! Class mjlj_2 Book ,» / A Copyright N? COPYRIGHT DEPOSfT. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/humannatureclubi02thor c THE HUMAN NATURE CLUB 0- /sf ^ - The Human Nature Club An Introduction to the Study of Mental Life BY EDWARD THORNDIKE, Ph. D. ^ Instructor in Genetic Psychology Teachers College, Columbia University, New York LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO 91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK LONDON AND BOMBAY I90I THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, Two Copies Received FEB. 28 1901 ^Copyright entry m CLASsWYiliB* No. COPY B. Copyright, 1900 By Edward Thorndike Copyright, 1901 By Longmans, Green, and Co. All rights reserved. First Edition ( published at the Chautauqua Press) 1900. Second Edition, revised and with additions, January, 1901. PREFACE This book aims to introduce the reader to the scientific study of human nature and intelligence. It is intended to be useful to intelligent people in general and especially to young students in normal and high schools beginning the study of psychology. The author has tried to write so simply that pre- vious knowledge of science, explanation by a teacher, and even unpleasant effort on the part of the reader, will be unnecessary. At the same time he has tried to be true to fact and sound in method. One must not expect too much of a book which tries to handle psychological questions without resort to technical words and without presupposing knowledge of elementary science. If the book tells a little truth and does not deceive readers into think- ing that it tells more than a little, it may serve a good purpose in waking people up to the possibility of a scientific study of human nature, and introducing them to some of the published results of such study. For the unconventional form and for the adoption of a thoroughly fictitious dialogue, no excuse is offered. The fiction is frankly announced and should certainly not prevent the reader from realizing that all the pretended discoveries of the members vi Preface of the Human Nature Club are really the results of long labors by trained thinkers. It goes without saying that the author is indebted to psychological literature in general so far as he is acquainted with it. In particular he is indebted to the writings and teachings of Professor William James, who is so often paraphrased in this book. The debt to Professor James is so evident that it seems unnecessary to point out the many places where his formulae have been made to do service. Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, December, 1900. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI XII xiii XIV XV XVI XVII XVIII XIX Index What the Brain Does . Things We Do Without Learning Different Ways of Learning Our Senses The Influence of Past Experience Attention Memory Trains of Thought Mental Imagery Our Emotions Purposive Action Habit and Character Suggestion Imitation Mental Training Heredity and Environment A Review Some Deeper Questions about Human Nature Some Advice from the Editor about Means of Studying Human Nature PAGE I 20 2CJ 42 57 65 76 86 100 "5 127 138 148 163 170 181 197 200 214 233 vil THE HUMAN NATURE CLUB CHAPTER I WHAT THE BRAIN DOES Mrs. Ralston stood at the door of her son's room and knocked. * 'Breakfast in five minutes, Arthur. I thought you got up when I called before." "All right; I'll be down," came from within, and Mrs. Ralston went downstairs. There she found the rest of the family assembled in the sitting-room. "Arthur will be down in a few minutes; we'll wait for him," she said; and then turning to Mr. Tasker, who was half boarder, half friend of the family, "How did you like the lecture last night?" "It was fine," was the reply. "Solid and worth while, and still very entertaining. His general theme was the interesting things one can find in the world all about him if he'll only look. You remember how we puzzled over his title, 'They Have Eyes'? He claimed, for instance, that we could see how the rivers and valleys and plains and lakes have been formed if we'd only watch Bear Brook." "Yes!" broke in Mrs. Elkin, Mrs. Ralston's mar- ried daughter; "but don't you think that it depends on who looks? The geologist sees all those things in Bear Brook because he knows geology, just as a cook could tell just how hot the oven was by looking at 2 The Human Nature Club a loaf of cake, while you, though you are a school- master, couldn't see anything but dough and crust." "I know that's so in some things," said her hus- band; "for don't you remember how the man who had the high school before Tasker would see all sorts of bugs and worms when he was walking along the road, things you couldn't see till he almost put his finger on them? It isn't the eyes that see; it's the knowledge behind them. It wasn't his eyes; it was his course at the state agricultural college. I thought last night at the lecture that if it weren't so, I wouldn't have any excuse for knowing almost nothing of the world outside the boot and shoe business and the art of beguiling brook-trout. You have to study a long while before you can see things. If there were any science that didn't need systematic school training, I'd study it." "I wish we could study the real world somehow," replied Tasker. "We've had a Browning class and a Greek art class and a Church History class, and I wouldn't wonder if it would do us good to stop studying books and study real things for a while. 4 'Let's study breakfast," said Mrs. Ralston. "I wonder what's the matter with Arthur?" "I'll run up and bring him down," said Mr. Elkin. "The rest of you go ahead." He went up and entered Arthur's room without knocking. There sat Arthur, all dressed except one shoe, which he held in his right hand. His left hand was scratching his head, and his face wore a meditative expression. The Human Nature Club 3 "What's the matter, Arthur? Breakfast's all ready." "I know that, Elkin. Say! Can you tell me how many stairs you just came up?" "What in the world do you want to know that for? Come on down to breakfast." "I won't go down those stairs till I either know how many stairs there are or know why I don't know. I don't believe you know yourself." "There are — there are — well, I guess I don't. Odd, too; I've been up and down them hundreds of times." Arthur began to laugh at his brother-in-law, and the latter to cover his confusion went out and called to those below: "Come up here, everybody. Arthur's gone daft. He's sitting here raving about stairs." "Yes! Come up here," cried Arthur; "we'll see who's the fool. Stand up 'n a row there," he added as they came into the room. "How many stairs did you just come up, mother? Well, well! And you've been up those stairs thousands of times. Next! Next! Eyes to see! This is an observant family." "What's got into you, Arthur?" said his sister. "It is queer that we should all know so little about a thing we've done so often; but what started you thinking such stuff?" "You know that lecture last night? Well, when I got out of the bath-tub I thought I'd start in to observe things, and I wondered what I could observe, and then I wondered why I felt fresh from a cold bath, and I couldn't tell; and that set me thinking while I was dressing that lots of common things were 4 The Human Nature Club really rather mysterious, and then it struck me that I had dressed myself without thinking about it at all, and I wondered at that; and then I noticed that I had my right shoe on, and I wondered if I always put that one on first; and then I wondered about doing things without thinking about them, and thought of the next thing I had to do — to go downstairs, that is — and I realized that I generally did that without thinking how to do it at the time, and then it struck me that I really couldn't think how to do it, that I didn't even know whether there were a dozen steps or twenty. And then I wondered how I could have gone up and down those stairs and never noticed that. I suppose you folks are hungry and think I'm silly." "Yes! I know why I want to eat," remarked Mr. Elkin. They ate their meal in a queer way. Mr. Tasker sat with his brows furrowed, whispering occasionally to himself. Arthur would occasionally stop eating to stare at some one or apparently to question himself. At last he blurted out, "Why do you suppose Emma likes boiled eggs, while I, her brother, abominate them?" Everybody laughed except Mr. Tasker. He pulled out his watch, and said: "Will you all please listen to me a few minutes? I have a scheme. If you'll keep still for five minutes, I'll tell you about it. I must go down to the school at a quarter-past eight, and you can make fun of it after I've gone. You know before the excitement of Arthur's discovery we were saying that it would be a fine thing if we could study some things in the real world for ourselves, instead The Human Nature Club 5 of just soaking in book knowledge, if we could get the sort of pleasure (and profit too) that the lecturer last night told us came from looking to see how things really are. Now, no one of us has enough knowledge to start in studying bugs or plants or brooks, and not all of us have enough of an interest in any one of these things to induce us to do the studying. But I believe there's one thing that we're all interested in, that's well worth looking at, but that doesn't require us to read German books or buy microscopes or make big collections. Arthur has opened his eyes to it this morning, and I got my idea from him. Let's look and see how real people live and act and think. Let's get our eyes open to human nature, to the real world, not of mountains, or brooks, or birds, or beetles, but of people. Let's have a club, 'The Human Nature Club,' whose business it shall be to see how and why we and our friends do the things we do, think the thoughts we think. Let's start in by finding out how we can dress ourselves without think- ing about it, and how we can go up and down a flight of stairs from one to twenty years without learning how many stairs there are. Think it over; I must go. Good morning all!" "Wait a minute; I'll go with you," said Arthur. They left the house together, Mr. Tasker going to the high school and Arthur to his duties as assistant manager of the Redpath Tool Company. Mr. Tasker did not return to the house till nearly eight o'clock that evening. When he came into the sitting-room he was surprised to see besides the regu- lar household, Miss Fairbanks, a music-teacher who 6 The Human Nature Club lived in the neighborhood, Miss Atwell and Miss Clark, two teachers in the graded school, and Mr, Henshaw, the manager, editor, chief reporter — in fact, the general producer of the West field Register. "Who is having a surprise party?" he exclaimed. "This is the Human Nature Club," replied Mrs. Elkin. "I spent most of the morning talking about it, and all of the afternoon hunting these folks and telling them about it. We've just elected you boss, or rather president, and we're ready to start ahead." "We've progressed this far," added the editor. "Everybody here knows that the scheme is to watch real people, especially ourselves, to see what they are, how they learn things, why they think and feel and act as they do. Everybody is to keep his eyes open for facts about people. We had just begun to air our wisdom in connection with that mystery of the stairs. Now, how shall we run this organization, Mr. President?" "I suggest," responded Mr. Tasker, "that we leave rules and regulations till we have investigated the 'mystery of the stairs,' as you call it. What did you decide, Arthur? You are the father of this, our first problem." "I don't know that I have decided. I've been thinking of a number of things like it, things which I can get along with first-rate, but which I don't seem to know much about. I didn't know whether there were four or five or six buttons on my vest; I don't know how many hooks -there are in my closet, though I've used that closet for eight years." "It's the same sort of thing, isn't it, when I go The Human Nature Club 7 along the hall in the dark and stop just in front of my bedroom door? I couldn't for the life of me tell how- many steps I take, but I always stop in the right place. " "That's like my playing the piano," said Miss Fairbanks; "I see the notes and put my fingers on the keys, but I don't once think, 'That is G, ' or 'That is a half-note higher,' or 'Now I will stretch my little finger way out.' Of course I could if I stopped to think about it, but I don't, any more than you think of the number of stairs or the number of steps. I'm sure we all do do things that way without thinking about them, and we can agree for a start that one can do things without at the time or afterward knowing much about it." "That is so," said Mr. Tasker; "but it makes two new questions out of our old one. In the first place, how do we come to do things without having to think about what we're doing? In the second place, how do we know so little afterward about what we've done so many times?" "I think that perhaps I can answer the first ques- tion," said Miss Atwell. "When I was visiting Kate Maxwell, at Barnard College, I went to some classes with her, and at one of them the professor was lec- turing about the brain. He said that the brain was a machine for connecting our bodily acts or move- ments with what we heard and saw and felt. For instance, the reason why when you see a team coming, you get out of the way, is that some sort of commotion in your eyes is transmitted along a nerve to your brain and stirs up some commotion there, which is transmitted through other nerves to your muscles and 8 The Human Nature Club somehow makes them move your body in such a fash- ion that you run across the street out of the way. As far as I could make out, the brain was like the big switchboard in the telephone office. Messages com- ing in from all over the body get connected with the proper wires, so to speak, and sent out to the right muscles. Now, if I'm right, all you have to suppose to answer our question is that the commotion or message can be sent to the right muscles without your thinking about it — without the operator at the switchboard having to bother about it, to stick to my illustration. Thus just seeing the top of the stairs and feeling each one as you step rouses just the right movements. When you were first learning to play the piano you would make mistakes and have to think about what you were doing, but after enough practice the brain would do the work of itself. The commo- tion aroused in the brain by seeing the notes of a cer- tain chord would go in a certain way — that is, to the right muscles — because it had gone that way so many times. It would be like water that having worn a certain channel always runs in it. Excuse me for talking so long, but I think we can see a reason for our being able to do things unconsciously if we think how the brain acts." "That sounds all right, with one exception," answered Mr. Tasker. "You say, if I understand you, that anything which we have done in certain circum- stances tends to be done again if the same circum- stances occur again. But that isn't so if the results of the act are painful. Little Helen, the first time she saw a candle — when she was about a year and The Human Nature Club 9 a half old — put out her hand to take it and was burned. According to your theory she would the next time she saw a candle, put out her hand. But as a matter of fact she didn't. She shrank back without reaching. What you say is true of cases where the results are pleasurable or indifferent, and Fig. i. explains our cases, but it needn't always be true. Isn't that so?" Miss Atwell nodded assent, and Mr. Tasker con- tinued: "I wish you'd let me draw a picture to show my notion of what you said about the brain, and see if I understand you. Perhaps it will help us all." Arthur brought in the baby's blackboard, and Mr. Tasker drew his picture (Figure 1), giving at the same time the following explanation; io The Human Nature Club "This picture is supposed to represent very roughly what happens in doing two things which we do automatically — that is, without thinking about how to do them. The two things are playing the piano and chewing gum. In playing the piano some- thing happens in the eye which sends some sort of a current or commotion or explosion up to the brain, as I show by the line a b. This results in some sort of current or commotion being sent to the muscles which move the forearm and fingers, as I have shown by the dotted line B A. Just how the thing coming from the eye gets switched so that it starts the thing going to the arm I don't know, as I show that by the line of crosses b B, which means simply that somehow a b is connected with B A so that what the eye sees influences what the arm does. In chewing gum the presence of the gum in the mouth arouses the jaw muscles to act in the same way, a continuous line, m b v representing the mouth-brain connection, a dotted line, B x J, the brain-jaw muscle connection, and a line of crosses the connection between the two. Does that represent the ideas of the company and agree with what the professor said, Miss Atwell?" "Your explanation is worthy of our high school principal, but I'm glad you don't have to teach draw- ing," said Mr. Henshaw. "Don't laugh at my drawing," was the reply; "for if that represents the idea, I'm going to try another to show my general idea of the brain as I've derived it from Miss Atwell's description. Here is the brain (Figure 2), with a lot of things — nerves, I suppose they are — coming in from all over the body and bring- The Human Nature Club II ing in the 'commotions' that correspond to the electric currents coming in to the telegraph office over the wires. The continuous lines represent those. The dotted lines are the nerves going out to all the muscles. The crosses are the connections made on Fig. 2. the switchboard. Multiply all these lines by thou- sands and you have the brain. Is that right?" "It's right as far as it goes, but the brain is more than that, I'm sure, though I can't remember just what else the lecturer did say about it." "Why wouldn't it be a good thing for me to run over to Dr. Leighton's house, and see if he can't tell us a bit about our brains. We can learn about the outside facts of human nature ourselves by watching ourselves and other folks, but we can't watch our brains; and he has had the chance to study them, so 12 The Human Nature Club why not profit by his experience? I think that we'll find that the brain plays a big part in making human nature what it is in other things besides these uncon- scious performances, habits, automatic acts or what- ever you call them." Mr. Henshaw's proposition was received with approval and he went after the doctor. The others spent the next ten minutes in talking over what had been said and in congratulating themselves on the success of their first meeting. "This has been as hard thinking as I've done for a good while, apart from business," remarked Mr. Elkin; "yet I declare I've enjoyed every minute of it. It pays to think about things if you know anything about them to start with, and can work them out your- self, or make believe that you do." "My head is full of about twenty questions to be investigated, which will be, if anything, more interest- ing than this one," added Arthur. So they kept on until Mr. Henshaw came in with Dr. Leighton. After he had greeted the company, the doctor began: "Mr. Henshaw tells me that you are observers of human nature, and have a notion at the start that what people do and feel depends largely on the way their brains work, and since you can't yourselves observe what goes on in people's brains you have asked me to tell you something about it. "You are quite right in thinking that human thought and action, in other words, human nature, depend on what happens in the brain. For instance, Mr. Tasker here is a steady sort of person, but if The Human Nature Club 13 I should inject into his brain a little of a certain drug, he would become very volatile and changeable for the time being, would feel very wretched and then very exalted, etc. His nature would be changed for the time being. Let me cut out a little piece in one part of your brain and you'd never see things any more. Let me cut out a little piece in another place and you would lose your command of language. Let a person tire his brain by overworking or maltreating it and his nature grows irritable. You have all seen that in young children after an exciting, restless day. If a person's brain doesn't grow, he may really have no human nature at all, but be an idiot, almost like a mere beast. "What, then, is this brain of ours, and how does it do its work? In order to be clear I shall have to simplify things somewhat, and I beg you not to imagine that in these ten minutes you will get an accurate or complete notion. I will try, however, not to give a false notion. The brain and the other parts of the nervous system are a very complicated apparatus for fitting our acts to our surroundings, for making us swallow food when it's in our throat, reach for things we want, take food when we're hungry, go to work when it's time, etc. The brain's business is to be influenced by what happens to us, what we see, hear, feel, etc., and to i?ifluence what happens in us — i. e., what we do or say. It thus is the connecting link between what the world does to us and what we do to the world. "Now, to see how the brain or nervous system does this, how it works, we must see how it is made. So H The Human Nature Club #r-1 first look at this picture, a picture of one of the units or 'cells,' millions of which together make up the brain. You see that it looks like a string frayed out at both ends, and has a notable swelling in one place and little side strings running off from it and fraying out at their ends. The real thing which it rep- resents may be very short or may be several feet long, but it is never anything like as big around as the picture shows it. A hundred of these nerve-cells, or brain units, or nerve-strings stuck together in a bundle would not be as big around as the smallest needle. Now, imagine nerve cells or strings like this with one end in the eye and the other end in the brain or spinal cord, which is really a part of the brain. Imagine other thousands starting from the ears and nose and tongue and fingers and stomach and joints — in fact, from different organs all over the body — and end- ing in the brain. Imagine, also, other thousands of such nerve- cells or strings with one end in the brain and the other end in connection with some muscle, or per- haps gland. Imagine, in the third place, thousands of such nerve-strings, entirely inside the brain — I always mean to include the spinal cord, too — run- ning from one part of it to another. Imagine all Fig. 3. The Human Nature Club 15 these strings to keep the same places. Then you will have a notion of what the brain and nervous system is. It is just the sum total of all these nerve-cells running from eyes, ears, skin, etc., to a central mass, where there are a lot of connecting strings, and running out from it to all the muscles. You were quite right in likening the brain to the switchboard of a telephone office; and just as a telephone system is really nothing but a lot of incoming and outgoing wires and a lot of connecting wires at some central station, so the nervous system, including the brain, is really only a lot of nerve-cells, incoming cells, outgo- ing cells and connecting or associative cells. "That is what the brain is. Now, what the brain does is just what the particular nerve strings or cells do. When we say that anything is done by the brain, we mean just that it is done by one or ten or ten thousand of these nerve strings or cells. Just as a telegraph system acts only as the wires act, so the brain acts only as its cells act. How, then, do these cells act? What does a nerve-cell do? If we answer that question we shall know what the brain does. "Now I shall tell you the important, the essential business of a nerve-cell. There may be other things which it does, but its one sure and chief business, or function, to use a scientific word, is to transmit, to so act that any commotion or action at one end of it will be carried along it to its other end. If you will call to mind some common cases of transmission, you will get a clear notion of what I mean. Drop a stone in a pond, and the wave around it causes another wave in a wider circle, that causes still another, and 1 6 The Human Nature Club so on till the last wave may be at the pond's edge. The water, we say, has transmitted the wave from the center to the edge of the pond. The action or com- motion at the center has been carried across the water. Take a piece of clothesline ten or fifteen feet long ; shake one end of it up and down ; the 'wave' of motion passes along the string to the other end. Put one end of a poker in the fire, and the other end gets hot. The electric discharge of a lightning-flash striking one end of a lightning-rod is transmitted along it to the ground. The rod conducts it, we say. "Now, we don't know just what sort of commotion it is that a nerve-cell, a nerve-string, conducts, or just how it transmits it; but we do know that it does do it, that its business is to conduct what we may call nerve-currents or nervous discharges set up at one end of it to its other end. Thus a commotion or nerve- current, set up or started in cells having their ends in the eye by the sight of a dollar bill on the sidewalk, is transmitted or conducted along them to their ends in the brain. Now, this commotion or discharge or current can pass from the frayed end of one cell to the frayed end of another cell close enough to it, just as the electric current can go from one wire to another if they are near enough. I'll show this in a rough picture (Figure 4). So the current started in the eye, having reached the brain, may go over to the ends of connecting cells, go along these, go over to other cells, go along them, and finally end up at certain muscles. It may there make the muscles move in certain ways so that we stoop to pick the dollar bill The Human Nature Club 17 Cell A. I up, just as an electric current may be transmitted from a battery through switch after switch until it finally ends in a charge of dynamite and blows a rock to pieces. "Moreover, just as an electric cur- rent may blow up a rock, or light a lamp, or silver-plate a spoon, or connect / your telephone with mine, or with Mr. Elkin's, or with that of some man in New York, according to what connec- tions are made between the different wires, so the result of any nerve-cur- rent in a nerve-cell depends on what other cells that cell is connected with. One person's nerve-cells are so con- nected that the sight of a mouse makes her jump on a chair; another person's nerve-cells are so connected that the sight of a mouse makes him seize a cane and try to exterminate it. A cat's nerve-cells are so connected that the sight of a mouse makes her jump at it. When people act differently in the same circumstances, it generally means that P a . s . s es from one ' & J cell to the other their nerve-cells have different connec- via , the frayed ends at x. tions. "I mustn't take any more of your time, and I have a patient to see this evening, anyway. Any time that I can help you again, be sure to let me know." The doctor hastily left the room, in the midst of exclamations of thanks from the company. "Dr. Leighton ought to have been a teacher," CellB. Fig. 4. The current 1 8 The Human Nature Club said Mr. Tasker. "That was a pretty good piece of description to be given extemporaneously." 