Class ^ UBaMJU 
 
 Book_ A'VIS--^ 
 
 Copyist N" . 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSnV 
 
LESSONS 
 
 PSYCHOLOGY 
 
 E. HELEN HANNAHS, A. B. 
 
 Teacher of Psychology 
 
 IN THE 
 
 New York State Normal College, Albany 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 BRANDOW PRINTING COMPANY 
 
 ALBANY, N. Y. 
 
 1908 
 
U^VOS"! 
 
 W 
 
 
 IwoOoplB* rtetuj.^.' 
 
 APh 30 lyOB 
 
 Copyright, igo8 
 By E. Helen Hannahs 
 
J- 
 
 A, 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE lessons are designed particularly for the use of 
 teachers and those who are studying to be teachers. 
 The principles of psychology, however, as here presented 
 show the bearing of the subject in the affairs of daily life, 
 and for this reason it is hoped that the book will be of 
 interest as well to others. 
 
 Though it has not been customary to follow the plan 
 of the Lesson-Unit in teaching above the grades, I have 
 ventured to arrange my material according to it, since 
 that material is for the most part elementary. And long 
 experience has confirmed my opinion that it is helpful in 
 all work in the classroom to follow in spirit, at least, each 
 day the general plan of the three steps of preparation, pre- 
 sentation, and application. 
 
 In using the lessons in the classroom teachers will find 
 many of them as given too long for one day 's work. A week 
 is not too much time to spend in reaching, for example, the 
 law of associations here developed in the first lesson. For the 
 formulation of this law pupils will be interested to trace 
 in class and outside many trains of association and to talk 
 about them familiarly as they do about the facts of nature 
 or mathematics. And in most of the subjects, indeed, 
 pupils may spend profitably a much longer time than one 
 lesson in watching, giving, and discussing their experience 
 before they are led to generalize. 
 
 A great amount of practice is necessary, moreover, to 
 accustom one's self, say, to trace trains of association, to 
 find first members, to realize when one has omitted mem- 
 bers, — in short, to become really familiar with the process 
 of watching the stream of thought from the standpoint of 
 
4 Preface 
 
 associations and to establish the habit of observation. The 
 lessons are quite without meaning unless this detailed ob- 
 servation is persistently continued. 
 
 Psychology to be of value to a teacher or to any one 
 else must be a habit of mind. Such a knowledge as one 
 gains in reading a technical book on the subject when 
 one says of a fact, " Yes; that is true; I'll remember it," 
 might be called an assenting knowledge. A few facts 
 gained in this way no doubt become available in guiding 
 daily life, but not a large enough number to pay for the 
 time spent in this mode of study. 
 
 If, on the other hand, a person sets earnestly to work 
 to master his own thought processes, the ways of his mind, 
 he will soon accumulate a mass of observations, which in- 
 deed '* are not in themselves science, but without which 
 there is no science " for him. The kind of knowledge of 
 psychology that he can make out of this material is the 
 kind that is valuable, the kind that is available daily and 
 hourly in the schoolroom and everywhere. It is not just 
 formal, academic information about a text-book, it is 
 rather knowledge of the subject in our hearts and lives- 
 willed, professional wisdom. 
 
 The lessons are offered then, not with the aim to present 
 theories of psychology, nor yet to record the progress that 
 has been made in the science. There has been no attempt 
 even to classify the material logically. The purpose of the 
 book is rather to indicate one way in which by the study of 
 his own experience a person may gain a working idea of 
 some of the simple, general, and commonly accepted truths 
 of mind. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 Associations 
 
 Lesson I, The Law of Associations. 10; Lesson II, A Study of Identical 
 Elements in Trains of Association, 11; Lesson III, Analysis of 
 Associations, 18; Lesson IV, Correlations, 21; Lesson V. Defini- 
 tion of Associations, 24. 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Sensations 
 
 Lesson I, Definition of Sensations, 29; Lesson II, The Sense of Sound, 
 35; Lesson III, The Sense of Sight, 41; Lesson IV, Taste and 
 Smell, 50; Lesson V, Touch, Muscular, Temperature, and Organic 
 Sensations, 55. 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 Perception 
 
 Lesson I, Definition of Perception, 63; Lesson II, The Outer and 
 Inner Orders of the Stream of Thought, 68; Lesson III, 
 Inferences in Perception, 73. 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 Memories 
 
 Lesson I, Retention, 80; Lesson II, Reproduction, 86; Lesson III 
 Recognition, 91; Lesson IV, Memory Training, 95. 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Apperception 
 
 Lesson I, Definition of Apperception, 102; Lesson II, Learning, 106; 
 Lesson III, Teaching, 111; Lesson IV, The Lesson-Unit, 116; 
 Lesson V, Training the "Powers of Observation," 122. 
 
6 Contents 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 Thought 
 
 Lesson I, The Syllogism, 125; Lesson II, Valid Syllogisms, 131; Lesson 
 III, Conception, 134; Lesson IV, Induction and Deduction, 145. 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 Attention 
 
 Lesson I, Definition of Attention, 153; Lesson II, Control of the Atten- 
 tion, 160. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Imagination 
 
 Lesson I, Imaging and Imagination, 168; Lesson II, Cultivating Imagi- 
 nation, 172. 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Will 
 
 Lesson I, Will Action, 184; Lesson II, Feelings, 190; Lesson III, Desires 
 196; Lesson IV, Character, 203. 
 
Lessons in Psychology 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 ASSOCIATIONS 
 
 Lesson I 
 
 THE LAW OF ASSOCIATIONS 
 
 Preparation Step.— I. There is no better place to begin 
 the study of psychology than your own mind, and no bet- 
 ter method to follow than that of constant observation of 
 what takes place there. Suppose then that you study your 
 stream of thought, say, from the standpoint of the law of 
 associations. 
 
 II. Surely you have noticed occasional trains of asso- 
 ciation. To gain a working idea, however, of the law, you 
 must make a business of watching what passes through 
 your mind. For convenience in analyzing it, regard your 
 stream of consciousness as though it were all made up of 
 successive trains of associations, each one interrupting the 
 preceding one, and trace, trace, trace your fleeting thoughts 
 morning, noon, and night ! 
 
