far apart. Training of interest and attention. New interests. Sources of interests. Physical universe, hu- manity, God. Concentrated attention. Sustained interest and attention. re SUB CONSCIOUSNESS i He Ul UCU CIN te ur Feu vsunMu, XI: XII. Cellular intelligence. Changes in organism. Nerve energy. Types of behavior. Mind and growth of organs. Instincts. Instinctive behavior. Intelligent behavior. Freedom. Wakefulness of mind and body. Subconscious direction. Heredity. Lower and higher levels of mind complexes. Mental diseases. Nervousness and “nerves.” Abnormal dissociations. Loss of memory. Functional diseases. Psychotherapy. Misconceptions about hypnosis. Hypnosis and sleep. Practical uses of psychotherapy. Psychoanalysis. Dreams. Hallucinations. |§ Phobias. Hysterias and their cure. LEG NECIGCUST GON TROL Ge een nee, le Gia ARO MMO A iM Ideas possess innate energy. Emotional state and physical expression. Impellent energy. Tropisms. Ideas. Concentration. Mind mastery. Consciousness controls subconsciousness. Content of consciousness. Impulse. Instinct. Conscious control. Conscious control new to race. Limiting subconsciousness. Power of suggestion. “Know thyself.” Ideal. The thing to be done. Dis- cover latent resources. Mental assertion and physical act. Ability to do depends upon ability to know. TEMPERAMENTS, VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE, AND STLREIREL SOUNDER A TL LAL SGM lett UE OR Dy VALI oN Temperaments. Achievements and endowments. Classi- fication of temperaments,—sanguine, melancholy, choleric, phlegmatic. Reading character by observation. Voca- tional guidance by observational methods. Not enough facts. Cannot tell heredity, experience, nor training. Psychological tests. Not all born equal. Difference be- tween knowledge and intelligence. Innate potentialities. Army tests and what they show. Occupations and pro- fessions. Know, control, and deny thyself. Success, its ideals and attainments. Success elements—knowledge, right, truth, justice, service, forgiveness. Ask for self only what one asks for all. Vil PAGE 230 257 284 Vill CHAPTER XIII. CONTENTS GRGOU PSUA NDU RACES Gren inte een nee New Ideas. Group consciousness. Enlarging con- sciousness. Psychological factors. Motives. Race an- tagonisms. Japanese. Nordics. Education. Individual and group. Race superiority. Likeness of men. Solu- tion of problems. The forum method. PAGE S)8h8, PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY CHAPTER I MACHINE THE MIND USES Psychology finds its subject matter in the experience of human individuals. Up to the early part of the last century the science was largely introspective, and most of the emphasis was placed upon the consideration of the intellect. Later the will came in for a good share of attention, and in recent years the attention has been turned more directly to the emotions. Psychologists have come to recognize that the intellect alone does not make mind, that the mind is greater than intellect, greater than will, greater than emotions. It is the sum of all of these in their various manifestations. I think, feel, and will; but J am not thinking, feeling, and willing: Jam more than they. They are transient, / am perma- nent. J have the experience of feeling, thinking, and willing. There is a continuity about myself that is not true of any, or all of them. I am a personality, and psychology that deals with my experience must deal with a personality—one that looks back upon yesterday, knows today, and plans for to- morrow. When we think of experience, we think of something hap- pening, or of something being done. Change has taken place and we know of the change. The change is manifested thru some form of bodily activity, or of remembered bodily activity. The fact that we are aware of the change lies at the basis of consciousness. I 2 PRACTIGADV PSY CHOLCOGY: Psychology, then, must deal with experience of a person- ality which is conditioned by bodily activity. There must be a correlation of the psychological processes with consciousness. The study of the subject ought to make fairly clear the funda- mental principles of mental activity. Practical Psychology is an attempt to apply these princi- ples to personal development and to the daily task. It is safe to say that everyone is using every day some of the principles of psychology, often without knowing what they are, just as the boy who leaves his jackknife on the back door-step over night and finds it “‘rusted” in the morning does not know that the rusting has anything to do with the science of chemistry. We hear of the psychology of advertising, the psychology of salesmanship, the psychology of healing, etc. Psychology has been applied in some degree to problems of formal education, by the physicians in their practice, by lawyers in dealing with criminals and with juries. In recent years many attempts have been made to apply the principles of psychology to industry, and while not much headway has been made enough has been done to make industrial leaders anxious to know more about the subject. As always happens in such cases much that is not psychology has been “sold” as the real thing. Character analysis in most cases has nothing, or very little, to do with fundamental principles of psychology. Yet psychology has a large contribution to make to personal development, to all forms of industry, and to all forms of social organization. In every activity today except hunting and fishing one must come into contact with men. Modern civilization is based upon human contacts. Yet almost no attention has been given to putting within the reach and understanding of the common man any of the knowledge that the science of psychology has acquired. In industry the best experts are secured to select raw material, to supervise the processes, to test the finished MACHINE THE MIND USES 3 product, to merchandise it. In fact the closest study of every- thing is made except of the most vital factor in the business— the men. We are just beginning to recognize the importance of a knowledge of men, their impulses, desires, hopes, ambitions, and also of the necessity of their understanding us, and our impulses, desires, hopes, and ambitions as well as their own. They cannot understand us until they understand themselves. When Alexander Pope said “The proper study of mankind is man,” he made a statement the importance of which we are just beginning to realize. Every man is a salesman. He has ability to sell. He may sell ability direct to an employer. He may sell the goods his ability has produced, but he must sell and buy as long as he remains a part of any civilized community. ‘‘No man liveth to himself alone.” Psychology will help one to discover his ability and enable him to market it to better advantage. It will help him to increase his knowledge and to make what he has worth more by teaching him how to use it. The ability to apply a knowledge of psychology to the handling of a group of men in industry, to organizing a selling force, to planning an advertising campaign, to the selection of men for office, for factory, or for the road is an ability that the world wants and stands ready to pay for as has been demonstrated over and over again. This is a day when the search for values is engaging the attention of men everywhere. It engages the business man,, and the scientist, as well as the expert in religion. The ques- tion of use is on everyone’s tongue. What is the use? What is it good for? What can he do? The value of waste or by-products is an ever present one in every industry. There is an unrealized value in many of these by-products, which the 4 PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY discovery of new processes or more efficient carrying out of an old one, will make available. What is true of industry and industrial processes is true in a larger way of man himself. There is hardly one in ten who knows himself well enough to know what he can do best, or the circumstances under which he can do it. Scientists say that most of us use only from ten to thirty percent of our ability, not because we are lazy or indifferent but because we do not know how to apply our mental and physical powers. Psychology helps men to. understand themselves. Literally hundreds of men who have studied the subject in the last few years have discovered in themselves values and abilities they did not know existed. The results have been an enlarged vision, an increased economic value, often a new adjustment or a readjustment in industry or profession that has meant, greater satisfaction in the day’s work. Mental Mastery.—Two ideas have been prominent in the past concerning man and the world. The older one was that man was to take the world as he found it and use it. It had been provided for him by someone. That Being had placed him here for a season. He was to make the best of the situa- tion. He had been born into a system and was what he was because of that system. All his rights and privileges were his by inheritance. He did not know much about the world and he did not need to. By some process some knowledge had been obtained by those of influence which they were to use for the good of the common folk. This idea produced aristocracy and feudalism. The newer idea which made its appearance with Galileo and which was clarified by Francis Bacon emphasized the fact that man was not bound by any system—that he need not accept the world as he found it. He could remake the world and exploit its resources for his own satisfaction. The world was MACHINE THE MIND USES 5 composed of raw material which he could make over into many things. Under the old idea the world made very little progress. It discovered fire, invented the bow and arrow, made pottery, but it never learned to control power to any extent. It domesti- cated animals, used to a degree the winds and waves, invented some simple mechanical devices and, previous to the French Revolution had produced a low grade explosive, but these were the results of accident more than the results of diligent search for means to control power. So rapidly has the idea of remaking and controlling the world progressed that since the overthrow of the Holy Roman empire twenty-six new sciences have arisen. There has been a marvelous extension of man’s power of control in the physical realm. He has learned to control the power of steam, elec- tricity, and chemical reactions, and to apply this power to transportation, communication, and industry. In the biological realm he has used his increased knowledge and power to banish diseases. Bubonic plague, cholera, yellow fever, smallpox, malaria, sleeping sickness, and hookworm are no longer terrors to man. He has learned the secrets of control in the biological realm so that he has materially in- creased the food supply of the world thru plant and animal breeding. He is now actually making his world. Just as man has come to recognize the necessity of control in the physical and biological, he is coming to recognize the necessity of control in the psychological and the sociological fields. He is already beginning to realize that in remaking the world he has remade himself—that in making laws for the con- trol of society, in the development of social organizations, and in setting up governments he is making instincts, emotions, and ideas do for him what they have never done before. The mind of man has grown from humble beginnings with- 6 PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY out much attempt to see ahead. “Sufficient unto the day” has been his motto. It has reached a stage approaching adult vigor and is in a position to begin to direct its own course thru conscious control. Just as surely as changes have occurred in the physical and biological realm as a result of man’s endeavors, just so surely some changes have occurred in man. The changes which he has brought about with plants, animals, minerals, and metals have reacted favorably upon himself. He is approaching the time when mental mastery should be his goal. Mental mastery, or self-control, can come about only thru self-knowledge, and it is to the field of psychology that we look for help. When I speak of knowing one’s self, I mean the whole man, physically, physiologically, mentally, and morally. One cannot fall short of this and succeed supremely. What this course aims to do is to indicate the road, point the direction, describe the tools, and show how they are used. Relation of Mind and Body.—The mind is related to the body as it is not to any other object. Perhaps we would be nearer right if we thot of the body and mind as two parts of the same unit rather than thinking of them as separate entities acting together. We do not know anything of the mind’s activity except as it expresses itself thru the body. There are many speculations about the activity of the mind apart from the body, but no experience has been established which satisfies the scientists, one of whom is the psychologist, of such a fact. It is to the body that we must look for the expressions of mental activity. Bodily Activity.—Whatever has been accomplished by the race, or by individuals has been done through bodily activity. One may dream of what he will do, but unless he acts—tells his plans to others, writes them, or carries them out himself— nothing will be accomplished. Unless men do more than think, MACHINE THE MIND USES 7 unless they plow and sow the seed, write the poems, build the bridges, launch the ships, harvest the crops, deliver the ora- tions, preach the sermons, nothing results from the thinking except the exercise of the mind that did the thinking. On the other hand, wherever we see railroads built, tun- tels dug, schools established, monuments erected, books printed, we infer that someone has been thinking. Someone has dreamed and the dream has come true. The real dreamers — bring the things to pass. Forever they are dreamers, Who make their dreams come true. —Buiss Carman, “Ode to Edward Seventh.” Control of Bodily Activity—There has been much dis- cussion in recent years in regard to the influence of mind over matter, and the question is not settled to the satisfaction of all yet, but in general, we may say that for all practical purposes, all bodily activity is caused and controlled by the mind. When we speak of cause we mean a certain sequence, or order, in which things are arranged so that they always stand in the same order, never getting the cart before the horse. Finding things always occurring in such order, we say the first causes the second. Often we do not know enough about the conditions to be sure. A thing may be the occasion and not the ultimate cause; but if we find the events or phenomena appearing in the same order time after time we come to asso- ciate them as cause and effect. So often have we found thot preceding action that when we find bodily action we postulate mental activity as its cause. There are a number of reasons why we do this. Have you ever been hungry and have someone mention food, and then find your “mouth water”? Pawlow carried on many experi- ments with dogs, and discovered that if a picture of food was placed before the dog the salivary glands began at once to 8 PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY secrete saliva. That is, the idea being aroused in the mind caused the salivary glands to act. Bodily action followed the mental activity. Any stimulus that will arouse the idea pro- duces the same result. We know how digestion is disturbed when we are sad. We do not desire food. A picture of food placed before us at such time does not result in salivary glandular activity, be- cause the mind is too intent upon something else, yet the im- pressions from the picture were registered in the brain just the same as before. So it seems that unless the mind holds the proper idea orders will not be issued to the salivary glands. When one is frightened, the heart beats faster, breaths come short and quick, and a number of other bodily reactions occur, due (we quite naturally and properly infer) to the frightened condition. Ideas Tend to Express Themselves in Bodily Activity. —We have stated that all action is caused and controlled by the mind. We want to go a step further and say that all ideas tend to express themselves in bodily activity. Every idea seeks expression. The only means the mind has for expression is thru the body. One idea may express itself, or tend to, thru external organic action by striking with the fist or by calling names with the tongue, or by wishing a friend “a merry Christmas.”” Another idea may tend to express itself thru some internal bodily activity which may be chemical and not organic at all. You will notice that we have said ‘“‘tend to express.” Often one is able partially to prevent the expression of an idea. He may be angry and yet not express in words what his tendency is. He has been told to count ten before he speaks when angry, so he does not speak. His anger has sub- sided before he finished counting. But even then he did not prevent entirely the expression. A change of countenance, quick breathing, and perhaps a turning away gave some ex- MACHINE THE MIND USES 9 pression. When a tendency to act or speak is suppressed, we say it is inhibited. Remembering that every idea tends to express itself in bodily action, it is well for us to take heed as to what ideas we allow entrance to our minds, The saying, “‘As one thinketh, so is he” is virtually true; for one is bound to do the thing he con- tinues to think of doing. He is quite sure to become the kind of man he continues to think of becoming. The universe is so organized that each one has within himself the power to become what he wills. The Body a Machine for Doing Work.—The body is a machine for doing work, and no matter what our theories may be as to its ultimate relation to the mind, it serves the mind as an instrument of expression. If the best expression of the mind is to be attained, the body must be kept in such condi- tion that it can function properly. One would hardly think of trying to drive a car without some careful attempts to under- stand the principles of its operation. Yet here is a machine vastly more complicated and delicate than an automobile and most of us take little or no pains to understand its mechanism. I suppose the reason is that it is made so nearly “fool proof” that it goes without much attention. When the car gets out of order we call up the garage and are “towed in.” When the body gets out of order, we send for the physician, and sooner or later are “towed out.” Ordinary good sense would indicate a sufficient knowledge of the operations of the body to enable us to take proper care of it. This knowledge, if observed, will not only keep us in better health, and enable us to live longer, but will give us very much better service while we do live. The Cell Theory of Life.—In order to have a good idea of the body and its functions, it will be necessary for us to take a brief survey of life and its development. The fact that life IO PRAGTIGAL PSY GHOLOG™ begins with the egg was unknown to men of pre-scientific days. They thot life was due to the entering of a “‘life-principle” into the body and that death occurred when it departed. We know that life as we commonly conceive it begins with the egg and that death is due to the cessation of the process of oxidation in the body. The Living Cell the Basis of Life.—About a generation or so ago, Schwann of Germany and Huxley of England established the theory that the living cell is the basis of all life, that each plant and animal, including man, begins as a single cell. The cell is able to live, breathe, feel, move, gather food, avoid danger, adapt itself to conditions, and pass its charac- teristics on to the next generation, The Amceba.—The parts of a cell are the protoplasm and the nucleus. The nucleus and its network of tiny threadlike fibers are the only hint of a brain and nervous system the cell has. In the ameba (the simplest of the single-celled animals), any part may on the instant become an arm, a leg, a stomach, etc. Subsequent evolution adds no new function, but develops special structures to perform them. As these special structures develop, we shall find a distribution of duties somewhat along the line of division of labor in modern industry. This we shall consider later. The Amphioxus.—For ages the single-celled animals were the only ones on earth; but thru the slightest variations, higher forms appeared, each compoéed of many cells instead of one, a sort of colony, or community. While this stage was being reached new plans were worked out for feeding, informing, scavenging, and protecting the colony. Amphioxus is the name given to one of the little animals. It stands a long way up the scale from the amceba, but is very much farther away from the highest of the class of which he was the forerunner, the vertebrates. He has a mouth and a stomach and the sim- MACHINE THE MIND USES II : O ) O O PO © & Arik a 1O) AB tv Fic. 1—An ameeba is about 1/50 of an inch in diameter. These sketches show an ameeba getting its food and swallowing it. When it comes into contact with a particle of food-plant or animal, or a tiny piece of something else, it just begins to wrap itself around the particle until it is completely sur- rounded. Any indigestible matter passes on thru the body and out. The amceba is a minute particle of protoplasm, and each little animal contains a nucleus A, and a nucleolus B, besides water spaces called vacuoles C. plest form of a backbone ever discovered. There is a little cavity in the upper side of it in which a nerve tube rests. From a Fic. 2—The ameeba, like all animals, grows until it gets so large that food enough cannot be absorbed to keep it increasing in size. Then it begins to divide as seen in Figure 2. The division takes place thru the nucleus which is the very center of life, whether it be in plant or animal cells, and when com- plete each part is a fully equipped amceba and the process of growth and division continues indefinitely. it there are sent out very slender nerve fibers to different parts of the body. It reproduces itself by laying a single egg which, when fertilized, develops as does the amceba; but instead of I2 BRACTIOANIE VR SY GEOLOGY separating and parting company and each becoming a separate individual, the parts all hold together within the egg, and finally the young amphioxus comes out or, as we say, hatches. After hatching the cells all remain together, each group keeping its own place and doing its own work as part of the group. The function of each group of cells is determined while the creature is yet in the egg. Fic. 3—The amphioxus is about 114 to 2 inches long and lives buried in the sand on the seashore. It is a hollow tube thru which water flows and from which food is caught as it passes. In the figure, A is the nerve tube, B the backbone, C the opening where the water flows in and D where it flows out. The amphioxus has no head or tail but does have a mouth, stomach, simple form of backbone, and a nerve tube. If you take a hollow rubber ball and press one side in and cement the edges of the fold together, you will have a fairly good idea of how the amphioxus is made, for it is a hollow tube so folded that a part of the outside becomes the inside, and because it is the inside it has different work to do. Division of labor is established among the various groups of cells. The outer layer of cells becomes the skin and nervous sys- tem. The middle layer becomes muscles, blood vessels, and egg-producing part of the machine. The inside layer becomes the stomach and other parts of the digestive apparatus. The nervous system co-ordinates the whole body so that its parts can act together when necessary. MACHINE THE MIND USES 13 The Human Nervous System.—There is an increase in complexity in the evolution of the nervous system from am- phioxus to man. In the human embryo there is a hollow tube, modified and enlarged at the upper end. The nerve tissue thickens at the back or the dorsal side of the embryo and gradually folds over forming the tube. At the upper end three enlargements are formed by the unequal thickening of the walls of the tube. From these enlargements the brain de- velops by a series of outgrowths and foldings or crumplings. Along the spinal cord there appear little branches which develop into the spinal nerves and into the sympathetic nerves. In the human being there is a mutual relation between the brain and the spinal cord and a complete unity of nervous action. Each human being begins as a single cell. The process of development continues until the body composed of billions of billions of cells is complete. In the human body instead of having only three groups of cells as the amphioxus has, we have some thirty different kinds, each doing its particular part to keep the body functioning properly. We have nerve cells, smooth muscle cells, hair cells, bone cells, blood cells, nail cells, skin cells, etc. Each cell is born, grows, performs all the functions of a single living being, reproduces itself and dies. Cellular Intelligence.