11 Well! These young doctors that the good medi- cal schools are turning out know their business, I think," replied Mr. Elkin. "What were you scrib- bling all the time?" "You'll be glad later that I did scribble. I've taken down every word in shorthand, and I'm going to have our typewriter make a copy. That talk of the doctor's will do us about ten times as much good if we read it over carefully and keep a copy to refer to. It seems all clear now, but by next week it will be foggy in my mind, I'm sure, if I don't have a chance to go over it. If any of you would like to do the same, I'll get more copies made." "One for me, please," said Mr. Tasker; and all agreed to come to the next meeting with all the doctor's description clearly fixed in their minds. "It's time for me to go," said Miss Atwell. "What question is proposed for next time?" "I'd like to know why people who are very old think most about things that happened when they were very young," said Mrs. Elkin. "And I'd like to know why you always break dishes when you are all tired out mentally." "I'd like to know if there are any things that we can do not only without thinking about them, but also without even learning to do them at all," said Arthur. "I'd like to find the explanation of some of the things the Christian Science people do," added the editor. "But let's leave it to Mr. Tasker." "Well, I suggest that Arthur's point be taken up The Human Nature Club 19 first, at any rate, as it seems more closely connected with to-night's discoveries, and also that some one sum up the result of the Human Nature Club's find- ings so far. Is that agreed? Very well; I'll appoint Miss Atwell. The Human Nature Club is adjourned until next Saturday." NOTES BY THE EDITOR. The gist of this chapter is that the brain is a machine for making connections between what we feel and what we do, so that we can fit our acts to our surroundings. We can do things without thinking about them when such connections have been made. In technical terms, the brain is an associative mechan- ism, and can carry on automatic activities. CHAPTER II THINGS WE DO WITHOUT LEARNING "The Human Nature Club will come to order. "Let us have the report of the last meeting from Miss Atwell." "Mr. Chairman, at its first meeting the club inves- tigated the facts reported by Mr. Arthur Ralston, and found that they suggested two questions: First, how we could do things without thinking of what we were doing; and secondly, how we could do a thing a great many times and still know very little about it. The latter question we did not reach, as it seemed rather apart from the first, but the first we answered by saying that the brain could learn by practice to fit our actions to our surroundings in certain cases, and so finally get along without any assistance from our thoughts; the act, that is, becomes automatic. With the help of Dr. Leighton, we found the reason for the growth of such habits to be the structure of the brain, it being really not, as it looks, a big lump of jelly-like stuff, but a wonderfully complex system of connections between the parts of our body which sense or feel things and those parts which cause our actions. " "If there are no objections, this report is accepted. " "The particular object of this meeting is to report observations of actual facts bearing on the question of whether there are any things we can do or know 20 The Human Nature Club i\ without learning them at all, but I understand that it won't be considered unpardonable if any member chooses to report interesting facts on any other topic. I will first call on Mrs. Ralston." "Well, Stephen — or Mr. Chairman, I should say — I never did suppose that I should be asked to teach folks anything, and I declare I never should have thought of the things I have this week in the way I have if the questions hadn't been put just so. But when you come to think of it, breathing is quite a thing to do, but babies don't have to learn, and they know enough to suckle and to cry when they are left alone in the dark. They know how to put things in their mouths — mine knew too well — and I'm sure nobody has to teach them to ask questions or to look into every new thing they come across. So there are some things sure." "Does any one wish to deny the correctness of Mrs. Ralston's observations or to oppose any contrary facts?" "I'm not sure about the asking questions," said Mr. Henshaw. "In the case of our Robert, it seemed as if he did learn to ask questions by imitation, and kept it up because he liked to have you talk to him — liked to talk himself, too. I also thought, as Mrs. Ralston spoke of children touching and moving and tasting and fooling with everything they came across, that it was lucky they did so of their own accord without having to learn to. If they weren't naturally curious that way, they wouldn't learn about their surroundings half so fast. You may have seen a scrap I put in the paper about a week ago, quoting a great 12 The Human Nature Club scientist, who said that children learned more about the world in their first four years than in any four afterward. " "I see Mrs. Elkin has something to say. Mrs. Elkin." "I'm not sure, but I think that children walk with- out having to learn. It sounds preposterous, because we always talk about teaching babies to walk, but I really believe that they walk of their own accord, just because they are made so that they feel like it when the proper time comes. For don't you remem- ber, mother, how the doctor told us not to let Helen stand or try to get her to walk, because he was afraid it might cripple her, and how one day when we did put her down with her feet on the floor she started right across the room? She certainly walked, and also certainly hadn't ever tried before. I think most mothers begin to urge children before their brains or muscles, or whatever it is, are ready." "I don't believe that can be so with most chil- dren," said Miss Clark, "or people would have noticed it." "That's a poor argument, Miss Clark, if you'll permit me to say so. It's very evident that we don't notice a quarter of what really happens." "And I've noticed just what Mrs. Elkin did," said Miss Atwell. "For a while I was a tutor to Dr. Prentice's daughter in New York. He was rather queer, and he wouldn't let Mrs. Prentice or the nurse urge the youngest boy at all. When I went there the child could stand up by a chair. I don't know how he came to do that — and one day a pair of cuffs on The Human Nature Club 23 the table caught his attention, and he walked right across and got them." "Wouldn't it be a good thing to ask some of the people we know who have babies to watch them and see," said Miss Clark. "If children did really know how to walk when the right time came, I should think it was unwise to tease them to before they were ready. It might hurt their bones or something." "That's a good idea," responded the chairman. "Now, are there any more cases of things we do with- out learning — do just because we are made in a cer- tain way? Miss Clark?" "I wonder how it is about talking. Is any part of the faculty of language born in us?" "It can't be, because people born deaf don't talk," answered Mr. Elkin. "And a child of English parentage talks all French, no English, if he's brought up among French-speak- ing people," added Mr. Tasken "I do think, though," he continued, "that human beings differ from other animals in making a lot of different sounds — babbling, so to speak — and this they do instinc- tively — that is, without learning. That gives, I should say, the materials out of which imitation and learning can fashion language." ''You folks mustn't try to make out that nothing comes from learning," said Mr. Elkin, with a smile. "You have to learn the shoe business." "If people were born knowing how much eleven times five was, and how to read and write, we'd lose our positions, too," said Miss Atwell to Miss Clark. 24 The Human Nature Club After the general laugh was over, Arthur Ralston spoke up: "Mr. Chairman, if it's allowable to study human nature by comparing it to animal nature, I'd like to mention a few observations. It's evident that most animals can do rather complicated and seemingly dif- ficult things without learning— without any experi- ence. Last summer I visited a man in Mitteneaque who raised poultry, and I saw a hundred chicks which had been hatched out in an incubator. They had no one to teach them. There was no mother-hen for them to imitate, but they could eat and drink and run and jump and preen themselves and scratch. They would run and dodge when they got a worm. The young roosters, only a week or so old, would have mock fights. Strange as it may seem, they could all swim, too. The man had noticed it in the case of one who jumped out of a basket in which he was carrying it across a bridge, and had tried others. In fact, a ten-days' old chick can do a good many more things than a ten days' old baby. Animals evi- dently are like us, in doing some things without hav- ing to learn them." "I was wondering, too, when mother spoke first, if we didn't have some of these instinctive acts, as I be- lieve some one called them, in common with some of the lower animals. All of you who've lived on a farm know that young lambs or calves will run after anything which starts away from them slowly, and run away from anything which comes toward them fast. Now, haven't you many a time seen a baby run away when you try to catch him, with no real reason, The Human Nature Club 25 and we all know how they toddle after us if we are going away from them. It seems like a sort of gift common to human beings and some animals. And about the fooling with things and grabbing them and sticking them in the mouth, isn't a monkey just like a baby in that? I never thought of it before, but a monkey acts just about the same way toward any new thing that a baby does. Whatever meaning you give to the thing, it seems to me to be a fact, and one worth thinking about."' "I see," said Mr. Henshaw, "that we're likely to stir up more questions than we do answers; but I'm glad of it, for if we get our minds full of questions, we'll be on the lookout for facts. What is it, Miss Clark?" ''I don't see why if we never learn these things, we don't do them all when we're only a day or so old. But we don't." "I think that points to a very important fact, but I don't think it's any argument to prove that we do really learn those things, ' ' replied Arthur. ' ' I watched four of that man's chicks for a week, and they didn't scratch till they were several days old, yet I know they didn't learn to do it. When the time came they just did it. And it was so with Helen's walking. It seems to me it just is a fact that when the body or brain develops to a certain extent we do these things. Some things, like breathing and suckling, we do at the very start. Some things, like reaching and walk- ing, come later. It seems to me that the habit of collecting objects, which comes later still, comes to children without their learning it from any one. It 26 The Human Nature Club seems to me that we just have to grant that these unlearned acts — instinctive acts, as we've called them — may come at birth or be delayed for a consid- erable while. Isn't that so?" All agreed with Arthur, Mr. Elkin remarking that falling in love seemed to him a fine example of a delayed instinct. "Falling in love, at least the first time, would be ., an unlearned thing all the same," he retorted when the company laughed at his example. "If I may have one more word," said Arthur, "I'd like to ask whether these inborn abilities may not die out if they aren't exercised. Chicks naturally follow a hen, but if they don't have any chance to follow a hen in the first ten or twelve days, why then they won't go near one, much less follow it, if you do give them the chance. The act or instinct, or whatever you please to call it, has died out. Are ours that same way, I wonder?" No one seemed to have any evidence, and it was suggested that in the future eyes be kept open for that sort of fact. "I am interested to see," said Miss Clark, "what sort of thing in the brain corresponds to these un- learned acts. How is the connection between the nerve-strings made in these cases?" "It wouldn't have to be made at all, would it?" replied Mr. Tasker, after a moment or so. "If we do these acts without having to learn them, it would mean that our brains had a lot of ready-made connec- tions. They would be like a lot of permanent private telephone connections, or like nickel-in-the-slot ma- The Human Nature Club 27 chines. The sight of a small moving object stirs up the brain to cause the movement of reaching for it, just as the nickel makes the machine turn out a package of gum. If learning to do a thing when you see or hear or feel or think of something means that you build up a connection of some sort in the brain, doesn't doing a thing without any learning when you see or hear something mean that the con- nection is already built up for you, Miss Clark?" "Yes, that seems right." "It is now about time for this meeting to adjourn, and I therefore call for propositions as to what facts we shall look out for during the coming week. I take it for granted that we'll all bear in mind the questions discussed to-night and try to apply what we've learned. I myself would suggest that we notice any new thing that we do learn, and see how we learn it. I know that there are a lot of interesting questions about queer things in human nature, and I hope we can later get to the bottom of them, but I believe that we'd better see through the simple things first. " "I move that the chairman's suggestion be adopted, and that our next topic be, 'How did I learn to whatever the thing was?' " said Mr. Tasker. The proposition was accepted, and the company broke up. NOTES BY THE EDITOR. We inherit certain connections between nerve-cells which make us act in certain circumstances in definite ways, without our learning how, or thinking about the matter at all, or know- ing what we are going to do. Our inherited constitution makes 28 The Human Nature Club V us breathe and suckle and smile and reach for things and walk and be afraid in the dark, just as it makes us sleep and digest food and grow. We call such unlearned activities, instincts, or native reactions. Such activities may appear before birth or at birth or be delayed till after birth. They may be transitory, that is, may stay for a while and then disappear if not exercised and rendered habitual. Some of them we have in common with a great many of the lower animals. Some of them are peculiar to the human race. On the basis of these instinctive acts develop all our later acquisitions. An interesting account of them may be found in Wm. James's " Talks to Teachers on Psychology," pp. 45-63. CHAPTER III DIFFERENT WAYS OF LEARNING "Mr. Elkin, " said Miss Atwell, who was acting as chairman, "what have you learned this week, and how did you learn it?" 'Well, Miss Chairman, in order to be sure to have something to report to-night I took this chance of learning something that I should have learned long ago — to ride a bicycle! So far as I can recall the somewhat perturbed state of mind that I was in dur- ing the attempts, it was something like this. I'll make use in my description of a record which my wife kept at the time. I tried an hour each morning. The first morning I would sometimes fall over at the start; sometimes describe a short curve and then flop; sometimes go along with the front wheel wob- bling for twenty or thirty feet. I poked with my feet, and pulled this way and that with my hands, without much, if any, idea of what I was doing. I felt good when I kept going; that was about all. The farthest I went that morning was about forty feet. My wife says that I made thirty-eight attempts, rode about two hundred and fifty feet in all, fell over at the start nineteen times, had eleven of those meteoric curved dashes, and eight rides — short and zigzag ones, how- ever. This morning I rode five miles, falling off only four times, and then with fair provocation in the shape of a stone, a rut, a lot of sand and a terrifying 29 30 The Human Nature Club ^ milk-cart. All I can say about the progress from the first attempts to my present skill is that the useless jerks and pulls of arms and pokes of legs and bendings of the body gradually died out, and the right way of holding and pushing and sitting became the regular thing. My wife's records of the number of tumbles each day, the longest trip made, etc., show that pretty clearly. "I learned just by the try, try again method, with no ex- planations from any one and nobody to watch. Certain acts which kept me a - going, and so were satisfac- tory, seemed just to gradually become the natural acts, whereas at first they were only sel- dom done. I didn't think out how to do it, or about what my hands and feet were doing. What I thought of was just of keeping a-going. I've made some pictures which to me at least represent what happened. Let (in Figure 5) the line A B represent the feelings of sitting on a bicycle plus the desire to ride. At first these feelings lead to a lot of acts or movements represented by the other lines. Some of these make you fall or go crooked; others, which I'll represent by a double line, make you keep going and going the way you wish. After a lot of trials, these acts get connected with the feelings represented by The Human Nature Club 31 B A — B, so that you do just those. When you've learned completely, your behavior is represented by a figure like this (Figure 6), where the connections leading to all the useless acts have been obliterated and the con- nection between the feelings of being on a wheel and the acts that keep you on have been strengthened. Learning to ride a bicycle seems to be the selecti6n of one set of acts and the connection of them with a cer- tain situation, and the mere satisfac- tion of success r seems to be what does the selecting and connecting. " "Excuse me for interrupting," said Mr. Henshaw, "but isn't it largely in that way that we learn to hit a mark with a rifle-bullet or to dive? We just try and try, and the pleasure we get from successes stamps them in. " "I learned to have a decent 'touch' in playing the piano pretty much in that way, I think," added Miss Fairbanks; "but you go ahead, Mr. Elkin." "I hadn't anything more to say. I've talked too long already. " "I call on Miss Clark to speak next. You haven't said much in the meetings so far, Helen." "I shan't now, I'm afraid. All I've learned that was really a thing by itself was a new dumb-bell drill Fig. 6. 32 The Human Nature Club in the women's class at the gymnasium. I learned the movements just by seeing them done, by imita- tion. They were very simple, and I didn't have to use the trial and error sort of method that Mr. Elkins did in learning to ride a wheel. I just watched the leader, and did as she did." "Perhaps I'd better insert my observation here, too, for in my case the learning was to pronounce the French an, on, am, etc., and it was a case of imitat- ing." "Was it, really?" said Mr. Tasker. "It seems to me that you combined Mr. Elkin's stamping-in of the successful acts with Miss Clark's imitation. You had the sound the teacher gave for a guide, and you made a lot of attempts. When you hit the right sound, your memory used the model to stamp it in, but you didn't learn how to make the sounds just from hearing and seeing them made, as Miss Clark learned the movements. Isn't there a difference between direct imitation and imitation where one uses the trial and error method plus the help of a model?" No one objected to this distinction, and Mr. Tasker was called on next. "I told you not to expose me," said he. "The sad fact is, friends, that I haven't learned anything this week, not even my Sunday-school lesson; I've been too busy getting a class started in geometry. However, I've certainly observed in others methods of learning which differ from the three mentioned so far. For example, I asked a boy to get me a test- tube. He said he didn't know where they were. I said: 'You go downstairs to room D, and look in the The Human Nature Club 33 first case on your right side as you go in, in the third drawer from the bottom.' He succeeded all right, showing that he had learned where to find the test- tube just from my explanation. He didn't have to make a lot of efforts, one of which gradually became assured, as Mr. Elkin did. If I'd sent him ten times afterward he would have done just the same. He learned how to find the thing, once for all, by seeing through the situation. He didn't have any one to imitate. He learned by getting the idea of what to do and remembering it. So I should say we had three main ways so far. Some things we learn by trial and occasional success, which gradually becomes assured; some things by imitation, the model being either directly influential or working to direct our trials; some things we learn by getting ideas — i. e., from explanations." "I fancy my report is like Mr. Tasker's, and I'd better put it in now," said Mr. Henshaw. "I learned how to keep off book agents this week. A friend told me that during three weeks while his children were sick and a 'diphtheria' sign was on the door, he was bothered by no tramps or book agents. I'm going to try it. My friends will learn by 'explanation' that the sign does not mean real diphtheria, while the book agents will have to depend on 'trial and occa- sional success,' and the result should be very satisfac- tory. But speaking seriously, I think we ought to notice that learning by having ideas of things covers a tremendous lot of cases. We learn arithmetic and geography; how to add and subtract and go to places and to avoid poisons; we learn the news; we learn 34 The Human Nature Club how to keep books; how to play chess and such games — in fact, a host of things by just getting cer- tain ideas of things and acts. The model in imita- tion may just give us the idea of what to do or of how to do it. A person can 'explain' by an act as well as by words, and pure imitation would occur only in cases where the person did the thing without an idea of it by the mere force of witnessing the act in another — in cases, for instance, where a child gets St. Vitus' dance from being with a child who has it. But I'm keeping Mrs. Elkin and Mrs. Ralston from telling their experiences." "Mine was of the 'idea' sort. Mr. Elkin wanted me to be able to open his safe, so he wrote out the combination, and I learned it because I didn't want to bother about saving the paper." "Mine was of the 'idea' sort of learning, too. In connection with plans for an entertainment I had to know how much one hundred and twenty-eight times twelve and one-half cents was. I started to multiply it out, when Laura Keswick, who was with me, said right off, 'It's sixteen dollars.' I asked her how she got it so quickly, and she said, 'Why, that's easy. Twelve and a half is one-eighth of one hundred, so you just divide your one hundred and twenty-eight by eight.' I had to confess that I'd lived fifty-three years without having that idea of doing such an example in that easy way." "Arthur, you are the only one left to report." "The only new thing that I've learned how to do is to be able to tell the prices of eighty-two articles that our firm sells, without looking the matter up. It The Human Nature Club 35 was, of course, just a very simple case of getting ideas, of remembering each price in connection with the name of the article. When I receive an order for any one of them now. the idea of the price comes up in my mind, so that I make out the bill correctly. But I'd like to call the club's attention to some facts I've been thinking of while listening to the others to-night. Many things that we learn to do involve a mixture of the methods we've observed. When, for instance, we learn to play croquet, you start with a number of ideas that you get from explanation or observation, but you learn to aim correctly and to hit just so hard in any particular shot, from trial and gradual improvement. Moreover, I think you often unconsciously imitate the actions of other players. Learning to sing, also, is partly due to ideas, partly to gradually stamping in the right acts and abandon- ing the wrong ones, partly to merely imitating your teacher unconsciously. My second point is that dogs and cats learn only by the gradual trial and success way. At least, I remember reading an article in the Popular Science Mo?ithly which seemed to mean that. If you'll wait a minute, I'll get it and read part of it to you. " 'So far we have seen that when put in situations calculated to call forth any thinking powers which they possess, the animals' conduct still shows no signs of anything beyond the accidental formation of an association between the sight of the interior of the box and the impulse to a certain act, and the subse- quent complete establishment of this association because of the power of pleasure to stamp in any pro- 36 The Human Nature Club cess which leads to it. We have also seen that sam- ples of the acts which have been supposed by advo- cates of the reason theory to require reasoning for their accommplishment turn out to be readily accom- plished by the accidental success of instinctive impulses. The decision that animals do not possess the higher mental processes is reinforced by several other lines of experiment — for example, by some experiments on imitation.' 1 "Apparently the chief difference between human nature and dog or cat nature is that we have the idea method of learning. If so, we ought to study it more carefully." "Isn't the idea method of learning, as we've called it, a pretty big affair? We've noticed rather simple cases, but when you come to think of it, almost all of our school education, business training, original dis- coveries, scientific progress — in fact, almost all of civilization, which, I take it, means learning how to do a lot of things that savage peoples don't know how to do, is dependent on just getting certain ideas. We ought to notice just how we get these ideas. Why not observe for next time what happens when one acquires an idea, what causes it, etc.?" "Good for you, Henshaw, " replied Arthur; "but I'm doubtful about our getting the thing settled by our next meeting. I fancy we have a year's work before us if we're to observe everything possible about the way we learn to do things by thinking. We'll have to see how we remember and infer and guess and prove, and why we make mistakes and why 1 Popular Science Monthly, August, 1899. The Human Nature Club 37 we fail to remember and infer, etc. It will be a fine thing to watch, though, especially for you teachers. But it's a complicated affair, simple as it looks. Taking Mrs. Ralston's instance, let us suppose that some one reads, 'In multiplying by certain numbers — e. £\, 123^, 16^3, $3}i — it is often convenient to add two ciphers and divide by 8, 6, 3, etc' In order that this idea shall really bring about the proper results in his future conduct, he has to see the words or hear them, and we'll have to see how our senses work. He has to remember them, so we'll have to study what sort of things we remember best, how we remember at all, etc. He has to understand the meaning of each word and follow the points, and we'll have to observe our ways of comprehending things, see what they depend on, etc. He has to apply the thing to a particular case. It's wonderful how the common things that we take for granted are full of questions the minute you start in looking to see just what happens and why. There ought to be some books that tell about these things. Don't they teach about your senses and memory and that sort of thing in college, Tasker?" "Yes, they try to. The science of psychology is supposed to discuss just such things, but judging from the books I read in college, I should say that it would perhaps be better, and would surely be much more fun, for us to keep on making our own observa- tions and trying to think out what they mean, rather than to read any such books, at least for the pres- ent. My chum of sophomore year is teaching psychol- ogy in a college now, and if we get over our depth I can write and ask him to tell us where to find out 38 The Human Nature Club about the question in books. Besides, there's more in human nature than there is in the psychology books, I fancy. So let's keep on noticing human folks' behavior and discussing it, just as we have so far." "What shall be our plan for the next meeting, then?" said Miss Atwell. "Shall we just keep our eyes open in general, or shall we observe ourselves and other people with some definite question in mind?" "Hadn't we better do both, but plan to talk about only some one question? My wife and I find some bit of human nature to talk over almost every day now that we've started to keep a lookout, and we're saving all our observations until the club gets around to some topic that they bear on." "I think Mr. and Mrs. Elkin have the right idea, and I suggest that we begin the study of the 'idea' way of learning by trying to see what part our senses play in the matter, how many of the differences in human nature are due to differences in hearing, see- ing, feeling, etc." NOTES BY THE EDITOR. The method of learning by the selection of successes from among a lot of acts is the most fundamental method of learning, and is common to many animals besides man. The human infant learns in that way before he begins to imitate at all or to have ideas about things. We may take Mr. Elkin's drawings as representing in a rough way what does happen in the brain. The gradual increase in success means a gradual strengthen- ing of one set of nerve-connections, and a gradual weakening of others. This method of learning may be called the method of trial and error, or of trial and success, or (from its importance in animal life), the animal method of learning. The Human Nature Club 39 The cause of such strengthening and weakening is the resulting pleasure in one case and discomfort in the others. "Any act which is done in a certain situation and brings pleasure tends to be associated with that situation, and to be done when one is in that situation again. Any act which is done in a certain situation and brings discomfort tends to be dissociated from that situation and not to be done again." Things which we would learn by the idea method, animals learn by this "trial and success" method. For instance, if we make a pen, as shown in Fig. A, and put a chick, say six days old, in at A, it is confronted by a situation which is, briefly, "the sense-impression or feeling of the confining surfaces, an un- comfortable feeling due to the absence of other chicks and of food, and perhaps the sense- impressions of the chirping of the chicks outside." It reacts to this situation by running around, making loud sounds and Fig. a. jumping at the walls. When it jumps at the walls, it has uncomfortable feelings of effort; when it runs to B, or C, or D, it has a continuation of the feel- ings of the situation just described; when it runs to E, it gets out, feels the pleasure of being with the other chicks, of the taste of food, of being in its usual habitat. If from time to time you put it in again, you find that it jumps and runs to B, C, and D less and less often, until finally its only act is to run to D, E, and out. It has, to use technical psychological terms, formed an association between the sense-impression or situation due to its presence at A and the act of going to E. In common lan- guage it has learned to go to E when put at A — has learned the way out. The decrease in the useless runnings and jumping and standing still finds a representative in the decreasing amount of time taken by the chick to escape. The two chicks that formed this particular association, for example, averaged one about three and the other about four minutes for their first 40 The Human Nature Club five trials, but came finally to escape invariably within five or six seconds. It will be well now to examine a more ambitious perform- ance than the mere discovery of the proper path by a chick. If we take a box twenty by fifteen by twelve inches, replace its cover and front side by bars an inch apart, and make in this front side a door arranged so as to fall open when a wooden button inside is turned from a vertical to a horizontal position, we shall have means to observe such. A kitten, three to six months old, if put in this box when hungry, a bit of fish being left outside, reacts as follows: 1 It tries to squeeze through between the bars, claws at the bars and at loose things in and out of the box, reaches its paws out between the bars and bites at its confining walls. Some one of all these promiscuous clawings, squeezings, and bitings turns round the wooden but- ton, and the kitten gains freedom and food. By repeating the experience again and again, the animal gradually comes to omit all the useless clawings, etc., and to manifest only the particular impulse {e.g., to claw hard at the top of the button with the paw, or to push against one side of it with the nose) which has resulted successfully. It turns the button round without delay whenever put in the box. It has formed an asso- ciation between the situation "confinement in a box of a certain appearance" and the impulse to the act of clawing at a certain part of that box in a certain definite way. Popularly speaking, it has learned to open a door by turning a button. To the uninitiated observer the behavior of the six kittens that thus freed themselves from such a box would seem wonderful and quite unlike their ordinary accomplishments of finding their way to their food, beds, etc., but the reader will realize that the activity is of just the same sort as that displayed by the chick in the pen. A certain situation arouses by virtue of accident or, more often, instinctive equipment, certain impulses and cor- responding acts. One of these happens to be an act appro- priate to secure freedom. It is stamped in in connection with that situation. Here the act is "clawing at a certain spot" Confinement alone, apart from hunger, causes similar reactions, though not so pronounced, The Human Nature Club 41 instead of " running to E" and is selected from a far greater number of useless acts. 1 Concerning learning by imitation I have nothing to add to the club's observations. We do learn by imitation either directly or by a combination with the method just described. As Mr. Henshaw says, the bulk of human activities are directed by ideas of one sort or another. This method of learn- ing, the animals, with the possible exception of the monkeys, hardly possess. It is peculiarly human. 