 III. After having observed these trains of associations 
 for a time, begin to write out lists of them. Recall the 
 ideas that have helped to make your stream of thought for 
 the last half hour and write them out somewhat in this 
 way: (I just looked to see what time it was.) 
 
 (1.) A visual image of the clock-face; 
 
 (2. Thought words) Eight o'clock; I must do^ my 
 
 errands ; 
 
8 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 (3.) A secondary (recalled) visual 
 
 image of a shop I must visit. 
 
 Another series : 
 
 (1.) Temperature sensations of hot 
 
 coffee in my mouth and throat; 
 (2, Thought words) How good this hot coft'ee is! 
 (3. Thought words) It is such a luxury to have it hot. 
 
 A third series: 
 
 (1.) ' Organic sensations in my lungs; 
 
 (2. Thought words) This room is very close; 
 (3. Thought words) I'll open the window; 
 (4.) Group of secondary (recalled, in- 
 
 ner) muscular sensations mak- 
 ing the idea of myself as turning 
 and opening the window. 
 A fourth series: 
 
 - (1.) A group of sound sensations; 
 
 (2. Thought words) Miss S. is opening the door; 
 (3.) Group of secondary color sensations 
 
 making an image of Miss S. 
 opening the door; 
 
 (4. Thought words) She always opens the doOr so 
 gently. 
 
 Trace in this way twenty trains of association an hour. 
 
 IV. For convenience in tracing your thoughts count each 
 outer experience as No. 1. Almost always No. 2 will be 
 thought words naming, or identifying No. 1. Then may 
 follow secondary visual images or images in the terms of 
 any sense or more thought words. We may have any number 
 almost of trains of association on the same subject, and also 
 
Associations 9 
 
 we may change the subject in each successive member of 
 a train of associations. You will notice, moreover, that 
 sometimes the series are very long, sometimes so short and 
 quick, so fleeting that they hardly seem to have been in 
 consciousness at all. 
 
 V. What the relation is between brain and mind nobody 
 has ever determined. It seems certain that when thoughts 
 are in the mind the blood is circulating in the brain, and for 
 given thoughts in consciousness the same part of the brain 
 apparently is always flushed and stimulated. Do you re- 
 member the appearance in the sky of the aurora horealis? 
 A recent writer has likened to the motion of this flitting, 
 quivering light the shimmer and play of the activity of 
 blood in the brain and of its accompanying mentality, one as 
 subtle as the other. But though the relation between brain 
 and mind cannot be explained, one must realize that the 
 sensation blue is different from the vibration of brain-cells, 
 that a mental state is different from the activity of matter. 
 
 Presentation Step.— I. When we examine the parts of 
 one of these trains of association we are led to the question, 
 why should one group of sensations follow another? Why, 
 for example, should a certain group of color sensations 
 which makes the clock face be followed by the thought 
 words. It is eight o'clock? AA'^hy did I not think instead, 
 It rains, or China ? 
 
 The reason seems to be that sometime in the past I have 
 had this certain grouping of color sensations in my mind 
 before with the thought words, It is eight o'clock. Some- 
 time before, also, I had thought, At eight o'clock I shall 
 go out to do some errands. So now that I think. Eight 
 o'clock, the thought follows, I must do my errands. And 
 as I examine the members two and two of my trains of 
 association, I find in each ease that some or all of the ele- 
 
10 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 ments composing them have been in my mind together 
 before; I have been conscious of them as near in previous 
 time relations. 
 
 The law of associations then is, Mental elements that 
 have been together in mind before will return together 
 when some of them return, or, " When part of an idea 
 appears in consciousness, the whole appears." 
 
 II. Whatever other relations may be superadded, all 
 thought seems to be governed by this law. But though 
 stated in the terms of ideas, the law is really a description 
 of the way in which the elements of the brain and the 
 body are stimulated and respond. As Professor Titchener 
 says, " When two or three parts of the brain have been 
 excited together, in perception, a habit of co-excitation or 
 joint excitation is set up; so that if, later on, one of the 
 parts is excited alone the others will be involved also,— and 
 involved the more certainly, the more habitual the connec- 
 tion has been in perception." 
 
 The law is fundamentally one governing bodily elements, 
 the Law of Habit. 
 
 Application Step.— I. Watch your thoughts constantly; 
 jot down lists and think the law of associations with each 
 list. You cannot do this work by accident— you have to 
 think about it and make an effort to do it. 
 
 II. Watch different people to see how different their 
 response is under apparently the same stimulus. Watch 
 evidences of associations in children as shown in their 
 speech and acts. Watch animals to see to what extent 
 they are governed by the law of associations. 
 
 III. In sleep the minimum of blood is sent to the brain 
 and the mind is least active. We have not so many asso- 
 ciations, " we are only a fraction of ourselves." Trace 
 the associations in dreams. 
 
^ Associations 11 
 
 IV. Observe associations in conversations that you carry- 
 on and overhear. How much could you understand or say 
 if it were not for associations! 
 
 V. In the terms of associations, what is the process of 
 reading? Is it not the process of having trains of asso- 
 ciation, the first member of each of which is a visual image 
 of one or more script or printed words'? There is no 
 thought in a book, surely, no mental states like those in a 
 mind — "All we get from a book is what we bring to it " 
 arranged in new relations. 
 
 VI. Think over the gifts or photographs you have given 
 to friends lately. From the standpoint of associations, 
 why did you give them? 
 
 VII. Observe the kind of sensations that make up the 
 members of the trains of association. Are there visual 
 images, or groups of color sensations— so many that you 
 think habitually in the terms of sight? In other woras, 
 are you eye-minded? Or do you think more often in 
 thought words, that is, groups of secondary sound or touch 
 sensations? Determine whether your type is visual, audi- 
 tory, or tactual. 
 
 Lesson II 
 
 A STUDY of identical ELEMENTS IN TRxUNS OF ASSOCIATION 
 
 Preparation Step. — I. There will be suggestions for 
 our work in the schematic representation of the associations 
 between mental states. Let us picture these relations. 
 
 II. Recall and write lists of trains of association that 
 you have had to-day about the weather, the temperature, 
 the appearance of the sky, of the mountains; those that 
 you have thought about your meals, your food; those 
 starting in aches and pains, in hunger and thirst ; those 
 that you have noticed in connection with conversations. 
 