—The question arises at this point as to what keeps these different groups of cells, or any single cell, at work. We do not have to give attention to them all in order to have them do their work. We do not have to say to ourselves, Now it is time to breathe; now, to digest food; now, to secrete bile; now to make the hair grow. If we had to give attention to the smallest part of any of these functions, we would not be able to keep alive. However, we know these various activities are carried on from birth to death without our giving much, if any, thot to them. The question is, what makes the machine go? 14. PRACTICAL ARO Gay It is what may be called “cellular intelligence.” There is an intelligence, if we may use the term for any activity so low down in the scale of life, that takes charge of the processes of the cell in a multicellular body just as we saw is done in the case of the single-celled amceba. Dr. Carrel of the Rocke- feller Institute has demonstrated that living cells taken from a body, properly protected and fed, can be kept alive for long periods; not only that, but they grow. In 1912 he took some tissue from the heart of an embryo chick and placed it in a culture medium. It is living and growing yet. There is life in each organ, a “livingness” in each complete organism, so tena- cious that a part of the organism may be removed and kept alive and growing while the remainder dies and goes to decay. Single-celled animals never die a natural death and biologists are beginning to wonder if multicellular animals need to. The cells of a human lung can be made to live in- definitely when placed outside the human body where they are not compelled to.cooperate with groups of cells in other organs. This specialized service, differentiation of function, or division of labor, whatever we may call it, sooner or later causes a break and eventually death. The break may come in the stom- ach group, or the liver group, and so on. The inability of any group of cells to function properly throws the whole body out of order and death results. It has been discovered that X-rays of a certain intensity will kill weak cells and not injure the strong ones. If weak cells can be destroyed by X-rays or by radium before they can kill the whole body, life can be lengthened indefinitely. To bring this about is the problem biologists are now trying to solve. Let us turn our attention again to the amceba. We find that it requires all the power it has to perform its vital func- tions because every part of the little organism is engaged in MACHINE THE MIND USES 15 every activity. It has about all it can do to keep alive but, as the development of higher forms of life proceeds and the differentiation of function becomes more firmly established, an economy is effected whereby not quite all of the effort of every group is required all the time to keep the machine going. There are shortest possible periods of leisure in which, so to speak, the living animal has time to “think.” It chooses more wisely in food selection and more accurately between friends and enemies, has time to make a trifle better adaptation to en- vironment, and so makes possible a further and higher plane of life. Some of those activities to which it was in its lower stages obliged to give all of its attention have now been given over to habits and later become so ingrained in the very struc- ture and life of the cells that we call them instincts. They have become so essential that life cannot be preserved without them. We all recognize that the thing to which we must give our entire conscious attention today may become in a few months such a well established habit that we perform the act without any more thot than to decide to begin the process. May we not also assume that, if that habit makes only the minutest change in a nerve center and if the same habit becomes established in our children with the same minute changes that in the long ages of unfolding the basis of that action may be shifted from habit to instinct? Of course we do not know enough about our ancestors to be sure what they were. No one knows enough about the mental characteristics of an ancestor of ten genera- tions ago and of the intermediary generations to determine just what particular changes have been made in the successive nervous systems including his own body, but ten generations are as nothing in the processes of the ages. Certainly changes in the nervous systems of the animal kingdom have been made, and so far as evidence goes every modification has come thru influences at work within the organism influenced by its 16 ERAT CAT i Sy CEI) IAD tn environment and not by injecting of another force from the outside. These changes in the nervous organism have resulted in an increased efficiency and in a larger leisure. Division of labor among the groups of cells has resulted as a division of labor in industry has. Man has time consciously to direct his Ff "Na, D "Uh (ny Fic. 4.—A human embryo of six weeks growth showing the spinal cord and its outgrowth in skull. Notice how A, B, C, D, E, and F are folded or crumpled back upon the upper end of the spinal cord. efforts. He can make plans for future activity. He can set goals to be attained. He has time to weigh the results of efforts of other men and of his own. Where formerly he could see as far ahead as the next day, now he sees ahead weeks and months and years. This has enabled him to become conscious of innumerable things of which his earlier ancestors were entirely ignorant. Psychology should help us to under- MACHINE THE MIND USES 17 stand ourselves so we may employ wisely this larger con- sciousness. The Cerebrospinal System.—We must understand the nervous mechanism a little better because it plays such a large part in life. The human nervous system is composed of the cerebrospinal nervous system and the sympathetic nervous system. The cerebrospinal system is composed of the central nervous system and the peripheral nervous system, ‘The cen- tral system consists of the brain and the spinal cord which runs two-thirds of the way down the spinal column. The peripheral system extends to the surface of the body, to the special senses, and to the muscles. The Brain.—All the power one exerts is thru his nervous system. Each one of us is protected and kept alive thru its functions. We are made aware of the need of food, we are informed of a headache, we are warned of fire, we are told about cold feet and of toothache, in fact we are kept fully posted about all of these and many other things that are essen- tial to our health and safety by a properly functioning nervous system. We might starve, freeze, or be run over by an auto- mobile were it not for these continual advices which we receive. The brain is the most important part of the entire system be- cause by means of it we come to understand what these various messages mean. It makes possible the interpretation of nerve language. It will be necessary for us to get a little more familiar with this important part of the system. The average weight of the brain at birth is twelve ounces. The average weight in adulthood is three pounds. From birth to adulthood the brain not only increases in size but increases in complexity. The growth in complexity of structure is really more important than the increase in size. At birth there are about ten billion cells in the brain and the number in any one brain never increases altho, through disease and injuries, the 18 PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY number may be decreased. While the number of cells is not in- creased, the size of the cells is. The increase in the size of the cells depends somewhat on what we ask them to do for us. I suppose many of us never call all of the cells of our brain into activity and so never realize to the full our capacity either to work or to think. Fic. 5 shows the upper surface of the cerebrum, indicating the location of the more prominent fissures. The fissure of Rolando is indicated by A, the fissure of Sylvius by B, and the parietal occipital fissure by C. It also indicates the lobes of the cerebrum. The brain is composed of the cerebrum and the cerebellum. The cerebellum is the lower part of the brain. It is the organ of equilibrium and of motion. It receives the sensory impulses from the skin, the muscles, joints, and semi-circular canals of the ear and from the eye. The impulses from the cerebellum help to maintain the right degree of muscular tension. So far as is known the cerebellum has nothing to do with conscious- ness and operates independently of it. The cerebrum is the upper part of the brain and in the adult nearly covers the cerebellum. It is in reality the thinking cap. It is divided into two nearly equal parts somewhat resembling MACHINE THE MIND USES 19 the meat of an English walnut. The cerebrum grows faster than the skull and so forms folds and wrinkles on its surface which are called convolutions. Between these folds are spaces which are called fissures. The mind grows as the brain grows and cannot grow any faster. In all cases where the brain does not develop to normal, the intelligence of the individual is below normal, ranging anywhere from that of an idiot to that of a high grade moron. We often hear the expression, “He hasn’t any brains,’’ when what is really meant is that he does not use what he has, but in many cases he does not have any brains, or at least not good ones. One cannot use what he does not have. In appearance the brain is quite the color of a piece of putty. It is covered with a layer of gray matter not over an eighth of an inch thick. This covering of gray matter is a very essential part of the brain as we shall see. Thru studying diseases and by examining persons who have been injured scientists have come to know that certain func- tions of the brain are located in certain definite parts, because any injury or disease of that part interferes with the function and may prevent it entirely. The lower part of the cerebrum is the seat of control for certain vital functions, such as breathing, heart-beat, secreting saliva, swallowing, etc. These are in a sense involuntary as they can be performed without consciousness. The middle part of the cerebrum is quite a large region and is the seat of control of voluntary movements. It is the func- tion of the middle part of the cerebrum to respond to auditory and visual reflexes. Sensory impulses from the retina of the eye and from the cochlea of the ear enter here into synaptic connections with muscle-nerves of the face, eyes, and other parts of the body. The fore part of the brain is the seat of the perceptive, 20 RRAGCTIGAU VE SY Gi Qin® Give reflective, and interpretative powers of the mind as indicated by Mills and others. That is, they place the seat of the higher powers of the mind in the fore part of the cerebrum. The outer layer of the cerebrum and of the cerebellum is called the cortex, which means bark. It is the gray covering just referred to. The cortex of the cerebrum is much more highly differentiated as to functions than that of the cere- Fic. 6 presents left side view of the left hemisphere of the cerebrum, and indicates the localization of functions in the brain areas, or centers. bellum. In the cortex of the cerebrum are various centers or areas, such as visual, auditory, frontal association, olfactory, etc.; that is, only one kind of impulse gets to the same center, or area. The nerve processes of the cerebral cortex are directly associated with consciousness. Association Centers.—There are large areas in the brain that do not serve any sensory or motor function, but serve only to connect sensory and motor centers. They form association tracts which bind together all parts of the brain. Mental ability depends rather upon the power of association than upon the size of the brain. MACHINE THE MIND USES 21 The Thalamus.—tThere is a large mass of nerve fibers lying in the center of the brain called the thalamus, All sen- sory impulses except those from the olfactory membrane pass thru the thalamus before reaching the cerebral cortex. These impulses undergo some modification which results probably in their establishing a closer association with other incoming impulses so that there is more or less correlation before the nerve energy reaches the cortex. The Medulla.—The medulla is between the spinal cord and the cerebellum and is about an inch long. It is a sort of gateway between the brain and the body. All sensory impulses from the trunk to the brain and all from the brain to the trunk pass thru the medulla. Here are found the nerve cen- ters that control circulation and respiration. The Spine and Spinal Cord.—The spinal column is com- posed of thirty-one irregular bones placed one above another, each called a vertebra. There is a round hole in each side of each bone, sixty-two in all. Out thru each hole passes a nerve about as large as a goose quill. Each is called a spinal nerve because it comes from the spinal cord. Each nerve has two roots; one is smooth and the other has a little nodule, or ganglion, somewhat similar to the little nodules found on clover roots. Each nerve has a sort of insulation so that the impulses cannot be lost or dissipated; then both are wrapped together much as we wrap two electric wires together. Every message going to the brain passes thru the root with the ganglion in it, and every one going out passes thru the smooth root. The spinal cord is the main highway of all travel for all impulses between the brain and the body. Each of these spinal nerves continues to subdivide into from two hundred to twelve hundred fibers, often passing out _of the wrappings of one bundle into the wrappings of another. Before considering the function of the spinal cord, let us 22 PRACTICAL ORS Y CHOLO GY: consider the neuron or nerve cell. The neuron is composed of four parts: (1) Cell-body; (2) Dendrite; (3) Axon; (4) End-brush. | Let us remember that in the nervous system gray color means nerve cells and white means nerve fibers. The vital part of each neuron is the cell-body. Its special function is to conduct the energy called neurokyme which the neuron generates. Another function is probably the nutrition of the neuron. Dendrite (from dendron, Greek for tree) is the name given to a part of the neuron because of its branching. It con- ducts the impulse toward the cell-body. The axon is to the neuron what the wire is to the telephone system. It transmits or conducts the nerve impulses away from the cell-body. There is usually only one axon Fig. 7 is a sketch to ga neuron. Each dendrite and each axon of a neuron showing , j the different parts. is covered with a medullary sheath. Many BN Be) poe paeie scientists claim that the neurons in the cerebrospinal and in the sympathetic sys- tems do not function until the medullary sheath has been pro- duced. This may account for the late functioning of some of these neurons. The child has few medullated neurons when born, but they develop so rapidly that in a few weeks or months certain fundamental tracts are functioning regularly. The medullary sheath is a fatty substance produced by the neurons and serves as a sort of insulation. The axons covered with it make the white portions of the spinal cord and brain. The axons of the sympathetic system are not covered with it and so are gray in color. The end-brush of the neuron intertwines with the dendrites MACHINE THE MIND USES 23 of another neuron yet does not come into actual contact with them. The end-brush may end in a muscle or in a gland. In the first case muscular action results, in the second chemical action results. The neurons which connect sensory with motor neurons are called connectors. The brain is composed largely of connector neurons and as a result there are millions of synapses in the brain. These gaps tend to retard the speed of the impulse and so delay action. chor Five? \c° ane é Meter Frber Fic. 8.—Reflex arc. The dendrites are microscopic and the axons are micro- scopic in diameter, altho not in length. Many of them are several feet long. One reaches from the top of the head to the small of the back. The cell-bodies are also microscopic, measuring from 1-160 to 1-6000 of an inch in diameter, The cell-body con- tains neurofibrils which extend into the axons and serve to help conduct impulses. It also contains chromatin, a substance concerned in the metabolic processes of the neuron, Overwork breaks down the chromatin. These metabolic changes in the _cell-body (which may be chemical) may be the cause of cer- tain nerve impulses. 24. PRAGTIGALR? SY CHOEOGY The ten billions of neurons of the brain are divided into groups, each performing its own work. Each group responds only to a particular stimuli, just as axons conduct only one kind of message. One group of these neurons responds to impressions which we interpret as sight; another as hearing; another as touching, etc. Each of these groups has to do with only one set of impulses. It is important to recognize, too, that each group depends upon stimulation for its development. If for any reason the end nerves leading to one of these groups is destroyed not only is the ability of the nerve to func- tion lacking but the neurons of the group never develop. The Function of the Spinal Cord.—The spinal cord has two functions; one, to convert sensory impulses directly into motor impulses, without the necessity of consulting the cerebral cortex about the matter; another to transmit impulses to higher or lower levels of the nervous system. We must remember that when these nerves subdivide into hundreds of fibers the ends, while never actually meeting each other, are in the same field and so near that messages may pass from one to the other as influence passes from magnet to metal in an electrical field. These gaps as we have already indicated are called by the psychologist synapses. These con- tacts are purely functional and not anatomical. There is no actual contact of the nerve fibers. There may be several fibers within the field and each fiber and synapse may be regarded as offering a greater or less resistance to the flow of the energy or neurokyme. Here, as we might expect, the line of least re- sistance is taken, and having once been selected, it is very likely to be selected the next time; and so thru repetition a sort of thru connection is established. Altho each neuron has possible connections with many others, it is possible to get a “thru line.” Habit is formed by getting a “thru line’ so often that the con- nection becomes almost, if not quite, automatic. MACHINE THE MIND USES 25 The Reflex Arc.—The reflex arc is the functional unit as the neuron is the structural unit of the nervous system. In its simplest form. the reflex arc consists of a stimulation affecting the sensory nerve which leads to the sensory ganglion in the spinal cord, then thru the spinal cord to the motor ganglion and then out thru a motor nerve to a muscle. Sometimes there are a number of neurons between the first and last. These intermediate neurons are called connector or association neurons. The Sympathetic Nervous System. —The sympathetic nervous system is com- posed of a chain of ganglia lying outside of the spinal cord. The chain is composed of forty-nine ganglia—twenty-four on the right side of the spine, twenty-four on the left, and one in front of the lowest bone of the spine. Each ganglion is connected with its neighbor above and below by a rope of Fig. 09 is a sketch axons which hangs in a loop from the upper SVN seek Se end of the spine. brum showing cell- The neurons of the different ganglia Hedy er: eon send off axons to definite parts of the body brush D. —heart, stomach, liver, etc. At these different centers, the axons are closely interwoven, forming a network called a plexus. A number of small ganglia are interwoven with each plexus. These plexuses all lie within the body cavity and are in close connection with the organ which the plexus controls. There are a number of smaller ganglia scattered thruout the organism, in the eye-socket, in the thoracic cavity, on the walls of the heart, etc. The sympathetic system extends to all organs of the _abdominal cavity, and to all involuntary muscles. The cerebro- spinal system is connected with the sympathetic system thru 26 PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY the spinal nerves, each of which sends two branches to a ganglion, one carrying outgoing messages and one incoming messages. There is no other known connection between the two systems. The sympathetic system controls the action of the glands, the smooth muscles, peristaltic motion of the stomach and intestines, the tension of the arteries, and all the vital functions of the body without our being conscious of their operation. However, when things go wrong and the stomach does not function properly, or when we have taken ptomaine poison into the system and something needs to be done about it, impulses are sent from the stomach to the sympathetic ganglia, then into the spinal cord and thence to the brain, arousing con- sciousness. Then, we send for the physician. We cannot control the sympathetic system directly, but we can influence it thru its connection with the cerebro-spinal system, a part of which, the brain, is very closely associated with consciousness. Mosso of the university of Turin determined that the seat of the emotions is in the sympathetic nervous system. So we see why we do not want food when we are sad and why we have a hard time digesting if we do eat it. Anything that disturbs the emotions interferes with digestion. Joy and happiness help it; sadness and sorrow hinder it. The sympathetic system is controlled by the mind calling up the neurons of a central station and making some demand upon them. The neurons respond by setting the muscles to work. The muscles call for blood, and the ganglia of the heart and the blood vessels are compelled to go to work. Cer- tain neurons, as we have seen, control others, which accounts for the unconscious service that we sometimes get. The rea- son the mouth waters when we are hungry and think of food MACHINE THE MIND USES 27 is that the neurons of the brain issue orders to the salivary glands and they immediately respond by producing saliva. The mere suggestion is sufficient to secure action. The power of suggestion to control the functional activities of the body will be considered more fully later. Consciousness is a characteristic of mental facts by which we become aware of them. ‘Mental facts are phenomena that can be known to one person only and that one the person experiencing them.’ Consciousness means endless change, or discrimination. The word means knowing with or together. Consciousness indicates mental change, and mental change indicates bodily change. Whether consciousness is the cause of the bodily change or vice versa scientists are not all agreed. However, so far as we know there is no consciousness without the action of the cortical cells, but whether all action of the cortical cells causes consciousness we do not know. It is the commonly accepted opinion that consciousness is a cause rather than an effect ; that while the impulses that run thru the nerves and ganglions are physical phenomena, the result of these is something quite different. Those who are inclined to place more emphasis upon the psychological processes as the cause of consciousness, point out that reflex action is without consciousness, because there are very few neurons involved, that when an inconceivably larger number of the neurons of the cortex are stimulated, the reac- tion is of sufficient force to arouse consciousness, or to cause consciousness—that is, that when the cortical cells are involved we get consciousness, otherwise not. We do not know just when consciousness begins in the in- dividual, and none of us can remember when it began in his own life. judging from experiences with children, conscious- ness appears soon after birth and continues to increase in scope and power until maturity, which probably occurs at about 28 PRA CTICAILVPSY GEOR OG: the time of man’s highest mental efficiency. The fact that the neurons of the cortex are the latest to develop and that con- sciousness cannot develop without neuron reaction accounts for the comparatively late appearance of consciousness in the race. The insect, animal, or human that can respond to the greatest number of impulses, enjoys the highest degree of consciousness and of intelligence. The impulses received and responded to by the caterpillar, the dog, the Australian Bush- man, and the Anglo-Saxon indicate the degree of consciousness each possesses. Accidents to the nervous system modify or completely destroy consciousness. Diseases and drugs may have similar effects. As to the relation of consciousness to the nervous system, it is possible that a stimulus in the cortex may simply open the way for consciousness to appear, as turning the faucet lets the water run. The faucet does not cause the water to run, altho it cannot run without the faucet being turned. Again, it is well to remember that for all practical purposes the body is a machine which the mind uses. The mind is often thot of as synonymous with conscious- ness, but that is not in accordance with common experience. There are many activities of the mind carried on without con- sciousness. Impressions made upon the neurons of the nervous system are retained and interpretations of those impressions are retained. Associations are, as we shall see later, formed and strengthened without consciousness. All past experiences remain a part of the contents of the mind, altho not always in consciousness. It is as tho the mind were a great reservoir into which the elements of experience, after more or less sorting, are poured to be retained until needed for further use. There has been a good deal of confusion in regard to dis- tinguishing between these different phases of the mental activity. Some have spoken of the conscious mind, the sub- MACHINE THE MIND USES 20 conscious and the unconscious mind, thereby seeming to indi- cate that we have two or more minds. We want to make it perfectly clear that there is only one mind, however many forms of manifestation it may have. It seems much more satisfactory, and also in accord with the facts, if we speak of the consciousness, the subconsciousness, and the unconscious- ness, remembering that they are contemporaneous in time but with no “visible’’ connection. Yet, there is always a unit of consciousness. It relates to me. J am the one who is conscious. It is J who had that experience ten years ago and it is J, the same J, that remembers having had it. In spite of all the changes of the years, the sleep of nights, the delirium of dis- ease, the continual wearing out and rebuilding of my body, including the neurons of the brain, J still remain. Thru all these years there has been a broadening and deepening of con- sciousness which has resulted in establishing an increasing number of contacts with men and things. This consciousness is mine. It is a unity, yet made up of vast numbers of little experiences as the motion picture film which seems to run on as one continuous picture is composed of a great number of separate pictures. I am not my body. I am more than that. I live in my body and use it, but I am superior to the house in which I live even tho I have great regard for it and give it the best of care. There is a quality of “livingness” that indicates where a living thing stands in the scale of development. The plant, fish, dog, boy, are equally alive, but there is a difference in the quality of “livingness’” each possesses. “Livingness’ of an individual is the measure of its consciousness and of its intel- ligence. In man, because of the delicate machine in his con- trol and because of his ability to direct it, his consciousness has outrun that of all other creatures and it is still running. The continuous enlarging of consciousness is our task. CHAPTER II SENSE-PERCEPTIVE PROCESSES WE live in a world of continuous change. Nothing is at rest. The scientist tells us that even the electrons are in con- tinuous revolution around the center of their little system. In fact, change is the only permanent thing we know. With many of these changes we are more or less acquainted but many of them most of us know about only by hearsay. The physiologist tells us that we have an entirely new body every seven years. We hope he tells the truth for some of us need it. We know that stains on our hands and cuts on our faces soon disappear and there is no good reason why we should not believe the physiologist, especially as he has nothing to gain by deceiving us. Neither have the other scientists for that matter. We are concerned in this chapter with the method by which we get acquainted with these changes and to discover the man- ner in which we attach meanings to these changes, both those that are in the world outside of ourselves and those within, both of which have a bearing upon our mental development. We saw in the last chapter that the body is equipped with a nervous mechanism by means of which the activities of the body are co-ordinated and by means of which the entire sur- face of the body is put into communication with the brain. Any disturbance in the way of stimuli at the outer end of the sensory nerves is instantly reported to the neuron to which the sensory nerve is attached and from there the disturbance may 30 SENSE-PERCEPTIVE PROCESSES 31 be reported to a muscle or to another neuron and so on until the stimulus reaches the brain. World of Waves.