1 Edward Thorndike, Woods Holl Biological Lectures, 1899. CHAPTER IV OUR SENSES Mr. Henshaw opened the fourth meeting of the Human Nature Club by saying: "Arthur was telling me Wednesday of some general notions of his about the best way to look at human nature, and I took the liberty as prospective chairman of this meeting of asking him to prepare a sort of scheme showing his ideas. If he will tell us his view now, we can criti- cise it to our heart's content, and then go on to our own observations." "Mr. Chairman, I have tried to settle a few points in my own mind, with the help of a book or two that I found in the Springfield Library. 1 The life of a human being seems to be a series of acts. We are in circumstances or surroundings or situations that change, and we act — or, to use a more exact word, react — to these situations by movements of our body or limbs, or of some part of us. All that we really do to the world about us and to other people is to make some movement. Giving a million dollars to a hospital is really just making certain movements with your fingers, resulting in your signature on a check. And the only importance of our thoughts and feelings and education and characters is that they make us do certain things in certain circumstances, make us react in certain ways to certain situations. »Xhe book was James's "Talks to Teachers on Psychology." 4 2 The Human Nature Club 43 I mean by a 'situation' just the sights, sounds, tastes, etc., which you feel at the time. Give me any fact of human life that you please, and it can be expressed as a reaction to a situation. Give me any- thing in human nature, and its importance will con- sist in its influence on our movements." "Then you would say that knowing arithmetic is important because it leads us when we hear, 'How much are nine times -eighteen?' to move our throat muscles so that we say, 'One hundred and sixty-two,' or to make with our fingers the movements producing 162 or one hundred and sixty-two. You would say that knowing the alphabet really means the tendency to react to the request, 'Give the letters of the alpha- bet,' by saying or writing 'a, b, c,' etc." "Yes; that's it. And the difference between any two people will be really that they react differently to the same situations. For instance, the difference between a thief and an honest man is that one reacts by taking things when the other would react by leav- ing them alone. The difference between Republicans and Democrats is that one class take a ballot which the other class refuse, go to a lot of speeches, read a sort of papers which the other class would avoid, move their hands together in clapping at a sentence which the other class would hiss, etc. For practical purposes, living equals reacting to multitudinous situ- ations; by a man's character or nature we mean his ways of reacting." "I don't quite see that that is universally true. Don't we have lots of thoughts and impulses that make up a part of our lives, but yet exert no influ- 44 The Human Nature Club ence on our actions? For instance, don't mothers have love for their children that they don't show? May not a boy do just the same things in school as another boy, and yet be of a different character? I always thought human nature — character — was something in us which might be there and yet not express itself in acts." "Haven't you neglected my words for practical purposes, Miss Clark? If the . mother's love didn't result in any act, if it never led her to do anything, no one except herself would be any different because of it. No one but herself could ever know that it existed. And so of any increase or decrease in its amount. I'll agree that there is room for difference of opinion, but I think that if we knew all a person's reactions to different situations, we should know the person's real nature. Your boy may perhaps do just the same things in school, but if he's really of a dif- ferent character, I'm sure that out of school, and later on in school, he will show the difference in his actions. I don't think we have a right to imagine any sort of thing which mysteriously exists in us, and call it character. All we can know about it is its results on conduct, and these are just that the person reacts in certain ways to certain situations." "It is fair to say in Arthur's defense that all the human nature facts we've discussed so far are facts describable by his phrase. Listen, for instance, to this. Our habits are just cases of similar reactions to the same situation recurring a number of times. We've learned also that we could react to a situation successfully without knowing much about the situation; The Human Nature Club 45 that we can make certain reactions without learning how; that in other cases we learn how to react prop- erly by trial and success, by imitation, and by getting an idea of the reaction desired. I've used his words, you see, to describe the facts we've been studying, and they seem to fit. Don't those sentences sound clear and true? I suggest that we provisionally accept Arthur's way of describing human life until we find some fact which conflicts with it. Can you just summarize it, Arthur, and show how it may help us in discussing the use of our senses?" "I should repeat that human life consisted of a multitude of reactions to situations. By a situation we mean what is around us, what happens to us; by a reaction, what we do, what movements we make. Our thoughts and feelings are an important part of our nature, for they have a share in deciding what reactions we will make. For instance, two men are walking down the street, one feeling hungry, the other not. The feeling will make one react to a restaurant by going in, while the other passes by. Our senses, in particular, make an enormous difference in the way we react, for if we don't see or hear or feel or taste or smell a thing, we won't react to it at all. Thus, a deaf man who is run over by a train is killed be- cause he failed to react by getting off the track, the situation being 'train coming.' His failure was due to his failure to 'sense' the situation. In order to react properly to any situation, we have to feel it. Our sensations serve as the starting-point. If we didn't have eyes, ears, skin, etc., which were influ- enced by the outside world, by the situations in which 4.6 The Human Nature Club we are, we should be unable to adapt our actions to circumstances at all. As to learning by getting ideas, we couldn't learn, because no one would have any means of communicating an idea to us." "I think this general outline will help us in describ- ing our observations," said the chairman. "But first, are there any remarks concerning what we've said so far?" "I think, perhaps, my observation ought to come first," said Miss Fairbanks, "because if we all agree that we can adapt our conduct to the outside world in so far as we have sensations, it seems worth while to see how far our sensations do parallel outside events, and how far people differ. I don't mean dif- ferences due to the absence of a sense entirely, as is the case with people blind or deaf or without the sense of smell, but differences in the range of a single sense. Now I've noticed that old people cannot, as a general thing, hear some very high notes which young people can. I remember, too, that one of my teachers at the conservatory told me that individuals varied in the range of tones they could hear. He said that the majority of people could not hear any tone much over six octaves above middle C, but that some individuals could hear tones an octave or more higher; that is, the situation 'air vibrating forty thousand times per second' would be felt and so reacted to by some and not by others." "There's another kind of failure to get sensations, apart from general failure in a sense," said the chair- man. "About two years ago I went to see my friend Arbuthnot, an army surgeon. When I reached his The Human Nature Club 47 office I found him sitting by a table on which were a lot of different colored skeins of yarn, eight or ten shades of each color and of gray. " 'Are you mending socks or knitting an afghan?' said I. " 'Wait and you'll see,' said he, and rang a bell. In came a recruit. (The surgeon was stationed at an enlisting station.) 'Pick out all the colors that are shades of that one,' said the surgeon to him, pointing to a green skein. The man passed this and other tests successfully, and was sent on. 'We test them for color-blindness,' said my friend. 'About four men in a hundred can't tell some shades of red and green. They don't see reds and greens as we do. Now, in the case of a soldier reporting signals, or an engineer running his train in accordance with differ- ent colored lights, such an inability might make a tremendous difference. If an engineer failed to see the redness in a light and reacted as if it were just an ordinary lantern, he might wreck a whole train.' "Arbuthnot told me that all engineers on the big roads were tested for color-blindness nowadays. It's odd, but only very, very rarely is a woman color- blind." "I used to know a young man that must be that way," said Miss Clark. "He was terribly slow at finding wild strawberries in the grass, and never could see a tree that had turned color early in the fall until you pointed right at it; and I remember that he'd call dresses brown when there was a lot of color in them. I never put the three things together before, but I suppose he must have been at least partly 48 The Human Nature Club color-blind. It's too bad you didn't see a case at the surgeon's office." "But I did. Shall I take the time to tell you about it?" "Yes! Yes!" "Well, I had to wait over an hour, until Arbuth- not finished his office work, and during that time twelve men were tested. Eleven were all right, but one of them, though he got the bright shades of green all right, was very slow in finding the others, and didn't get them all. And he wasn't sure of some that he did pick out — at least, he'd hesitate. He would also pick out grays which had no green in them at all. That's quite enough about color-blindness, I'm sure, but let's keep our eyes open for some one who is color-blind, and then we can try the tests on him." There was a minute's silence, broken finally by Miss Atwell. "It strikes me that the facts mentioned so far show one general truth clearly — namely, that a per- son's senses only partially reveal the world to him, that the situation as he feels it is only a part of the real situation he is in. The color-blind person may be in the presence of green things, but he doesn't see the greenness. The old person may be in the pres- ence of air-vibrations making high tones, but he doesn't hear them. Persons lacking a whole sense miss one whole aspect of the world. And even those of us who have all our senses in perfect order, still do not feel all the facts of the world about us. For instance, we here would all feel the same whether The Human Nature Club 49 there was an electric current passing through those telephone wires or not. That cnange in the outside world about us — 1. e., the situation we are in — would make no difference in our sensations. All sorts of things may be happening around us that our few senses don't take account of." "By the way," interrupted Miss Clark, "I know of a man who can by the sense of smell tell which of his friends are in a room. You blindfold him and bring him into a room where there are three or four people of his acquaintance, and he rarely makes a mistake. I suppose he'd think we were smell-blind, so to speak." "I was just going to say," said Miss Fairbanks, "that I believed there was something more to be said than that people differed in the range of sensations or in the lack of one sense or a part of one. I think they differ also in delicacy. In fact, I should think your friend differed from us in delicacy rather than in range. I've tried all of my pupils with a monochord at their first lesson by sounding a certain note and asking them to sound the same note. Some get very near it, within a tenth of a tone, while others are half a tone or more off." "I remember a case where ability to feel small differences — delicacy of discrimination, I suppose we might call it — made a big difference in a man's reac- tion to a situation. I was in the office of a big tea importer at New York. 'I'll show you an easy way for a man to make ten dollars,' said he. 'Here are two samples of tea. I am offered both at the same price. Tell me which to take,' and he put a pinch of 50 The Human Nature Club each in a cup and added boiling water. I tasted both, and for my life couldn't see a bit of difference. 'No wonder they give you your choice!' I said; 'the tea is just the same.' 'Maybe it is, ' said he, and rang a bell. The office boy appeared. 'Call Hopkins.' "When Hopkins entered my friend said, 'How about these teas here, both offered at forty-two?' Hopkins tasted each carefully, and then replied, 'This one is worth at least two cents more than the other.' He had reacted to a difference in the tastes that I could not feel at all, and had saved his employer some sixteen hundred dollars. He was making his living out of his ability to discriminate delicately." "Why not try our own abilities," said Arthur. "I think I can see a handy way." "All right." "That's a good idea." "Go ahead," came from the company. Arthur left the room, to return in a few minutes with a lot of sheets of paper, each with a line drawn on it, and a number of pencils. These he distributed. "Attention, every one!" he said. "You are to draw on the second sheet I gave you, below this line, a line of exactly the same length as the sample, but you mustn't measure." Every one did this. Meanwhile, Arthur was pre- paring more sheets. These he gave out, and they repeated the experiment under his direction, each one doing it ten times. "What made you have us do it so many times?" asked his mother, "and what's this for, anyway?" "I'll show you in a minute. First, every one measure with these rulers," taking from a drawer The Human Nature Club 51 a box of rulers which Mr. Tasker had bought for the high school. "The line you were trying to equal was in every case ten centimeters long. Make a note of how many millimeters wrong you were — e. g. y if in a trial your line was three millimeters too long, call it —J— 3 ; if three millimeters too short, — 3." Every one did so. "Let me see yours, Tasker, and shove over Helen's blackboard, will you. Let me have yours, too, mother. " He then put on the board Mr. Tasker's record and Mrs. Ralston's, as follows: Average " Mr. Tasker. Mrs Ralston. Amount of Error. Amou nt of Error. -\- 3 millimeters -f- 6 m illimeters. + 4 + 7 (< + 4 + 8 << + 1 + 4 << + 4 + 9 << + 1 + 4 << + 5 + 8 << " + 9 << + 6 + 7 •I — 2 " + 1 << r, 30 mm. 63 mm. 3 " 6.3 « "Now, mother, you see why I asked you to do ten. It's to avoid mere chance and get a real estimate. On the whole, Tasker has a more accurate sensation of sight or movement, or whatever guides one in draw- ing lengths; but if I'd taken only one record from each of you, I might have struck the worst of his — that is, the -\-$ — and the best of yours — that is, the $2 The Human Nature Club +i, and then we'd have thought you were the more accurate. Everybody now get your average error." The club spent some time in comparing notes and seeing whose discrimination of lengths was most delicate. "I wonder why Mr. Tasker's is the best record," said Mrs. Elkin. "Do you suppose he just has that gift, or is it because of his training?" "The tea-taster's and the music-professor's deli- cacy of discrimination was due to training, and prob- ably mine is, too. Probably in telling differences in taste, Mrs. Ralston would beat me all hollow. I used to suppose that it was just her fancy that led her to say, 'This pie is a bit sweeter than those I made last week.' I couldn't taste any difference, but now I really believe she did." "I want to add again that just as there may be things in the world which we don't any of us feel any more than the blind man feels colors, so there are differences which none of us feel. Take these two Fig. 8. lines. I can't see that either is longer than the other, can you? No! Well, if we had a microscope and The Human Nature Club $3 a very accurate measure we would probably find a difference. You have one, Arthur? Good." She took the little magnifying-glass and looked through it at the lines. Yes, one is really much longer. Now, if I should make them so that under this glass they looked just equal, by taking a more powerful lens I'd find them really unequal. Accuracy, exactness, in things is never an absolute thing, if you come to think of it, is it? When we say that a singer's notes are absolutely true, we really mean that we can't distin- guish any discord." "If nobody has anything more to say about differ- ences in the delicacy of discrimination, I'd like to tell of one more observation. Helen has a lot of colored papers that she plays with, and the other day I noticed that a piece of green paper when placed on red looks much greener, while red placed on green looks much redder. The green background will even make a gray look reddish, while the red background makes a gray look greenish. I wonder why that is." "I've noticed that effect of contrast, too," said Miss Fairbanks. "Red and blue-green are complementary colors," said Mr. Tasker; "that is, red and blue-green light, mixed together in the right proportions, make white light. Does your contrast effect come with yellow and indigo-blue, orange and blue?" "It does with orange and blue. I never tried the other. I will if I can find those colors among Helen's papers." "I can't explain it, but it's probably true of all complementary colors," 54 The Human Nature Club "Isn't there a similar contrast in taste? Moder- ately sweet coffee tastes very sweet if you drink it right after eating a sour orange." "Would it be fair to make the statement that we feel almost all things, not the way they are in them- selves, but the way they are in relation to their sur- roundings? Just as a word's meaning is always due to a certain context, so a thing's feeling is always due to its context, to what has come with it. Sometimes a thing is emphasized, as with colors on a contrasting background; sometimes it is weakened, as when sweet coffee seems no longer sweet after maple sugar." "I suppose we'd better stop soon, and do the rest of our talking by twos and threes. But we'd better first decide about next time. If other things besides the sensations one has influence his reactions, we ought, perhaps, to notice them, what they are, and what there is to be known about them, before we go on to Christian Science or hypnotism, or why some children are very like their parents and others very different from them, though I understand there are lots of observations on these and other points waiting to be reported." "I quite agree with the chairman," said Mr. Tas- ker; "and I'd suggest that we all write out our obser- vations and drop them into a box here. Stories are likely to grow if we don't put them on paper. We'll get around to them sometime. For the present, let's get at ordinary human behavior till we can partly understand it. Then we can go on to these more exciting questions. I hear that Mr. Henshaw has about a hundred observations which convince him The Human Nature Club $$ that the female half of human nature is of a lower order of intelligence." "Not lower, but different," cried Mr. Henshaw. "I hope you'll produce them. We can have a debate. But for next time let's ask just, 'What else besides differences in their sensations makes differences in human beings' actions?' " With this understanding the meeting adjourned. NOTES BY THE EDITOR. The club's conclusions about sensations may be summarized as follows: Our actions depend on our sensations: (a) On the presence or absence of a sense. (b) On the presence or absence of some special function of a sense — e.g., green-vision. (c) On the range covered by a sense. (d) On the delicacy of discrimination. There may be differences without our feeling them, and the same real difference which when added to one thing makes us feel a difference, may not be enough to cause such a feeling when added to another thing. Thus it would be easy to see a difference between a one candle-power and a two candle-power electric lamp, but impossible to tell the difference between a three hundred and a three hundred and one candle-power lamp. Finally, our sensation of a thing may depend not only on it, but also on its surroundings. We might say further about sensations, that in addition to sights, sounds, smells, tastes and touches, we have sensations of heat, of cold, sensations due to contraction of the muscles, strain of tendons, rubbing of joints, sensations of hunger, thirst, nausea, of changes of equilibrium, of pain, etc. Complex sensations vary in quality according to the simple sensations involved, and these simple sensations show (i) differ- ences between the senses — e. g., between a sound and a taste; (2) differences within the same sense — e. g„ between red and 56 The Human Nature Club blue. Some of these differences seem differences of more or less of the same thing — e. g., loud and louder tones, bright and brighter light, etc. These may be called differences in inten- sity. These sensations are all due to action in the nerve-cells of the brain, aroused by action in the nerve-cells coming from our different sense organs. Nerve-cells starting in eye, ear, nose, mouth, skin, surfaces of the joints, tendons, glands, etc., run to the brain. At their outer ends they are set in action by light or heat or pressure or some other cause, and transmit this ac- tivity to their inner ends inside the brain, there making connec- tions with other cells. (See Figure 2, page 11.) Thus sensa- tions may cease for any one of several reasons. If a man's eyes are cut out, he can't see, because the outer ends of the nerve-cells are destroyed. If you leave his eyes unharmed, but cut the two bundles of nerve-cells going from his eyes to his brain, he can't see, because the activity can't be transmitted to the brain. The eye alone can't see. If you leave eye and nerve-cells, but cut out the place in the brain to which these cells go; i.e., cut out their connections with other cells, he can't see, because you've destroyed the connections. Successful use of one's senses may in the same way depend on the condition of the sense-organ, of the nerve-cells from it to the brain, and of the cells with which they there make con- nections. For a convenient account of our sensations, see (1) William James, " Briefer Course in Psychology," pp. 9-77 ; or (2) E, B. Titchener, "Outlines of Psychology," pp. 26-91. CHAPTER V THE INFLUENCE OF PAST EXPERIENCE "We saw last time," said Mrs. Ralston, "that the way a person acted in any situation depended on the sensations he had. We were to have in mind this week the question, 'What else in a man besides the number and range and delicacy of his sense-powers influences the reactions he makes?' "I presume you've all thought of the case which I have in mind, but just let me read it to you, so we'll have the exact facts in mind. " 'A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. And by chance there came down a certain priest that way; and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. And likewise a Levite, when he was at the place, came and looked on him, and passed by on the other side. But a cer- tain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion on him, and went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him.' 1 "Now the priest and the Levite probably saw just what the Samaritan saw. Their sensations didn't differ from his, but their reactions differed tremen- 'Luke x. 30-34, inclusive. 57 58 The Human Nature Club dously. And the difference was due to their charac- ters, their general attitude toward people. The same nerve commotions came from the eye to the brain in all three cases, but in two of the brains connections existed which caused the nerve commotions from the eyes to arouse acts of 'passing by on the other side,' sticking the nose up in the air and saying to oneself, 'I wonder when I'll be made a member of the San- hedrin, ' while in the Samaritan's brain connections existed which caused the pitiful sight to result in the acts described. If, as the doctor told us, we act as we do because of connections between certain sense- impressions and certain movements, I should say that a person's behavior in any situation depended not only on what sense-impressions he had, but also on what connections exist, on what sort of a brain the sense- impressions come to. I'm afraid this is all wrong, but I thought it all out and made Mr. Tasker tell me how to say it." "It's all right, so far as I can see, Mrs. Ralston. If you take our old telephone illustration, you could say that the result of a message depends not only on what the message is, but also on whom it goes to, what wire the first wire is connected with at the cen- tral office. In the case of the priest, connection was made with Mr. Nose-elevating Muscle and with the office of the 'Pass by on the other side' Company. "I remember a rather funny instance of the way just the same sense-impression can produce entirely different reactions in people, according to their pre- vious education, which means, I suppose, according to the constitution of their brains, the connections The Human Nature Club 59 existing between nerve-cells. I once went with a friend to a spiritualistic seance. We sat beside two women, evidently believers. Various spooky forms emerged from the cabinet and spoke solemnly of the other world. The reactions of the women were bated breath and a tendency to tears. My reaction was extreme disgust mixed with a strong desire to laugh. What a person does in any situation evi- dently depends not only on the sensa- tions he has, but also on the make- up of the mind that has them." "Not only what he does, but what he thinks, you might add," said Mrs. Elkin. "I once gave ten cents to a little girl in the country, telling her to put it in the bank. Her thoughts in connection with the word 'bank' surely differed from mine, for she put the dime in the sand-bank by the road. If four of you will come into the other room, I'll try an experi- ment which I think will show how the effect of any sense-impression depends on the mind that receives it. " Mrs. Ralston, Mr. Elkin, and Arthur went out with her, and came back in a minute. Then Mrs. Elkin drew on the blackboard a figure like figure 9. Mrs. Ralston, Mr. Elkin and Arthur smiled appre- ciatively, while the others seemed very much puzzled. "I suppose you are wondering what makes these three smile, while you feel simply mystified. The J) Fig. 9. 