12 
 
 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 III. ^Yrite lists of the sensations that make up each 
 member of the trains of associations : For example, 
 
 (1. Sound sensations,; 
 
 < 
 
 noisy, 
 
 crunching (made by wheels 
 
 on snow), 
 creaking, 
 s(|ueaking, 
 loud sounds, 
 high pitched; 
 
 r Words incipiently spoken 
 (2. Thought words, ) How J in the terms of the mus- 
 
 cold it must be ! 
 
 (3. Secondary visual 
 image, ) 
 
 
 cles of the throat and 
 tongue ; 
 
 r Grays, 
 J reds, 
 
 "^ browns ( so grouped as to form 
 the snow-covered street). 
 
 and so on, for many trains. 
 
 IV. What do you mean when you say that A's portrait 
 is a good likeness, that it looks like his face? 
 
 The face, to you, is really a group of color sensations 
 arranged, or grouped in a definite way ; the portrait also 
 is a group of color sensations combined as nearly as the 
 artist can combine them in the same way that the similar 
 colors are grouped to make A's face. There are certain 
 colors and arrangements that are identical in your mind 
 to the two. In an oil painting, for example, there are 
 probably both colors and arrangements that are common 
 to face and portrait. In a blue-print, on the other hand, 
 there are no colors in comm(m, but the arrangement of 
 blues may have so much that is identical with the arrange- 
 ment of colors in the face that it is an excellent likeness. 
 
Associations 
 
 13 
 
 When we say that two different people resemble each 
 other, we really mean that their faces, reduced to color 
 elements and grouping, have certain points in common, 
 certain sensations or arrangements that are identical. 
 
 And so it is with all experiences that we call similar. 
 All similarity reduces to few or many identical elements 
 among diverse elemenfs. 
 
 Presentation Step.— I. Write (a) the lists and (6) the 
 elements for several trains of association somewhat as 
 follows : 
 
 (a) List: 
 
 (1.) Visual image of a calendar; 
 
 (2. Thought words) The eighth; I must send something 
 
 ior M 's birthday ; 
 (3.) What shall I send? 
 
 (4.) Secondary visual image of a box 
 
 of souvenirs ; 
 (5.) I might send that pillow-cover. 
 
 (&) The elements of this list in the order and relation 
 that they came to my mind are : 
 
 (Stream of Thought.) 
 
 (1. Visual image of 
 a calendar:) 
 
 (3. Thought words:) 
 
 (5. Thought words:) 
 
 f Grays 
 
 I reds, 
 
 I (so grouped as 
 
 [ to form 8.) 
 
 f The eighth. I 
 must send something 
 for M's birthday. 
 
 What shall I send? 
 
 f Greens, grays, 
 reds, browns 
 
 I might send that 
 [ pillow-cover. 
 
 (2. Thought words:) 
 
 (4. Secondary sight 
 sensations making a 
 box of souvenirs:) 
 
14 
 
 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 That is, I have now in mind as a primary experience a 
 visual image of a calendar. This image is composed of 
 grays so grouped as to form a figure eight. When I have 
 had that grouping in mind before it was part of another 
 mental state which was then completed by the thought 
 words, " The eighth, I must send something for M's birth- 
 day." The. thought of sending a gift had before been in 
 my mind as part of another mental state which was then 
 completed by the thought of deciding what I should send. 
 So that now when I think, " I must send something," the 
 thought follows, " AVhat shall I send?" and so on. 
 
 The elements identical to two mental states are pictured 
 as common to two braces. 
 
 II. A second graphic analysis: 
 
 (1. Visual Image of 
 a stranger's face:) 
 
 (3. Thought words:) 
 
 (Stream of Thought.) 
 
 f grays, 
 
 flesh tints, 
 I browns, grays (so 
 I grouped as to make 
 I part of Ruth S's face.) 
 
 flesh colors, 
 grays, 
 
 light browns 
 (so grouped as 
 to make the rest 
 ■ of Ruth's face.) 
 
 Ruth S. She's in 
 New York. She can't 
 be here; 
 
 (2. Visual image of 
 Ruth S's face:) 
 
 (4. Thought 
 words:) 
 
 I'll look again 
 more carefully. 
 
 ■In the above series I saw a stranger whose face resembled 
 Ruth S's face, that is, had elements in common with it. 
 When I saw the first face, ' ' quick as thought ' ' Ruth 's face 
 flashed into my mind with the thoughts that followed. 
 
Associations 
 
 15 
 
 III. A third graphic analysis: 
 
 (Stream of Thought.) 
 
 (1. Sound sensatioDs:) 
 
 (3. Secondary visual 
 image of the snowy 
 street:) 
 
 (2. Thought words:) 
 
 IV. Each train of associations reduces to the general 
 formula, 
 
 fa 
 
 (I.)' 
 
 I I (2.) 
 
 (3.) 
 
 (4.) 
 
 and so on. 
 
 The thoughts b, c, d, e, are the results in mind of the 
 excitation of the brain cells b', c', d', e'. The excitation 
 of the brain cells follows the path established by the law 
 of habit. 
 
 Application Step.— I. This plan of tracing and analyz- 
 ing trains of association leads to closer observation of 
 thoughts than that followed in the first lesson. By that plan 
 members and elements may often be omitted or overlooked. 
 By studying out always the elements of identity between 
 each two groups, one finds a larger number of thoughts 
 and thus learns more about his mind. 
 
 II. Professor Titchener calls these identical elements 
 ' ' stepping stones, " as it is by means of them that we pass 
 from one idea to another. Thomas Hobbes, a great Eng- 
 lish philosopher, showed that it is by these common ele- 
 ments that we may ' ' perceive the way of this wild ranging 
 
16 
 
 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 of the mind, and the dependence of one thought upon 
 another. ' ' 
 
 III. I may have had a hundred or more visual images of 
 the capitol. But though I speak of them all as " the 
 capitol," each one differs in some details from all the 
 others. I do not think the same thoughts after any two of 
 them. Each different visual image that I call " the capi- 
 tol " has elements that have been in my mind before with 
 thought words, — sometimes, perhaps, with " the east 
 front ; ' ' again with, ' ' How badly discolored the south walls 
 are ! ' ' And still again with, ' ' I must return that book to 
 the capitol library," and so on. In each case the elements 
 making the dift'erent visual images of the capitol had been 
 in my mind before with the thought words that followed. 
 Graphically I thought. 
 