—Movements of bodies set air in motion in the form of waves which go in all directions until they strike some object. Then they are deflected and go on until the energy is dissipated. We live in a world of waves, some of which are continually striking against the surface of the body. Some of these waves arouse the nerves to action and some do not. Some of the waves are able to secure a response when they strike a certain part of the body but not when they strike anywhere else. Waves of air strike the auditory nerve and secure a response but the same form of wave striking the skin of the face or the eye does not arouse nerve action. Of course, sometimes as when there is a great explosion enough air is set in motion and with such force and rapidity that it knocks one down. He hears it too but it is not the sound that knocks him down. Of course waves in the air may come with force enough to arouse nerve action in the eyes and cause them to become red and inflamed but the response is not like the response given by the auditory nerve stimulation. Differentiation of Functon.—Thru the long ages of hu- man evolution a differentiation of function has developed among the nerves so that one group attends to one form ot stimulation, another to another, etc. These groups are better trained than some people are for each attends strictly to its own business and leaves the others to do the same. There are a number of these groups, five or more of which give us information about the external world. In fact, all we know of the world around us we know because of the activity of these nerves. They are the nerves of the special senses, the names of some of which we learned when children in school. Sensation.—The capacity for sensation lies at the founda- tion of all knowledge. So the condition of the nervous system 32 PRAGLTICGALLPSY CHOLG Gy is an essential factor in determining the kind of report that is made to the cortex. Good health is an important factor in accurate reporting. Sensation is not a physiological process as considered in this connection, but SENSATION is a mental interpretation of the cause of the disturbance of the nerves of the special senses. Sensations are not knowledge any more than cotton is cloth. They are the raw material out of which knowledge may be built. They are the bricks out of which the house of knowledge is to be erected. These stimuli come to us without effort and may be recorded in the neurons without awakening any mental reaction or not enough to arouse consciousness because we have little or no interest in them at the time. The clock strikes tho we do not hear it but the vibrations reach the ear and are recorded. One may be sound asleep and not know when the clock strikes, and yet, make a quick move- ment every time it strikes. The recording of stimuli has a bearing upon the idea we have of getting used to noises. New comers to the city are very much disturbed and quite worn out at first by the confusion of noises. After a few weeks they forget all about the noises and go about their work or study without paying any attention to them. The recording of the stimuli has gone on just the same but the persons have lost interest in them. Many things of which we have never been conscious are recorded in the neurons of the brain and many of which we have been conscious and have forgotten are still registered there ready to be recalled when the proper association occurs. While sensations are the raw material out of which ideas are made, they of themselves are not of so much importance as are the reasons why we attend to them. One sees what his friends see. All things are judged in relation to other things. We see what our past experience has established an interest SHINS EPP ROELP ETV EOPROCESSES Bo in. Yet everything we meet has some significance and makes some impression upon the senses. Using Senses.—One should use his senses in order to improve them, for without use they cannot improve any more than the muscles can. Training the senses makes them more proficient. They respond to a larger number as well as to a wider range of impressions. The threshold of the senses can be lowered considerably thru use. Thru practice one can hear lower sounds than before. When one recalls that all the material he has for making ideas come to him thru the senses, he will realize that his first task is to increase his stock of sense material, or SENSATIONS and that thereby he grows to larger mental proportions. Perception.—When two or more impressions have been registered together in the cortex and have been interpreted as sensations there is a tendency, whenever one of thm is aroused in consciousness, for the mind to recall the others. When these sensations are so related that one of them recalls the others of the group into consciousness a PERCEPT is formed. PERCEPTION is the mental process by means of which we select such sensations as we wish to make the basis of our conscious life. Perception enriches a sensation by adding to it all of the remembered past. It is the recognition of the cause of the sensation. If I am aroused by a stimulus but do not know its cause I have a sensation. When I have identified the cause I have a percept and have performed the act called perception. Perception means that one is conscious of some- thing. The value of that thing to his mental life depends upon how much or how rich a past he can relate to it. Groups of people are often tested by mentioning a word to them and hav- ing each one name what came into his mind immediately after the word was spoken. Of course everyone will immediately associate the idea with some experience of his past. Then have 34 BRAGTIGADIRSY CHOEOGY. each one make a note of the second thing that occurs to him, the third, etc., until he has written a list of ten things which have occurred to him one after another. In each one’s list you will have a pretty good idea of how much his past experience can contribute to his present. I have often used the word boat as the first word, and have found that those who have always lived inland have a very different group of things to recall than have those who have lived near the sea, or the Great Lakes. The one group of persons cannot add very much to the idea from the past while the other group can add many things. ' I recall a story of a teacher in southern California trying to teach Whittier’s “Snow Bound” to a class of children but she had a very difficult time to interest them in the poem be- cause only one of them had ever seen a flake of snow, and she had never seen more than a light flurry of snow herself. Think what memories of the past would arise in the mind of each when the word home was mentioned to a group of per- sons among whom was one living on Fifth Avenue, one from a little farm in the middle west, another from Zululand, and still another whose parents died before he was two and a half years old and who for the next eight years had his only home in doorways around Chatham Square and later under the western approach to Brooklyn Bridge. As someone has said there is no accounting for tastes. Of course there isn’t unless you know the experience of the one whose taste is under consideration. As an Englishman said, “T don’t like spinach and I’m glad I don’t. For if I liked it I would eat it and I can’t bear it.” Every new sensation should be closely scrutinized in order to determine whether or not it can be related to some group al- ready in the mind. If it cannot, it is put into a class by itself to SENSE-PERCEPTIVE PROCESSES 35 be called up for comparison with later stimuli. This sorting process goes on continuously. No Dealing with Outside Realities.—Perception does not deal with outside realities, but with the impressions of out- side realities which have reached the cortex thru nerve stimuli. Perception interprets these impressions. If we do not receive appeals from nature, music, graphic arts, etc., it is because our senses thru which we come to appreciate these have for some reason not become active. If one’s perception is indis- tinct he tries to clarify it by gaining more raw material thru the senses. If he cannot see distinctly he goes nearer, or gets a pair of tortoise shell glasses. The tortoise shell makes him look better and the glasses make him see better. What One Can Know.—What one can know depends largely upon his environment which reacts upon his nervous system and which he will interpret in terms of his past expe- rience. The fusion of the new element with those derived from past experience constitutes one’s idea of a thing. We tie up our ideas in bundles and label them ideas. In perception we relate the experience to an object which is the thing that logically accounts for the perception. Interpreting Impressions.—Whether the external object resembles our idea of it is difficult to tell. It depends upon whether our senses have reported matters correctly and whether or not we have interpreted the reports rightly. The fact that perception has its origin indirectly in observational material makes it evident that it can give us knowledge of qualities of material objects only. It will give us impressions of color, form, weight, size, shape, etc. But when we try to interpret impressions made upon the optic nerve as sight we must remember that it is the image upon the retina that perception deals with and not the external object itself. Do we know then that the object resembles the impression made upon the 36 PRACTICAL RE Dy Ori QI) Givi retina of the eye? Assuming that it does, are we safe in assum- ing that an object resembles any or all of the impressions made upon the senses? Do we get a correct idea of the sun by the interpretation of the effect which its rays produce upon the back of the hand, or by the effect of its rays upon the un- covered eye? Is the sun like either, neither, or both? Is mustard as it tastes on meat or as it feels when you have mustard drafts on your feet, or a plaster of it on your chest? Do our senses give us any degree of certainty about the exter- nal world? Sense Deception.—Before we attempt to answer this question, let us consider some instances where we know the senses deceive us. That things are not always what they seem is acommon saying and “worthy of all acceptation.”’ We have often noticed in the ‘“‘movies” that carriage wheels often appear to turn backward while the carriage goes forward. We know they do not. Little squares of gray paper laid on green paper look greenish, but they are not. There are many such peculiar appearances which the psychologist calls illusions. The fact is taken advantage of by advertising men and merchants to quite a large degree. They know that plaids make things look larger. So they often put up candy and other foods in boxes covered with plaid designs to make you think you are getting more for your money. Large fleshy women of good taste and a knowledge of style never wear plaid dresses or plaid suits. They look large enough already. Tall thin women of the same social group never wear stripes, because stripes exaggerate height. The advertising man always places the “cut” of a cigar vertically on the page because it looks longer, but it isn’t. It reminds me of the question, Why married men live longer? The answer is, They don’t; it only seems longer. I suppose this is one of the illusions of the unmarried men. SENSE-PERCEPTIVE PROCESSES 37 You sit in a train which is standing still. There is another train standing still on the next track and opposite you. Pres- ently one of them begins without jerk or fuss to move. You think your train is moving, and then you begin to have doubts about it. You are not sure whether your train is going ahead, or the other one backing up, or whether yours is backing up and the other going ahead, or whether both are going ahead, or both backing up, one faster than the other. You will have to look at some other object than the two trains to satisfy yourself. All the other passengers are in the same “boat” you are. You have noticed often that when the rain is coming straight down that it strikes the car window as tho it came at an angle from the direction the train is moving and the faster the train goes the more nearly horizontal the rain comes. Yet, it doesn’t, it only seems to. I sat at my desk one bright afternoon. There was no sign of rain. Suddenly I heard a rumble of thunder. I was sur- prised. Feeling that a sudden storm was approaching I went to the door to see in what direction it was. As I stepped out on the veranda a horse and wagon went past. Then I knew what caused the thunder. It was George Miller’s wagon. It had just crossed the Cayuga Creek bridge. My senses tried to play me a trick, but I caught them at it before they caused me much inconvenience. Do we always catch them at it? May they not sometimes deceive us so completely that we never discover it? If they deceive us at all how can we ever depend upon them? Trust Your Senses.—We must in spite of all these illu- sions trust our senses. They are all we have to trust as a _ means of getting information about our world. We may specu- late about their unreliability, yet we are forced to trust the 38 PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY evidences of our own senses at least when they agree with those of others like ourselves. Cause of Illusions.—Let us consider the cause of these illusions. It may help us some in restoring confidence in our senses. Wheri a stimulus passes thru a nerve to the cortex the neurofibrils are thot to extend themselves as a result of the impetus. These little extensions are called amceboid processes, The neuron which has been aroused into activity by a stimulus never quite resumes its former condition. It retains some of the effects of the change and later impressions will find the path more or less distinctly marked out. There is a tendency for the new stimulus to follow out the already tho faintly established neuron pattern. Often the stimulus overflows the neuron pattern and is dissipated, leaving only very indistinct traces in the cortex. However, if two sets of stimuli disturb the sensorium at the same time, one, we will say, disturbing the optic nerve and the other disturbing the auditory nerve, the amoeboid processes may extend far enough to prevent partially a general dissipation of the nerve energy by forming a short and easy connection between the two sets of neurons which have been excited, allowing an increased amount of energy to flow thru. A more or less composite, or perhaps we had better say compound, pattern is now set up and when later a stimulus excites either the optic or the auditory nerve, the entire pattern is aroused to activity. In this way the two are so closely asso- ciated that when one is present in consciousness the other is recalled. Common Factors.—As the number of associated groups increase there is bound to be one or more factors common to several neuron patterns so it is not easy to tell just which one will appear in consciousness when stimulation occurs. Think, for instance, of the color red. It is associated with several patterns or groups of patterns, as red apple, red book, red hat, SENSE-PERCEPTIVE PROCESSES 39 red cow, the “reds,” etc. Just which of these will appear in mind when the percept red has the attention depends upon several factors which we shall consider later. If it is associated with any of these objects the interpretation will be correct. There is nothing wrong in thinking of any of the above named objects in connection with the color red, but often we associate the sensory element with the wrong group. A loose shingle is interpreted as a ghost. In the case of the wagon going over the Cayuga Creek bridge the element rumble was put into the group of sensations which meant thunder instead of into the group which meant wagon-crossing-bridge. The sense stimu- lus was true but it was interpreted wrongly. ILLusiIon is getting a part into the wrong whole, a sensory element into the wrong neuron pattern. In that case the sensory element is not what it appears to be. One must always be on guard against making the wrong interpretations. How is one to determine that his interpretations are not illusions? I hear a sound and think it is a bass drum. IJ am trying to interpret it. My companion hears the same sound. He says it is a big gun. When I associate the sound with a bass drum it seemed about a block away, but when I think of it as a big gun, I think of it as fifteen or twenty miles away. I am checking up my interpretation with that of my companion and we do not agree. We refer the matter to the first man we meet and he agrees with my companion. In the meantime we have walked to about the place where I thot the bass drum would be if my interpretation was correct but we neither see nor hear any signs of the drum. Then I come to the conclu- sion that my companion was right in his view of the matter. We decide it was the big gun and not the big drum which we heard. Our interpretation determined the object to which we referred our impressions and on comparing experiences we came to an agreement. 40 PRACTICAL" PSY CHOLOGY: Objective and Subjective——Only those interpretations which may become common property are called objective. Those which cannot become common are called subjective. To every form of experience there is a proper test and we should seek to find it and apply it to our experience. For the great majority of us there is an approximation toward agreement. The validity of one’s perception rests on the fact that his agrees with that of others. If it does not agree he ought to check his interpretation very carefully. It may be that one of the senses is defective. He may be color blind, does not hear correctly, or he may have an astigmatism which prevents him from having transmitted to the cortex the same stimuli that others have. What Red Means.—Of course you cannot know what I mean when I speak of red. All you know is that we call the same thing red but as to just what it means to me you cannot know because you cannot receive the same waves that I have received. You cannot know how long a yard stick is to me. Its length to you depends upon the convexity of the lenses in your eyes. If the yard stick looks twice as long to you as it does to me everything else will look twice as large and you and I would never know the difference. We judge everything by everything else. My idea of red is gained from what every- one else calls red. We judge motion by comparing the movy- ing object with another that is not moving, but when we try to judge motion or direction in the large it is difficult because we have nothing to check with. It is pretty difficult to tell the exact direction and speed a man is traveling who is walking east on a train going west at sixty miles an hour while the earth is turning east on its axis at the rate of 1000 miles an hour, and at the same time moving in its orbit around the sun at the rate of 70,000 miles an hour while the whole solar sys- SENSE-PERCEPTIVE PROCESSES 4I tem is moving off thru space toward the constellation Hercules. Misunderstandings.—Misunderstandings and misinterpre- tations arise because we do not check far enough back in our experiences. We too often take coincidents for causes just as we take one element of a neuron pattern for the whole pat- tern. The Egyptians observed that when Sirius, the Dog Star, appeared on the eastern horizon with the rising sun the Nile river began its overflow. They assumed that the star was the cause of the overflow. The translators of the Bible in dealing with the story of Elijah made the selection say that the ravens fed Elijah. Hebrew scholars tell us that the con- sonants, which were the only letters written in the old Hebrew, are the same in the words ravens and Arabians and that the translators put the part, the consonants, into the wrong whole and interpreted it as ravens when they should have put the element into the right whole and interpreted is as Arabians, This may not be called an illusion but the mental process is the same. It is like trying to fill in the missing letters in forms like l-nd-n. It may be London, or Linden or Landon. One’s past experience and his prejudices play a large part in deter- mining what he supplies. The Englishman would suggest London, the German Linden; and someone else the last. We must not get the idea that man is passive amid all these impressions, that he stands around waiting for stimuli to arouse him. He undergoes the effects of his own behavior. He is active all the time. As an organism he is reacting all the time to his environment trying to bring about an adjustment of himself to it and of it to himself. His attempts at adjust- ment result in action which results in knowledge. He acts, then reflects, then acts again, using the experience to con- struct new and better experiences. That is, each experience 42 PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY becomes the raw material out of which he builds a more intelligent, because better understood, experience. Special Senses.—The only approach one has to the ex- ternal world is thru the nerves of the special senses. It is out of the material reported to the brain thru these senses that we build our world. Each makes his own world. If he is blind, he builds a world without color, light, and shade. If he is deaf, he builds it without music, or the sound of pleasant voices. If he has no sense of feeling, he builds without ideas of rough and smooth. To seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching, many add muscular sense and the sense of heat and cold, etc. The first five are called the primary senses and the others the sec- ondary. We may for convenience divide the primary senses into two groups, one giving us knowledge of the physical quali- ties of objects. These are seeing, hearing, and touching. The other group gives us knowledge of the chemical qualities of objects. These are tasting and smelling. Sensory Qualities——Let us turn our attention to the material furnished us by the nerves of the special senses and try to understand a little more fully this raw material. The special senses developed in animal life as a means of protection and preservation. Self-preservation depends upon food and protection from enemies, Smell and taste served the immediate purpose of determining whether or not an article was fit for food. Seeing helped to discover food and enemies at a distance. Hearing also served a similar purpose. The lion’s roar heard by his prey is a protection to the prey, and the hyena that follows the lion to feed upon the bones that fall from his table and whose sense of approaching danger is much keener than that of the lion warns the lion against his enemies. So thru the ages by constant use the senses have been devel- oped. They have not reached so high a state of development SENSE-PERCEPTIVE PROCESSES 43 in man as they have in some of the lower animals. Man cannot smell as the dog, see as the hawk, nor hear as the deer, but he knows a great deal more because of what he does smell, see, and hear. Touching.—Touching, or feeling, as it is often called gives us impressions which we interpret as pressure. The range of this sense is very limited in extent as we must get within arm’s length of the object in order to touch it at all. We get other impressions which we interpret as rough and smooth, giving us some idea of surfaces and from the surface we are often able to judge of the material. The sense of touching, or feel- ing, gives us ideas of pain as when there is an injury to the body from some outside agency. It also gives us an idea of pain when there is some disturbance of the internal machinery as in dyspepsia or gout. Practically all stimuli if increased in intensity sufficiently cause pain. Very bright sunlight causes pain in the eyes and loud noises cause headache. Suddenness of stimulation will cause pain. If one puts his hand quickly into ice water, he will feel pain, or if he puts it quickly into hot water, pain will result. He may put his hand into warm water and gradually increase the temperature until the water is hot and not feel pain. The slowness seems to give time for adaptation. On the other hand, slow pressure causes pain while a quick cut with a knife, or a quick pull on an adhesive plaster, or a bullet wound causes no immediate pain. The explanation is the same as was the one which led your friends in your childhood days, when one of your first set of teeth became loose, to tell you to tie a string around the tooth and tie the other end to the door knob and have someone suddenly open the door. The tooth was out “before you knew it.” The relation between pain and emotions is a close one. One may mentally exaggerate pain until it becomes almost 44. PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY unbearable. On the other hand if strong emotion is aroused one may receive a severe injury and not know that he has been hurt. It does not hurt if he does not feel it, and under the strong emotion he does not feel it. The sense of cold and heat is located in certain parts of the body and must be considered in this connection, The entire surface of the body is not covered with these nerves. There are places not sensitive to these stimuli. Some are sensitive to heat, others to cold. Our interpretations of these stimuli as of most of the others are relative, or comparative. One coming in out of doors on a very cold day when his fingers “just tingle’ with the cold, and putting his hands into water cannot guess the temperature of the water within a wide margin. Having taken his hand out of water the temperature of which is 40 degrees will make water at 60 degrees feel very warm. The laundress holds the iron close to her cheek to test its tempera- ture. Her cheek is much more sensitive to heat than it 1s to feeling. I suppose that is why we say certain persons have “lots of cheek.” They have little or no feeling for the feel- ings of others. Sometimes this particular quality is called “call” but it is not divided into three parts. The muscular sense is more or less closely related to touch- ing. The sensory nerves originate, or some of them do, in the muscles as well as in the skin. These report impressions which we translate into ideas of weight and tension. Ordinarily we think of the sense of touching as having to do with feeling with the hands and fingers. How accurately can you use your hands and fingers? When I was a boy on the farm we used to sow clover and timothy seeds mixed together and sow them broadcast. My father taught us to sow a strip eight feet wide and to determine the right amount of seed by what we could pick out of the measure with the tips of SENSE-PERCEPTIVE PROCESSES 45 two fingers and the thumb, and to do it so accurately that we would not vary a quart in the amount to be sowed on an acre. To discover how accurately you can feel take a package of not less than twenty-five cards of the thickness of visiting, or calling cards. Hold them in the left hand with the end of the pack up. Close your eyes and lightly draw the thumb of the right hand over the top of the pack and each time remove the three righthand cards and lay them by themselves. When you have removed them all from the left hand count the packs and see how many have three cards each. If you do not have cards handy, use a package of envelopes. Repeat the operation three times and compare the results. You should have six correct the last time and five the first, if your sense of feeling is good. If excellent, you should have seven correct the last time. By practice you will find that your sense of feeling will improve. The same thing will be true in regard to testing rough and smooth surfaces. Here, as in other lines, practice makes per- fect. It all depends upon what you practice. Seeing.