60 The Human Nature Club only difference is that I supplied their minds with a bit of information, built up some connections be- tween their cells, I dare say. Now, I'll do the same for you. Listen and look at the figure. An artist once said that he could with three lines portray a sol- dier entering a house, followed by his dog." The others now had their turn at enjoying the drawing. Mrs. Elkin continued: "I think that is rather a pretty instance of how just the same thing may arouse totally different thoughts according to the nature of the mind that sees it." "Yes; that's very good. In fact, I think our point is now entirely clear, but I've thought up an imaginary story that I want to inflict on you. In New Orleans, at a theater, two men sat side by side. One was the president of the St. Clair Trust Company, another owned a block near the river. A man rushes in and cries out, 'The banks are giving way!' The first man rushes out to borrow money, the second to hire laborers. " "That's just my story in another form," declared Mrs. Elkin. "You're plagiarizing." "Well, it's a good illustration, anyway." "May I try to put all these facts into a few gen- eral statements?" said Mr. Tasker. "How is this? What we think or feel or do in any situation depends, first of all, on whether we feel the situation itself, on how our senses act, but it also depends on what ideas or acts the sensations arouse. Now the latter depend on our mental constitution, on our knowledge and habits, and these depend on our previous life. So that what we think or feel or do at any time depends The Human Nature Club 61 partly on all that we have thought and felt and done in the past. If we refer all this to the way our brains work, we shall say that our thoughts and feelings and acts are dependent, first of all, on what action goes on in the cells coming from eye, ear, etc., but also upon what sort of action this causes in the cells within the brain itself and the cells going out to the muscles. Now, here the whole previous life of these cells will make a difference. Just the same eye-action may make two brains act differently, because those two brains have acquired different make-ups. The same nickel may cause one machine to give out a piece of gum, another machine a piece of candy, because the machines are different. The result depends on the machine as well as the nickel, the brain as well as the eye or ear." "I object to that statement on the ground of incompleteness. You talk as if all the cell-connec- tions that had ever been made, all the knowledge and habits that a man had acquired during all his life, made a difference in the way he reacted to everything. But that isn't so. Mr. Elkin is a Presbyterian and in the shoe business. Miss Fairbanks is a Methodist and a music-teacher. I'm not anything in the church line and edit a paper. Yet by and by, when the chairman says this meeting is adjourned, we will all react in about the same way. Our vastly different previous mental lives won't make any difference. I write on the board, ' Homines pontes faciunt' The thing which decides what thoughts we will have in this situation — namely, seeing those chalk-marks — isn't our religious or business or political nature, but 62 The Human Nature Club just the presence or absence of a knowledge of Latin. People may react alike if they are alike in a certain system of thinking which is concerned, even though they are vastly different in other respects. I say, 'How much are eight times five?' and five thousand people may react alike, and yet be of vastly different mental make-ups. On the other hand, two men may have thought and acted alike on ninety-nine per cent of the world's ques- tions, but if one of them happens never to have learned arithmetic, their re- actions to that question will be very different, for it is only that part of their mental constitution that's concerned." "You're quite right. The mind, the brain, is, of course, a tremendously complex affair, and not all of it is at work at once in any single situation." "I have still another addition to make. The very same person may to the very same sensations react differently on different occasions, according to what thoughts are temporarily uppermost in his mind. Let me follow Arthur's example, and experiment on you. Please imagine a pyramid with the tip cut off sticking out at you from the board while I draw." He then drew a figure like figure 10 and quickly erased it. "What did you see?" Fig. io. The Human Nature Club 63 "A pyramid, of course." "Was its small end sticking out toward you?" "Yes." "Well! Now imagine an open box, shaped like the pyramid, but with the small end away from you, while I draw again." He then drew the same figure again. "What did you see?" "The box you told us about, of course; that's what you drew." "Was its small end away from you?" "Yes." "Very good. I drew exactly the same figure in each case, but one sees it as sticking out or as hol- low or even as a flat surface, just according to which idea you have uppermost in your mind. I noticed the thing I just tried on you years ago. It seems as if we could have certain cells temporarily half a-going, so that they are more likely to receive the commotion from the eye than others." "That may be the reason why it's so hard to see mistakes in a letter that you've written yourself. Your mind is full of the thing you intended to write, and you see it, even if on the paper it's different. I have a trick of writing 'the' or 'they' for 'their,' and even when I re-read a letter I've written, I'll often leave the mistake in." "You can make such mistakes, too, because of your general mental make-up, your previous mental life," added Miss Atwell. For instance, I picked up the paper the other day, and seeing the heading 'The School-Girl Question,' started to read that column. What was my surprise to find it was really 'The Ser- 64 The Human Nature Club vant-Girl Question.' My general bent of mind as a teacher had made me interpret my hasty glance wrongly. You, Mrs. Ralston, I suppose, would make the opposite mistake, in case you made any. The cell commotions coming from our organs of sense — that is, from eyes, ears, nose, skin, etc. — seem to serve as hints, which we interpret sometimes rightly, some- times wrongly. The reception a sensation meets with seems to be about as important as the sensation itself. " "Do you remember the talk we were having at breakfast about Professor Larkin's lecture the day the club was started?" said Mrs. Elkin. "I said that it wasn't the eyes that saw, but the knowledge behind them, and Herbert backed me up by telling how Mr. Rogers could see at a distance of ten feet bugs and things that he couldn't see till they were pointed out to him. Our talk to-night has shown that we were right, hasn't it?" NOTES BY THE EDITOR, The club's conclusions in this chapter are all thoroughly scientific. What we think and feel and do in any situation does depend on the make-up of the brain the stimulus comes to, as well as the nature of the stimulus itself. (1) The general bias of the mind, (2) its particular equipment in a certain field, and (3) the ideas wnich temporarily possess it, all make a difference. This fact is often referred to by the words Apperception or Assimilation. CHAPTER VI ATTENTION Mr. Elkin, who was the chairman, opened the sixth meeting of the club by saying, "I didn't have to look far for another general influence on human conduct or behavior, or reactions, and I want to be the first to report to-night. "I've been surprised again and again since Helen was born by occurrences like this. My wife and I would be sitting here talking, when all of a sudden she'd jump up and start for the door. 'What's the matter?' I would say 'Baby's crying; don't you hear?' would be the reply, and off she'd go. If I lis- tened attentively then I could hear the far-off squall- ing that is a necessary evil accompanying one of the best things in the world. But until then I hadn't heard a sound. Now, my ears are keener than my wife's, so that if it had been a matter of sensation, I should have heard first. It wasn't, nor was it wholly a matter of preparation. The difference was in her attention. As she used to say, she kept half- listening for the baby all the time. In thinking about similar facts this week, I've come to the opinion that differences in one's attention to his sensations and thoughts may make almost any difference in the reac- tion. I walked right into a tree the other day while I was thinking about some business matter. Now, my eyes were open and the tree was right in front of 65 66 The Human Nature Club me, so I must have had the sensations which would lead one to turn aside. I certainly know enough not to try to walk through a tree. Yet I hit it fair and square. The trouble was that I was attending to my own thoughts. So it seems to me that what we do, the way we act in the different circumstances in which we are, is decided not only by what sensations we get and what sort of previous experiences we've had, but also by the amount of attention we give to the sensa- tions. " "I'm glad you've brought this matter up, for I had been thinking of the same thing in connection with the boys and girls at school. The thing that makes perhaps the most difference between pupils in school life is the extent to which they, so to speak, focus their thoughts on the subject at hand. In fact, this is one aspect of human nature that I'd studied a good deal before we started this club." "Let's have Mr. Tasker give us a sort of a lecture on attention now," said Miss Fairbanks. "Then we can ask him questions and make him explain any observations we've made that seem due to it." "Yes; that will be a good thing." "It seems to me that I'm always talking here, but perhaps I do know a bit more about this particular thing than you do. First of all, I'm sorry you started out with the word 'attention,' for when we say 'Give attention to,' or 'I attended,' we don't really mean that there is any stuff 'attention' that we add to our sensations or ideas, or any sort of a performance 'attending' that we go through. We mean just the facts that (i) we assume certain bodily attitudes, that The Human Nature Club 67 (2) certain sensations or ideas are clear, while others are weak and indistinct, and that (3) certain impulses and ideas are checked, nipped in the bud, whenever they venture to appear. For instance, when a boy in my school is, as we say, attending to what I'm saying to the class, what really happens in him is, first, that he holds his head so as to hear me well, keeps the muscles in his ears tense, and very likely keeps his body rather still, and breathes differently from usual. This sort of thing is what I've called assuming a cer- tain bodily attitude. In the second place, the sensa- tions of sound which he gets from my voice are clear and emphatic to him, while the sounds from the street, the other boys' faces, the hot or cold temperature of the room, etc., are all more indistinct and weak. My words are, so to speak, in focus, while all the rest is out of focus. In the third place, supposing some one whispers to him, he may check the impulse to whisper back. Now it is surely true that this boy will react differ- ently to my words than a boy who sits listlessly, with now one thing uppermost in his thoughts, now another, not checking the aimless impulses that come up. He will hear them better, understand them bet- ter, remember them better. It is also clear, to take a case like Mr. Elkin's, that a boy who sat there with his ears strained to catch the whispers of the girl behind him, with her silly talk clear 'in the focus,' and my wise words vague and out of focus, checking all impulses to anything save listening to that girl, would react very differently from the first boy. He would be attending, but to the wrong thing, as was 68 The Human Nature Club Mr. Elkin in the case of the tree. Is this clear, so far?" "How do you know that one's ear-muscles behave differently when one listens? The ears don't move, do they?" "They do in some animals, and may tend to in us. But what made me think the muscles were tense was the feeling of re- laxation in your ears which you have when you've been attending closely to sounds, but suddenly stop." "I don't believe I ever felt that." "Well, it doesn't matter. You'll agree there is some change of bodily attitude?" "Yes; I just wondered about the ear-strain." "To go on, then, the main thing to note is that any time we may have a number of things in mind, and that they are not all on a dead level, but that some one has the preeminence over the others, is clearer and more emphatic, and plays the leading role in determining our conduct, our reactions. Let me make a picture of Mr. Elkin's mind at the time he bumped his head against the tree. I'll put the clear, emphatic, possessing thoughts in the center, and the Fig. ii. The Human Nature Club 69 vague, unattended-to thoughts outside. When he hit the tree there was a change. The shock and pain were so emphatic that they temporarily banished the thoughts about the shoe business to the margin, and usurped the central place — i. e. % were attended to. The main thing, I repeat, is this preeminence of one among many feelings. There may also be more or less of the bodily attitude and checking of other thoughts and impulses." "Do you think that we always are absorbed — 'pos- sessed,' to use your word — by some one thing above others? When one lies on one's back in the grass on a summer's day, half-awake, half-asleep, thinking of a dozen things, but not thinking much of any of them, is there really any one 'focal' idea? Aren't they all on the same level?" "I don't know about that. They seem to be. But maybe they do have preeminence, one at a time, but keep it only for half a second or so, and thus give us the idea that during any ten or fifteen seconds we've thought indifferently of a dozen things. I don't see how one can settle the question. Take your choice." "Here's another question. Is there any fixed number of things one can have in mind at once?" "I don't believe so. It seems to me that people differ greatly, that some boys in school, for instance, have what I call a 'broad thought-capacity.' They seem to have a lot of things in mind at once. Little Dodge, who was the football captain last year, seemed to be able to watch all twenty-one players at once. The same trait appeared in his school-work, too. On the other hand, some people seem to have a narrow 7a3^ ^^z^z^ The Human Nature Club 161 ** ' Observation LXXXIV. — Arthralgia consecutive to an arthritis. — -Immediate cure by suggestion. " 'D., twenty-one years old, comes to consult me on April 2, 1884. Three months ago, after having wheeled a wheelbarrow, he developed a swelling of the left heel, and was unable to bend the joint. Six weeks ago a physician applied a starched bandage, keeping it on three weeks and two days. The band- age was taken off fifteen days ago, and there was no improvement. 11 'D. limps and bends his knee when he walks. He cannot bend the left heel, which is painful to pres- sure. The swelling has disappeared. On the 2d I hypnotized him. Profound sleep; memory perfect upon waking. Suggestion and passive movement of the joint during sleep. " 'Upon waking, he bends the tibio-tarsal articula- tion very well and spontaneously without pain. He walks well, .... the cure has been maintained.' "For the last one," said Dr. Leighton, "I'll read you a case something like Miss Clark's man at the healer's. ' ' ' Observation LXXX. — Rheumatic paralysis of the forearin and right hand. .... Total cure in four sit- tings. ' (In the first two sittings the patient regained abil- ity to straighten his wrist, to lift his hand, and to feel heat, cold, touches, etc., on its surface. Now follows Dr. Bernheim's account of the influence of the last two sittings.) 'Dr. Levy sent the patient to my clinic on June 30 The ?niddle, fourth, and little fingers are 1 62 The Human Nature Club bent into the palm of the hand at an angle of one hundred and twenty degrees After two hypnotic seances, the patient opens his hand easily The cure is complete.' " "Before we go, Doctor," said Arthur, "what book would you recommend on this subject?" "On the whole, I should say that 'Hypnotism,' by Albert Moll, would be the best. The chapter on hypnotism in Volume II of James's 'Principles of Psychology' would be a good chapter to read with it." CHAPTER XIV IMITATION "I find among the observations," said Miss Fair- banks, at the beginning of the meeting, "a number of statements pointing to imitativeness as a common feature of human nature. Mr. Tasker mentions a spring during the time he was at college when four men out of every six in the college wore corduroy trousers, for no special reason that could be discov- ered. Miss Atwell has some comments on the way styles in women's dress are taken up. Mr. Henshaw has noted that one war play, like 'Shenandoah,' seems to bring forth a number of successors. The fad for pictorial and inscribed buttons is a recent case that I have noticed. Most of our styles and fads are not due to real desires, but to a human tendency to fol- low a leader, to do the thing done. If the club has no objection, I'd like to have you talk over imitation as it is found among men and women." "The topic seems to me very timely," said Mr. Tasker; "for, after all, isn't most of this imitation really suggestion over again? When a person sets the example to others and is followed, what does he do but inoculate them with the idea of doing or being that thing? The example spreads in the way it does because the suggestion is masked. If a college boy bought a pair of corduroy trousers, and then went around saying to every one, 'You want to get some 163 164 The Human Nature Club of these; they're fine; get a pair; please get a pair, ' the chances are that he wouldn't be imitated; but as things are, the suggestion is insidious, and the strik- ing idea of that novel apparel comes to possess the minds of the whole college. Imitation of the sort displayed in those observations seems to me to be just suggestion. " "I suppose we'd all agree," said Arthur, "that there was no mysterious force, imitation, which com- pelled people to act as they do in these cases. Of course, the effect is produced by people being 'inocu- lated with ideas,' to use the phrase we seem to have adopted. But I don't think we ought to stop with labeling the facts suggestion. How does the sugges- tion work? Why do we imitate some people and not others? How do these fads, etc., start? Can you tell beforehand what will and what won't be imitated?" ''Your second question interests me," said Miss Atwell. "I used to think that we imitated solely the people we admired, looked up to, but I'm not so sure of it now. I think that we tend to imitate everything, because we tend to act out all the ideas we get. And I'm sure we often imitate people whom we don't look up to at all. For instance, I found myself catching the mannerisms of a teacher whose methods I hold in very low esteem." "There is, however, a great deal of evidence in favor of your old opinion, isn't there?" said Mrs. Elkin. "Servants ape their masters' dress and ways; courtiers mimic their king. After all, we look up rather than down to find our models." "Might it not be this way," said Mr. Henshaw. The Human Nature Club 165 "Suppose we accept what Miss Atwell says about the general tendency to do what we see done, to follow any one who goes, to become what any one is. There would then be a tendency to imitate most what we attended to most, and that would be likely to be the acts of those we admired. Also there would be a tendency on our part to inhibit imitation in the case of people beneath us morally or socially. We would feel, 'But I am not to be like that person.' In the case of those whom we feel to be above us, on the other hand, our natural imitativeness would be reinforced by a conscious effort to emulate. So, though when off our guard we might imitate anybody, as Miss Atwell says, the preponderance would be decidedly toward imitating our betters — that is, those we think of as our betters." "It strikes me," said Arthur, "that we often adopt ideas not because we find them in our betters, but because their source is mysterious, unknown. If a woman knew the Hebrew manufacturer who invents some new style of hat, she'd never buy and wear that style of hat. But when the hat appears in the store window as a new style, her very ignorance of its origin renders imitation likely. I think that in many cases the fact that the suggestion comes from nowhere, that we don't know any reason why we should do a thing, that there is no sense in it, no model to esteem or disdain, favors imitation." "That may be," said Mr. Tasker. "At all events, in most things we are imitators, following blindly the lead of some known model or some mysterious ten- dency. We like to be like other people, that is one 1 66 The Human Nature Club reason. Besides, most of us can't indulge in the luxury of inventing or thinking out styles and man- ners and opinions, etc., for ourselves. We take them ready-made, and save time." "Somebody* has to invent these things, though; somebody has to be the leader," said Mrs. Ralston. "Each one of us is, I suppose, a little of both. In some things we lead, in others follow; but some peo- ple are leaders to a much greater extent than others. Henshaw is the leader, the inventor, the suggester, for the Republican party in this town; the rest of us are in politics his followers, imitators, suggestible subjects. We rehash his editorials in our conversa- tion, originating perhaps some modifications of our own. " "And I," said Mr. Henshaw, "largely repeat the ideas of the big editors and statesmen, inventing here and there an idea, perhaps once a year. The real originators are few and far between. Luckily, their inventions, though hard to originate, are easy to copy. Progress would be inconceivably slow if we had to wait for each individual to invent every reform or new idea or new method for himself. It's well for us that inventions, new ideas, are like the plague or smallpox; they can spread by infection." "You might add," said Mr. Elkin, "that as in the case of infectious diseases, some people have great power of resisting the germs." "We have been gradually broadening our use of the word imitation until we've brought it to mean the source of all our acquisitions save those resulting from accident or absolutely original invention," said Miss The Human Nature Club 167 Atwell. "We mustn't forget that we are not talking about exactly the same process as we were when we started. It's interesting, however, to see that you can express the entire process of civilization by two facts, invention and imitation." "It maybe interesting," said Arthur, "but I think it's too vague to be profitable. It's easy enough to say that everything in people must be either the result of their own mental activities or the repetition of other people's, and it's easy to call the former inven- tion and the latter imitation, but what of it? What good does such talk do if we don't see in concrete detail how this imitation occurs? When you start to make sweeping statements about the world at large, and to tack names to processes you don't understand, I feel like calling the club to order." "We accept your rebuke, Arthur," replied Mr. Tasker; "and I'll leave our flight into speculation about civilization and return to definite facts by reporting an observation of mine to the effect that whereas the object of girls' imitation is generally distinguished for good looks, the boy who is imitated by other boys rarely is. In other respects the imi- tation of girls differs from that among boys." "Oh, Mr. Henshaw!" cried Miss Clark; "that reminds me that you've never told us your opinions about the human nature of women, how their minds differ from men's, and that sort of thing. Won't you now?" "I think I'd better not interrupt our investigation of imitation. " "I wouldn't mind that, Henshaw," said Mr, 1 68 The Human Nature Club Tasker. "I think human imitation is too complex a matter for us to see far into. We've noted its common occurrence, the sort of person imitated, and have all doubtless thought of the added importance given to our conduct by the fact that it is a germ that spreads to other people. I don't think we need dwell on the topic longer." "Well, " said Mr. Henshaw, "first of all, women seem to me to be decidedly different from men in their mental abilities. They are naturally less in- dependent and aggressive, more docile and obedi- ent." "I don't believe they are naturally so," said Mrs. Elkin. "I think it's all due to their training. The little girl is not left to her own devices so much; she is taught to pay more regard to conventional opinion. It is not thought to be nice if she shows independence of spirit or mind. Originality isn't fostered in her as it is in the boy. People say women never reason, but when that's the case it's because they haven't been given the chance to. It doesn't pay for them to. They would be reasonable if people wanted them to be. The trouble is that all people expect of a girl is that she shall be agreeable." The discussion of the mental differences between men and women became very lively, and the editor finds more rash statements and warmth of argument than real observations of human nature. Mr. Hen- shaw had little chance to report his opinions, and what he did say seemed to be only opinion, not ob- served fact. Indeed, at the end of the discussion Arthur wisely remarked that the club had gone beyond The Human Nature Club 169 their depth in trying to handle such vague questions as imitation or the psychology of the sexes. Before adjournment, Mr. Henshaw asked the club to be ready at the next meeting to present facts about mental training, general development of mental ability. CHAPTER XV MENTAL TRAINING "I announced last time that I wanted to have the club think over the question of how people can improve their intellectual powers, how they can train their minds. Arthur has been experimenting with the matter in a modest way, and later we'll hear from him. From our study so far 'the mind' seems to be just a name for the fact that we have thoughts and feelings, and what 'the mind' can do seems to be just to have certain particular thoughts on the proper occasions. The quality of a person's mind seems to depend on the particular ideas it has. We've found that there was no 'power of memory,' but really thou- sands of memories j that there was no 'power of atten- tion,' but only superior clearness and prominence of certain thoughts; that 'reason' was just a name for the fact that certain ideas were dwelt on and others inhibited. What do all you school-teachers mean, Tasker, when you talk about training discrimination, training memory, cultivating the power of reason, etc.? "I suppose some of them do mean that there are some mysterious forces, or mental dynamos, each of which does some one kind of thing, remember, or reason, or what not, and that education somehow gets these wonderful engines going and keeps their wheels greased. I remember once hearing a man at a teach- ers' institute compare the mind to a big machine. 170 The Human Nature Club 171 'Sensations are thrown into the hopper at one end,' he said, 'attention makes them clear and intense, per- ception, imagination and memory in turn work them over. They are changed into general notions by the action of conception, and are then subjected to the influence of the reason, which turns out the finished product.' Of course, that sort of a view is all bosh." "But I don't see the impossibility of training apart from learning particular things. What we mean by greater mental power, by greater power of discrimina- tion, for instance, is that all discriminative acts are more delicate. What we mean by saying that one person has more reasoning power than another, is that his reasonings in all sorts of lines will be more successful. If you don't like the word 'power,' take the words 'general ability.' If a person's general ability is improved, it seems to me fair to say that you've trained his mind." "May I put Henshaw's question in another way? Let's ask, 'Does special training give general ability?' As Henshaw says, our nervous systems seem to be schemes for associating particular acts with particular situations, particular ideas with other ideas. We can see how studying arithmetic makes a boy able to reason with numbers, for the study has given him the system of particular associations needed. Henshaw's point, I take it, is that there's no reason why those particular associations should make him any better able to reason about religious creeds. Training in arithmetic surely gives special ability, but does it give general ability? Wouldn't you, to be trained to really general reasoning, have to reason about all sorts of 172 The Human Nature Club things? That's really your problem, isn't it, Hen- shaw?" "Yes. It seems to me that learning one thing makes you able to do that thing, but doesn't add to any general mental capacity." "But if that were so, how could people vary so much in their abilities to handle novel problems in life? Some people surely do have better judgment than others in all sorts of matters for which they've received no special preparation. Surely, Mr. Tasker could do better, say on a North Pole expedition, or in a Chinese meeting, than Mike Malloy, who shovels off our walks. If we look back on our training at school and outside, we can see clearly that besides learning how to meet a lot of particular situations, we've become better fitted to handle all sorts of unfamiliar ones." "I might claim, Miss Atwell," retorted Henshaw, "that our inherited capacities had something to do with such differences in people. We may have been born with a better general equipment than Mike. Look at the other side of the matter a bit. We learned that by training, by practice, some people improved vastly their delicacy in discriminating pitch, or the tastes of teas, or the colors of ribbons. But do you imagine that the musician who has had this training can discriminate the flavors of soups any better than average people, or that our tea-taster has any finer eye for color, or that the girl at the ribbon counter has, by her training, improved her ability to judge the lengths of lines? Take another case. Play- ing chess undoubtedly requires a lot of intellectual The Human Nature Club 173 ability, but are the famous chess-players notorious for ability to think out any other life problems than those of chess? Tending a machine requires a lot of atten- tion. A man running a complex machine often has to watch with the utmost care, but is he thereby enabled to attend to sermons or books or to a game of cards any better? Take a proof-reader. He exer- cises himself in observing small details hours every day for years, but he isn't any more proficient in observing plants or animals or human nature than before. Why, just take ourselves as cases. We've improved in observing and explaining people's actions about two hundred per cent, but is there any one here who observes the coming of the birds, or the condition of the weather, or the dust on the mantelpiece, any bet- ter than before? "This is a good place to work in my experiment, I guess. Henshaw and I were talking about this after the meeting two weeks ago, and I thought of a scheme. I took twenty big cards and made on each a line. Those lines were from six to twelve inches long, and varied by half inches. I had mother and the Elkins and Arthur look at them, one at a time, and judge their length. Then I made another set of thirty cards with a line on each, but in this set the lines were %, ^3, % y ]/%, 1, i}i y 1%, ife, and 1% inches long. I then had the folks judge these, and record their judgments. I then had them do it over and over again, looking after each trial, so that they could learn to do it better. They improved tre- mendously, made, in fact, after a day or so, only about one-third as many mistakes as they did at first. 