 (1. Visual image of 
 the capitol,) 
 
 grays. 
 
 (grouped to make 
 the east front.) 
 
 (2. Thought words.) 
 
 (1. Visual image of 
 the capitol,) 
 
 The east front 
 
 f grays, 
 
 ! (grouped to make 
 I the discolored 
 I south side,) 
 
 The south side 
 is badly dis- 
 colored 
 
 (2. Thought words;) 
 
 (1. Visual image of 
 the capitol,) 
 
 grays, 
 
 (grouped to make 
 
 the library windows.) 
 
 I must return that 
 book to the 
 capitol library. 
 
 (2. Thought words,) 
 
 IV. We have, in other words, what might be called mul- 
 tiple associations with the capitol', and not only with the 
 capitol but with many, many other facts, people, and ex- 
 periences of all kinds. 
 
 The business of education may be regarded as to develop 
 proper multiple associations. Study each day's lesson 
 
Associations 17 
 
 that you teach with the idea of establishing the material 
 in many trains of association, of " multiplying cues." 
 
 V. What is the explanation of forgetting, say, a person 's 
 name? Is it not that we cannot recall a thought having 
 elements identical with the mental state of which the name 
 forms a part, that we cannot get on the right train of as- 
 sociation ? In other words we cannot come upon a thought 
 that has been in mind before with the name. 
 
 In our endeavor to find an identical element we go over 
 the alphabet, recall the scenes and circumstances of meet- 
 ing the person and all we know about him. Then perhaps 
 an hour later, when we are thinking apparently of some- 
 thing wholly different, we come upon the identical element, 
 and there is the name ! As the witty woman in " Dr. North 
 and his Friends " said, our thoughts are like Bo-Peep's 
 sheep. " Let 'em alone and they'll come home, a-bringin' 
 their tales behind them." 
 
 VI. It is convenient in observing and analyzing our 
 thoughts to speak of them as though they were separate 
 entities, just as w^e think of the separate atoms of matter, 
 Our stream of thought, however, is not broken or divided 
 into units, it is itself a unit; as Professor James says, 
 ' ' Thought is not jointed, it flows. ' ' 
 
 VII. I must urge you to persevere in the practice of trac- 
 ing trains of association and, also, artificial as it may seem 
 at first, 'in seeking the identical elements between their 
 different members. There is no kind of observation and 
 study that shows us so much about our mind as this study 
 of associations. If you were learning botany you would 
 not find it trivial or irksome to analyze many plants 
 minutely. Put the same amount of effort and patience in 
 this work. 
 
18 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 Lesson III 
 
 ANALYSIS OF ASSOCIATIONS 
 
 Preparation Step.— L By describing and making ex- 
 plicit the condition and process which make possible your 
 present thoughts you can vary your observation of as- 
 sociations. 
 
 II. Recall trains of association that you have had about 
 music heard recently; about people's voices, sounds in the 
 street, in the house. Recall what you have thought while 
 reading newspapers, magazines, signs, bill-boards, letters; 
 on seeing pictures, buildings, landscape, a river, a hill, a 
 tree, a head, a face, mannerisms, expressions, gestures. 
 
 Watch the association of acts with thoughts; as, (1.) 
 Visual image of a letter; (2.) I must mail that letter; 
 (3.) I'll put it where I can see it when I go out; (4.) Sec- 
 ondary muscular sensations of placing the letter on the 
 desk. (1.) Primary muscular sensations of rising; (2.) 
 Secondary muscular sensations of reaching out my hand 
 and placing the letter on the desk. (1.) Smell sensations of 
 smoke; (2.) What can be burning? (3.) I'll see. (1.) 
 Muscular sensations of rising; (2.) I'll look in the outer 
 hall first, — and so on. 
 
 III. Do you remember the first time you saw moving 
 pictures? An automobile? An electric launch? Recall 
 your first experience in hearing a phonograph, a pianola, 
 a telharmonium. 
 
 How did you identify these experiences? Did not some 
 one have to tell you what each one was? Or, had you not 
 read about a pianola, for example, picturing as you read 
 how it would look and sound, so that when you saw some- 
 thing that looked like the picture you could think the word 
 with the image again? 
 
Associations 
 
 19 
 
 Presentation Step.— I. Write (a) the list and (&) the 
 schematic analysis of several series. For example, 
 
 (a) (1.) Sound sensations of wheels creaking in the 
 
 snow; 
 (2. Thought words:) How cold it must be! 
 (3.) Secondary visual image, the frosty street 
 
 outside. 
 
 1^ noisy sounds, crunching, 
 (&) (1.) J creaking, loud, high in 
 I pitch, squeaking; 
 
 J How cold it must be ! 
 grays, 
 reds, 
 browns. 
 
 (2. Thought 
 words : ) 
 
 II. To make explicit the process by which it is possible 
 for me to have these thoughts : 
 
 Long ago in my childhood and many times since, I re- 
 member to have heard this peculiar creaking, crunching 
 sound of wheels in the snow when I have heard some one say 
 and have thought, How cold it must be ! Now that I hear 
 sounds of this peculiar quality again, I think (not, red 
 chimneys, nor anything else, but just the thought that has 
 been with this peculiar quality of sound before) How cold 
 it must be! When I have thought. How cold it must be! 
 before, I have seen the street as it looks on a frosty morn- 
 ing. So now that I think the words. How cold it must be ! 
 they are at once followed by a secondary visual image of 
 the frosty street. 
 
 III. Again, I have the series, (1. A song in parts) musi- 
 cal sounds; (2.) Incipient humming of one of the parts 
 
20 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 with the singer; (3. Thouoht words) This humming is 
 what listening is. I'm listening to one part. 
 