—The sense of vision is stimulated by vibrations in the ether which pass thru the lens of the eye and are brought to a focus on the retina where the image appears bottom side up. The optic nerves from the retina pass to the sight center of the brain, some of the fibers passing over to the other side of the brain so that both sides of the brain help in interpreting the image of each eye. There are two images to each object. When the eyes do not focus alike there is a blurred, or confused interpretation. The waves come thru space in straight lines and from short or long distances. Because of this fact we infer distance by sense of sight, and size from distance and color, or rather by brightness. In reality sight cannot enable us to judge distance. It can only give us information about brightness and colors, but by experience we have learned that a difference in degree 46 PRACTICAL SY Gi iG of brightness is apt to mean far away or near to. We are able to judge distance too by means of muscular tension. Hold an object at arm’s length and focus both eyes upon it and bring it closer, keeping the eyes fixed upon it. You will soon feel the tension of the muscles. Move it away and they relax. The degree of tension or pull gives us a clue to the distance. The impressions gained from the sense of sight are usually classed as achromatic, or brightness, and chromatic, or color. The achromatic is divided into blacks, whites, and grays. The chromatic is divided into the color series composed of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. The chromatic is again divided into actinic and non-actinic according to the length of the waves. The actinic rays produce chemical effects, and it is now pretty well established that they are what makes it impossible for blondes to thrive in the tropics. The pigment in the skin of the brunet protects him from the actinic rays. The actinic rays are at the upper end of the color scale and are green, blue, indigo, and violet and the ultra-violet. Some persons are born without color sense. They see the world in grays. Such persons are said to be color blind. Some are only partially color blind, being blind to red. Others are blind to green. These persons are always handicapped so far as the world of color is concerned, and they must find success in some activity into which a knowledge of color does not enter. One who is blind to red and green or to either one cannot be trusted to run trains on the railroads no matter how well equipped he may be in regard to every other requirement. He would run past signals. He would be of less value in that posi- tion than was the Irish stowaway. He was brought on board and the captain placed him at the bow with strict orders to report anything he saw. After a couple of hours, he called out, “Captain, I see a red and a green light. I think we’re coming to a drug store.” SENSE-PERCEPTIVE PROCESSES 47 The sense of color is a rather recent acquirement in the his- tory of the race. Pictet says there were no names in Indo- European languages indicating color. Max Mueller says there is no Sanskrit root for color. Geiger tells us that the primitive Aryans were conscious of only one color. In the oldest literary composition only red and black are indicated. The Rig Veda mentions red, black, and yellow. Later there is mention of white, then still later green. Etymology shows that blue was still unknown three thousand years ago. It is a long step from the ancient Aryans who recognized only one color to the mod- ern color expert who knows several tints and several shades of each color of the scale, and in addition knows them when applied to almost any kind of material. Some persons are able to see at greater distances than others, and are said to be farsighted. Others are nearsighted. Occasionally one is met who cannot see after dark as the albino cannot see well in the daylight. The cause of the inability to see after dark is probably due to the lack of rods in the retina of the eyes. Birds like the owl that see well only at night have only rods which are receptors for whites, grays, and blacks in the retina of the eyes. Those that see well only in the day like hens have cones which are receptors for the colors of the spec- trum in the retina and no rods. The normal visioned person has both rods and cones. Do you know whether or not your vision is normal? Have you had your eyes examined so you know just what they can do and how well they can do it? Does your work make any demands upon your eyes that they cannot stand for years? If so you had better change. We sometimes wonder why so many persons have difficulty with their eyes. But when we remember that in former gen- erations very little reading was done and very little work of any kind that required close eye application and that what was 48 PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY done was all done by daylight as there was no artificial light that one could work by, and then recall that with all the books to be read and close work to be done, much of it by artificial light that makes it possible, even if unwise, for one to use his eyes for twelve, fifteen, and often eighteen hours out of twenty- four, it is no wonder that we are finding many weaknesses of the eyes that former generations never dreamed of. Hearing.—The last of the senses that give us information about the physical qualities of matter is the sense of hearing. Waves of air strike the inner ear and stimulate the auditory nerves which carry the impression to the neurons of the cortex after which the mind interprets them as sound. Ears differ much in their capacity to receive sensations, as minds do in their ability to interpret them. Until the vibrations of the air reach 16 per second we can- not hear and some persons cannot hear as low as that. Most persons hear vibrations ranging from 16 to 50,000 a second. The human voice has a range from about 87 to 768 per second altho some singers have a much wider range. It is said that Christine Nilsson’s voice reached 1361 vibrations. You see the range of the ear is far beyond the range of the voice. This enables us to appreciate musical instruments that range very high as well as those that have a very low range. Sound vibrations are usually divided into two classes, noise and tone. Noise results from rough, interrupted vibrations. Tone results from smooth, uninterrupted vibrations. Tones are classified according to pitch, intensity, and timbre. Pitch depends upon the number or frequency of vibrations. Intensity depends upon the amplitude of the vibrations. Timbre, or quality depends upon the material which is caused to vibrate. We readily recognize the quality of the sound of the piano, flute, cannon, cricket, and trombone as they each produce a different form of vibration than any of the others. Scientists SENSH-PERGCEPTIV EE PROCESSES 49 tell us that the quality is determined by the number and the intensity of the overtones, or harmonics, There is a rhythmical sequence of related tones which we speak of as melody, and another relationship between two or more tones sounding together which we call harmony. The ability to enjoy the relationship of tones varies to a remarkable degree. One person likes only music with a tune to it. He has no use for highfaluting music, and another thoroly enjoys the closest harmony and the heaviest operas. It is not unusual to find at an orchestra concert one who just hears the music, another who enjoys the rhythm and swing of all the parts, while another enters heart and soul into the interpretation of the themes, and finds himself responding to every change presented by the musicians. This is not so strange when we recall that music is one of the latest acquire- ments of the race, that only 50 per cent of us have any musical sense at all, and that only three or four in ten thousand have a real musical sense. We may all receive the same impressions from the waves of sound but most of us are unable to make any intelligent interpretation of them. Yet the best human ear can detect ten thousand steps in pitch. While the musical sense is one of the latest acquirements of the race, the sense of hearing is one of the oldest and most firmly fixed. One’s ability to understand his world and to adjust himself to it depends in a large degree upon his hearing. If he does not hear well, or at all, he is badly handicapped. He will be shut out of many lines of activity where otherwise he might find splendid opportunity for the development of his other powers. Each one of us should make the necessary effort to know just what degree of efficiency we may hope to attain thru the use of each of the senses and how we may measure up to the best of our capability. 50 PRAGCTICAT YRS Y CEOD OGY. Smell.—The sense of smell and the sense of taste give us information about the chemical qualities of matter. One may look upon many things. He may listen to many things, but is seldom killed by what he sees or by what he hears, but unless one acts quickly he may be killed by what he tastes or by what he smells. Smell and taste are the sentinels which guard the gateway to the lungs and to the stomach. One cannot live in a room filled with poisoned gas, and his nose lets him know when it is time to move. Under ordinary circumstances we readily adapt ourselves to odors and fail to recognize their presence. The sense of smell rests in the olfactory nerves, the ciliated cells of which are imbedded in the mucous membrane of the nose. The intensity of an odor depends upon the number of particles emitted by the object. The sense of smell rivals the spectro- scope in detection of minute particles of matter. A good nose can detect 1/2,000,000 of a milligram of musk and 1/2,000,- 000,000 of a milligram of mercaptan, one of the vilest smelling things man has made. Smell is about 24,000 times as sensitive as taste and has a great influence upon the emotions. Smells are surer than sounds or sights To make your heart-strings crack. —KIPLING. The odor of delicious food tends to arouse emotional energy to a high pitch. We do not wonder that Esau was so stirred by the odor of the mess of pottage that he was willing to trade almost anything for it. His emotions were aroused to a pitch beyond his control. Taste.—The sense of taste is in the gustatory nerves. The taste buds are connected with the receiving nerves along the sides of the ridges of the tongue. They are stimulated by substances in solution only. There are four recognized tastes, sour, soapy, bitter, and SENSE-PERCEPTIVE. PROCESSES 51 sweet. The acid, or sour, taste is the perception of the hydro- gen atoms charged with positive electricity. It is easily recog- nized by anyone who has tasted the leaves of the sorrel plant. The alkaline, or soapy taste is the recognition of the hydroxyl element charged with negative electricity. The other two are well known to all of us by their names and by experience. We all know what bitter means even tho we may have trouble to define it, so also with sweet. Flavor or aroma is a sort of compound of taste and smell. Coffee does not taste nearly so good if you hold your nose while you drink it. That is one reason why cold coffee does not taste so good as hot. We cannot smell the cold coffee as we can the hot. It is a combination of taste, smell, and touch that makes ice cream so pleasant. Think of the flavors we pay good money for when we buy ice cream flavored with choco- late, vanilla, sarsaparilla, etc. Millions of dollars’ worth of these perfumes and flavors are manufactured every year and sold at a profit. The odoriferous oil in violet perfumery costs about $10,000 a pound yet there is a ready market for it and for almost anything else that pleases the sense of taste and smell. Sense Limits.—There are limits to the power of the senses to report impressions. As they do not report the effect of waves of air below 16a second, they do not report the effect of waves above 50,000. When waves reach 18 million a second the reporting begins again but instead of reporting as sound the report is of heat. Then there is a wide range from which no impressions are recorded. When the waves reach 395 bil- lion a second we begin to receive reports of light and color. There is a continuous reporting until the number of waves reaches 757 billion a second which we interpret as the violet ray. Beyond this are the ultra-violet waves which the eye 52 PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY cannot interpret directly, but which are known by their effects, and beyond these the X, alpha, beta, and gamma rays. Our Stock of Percepts.—There must be a constant receipt of new perceptive material if one’s mental growth is to be con- tinued. One cannot make bricks without straw, neither can he build ideas without perceptive material. The avenues of ap- proach to the mind must not only be kept open but they must be used. There are two essentials in the perceptive process that should be kept constantly in mind. They are accuracy and speed. ' | The first essential is accuracy. Inaccurate perceptions are a handicap but accurate ones are an advantage. Careful ob- servation is the great essential. See and see correctly. One of the best ways to test your powers of observation is to attempt to make a sketch of what you have seen. Agassiz said, “A pencil is the best of eyes.” When one attempts to draw he realizes how he has overlooked the details of the thing observed. Every one of us can increase greatly his ability to see things. Three men looked at something lying on a table. One reported that there was nothing there except a pen or pencil. The second reported that there was a fountain pen. The third reported that there was a Waterman fountain pen with a clip cap on it. The difference in the ability to see could hardly be better illustrated. Recently in a meeting of a men’s club in New York some simple observational tests were given. One of the number was called upon to read a short selection. When he had retired from the stage the men were asked to answer several questions about him, some of which were as follows: What is the color of the reader’s suit? Is his collar high or low? Is he tall or short? Is he stout or slim? ROH & SENSE-PERCEPTIVE PROCESSES 53 Is he blonde or brunet? Are his shoes black or tan? Is his hair parted in the middle? Does he wear a bow tie or a four-in-hand? CONT QAUt More than half of the men present gave incorrect answers to over half the questions. Inaccuracy of observation was clearly manifest. If the promotion of those men depended upon what they could see, they would have been disappointed. The speed of perception is almost as essential as the accuracy. The world wants men who can do things accurately but it wants them done speedily. “Time is money” is what we hear on every hand. It is not any wonder that we live in pov- erty when we remember how much time we waste. We must learn to see and see now. It is surprising to discover the speed in observing we can attain thru practice. We can learn to look as tho we were never to get another chance. We can fix as in a photograph the entire scene if we will and then recall it at leisure. The growth of the mind depends upon the constant recep- tion of new sense-perception material. We cannot emphasize this too much. The mental life of tomorrow depends upon the material you have selected today. Give thot to the selection today. A growing self-consciousness should be your constant aim. Making of yourself a successful salesman, a successful lawyer, a successful preacher may be important, but vastly more important is making of yourself a man. After that one can make many things of himself. Before that he can make nothing but failure. One must continue to come into contact with the universe at an increasing number of points and this must be done thru the use of the senses. The world is not changing very much but man is changing rapidly. Think of what iron ore meant to primitive man and what it means today. Where early man saw simple iron, the chemist of today sees steel in all its forms 54 BRAGTIC ADNER SY GEiOHsGyay, and sees new possibilities thru alloys that the man of even a generation ago never imagined. What has caused all this change? Iron has remained the same, but man has grown. An ever increasing self-consciousness has made this advance possible. You cannot extend your viewpoint one iota without extending yourself. An enlarging viewpoint means an en- larging life. Observe, read, study, attend lectures, get more facts, establish new viewpoints. The richness of your life is within you. We live in deeds not.years, in thoughts not breaths, In feelings not in figures on a dial.—Ferstus. _ Are your surroundings discouraging? Do you feel that if you were in another’s place success would be easy? There is an external environment that we cannot change. One cannot change his race. He cannot change the climatic conditions of his part of the world, but these are minor things. One’s real environment is within himself. The factors of mental growth, of success, or failure are yours. Perception is a condition of the mind. You are responsible for your state of mind. You make your own world, and you choose the material out of which you build it. Have you chosen wisely? Well and good. Have you chosen unwisely? Then choose again. No one has failed so long as he can begin again. Every morning brings a new opportunity. They do me wrong who say I come no more When once I knock and fail to find you ins For every day I stand outside your door And bid you wake, and rise to fight and win. Wail not for precious chances passed away, Weep not for golden ages on the wane! Each night I burn the records of the day— At sunrise every soul is born again! —MALONE. CHAPTER III CONCEPTS AND JUDGMENT AS we have already noted, the human individual is a con- tinuous unfolding from the germ cell to adulthood. There is much modification but no new factors appear. The behavior of the various groups of cells and of the different organs of the body is largely the result of what we have called “Cellular intelligence.” It is probably not so much the result of reasoned processes as we used to think, nor is it the result of chance. Behavior is more the result of, or rather response to, impulses and desires. These arise because of certain stimuli which affect the nervous system and are interpreted as sensations and perceptions giving us information about the qualities of mate- rial objects, such as color, form, weight, size, etc. Sense training, therefore, is the logical beginning of all education, and its continuance is essential to anything like a complete and harmonious development of the mind. Securing the supply of sense-percepts depends upon us. What have you done since studying the second chapter to improve your sense-perceptive material? Remember that knowing how to improve does not mean improvement. Im- provement comes thru knowing and then doing. Knowledge is not power; it is a means to power. One must use the means. You may come to know thru these chapters all of the funda- mental principles of mental operation and how these principles may be applied, but unless you apply them, you will not increase your ability. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings.” 55 56 PRACTICAL RS Gn OMO Gy Do not make the mistake of thinking that you are going forward by leaps and bounds. Your mental growth is slow just as your physical growth is. You have attained your present weight by taking food a mouthful at a time, digesting it, assimilating it. Your mental growth proceeds in the same way, an observation here, a reflection there, but never without effort, and at the best a consciously directed effort. Relation of Percepts to Concepts.—We begin life with- out any neuron patterns. As soon as consciousness appears, we begin to receive impressions from the outer world. These sensations are indefinite, unclassified, undifferentiated. Very gradually the mind begins to localize the source of these im- pressions as here, there, elsewhere. The child finds the world, in the words of William James, “a big blooming confusion” and proceeds very slowly to relate it to himself. His first conclusion seems to be that it is all one. He does not at first distinguish between himself and things around him, but as time goes on and his experience broadens a bit, he learns that the teddy bear and his blocks are not a part of himself. He has then made a distinction between self and not-self. He is all the while receiving impressions thru the senses and inter- preting and relating or referring them to definite sources. These interpretations, as we have already noted, are the results of perception and are called percepts. Just as sensations furnish the raw material out of which percepts are made, so percepts are the raw material out of which concepts are made. A percept is the result of immediate experience, but a concept is not such a result. A concept is mediated, or in other words, is arrived at thru something else. It is a new meaning, or an old meaning seen in a new way or under different circumstances. Concepts.—A percept is an idea of a particular thing or quality; a concept is an idea of a general group or class of CONCEPTS AND JUDGMENT 57 things. One may have a percept, let us say, of a chair, a par- ticular chair which he sees or has seen. He may have also a concept of a chair, not any particular chair, but an idea that includes all chairs. This idea he arrives at by considering not a particular chair only but by observing many chairs. That is, he arrives at the concept chair by means of the percepts of many chairs. So we say the percept is the result of immediate experience while the concept is mediated thru, or by means of, something else. A percept may be a horse. The concept is horse, the class which includes any and all horses. A percept may be Woodrow Wilson. The concept would be man, the class which includes any and all members of the human race. A percept may be a concrete object or a proper noun. The concept would be an abstract quality or a common noun. As you see, dog does not mean the same as this dog. This dog may have short legs, long hair, long body, short nose, but dog is the name of all dogs everywhere. Concepts are ideas of classes of actions and of things. Concepts must contain all the essential elements of the group and none of the incidental elements. Body is an essential element in a dog, but long body is not. Hence, long is incidental and cannot appear in the concept dog. If by any chance one’s notion of dog includes the element long body, it will be evident that he has not seen all kinds of dogs. Conception.—Conception is that act of the mind thru which it forms an idea of a class. A class is a group of indi- viduals which resemble each other in some particulars. We are not able to form a mental picture of a class as we are of an individual. Usually when the word dog is mentioned we think of some particular dog but we feel at the same time that the image of any other dog would satisfy us just as well. A -mental image always represents qualities and particulars of an individual object. Conception can embody only those qualities 58 PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY common to the entire class. If the concept is of apples, it must not contain the percept of a spot or wormhole. Yet the con- cept must always be interpreted in terms of certain individuals of the group. The concept can mean nothing apart from the individuals from which it took its rise. One’s concept of dog can mean nothing apart from the individual dogs he has seen. When the word apple is mentioned, we find our minds running to the percept red, then quickly, to green, yellow, etc., to sweet, sour, to dry, juicy, and finally coming to rest, let us say, with the idea of the early harvest apples that we liked so well in our younger days and which we regard as our ideal of what an apple ought to be. Formation of Concepts.