174 The Human Nature Club I then had them try the six to twelve inch lines again, and they did not judge them a bit better than at first. This is, of course, only a little thing, and wouldn't be anything to found a general opinion on; but so far as it goes it shows that training in one special field needn't improve us except in that special field." "I'll agree," said Mr. Tasker, ''that there isn't any subtle, mysterious training of ''the attention' or 'the memory' or ''the reason,' for I don't think there are any such things to be trained, and I'll allow that your facts clearly show that special training need not give general ability. But still I don't see how you explain Miss Atwell's facts that a man who has learned to do a number of things accurately, thor- oughly, and reasonably, will generally do unfamiliar things better, too." "Would you claim that learning one thing didn't help us to know other different things at at/, Mr. Henshaw, or only that there never was this mysteri- ous general 'mental training' we hear talk about?" "I meant only the latter," Mrs. Elkin; "but I'd like to see just how the special training could improve general ability before I believed it did in any case. I for my part will agree that we all have powers over a wider field than that in which we've actually devel- oped them. I'll agree, for example, that having to bring up coal when you are a boy makes you more likely to be able to stand work in all sorts of lines. I'll agree that denying yourself cigars helps give a general power of self-denial. I should think any one who had pupils or children would want to know just how such general influence came about, as gen- The Human Nature Club 175 eral habits and powers seem more important in a way than particular accomplishments or information." "I can see one way," said Mr. Elkin, "if you'll permit me to join this debate. There are some par- ticular accomplishments which have general value. Bringing up coal, for instance, teaches a boy, first of all, that tasks which are unpleasant can be done, that disagreeable matters can be undergone. Now I take it that that is one of the most generally valuable bits of experience a boy can have; it may be a big part of the difference between a spoiled child and a decent citizen. Again, making a boy obey may teach him the particular but yet widely applicable truth that his own wishes are not the measure of the universe. So with industry. The habit of working ten hours a day may be acquired in connection with some special work — studying, farming, carpentering, or what not; but it is of general influence, for the habit is not 'If carpentering, carpenter ten hours a day,' but 'If working, work ten hours a day.' To use an Irish bull, 'Some special training is general.' " "That's good; and I can follow it up by another shot. A man told me once that high-school geom- etry had been great training for him, for it taught him that things could be absolutely proved. Now his reasoning in geometry may have improved his reason- ings about all sorts of things later, by giving him the idea that you can do more than guess at or follow opinions about any question; you can in many cases absolutely settle it. That idea may have been called up in all sorts of circumstances, and may have made him try to really demonstrate that a thing was so, 176 The Human Nature Club whereas if he had not studied the geometry, he might never have even tried." "That might be the case with observation, too. A boy in school might from a course in botany or natural history get (what, perhaps, he never had be- fore) the notion that you can find out things by sys- tematically and carefully watching. He might get this idea in connection with the study of a frog or bean-stalk, but then apply it to business or politics or the stock market. We saw in studying attention how ability to stand the strain of effort was of great general importance. So, from the particular habits and powers that, as Elkin says, are general, and from the generally applicable ideas which special training may inculcate, we should expect some general influ- ence. Yet this doesn't require any subtle mental machinery, but only the ordinary mental laws that we've been working with." "I have a theory," said Miss Atwell, "that fits pretty well here. I'm rather proud of it, and you must listen to it. It has always seemed to me that the world is, after all, not so very big. We don't really meet so very many new things. For what we call new things are often just new mixtures of old familiar elements. We don't do so very many new things, either. What we think of as a totally new action is often just a new combination of old familiar movements. For instance, this figure which I draw, we'd call new. We've never seen it before; yet it's elements are none of them new. So with my act in drawing it. It would be called new, yet the separate acts of which it was composed were all familiar to me. The Human Nature Club 177 Now, this view gives still another opportunity for special training to seem to give general ability. We learn in some sort of special training a number of things and find that we then do better a lot of novel things. But they may be only apparently novel. Their elements may be the same as the elements of the first set of things. Special mental training may Fig. 12. give general mental ability, then, in some cases, be- cause the elements of the knowledge, the elements of the movements — the elements, that is, of the ability — were really the same in the general field." "Let me give one more way," said Mr. Tasker. 'The world is not only not so big as it seems, per- haps; it is also not so varied; very many things are much alike. Even where the elements of seemingly different things are not exactly the same, they may be near enough alike so that the treatment which 178 The Human Nature Club succeeds with one may succeed with another. For instance, practice in speaking before a class may make you better able to preach or argue in court." "All that you folks have said I'll grant to be prob- able and to often occur, and I believe, as you do, that thus thinking or doing a thing not only teaches us that, but also fits us for other things to the limited extent you've claimed. But I think you ought to admit that we have no right to presuppose such wide- spread influence of special training until we have evi- dence that it exists. My experience is that every habit or power or bit of knowledge is often confined within a very narrow sphere of activity. People may be charitable in the church and niggardly in support of public institutions, observant of bugs and oblivious to human nature, reasonable about business and pig- headed in politics and religion, careful in speech and careless in dress, and so on through a list of a thou- sand things." "I'm sure I'll agree to that, and I hope next year we can, under Arthur's guidance, test this question by making experiments to see just how far certain training improves our general powers, " replied Mr. Tasker. "It certainly is foolish to talk about 'the faculty of observation,' or to suppose that because a man has learned to be accurate in one thing he will be in all others. I think that we ought all to recall what Henshaw said some weeks ago about each one of us being not so much 'a mind' as a multitude of 'mental systems.' I may be careful while in my 'school-teacher' system, and careless in my 'home life' system. I may be reasonable in my 'student of The Human Nature Club 179 physics' system, and utterly bigoted in my 'theology' system. I may have the innocence of the dove in my 'evening-party' system, and be as wise as a serpent in my 'business' system. The training of my mind in one of its systems need not pass over to any of the rest." "Don't you think, too," said Mrs. Ralston, "that this ought to give us a good deal of charity toward people when they seem to us to be pretty mean and bad? We may see only one of their systems, and in others they may average up as well as most people. I don't think you ought to judge any one till you know the whole of him, all his systems, as Mr. Henshaw and you call them. " "I think," said Arthur, "that if all of us together should start in to know completely the human nature of just one single man, we'd be kept busy for all our lives, and at the end find many things in the man that we hadn't touched." "I think," said Miss Clark, "that we must go home early to-night, and leave you to finish by your- selves. Good night, Mrs. Ralston, good night." NOTES BY THE EDITOR. The importance of this discussion for those interested in education either in the school or in the home is evident. There is a popular belief that attending to, or observing, or reasoning about one sort of things makes one attentive to, or observant of, or reasonable about all sorts. On the contrary, the mind appears to really represent a number of particular abilities, particular acts, particular memories. It appears to be an organ for connecting particular ideas and particular movements with particular situations. The club noticed that these parti- 180 The Human Nature Club cular, special abilities might give general ability in so far as they (i) were really accomplishments of general utility, or (2) inculcated ideas which might arise in all sorts of situations and influence our behavior, or (3) taught us to deal with certain elements which were present in all sorts of different complex situations, or (4) enabled us to deal with closely similar things. Further than this the club wisely decided we should not ex- pect any general influence from anything we learn unless we see evidencj of it. There is no useful reference for reading about this topic, but it would be an excellent plan to train one's self in some one thing and test one's self before and after train- ing to see if one's general ability in any line had been im- proved. If one were learning to play the violin, for instance, he could find out whether his fingers were more nimble and accu- rate in writing on a typewriter after some months' of violin exercises than before. If one were learning to play golf, he could see whether his eye and hand were more skilled in throwing stones or playing croquet after a month's golf practice than before. CHAPTER XVI HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT Mr. Tasker opened the meeting of the club by say- ing: "We are fortunate to-night in having with us Dr. Leighton, whom you all know, and Superintendent Carmody of the county reformatory. Dr. Leighton has kindly consented to tell us about the ways in which the mental make-up of parents influences that of their children. Superintendent Carmody will speak to us about the human nature of criminals. Dr. Leighton, you have the floor." "Ladies and Gentlemen: What our intellects and characters are you have found to depend on what our nervous organization is. Like it, then, they are determined partly by what is in us from the beginning of life, and partly by what happens to us. Every human being grows from an ovum or egg. This egg contains substances in a certain arrangement, which determine in part what the man or woman who de- velops from it will be, what bones, nerve-cells, etc., he will have; what things he can do without learning, how much mental vigor he will possess, etc. This egg represents his inheritance from his immediate and remote ancestors. Let us use the word germ-inherit- ance for this. "Now the egg or germ is affected by all sorts of influences in its months of life before it develops into the new-born baby. It is alive from the start, is 1S1 1 82 The Human Nature Club growing, is influenced by heat and cold, lack of food, by poisons which it gets from the mother's blood, and by all sorts of events that happen to it. The growing brain is, of course, as much modified by these influ- ences as is any other part of the body. It is evident that what happens to us before birth may make a big difference in our future intelligence and character. If, for instance, our nerve-cells are poisoned by alcohol before birth, we shall suffer just as surely as if we after birth become willful drunkards. "From birth on, things are constantly happening to us, and we are constantly reacting in various ways. We can all see that what we eat and drink, what we see and hear, whom we imitate, what we do and neg- lect, all make a difference in our mental make-up. "What one of us is mentally thus depends (i) on his germ-inheritance, what he was at the start; (2) on what happened to his growing brain before birth, and (3) on what happened to it after birth. We doc- tors use the word 'nutrition' to mean all the influences covered by 2 and 3. It includes the influence of foods and poisons, accidents and shocks, habits and lessons learned, people and things seen, ideals and ambitions inculcated, etc. Scientists in general reserve the word heredity to refer to only what a human being possesses at the very start. Of course, you could use it as most peo- ple do, to mean what tendencies are in a person at birth. If we do, we must be sure to remember that the word then covers real inheritance, and also some- thing quite different — namely, the acquisitions gained before birth. These are tremendously importarv The Human Nature Club 183 To save any misunderstanding, I will use the phrases germ-inhe ritance \ ante-birth acquisitions, and post-birth acquisitions, or nurture, to refer to these three factors at work in developing a human being. "Let us first ask, 'Which of these three is the most important?' One finds all sorts of opinions about this question. Liebnitz, who was a famous philos- opher of the seventeenth century, thought that nurture was all important; that if he could control the educa- tion of the world's inhabitants he could remodel mun- dane affairs, and banish ignorance and vice. "On the other hand, Mr. Francis Galton, the most thorough student of this problem in human nature, says: 'There is no escape from the conclusion that nature [by which he means germ-inheritance plus ante-birth acquisitions] prevails enormously over nur- ture when the differences in nurture do not exceed what is commonly to be found among persons of the same rank of society and in the same country.' 1 "If you look at the matter on all sides, I suppose you'd have to say that the germ-inheritance was the most important. That decides whether one will have the mind of a jelly-fish or a dog or a man. It gives a basis without which the other influences could effect nothing. The differences "between races, between a negro and an Englishman, between a Filipino and a German, are in great measure due to different germ-inheritances. A man's germinal inheritance is, so to speak, his capital, his stock in trade. He may foster or spoil it by good ante-birth acquisitions; his nurture may increase or waste it. But without it he '" Inquiries into Human Faculty," page 241, 184 The Human Nature Club couldn't do business at all, and its nature must decide what sort of business he will do. "It is probable that general mental ability as well as special mental gifts are in large measure due to germ-inheritance. Mr. Galton has studied this ques- tion more thoroughly than any one else, and he de- cides that in the case of eminent mental gifts he has demonstrated that the son of an eminent man has one thousand times as good a chance of being eminent as the son of the average man. The brother of an emi- nent man has over five hundred times the chance of being eminent that the brother of the ordinary man has. A grandson of an eminent man has about one hundred and forty times as good a chance; a nephew about one hundred times as good a chance. Training and family influences could not account for this, or even probably for any considerable part of it. "Eminent mental ability, then, and presumably mental ability in general, is mainly the result of germ- inheritance, not of nurture or education, so far as we can at present see. "We must remember that he does not mean that the son of a genius will be a genius, or that the son of a clodhopper need not become one of the great ones of the earth. What he means is that there is a very much greater probability for the former event than there is for the latter. We must not expect any- thing like absolute likeness between father and son, for the son's germ-inheritance is a tremendously com- plex affair, depending on both sides, subject to all sorts of accidental influences. "I dare say you've often wondered why the same The Human Nature Club 185 father and mother may have children differing so widely in physical and mental make-up. Such cases show clearly the complexity of the matter. Of course, their ante-birth acquisitions may differ, but besides that there are probably differences in the general vigor and developing power of germs from the same parents, but at different times. In pigeons the time of the year makes such differences. Birds which in April hatch strong, healthy offspring may, other con- ditions remaining just the same, have in September weak, ill-developing young. Finally, let me remind you again that the germ has a great number of pos- sibilities, and the realization of any one of them may be caused or blocked by very slight accidental occur- rences. The germ may contain elements which have not openly manifested themselves for several genera- tions, but which still are transmitted from parents to children, and which may at any time appear. A boy may thus develop some mental characteristic exactly like his great-grandfather, though that characteristic hasn't been present in his grandfather or father. "So much for germ-inheritance of mental charac- teristics. We now come to the ante-birth acquisi- tions. The germ depends for its development on the treatment it receives before birth as well as on its inherent nature; especially important is the food sup- ply. Of course, the influence is now indirect, is only through the food supply in the mother's blood, or through physical conditions of heat, cold, shock, etc. How far these influences can make differences in the character and intelligence of the future child, I can- not *^11 you. They would certainly seem capable of 1 86 The Human Nature Club making differences in his general bodily and nervous, and so mental vigor. Of course, physical diseases thus transmitted may indirectly work tremendous changes in the child's mental make-up. "It's not my business to discuss the influence on development of what happens to children after birth. But I want to correct a possible misapprehension. When I said that germ-inheritance was perhaps the most important because the most fundamental, I did not mean that the most important special character- istics of human nature were due to germ-inheritance. Truth-telling, diligence, attentiveness, integrity, unselfishness, charity and their like, are all probably characteristics acquired after birth. Speaking broadly, civilization, including morality, is in each human being an acquisition, not an inherited trait. "The great question of all concerning the influence of heredity on the development of human nature is, I think, this: 'Are the habits and powers and inter- ests and ideals we acquire in life transmitted to our children? Are the characters we form and the intel- lectual abilities we attain handed over, in whole or ^ part, to our offspring? Do we carve out not only our own destiny, but also that of our children?' Our own inheritance is passed on, but are our acquisitions as well? "It is certain that in a rough way the sins of the fathers burden their posterity, and on the other hand that the good we do lives after us in the character of our children. - "But you will recognize from what I have already said that many causes may be accountable for this. Intelligent parents may have intelligent children, be- The Human Nature Club 187 vause their own acquired intelligence leads them to . train them intelligently, because they themselves serve as models for inheritance, because the 'nurture' of their children is such as to develop intelligence. Again, there may be substances in the blood which are acquired by and in turn minister to the healthy, vigor- ous action and growth of the brain, and the 'ante- birth acquisitions' of children of intelligent parents may thus account for more or less of the mental abil- ity these children show in after life. Finally, there might be real changes in the germs of parents caused by thoughtful, intelligent lives, and thus the acquired intelligence of the parents might make a favorable difference in the germ-inheritance of their children. "Taking a simple illustration, we may say that a mother who has learned to control fits of melancholy and depression might decrease the tendency to such attacks in her children — first, because her own acquired control over them would cause the surround- ings of the child after birth to be favorable ; secondly, because she had decreased some substance in her blood which caused them, and so improved the devel- opment of the child before birth; thirdly, because she had by her training actually changed the nature of the germs which represent the child's germ-inherit- ance. "Now, there can, of course, be no doubt of the first sort of influence. We see evidence of it all around us. And there can be no doubt that so far as there are any substances in the blood that affect mental life, such might vary in the child as they varied in the mother. Certain diseases undoubtedly are trans- 1 88 The Human Nature Club mitted in this way. But about this kind of transmis- sion of mental powers I know nothing definite enough to tell you. When we come to the third question, whether mental habits and powers acquired in life so alter the germ substance of the parents that their children will profit by the parents' 'acquisitions,' we find that our present knowledge points to the answer 'no.' "I can't begin to give you all the arguments pro and con, all the evidence which makes students of the processes of life nowadays decide that a man's germ- inheritance, the make-up of the minute mass of living matter which is his starting-point in life, is independ- ent of the acquired nature of his parents. You can see for yourselves that our acquisitions are not wholly transmitted. Ten generations may have acquired the power to read, yet the children of the eleventh have to learn. A child's ancestors for ten generations may have spoken English, yet he doesn't have the power or tendency, and will speak French if brought up by French people. I have said that nowadays we believe that our acquisitions have no direct influence at all on our children's germ-inheritance. The evi- dence for this belief is like that I've just given for the belief that they are not wholly transmissible. It is, namely, that we' see no signs of such transmission. For instance, human beings, ever since there were any, have seen the sun, yet a person born blind does not have a mental image of the sun, does not know that the sun exists until he has been taught. Again, people have learned in every generation that fire hurts, have learned to keep their hands out of it; yet chil- The Human Nature Club 189 dren tend when they see a bright flame to reach for it. Why, then, should we expect that because a father learns to keep his hands off other people's property, his children should be any less greedy? "So at present it seems wise to believe that so far as definite particulars go, what a man does in life makes no difference to the germs from which his chil- dren will grow. Of course, generally good or poor nutrition of all the parent's body would mean good or poor nutrition of these germs, and that might mean healthy or unhealthy development of mind as well as body in the child. But facts about such general influence are very vague. The practical outcome of this is that a man's becoming a doctor or lawyer or thief or Indian chief need not prove that his son will inherit qualities that will fit him better than his parent for a like career; that having a college education need not make your children inherit any more gifted minds than you did. The gifts that are in our power to bestow on our children are, first of all, proper edu- cation after birth; secondly, proper nutrition before birth, and (possibly) thirdly, some of the general physical and mental vigor which we may have acquired. " "I'm sure," said Mr. Tasker, "that we all are obliged to Dr. Leighton for clearing up a matter about which most of us had very vague and mistaken notions. After the meeting is over we can ask questions and make comments about it. I take great pleasure in introducing to you Superintendent Carmody. " "Ladies and Gentlemen: Concerning the mental characteristics of criminals a oreat deal has been 190 The Human Nature Club said, though but little is known. Some students of the matter would tell you that the criminal is a men- tally undeveloped being, an immature man, a being whose growth in intellect and character has gone only part way. Others would tell you that the criminal was a distinct species of humanity, clearly marked off irom ordinary folks, and that he transmitted his make-up to his children. Others would tell you that there was nothing whatever extraordinary about the general mental make-up of criminals, that the reason ror their crimes was vicious and careless training in youth, and that to talk about inherited criminality was as absurd as to talk about inherited knowledge of solid geometry. "'Inasmuch as Dr. Leighton has already given you a statement of the general facts and problems of mental inheritance, I may well begin by discussing the question just hinted at — namely, 'Is the tendency to crimes a matter of germ-inheritance, or is it a post- birth acquisition? Are criminals born or made?' In con- nection with this question we may run across a number of the noteworthy facts about criminal human nature. "First of all, let us disabuse our minds of the notion that there is any such thing as the criminal, with a perfectly distinct type of make-up. To be a crim- inal means to behave in a way which the opinion of people in general condemns and stamps as unsatis- factory and menacing to human welfare, and so pun- ishes. Now, a man may behave in such ways in a fit of passion, or under remarkable temptation, or in boyish pranks, though his general character tends entirely to the opposite sort of life. Here we have The Human Nature Club 191 a criminal who clearly has not a criminal make-up. A good, pious woman is afflicted with a morbid impulse to strangle. She detests the thought and fights against it, but it is overpowering, and she has to give way to it. She kills in this frightful manner her sister's child. But for expert medical testimony she would be punished as a criminal. She has com- mitted a criminal act, though not with criminal intent or from a wicked nature. So with those kleptomani- acs who are really mentally diseased. Again, we have criminals where the cause of the act was a brutal nature, others where it was lack of distinct ideas about right and wrong, others where it was laziness, others where it was a perverted desire to show off before a gang of vicious roughs. A multitude of dif- ferent mental characteristics may thus lead people to criminal acts and criminal careers. It is therefore evident that if one takes the thousands of criminals, and asks any question about them, the answer which fits some may not fit others. So with our question concerning the inheritance of criminality. The traits which lead a man into crime may in some cases be inherited and in others acquired. "We can, however, look at the general run of crim- inals, and in a vague, general way see whether criminal ancestry or vicious training plays the leading role. When doing so we should remember that crim- inal parents are likely to give their children a training such as would probably predispose the best born children to vicious and lawless lives. So when we see crime running in families we must not jump at the conclusion that germ-inheritance is to blame. 192 The Human Nature Club "Now, let us take a look at a famous family of criminals. The infamous Juke family of seven hun- dred and nine individuals, distributed over six gener- ations, produced seventy-seven offenders in one county in forty-five years. If the records from the previous years and from three other counties, and all the records of misdemeanors, could have been added, the number would doubtless be much increased. The history of this family is a disgusting record of de- bauchery, vice, pauperism and crime. 1 It would seem at the first look that we had here a case of inher- ited criminality. If we look more closely, we find that the training received by the members of the family, their post-birth acquisitions, may account for their rich harvest of criminals. 'They lived in log or stone houses, similar to slave-hovels, all ages, sexes, relations, and strangers 'bunking' indiscrim- inately Domesticity is impossible They .... were so despised by the reputable com- munity that their family name had come to be used generically as a term of reproach. ' The young Juke was thus early familiarized with vice and crime; he was deprived of intercourse with decent children; he had no examples of thrift or industry or honesty or chastity; he was without moral restraint or social discipline. "That his criminal career was the result of what happened to him after birth rather than of his mental inheritance is suggested by several cases where early marriage and removal from the community was fol- lowed by a decent career. For example, a Juke girl 'See " The Jukes," R. L. Dugdale. The Human Nature Club 193 who had a thoroughly vicious ancestry and had been arrested for vagrancy in her fifteenth year, 'marries a German, a cement-burner, a steady, industrious, plodding man, settles down into a home, .... and takes the position of a reputable woman.' "That ante-birth acquisitions may have played a part by making the health and physique and mental development of the Juke children such as would unfit them for regular lives and self-control, and make them easy victims of impulse and appetite, is shown by the large percentage of disease and poverty and the gen- eral lack of hygiene and personal care. The Juke progeny may have been burdened with a germ-inherit- ance that would make them likely candidates for crim- inal careers; they probably were mentally enfeebled by bad nutrition before birth; they certainly were brought up in an environment which would favor the acquisition of immoral and criminal habits, "We may now turn from this particular family, and look at juvenile offenders in general. One would suppose that if criminals passed on mental charac- teristics which act as causes to crime, the class of youthful criminals would include a large number of descendants of criminals. Yet only two per cent of the inmates of English industrial schools 1 were found to be descendants of habitual criminals. In fact, the juvenile offender seems to be the product of bad bringing up, rather than of special criminal ancestry. Twenty per cent of the inmates of industrial schools are without a father living, fourteen per cent without 1 The figures here quoted are taken from W. D. Morrison's " luvenile Offenders." 