 I once learned that the process of hearing sounds, of 
 listening is one of incipiently imitating the sounds in the 
 throat. When I heard one part of the musical sounds, I 
 incipiently reproduced the sounds in my throat ; When I 
 had had the thought of hearing that voice before at a 
 certain time I had thought, I '11 listen to it ; so now that I 
 hum to myself with the voice, I think, This hunmiing is 
 listening. I'm listening to one part. 
 
 IV. Analyze thus many trains of association explaining 
 with each two members that it is possible for them to come 
 back together now because they have been together before 
 and recall if possible the certain definite time when they 
 were together formerly. 
 
 Application Step.— I. Think out associations in which 
 you image different acts. The thoughts, for example, of 
 the words that I am to write are followed by inconceivably 
 fleeting secondary groups of touch, muscular, and joint 
 sensations that make before I write each word the image 
 of my act in writing. These associations were established 
 when I learned to write. 
 
 II. Our muscles perform many acts for us as a result of 
 established bodily associations, or habit, without conscious 
 direction or with only a little thought. Watch these bodily 
 associations constantly. 
 
 III. What have you thought recently on seeing a flag? 
 A steeple? College colors"? Recall the time when these 
 associations were established. 
 
 IV. Why build church steeples? What do they mean? 
 Why put out flags? Of what value would a visible symbol 
 be if nobody had any associations with it? 
 
Associations 21 
 
 V. If there were no visible signs, monuments, memorials 
 of people, events, and ideals, from the standpoint of asso- 
 ciations what should we miss? 
 
 VI. What is the value of associations to us emotionally 
 and as related to interests? 
 
 VII. What difference does the work of Burns, Scott, and 
 Carlyle make in our interest in Scotland! What associa- 
 tions have writers added to places in our own country? 
 What associations has history established around places 
 and people that you know ? 
 
 VIII. " The man who, from poverty of mental back- 
 ground, is stirred by none of these things " (associations 
 that come on a visit to the homes of Milton, Wordsworth, 
 and Shakespeare, to Stirling Castle,) " misses an influence 
 on character and a stimulus to conduct which are of incal- 
 culable value. A soldier whom I met some time ago told 
 me that, when he was a young subaltern, and was getting 
 slack, as he expressed it, he was pulled together by a pithy 
 but effective remark of his superior officer. ' Take care,' 
 he said: 'you're forgetting Wellington, and the history 
 and traditions of the army.' There's many a lad who has 
 been spurred to his best endeavor and restrained from a 
 mean or ignoble act, by the flashing across his mind of 
 the name and figure of one of his heroes in history or in 
 fiction." (" Psychology for Teachers," C. Lloyd Morgan.) 
 
 Lesson IV 
 
 CORRELATIONS 
 
 Preparation Step.— I. The law of habit governs the 
 way in which our thoughts come back always. There is 
 often, moreover, besides the relationship of mere con- 
 tiguity, or nearness between mental states, another relation 
 superadded. 
 
22 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 II. The following lists will serve to illustrate this kind of 
 relation : 
 
 a. (1.) Smell sensations; 
 
 (2. Thought word) perfumery; 
 (3.) Where does it come from? 
 (4.) Ill look around the car to see. 
 
 6. (1.) Visual image; 
 
 (2.) That is a young Italian girl in the seat back of me. 
 (3.) Maybe she has some perfumery on. 
 
 c. (1.) Sound sensations; 
 
 (2. Thought words) What sweet voices those Italians 
 have ! 
 
 d. (1.) Visual image of bent handle of a mirror; 
 (2.) That must be to rest the mirror on. 
 
 e. (1.) Visual image of a young lady; 
 
 (2.) Secondary visual image of Ruth S. ; 
 
 (3. Thought words) Ruth S. ; But Ruth S. is in New 
 
 York. She can't be here; 
 (4.) I'll look again more closely. 
 
 /". (1.) Visual image of the same young lady; 
 
 (2.) No style about her hair and hat; 
 
 (3.) Ruth is so good looking ! 
 
 (4.) This is surely not she. 
 
 g. (1.) Visual image of part of a pin; 
 
 (2.) Secondary visual image of the rest of it. 
 
 Presentation Step.— I. In a, between 1 and 2, the re- 
 lation in my thought is more than just that of contiguity; 
 it is one of cause and effect. Between 2 and 3, there is 
 superadded the relation of source, and also in &, 2 and 3 ; 
 between a, 3 and 4, the relation is purpose; between c, 1 
 and 2, substance and attribute ; between d, 1 and 2, design ; 
 
Associations 
 
 23 
 
 between e, 1 and 2, resemblance ; between /, 2 and 3, con- 
 trast, and between g, 1 and 2, subordination (part and 
 whole). 
 
 II. In mere nearness, contiguity of mental states, there 
 is no real relation. The correlations indicated above, on 
 the other hand, are real mental relations. 
 
 III. As to their nature, they have been regarded by some 
 writers as differing from contiguity in kind; by others, as 
 complex evolutions of simple contiguity. Whatever their 
 origin may be, correlations are real experiences, and they 
 are the relations, the associations, of the higher forms of 
 thought. 
 
 IV. Because these associations face both ways (we may 
 pass from cause to effect or effect to cause, from part to 
 whole or whole to part) they are correlations. 
 
 The principal correlations that the intelligence finds 
 among its objects are those of: 
 
 1. Coexistence 
 
 2. Succession 
 
 3. Subordination <; 
 
 4. Resemblance 
 
 5. Causation 
 
 6. Design-utility. 
 
 time 
 coinherence 
 
 time 
 space 
 
 '^ genus and species 
 essence and property 
 whole and part 
 quantity 
 proportion 
 
 r resemblance 
 ' identity 
 I difference 
 
 (J. ]\r. Baldwin, 
 Psychology.") 
 
 Hand-book of 
 
24 Less<,)Ns in Psychology 
 
 Application Step.— I. Watch constantly for correla- 
 tions in your trains of association. 
 
 II. Imagine a mind whose thoughts are governed by con- 
 tiguity only, a stream of thought in which there are no 
 correlations. 
 
 III. Which kind of associations, contiguity or correla- 
 tions, enables a parrot to talk! A child"? An adult? 
 
 IV. Which kind is involved in learning to spelH In 
 learning the facts of history, of aesthetics? In the process 
 of muscular training? In playing the piano? In house- 
 keeping? In banking? 
 