—We have seen what conception is and what concepts are. Let us consider now how they are formed. We cannot remember how we first formed concepts, but we may be able to analyze the process clearly enough to answer our purpose. The little child when it first begins to talk calls all men “daddy.” He does it because he sees no difference between his daddy and the others to whom he applies the name. He has only very indefinite ideas of particular men and he has just as indefinite ideas as to the class of men. This is due to the fact that the mind of the child as well as that of the adult perceives likenesses before it does differences. We recognize this in the somewhat common expression, “All coons look alike to me.” To the average American the appearance of Japanese, Chinese, and Koreans is quite the same. I happened to be in Germany at the outbreak of the Great War and with quite a group of other Americans suffered some inconvenience and annoyance by the German military and citzenry because they thot we were English. They were not able to distinguish the differences in looks and speech between the American whom at that time CONCEPTS AND JUDGMENT 59 they regarded with some little respect and the Englishman for whom they had less. In my high school teaching I had twin sisters who were as like as “two peas in a pod” at least so they appeared to me when they first entered the school. For some weeks I was con- tinually confused as to which I was talking with and some of the teachers were never able to identify accurately either of them. However, after several weeks I began to notice differ- ences in them and as I became better acquainted with them I noticed still other points of dissimilarity until I wondered how I could ever have confused them. The point is that I could not distinguish them apart until I did discover the differences. I see a man coming down the road. I am sure it is Jim Smith. A few minutes later I conclude that it is either Jim or his father. I can tell by the walk. When he gets near enough for me to note that it is the younger man, then and only then, am I certain that it is Jim. We cannot perceive individuals without perceiving differ- ences. The child will be able to distinguish his father from other men when he learns to note the difference in clothing, beard, voice, etc. To the child geese and swans look alike and if he is familiar with geese and not with ducks, he will on first meeting ducks be quite apt to call them little geese. In much the same way he makes the distinction between self and not-self, putting the teddy bear and the kitten into the not-self group. As his experience broadens he finds that he may put them both into the basket and teddy bear will stay there but often the kitten will not and then he has noted other differences and he subdivides the not-self group into living and non-living. Of course, he does not use these terms. I was interested last summer in noting how a little niece of mine was making these differentiations or rather had made them. She put the teddy bear and the kitten both into the 60 PRAGTICA BH SRS Y CHOEOGY basket and then for some reason ran into another room return- ing in a minute or so. While she was gone the kitten jumped out of the basket and ran away. When the little girl returned she looked up at me and pointing to the basket said, “Kitty gone,’ and said it with an air which indicated that she was not a bit surprised, that that was about what one would expect of a kitten anyway. She then ran out to get the kitten. While she was gone I took the teddy bear out of the basket and placed it where she could not readily see it. When she returned to the basket and found it.empty she was in a quandary and looking up at me with wide open eyes and pointing at the basket said, “teddy gone.” The expression on her face and the tone of her voice indicated that while she was not surprised to find the kitten gone she was very much perplexed to find the teddy bear gone. He had never done that before. She had already made the classification of living and non-living. Later the child makes distinctions among things that are alive and classifies them as plants and animals. Then plants are divided into those that bear flowers, called phanerogams, and those that do not, called cryptogams. The flowering plants are divided into two groups, those having the seed covered, called angiosperms, and those that have not, called gymno- sperms. ‘This process is a continuous differentiation among the individuals of a larger group. The result may be indicated as shown on page 61. In the same way differentiation is carried on among non- living things and the sciences of physics, chemistry, physiog- raphy, meteorology, etc., result. The subdivisions of the ani- mal group are arrived at in the same way. | The child and even the adult may not form very clear con- cepts at any point of the way. At best there will always be a rather indistinct boundary between groups, a sort of twilight area as tho one could not see distinctly. For instance, it is not CONCEPTS AND JUDGMENT 61 Child | Self ae ug. ult igs Not-living | | Plants Animals Phanerogams Cryptogams (flowering ) (not-flowering) Angiosperms Gymnosperms (covered seeds) {naked seeds) easy to know the concept life or alive. It is not easy to tell whether or not a certain object is alive. Just so it is difficult to distinguish between plants and animals. It seems easy because we deal with things far from the margin of the group like horse, the animal, and horse-chestnut, the plant, but when we deal with the microscopic single-celled object it is difficult to say whether it is plant or animal. Analysis and Synthesis.—There are two processes em- ployed by the mind in dealing with objects of experience. One is the process of separating an object into its parts. The other process is the combining of the parts into a whole. The first is called analysis; the second is called synthesis. Both pro- cesses must be employed in order to give one a fairly good check on the accuracy of his concepts. As we know, sense-percepts lead to a knowledge of indi- vidual concepts which may be joined to form larger groups, and these may be joined to form still larger ones. The satisfac- tion that comes to a child when he recognizes for the first time _ that plants and animals are alike in that they both have life, that gases and liquids are comprised in fluids, and so on, is like 62 PRACTICAL PSY CHOLOGY that of the adult who has discovered likenesses where he thot only differences existed. I suppose it is the same feeling that Newton experienced when he realized that there was a com- mon element in the falling apple and in the moon in that both were compelled to obey what we call gravitation. The synthetic process may be indicated as follows: Plants Animals | Living things Gases Liquids | | Fluids eae apple Moon ae Gravitation Cat ‘ Dog ASA Seiki Ae A J | Mammal Vertebrate Animal Living thing Material substance All concepts are formed by means of these two processes. The concept is never definite until both processes have been followed out. The chemist thinks of rubber and wonders what it is com- posed of. He goes into his laboratory and analyzes it and learns what all the parts, or elements, are. Then he goes out CONCEPTS AND JUDGMENT 63 and seeks for these elements here, there, anywhere, and having found them puts them together in the right proportions and makes rubber, which because of the method followed is called synthetic rubber. Children in school are taught to analyze sentences in the language class, problems in the arithmetic class, etc. This is for the purpose of having the members of the class get a clear idea of what the essential parts of a sentence are, or to have them get such a clear idea of a problem in arithmetic that they see what parts are given and what ones are to be found. By one’s ability to analyze a problem is determined his place and his rating in the class. Then, again, the class is given certain words to be used in sentences. Then the synthetic process is brought into play. If one can analyze a sentence correctly and can build a correct sentence having certain words and conditions given, his concept of sentence will be fairly accurate. These two methods, or processes, are carried on extensively in every business and profession. Every concept employed in banking, railroading, preaching, manufacturing, merchandising, etc., is arrived at in the same way, and other things being equal the person with the most concepts is the best equipped for SUCCESS. Steps in Concept Formation.—There are definite steps thru which the mind passes in arriving at a concept. It will be well for us to look carefully at them. That is, we will analyze the process into its parts. The steps are as follows: 1. Observation. One must observe many objects carefully and form images of them. This requires time and is a slow _ process if well done. 2. Comparison. One must see clearly the agreements and 64. PRACTICAL oY GHOLROGY the disagreements, the likenesses and the differences among the different objects seen. 3. Abstraction. One must think only of the common, or essential qualities, the likenesses, and then reject, or overlook, the non-essentials. He must abstract, take away from all the elements, only the common ones. 4. Generalization. One must then put all the objects hav- ing like or common qualities into one class, or genus. When we have done this we know that these qualities will be found in every object in the group. 5. Name the concept. The name is a tag, or label, or a string with which we tie things together into bundles. We must be sure to make the name general because it is to be applied to a class or group. In naming the concept one must have regard to the next larger group and define or name the concept in terms of it. For instance, one might define cat as a material substance which is correct but which is too indefinite. If one says that a cat is a mammal, he is much more accurate than he would be to say that a cat is an animal altho both anwers would be true. Value of Clear Concepts.—The ideas of children are necessarily hazy because of the lack of experience. The child hears words used in regard tg certain things and forms his concepts of things accordingly. To a child “far away” does not mean what it does to his father. Narrow means to him the width of pieces of ribbon, pieces of boards, etc. He, like adults, measures the unknown in terms of the known. To one who has never been a hundred miles from home distance is wrongly conceived. The stream where the old swimming hole was, was to us a wide stream. The hill back of the house was very high. Its top almost reached the sky. In most of our early concepts the proportion was sadly awry. We had to CONCEPTS AND JUDGMENT 65 observe many, many instances before we succeeded in cor- recting them so they would even begin to approach accuracy. The chief reason for inaccurate, hazy concepts is the fact that our perceptive material is inadequate, and then, there is always a tendency to generalize too hastily. The Psalmist says, “I said in my haste all men are liars.” -(Ps. 116:11) If he had been in less of a hurry and observed a few more men he would not have been so apt to call all men liars including himself. We often try to make a standing jump from the particular to the general without exploring every foot of the way. This makes for hazy concepts. If one has been deceived, he jumps to the conclusion that all men are false. If he has been cheated in business, all men are rascals. If one has trouble, this world is a vale of tears. One carries a rabbit’s foot to bring him good luck, and another looks at the tea-grounds in his cup to learn whether or not he is going to have visitors. A man said to me recently, ‘Never trust a curly-haired Italian.’ He had found one Italian who could not be trusted and he happened to have curly hair, so he made a hasty generalization that all curly haired Italians are untrustworthy. Think of some of your concepts and see just how clear they are. What is your concept of republican, democrat, social- ist, Bolshevik, soviet? What is your conception of Protestant, Romanist, Jew? How did you arrive at your concept? Have you clearly perceived the elements that enter into the concept of any of these groups as held by those most friendly to such groups? Why are you an adherent of a certain religious body? Have you made an honest effort to form a correct concept of what the group stands for? That is, have you formed an accu- rate, clear concept, or have you inherited your religion and politics as some persons do their parents’ money? What is your conception of revolution? Do you have the 66 PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY same idea of it when you think of George Washington as you do when you think of Lenine? What is your conception of right, wrong, good, bad? What is your conception of the relation of capital and labor? What is your conception of democracy? Will your concept of democracy apply to indus- try and religion as well as to politics? These and many more subjects are of very vital importance to every live man and woman, and yet vast numbers of fairly intelligent persons have only the most hazy ideas about them. They have strong opinions which all too often are based upon prejudice, but as for clear concepts they have few. Growth of the Intellect—The growth of the intellect is indicated by the number of accurate concepts one has. A growing mind is always forming new concepts and clarifying old ones. One begins to stagnate mentally when he gets to the point where new ideas disturb him. Many of us are like the mother of the young woman who went to hear Charles Darwin lecture on the “Descent of Man.’ She went home and told her mother that she believed that Darwin’s theory was correct and man had descended or ascended from some sort of lower animal life. Her mother replied, “That may be so, but if it is let us pray God that just as few people as pos- sible may find it out.” She was afraid that her old concept of the origin of man would be upset and she did not want to have to go to the trouble of developing another concept. In order to maintain mental flexibility one must be con- tinually forming new concepts and clarifying old ones. Con- cepts of a real live person are bound to change. Reinterpreta- tion of his experience is continually going on. It is a lack of a good stock of concepts that makes it hard for one to change occupations late in life and succeed. One has lived with one set of concepts so long that the energy required to develop new ones is too great for him to muster. For instance, one who CONCEPTS AND JUDGMENT 67 has worked for years in a paper mill has had to develop an entirely different set of concepts than one who has been em- ployed in the steel industry. His mental and muscular reac- tions have been built up in connection with his stock of con- cepts, and they are too rigid to change, and when he is thrown out of industry for any reason, he is unable to get back unless he can get into the same work. Adequate in Scope.—One should aim to make his con- cepts adequate in scope as well as in number. Think of the farmer’s conception of red clover. He usually thinks of it as a plant that makes good fodder for stock and the roots of which enrich the soil. The concept of the botanist includes a knowledge of structure and function of the plant, of the family to which red clover belongs, the climate and the kind of soil in which it grows. The concept of the physicist includes ques- tions of osmosis of liquids, circulation of the sap and other purely physical phenomena. The concept of the chemist will consist of a knowledge of the chemical reactions carried on by the plant. His concept of red clover is that of a laboratory where chemical processes are carried out. The bacteriologist thinks of red clover as a plant the roots of which provide opportunity for certain bacteria to grow and thru growth to take from the atmosphere quantities of nitrogen and build it into the roots of the clover which are then released to feed other plants. The concept of the geologist involves a knowledge of what materials are built into the structure of the plant, from the disintegration of what rocks the material came. Are they the new or older rocks of the earth? And at once the age and history of the earth enters into his concept. To all this must be added a knowledge of what the clover has added to the civilization of the world thru providing food for man. To have an adequate concept of red clover one should have 68 PRACTIGATIIES V.GHOEQGN, the essentials of all of those of the farmer, the botanist, the physicist, the chemist, the bacteriologist, and the geologist. So we see again the necessity for wide experience requiring consideration of an ever increasing number of details or particulars. Speed and Accuracy in Generalizing.—The development of concepts is a slow process. It took the race ages to distin- tinguish between mind and matter and according to present ideas of science, the line of demarkation cannot be drawn with certainty now. Max Mueller says that all the concepts that ever passed thru the mind of ancient India may be reduced to one hundred and twenty-one root concepts. When we recall the height to which that people attained in order to produce such a language as the Sanskrit and then recall that the root concepts number only one hundred and twenty-one, we are impressed with the slowness of the development of concepts. It is a slow process for a child to comprehend that two apples and two apples make four apples, but it is a much longer and slower process for the child to comprehend that two twos of anything make four, and then to complete the generalization and know that two and two make four. It is difficult for the child to see that four horses, four cats, four dogs, four cows, all resemble each other in being four. The difficulty is well illustrated by a story told of some English sailors. One of their number said to the group of eight or ten, “If a ’errin’ and a ’alf cost one and ’a pence what will twelve ’errin’s cost?” The group wracked their brains in silence for several minutes. Then one of them said, “Eh, Bill, and did you say ’errin’? I'll be blamed if I aint been figgerin’ all the time on mackerel.” The process of differentiation is as slow with adults as with children. We all have some kind of a concept of the great American product corn, or mahizg as the Indians called it when Columbus arrived. For several generations the concept of CONCEPTS AND JUDGMENT 69 corn included the particulars of its growth and something of its food value to man and beast. We recognized the stalks as food for cattle and the-cobs for pipes, and that the grain itself could be made into corn meal and corn starch, but now a con- cept of corn that is accurate and uptodate must include the particulars about the more than a hundred different commercial products made from corn and which add millions of dollars to the value of the corn crop every year. It was difficult for us to see these elements, such as corn oil, oil cake, oil meal, dex- trose, corn syrup, tanners’ sugar, and about two dozen others, in corn, yet they were there and someone found them. What has happened with corn has happened with cotton until about three dozen different articles produced from cotton are on the market. These so-called by-products add $150,000,- 000 to the value of the cotton crop annually. Now, think of this in connection with your own business or profession. Are you thoroly familiar with all of the con- cepts employed by the best men in that line? Do you know the relation of departments to each other? In other words, are you “at home’ in the business? If not, you can have only a small measure of success at the best. Many a man thinks he _ 1s in a blind alley when he has scarcely made a beginning in sounding the possibilities in his field. One has not sounded the depths of his present position, nor its breadth of oppor- tunity, until he has mastered all the concepts employed by the masters of the business and has become familiar with all the particulars which enter into those concepts. Inaccurate concepts are one of the great handicaps to prog- ress. So often we do not see all the particulars that enter into the generalization, or in other words are unable to make a generalization because we do not recognize the particulars. That was the difficulty with the workers in England when the power loom was invented. They saw in it a machine that was 70 PRACTIGATAR SY CHOLOGY to throw them out of work, and so they burned all the machines they could find. When Whitney invented the cotton gin the same thing happened in the United States. None of the workers saw that the machines would reduce the cost of cloth and multiply its use, thereby increasing the demand for workers on farms and in mills and factories. The same attitude was assumed by the Christian church in regard to science in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. The Christian leaders, because of the narrowness of their concepts, thot science would destroy the church and maybe Christianity too, and so they set themselves out to destroy it. The possibility of Christianity and science being combined as particulars into a larger concept was beyond the reach of the imagination of most of the theologians. However, science was not destroyed. A more careful weighing of the particulars, or essentials of both, has resulted in forming a new concept of life, and the former enemies of science are now its most devoted supporters. Germany in the past seventy years serves as another example of inaccurate generalization. She became possessed of three notions which were destined to be her undoing. First: she assumed she had the best culture in the world. Second: she believed she was called of God to make that culture world- wide. Third: she believed she had an invincible machine with which to do it. Probably no people ever blinked the facts as Germany did. Probably no people ever knew more about theoretical psychology and so utterly failed in its application as she. It was with Germany as with many individuals. All too often the wish is father to the thot. The great danger of half truths is that they are the product of faulty concepts. The Safeguard.—The only safeguard against faulty con- cepts is the careful re-examination of the particulars from which the concepts are derived. Such re-examination often CONCEPTS AND JUDGMENT 71 reveals elements in the particulars that were overlooked at first. A careful analysis and a careful synthesis are the only cor- rectives for faulty generalization. Without these we are apt to narrow the idea of the class to fit the particulars with which we are familiar. Language.— When we have completed the analysis and the synthesis we are at the place in mental development where names become useful. It is useless to teach names to children before they have learned the classes to which the names apply. We have noted that words are signs, tags, or a string with which we tie things together in bundles. In the first text-book on grammar I ever studied, we were taught that a word was the sign of an idea, but it is hardly that. If it were, the word would always recall the idea, but many persons know words and do not have any ideas represented by the words. What words do is to recall or arouse experiences. If one has had no experi- ence, the word cannot recall or arouse any. Hence, words which do not arouse experiences are not only useless but serve as encumberers of the mental ground. The child receives an impression of darkness which he is taught to call black. The object moves around the room. He learns to call it “dog.” He perceives the object. He forms a neuron pattern, which when stimulated gives rise to the consciousness “dog.” He feels the dog’s hair. The dog licks his hand. These patterns are tied together to form a more elaborate pattern. The word recalls this pattern. Language serves as a means of communication and also serves to preserve the results of thinking by enabling us to recall a concept without repeating the entire process by which we first arrived at the idea. Language is both oral and written and in either case must serve to arouse experiences to be of any value. It is difficult to express a concept in words. It is difficult to interpret a 72 PRACTICAL (PSY GHOLOGY word so as to get an accurate idea of the concept it is intended to convey. Language should always be on a par with the mental level. Words should not be learned until one attains the mental status that enables him to comprehend the essentials of the objects included under the name. One may be taught the word “ten” so he can recognize it anywhere and yet have little or no con- ception of the objects or units which it represents. Of course there is no need for oral language until class notions begin to be formed. Sometime later signs begin to be used to indicate objects and actions. The simplest signs that another may learn to interpret more or less accurately are writ- ten language. Concepts are class names, and names are in reality definitions. Language is a measure of concepts and the accurate use of language is one of the best indications of the development of the mind. As we have already noted, there are many persons who use words without much notion of their meaning but who use them fairly accurately in general con- versation, expressions such as “psychological moment,” “effi- ciency,” “system.” They have acquired the use largely by imitation and any examination into the particulars of the con- cept conveyed by the words shows how hazy the real meaning of the word is to the user. So certain have the psychologists become that one’s intel- lectual ability may be determined by the use of language that Prof. Lewis M. Terman has prepared a list of words, the use of which it is claimed will indicate intellectual standing within IO per cent of the famous Binet-Simon scale. Professor Ter- man derived his list of 100 words by taking the last word in every sixth column of a dictionary containing 18,000 words which are probably the most common in the language. The assumption is that any 100 words selected at random or accord- 39 «666 CONCEPTS AND JUDGMENT 73 ing to some arbitrary rule will give the same result. Tests enough have been made to indicate that the assumption in regard to determining one’s intellectual level is fairly well justified. It has been determined that for every word known in such a list, the individual knows 180 other words. Using 180 as a sort of safety factor and multiplying the number of words known by it one will arrive at the number of words in one’s entire vocabulary. Of course there may be cases where one may use words correctly and not know the concepts well enough to know the 180 related words, but that will be quite apt to be offset by failing to indicate a correct use of some of the words in the list. To find the entire vocabulary of an individual multiply the number of words known by 180. Thus if one uses or defines 60 words correctly he has a vocabulary of 60 180== 12,800 words. The following is a list of the standards arrived at as a result of many examinations: Mientaleleverior Ciwht. i VEALS y. + Wessels Gis ede 6 e's 20 3600 % "i ra cell WM cee ee erates s 30 5400 ke PPPLYWELVE DR rile Wisi slate ea-c aissta th Thi cets 40 7200 aa i. Baa POUTTCCT UN Sino ect ens coms aye) 50 9000 PMOL ADC EAC Umi cosiy og tart ate est ie hone tahbrae Gal Clow eel g's 65 LIVoo BSE TIOL MACE nna ue ls coca gincia tl ta ccet te ae ase 75 13500 If you wish to test yourself, take the following list of words and write each one in a sentence using it in such a way as to indicate that you know what it means. Care must be exercised in order that not only the word be used correctly but that its use indicates that you know what the words mean. For instance, you may write for number two, ‘We built a bonfire.” The sentence is correct as to structure and probably as to fact, but it does not show the meaning of the word for _ you can substitute any number of words for bonfire in the sentence and have something like the following: 74, PRACTICAINR SY GHOLOGY bonfire boat We built a4 ship playhouse tennis court little. But if you had written “We raked the leaves from the yard and built a bonfire of them,’”’ you have made such a use of the word that it is quite impossible to mistake its meaning. It should be remembered also that intellectual level is not dependent upon education, but is independent of it. One comes somehow to know these things whether he has studied much or Natural ability does the rest. The list of words used by Professor Terman: 68 milksop I 2 25 26 27 28 29 30 at a2 33 34 orange bonfire roar gown tap scorch puddle envelop straw rule haste afloat eye-lash copper health curse guitar mellow pork impolite plumbing outward lecture dungeon southern noticeable muzzle quake civil treasury reception amble skill misuse 35 insure 36 stave 37 regard 38 nerve 39 crunch 40 juggler 41 majesty 42 brunette 43 snip 44 apish 45 sportive 46 hysterics 47 Mars 48 repose 49 shrewd 50 forfeit 51 peculiarity 52 coinage 53 mosaic 54 bewail 55 disproportionate 56 dilapidated 57 charter 58 conscientious 59 avarice 60 artless 61 priceless 62 swaddle 63 tolerate 64 gelatinous 65 depredation 66 promontory 67 frustrate 69 70 7h ae 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 He needs to know reading, counting, and a little logic. philanthropy irony lotus drabble harpy embody infuse flaunt declivity fen ochre exaltation incrustation 2 laity selectman sapient retroactive achromatic ambergris casuistry paleology perfunctory precipitancy theosophy piscatorial sudorific parterre homunculus cameo shagreen limpet complot CONCEPTS AND JUDGMENT 7° New Concepts.