194 The Human Nature Club a mother living. In the cases of children with both parents living, there is still emphatic evidence that proper restraint and proper moral training are rare. Over three-fourths of the homes from which these children come are, to use Mr. Morrison's words, not 'morally fit for a child to live in.' When children of this very same class are taken and well cared for, they do not become criminals to any greater extent than average children. So we are warranted in the opinion that criminality in this class, is in the main not an inborn, but an acquired trait. Their bad train- ing accounts for their offenses, and if good training is supplied, the offenses do not appear. However, though these children do not inherit criminality from their parents, they may, and probably have, inherited more than the ordinary human being's share of mental dullness and incapacity. "In the study of criminals one thus finds in con- crete shape all the problems concerning heredity of which Dr. Leighton told you. How much of the criminal's career is due to germ-inheritance, how much to ante-birth acquisitions, how much to post- birth acquisitions? Answers to these questions are being gradually worked out by students of crime. Do not forget that these factors account for the nature of every man as well as of criminals, and that it will be one of the greatest problems of the future to ascer- tain in the cases of men of all sorts the exact influence of heredity and of environment. In the case of crim- inals in general, I personally am inclined to the opin- ion that no specific tendencies to crime are inherited. Certain general mental conditions may be inherited The Human Nature Club 195 which serve as good soil for criminal tendencies to grow in. But the training is the real decisive factor, Other people, however, are of the contrary opinion. We don't know enough yet. "So much for the question of hereditary crimi- nality. I have a few remarks to make upon some of the mental characteristics of the average criminals. Remember, that in many cases these won't fit. First of all, they are, as one would suppose, without moral ideals, feelings of remorse, or much sensibility to any moral emotions. They are below the average in gen- eral intellectual powers, though, of course, they may be apt in their particular lines. They are likely to be incapable of sustained effort, and to be irritable and impulsive. They are distinctly religious. 'Out of twenty-eight thousand three hundred and fifty-one admissions to three large metropolitan prisons,' remarks the Rev. J. W. Horsley, only fifty-seven described themselves as atheists, and this number,' he adds, 'must be further reduced as containing some Chinese and Mohammedans.' Many of these cases were men who were really rather religious. 1 "On the whole, the criminal population is not very markedly different from the average. They are not different from other men and women as dogs are dif- ferent from cats. If I had here a hundred criminals and a hundred average men and women, I am not at all sure that any psychologist could, by a mental examination, pick out the criminals from the rest. Yet as one lives among them and reads widely in the history of crime he gains a feeling of certain types of 'For these and similar facts see "The Criminal," by Havelock Ellis. 196 The Human Nature Club human nature — the criminal types. I'm not sure, again, that these types are any more distinct than types of plumbers or lawyers or scientists. If you'll come and visit our reformatory some time, you can yourselves judge what the human nature of criminals is like by actual observation. And finally, though I've just done the opposite thing, I advise you to study the psychology of criminals rather than talk about it."" CHAPTER XVII A REVIEW At this meeting of the club, its members discussed the following questions and observations, taken from their box. They were able, with the aid of the information they had already acquired, to answer the questions satisfactorily, and to refer the observations to similar facts already studied. The editor trusts that his readers can do likewise, and feels confident that they will prefer to think the explanations out for themselves rather than to be told. "A man who had seen long military service became a waiter in a restaurant. One day a gentleman din- ing there was telling an anecdote in a rather loud voice, and in the course of it said, 'Company, salute!' The waiter, who was passing by with a tray of dishes, dropped the tray, and brought his hand up to his fore- head in the act of saluting." "A famous French tragedian used to hire a man whom he would beat and pummel as fiercely as pos- sible just before going on the stage to play the last act of Othello. Why did he do it?" "Samuel Johnston used to insist on touching every lamp-post as he walked along the street." "Why is it that a person can be extremely accurate in one sort of thing — e. g., keeping accounts — and yet be very inaccurate in other things?" "I walked down Liberty Street every day for two 197 198 The Human Nature Club weeks, and didn't know that a new house was being built there." ''Some years ago a certain company used to wrap the small packages of tobacco which they sold in papers with pictures of baseball players on them. On these papers it said, 'Save the wrappers.' (A prize was given for every hundred returned.) The small boys of the town would collect these papers, and seeing the inscription, would save those which had batsmen on them." "There were, I believe, five Poe brothers at Prince- ton, all of whom played on the Varsity football team. They varied only a few inches in height and a few pounds in weight, and played the same kind of a game. All were of light weight." "A clergyman started in to preach, and could hardly restrain himself from groaning aloud, so violent was the pain he was enduring from an ulcerated tooth. After a few minutes he felt no pain at all, though it returned when he had finished his sermon." "What is the basis for this advice, which I read in a book on education: 'To assume the existence of vice [in a child] is often to produce it. We must, therefore, say to the child: "You did not really wish to do that; but see how others would interpret your action if they did not know you." ' " "An Indian visited a camp, and became interested in some of the pictures he saw there. He carefully followed with the point of his knife the outlines of a drawing in a magazine. When asked why he did so, he said that doing so would help him to carve a likeness of it when he returned home. What sort of imagery was strong in his case?" The Human Nature Club 199 "E. W. Sabel, in the Saturday Evening Post, tells an anecdote of Frederick Villiers, the famous war cor- respondent. Villiers had been under fire for some days, the enemy bombarding the force to which the artist was attached, so that the arrival of a shell was a commonplace circumstance to be treated in the usual way. Out of this ordeal he came unscathed to London, and was strolling down the crowded Strand. "On a sudden the pedestrians were appalled to see him fling himself at full length upon the greasy, muddy pavement, and there lie on his face rigid as a dead man. From all directions men rushed to render him assistance. They turned him over to rub his hands and unbutton his collar, expecting to find him in a fit. But no. On his face they found not the pain and pallor of epilepsy, but astonishment and mud. Villiers, when they laid hold of him, quickly jumped to his feet, shook the mud from his hands and clothes, and then looked around for an explanation of his own apparently idiotic act. The explantion was forthcoming. "A few yards behind him stood a horse and cart. The carter had a moment after Villiers passed pulled the pin and allowed the cart-box to dump upon the ground a load of gravel. The heavy beams of the cart, of course, struck the wood paving with a resound- ing 'dull thud,' and the clean gravel hissed out with an evil roar. This combination of sounds, the war artist declared, was identical with the striking of a live shell, and Villiers, forgetting that he then stood some thousands of miles from the seat of war, flung himself down to await the dreadful explosion." CHAPTER XVIII SOME DEEPER QUESTIONS ABOUT HUMAN NATURE "I've made a collection of questions from our ob- servation-box which I thought might all be taken up together. I classed them together, not because they were about the same matters, but because I hadn't any notion of their true answers, and didn't see just how they could be answered, but perhaps you can do better than I. Here they are: "No. i. If our feelings of outside things are due to action in our different senses, so that our knowl- edge is limited by our sense-powers, so that, in fact, there may be things in the world by which we aren't influenced at all; if, also, there may be differences in things which we don't feel; if, also, we feel as sounds what are really vibrations of the particles of the air, as colors what are really only different rates of vibration of the ether — how can we be said to know the reality of the world at all? We don't seem to get it all, or to get all the differences in it, or even to get it as it is. Don't we have just a sham world, and may not the reality of things be entirely different? "No. 2. What, really, is a 'thing?' Our sensations of things vary. Sugar tastes different after vinegar; it looks different at night; its weight would be differ- ent on the moon. What is its reality? What stays the same, no matter how much our feelings of it vary? "No. 3. If willing means just the fact that some 200 The Human Nature Club 201 ideas are attended to, are clear and emphatic and possess the mind, if our actions are the result of the ideas that we harbor, what do we mean by saying that our wills are free? Are they free? Do we really do anything in the universe on our own account; are we really in the game,. or does it all run off like a ma- chine? Do we make a difference, or don't we? "No 4. Is the feeling that we could have done otherwise, which we have after an act or a choice, just a delusion? Is the action of our nerve-cells in such cases really decided, as the course of a bullet is, or do our own selves have an influence, play a part? "No. 5. If our thoughts and feelings go with cer- tain cell commotions in the nervous system, how can we expect to have any existence after our bodies have returned to dust again? Or if we can, what sort of an existence can it be? "Nos. 1 and 2 are really the same question in dif- ferent words, you see. So also with 3 and 4. "I asked Mr. Northrup to come in to-night because a clergyman is supposed to know more about the last three questions than common people. Won't you answer them for us, Mr. Northrup?" "I won't answer them, because I can't. I could give you on questions 3 and 4 the arguments the- ologians give, but as there are arguments both ways, and very good and wise people have been on both sides, I suppose that won't help. And question 5 can't, so far as I see, be answered. If you accept the New Testament as a piece of true history, you have evidence for continuance of mental life apart from the body. But our present-day experience 202 The Human Nature Club doesn't give evidence such as I understand you've sought in your other studies of human nature. "I would, however, like to say a word before you begin to talk over these questions. Your study of human nature has led you up to three of life's great- est problems, the problems of knowledge, freedom and immortality. We get a view of the world which enables us to get along in it, but what is it really? Our reasons for believing in the existence of other people's minds are our experiences of their physical actions. What becomes of their minds when their physical actions cease? We make movements, do things in the world, but so do trees and worms. Do we really contribute anything to the universe? These are sweeping questions, which have absorbed the thoughts of philosophers for hundreds of years. I don't honestly believe you or I could answer them." "It won't do us any harm to think about them for awhile, I guess," said Arthur. "If they can't be answered satisfactorily, we can pick the most prob- able answer, or find out how they might be answered, or decide N which answer, if both are equally likely, it's best for us to make, or perhaps find that it's our duty not to make any answer, or that it's best, after you've thought things out as well as you can, to drop the whole question." "I was to blame for that second question," said Mr. Tasker; "and as I've been thinking about it and reading a book my old chum recommended, maybe I'd better say what I can. I've come to think that the reality of things is really an inner life of thought The Human Nature Club 203 and feeling something like our own. I'll tell you why. What do you know me as? Your knowledge of me is of a moving thing with brown hair and blue eyes, from whom certain sounds emerge, who is so heavy, and so hard to the touch, who would taste so and so if you were cannibals and ate me. I to you am a 'thing' known by sensations. If you didn't see me or hear me or touch me, etc., you wouldn't believe that I existed. But what do I know myself as? I to myself am a lot of thoughts and feelings, an inner life of desire, ambition, effort, etc. I am, whether you see or hear me or not. Now, here you have a 'thing' which is known in two ways. To an onlooker, to an outside observer, it is the six-foot biped I described, but it really is a living soul, a personal consciousness. So I say that the rest of the 'thing' world, the trees, stones, worms, etc., are in reality inner conscious- nesses. To itself an inner life of feeling is an inner life of feeling. In any one else it only causes sensa- tions of sight, touch, taste, etc." "Well, I was to blame for the first question, which is substantially the same as the second, and I think your answer is just mystical rubbish," said Arthur. "Certainly a human being does have an inner being, his stream of feelings, and an appearance to other people, his living body. But that doesn't prove that the inner being is the reality, corresponding to the outer appearance. That might correspond to his arm or eyebrow or to nothing, and the rest of the 'thing' his body, or all of it, might have a reality of its own. Moreover, there might be a different law for sticks from that for complex things like the human body. 204 The Human Nature Club That a consciousness reality went with one wouldn't prove that it went with another. "I think we just don't know any 'reality' for the world of things, or rather I would say that they have all sorts of realities, because I would say that the ways they impressed us were their realities. They are 'all things to all men. ' They are what they seem because they really aren't, but only seem. Don't laugh. I mean it. I mean that sugar really is sweet one time and not sweet another, white in one light and gray in another, etc., because I claim that all that phrases like is, is really, is in reality can mean, is feels to us." "I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," said Mrs. Elkin. "Let's go on to the next question. You men can fight this out later." "Perhaps I ought to own up to that third question, as to whether we really ourselves initiate any action, whether we really choose between two possible acts, or really are just like clocks wound up by some outside power," said Mr. Elkin. "That is a question in theology that always interested me, and I confess I believe with the old-time Calvinists that an all-wise being could prophesy everything that any one of us will do. I don't see that our actions can be otherwise than the result of our inherited nature and the circum- stances which 1 influence us. We are just little wheels in the big universe machine, which turn according to the way the whole machine works." "Well, I wrote .question 4, and I've come to just the opposite opinion" said Mr. Henshaw. "We cer- tainly feel, after any act, that we could have done otherwise." The Human Nature Club 205 "But there's no guarantee that that feeling repre- sents the true state of the case. The hypnotized per- son, who is the mere tool of the hypnotizer, some- times feels that he is doing what he pleases of his own free will. In dreams we feel that things are real, but that doesn't make them so." "I wasn't going to argue from that. I was just going on to say that if that feeling is a delusion, if we are really just puppets, moved back and forth by some outside power, then responsibility, merit and blame can have no real meaning. If the man who murders his mother does it just because that's a part of the universe-play in which he's a puppet- actor, he can't really be blamed for it. He is acting in just the same way as the hero who saves a life ; only he happens to have a different part in the play. If we are to be responsible for our conduct, we must have real control over it. I confess that my experience with people leads me often to doubt whether they are really free agents, directors of their own conduct. In dealing with people we do act on the supposition that their choices will be made in accordance with circumstances. We don't expect a man to act freely. We expect his nature and training and the induce- ments we offer to decide, his choice. Still, Elkin, I have faith that this world is a moral world, where people really are responsible for their actions, and so I have faith that their wills are free. Life would be just a sham battle if we didn't count, if we weren't real contributors for good or evil to the world's his- tory. We do make a difference and are responsible 206 The Human Nature Club for the differences we make, or else there's no good- ness or badness." "When you put it in that way I don't feel like con- tradicting you, but how can we be real contributors? To say that a man does a thing from free choice seems to me to mean just that he does it by chance, for no reason at all, but we've seen that the ideas he has, the habits he's formed, the motives that are pres- ent, decide his action." "You've got around to where the philosophers are," said Mr. Northrup. "It seems as if our acts were foreordained as a part of the world-machine, but we also all have faith that there is real merit and real blame — i. e., real responsibility — and so we have faith that our acts are not all foreordained, but are really due to our own selves." "I don't believe Mr. Elkin really believes a word he says," remarked Miss Clark. "People only deny the freedom of the will when they want to excuse themselves from some bad action. It's only people who are bad that claim that we are creatures of cir- cumstance, that drunkenness is a disease, that theft is due to temptation, etc." "My dear young lady," retorted Mr. Northrup, "I know that the view you've just taken is a common one, but I assure you it's totally false and wicked. One of the best men I ever knew told me that in looking over for*-.y years of his life he didn't see how a bit of it could have been otherwise. He said he couldn't claim praise for any of the good parts, and didn't really see that he could have avoided the bad parts. Any theoretic view may be put to a bad use. The Human Nature Club 207 Some folks believe in heaven just because they want to loaf forever. It is no discredit at all to a man if it seems to him that his life is determined for him by the constitution of the universe." "It seems to me," said Arthur, "that real belief in either of these theories needn't have much to do with saying 'Yea, yea' or 'Nay, nay' to them. Real belief is, I think, a tendency to act as if a thing were so. If we believe that a team is in front of us, we try to get out of the way of it; if we believe that a man is a liar, we don't trust him; if we believe that the moon is inhabited, we'll focus telescopes upon it, and so on and on. Now, just saying a thing is so may be compatible with real disbelief of the sort I've described. I should say that the important question was whether a man acted as if he were really responsible, acted as if he really could contribute to the good or bad in the world, and that it mattered not so much what he said or wrote about it. Of course, his theories might somewhat influence this more important active belief. "My interest in this question is not to try to settle it, but to notice that people are split into two great classes, on the basis of their active attitude toward this question. Some people feel responsibility, feel the importance of life, feel that every one of their moral choices will make a difference to them and to the world, and constantly act as if they did count, as if they were themselves making the world what it is to be. Another class are swayed by outside influences, follow the style, take what comes, accept, as they say, the inevitable. They are always committing their careers into some one else's hands. They act 208 The Human Nature Club as if they couldn't count, as if they had no part to play, save passive non-resistance. They may say, 4 Oh, certainly, I believe in the freedom of the will,' but they are the real disbelievers. 'The same thing holds concerning the last ques- tion, the question of the immortality of the mind after the death of the body. There are some people who, whatever they say with their lips, act as if this life was all. They may talk about immortality, but the 'beer and skittles,' the applause and comforts of this mundane sphere, make up the situation to which they react. Other people, some of whom may not be sure that human natures can exist apart from human bodies, yet live as if they were probationers for a larger life, as if in the world as a whole honor and duty and truth and love did count more than they seem to here. Each man chooses the aspects of the universe to which he will react, and these choose to react to the nobler and larger life. The practical question is not, 'What do you say the world is?' but, 'What kind of a world is your conduct, your active belief, adapted to?' " The company were silent for several moments after Arthur had finished. Finally Miss Atwell spoke. "Yet we ought to know all we can about these things, ought we not? Thomas Arnold says some- where: 'Concerning whatsoever matters it is our duty to act, concerning those matters it is also our duty to think. ' I should suppose that our theoretical opin- ions would influence what you call our active belief." "They will, of course. I just wanted to show that the latter was really the more vital fact." The Human Nature Club 209 "I asked that question about immortality," Miss Atwell went on. "You don't think it irreverent, Mr. Northrup?" "Certainly not. It's a question that the most rever- ent men have again and again asked. Even if we are sure that we shall have continued existence, we want to know how it is possible." "I was once taught," said Mr. Tasker, "that my sensations and memories and imagery and feelings of activity and emotions depended on the nervous sys- tem, yet my 'reason' did not, and that it would exist after the death of the body, though sensations and emotions, etc., would be gone. That might be true, though I don't believe it is; but I can't see that that sort of immortality would be of any use. You couldn't remember anything, you wouldn't know your own name, or have any facts to reason about, or love, or feel duty. You would just be a bare 'reason,' which would be no better than nothing. Everybody would be alike. Unless we have a real personal exist- ence continuous with this one, I don't see what differ- ence it makes whether we have any." "I'm glad you spoke of that, Tasker," replied Mr. Henshaw, "because I happened to read a while ago a book by an eminent psychologist, who believes that real complete personal existence ca?i continue after death. We often talk as if when one of us died a sort of superfine angelic being was born in the other world. But unless that being is myself, unless it remembers my acts and thoughts, what value is its existence to me, or what justice is there in rewarding or punishing it for my deeds? Now, this psychol- lio The Human Nature Club ogist — who, by the way, believes that our thougnts and feelings do parallel and go with commotions in nerve-cells — says that this need in no way imply that our thoughts and feelings cannot go on just the same or better without them. For, he says, the nerve-cells might be just the means of transmitting these thoughts and feelings, which might exist apart, but as light penetrates through transparent substances, so might they appear in connection with these human brains of ours. I think I can quote you one passage from memory. " 'Suppose .... that the whole universe of material things — the furniture of earth and choir of heaven — should turn out to be a mere surface veil of phenomena, hiding and keeping back the world of genuine realities Admit now that our brains are .... thin and half-transparent places in the veil. What will happen? Why, as the white radiance comes through the dome with all sorts of staining and distortion imprinted on it by the glass, .... the life of souls as it is in its fullness will break through our several brains into this world And when finally a brain stops acting altogether, .... the sphere of being that supplied the consciousness would still be intact; and in that more real world .... the consciouness might, in ways unknown to us, continue still.' Ml "What do you think of that, Mr. Northrup?" "That's very ingenious, and of one thing I'm con- fident. The universe is very big, and may hold facts in store for us that we don't dream of. Among its 'William James, "Human Immortality," pp. 16-18. The Human Nature Club 211 facts may be a real being for things other than our present feelings of them, a real freedom in our actions, a real existence apart from the body. Of another thing I'm still more confident. The more keenly we seek the truth about how things do seem to act, about what they seem to be, the better we shall know what they really are. The more earnestly we rationalize our lives, the more fully we rid ourselves of weak superstitions and blind imitation of other people, the less rein we give to accident and mere opinion and gross impulse, the more real freedom of will we shall have, if there be any. And the more zealously we work to make this a good and happy world, the better fitted shall we be to take our places in any other." "I'd like to read you a few words which show a character that realizes Mr. Northrup's ideal," said Mr. Tasker, as he reached over to the bookcase and took down a book. "The Greek philosopher, Socrates, is on trial for impiety, and is threatened with death. Plato, his biographer, makes him say, in a passage which even in translation is of remarkable beauty: " 'Some one will say: And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end? To him I may fairly answer: There you are mistaken; a man who is good for any- thing ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong — acting the part of a good man or a bad For wherever a man's place is, whether the place which he has chosen or that in which he has been placed by a com- 212 The Human Nature Club mander, there he ought to remain in the hour of danger; he should not think of death or of anything but disgrace. And this, O men of Athens, is a true saying. '* 'Strange indeed would be my conduct, O men of Athens, if I who, when I was ordered by the generals whom you chose to command me at Potidaea and Amphipolis and Delium, remained where they placed me, like any other man, facing death; if, I say, now, when, as I conceive and imagine, God orders me to fulfill the philosopher's mission of searching into my- self and other men, I were to desert my post through fear of death, or any other fear; that would indeed be strange, and I might justly be arraigned in court for denying the existence of the gods if I disobeyed the oracle because I was afraid of death; then I should be fancying that I was wise when I was not wise. For the fear of death is indeed the pretense of wisdom and not real wisdom, being a pretended knowledge of the unknown; and no one knows whether death, which men in their fear apprehend to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good. Is there not here con- ceit of knowledge which is a disgraceful sort of igno- rance? And this is the point in which, as I think, I differ from others, .... that whereas I know but little of the world below, I do not suppose that I know, but I do know that injustice and disobedience to a better, whether God or man, is evil and dishonor- able. ' 1 "Socrates is declared guilty and condemned to death. His last words to the judges are: 1 Jowett's translation ot Plato's ' Apologia," The Human Nature Club 213 11 'Still I have a favor to ask of them. When my sons are grown up, I would ask you, O my friends, to punish them; and I would have you trouble them as I have troubled you, if they seem to care about riches or anything more than about virtue, or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing — then reprove them as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing. And if you do this, I and my sons will have received justice at your hands. " 'The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways — I to die and you to live. Which is better, God only knows.' ,n 'Idem. CHAPTER XIX SOME ADVICE FROM THE EDITOR ABOUT MEANS OF STUDYING HUMAN NATURE There are many aspects of human nature which we may study, and a number of ways of knowing about them. One may, for instance, by living among peo- ple and watching their ways, gain an