 Which kind is involved in passing an examination? 
 Which is required for scientific knowledge? Which kind 
 is it more valuable to make, more educative? 
 
 V. Compare your memory for facts merely contiguous 
 in time and space, such as the number of days in the month, 
 the position of Batavia on the map of Java, with your 
 memory for facts really correlated, such as your knowledge 
 of the science you know and love best. 
 
 VI. Read all the books on psychology to which you have 
 access on the subject of associations, not so much to learn 
 the book as to learn the subject. 
 
 Lesson V 
 
 DEFINITION OF ASSOCIATIONS 
 
 Preparation Step.— Here are some lists I have just 
 noticed : 
 
 a. ( 1. ) A group of color sensations ; 
 (2. Thought words,) Blue pencil. 
 
 &. (1.) Sound sensations; 
 
 (2. Thought words,) Miss P. ; 
 
Associations 25 
 
 (3.) Secondary visual image of Miss P. in another 
 
 room; 
 ^4. Thought words,) She must be working. 
 
 c. (1.) Sound sensations; 
 
 (2, Thought words,) She said " Don't close the 
 
 door. ' ' 
 (3.) I '11 leave it open ; 
 (4.) I'll ask her what mail there was. 
 
 • d. (1.) Sound sensations of my own voice ; 
 (2. Thought words) Was there any mail? 
 
 e. (1.) Sound sensations (of Miss P's voice) ; 
 (2. Thought words) Not for you. 
 
 (A little time ago I had this one :) 
 
 /, (1.) Visual image of a calendar. 
 
 (2. Thought words) The eighth. I must send some- 
 thing for M 's birthday ; 
 (3.) AVhat shall I send? 
 
 (4.) Secondary visual image of a box of souvenirs; 
 (5.) I might send that pillow-cover. 
 
 Presentation Step.— I. How many of these thoughts 
 could I have had without associations? In a I could not 
 have known the name of the object. In 6 I could not have 
 " known " the sounds, nor could I have thought of the 
 person. In c I could not have planned to do as I did. In 
 d and e I could not have asked the question, nor could I 
 have understood the answer. 
 
 II. In general, without associations a person could not 
 think of the name of anything he saw or of any person ; 
 he could not converse with people, as he could not think 
 what to say in answer to their questions, nor could he 
 even understand what they said; he could not read; he 
 
26 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 would not know his own name, his own home, and friends ; 
 he could not remember what he had done, nor could he 
 make plans for the future. 
 
 III. To contrast our imagined condition without asso- 
 ciations with our real condition with associations always 
 present : we should have a succession of isolated, discon- 
 nected primary sensations coming along like so many 
 beads dropping one by one from a box, instead of the con- 
 nected flow that we do have, in which the sensations come 
 in a previously established, organized, interrelated net- 
 work of infinite complexity. Our stream of thought seems 
 to be made up of first, a primary group of sensations of 
 sight, sound, or some other sense, followed by one or more 
 secondary groups in previously established relations, in- 
 terrupted by another primary group, which in turn is fol- 
 lowed by secondary groups, always ordered, connected, 
 continuous all day long, all night long, and all our lives 
 long. All elements of our stream of thought are related, 
 none is isolated. We may then formulate this definition : 
 
 IV. The relations between the elements of our mental 
 life that secure for us continuity of thought are associations. 
 
 Application Step.— I. It is this fact of association that 
 makes us educable. If our organism were not governed by 
 its law, we should be worse off than animals and even than 
 plants, both of which are governed by the same law. And 
 indeed the atoms of inorganic matter must be conceived as 
 ordered in the same manner, for does not. a well-worn gar- 
 ment become trained to fit us? 
 
 As Professor James says, " Your pupils, whatever else 
 they are, are at any rate little pieces of associating machin- 
 ery. Their education consists in the organizing within them 
 of determinate tendencies to associate one thing with an- 
 other, — impressions with consequences, these with reactions, 
 
Associations 27 
 
 those with results, and so on indefinitely. The more copious 
 the associative systems, the completer the individual's 
 adaptations to the world. 
 
 " The teacher can formulate his function to himself 
 therefore in terms of ' association ' as well as in terms of 
 ' native and acquired reaction.' It is mainly that of 
 huilding up useful systems of association in the pupil's 
 mind. This description sounds M'ider than the one I began 
 by giving. But, when one thinks that our trains of associa- 
 tion, whatever they may be, normally issue in acquired 
 reactions or behavior, one sees that in a general way the 
 same mass of facts is covered by both formulas. * * * 
 ' Those laws ru)i. the mind.' 
 
 " To grasp these factors clearly gives one a solid simple 
 understanding of the psychological machinery. The 
 ' nature,' the ' character,' of an individual means really 
 nothing but the habitual form of his associations. To break 
 up bad associations or wTong ones, to build others in, to 
 guide the associative tendencies into the most fruitful 
 channels, is the educator's principal task." (" Talks to 
 Teachers. ' ' ) 
 
 II. Some one has said, and I think that was Professor 
 James, too, that an uneducated man is nonplused by all 
 but the most usual circumstances. 
 
 This statement means, for one thing, that the uneducated 
 man has not been caused to interrelate, correlate, and as- 
 sociate in right relations, or classify what knowledge he 
 has, so that his thought can be nimble, flexible, supple. 
 What he knows is not readily available, here to become a 
 resource, there to point a .joke, and again for use in an 
 emergency. 
 
 III. " * * * association of ideas is intimately related to 
 strength of character; when close connection is established 
 among an abundance of related thoughts, one is likely to 
 
28 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 be quicker, safer and firmer in the decisions he reaches. 
 When we reflect that life consists of a continual debate, 
 that in all matters, whether of morals or business, men are 
 called upon to weigh evidence, to balance pros and cons, 
 then to act, we see the extent to which the relationship 
 among ideas must influence conduct. No matter how much 
 a man may know, if he cannot think of it when it is needed, 
 if he cannot mass it quickly against a temptation, or if he 
 cannot have the benefit of it all in passing a judgment, he 
 practically knows less and is a weaker man than he 
 might be. 
 