—New concepts are constantly being formed and so new words to indicate them come into use. There has recently been prepared a dictionary of war words in which are listed 5000 new words that came into use in our language because of new concepts formed in American minds during the war. If concepts and words are properly related, we shall come to attach to the word the same meaning that we formerly attached to the object or to its image. Then hearing the name will serve the same purpose as the percept which we received from the object itself. Furthermore, the name will help to preserve the system into which we gathered the group of par- ticulars. For example, the word plant is a sign for all of the different specimens in all of the 176,000 or more species in the vegetable kingdom. Physics is a sign for those phenomena of nature which are included in mechanics, hydraulics, pneu- matics, motion, sound, heat, light, electricity, etc. When we think of the word we do not think of all these details, and yet, we must be familiar enough with these that we shall not include chemical processes under the term physics. There is a great saving of effort in the use of names. Symbols take the place of many details. There is little more mental effort required in the thinking of a great scientist than there is in the thinking of the Australian Bushman. The scientist uses many signs as representatives of a great many ° details while the Bushman is obliged to deal continuously with the details. The expert mathematician deals with the problems of higher mathematics with as little effort as the arithmetician does with the more elementary ones for the same reason. One classifies extensively: the other, very narrowly. Judgment and Judging.— Usually when we think of judg- ment or of judging, we think of a judge on the bench, or per- haps of God at the last judgment. We are quite apt to get the 70 PRACTICAD PS) GIOLOGms idea that judgment is an arbitrary process which the judge on the bench could omit if he only would, or that God could release us from if he will. In this we are quite mistaken. Judgment is not a creation of theology, nor of psychology, nor even a product of the imagination. Judging is a process of thot and is innate in any being who has the right of choice, or who thinks he has. No one can escape the process, nor its results. Judgment is an identification or comparison and a declara- tion. Is ice cold or hot? Is an act right or wrong? Is a belief theistic or atheistic?, Each answer depends upon what the standard is. You compare the thing in mind with the standard. An act is honest or dishonest according to your standard of honesty. Slavery is right or wrong according to the standard. Standards vary. Sixty years ago men were proving from the Bible that slavery was right and other men were proving from the same book that slavery was wrong. They could not both be right. Now they all agree that it is wrong, and most of them agree that it was wrong all the time they were trying to prove it was right. The interpretation of the Bible in regard to slavery has changed, the standard has varied. Knowledge of Standards.—A knowledge of standards is essential in every process of judging and is essential to the one who is to judge and also to the one who is to be judged. One cannot judge how many feet long a stick of timber is unless he knows how long a foot is. One cannot judge whether or not one does a fair day’s work unless he has knowledge of what constitutes a day’s work. ‘These standards are concepts which are arrived at thru the process of judging. The Raw Material of Judging.—As we have already seen the interpreting and relating of sensations provides the raw material out of which percepts are formed, and the relating and interpreting of percepts provides the material of which con- CONCEPTS AND JUDGMENT 7 cepts are formed. In much the same way concepts are the raw material out of which judgments are formed. There is a simple judging process in comparing and relating percepts, but the judging process comes to its fulness in dealing with concepts. Judgment compares two concepts and declares whether or not they agree. One has in mind a concept of an orange and then decides whether or not the object he sees is an orange. It is always a choice between two and only two alternatives at one time. In perception there may be two or more elements and there may be several or many elements entering into the formation of the concept, but not so with the judgment. It is what Titchener calls ‘the yes-no consciousness.’ The thing is or it is not. Not only must the two concepts be held in the mind at the same time but a declaration must be made about them. They must be logically related. As one’s ability to form concepts depends upon his stock of percepts, so his ability to form judgments depends upon his stock of concepts. Other things being equal the one with the most facts at his command is the more intelligent. There is no “corner” on facts. There is no limit to the number of con- cepts one may form except his own determination. One can continually acquire facts and form new concepts. Many judgments are false because of a failure to get all the facts. We do not observe extensively enough nor accu- rately enough. Often we think too much and observe too little. We do a good deal of thinking but do it with only a part of the facts in mind. We should aim to observe widely and then think accurately. Many judgments are false for us because we have taken them from others. It is not enough for one to think as others think. If that were so, then there can be no progress for the race. It is because men have arisen who do not think as others do, but who think far ahead of the great mass that 78 PRAUCTICALTESY CHOU Gt. any advance is possible. This is true in religion, politics, science, business, everywhere and in every line. Jesus, Paul, Socrates, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Harvey, Darwin, Rous- seau, Jefferson, Lincoln, De Lesseps, Langley and scores of others have thot way ahead of the group and often reached conclusions contrary to it, which it later accepted. Training the Judgment.—We should not ask others to accept our conclusions, neither should we accept the judgments of others unless we familiarize ourselves with the process thru which they reached their conclusion. If we know the facts involved and the method pursued we are in a position to test the conclusion ourselves. A lack of either of these makes one narrow, and gives rise to prejudice and bias. Judging cannot be taught; it must be practiced. Every person seeks an honest judgment and everyone believes his judgments are true, yet often they are false. The wise man seeks to have his judgments tested by others. He seeks honest criticism. The unwise man does not want criticism, and is seldom willing to profit by the experience of others in judging. Practice makes perfect in judging as in anything else. The finest result of a trained mind is the ability to judge accurately. Judging is a process of comparison and in its more formal application deals with the comparison and relation of concepts. “Judging means inquiry; inquiry means doubt; doubt means conflicting opinions.”’ Judgment is all the time seeking dis- coveries among unrelated concepts. The progress of the world has been due to relating concepts that formerly seemed to have no common elements. All inventions and discoveries have been due to the same process. Sometimes these discoveries have been accidental, but in most cases men have been searching for these relationships and often after years of search have been rewarded with success. It is said that the streets of Philadelphia were paved with CONCEPTS AND JUDGMENT 79 anthracite until 1803. Then one day a house caught fire and burned down and with it part of the walk running to the street. This walk was made of anthracite. The people then discovered that there was a great amount of heat stored in those black rocks. Whether or not the story is true, it is true that man in some way came to know that hard coal could be used for fuel. Man needed heat and there was the heat in the anthracite, but no one had been able to discover the common element and adapt it to use. Some thirty-five years ago the business men of Niagara Falls set themselves at the task of discovering some way of using the enormous power of the rapids above the falls. There was great need of power on the entire Niagara frontier and there was that enormous power going to waste. Could not some way be found by which that power could be harnessed and made to meet the needs of the people? After some years of effort there was found a way. Turbines were installed and connected to electric generators and by means of high power lines the Niagara power is now carried for hundreds of miles to shops, factories, and railways. There was nothing really new in the plan. It involved the discovery and relating of what had before been undiscovered and unrelated. That was an exercise of judgment. Men for years had been familiar with revolving metal in both sheet and solid form. All metallic machinery involved the process. Men had for years been familiar with the horse- shoe magnet, but one day Michael Faraday revolved a piece of sheet metal between the poles of a magnet and as a result the transportation and artificial lighting of the world has been revolutionized. Today the electric generator and its com- panion, the electric motor, are serving millions because some- one discovered a relationship between concepts that seemed to have no relation, 80 PRACTICAL PSY GHOLOGY Who would think that trees are made of newspapers? Or to state it differently, who would have thot a few years ago that newspapers could be made of trees? There was in paper and in trees a common element that would help form a new concept when properly related. The discovery of cellulose in wood and its identification with the same material in paper has made possible the building up of the great paper industry. Discoveries are being made all the time. New relations are being found, and new concepts set up. Who is going to make them in your business? Do you realize that no matter what your business is there are some improvements to be made thru some such discoveries, that there are undiscovered rela- tionships in the material and in the methods used and that someone is bound to discover? Are you waiting for some- one else to make the discovery? Why do you not set yourself to make it? Why wait for someone else? You want to develop your intellect to its highest. That can be done by using it. The best place to use it to its full capacity is in your everyday task. Any man or boy in any industry who has been at his work long enough to master it knows more about his part of it than any one else connected with the business. If improvements are to be made, he is the logical one to make them. No one else has so fine an opportunity to discover unrelated concepts in your job as you have. Are improvements to be made in the machine you use? You make them. Are improved methods or shortened processes to be discovered and installed? You discover and install them. If a better man than you were to take your place what would he do that you are not doing? When you have answered that question, immediately begin to do those things yourself. By doing all that the better man could do one makes himself equal to the better man. Many of these discoveries are made by accident, but CONCEPTS AND JUDGMENT 81 almost every discovery is made while one is searching for something. He may not find what he is looking for but he is searching. His mind is awake, alert. Columbus was search- ing for a route to India; he did not find it, but he discovered something. This all has a bearing on psychology, because the increas- ing number of concepts is the measure of our mental growth. It is not enough for one to do his work well today. No one gets real satisfaction from just doing well; he must do it the very best possible. Then he finds joy and happiness, because one can never do his very best without mental growth, and it is growth that brings happiness. One must be bigger than his job; must grow faster than his job; or he will soon be too small for the job. It means that whatever your place in the world may be, whether mining or farming, manufacturing or selling, preaching or teaching, you must be able to relate all your experience and all of your thinking to your work. Every new concept must somehow be related to the task. Every book you read, every course you study must somehow be applied. One who studies psychology and does not relate it to his everyday activities is like one who has money but does not invest it. _- Do you want to succeed? Then you must do. In order to do you must know. One’s power to do depends upon his ability to know. You can know more today than you knew yesterday. You can know more tomorrow than you know today and so on as long as normal life continues. It depends upon your determination. Have you decided to know more? Then all the powers of the universe are at your command. You are master. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishment the scroll I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul, CHAT LICR LV THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION MOST philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- turies thot that man was the product of environment and education. They believed that all men were born equal but later became unequal on account of unequal opportunities. Descartes was one of these. He says: “Good sense is of all things among men the most equally distributed ... the diversity of our opinions does not arise from some being en> dowed with a larger share of reason than others, but solely that we conduct our thots along different ways and do not fix our attention on the same objects.” The cry of the French Revolution of “liberty, equality, fraternity” was based on a similar idea. The Declaration of Independence reflected the spirit of that time when it was held to be self-evident “that all men are created free and equal.” The idea of the equality of men has always been one of the fundamentals of democracy. Upon that belief has been founded systems of education, government, and theology which have been carried over into our own day, but the study of psychology has made it perfectly plain that all men are not created equal, that no two nervous systems are alike, that the same environment and education will not always produce the same quality of mind. There is such a thing as inherent ability or capacity and there is such a thing as a lack of both and no environment and no system of education can make up for the lack. Psycho- 82 THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 83 _logical tests of various kinds, and especially the Army Intel- ligence Tests, have made clear what many had come to realize in a general way. The Army tests were given to 1,735,000 men who were taken from all walks and stations of life and who represent fairly well a vertical section of the American people. According to these tests there are in America about 15 millions of persons who can be classed as “A” and “B” in mental ability. The remaining 85 millions, or a few more, fall into groups below these two classes. So far as other peoples go they do not rank above us either in grades or in the percentage of population in the grades. This might seem to have a tendency to destroy our faith in the importance of education and environment. It no doubt comes as a severe shock to those who have thot that education is a panacea for all the ills of our civilization but the facts will do us good if we face them squarely and try to adjust our- selves to them. When we begin to inquire into the cause for this inequality we find that one of the reasons is the fact that the physical machine that we call the body does not function equally well in all individuals. All human bodies do not react with the same rapidity and accuracy. We all know some persons who are very quick in all their movements and others who are very slow. We know others who see and hear accurately and others who do not, others who interpret quickly and accurately and others who do not. Some can see thru a complex problem and others cannot. Some learn complex processes and per- form them with skill and others can never learn the process so as to perform it with any degree of proficiency. These dif- ferences depend largely upon the special senses and the con- dition of the brain, especially the cortex. Two persons may receive similar sensations at the same time. The nervous sys- 84 PRAGTIGALY Pay GHOLOGY tem of one transmits readily and accurately what it has re- ceived. It is promptly interpreted and the appropriate action determined upon and the action performed while the other person is still “thinking about it.” Reaction Time.—The time required from the receiving of the sensation to the completion of the action is called reac- tion time. There are many ways of testing persons to learn how quickly they react to various stimuli. These tests not only indicate the time but they also furnish a clue to one’s adaptability to the work in hand. Without some tests there is much loss of time and energy. By the use of tests instead of the old “cut and try” method, the unfit as well as the fit may be discovered at once. It is not enough to know one is quick but we want to know how quick. Elements Involved.—There are several elements that enter into the process which runs as follows: 1. The time required by the sensory nerves in transmit- ting the stimulus to the appropriate brain center. 2. The time required by the brain, or the mind, in per- ceiving or interpreting the stimulus after it is reg- istered in the cortex, or as we may say, breaking over or thru the synapses in the spinal cord or brain. 3. The time required in issuing a motor order. 4. The time required by the motor nerve in transmitting the command to the muscle to produce action, The first and fourth are purely physiological times. The second and third are more largely mental, or psychological times. It has been established that the nerves transmit sensa- tions at the speed of about 370 feet a second. The mental time or the breaking thru the synapse is very much slower. The average time for the four parts of the process is from 1-10th to 1-5th of a second. THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 85 Nerve Fibers.—The white mass of the interior of the brain is composed of fibers of which there are three sets, or groups. 1. Those reaching from the cortex to the various internal organs of the body, and to the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, etc. - 2. Those that run from one half of the brain to the other half, enabling both halves to function together. 3. Those that run from one area of the cortex to another. These are so numerous that every part of the cortex is connected with every other part. Association Areas.—We have referred in a previous chapter to the association areas and the association centers. Herrick says the association areas are the most important part of the human cerebral cortex. These parts of the human brain are very much enlarged in comparison with those of the anthropoid apes. In the apes the projection areas are fully as well developed as in man, but not so in the association areas. The smaller brain weight of the ape is due largely to the lack of development of the association centers. The same is true in regard to humans. Those of lower mentality have unde- veloped association areas. The number of brain cells developed nearly double by the end of the fourteenth year. No new cells are created but those present develop. By the end of the fifteenth year the volume of cells is about 125 times what it was at birth and in the next fifteen years increases to 150 times the volume at birth. The cells constitute a very small part of the total brain and they may increase in size many times and not greatly affect the size or weight of the brain. The size of the head is not a true index of the size of the brain. Frontal Association Areas.—The frontal association areas are the last to develop and the first to disintegrate. Under 86 PRACHICAT (PSY CHON@GY the influence of alcohol and of fevers the higher powers of the mind, which means the higher powers to associate, are the first to disappear. A study of the history of the race indicates that the older the faculty the more nearly universal it will be and in the “break-down” the last power acquired will be the first to go. It requires a long time to stabilize a power in the nervous system of the race. Insanity is the breaking down of recently acquired racial powers. Color Sense.—The color sense appears in the child at the age of three or four. It appeared in the race about three or four hundred thousand years ago. Color seldom appears in dreams and when it does it is usually the color red. Red was the first color known, or identified by man and ultra-violet the latest. In sleep or in delirium these later acquirements disap- pear first. The same is true of the musical sense. The real musical sense appears at about fifteen years of age. Only about 50 percent of the race have any musical sense. About three or four in one hundred thousand have any real musical sense. The musical sense is almost never retained in dreams and never in insanity, not even by musicians. The higher association complexes are the first to break because they are the latest to be acquired by the race, and in the case of many individuals have not yet been acquired. Mental Growth.—Mental attainments depend upon the development of the association areas which are located, ac- cording to Flechsig, as follows: I. In the frontal region. 2. Between the kinesthetic and optical centers. 3. Between the optical and auditory centers, Age of Development.—The great association centers be- gin to develop at about twelve years of age, or at the beginning of puberty. The upper limit of feeble-mindedness is about THEAWOREDIOR ASSOCIATION 87 twelve years. This accounts for the inability of feeble-minded to associate. Children under twelve and feeble-minded persons do not associate as well as normal adults do. They do not have the brain development necessary, and hence, not having the tools cannot use them. They are able to make only the simplest classifications and associations. The reason why some persons have no musical sense, no artistic sense, or no moral sense is because the association centers which relate the various impressions, the interpretation of which makes these “senses,” are still undeveloped. World of Associations.—We live in a world of associa- tions. Think of anything you will. In a moment you will be thinking of something else and a moment later you will be thinking of something different still. Think of the school you attended and you will think of the teacher, of the chums of your school days, then of the trees that grew in the school yard, of the games you used to play. Then your mind “wanders” to the successes of your former friends, and so forth. Thinking of anything makes us think of other things which are in some way connected with it. All ideas have certain definite associations with other ideas and they tend to come up in consciousness in groups. Facts are of no value in and of themselves. It is only as they are related to other facts that they serve us. That is the only way they exist. Things in space and events in time do not exist alone but are always a part of a larger group or of some more complex process. Facts have relations like the members of a family. Some are very near relations, others more distant like third and fourth cousins. One of the first things we ask about a man is in regard to his relations. When we find out that he is the son of Bill Jones or of the Hon. Welkin Ring we begin to be at ease. _ Hereafter when we think of the Hon. Welkin Ring we will 88 PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY think of this man. That is, they will be associated in our mind because they are related in the family. An Idea Does Not Appear Without Reason.—An idea never appears in consciousness unless there is a definite reason why it should. We often hear persons speak of thots “pop- ping” into their minds as tho they came from nowhere with- out cause. This is not the case. In many instances we can trace back connections from what we were thinking about to the ideas which seemed to come without cause. In so many instances has this been true that psychologists are convinced that no idea comes into consciousness without being called directly or indirectly. We shall say more about this when we discuss the subconscious. What is Association?—Association is the tendency of the mind to recreate a previous experience when any element of that experience appears in consciousness. It depends upon the fact that experiences are tied together and that the neuron system must be able to respond to stimuli. Both of these are essential. If either is lacking the association will be lacking, weak, or incomplete. A normal child lacks experience but he has the potentiality. He cannot respond now but he will be able to later on. A feebleminded person has the experience but he does not have the potentiality. He cannot respond now ..and in all likelihood never can. We may say that brain plus experience equals success in associating and that experience minus brain equals failure to associate. The Normal Process.—The simple processes of associa- tion are carried on by all normal neuron systems. When we see an object and hear a sound at the same time we associate them and when later we hear the sound we at once “see” the object. We associate the impressions received thru one sense with those received thru another sense just as readily as we do different impressions received thru the same sense. This THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 89 is called the conditioned reflex, and leads often to substituting coincidences for causes, as in Rostand’s Chanticleer, in which it is believed that his crowing caused the sun to rise, because the rising always had followed his crowing. Cause of Association.—The higher, or more complex, associations are thot to be caused by blocking off or damming up the stream of nervous energy in such a way that it cannot follow the old path or channel. The energy seeks a new out- let and in so doing overflows into the great association areas. It seems to act like a stream flowing thru nearly level ground. Any damming of the stream causes the water to rise and very slowly but very surely to seek other outlets or channels. Some- times the change of channel may be due to an increase of water, in which case the stream, because of its increased volume, sweeps away the little curves and crooks which it followed, so naturally in ordinary times. This overflow may cause a permanent change in the channel while only streamlets follow the old line. So with association, the blocking of the energy may cause an overflow into new channels, and also, under the influence of great fear, anger, or any other deep emotion the old neuron paths may be almost completely swept away and new associations set up, leaving only “streamlets”’ flowing thru the old channels. Any blocking such as fear, curiosity, hesitancy, or the discovery of a new truth may cause the nerve energy to overflow into new channels and form new neuron patterns. As a result new associations may be formed which are much stronger than the old ones. Association results because neuron patterns or processes follow a certain order. Two or more pathways have been con- nected and in some way become “fixed” so that they are more or less permanent. When one is disturbed the other is also. It is like ringing a telephone on a party line. All the bells ting at once. They are all associated. Each idea has its own 90 PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY system of cells, nerves, or pathways. Stimulate any one and the idea results, or arouse the idea and the pathway is stimu- lated. The mental process and the physiological process in the cortex are closely connected. We associate because of the structure of the brain upon which all mental processes, so far as we know, depend. Past and Present.