undefined, intui- tive skill in guessing what is in a man's mind, how he will act in various circumstances, and what are the best ways to handle him in order to attain some pur- pose we have set before us. The book agent knows human nature in its book-buying features in this way. The experienced teacher may in this way have a prac- tical knowledge of children, though she might not know how many senses they had or what the difference was between memory and instinct. The tactful soci- ety woman, too, may have a successful insight into people's feelings, without being at all able to analyze or describe them. A lofty instance of this intuitive knowledge of human nature due to the concrete study of actual people was furnished by Abraham Lincoln. There are also some gifted minds who, even in imaginative flights and conventional literary produc- tions, are able to present living men who might walk out of the novel or play into our church or club. To take the stock example, Shakspere possessed an 314 The Human Nature Club 215 imagination that could manufacture a dialogue that rings true to human nature. Yet he probably knew less than Mr. Tasker about the definite questions discussed in this book. He knew human nature imaginatively, but not scientifically. Now, it is patent that the editor of this book has no such knowledge of human nature as enables one to give lifelike portrayals of men and women. On the contrary, the characters in this book are little better than marionettes. They all talk alike. If you take a sentence and try to guess which member of the club spoke it, you find that you can't, that the author hasn't endowed his characters with life. If the book were intended to display the human nature of Mrs. Ralston and Misses Atwell, Fairbanks and Clark, and the rest, it would be a complete failure. Dra- matically it is an atrocity. Further, it is extremely probable that the author would make a mediocre book agent, and bring calamity to any social circle he might try to lead. One can study human nature considerably, then, without gaining concrete insight into people's minds or ability to portray them. One can study the elements that make up a person's mind and the general factors that influence our mental lives. This is what the psy- chologist does, what the members of the club did. It is likely that such general study of the workings of human minds will assist one's practical insight into concrete, individual characters. But the one does not presuppose the other. This study of the general factors at work in all minds consists of observing facts, thinking about 216 The Human Nature Club them and testing the opinions thus gained by seeing how well they fit the facts observed. It is especially desirable to devise circumstances in which a person's behavior will reveal important facts about the work- ings of his mind, and reveal them in a definite, exact and unmistakable way. If you wish to know whether a person has acute power of sensation — of sight, for instance — it is better to arrange a lot of letters as oculists do, and observe how well he can read them at a certain distance, than to trust to your general obser- vations of the way he uses his eyes. It is better to make exact observations under illuminating condi- tions — that is, to make experiments — than to trust to chance observations. One can almost always improve his vague opinion on any subject by devising means to make his observations more detailed, more accu- rate and more significant. In studying human nature in the psychologist's way, one may well begin by observing and experi- menting on one's self. Look at your sensations, imagery, memories, judgments, emotions, decisions, acts, habits; test the delicacy of your discrimination, the extent of your memory, the degree of concentra- tion of which you are able; recall and think out your trains of thought, your dreams, your tastes and prefer- ences. The result will be that you will be better able to understand other people and to appreciate the meaning of what is said in books about psychology. The chapters in James's "Principles of Psychology" mentioned at the end of this book will be a helpful guide in this work. [ Mental life is, however, broader than the measure The Human Nature Club 217 of any single person's mind, and though training in the description and analysis of one's feelings is a use- ful, perhaps necessary, preliminary to the study of human nature, it is only one of a number of studies worth undertaking. Those whom it specially inter- ests may carry it out to a well-nigh unlimited extent, picking to pieces every feeling they have, and discov- ering its exact nature and composition, but the aver- age student will prefer to leave it after a while in favor of some of the following topics: 1. The causes of our intellects and characters, the nervous activities which go with them, the influence of inherited structure, general bodily condition, drugs, foods, climate, brain diseases, education, etc. 2. The causes of special mental and moral quali- ties, such as genius, insanity, criminality, idiocy, superstition, 'crankiness,' sentimentality, accuracy, attentiveness, etc. 3. The origin of human nature and its develop- ment in the life of each human being from infancy. The mental life of lower animals. 4. Differences in the mental make-up of different races and nationalities of men. 5. The influence of our mental constitutions, our thoughts and feelings, on our actions, and so on other people. The part mental life plays in the world, 6. The exact estimation of any individual's mental equipment and tendencies. A mental diagnosis which may inform a man what his nature is, how he differs from his fellows, what he is good for, what his weak- nesses are, etc. Other topics — e. g. y the psychology of men as 218 The Human Nature Club social beings, considering the relations of one mind to others, might be added to this list, but it is already long enough to show that there are plenty of questions concerning human nature worth thinking about. You may remember that the founders of the club started out with the notion that they could observe human nature without book knowledge or previous experience. They found it worth while to call in a man who knew about the human brain at their very first meeting, and they soon turned to Mr. Tasker's books as helpful and even indispensable. As soon as you study any aspect of human nature in earnest you will find that progress depends on knowing what other people have found out in that, and indeed in other sciences. To know much about a man's mind, you must know about his body, especially his nervous system, and thus you need a knowledge of anatomy and physiology. To study our second topic to the best advantage you must know something of the gen- eral laws of heredity. To study the third topic you must know the order of development in the animal world. Thus one needs an acquaintance with zoology. So on through the list. One's first duty, then, is modesty. Every reader of this book should know that it gives but a bare and meager outline of a very few of the facts of human nature, that it can only be an introduction to the study of mental life. Knowledge of psychology and ability to study psychology fruitfully are, we shall all agree, worthy accomplishments. Like most good things, they are hard to get. The best fruit on the The Human Nature Club 219 tree of knowledge is on the topmost branches. To reach it you must climb. I have placed at the end of this chapter a list of books which may serve as guides in the study of psy- chology to any who have been awakened to an interest in such facts as this little book describes. 1 In reading them it will be well to make as you go along a list of words the meaning of which is not entirely clear, and so far as possible to find out in each case the exact meaning then and there. It will also pay to compare the opinions of different authors in cases where they treat the same topic. It is of the utmost value to think up examples of every fact you learn, to note any evidence you can from your own experience for or against any statement made by an author, and to make sure as you go along that you know just what question the author is trying to settle, just what he is driving at. Finally, it is our duty toward any writer to drop for the time being our pre- vious conceptions and prejudices, to receive his opinion in an open mind. Reading books is but one way to get knowledge, and possibly not the best. If you have followed the suggestion made in the introduction, and collected facts and noted questions and made experiments, you will recognize that we verify our book knowledge by associating with it knowledge of real things. In the end, psychology must always be a system of facts about real men and women, and the study of books about psychology will be of most value to him who 1 These books are all worthy of purchase by any public library. Their contents should be in the main intelligible to any thoughtful student of this book. 220 The Human Nature Club studies real people as well. General observation of people's thoughts and conduct should have already- become your habit. Special detailed study of some phase of mental life is also of great service in bringing us close to fact and teaching us care and precision. I have therefore prepared directions for a number of such studies, none very pretentious, but all worth undertaking if one has the serious purpose of improv- ing his knowledge of psychology. Unless you are considerable of a genius it will be wise to follow these directions exactly. i. A Psychological Autobiography. The aim of this study is to find out what factors determine your mental history, what makes you the man or woman you are. Record every year what you think your mental make-up is, what knowledge, interests, habits, powers, ideas, emotional tendencies and type of will you possess. Write in detail. After the first record, made say in January, 1901, you need record annually only changes — /. e. , additions or losses. Then record all the important factors under the influence of which you have been that year. Then try to think how each change in you has been caused, and what the effect on you of each influence has been, and write down your opinions. So far as possible, recall your make-up at each year of your life, as far back as you can remember, and make a record for each year. Do the same with the influence of each year. Try to think out what has made you what you are from childhood on. Get the opinions of your family and friends. The Human Nature Club 221 Try to find good evidence for every opinion you rorm. A record like this is less irksome to keep than a diary, and probably much more profitable. A handy way of keeping it would be to use very wide paper, dividing it by vertical lines into three columns. In the first, one should describe his make-up under a number of separate headings, such as — age height weight health eyesight hearing imagery memory attentiveness method of thinking suggestibility imitativeness likes dislikes emotions vigor kinds etc. sentimentality nervousness bodily control type of will In the second column should be described, in some regular system of groups, all the factors that have been influencing you, such as: ill The Human Nature Club i. Variations in growth, health, or other physical influences. 2. Physical surroundings — /. e., locality, sights, sounds, etc. 3. Persons. In the home. Out of the home. 4. Organizations — e. g. y Church. Club. Business life. Political life. 5. Information acquired — i. e. , the influence of books, studies, etc. In the third column should be noted the inferences about what factors in column 2 caused the changes noted in column 1. Of course, such a record should be carefully preserved, as it might be of great interest to one's children. A final caution is necessary concerning such a record. Confine yourself strictly to matters of observed facts concerning the outward manifestations of your make-up. Do not for the purposes of this record, or indeed for any purpose, think about your inner self, your peculiar inward being or your moral nature. Do not pry into what lady novelists call "the recesses of your heart. " Your opinions about them would be of no psychological value to you or any one else, and they do not work well if looked at too often. A Study of Habit. In general. The aim of this study will be to give you som£ con- crete ideas of (1) the part habits play in human The Human Nature Club 223 nature; (2) the regularity of habits; (3) their variety among different people; and (4) the speed with which acts become habitual. Notice in yourself and in as many other people as you can what acts are performed by mere force of habit. Keep records. See how much of human life is carried on in this way. See in the case of certain common automatic actions (1) whether the same per- son regularly performs the act in the same way; (2) how far different people perform the act in the same way. Keep records. Notice the growth of some habit. In particular. 1. Think of a number of acts in the case of which it seems to you worth while to ask, "Is this performed automatically, or does it require conscious direction?" Take a broad sheet of paper and arrange your list in a column at the left-hand edge. Then at intervals of an inch or two rule vertical lines down the page. At the head of the columns thus formed put the names of the people you are observing, and a brief description of them — e. g., age, occupation, early training, etc. Then when you find out whether any act is in the case of any one of them automatic, make a note beneath the proper name and on a level with the proper act. Your sheet then will look like the table given on page 224, after some time's work, and should eventu- ally be entirely filled out. 2. Make a list of common habitual performances — e. g., putting on one's shoes, taking them off, taking off one's collar, opening the door of some frequently 11^ The Human Nature Club o H W u -•-> > w .i ti d tn P 02 U > Ph > >> >-( i— i d ■M rf2 d d . o £ £ v- >* U~l o 4-> *3 n't3 .■a o , « P-. in CO en t/i o >H > , >H X 00 > ro i --s rt ! rt rj « ro ' a & a < -d rt o •?, O w ,P KT, • u -t-> w Q W < c/a rt w The Human Nature Club 225 visited room, carrying a light bundle, order of acts on sitting down to the breakfast-table, etc. Notice in every person you can whether the act is always carried out alike on say four different occa- sions. For instance, notice whether you always put on the left shoe first. Do you always take the same shoe off first? Notice which end of your collar you button first. See if you always do so. Observe in the same way which hand is used to open the door, to carry a light bundle. It is still better to make the same observations concerning other people. And with such acts as the last example given above, it will probably be advisable not to try to watch yourself, as the idea of the watching will make your actions unnatural. Such acts as this last example are com- plex, and so your notes will have to be something like this: Mrs. A— Monday, took napkin, put it on lap, looked at clock, drank water. Tuesday, took napkin, put it on lap, drank water. Friday, took napkin, put it on lap, looked at clock, moved her knife and fork. Monday, took napkin, put it on lap, moved her knife and fork, drank water. Of course, you may find no such regularity. When you have gained an opinion concerning the regularity of habits in individuals, you can compare them with each other — e. g., suppose you have ob- served ten persons who regularly take off the same shoe first. Count up the number among them (1) who take off the right shoe first, and (2) who take off 226 The Human Nature Club the left first. You can also see whether a person who is regular in one habit tends to be regular in all sorts of things, and vice versa. 3. Take some simple accomplishment and practice it until it becomes automatic — e. g., writing a certain sentence on a typewriter, playing a piece of music, adding columns of figures. Keep records showing your improvement by the decrease in the time taken as the thing becomes habitual, decrease in mistakes, decrease in effort, decrease in disturbance by conver- sation, etc., increase in ability to yourself do some- thing else at the same time — e. g., talk, read, think, do mental arithmetic. Suppose, for example, you each day do ten ex- amples in addition of this length* 94935 88789 67598 88986 45678 98746 94937 89789 68598 56786 88986 After a while you will be able to add and talk at the same time. You will also increase in speed, and find it after a while no effort. In carrying on such an experiment, you should make out on cards about fifty such examples. When you add, lay the card on a piece of paper, and put your result beneath it, thus: The Human Nature Club 227 32657 89456 23472 98657 79864 43729 94976 98678 89567 89976 78868 97869 917769 You can then use that same card again and again on later days, and save the work of making out new ex- amples. You will need fifty or more cards, however, so as not to have the same example reappear often enough to be remembered. On each day, or every second or third day, record (1) the time intakes you to do four examples; (2) the number of mistakes made in these four, if any; (3) your ability to work while some one is talking to you, and (4) your ability to work and talk at the same time. Two examples may be done under each of these conditions. 1 See how far these records show the formation of the habit. 1 The record may be kept in this way: Time taken to do four. Mistakes in four. Time for two when disturbed. Time for two while repeating poetry. Jan. 4 Jan. 5 Jan 6 Etc 228 The Human Nature Club You can write the correct answer on the back of each card, or you can number the cards and make out a key with the right answer for each number. There will be hardly any labor in comparing the answer you obtain with that on the card or in the key and notic- ing how many figures, if any, are wrong. A Study of Pleasure. Get as many people as you can to write down or tell you the ten things which they enjoy most, in which they feel the most pleasure at the time. After this, get them to number according to the degree of pleasure they gain from them the following: 1 Eating dinner. Playing your favorite athletic game. Playing your favorite sedentary game. Working with tools, as in a garden. Reading a novel. Hearing music. Talking to a friend. Day-dreaming. Learning something. Writing something. Look over your lists. Consider whether various scruples — conventional, moral, etc. — would prevent people from mentioning certain things which might really give them the utmost pleasure. Consider how far any one is himself incapable of judging what he likes best. With these precautions, notice what pleasures people in general esteem, how far individuals differ, how far men and women differ, children and adults. Recall the pleasures of people of other nationalities. How much of people's tastes in the 1 Copied from the "Psychological Tests" used at Columbia University. The Human Nature Club 229 matter of enjoyment seems inherited, how much due to training. Collecting Data for the Study of Heredity. The aim of this piece of work is to obtain a careful record of some simple facts about the physical and mental make-up of the different members of the same family. Get printed a hundred or more sheets like the fol- lowing: 1. Date of birth Birthplace 2. Occupation Residences 3. Age at marriage 4. Age, at marriage, of wife 5. Mode of life so far as affecting growth or health 6. Was early life laborious? Why and how? _ 7. Adult height — Color of hair when adult — Color of eyes_- 8. General appearance 9. Bodily strength and energy, if much above or below the average 10. Keenness or imperfection of sight or other senses 11. Mental powers and energy, if much above or below the average 12. Character and temperament 13. Favorite pursuits and interests Artistic aptitudes 14. Minor ailments to \ In youth which there was V special liability) In middle age 15. Graver illnesses { £ ^fh"" J ) In middle age 16. Cause and date of death, and age at death 17. General remarks Note. — This table is taken from the ' Family Records ' of Mr. Francis Galton. Have your immediate and remote relatives fill them ©ut carefully and completely. At the head of each 230 The Human Nature Club put the name and relationship of the person fully. Do not say grandfather, but father's father, or mother's father, according to the side of the family on which he is. So with all relatives. You might thus have for a very distant relative: Mother's father's mother's brother's son. Keep all these records together. You will find them interesting to show relatives, and to examine yourself for cases of inherited mental qualities, and for the influence of training as well. If these studies lead you to invent others, to think about human life for yourself, and to try to see into it, you may be sure that they are worth your while. REFERENCES FOR THE FURTHER STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGY. The best book to begin with is William James's Talks to Teachers on Psychology, etc. Henry Holt & Co., New York Pp. 301. Price, $1.50. The next best book is by the same author; Principles of Psychology. 2 vols. Henry Holt & Co., New York. Pp. 1193. Price, $4.80. Read first chapters IV, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX, XXI, XXII, XXIII, XXIV, XXV, XXVI. If this much reading has been done, any of the following list of books may be profitably begun: E. B. Titchener, Outline of Psychology. The Macmillan Co., New York. Price, $1.50. F. Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty. The Macmillan Co., New York. (Out of print at present.) Pp. 379. C. Lloyd Morgan, Introduction to Co7nparative Psychology. Scribner's, New York. Pp. 377. Price, $1.25. (Discount gen- erally obtainable.) G. F. Stout, Manual of Psychology. Hinds & Noble, New York. Price, $1.60. > The Human Nature Club 231 F. Warner, The Study of Children. The Macmillan Co., New York. Pp. 250. Price, $1.00. N. Oppenheim, The Develop7nent of the Child. The Mac- millan Co., New York. Pp. 292*- Price, $1.25. In connection with the study of the human mind it is of great value to know something about the human body. For this purpose, read: The Htiman Body, H. N. Martin. Elementary Course, pp. 261; Briefer Course, pp. 377. Henry Holt & Co., New York. Primer of Physiology, T. H. Huxley, revised by F. S. Lee. INDEX PAGE Abercrombie, quoted 90 Action : after deliberation 131-136 automatic 7-10, 128, 139 diseased forms of 136 ideo-motor 128-129 purposive 127-137 relation of purposive action to attention 132-135 Apperception 57-64 Association : by contiguity 92 by similarity 92 cause of 81-82 conditioned by mental sys- tems 84, 95-96 frequency as a factor in 83 of ideas 83-85, 90-99 recency as a factor in 83 vividness as a factor in 83 Associations, permanence of...78-79 Attention 65-75 brain correlate of 70 diffused 69 extent of 69 in relation to purposive action 132-135 in voluntary thinking 98-99 influence of previous expe- rience on 74 meaning of 66-68 training of 71-73 Autobiography, a psycholog- ical 220-222 Automatic Activities: due to the brain 7-10 in connection with pur- posive action 128 originally purposive 139 PAGE Bernheim, quoted 159-162 Brain, the 7-17, 19 automatic activities due to..7-10 condition of due to past ex- periences 58, 64 correlate of attention 70 function of 13 instincts due to inherited structure of .26-28 law of habit in the 8-9 Carpenter, quoted 90 Cause of association of ideas.. 81-82 Cause of sensations 56 Character 142-147 brain basis of 143 habits as elements in , 144 how far acquirable 146 ideasas elements in 145 ideals as elements in... 145 " temperament as an element in 145 Chicks, instincts of 24 Choice 130-134 Color blindness 47 Contrast of sensations 53-54 Criminals : heredity and environment as factors in producing... .191 -194 psychology of 190-196 Delayed instincts 25 Delicacy, of discrimination of sensations 49-52 Diseases, of the will..... 136 Discrimination, delicacy of sense 49-52 Drobisch, quoted 89 Dugdale, quoted 192 233 ^34 The Human Nature Club PAGE Effort: the feeling of in attention..71-75 in decision ....134, 135 Ebbinghaus, quoted 80 Ellis, quoted 195 Emotions, the 115-126 bodily expression of 115, 116 cause of .' 117-122 control of 122-124 utility of 124-126 Experience : influence of previous 57-64 influence of previous on at- tention 74 Extent, of attention 69 Freedom, of the will 204-208 Function : of emotions 124-126 of memory 77 of nerve cells 15-17 of sensations 45-46 Galton, quoted 183, 184, 229 Habit, law of, in the brain 8-9 Habits 138-142 as elements in character 144 directions for an empirical study of 222-228 ethical implications of ...141-142 Henkle, quoted 89 Heredity : and acquired traits 186-189 and environment 181-196 and mental ability 184 as the cause of instincts... 27-28 directions for an empirical study of 229-230 Human nature, ways of study- ing 214-220 Hypnotism 148-152 anaesthesia in 151 dissociation of ideas in.. .149-150 forgetf ulness in the hypnotic trance 148-149 hyperaesthesia in 152 suggestibility in 150-152 PAGE Illusions 63, 64 Imagery, mental 100-108 Imagination : Sea Imagery, mental. Imitation 163-168 and invention 166-167 and suggestion 163-164 of the mysterious 165 learning by 32 Immortality, of the mind 208-213 Impulses, insane 128, 129 Influence of mind on the body 157-162 Instincts.. 21-28 delayed 25 of chicks 24 transitory 26 James, William, quoted.. .28, 42, 75, 86, 87, 88, 89, 99, 117, 119, 124, 126, 141, 152, 162, 209. Judgments 109,110 Language, how far instinctive.. 23 Learning : animal method of 35-36, 38-40 by ideas 33-34, 37, 41 by imitation 32 by trial and success ...29-31, 36, 38-40 Meaning : feelings of 108, 109 of attention 66-68 Memory 76-89 abnormalities of 89-90 cause of 81-82 changes in old age 88-89 function of 77 of how to do things 78, 79 training of the... 87, 88 Mental Imagery, see Imagery. Mental Systems, see Systems. Mental Training ; See Training. Mind, influence of, on the body 157-162 Moll, quoted 162 Morrison, quoted 193 Index *35 PAGE Native reactions 21-28 Nerve cells: function of 15-17 structure of .....14-15 Permanence, of associations between situations and acts 78-79 Philosophy, and psychology.200-213 Plato, quoted 211-213 Pleasure, directions for an em- pirical study of 228 Popular Science Monthly, quot- ed 36 Practice, directions for an em- pirical study of 226-228 Psychology, ways of study- ing 214-220 Purposive action 127-137 Range of sensations 46 Reactions, life as a series of ...42-45 Reality, the, of things 202-204 Selection : in voluntary thinking 98-99 learning by 29-31, 35-36, 38-40 Sensations 45-56 cause of 56 contrast of 53-54 delicacy of discrimination of 49-52 function of 45-46 range of 46 Sexes, mental differences of the 168 Sidis, quoted 153 Sollier, quoted 119 Spontaneous thinking ...82-85, 90-96 PAGE Studying human nature, ways of 214-231 Suggestion 152-162 as a means of cure 157-162 in hypnotism 150-152 masked 155-156 Systems : mental 62 influence of on association of ideas 84, 95-96 Things, reality of 202-204 Thorndike, Edward, quoted 41 Training: influence of special train- ing on general ability 170-180 of attention 71-73 of the emotions 122-124 of the memory 87-88 of the will 135 Trains of Thought: See Asso- ciation of ideas. Transitory instincts 26 Transmission, of acquired traits 186-189 Trial and success, learning by 29-31, 35. 36, 38-40 Unlearned reactions 21-28 Volition: See Purposive Action. Voluntary thinking 97-99 attention in 98-99 selection in 98-99 Walking, as an instinct 22 Will, the: See purposive ac- tion, freedom of the 204-208 A LIST OF BOOKS FOR TEACHERS PUBLISHED BY LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO Psychology in the Schoolroom. By T. F. G. Dexter, B.A., B.Sc, and A. H. Garlick, B.A., author of "A New Manual of Method." 421 pages. Crown 8vo. $1.50. Many students have little difficulty in mastering the general principles of the Science of Psychology, but experience considerable difficulty in applying those principles to the Art of Teaching ; and it is because special attention has been paid to the application of the subject that it is hoped that this book will be of some service, not only to the student and young teacher, but also to teachers generally. — From the Preface. Recently adopted at Yale, Cornell, University of Mississippi, College of the City of New York, University of Minnesota, Syracuse University, Adelphi College, University of Utah, Temple College (Philadel- phia), Mount Holyoke; State Normal Schools, at Plattsburgh, N. Y. ; Denver, Colo.; Peru, Neb.; White- water, Wis.; Lowell, Mass. ; Cheney, Wash. ; Cedar Falls, la. ; Winchester, Tenn.; New Paltz, N. Y.; New- York Training School for Teachers ; Training Class, Utica, N. Y. Hon. Joseph W. Southall, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Virginia: — "I cannot commend too highly Dexter and Garlick's ' Psychology in the School- room ' to all teachers who wish to learn the scientific principles on which all correct teaching is based. It is a model text-book." F. M. McMurry, Teachers Col- lege, Columbia University : — " It is particularly valuable for teachers who have made little study of the subject of psychology and who desire to realize its practical bearings upon instruction." Albert Leonard, President of Michigan System of Normal Schools: — "This is a book which will receive a cordial welcome at the hands of wide-awake teachers. It is altogether the best book of the kind that I have seen." Miss Lucy Wheelock, Kinder- garten Training School, Boston, Mass.: — " It has proved to be such a treasure that we are to adopt it for our junior class book. I shall send you an order for it as soon as the class assembles." Gervase Green, Yale Univer- sity: — " It will fill a long-felt need. The psychology is sound, and the pedagogical applications full and suggestive." Dr. Joseph S. Taylor, Editor of New York Teachers' Magazine : — " It would be difficult to imagine how more could be crowded into equal space with the same clearness that we find in this delightful book. We have had applied psychologies before us in large numbers, but we have never seen one so simple and full of meat as this." Longmans, Green, & Co' s Publications. German Higher Schools — The History, Organization, and Methods of Secondary Education in Germany. By James E. Russell, Ph.D., Dean of Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. 