 ' ' School education can help to remedy that defect. Since 
 the rapidity and completeness of reproduction of ideas are 
 known to depend upon the closeness of relationship among 
 them, upon the extent to which they are built into chains, 
 or series, or networks, one of the first duties of the in- 
 structor is to weave the knowledge that he imparts into one 
 web. Thereby character is greatly strengthened." (Frank 
 McMurry, Ph.D., Concentration, " The First year Book of 
 the Herbart Society.") 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 SENSATIONS 
 
 Lesson I 
 
 DEFINITION OF SENSATIONS 
 
 Preparation Step. — The different parts, or members of 
 trains of association are groups of sensations. In this les- 
 son we shall study these elements. 
 
 I. As a preparation for the study, name the sensations 
 in the objects about you and in your thoughts somewhat 
 like this: 
 
 The sensations that make my table now are browns, grab's, 
 greens, and yellows. 
 
 I hear the children in the street ; the elements that make 
 this experience are sounds of the peculiar quality of chil- 
 dren's voices, high in pitch, shrill, loud, and sometimes 
 musical. The sounds of the electric car that I recall hear- 
 ing yesterday are harsh, loud, metallic, and noisy. The 
 temperature sensation of some beads near my hand is cool ; 
 my pen, warm. The touch of the beads is smooth in places, 
 rough in other places. 
 
 I recall the organic sensations connected with a church 
 that I entered; they are close, stuffy, and stale. 
 
 Notice every hour and write lists of many sensations, 
 both primary and recalled, in your stream of thought. 
 
 II. We may think of the nervous system as a single 
 organ made up in general of two parts, (1) the lines of 
 nerve-fibres radiating in pairs to all organs of the body and 
 to every part of its surface from (2) the spinal and cere- 
 bral centres. 
 
30 Lessons in I^sychology 
 
 The function of the lines of nerve-fibres is to carry ex- 
 citation, or " nerve impulse " to and from the end organs 
 on the one hand and on the other, the spinal and cerebral 
 centres. In the cerebral centres are effected the redistri- 
 bution of impulses. 
 
 AVhat the nature of nerve change in conduction is is not 
 fully known. It seems probable that it is mechanical 
 (vibratory), chemical, and electrical, all three. 
 
 III. If the air were colored red so that you could see it, 
 would it not seem to be more really matter! It is some- 
 times difficult to realize that this invisible substance all 
 around us has weight, that it is impenetrable, inert, and, in 
 short, is as really matter as is the table, the house, or the 
 Avater of the river. Yet such a realization will help you 
 very much in studying what precedes sensations. 
 
 IV. To think the conditions of the Atomic Theory into 
 matter about you will also be a help to you. 
 
 Try to realize that the ink and paper of the book, your 
 hand, your clothing, and everything in the room as well 
 are each and all actually made of minute particles, no two 
 of which are in intimate contact, and all of which are in a 
 state of vibration. If you quicken the rate of vibration of 
 the molecules, you will raise the temperature and increase 
 the volume. If this rate is increased still further, the par- 
 ticles will be driven farther and farther apart till, unless 
 chemical change takes place, a solid becomes a liquid and 
 the liquid, a gas. If chemical change does take place, the 
 elements resulting from decomposition become liquid or 
 gaseous. If the rate of vibrati(m of the molecules in a 
 given gas be decreased, its temperature will fall and its 
 volume grow less until its form becomes liquid and finally 
 solid. 
 
 Study concretely all matter about you in the terms of 
 this theory. In how many states may each kind exist? 
 
Sensations 31 
 
 V. The Atomic Theory says that no two molecules of 
 matter, as the paper, are in close contact. In the spaces 
 between the molecules, called pores, is supposed to be an 
 imponderable substance, ether, which, though it has none 
 of the properties of matter, we think as existing. Ether 
 seems to occupy all the spaces that are not filled by matter, 
 those between us and the heavenly bodies as well as in- 
 termolecular spaces. 
 
 Presentation Step.— I. I just heard a bell ring, that is, 
 I had a group of sound sensations. Think what had to take 
 place before I could hear these sounds: 
 
 The first thing was the striking together of two pieces of 
 metal, the clapper and the bell, in such a way that vibra- 
 tions of a rapid rate were started in both the bell and the 
 clapper. Next, these vibrations, or waves were transmitted 
 in straight lines by means of the air and other matter in 
 all directions from the bell. Imagine these spheres of mo- 
 tion moving out from the bell as a centre through the air, 
 the walls, the earth, and everything in their way. In the 
 course of time some of this motion reaches my ear-drums, 
 is transmitted through the parts of my ears to my 
 auditory nerves, and thus to certain cells in the tem- 
 poral lobes of my brain. So far there have been only 
 vibrations of matter. Now, apparently, a wholly new 
 result takes place, in that I have a sensation of sound 
 in my mind. 
 
 No one has yet explained how vibrations of matter are 
 turned into a mental state, a sensation. We have to accept 
 the experience as a fact without any explanation. The re- 
 sult then of this particular kind of brain excitation is a 
 sensation of sound in my mind. 
 
 II. Let us study next a sensation of smoothness, the 
 touch of my pen : 
 
32 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 As my finger tip moves over the pen, changes take place 
 in the terminals of the nerves of touch in my skin. This 
 excitation is transmitted along the length of the nerves 
 of touch through my arm, body, and spinal cord to certain 
 brain cells, and the result in my mind is sensations of 
 smoothness. 
 
 III. What takes place in order that we may have a sen- 
 sation of color is rather more complex. It is perhaps some- 
 what as follows : 
 
 I see the color green of my blotter. The vibrations we 
 are concerned with here originate in the solid particles of 
 carbon in a lamp flame. As compared with those that vi- 
 brate when the result is sound, these particles are vibrating 
 at an intense rapidity. The waves thus started are trans- 
 mitted in straight lines in all directions from the vibrating 
 particles in the flame by the medium ether. Some of the 
 vibrations are reflected from the blotter, though at a 
 changed rate, through my eye, — its lenses and humors to 
 the retina. Excitation is set up in the optic nerve and 
 brain cells, and the result in my mind is the sensation 
 green. 
 
 It is probable, also, that when the source of vibration is 
 the sun or any other body in intense enough vibration, the 
 process and medium are the same. 
 