—Association supplements present ex- perience with reproductions from past experiences. If one has been burned, consciousness of pain occurs when fire is seen. Pleasure is felt by a hungry person when food is seen or even thot of. The soldier hears the whiz of a shell and “ducks.” One hears an auto horn honk and “sees” the car approaching without even looking in its direction. In each instance some element from the past experience is added to what the present holds. The richer one’s past experiences, the more will be added. If one is a student of history, what a wealth of asso- ciations arise when one speaks of the reforms of the Gracchi. If one has visited Oxford University, what pleasure is ex- perienced when reference is made to Trinity, Christ’s, Mag- dalen, Keble college, etc. The lack of experience indicates a poverty of association that is often painful as well as amusing. The story is told of an Indiana couple, a brother and sister, both unmarried, who had lived together and labored hard for years and just before the World War decided they would visit Europe and see something of the world before they got so old they could not. They visited western Europe and went down into Italy. One morning at breakfast in Florence they fell in with a well informed American to whom they began relating their experiences and their delights at what they had seen. He asked several questions about what they had seen, discussed literature, history, etc., and finally asked what they thot of Omar Khayyam. The brother replied that they had not seen it yet but were going to the next day. After breakfast the THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION QI sister said, “James, you make me tired with your putting on airs.” James replied, ‘“What’s the matter now, Jane?’ She replied, “You talk about Omar Khayyam as tho it is a build- ing or an art gallery or something to be seen, when everybody knows it’s a cheese.” Omar Khayyam did not add much to their experience. Laws of Association—Contiguity.—There are two ways in which we associate things and events. The first is associa- tion by contiguity, or as it is often called mechanical associa- tion. Do you know why they placed B next to A in the alphabet? Why did they not put it just before Z? Why did our teachers not begin by teaching us the letter Z first, then Y, X, W, etc.? There is no particular reason except that the letters were taught them in the order in which they taught them to us. Of course there is nothing about A that suggests B. We just have to learn that B follows A. There is no way of reasoning it out. Things that arbitrarily come together in consciousness, however unlike they may be and which are somehow so related that when we think of one we think of the other, are said to be associated by contiguity. Committing poetry to memory is association by contiguity. Even tho we see the pictures described, the pictures them- selves are arbitrarily associated and have to be so remembered. We just have to remember that a certain picture comes before another and having learned them in that order, we find it much easier to repeat them forward than it would be to name the pictures in the reverse order for the same reason that we can name the letter following H in the alphabet more quickly than we can the one preceding it. Read the following verses and note the order of the pictures and then commit the verses to memory and note carefully how you associate the various items referred to: 92 PRACTICAT ARS YCHOLOGcy THEY SHIPS One ship drives east, and another drives west, With the self-same winds that blow. ’Tis the set of the sails, and not the gales Which tells us the way they go. Like the waves of the sea are the ways of fate As we voyage along thru life. *Tis the set of the soul which decides its goal And not the calm or the strife. —ELLA WHEELER WILCOX, Association by contiguity is really at the basis of all associa- tion. It is based upon the fact that the stimuli are in con- sciousness at the same time. Contiguity of experience gives rise to association. A particular element in the new pattern is associated with others having a similar element of time. The elements are actually together in mind. We may never actually see things together but we see oF hear the names together. I think of London, Paris, Berne together, not because I ever saw them together but because they were cities visited on a certain European trip. I asso- ciate them also because they are capital cities. They are in mind together under both of these heads. We think of Alexander the Great and Napoleon at the same time, altho they lived centuries apart, as readily as tho we saw them walking down Fifth Avenue together on Easter morning. Children and feebleminded associate aimost entirely by contiguity. Time and place are the most important things in the way of grouping for them. Children do not discover like- nesses as readily as they will later. We do not associate events by the time of their occurrence so much as by the time that we think about them. Similarity——The other way of associating is by similarity, or, as it is sometimes called, logical association. It depends, not upon time or place so much as it does upon the inner THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 93 relations of things and events. There must be some point of identity between the things and events associated. We asso- ciate chess and checkers not alone because they are games, nor because they are played somewhat alike, but because they are played on the same kind of a board. We associate billiards and pool because they are played with balls and cues on similar tables. Association by similarity can only occur when the nervous energy overflows the simple perceptive patterns into the great association areas. We do not begin to seek for relations of cause and effect, genus and species, law and example, means and ends, premise and conclusion, likeness and unlikeness, etc., tintil we have passed the age of about twelve years, or in other words until the great association areas begin to develop. Similarity requires very much more elaborate neuron patterns than does contiguity and unless these patterns are developed wide association is not possible. Likeness and Difference.—We associate or group by like- nesses and differences. We group people by their likes and dislikes, by whether they agree with us or not. None of these groups agree in all points but they have one outstanding point of agreement. All men are not alike. All Odd Fellows are not odd. All ministers are not alike, yet there is a char- acteristic of ministers because of their views, their training, their calling, which lets us associate them. So with the other groups. There is enough in occupation, profession, trade, to tie men together in groups. It is the same when we deal with material qualities of objects as it is when we deal with personalities. Need of Wide Association.—It is quite necessary if one is to make the best use of his powers that he make wide asso- ciations. He cannot know unless he does associate widely. What I mean may be illustrated by the following. One is 04. PRACTICAIIPSY GHOrOGy asked if he knows Mr. A. He replies that he does, that he and Mr. A are both members of the Lawyers’ Club. Another knows him as a member of the Presbyterian Church, another as a member of the Masonic fraternity, still another as a mem- ber of the Democratic County committee. None of these know him in more than the one relation. None of them know him in the home where he appears as husband and father. They — do not associate Mr. A with enough groups to really know him. To know Mr. A one must be able to associate him with all of these and still other groups. One may know that iron rusts and not associate the fact with the science of chemistry. He may know that wet clothes hung on the line dry, but he may never associate the idea with the science of physics. He may know something about the molecule and the atom but he may not associate them in such a way as to tie physics and chemistry into the group of physical sciences with physiography, meteorology, astronomy, etc. One may know a multitude of facts and yet not associate them in such a manner that they throw light on all his prob- lems, and yet it is possible to do that. It is possible to so associate that the facts of physics will throw light on every other physical science. Association by similarity is at the foundation of comparative anatomy, comparative physiology, comparative religion, etc. One should be on the lookout for new associations, and for opportunities to increase the extent of the old ones. “Old friends are best” is a saying that may be true, but old associa- tions are not always the best. Often as in anger old associa- tions that we thot were completely broken up reappear. In unguarded moments regrettable associations of former days arise in consciousness and before we are aware of it they have found expression in action. This not only indicates that the old associations are still there but also that they are still strong. THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 95 Drowning persons often see their whole past life flashed before them in an instant. A sudden accident on land pro- duces the same effect. A great emotion such as fear of drowning rushes thru one’s mind on a sort of a “Paul. Revere’s Ride,” disregarding all conventionalities and customs, arousing “every Middlesex hamlet and farm’’ of the mind to the impending danger, and so one sees all his past, or enough of it to make him feel that nothing has been omitted. Power of Association.—The power of association is al- most beyond belief: Ideas are the part of us that do things. Often they do the wrong thing. When they do, it is because of wrong associations that have been established in the mind. We saw in an earlier chapter that the sympathetic nervous system controls all of the vital organs and that impressions made upon the cerebrospinal nervous system would affect the sympathetic system. Impressions in the way of ideas in con- sciousness will affect the subconsciousness and the subcon- sciousness will cause the vital organs to function in accordance with the ideas received. For instance, one once ate sour cherries and drank milk at the same meal and afterwards was ill. He gets the idea that it was the milk and cherries that caused the illness and having associated the illness with milk and cherries he cannot again eat the two together without being sick. He says the cherries soured the milk and that made him sick. If he knew that the hydrochloric acid in the stomach sours every drop of milk as soon as it reaches the stomach whether one eats cherries or not he would have to find another reason for being ill, or more likely he would go on eating cherries and drinking milk and not suffer any ill effects from them. A man came to me about two years ago who recited an experience with milk and cherries similar to what I have just stated, When he was a boy forty-five years ago he was made 96 BRAC LICAR PSG OEGCy sick he thot by eating milk and cherries together and altho he is very fond of both he has always had to be careful not to eat them together. Whenever he has eaten them together he has been ill. When I explained to him that all milk sours as soon as it reaches the stomach and that it cannot be digested until it sours he replied, ‘“[Then what always makes me sick?” I explained that in the first instance his stomach may not have been functioning quite normally and that the eating of cherries and milk may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. They may have been the occasion and not the cause of the illness, but he not knowirig any other reason assumed that the cherries and milk were the cause and having set up that asso- ciation in his consciousness, it had immediately laid hold upon the subconsciousness and whenever he ate the two foods together the subconsciousness upset the action of the stomach and he was ill. I told him that if he could break up that old association he would no longer suffer any inconvenience from eating the two articles of food together. He was not able to do it. Then I suggested hypnotism, and as the result of one treatment the old association was completely broken up and for two years he has eaten cherries and milk together on numerous occasions without the least discomfort. Subconscious.—As we have already stated in another chapter, the mind is the whole and the consciousness is the part. A number of names are in use in referring to the part of the mind that is not consciousness, but we shall use sub- consciousness or the subconscious, remembering that when we speak of the subconscious mind we are referring to that part of the mind which is not in consciousness and not to another mind. We have one mind only. It may manifest itself in many ways, | THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 97 Subconscious Association.—The thots of the moment pass into the subconsciousness and there remain until recalled. They pass into the subconsciousness associated in groups. Often we do not know all the elements in the group and only under the influence of hypnosis can we get at some of them. What we are interested in just now is to see what the sub- conscious associations result in. For instance I know several persons who have always been a little shy of policemen. Some of them had reason to be, but others could give no reason for the feeling except that as children some of them had been frightened into obeying by being told that the “cop” would get them if they did not. Those threats had settled down into the subconsciousness and at every appearance of a policeman a little wave of emotion was aroused which caused the un- pleasant feeling. In the minds of most persons the abnormal functioning of bodily organs has come to be associated with organic disease. But the psychologist knows that most functional disturbances are caused by the mind thru wrong association and he knows also that the functioning may be made normal by conscious control. The organs misbehave because of wrong association and can be set right by establishing right associations. The trouble is not in the organs of the body but in the mind. This does not say that we have no organs, that there is no matter, that all is mind. It does not go as far as the Christian Scientist and deny all material substance or at least call mate- rial things errors. Someone has said that a Christian Scientist may deny all materiality but he always knows the right change for a five dollar bill. The Christian Scientist can go no fur- ther than to help secure conscious control of organic func- tioning and he cannot go that far unless he follows exactly the laws of mental operation. The body functions according to groups of associated 98 PRACTIGAINES VOC EOI Cy ideas. With every idea there is associated an emotion. The seat of the emotions is in the sympathetic nervous system. One can, to a surprising degree, control his emotions and so control the ideas and his actions, conscious and subconscious. We shall see more of this later on. Some of the groups that are wrongly associated are, for instance, the need of eight hours sleep, and that brain work is very fatiguing. So strongly fixed in our minds is the idea that one must sleep at least eight hours, that if for any reason we are awake for an hour or two during the night because of “restlessness” we are very much worried. No one ever went crazy because of lying awake. One may have gone crazy over worrying about lying awake nights. One does not need eight hours sleep. He needs eight hours rest, which he can secure without sleep if he will lie quietly with all voluntary muscles relaxed. But so firmly fixed is the idea that it is dangerous to lie awake that if we cannot sleep we “roll and toss and worry” and the next morning take pleasure in telling how many times we heard the clock strike during the night. We never slept a wink from one-thirty to five. Sup- pose we didn’t. Suppose you say to yourself, “I lie awake half the night lately. Now I am going to go it one better and stay awake all night.” You will have the hardest time to keep awake you have ever had. The one time when you really find it hard to sleep is when you go to bed. “I cannot sleep” has become associated with bed and the subconscious mind lays hold on the suggestion and keeps you awake. In the same way one has difficulty in awaking. One has to be called every morning, either by an alarm clock or by another member of the household. I have had persons declare to me that they just could not wake on time in the morning. I have declared to my psychology classes for years that anyone can awaken at any hour of the night he wishes, that the only THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 99 reason one has come to feel that he cannot waken is because he has set up an associated group, two elements of which are, “I cannot waken” and “six o’clock.’’ If one will form another associated group composed of “I can waken” and ‘six o'clock,” he will have no difficulty in waking. In one of the classes which was composed of men and women from the various professions, manufacturing, merchan- dising, and allied interests, one of the men said he did not be- lieve that it would be possible for him to awaken without being called, that he had formerly used an alarm clock, but that he had gotten so he could not hear that and that for several years his wife had called him every morning, much to his chagrin, but he “just could not wake up.’ I asked him what time his wife called him and he said she always called him at six o'clock. I suggested to him that he go home that night and tell his wife that she should not call him again, that he was going to apply psychology to waking, and that to prove it he would awaken her at five o’clock the next morning. He should then go to bed and just before falling to sleep say to himself, “I am going to waken at five o'clock in the morning, five o’clock,’ and then to go to sleep and sleep “like a log” and not with one eye open for fear he would over sleep. The next Monday evening he came to class and I asked him to report. He said his wife made all sorts of fun of him when he said she need not call him, saying he would sleep until noon if she did not, but to his delight and her surprise he called her at five minutes to five the next morning, and that he had awakened at six o'clock, the time set, every morning during the week. I saw him recently and he said he has not used the alarm clock nor been called during the past two years, and that on several occasions it has been necessary for him to - catch an early train out of the city in connection with some of 100 PRACTICAL PSs YCHOLOGY his business trips and he has never missed one. The old asso- ciation seems to have been completely broken up. He has really gained self-control. The one who says, “I can” has the battle half won. The one who says, “I cannot”’ is licked before he starts. What is true in regard to sleeping and waking is true in regard to the idea of fatigue as a result of brain work. We have been told so often that brain work is so very fatiguing, that our minds are filled with the idea. The association between brain work and fatigue is so strong that anything that we interpret as brain work makes us tired. We expect to get tired and we get tired. Just as the man who ate cherries and drank milk expected to be sick and was until he learned better. It is not the brain work, but the worry that some of us allow to disturb us that fatigues us. Brain work is no more fatiguing than muscular effort, and we recuperate just as quickly from it. Of course your work is the most wearing, the most tiring, because you think it is. You are going to be fatigued in pro- portion to what you think the work demands. How sorry we have come to feel for ourselves! But learn the facts about yourself and set up new associations based on facts instead of on fancy. You are stronger, bigger, better than you know. Ask yourself how you came by such ideas as you have been harboring. In most instances you will find that “they say” and or, “everyone knows it,” is the authority for your beliefs. Then get behind these and discover the facts and correct your beliefs. Some of these wrong associations are formed in early childhood, have passed into the subconsciousness and are often forgotten, while the effects of the association remain for years. Several years ago a woman came to me who had suffered for years from fear occasioned by hearing footsteps THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION IOI behind her on the street. She just could not stand it to have anyone walk behind her, and sometimes it seemed as tho she must either scream or run, but the imaginary spectacle of a woman of forty-five running down the street would restrain her while she would “shake like a leaf.” She had finally gotten to the point where she came home from her work ‘completely exhausted” every night. A careful questioning of her failed to throw any light on a sufficient cause and hypnotism was suggested. Under hyp- nosis [ was able to get from her a recital of an incident that occurred before she was seven years old and which she had completely forgotten. I told her that when she came out of the hypnosis she would recall all that she had told me, which she did. As soon as she sensed the situation and saw the relation of that early experience to her present fear she began to form a new association and has never been troubled by “hearing footsteps’? behind her. She had been treated by physicians for years, but the cause was not organic but func- tional. Physiologically she was sound, but associationally she was all awry. When I saw her about two years after I had hypnotized her, she said, ““What a world of misery I could have been saved if the cause of my trouble could have been discovered thirty years ago.” There are persons who have formed such a strong associa- tion between the idea of ships and seasickness that to go on board a ship lying at the pier causes nausea. In fact for years I had similar experiences and to stand on land and watch a ship roll slightly in the harbor would make me sick. Most of us were brot up with the idea of being sea sick if we ever should go upon the water and of course we are sea sick at the first and usually at the last opportunity, although some of us “overcome”’ it. We speak of the dignity of labor and yet in the minds of 102 PRACTICA WP Sy CHOLOGY the great majority of the laboring classes there is the idea, caused by wrong associations, of the imdignity of labor, and all too often the working man is dissatisfied with his lot be- cause he feels that he is consigned to an undignified activity. He cannot conceive of time or condition when men would “work for the joy of working and none would work for pay.” Even many of those who have expatiated upon the dignity of labor are perfectly willing that the other man should do the laboring, and those who have associated all things evil with capital have changed their minds as soon as they have acquired a little capital. That is, they set up new associations. In both of these groups there is a tendency to associate everything bad with the other group. The capitalist can think of nothing too mean for the laboring man to do, and vice versa. In many cases both find grounds for their suspicions, and until time and effort are given to the breaking up of the old prejudices based upon wrong mental associations and the forming of new associations based upon facts which recognize that the rascal is the exception in the ranks of both capital and labor, there cannot be peace in industry nor in community life. The law of cause and effect applies as well in the field of association as anywhere else. Suggestions of leaders in both groups find expression later in the actions of their followers and often neither group realizes the origin of its spring of action. Dissociation.—In order that association may be made, dissociation must also be exercised. Something must be re- jected, kept out of mind for the time being. Dissociating is rather difficult. Ask a child which is heavier, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead and almost without exception the answer will be, “‘lead.’’ He cannot dissociate the “lightness”’ of feathers and have “heavy” left. In the same way people find it difficult to dissociate the idea of impurity from warm THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 103 air, and yet analysis shows that warm air is just as pure as cold air. Most of us find it a little difficult to dissociate wings from a bat and see an animal that is not a bird, or the snake- like characteristics from an eel and see a fish. We meet all things as complexes and not as units and we have to learn to dissociate the different elements and to clas- sify, or associate. The temperers of steel associate a certain color with the temper of the steel, and they must dissociate that color from all other elements in the steel. So also with dyers of silks, wine-tasters, and tea-tasters. Just as we learn to taste the corn starch or the vanilla in ice-cream by dissociat- ing them from the other elements, so these experts referred to do with their tasks. Association always implies inhibition and discrimination. When an element appears in consciousness there is a tendency to recreate the whole of a former experience. Some of those elements are not wanted and so are inhibited. One is walking along the street and hears the fire engine approaching. The first impulse is to follow the fire engine, but he remembers that he has an appointment to keep and so he inhibits or drives out of his group of associated elements those which would lead him to the fire. Hysterics are those who dissociate many experiences from the common group and who exaggerate those which they associate. These are perverted associations, or obsessions, some element of which is very much exag- gerated. Experiences are common where the associated idea and its physiological response have produced exaggerations so strong that functional processes of the organs of the body are disturbed. Prejudice and bias are examples of perverted associations. The fatigue of marching men will be relieved by martial music. It diverts or inhibits certain ideas and arouses the emotions. Hypnosis reinforces associations or sets up new 104 PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY ones. However, we must not overlook the fact that there is a continuity of mental processes. There is no point where one mental process ends and another begins. They are as con- tinuous as consciousness itself, and extend in many cases below, consciousness. Time Required to Form Associations.