8vo. 468 pages. With 7 Appendices of Tables and a Full Index. $2.25. This book is the result of Dr. Russell's personal investigation of the Ger- man Schools at the instance of the Regents of the University of the State of New York, and as the Special Agent of the United States. Very little has been written heretofore in English on the secondary education, which is the foundation of the German University training and the basis of all profes- sional service in the Fatherland, although it is in this sphere that German education can be studied to best advantage. Contents: Beginnings of German Schools — The Rise of Protestant Schools — The Period of Transition — The Reconstruction of the Higher Schools — The Prussian School System — The Higher Schools of Prussia — Foundation and Maintenance of Higher Schools — Rules, Regulations and Customs — Examinations and Privileges — Student Life in the Higher Schools — Instruction in Religion — Instruction in German — Instruction in Greek and Latin — Instruction in Modern Languages — Instruction in History and Geography — [Instruction in Mathematics — Instruction in the Natural Sciences — The Professional Training of Teachers — Ap- pointment, Promotion, and Emoluments of Teachers — Tendencies of School Reform — Merits and Defects of German Secondary Education — The Privileged Higher Schools of Germany in 1897 — Attendance in Higher Schools in Prussia — System of Privileges — Salary Schedules — Pensions of Teachers in the Higher Schools of Germany — Extracts from the General Pension Laws of Prussia — Leading Educational Jour- nals of Germany — Index. The Outlook, New York:— "The book abounds in matters of interest to all professional teachers. The work is certain to remain, at least for years, the standard reference-book and authority upon this subject." The Dial, Chicago: — "The au- thor shows wide reading on this sub- ject and skilful use of the note-book. He sprinkles quotations over his pages most plentifully, but he so weaves them into his narrative or exposition as not seriously to impair the unity of his composition. But, what is more to the purpose, he shows, when dealing with the second- ary schools as they now exist, a large first-hand knowledge, obtained by personal visitation of schools and conference with teachers and educa- tional authorities. There is no work in the English language, known to us, that contains so much and so valuable information about the sec- ondary schools of Germany. Nor is the book a book of facts merely ; the author has an eye also for ideas and forces, and conducts his historical narration with constant reference to these factors." Public Opinion, New York: — " An original and very valuable con- tribution to the literature of peda- gogies. For Germany's position in educational matters is an assurance that one may learn much from a study of any of her schools. After several historical chapters each study of the secondary schools is taken up separately — a very wise plan which greatly simplifies a search for par- ticular information." Longmans, Green, &- Co' s Publications. AMERICAN CITIZEN SERIES. A Series of Books on the Practical Workings of the Functions of the State and of Society, with Especial Reference to American Conditions and Experience. Under the Editorship of Dr. Albert Bushnell Hart, of Harvard University. Outline of Practical Sociology with Special Reference to American Conditions. Third Edition, Revised. By Carroll D. Wright, United States Commissioner of Labor; Lec- turer in the Catholic University of America. Large crown 8vo, with 12 Maps and Diagrams. 464 pages. $2.00. Contents : Part I. The Basis of Practical Sociology. Intro- duction — 1. Development of the Science of Social Relation — 2. The Population of the United States — 3. The Status of the Population of the United States — 4. Native and Foreign Born. Part II. Units of Social Organism, i. Social Units — 2. Political Units. Part III. Questions of Population, i. Immigration — 2. Urban and Rural Population — 3. Special Problems of City Life. Part IV. Questions of the Family, i. Marriage and Divorce — 2. Education — 3. Employ- ment of Women and Children. Part V. The Labor System, i. Old and New Systems of Labor — 2. Appliances of the Modern Labor Sys- tem — 3. Relations of Employer and Employee — 4. Questions Relating to Strikes and Lockouts. Part VI. Social Well-Being. i. The Accumulation of Wealth — 2. Poverty — 3. The Relation of Art to Social Well-Being — 4. Are the Rich Growing Richer, and the Poor Poorer ? Part VII. The Defence of Society, i. Criminology — 2. The Pun- ishment of Crime — 3. The Temperance Question — 4. Regulation of Organizations. Part VIII. Remedies : Solutions that are Proposed for Social and Economic Difficulties. Maps and Diagrams. Index. Outlook, New York : — " The in- itial volume .... sets a high standard for its successors to pre- serve. . . . These bibliographies fit the book peculiarly for advanced classes, from which independent work is expected. The field which the volume covers is extremely broad. On all these subjects a prodigious amount of American sta- tistical information is given." Dial :— " In this field of thought Mr, Wright's book presents more abundant stores of fact than any similar publication. The statistical matter is actually made interesting. The student of society is here supplied with a mass of data of great importance, and is directed to abundant and valuable sources of information and discussion." Professor C. M. Geer, Bates College, Lewiston, Me.: — " I am very much pleased with the book, as it covers what ought to be given in a college course in sociology." Professor I. A. Loos, State University, Iowa City, la.: — "I think Dr. Wright has done his work remarkably well, and he alone could have given us just this work, crammed with knowledge and good sense, lighting up the path of the student through the mazes of documentary material." American Journal of Sociology, University of Chicago, Chicago, 111. : — " Colonel Wright could not fail to produce a notable book on the sub- ject to which he has devoted this volume. There is no equally avail- able compilation and classification." Longmans, Green, & Co's Publications. The Art of Teaching. By David Salmon, Principal of Swansea Training College. Crown 8vo. 289 pages. $1.25. This book is devoted to the exposition of teaching as a Technical Art, founded on experience, philosophical principle and scientific observation. In the Introduction the author adopts Milton's definition of " a complete and generous education," but points out that the school teacher is really only one factor in physical, moral, and intellectual culture, and that, even to be efficiently so, he has need of professional training. His aim must be directed to secure the utility, discipline, and pleasure of the taught as results of exercised activity. The author takes up in successive chapters — (1) Order, Attention, and Discipline, and gives rules applicable to the regulated and successful exercise of these that they may become habitual ; (2) Oral Questioning — how to proceed with and succeed in it, and what to avoid while engaged in the process ; (3) Object Lessons — what to aim at in giving them, and how to accomplish the intended result ; (4) Reading, Spelling, Writing, and Arithmetic — how they should be taught, and the relative merits of various methods of procedure ; (5) English, including Composition, Grammar, and Literature ; (6) Geography, and how to make the teaching of it educative and valuable ; (7) History, and the methods of giving it a living (not a bookworm) interest ; (8) the Education of Infants — as a speciality. [From the New York Nation.'] Salmon's contributions to elementary school literature are many and valu- able. It suffices to mention his "Object Lessons," "School Grammar," "School Composition," "Stories from Early English History." He has now collected into the volume before us his views on the " Art of Teach- ing." The treatment of the subject is orderly, thorough, authoritative. He takes up first the fundamental matters of order, attention, discipline. Then comes a charming discussion of the art of oral questioning. Next follows an estimate of the claims upon attention of the main subjects of elementary study, with invaluable hints as to the teaching of each. The subjects treated are : Reading, Spelling, Writing, Arithmetic, English, Geography, History. This is, indeed, familiar ground, but the treatment is so able, so acute, so com- prehensive, that there is constant variety and constant interest. A very valuable portion of the volume is the section of sixty pages on Infant Edu- cation. Not only are the history and development of the kindergarten here admirably discussed, but the original and valuable contributions of England to the Education of young children are set forth. Most wise and helpful is Salmon's discussion of the best ways of teaching the elementary studies. This portion of the book is a true teachers' manual. It is a genuine pleasure to commend without qualification this admirable manual. It is a worthy companion to Fitch's "Lectures on Teaching," and, like that book, ought to be on every teacher's shelf. H. C. Missimer, Superintendent of Public Schools, Erie, Pa.: — "I have read Salmon's ' Art of Teach- ing,' and believe it to be the best work on the subject yet published. It is simple, direct, clear, practical, and has evidently been written by one who has had experience with every problem and difficulty of the school- room. Longmans, Green, & Co's Publications. 5 A New Manual of Method. By A. H. Garlick, B.A., Head Master of the Woolwich P. T. Centre. Crown 8vo. New Edition. 398 pages. $1.20.* Contents : School Economy — Discipline — Classification (Grading) — Notes of Lessons — Class Teaching — Object Lessons — Kindergarten — Arithmetic — Reading — Spelling — Writing — Geography — History — English — Elementary Science — Music. The experience of the author in the teaching of School Method has led him to believe that young students require much more help in this subject than is offered in existing manuals, and that it is essential that the informa- tion contained should be offered in its most serviceable form. His experi- ence has shown that no book is suitable unless it is comprehensive in its range, practical in its nature, and modern in its methods. For this reason all the subject-matter in this book has been carefully methodized, and much of it thrown into teaching form — the form which is most difficult to young teachers to acquire, and the most useful in practice. This work is based on the writer's teaching notes during the past ten years ; and as it grew to meet the wants of his own pupils for their recur- ring examinations, it is believed that it will be found specially suitable for teachers and students. William H. Maxwell, City Superintendent, New York, in the Educa- tional Review; — " . . . He treats of all the subjects in the elementary curriculum. . . . The conspicuous merits of the book are its clear- ness, its conciseness, and its fullness. If a teacher is at a loss to know how to teach an important point, — say in arithmetic, history or geography, — he has only to open this book at the appropriate heading, and he will find an excellent method of presenting it, which, if he has any ingenuity, he can easily adapt to his own uses. If he is in doubt about a matter of discipline, such, for instance, as how to treat a case of obstinacy, he will find the different kinds of obstinacy classified, and the appropriate treatment sug- gested for each kind. In short, the book is a vade mecum which the teacher should no more think of reading through than he would of perusing the dictionary from cover to cover, but which he will do well to consult when confronted with a difficulty. . . . " J. J. McNulty, Professor of Philosophy, the College of the City of New York: — "In our pedagogical course, we are using Garlick's Manual of Method as a practical guide for students intending to teach. The remark- able success of our candidates for state and city licenses, and the satisfac- tory results of the examinations in methods of teaching, I attribute, in large measure, to the interesting manner in which the various subjects are pre- sented by Mr. Garlick." Nation, New York : — " It is the best manual of its scope in English." The Independent, New York : — " The notes given on all these topics are those of a master, and of a master from whom any teacher in these grades of instruction might be glad to receive suggestions." Professor Carla Wenckebach, Wellesley College, Wellesley, Mass.: — ■ " It is excellent. No teacher can do without it." 6 Longmans, Green, & Co's Publications. Teaching and Organisation. A Manual of Practice, with Especial Reference to Secondary Instruc- tion. Edited by P. A. Barnett. Crown 8vo. 438 pages. $2.00. The object of this Manual is to collect and co-ordinate for the use of students and teachers, the experience of persons of authority in special branches of educational practice, and to cover as nearly as possible the whole field of the work of Secondary Schools of both higher and lower grades. The subjects treated in the 22 chapters are as follows : The Criterion in Education — Organization and Curricula in Boys' Schools — Kindergarten — Reading — Drawing and Writing — Arithmetic and Mathematics — English Grammar and Composition — English Literature — Modern History — Ancient History — Geography — Classics — Science — Modern Languages — Vocal Music — Discipline — Ineffectiveness of Teaching — Specialization — School Libraries — School Hygiene — Apparatus and Furniture — Organization and Curricula in Girls' Schools. A Manual of CIay=Modelling for Teachers and Scholars. By Mary Louisa Hermione Unwin. With 66 Illustrations and a Preface by T. G. Rooper, M.A. Balliol College, Oxford. i2mo. $1.00. The course set forth in this Manual is suitable for children of six or seven years of age and upwards. It is a great advantage to young children to learn to handle the clay and to become accustomed to using it. They may begin with the simplest objects, such as beads, round or flat, of different sizes ; cherries with string or wicker stalks ; a sausage, or cigar ; a small saucer, or a basket, a bun, or an open pea-pod with loose peas in it made separately ; a pat of butter, or a cottage loaf, are also suitable. For the work of advanced pupils, or for the higher classes in schools, more difficult subjects may be attempted. Kindergarten Guide. By Loi's Bates. With numerous Illustrations, chiefly in half-tone, and 16 colored plates. Crown 8vo. 388 pages. $1.50.* In addition to a full description of the kindergarten gifts and occupations, the book shows how ordinary subjects may be taught on kindergarten principles. Churchman, New York: — "A long needed hand-book for the kinder- garten teacher. . . . The whole course of instruction is elaborately explained with full illustrations, so that the teacher possesses, in this i2mo volume, a complete compendium for her work." Journal of Education, Boston, Mass.: — " Never before has there been so full, varied, and detailed a treatment of the subject from the standpoint of teacher, parent, and child. No family in which there are little children should be without this sum of all kindergarten virtues." Longmans, Green, & Co's Publications. 7 Games Without Music for Children. By Lois Bates, author of "Kindergarten Guide," etc. i2mo, cloth. 112 pages. $0.60.* Contents : I. Games for the School Room — II. Games for the Play- ground — III. Guessing Rhymes. The object of these games is to introduce variety when it is needed in the ordinary school routine, and to form a means of recreation to the children when unfavorable weather makes the usual playtime impossible. Briefs for Debate on Current, Political, Economic, and Social Topics. Edited by W. DuBois Brookings, A.B., and Ralph Curtis Ring- walt, A.B. With an Introduction on "The Art of Debate," by Albert Bushnell Hart, Ph.D. Crown 8vo. With Full Index. 260 pages. $1.25. In use as a text-book in Harvard University, Columbia University, Uni- versity of Pennsylvania, University of Michigan, and other leading insti- tutions. " I cannot resist telling you that ' Briefs for Debate' has proved itself to be one of the most useful books in the library. We use it constantly in connection with the High School work." — C. K. Bolton, Librarian, Public Library, Brookline, Mass. The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Phil= osophy. By William James, LL.D., Professor of Psychology in Harvard Uni- versity. Large crown 8vo. Cloth, gilt top. 349 pages. $2.00. Historical Survey of Pre=Christian Education. By S. S. Laurie, A.M., LL.D., of the University of Edinburgh. New Edition. Crown 8vo. 423 pages. $2.00. Dean Russell, Teachers Col- lege, Columbia University : — "The book is practically the only one we can use in our courses on History of Early Education." Martin G. Brumbaugh, Com- missioner of Education, Puerto Rico : — " I have used it . . . with great success." Arnold Tompkins, State Nor- mal University, 111.: — " I am a great admirer of Prof. Laurie and his work, . . . and will be glad to give it whatever recommendation and prominence I am able to give it." Recently introduced in the universities of Indiana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Colorado, Nebraska ; State Normal School at Oshkosh, Wis. ; Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences ; Columbia University, etc. Longmans, Green, 6r Co's Publications. Common Sense in Education. By P. A. Barnett, M. A. Crown 8vo. 331 pages. $1.50. This volume is based on a systematic course of lectures on the Practice of Education, which was delivered to Teachers during the last term of 1898. The lectures have been re-written and enlarged, and additional matter treated, so as to form a complete introduction to the study of current prob- lems of teaching and school practice. Such points of general theory are discussed as determine organization, curriculum, and schoolroom procedure. The subject of education is treated under the following general heads : — I. Lessons from the History of Education ; Warnings from Demonstrated Errors — 2. The Physical Basis of Education, and the Hygiene of Learning — 3. The General Discipline of Character — 4. Discipline in Instruction — 5. Curricula — 6. Audible Speech ; Native and Foreign Languages — 7. Liter- ature — 8. Science and Mathematics — 9. History and Geography — 10. The " Classical " Languages — 11. Special Studies and Examinations — 12. The Making: of the Teacher. Paul H. Hanus, Harvard Uni- versity, Cambridge, Mass. : — "I have looked the book through with much interest. While I cannot agree with all the author's views, I am glad to see that the book justifies the title. I shall take pleasure in calling the attention of students and teach- ers to it." Selections from the Sources of English History : being a Supplement to Text=books of English History, B.C. 55 — A.D. 1832. Arranged and edited by Charles W. Colby, M.A., of History in McGill University, Montreal. Crown $1.50. Ph.D., Professor 361 pages. Svo. Professor Max Farrand, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn. : — " The most satisfactory expression of opinion that I can make to you, I suppose, of Colby's Selections, is the announcement that I am so greatly pleased with it that I shall adopt it for use in my class in English History for next year." Professor Benjamin S. Terry, University of Chicago, Chicago, 111.: — "It is a good book, and something which the teacher of English History has long needed. I shall be very glad to use it in my own work." Julius Howard Pratt, Jr., Milwaukee Academy, Milwaukee, Wis.: — " It is very satisfactory to have books of this kind that give a glimpse at the original sources in a way to attract rather than to repel the young student." Professor Allen Johnson, Iowa College, Grinnell, Iowa: — "Let me add simply that I am greatly pleased with the presswork of this volume ; it is a pleasure to put so faultless a piece of work into the hands of students." Journal of Education, Boston : — "Few 'supplements' are as indis- pensable to the satisfactory study of any subject as is Dr. Colby's ' Selec- tions from the Sources of English History.' It is not too much to say that no teacher should conduct a class in English history without making constant use of this book." Longmans, Green, and Co's Publications. 9 Studies in American Education. By Albert Bushnell Hart, Ph.D., of Harvard University, author of '• Epoch Maps," " Introduction to the Study of Federal Government," etc. Crown 8vo, gilt top. 157 pages. $1.25. Beacon, Boston: — "Professor Hart is a keen observer and a pro- found thinker; he knows what Ameri- can education is, and he knows what it ought to be. . . . His whole treat- ment of the subject is vigorous and original. He has a most helpful article on the study of history, and another equally significant on the teaching of history in the secondary schools." Work and Play in Girls' Schools. By Three Head Mistresses. I. — Intellectual Education, including Humanities, Mathematics, Science, and ^Esthetics, by Dorothea Beale. II. — The Moral Side of Education, by Lucy H. M. Soulsby. III. — Cultivation of the Body, by Jane Frances Dove. Crown 8vo. 443 pages. $2.25. Hon. W. T. Harris, United States Commissioner of Education: — " The book suggests not only use- ful devices in the teaching of special branches, but abounds in profound discussions on the very nature of school education itself. I think you ought to bring this book to the atten- tion of our teachers by advertise- ments and circulars." A Teachers' Manual of Elementary Laundry Work. By Fanny L. Calder and E. E. Mann, of the Liverpool Training School of Cookery. Fcp. 8vo. 85 pages. $0.30.* Training of the Young in Laws of Sex. By the Rev. Hon. Edward Lyttelton, M.A. , Head Master of Hailey- bury College, author of " Mothers and Sons," etc. Crown, 8vo. 127 pages. $1.00. John Meigs, Principal of The Hill School, Pottstown, Pa.: — "You deserve the thanks of parents and schoolmasters the world over for publishing this book." Boyhood: A Plea for Continuity in Education. By Ennis Richmond. Crown 8vo. 154 pages. $1.00. Derby Mercury : — "We are quite sure that this book will prove very helpful, especially to mothers, upon whom, after all, mainly rests the re- sponsibility of guidance in the early days of childhood." Through Boyhood to Manhood : A Plea for Ideals. By Ennis Richmond, author of " Boyhood : A Plea for Continuity in Education." Crown 8vo. 200 pages. $1.00 io Longmans, Green, & Co's Publications. Exercises in Geography. First Series. — Elementary Exercises in General Geography. Special application to North and South America. By C. H. Leete, A.M., Ph.D., Fellow of the American Geographical Society, Head Master Dr. Sach's School for Girls, New York. With a colored Map. i2mo. Cloth. 66 pages. $0.40.* %* An edition for the use of teachers, with special Notes and Suggestions upon the use of the Exercises, has also been prepared. Price, cloth, $0.50. The object of these exercises is first to introduce into the early years of Geography Study a training in close observation, in recording facts and in making deductions. The exercises offer material for connected lessons leading from the observation of single details to the preparation of a com- plete description of a large and complicated subject. The pupils are led to collate the facts for themselves, and write their own descriptions. They learn as they work: the result of this is the power of perceiving essential facts, and of recording what is seen. The exercises are based upon Long- mans' New School Atlas, which is the principal material in the hands of the pupils from the age of nine to twelve. A prospectus of Longmans' School Geography and Longmans' New School Atlas, with specimen maps, and a pamphlet on the Study of Geogra- phy, will be sent to any teacher on request. Hints to Teachers and Students on the Choice of Geographical Books for Reference and Reading, with Classified Lists. Prepared at the request of the Geographical Association by Hugh Robert Mill, D. Sc, F.R.S.E.F.R.G.S., etc. i2mo. $1.25. *£* The object of this book is to place before teachers and students a selection of the best available books on Geography. Object Lessons in Geography. By T. F. G. Dexter, B.A., B.Sc, and A. H. Garlick, B.A. Crown 8vo. 328 pages. $1.10.* An attempt is made in this book to teach the Elements of Geography by means of Object Lessons. The book is furnished with illustrations, and a chapter is added on " Hints on the Making of Geographical Models." The Teaching of Drawing. By I. H. Morris, Art Master. With 675 Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 267 pages. $1.50. The object of this manual is to provide a fairly complete course of methodical teaching in drawing. The book contains 675 illustrations, which have been specially drawn for the purpose. The freehand examples, which are mostly shown in stages, may be divided into three sections, viz., Conventional Ornament, Plant Forms, and Common Objects. Considerable space is devoted to the teaching of Scale Drawing, Model Drawing, and Solid Geometry, as these parts of the subject require the most skillful and intelligent teaching. Longmans, Green, & Co' s Publications. n Longman's Object Lessons. Hints on Preparing and Giving- Them. With full Notes of Complete Courses of Lessons on Elementary Science. By David Salmon, Principal of the Training College, Swansea. Revised and Adapted to American Schools By John F. Woodhull, Professor of Methods of Teaching Natural Science in the Teachers College, Columbia University. 152 Illustrations. i2mo. 246 pages. $1.10.* Part I — Hints on Preparing and Giving Lessons : Should Science be Taught ? — When should Science Teaching Begin ? — Subjects of Lessons — Matter of Lessons — Notes of Lessons — Illustrations — Language — Questions — Telling and Eliciting — Emphasis — Summary — Recapitulation. (Pp. 1-36.) Part II. Notes of Lessons : First Year. — (a) Lessons on Common Properties, (b) Lessons on Common Animals, (c) Lessons on Plants. Second Year. — {a) Lessons on Common Properties, (b) Lessons on Animals. (r) Lessons on Plants. Third Year. — (a) Lessons on Elementary Chemistry and Physics. (b) Lessons on Animals, (c) Lessons on Flowers. Fourth year. — (a) Lessons on Elementary Physics. (b) General Lessons on Natural History, (c) Lessons on Elementary Botany — Notes of a Lesson on the Cat. — Index. (Pp. 41-238.) A four years' course in science is here scheduled that embraces botany, zoology, chemistry, and physics. The four subjects are studied throughout the course, the lessons being graded to suit the intellectual development of the child. Throughout the book new knowledge gained is made the stepping-stone to something higher, co-ordinating not only the facts of any one science, but also the various sciences themselves. The process of comparing objects in order to determine their similarities and differences, as a basis of classification, is an important feature of the book. Elementary Science Lessons. Being a Systematic Course of Practical Object Lessons. Illustrated by Simple Experiments. By W. Hewitt, B.Sc. Parts I., II., III., and IV. Each, $0.50.* This course of elementary science lessons is designed and arranged spe- cially for the purpose of developing and training the minds of young children. Each book might stand by itself or be combined with any other course of lessons, being general and fundamental in its character. The course forms a continuous and connected system of practical object lessons running throughout the whole of the elementary school course and developing into the more specific experimental science teaching of the higher standard. A Course of Simple Object Lessons for Infants. In two Series. By W. Hewitt, B.Sc. Second edition. i2mo. Each Series, So. 20.* i2 Longmans, Green, & Co's Publications. American Teachers* Series. Messrs. Longmans, Green, & Co. have the pleasure to announce that they have arranged for the publication of a series of books for the guidance and assistance of teachers in elementary and secondary schools, and of students in normal schools and teachers' colleges ; to be published under the general title of American Teachers Series. The series will be under the general editorship of Dr. James E. Russell, Dean of Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. The following volumes are now in preparation ; others will be announced from time to time: Latin and Greek. By Charles E. Bennett, A.B., Professor of Latin in Cornell University, and George P. Bristol, A.M., Professor of Greek in Cornell University. Crown 8vo. About 350 pages. With a colored map, bibliographies and index. $1.50. English. By George R. Carpenter and Franklin T. Baker, Pro- fessors in Columbia University. Manual Training. By Charles R. Richards, Professor of Manual Training in Teachers College ; late Director of the Department of Science and Technology in Pratt Institute. History and Civics. By Henry E. Bourne, Professor of History in the Western Reserve University. Mathematics. By J. W. A. Young, Ph.D., Assistant Professorof Mathe- matical Pedagogy in the University of Chicago. Chemistry and Physics. By Alexander Smith, Assistant Professor of General Chemistry in the University of Chicago, and Edwin H. Hall, Professor of Physics, Harvard University. Biology (Nature Study, Botany, and Zoology). By Francis E. Lloyd, A.M., Professor of Biological Science, and Maurice E. Bigelow, Instructor in Biological Science, both of Teachers College. Specimen Examination Questions in English. Set for admission to several leading Colleges and Scientific Schools in 1899 and 1900. The aim of this pamphlet is to guide preparatory teachers as to the kind of knowledge expected of candidates for admission, and will be sent to any teacher upon request. Supplies for classes can be obtained at a nominal rate ($2.00 per hundred copies), if desired. Messrs. Longmans, Green, & Co., will be happy to send their Catalogue, describing more than 1,000 text-books and works of reference, to any teacher on request. Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 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