—Associations are not formed instantaneously but require considerable time. Practically all of us have had experiences after wrestling with difficult problems and then forgetting them for some time to find that on returning to them the matter has cleared up. Often we read a book, the drift of which we have difficulty in getting, then after several weeks or months we re-read it and find to our great surprise the matter has cleared up con- siderably. Of course this may be due to a wider experience, but it is due largely to the fact that the association processes have been busy in the subconsciousness of the individual. We all realize that cramming the mind full of facts for an exami- nation does not acquire knowledge that stays with us. We must allow time for associations to be permanently formed. This shows why frequent reviews are necessary. These asso- ciations once being formed do become quite permanent. If one has ever learned to ride a bicycle and has thereby asso- ciated the various movements in balancing and propelling the wheel he may give up riding for a score of years and then mount the bicycle and ride with as much ease as ever. Uncontrolled Associations.—One can get a fairly accu- rate idea of a person’s ability to associate by naming a word and then let the person name the first word that occurs to him and the next, etc., say for three minutes, not using words connected in sentences. If this test is given to a number of persons there will be a wide variation in the number of words named. The best record will show an average of I to I 1/5 THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 105 seconds per word and the poorest of 1 1/5 to 2% seconds per word. Studying the words carefully one will find light thrown upon the experience of the individual. If the word “‘ice’’ is mentioned, the words named by one person will be, cold, frozen water, skating, winter sports, ice house, food preserva- tion, etc. Another person will respond with 32 degrees above zero, expansion, etc., running off into the principles of refrig- eration, the advantages that come from the ice being lighter than water and so rising to the surface as it freezes, thus saving the life of fish and other inhabitants of the deep. In a group of a dozen persons such a list of associated words throws a flood of light upon one’s interest, education, and experience. Tests in proof reading show that one man can read 2629 letters in one minute and thirty-two seconds, which indicates that he read one letter in one-twenty-eighth of a second. An unforeseen word will require five-sixths of a second to arouse an associated idea in the mind. It takes twice as long to read words that have no connection as it does to read words in sentences. It requires one-fourth of a second per word to read unconnected words and one-eighth of a second to read the connected ones. All normal persons recognize colors and pic- tures in slightly less time than they do words, but they require a longer time to name the color. Familiarity and Associations.—The speed of time re- quired for association may be increased by familiarizing one’s- self with the material. Two men, both of whom know equally well that 6 and 5 equal 11 and one of whom works with figures constantly and the other with literature, cannot respond equally quickly when asked how many 6 and 5 are. The one who follows a literary pursuit will, other things being equal, require one-tenth of a second longer to answer the question, 106 PRAGTICAIGRS VCROLOG On the other hand, while both of these men know equally well that Tennyson is a poet, the one who works with figures requires a longer time to state the fact. The Demands.—There are certain qualities demanded of all persons who seek employment with the idea of succeeding. Some positions require a greater emphasis upon one, some upon another, but they are all demanded. These three are accuracy, skill, and speed, and they are all based upon asso- ciation. A person who is not accurate is not worth much any- where and unless one has formed the habit of accurate asso- ciation, to be compelled to give close attention to accuracy is a wearing experience. The tendency that we often come across of “that is near enough” indicates a tendency to inaccurate observation and association with which industry and science today have no patience. Accuracy is essential. Then if one expects to succeed let him determine, or have someone de- termine for him if he is in doubt, whether or not he is accu- rate. Accuracy is not only an essential, it is the first essential. The thing must be right. Parts of the machine must be accurately made. They must be accurately adjusted. The mathematical computation must be correct. When accuracy is assured the next demand is for skill. Skill in the performance. In order to be skilful the muscles must be trained thru wide and careful associations. These associations require considerable time and they must become second nature. New muscular habits cannot be acquired in a day. The acquiring of muscular habits is to quite a degree a subconscious process. When one is going up stairs and expects to find another step at the top he raises his foot to meet it and finds it is not there. His whole muscular system is disturbed. Somehow subconsciously the muscles had gotten themselves ready to meet that uplift of the body to the next step. One sees what looks like a 50 pound dumb bell lying on DHEMWORLD OB ASSOCIATION 107 the gymnasium floor. He stoops to lift it. Subconsciously the muscles of the body tighten. He takes hold of the dumb bell and with all of that energy ready to be released and to his great surprise finds it is made of paper. Skill arises from a coordination of the mental and muscular reaction so that the task may be done easily as well as accurately. These two, accuracy and skill, are essential. In addition to these speed is needed, but speed without accuracy or skill is a liability. One may be as accurate and as skilful as the occasion demands, but if it takes him forever and a day to get the work done, industry cannot afford to wait for him. On the other hand, if the thing is done speedily but is inaccurate the results are too expensive for industry to meet. These three things, accuracy, skill, speed, ought to become as far as possible a second nature to one. In so far as they do there will need to be little expense in the supervision of one’s task, and in industry we are beginning to discover that the money paid for supervision of a man’s task cannot be paid to him in wages. The Three Phase Aspect.—As Munsterberg has pointed out, there is a three phase aspect in every experience. There is the aspect of knowing, having information about the task so that we may readily associate all the important elements of our experience at the time of need. Do you have all the infor- mation that it is possible to get about your work? If not, then there is someone better equipped to take your place and somebody is going to take it. There is an opportunity for you to increase your capital stock, which is your ability to dispense service. You have ability to sell. The greater your ability the greater the return. Tests of various kinds may be applied to help you to discover just how much you know about the task, 108 BRACTICAI ROY COG Crye Another aspect of experience, which has up to recent times been very largely overlooked, is that of feeling. ‘That raises the question of personal and social satisfaction which comes to the worker as the result of a well finished piece of work. Are you employing men and women? How much concern have you as to whether or not they are happy with the work? Are you employed by someone else? How much concern has your employer with regard to your social and personal satis- faction? Yet we know that one cannot succeed anywhere unless his best efforts are enlisted, and no one in modern life can succeed to the best unless he is able to enlist the efforts of other men to help him accomplish the things he has thot out, and men will never put their best efforts into anything that does not create a personal satisfaction. In industry we find a turnover of five times annually, that is, five times as many men have to be employed in the skilled operations in order to keep the working force intact. It has been estimated that it costs $40.00 every time a man is discharged and another employed. Some day thru the understanding of men as well as of processes, employers will come to understand that the working man himself has hopes, desires, and aspirations which he must be able to satisfy in the industry in which he is em- ployed or he will remain a liability to the industry. But in all too many cases while both employees and employers have hopes and desires and ambitions, neither one knows those of the other group. Andrew Carnegie said the way he was able to make his millions was not because he knew so much but because he could interest men who knew so much more than he did and then keep them interested while they worked for him. The touch of this very thing, a personal satisfaction, must come from the effort that you put into your work. There is also the aspect of doing, which again raises the THE WORLD OF ASSOCIATION 109 question of skill and of experience. How much technical skill have your Are you a paper hanger? How good a one? Are you a preacher? How good a one are you? Are you an advertising man? How skilful? How well qualified to do or carry on the essentials of your vocation? These three things, the aspect of knowing, the aspect of feeling, the aspect of doing, are essential. The degree to which one measures up depends on how well and how widely he has learned to associate. In spite of all that has been said about tests, no one knows us quite so well as we know ourselves, or at least as it is pos- sible for us to know ourselves. Let us then, while ‘it is pos- sible, become so acquainted with ourselves that we know wherein we need special training and then get it. Let us form associations that have, as far as possible, a logical basis. If we are in industry, let us be able to associate the process in which we are engaged with all the processes of the department, and that department with all the other departments of the busi- ness. If we are teachers of arithmetic, let us be able to asso- ciate arithmetic with the entire field of mathematics. If we are students, let us continually seek for the discovery of relation- ships so that we may really make ourselves master of the field in which we seek to live. CHAPTER V MEMORY IN the preceding chapters we have considered the relation of the mind to the body, and how the raw material of sensa- tion is registered and interpreted, resulting in the percept. We have traced the processes thru to the establishment in the mind of the concept. We saw that there were certain centers in the brain that do not connect sensory and motor neurons; that they connect the great association centers which begin to develop in the normal child at about twelve years of age. You will realize upon a moment’s thot that sensations and sense-percepts confine us to the present, the here and now. With these only there would be no yesterday, no past, no his- tory, no biography. Without another quality of the mind the child could never become an adult in mentality. Memory.—Memory enables us to extend our mastery beyond the immediate present. All of our remembered past can be brought before us now. We live again the experiences of former years. We visit again the scenes of our childhood. We live again thru pleasant memories of other days. By means of memory the past is made available for present use. We remember the results of mistakes made in other days and that memory serves to prevent a repetition of the mistake. We learn by experience, but we would not were it not for memory and remembering. Memory and Remembering.—Memory is characteristic of all organic life and is a form of motor activity. It makes IIo MEMORY III its appearance far down in the field of biology and is found all the way upward. Horses; cows, cats, dogs have memories. All migratory birds as well as others have memories. We often find the birds returning from their southern homes and using again the nest of the former year. Instinct is organic memory. Remembering is a matter of personal consciousness. Memory and remembering release us from the slavery of the present. Remembering is a process of building up associations among our experiences which we wish to retain. Good Memory.—A good memory does not remember everything, but it should remember enough to be of service. It ought to be faithful in retaining, reproducing, recognizing, and replacing experiences. One cannot very well know every- thing, but each one should be able to remember the facts needed in his field. One should be able to remember all the essen- tials of his business or profession. He should not forget his social and home relations. He ought to remember to look after his health, not to forget about his intellectual develop- ment. A good memory ought to give one a fairly good com- mand of his past experiences, and relate them to the affairs of today so that he does not make unnecessary blunders. Poor Memory.—We frequently hear persons complain of a poor memory, but every memory is good at some things. One always remembers what he really wants to remember. We often “wish” we could remember but we do not really want to. How often when we hear a story told someone says, “T wish I could remember stories as he does” and then never think of the stories again until he hears someone telling a story and then he “wishes” he could remember. The poorest memory is good at some things. The merchant never forgets prices of his goods. The chemist remembers the formulas he uses. The physician does not forget his prescriptions. The musician remembers his music. The baseball ‘‘fan’ knows 112 PRACTICAL PSYCHOLOGY. and can tell instantly all the details of the records of his favorite players. JI never knew a young man to forget the address of his ‘‘sweetheart.”” We remember what we want to remember. Forgetting.—Memory is not like a photographic negative, unchangeable. It is more like a sieve. It lets many things thru. The intervening spaces are often filled in with what is common experience, or by what we judge or wish had happened. For- getting is of equal importance with remembering. If one re- membered and repeated every detail of an experience, he would often make himself a nuisance and a bore. James calls our attention to a selection in Jane Austen’s “Emma,” which illustrates the tediousness caused by the contiguity of a recital. “But where could you hear it?” cried Mrs. Bates. “Where could you possibly hear it, Mr. Knightley For it is not five minutes since I received Mrs. Cole’s note—no, it cannot be more than five—or at most ten—for I had got my bonnet and spencer on, just ready to come out— I was only gone down to speak to Patty again about the pork—Jane was standing in the passage—were you not, Jane?—for my mother was so afraid that we had not any salting-pan large enough. So I said I would go down and see, and Jane said ‘Shall I go down instead? for I think you have a little cold, and Patty had been washing the kitchen.’ ‘Oh, my dear,’ said I—well, and just then came the note.” Some brain records are like a phonograph record. When one begins the selection it plays straight on thru. It cannot make selections. It follows the chronological order. Logic has no place in its reactions. If one interrupts such a brain record, the process must be begun all over again and the whole performance repeated. A verbatim memory is, there- fore, often a very serious handicap. Such details make one very ineffective in mental reactions. Remembering should be selective, dropping out many non- essentials. It should give us a broad perspective, recall the mountain peaks of experience, and yet the ability to recall detail when needed is essential. One speaks of the railroad MEMORY Lis trip from New York City to Buffalo. I at once think of Pough- keepsie, Albany, Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, the larger cities on the line, but if further discussion ensues, I will think of the smaller stations between these larger ones until I will have recalled most of them. So a good memory omits many: of the details which on occasion it may readily recall. Basis of Memory.—Experience which can be recalled must be preserved somewhere. We have seen that sensory stimuli leave a more or less definite impression in the neurons of the brain. The neurons never forget an experience they have had. Every sense impression and every motor response leaves an impression somewhere. The power of the nervous system to respond to stimuli is the basis of memory. All functions of the nervous system are improved by repetition and if stimuli are repeated frequently enough there results a permanent change in the brain cells. Memory is due to the number and to the persistence of these brain paths. These paths are made thru exercise. It is like making a path thru the underbrush. The first time thru there are left a few broken and down- trodden bushes, but after several trips thru the brush a more or less well marked path results, and those who have occasion to go in that general direction will follow the path. It is easier and pleasanter. So the stimuli of the nerves take the paths of least resistance, and by the continued exercise of these cen- ters tend to make them permanent. The nervous system pre- serves a record of what has happened to it and tends, on being stimulated, to act as it has acted. Brain Change Permanent.—The brain is changed by these stimuli even tho the interpretations are forgotten. The neurons have been modified as a result of the impressions and so change future stimuli as they pass over the same path. These last impressions must mean something different than they would if they traversed a nerve and reached a neuron II4 RRACTICAIME SA CH OLG Gry, that had not been perviously stimulated. So the records of former stimuli by modifying the effect of later impressions will result in a different interpretation and so result in a change of conduct. Even tho one may forget a past ex- perience, the record is still there to color and influence action. Memories or Memory.—We have spoken of memory as tho it were one, but we do not have a memory. We have memories. The localization of function about ;which we studied earlier indicates that we do not have a memory, but many memories. As you recall, the association centers in the human brain occupy about two-thirds of the cortex. Defi- nite areas in the cortex perform special tasks. The stimuli effecting the nerves of sight leave a trace in the sight area. A later stimulus may lead to a recall or a remembering of the thing seen without disturbing any other nerve center. Stimuli effecting the nerves of hearing will produce, so to speak, another memory and so on. So there will be a memory of sight, a memory of hearing, a memory of taste, etc. In fact, there will be as many memories as there are cen- ters in the brain in which impressions are made. These memories are not all equally clear. Visual and auditory feel- ing are more easily recalled than are those of taste and smell. It is very difficult for one to remember the feeling of hunger or thirst. The emotions are difficult to recall because the dis- tinction between the actual emotion aroused when one is hungry and the ideal emotion aroused when he thinks of being hungry is not very pronounced. Types of Memory.—There are several distinct types of memory, such as, visual, auditive, muscular. The person with a visual memory always sees colors and forms. He must get a good look at whatever he wishes to remember and when he recalls a circumstance, he sees each element. Someone refers to a selection in the old school reader. This person says, “I MEMORY 115 remember that selection. It began on page 100 near the bot- tom of the left hand page and ran down thru the next page and finished at the top of page 102.’’ Such a person seldom sees motion in a scene remembered. He sees the morning train on its way to the city, but as he thinks of it, it is not moving but is like a “painted train’? seen against the landscape. One with an auditive memory does not remember so well. how a thing or person looks but he remembers sounds. He cannot recall the details of facial expression of his friends, but he can recall the sound of the voices so distinctly that often he can go to the piano and touch the key that corre- sponds to the pitch of a friend’s voice. The one with a muscular type of memory sees and remem- bers motions. He will see in his mind’s eye the morning train gliding along in the distance on its way to the city, but will not be sure whether it has six or seven cars. Such a person is interested in movements. He enjoys sleight-of- hand exhibitions and often sees more of the intricate move- ments of the performer than any of those who are eye-minded or ear-minded. Retention.—In order that one may have a memory of any- thing there must be retained in the brain the effects of an experience. Without retention there could be no possibility of remembering. One cannot recall what is not there. But memory does not deal with raw material of experience, but with the relations of retained ideas. In order that retention may be made as permanent as possible, one should see that the impression is strong. The artist will visualize a subject at one sitting. Most of us would need a dozen and then per- haps could not tell the color of the eyes of the subject. Deep impression is essential for retention. The impres- _ sion made upon us by words is often more lasting than seeing 116 PRACTICABVR SY GH G@lOGY the object itself. The impression made by the simplest flower upon Wordsworth was probably more lasting than that of the most gorgeous or most delicate upon most people. He says, To me the meanest flower that grows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. There was a deep impression, and a lasting one. Most of us are more impressed with his words than by the “meanest flower that grows.” Recall.—lIf the mind retains and nothing more the material retained would be of no use. It must be where we can get at it. One must be able to recall, bring again into consciousness that which has been stored away in the recesses of the mind. Often we know we have certain things in the mind, yet we cannot get hold of them. Recalling is not like the power to run, to lift, to see. It does not come at the command of the will. It is more like a combination lock. One may want ever so much to get into the safe. He may rattle the door and gO thru all sorts of antics, but the door does not open until some- one works the combination according to the “set.’’ One must get hold of the right combination, or association in order to get into the mind and find the fact wanted. Recognition.—The image must not only be recalled but it must be recognized. There must be a feeling that this has occurred or been seen before. It must be recognized as part of my past. There must be a feeling of familiarity, or at least a feeling of the absence of strangeness. This is indicated by feeling at ease when the image appears. Replace.—The image must be retained, recalled, recog- nized, and replaced before the act of remembering is com- plete. One must know the circumstances under which the experience appeared. He must be able to live the incident over again, must see the original setting. MEMORY Puy We often find ourselves with an image in mind and are at a loss to replace it. Or we meet a person and are sure we have an image of the person correctly in mind, but we can- not tell where we have previously seen him. The mind will keep on trying to replace the former experience and often when we least expect it, the matter is cleared up and we are at ease about the matter. About four years ago I was introduced to a man in New York. I remarked that I was sure I had seen him before, but he had no recollection of having ever seen me. The matter rather bothered me for two or three days. Every little while the question of where I had seen him would come into my mind. One evening three or four days after being introduced to him I was riding downtown in the elevated train. I was reading a newspaper at the time when suddenly I saw in my mind a little railroad station in the south of France and a number of passengers waiting, and there among them I saw this man and two elderly ladies with him. The next time I saw him I asked him if he were not in the south of France in the early part of the Great War. He replied that he was, and remembered being at the station where I had seen him, altho he had not seen me at the time. When we come to deal more definitely with the subconsciousness we shall see more clearly how the replacing occurred. Intensity.—One of the factors on which permanence of the impression depends is intensity, or vividness. If the inci- dent arouses a large degree of interest and attention, the im- pression will be well fixed. Feelings have a great deal to do with the intensity. Anger, fear, stage fright, etc., make such an impression upon us that we can never forget them and at the same time prevent almost everything else from making any impression at all upon us. The reason we cannot remember things that happen when we are frightened is because the 118 PRAC ICN ie sty el Oya) Cove mind is not directed to remembering them but is directed toward something that prevents the recording of the impressions. In this connection we may note that interest always give certain impressions the advantage. They get a right-of-way over the ones in which there is less interest. We may be lis- tening to a speaker and presently he mentions something that has to do with a subject in which we have a special interest. We remember just what he says about that point but often we forget the rest of the address. Or we are interested in the general trend of the argument. We want to see where he is coming out. So because of our interest in that we follow the main line and pay no attention to the details, and so of course, straightway forget them. We remember certain items or points of an address and forget the connection in which they were employed. We often remember the stories told by a speaker and forget the points they were intended to illustrate. Recency.—Another element in the process that is impor- tant is the recency of the experience. Other things being equal one remembers what happened this morning, or what happened a week ago better than he remembers what hap- pened several years ago. It is in recognition of this that we cram the mind full of facts just before an examination.