 IV. We have studied what takes place when we have 
 sensations of sound, touch, and color only. W^hat occurs 
 in case of the other kinds of sensation is probably anal- 
 ogous. When the sensations are secondary, (recalled, inner) 
 though the end organs and nerves seem not to be excited, 
 the brain-cells are active. 
 
 In each case noticed the analysis of what precedes a sen- 
 sation ends with the words. " the result in mind (of the 
 cerebral excitation) is a sensation of sound, color, or touch. " 
 
Sensations 33 
 
 A generalized form of this statement may be accepted as 
 the definition of a sensation : 
 
 The result in mind of cerebral excitation is a sensation. 
 
 Application Step. — I. Imagine your condition without 
 color sensations. In what terms must a blind man do his 
 thinking'? How would you think the thoughts of the last 
 hour without sound sensations'? Suppose that you had no 
 sensations at all ! 
 
 II. Observation of the sensations that you use in think- 
 ing will soon show you that there are many more kinds than 
 just those of the five senses of the older psychology. The 
 ' ' five gates of Mansoul ' ' are no longer adequate to furnish 
 our complex mental life. Besides the sensations of these 
 senses, we have those from the organs of the body, that is, 
 organic sensations (such as tooth-ache, closeness, fatigue, 
 hunger), sensations of temperature, pressure, and those 
 from the tendons and joints. 
 
 III. The body is like a quivering, sensitized sounding- 
 board, each sense of which responds to its own rate of stim- 
 ulus. Though not all stimuli result in active consciousness 
 as discriminated sensations, or mental states, each modifies 
 the others -and is in turn modified by them, so that the 
 stream of thought at any moment is the resultant of all the 
 bodily stimuli. 
 
 IV. The fact that different sensations are the mental 
 results of different rates of vibration in matter seems to 
 indicate that the different senses had a common origin. 
 And indeed such is apparently the case. 
 
 The spinal cord and the entire nervous system are be- 
 lieved to have developed from the external embryological 
 layer, the skin, and all the higher senses have arisen as 
 gradually differentiated and specialized forms of touch, the 
 "mother tongue" of the senses, 
 3 
 
34 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 V. Why do we not hear sounds from the sun,, Jupiter, or 
 the " morning stars?" 
 
 VI. Suppose your auditory nerve had always vibrated at 
 the same rate : Would there have been a sensation result- 
 ing from this particular excitation ? 
 
 We must think that there would not. Change seems to 
 be necessary to attract our attention. In fact, all sensation 
 might be defined as " consciousness of change." " The 
 chain of consciousness is a sequence of ditferents " (S. 
 Hodgson, " The Philosophy of Reflection "). 
 
 VII. Here again, as in the study of associations, the cau- 
 tion is necessary that, though for convenience in analysis 
 we have spoken of sensations as if they were separate real- 
 ities, perhaps somewhat like the atoms of matter, they 
 must not be thought of as such. 
 
 " No one of them " (mental elements) " can live out of 
 that particular thought, any more than my head can live 
 off of my particular shoulders. In a sense a soap-bubble has 
 parts; it is a sum of juxtaposed spherical triangles. But 
 these triangles are not separate realities; neither are the 
 'parts' of the thought separate realities. Touch the 
 bubble and the triangles are no more. Dismiss the thought 
 and out go its parts. You can no more make a new thought 
 out of 'ideas' that have once served than you can make 
 a new bubble out of old triangles. Each bubble, each 
 thought, is a fresh organic unity, sui generis." ("Psychol- 
 ogy," Vol. I, W. James.) 
 
 VIII. Study your stream of thought as though it were 
 made entirely of sensational elements, that is, as though all 
 thinking and experience were in the terms of colors, sounds, 
 touches, tastes, smells, temperatures, and organic sensa- 
 tions. "All thought is the action and interaction of 
 sensations." 
 
Sensations 35 
 
 Someone has likened sensations to the letters of the al- 
 phabet, which have spelled out all of literature ; so our sen- 
 sations spell out for us all our experience, both inner and 
 outer, or primary and secondary. 
 
 Learn by daily study this alphabet of mental life;— name 
 and make lists of the elements of many trains of association. 
 Make lists also under each sense of as many sensations as 
 you notice, and analyze what precedes each. 
 
 Lesson II 
 
 THE SENSE OF SOUND 
 
 Preparation Step.— I. Name the sounds you have no- 
 ticed during the last hour. 
 
 II. The analysis of what precedes the sound sensations 
 of a piano I hear is as follows : Hammers controlled by 
 means of a mechanism through the keys of the piano are 
 caused to strike the wdres stretched over a sounding-board 
 in the piano case. The wires vibrate as a result, and the air 
 transmits the motion from them in all directions. Some of 
 the waves strike the sounding-board which so collects and 
 reflects them that they are intensified. As reflected these 
 waves travel in all directions through matter, that is, the 
 air, the floor, and the walls of the room and the house, and 
 some of them finally reach my ear. Excitation is set up 
 in the auditory nerve and brain-cells, and there is a result 
 in mind of sensations of sounds. 
 
 Go over again and again some similar analysis for your- 
 self, imagining vividly what takes place and tracing 
 with your finger the lines of vibration that come to 
 your ears. 
 
 III. Analyze what precedes many different sounds, as 
 voices, the wind, the rain. 
 
36 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 IV. How many people do you know by their voices? 
 Name all the differences you notice between voices, talking 
 and singing; between different bird notes, musical instru- 
 ments, bells, whistles, horns, doors, foot-steps, cars, ve- 
 hicles, machines. 
 
 V. Notice how accurately you can tell by sounds the di- 
 rection of objects, their distance, size, and material. 
 
 VI. What is the range of your speaking voice ! Of your 
 singing voice? How many octaves has your piano? 
 
 VII. How much do you care for music ? M^^hat are your 
 favorite songs? Musical instruments'? Recall what you 
 know about harmony. 
 
 VIII. Start separate lists of all the songs you know that 
 stir and inspire feelings of patriotism, courage ; of love of 
 home, nature, God. Classify other songs as those of war, 
 love, the cradle; folk-songs, children's songs, work songs. 
 
 What instrumental music has power to move you emo- 
 tionally ?— name the compositions and instruments. 
 
 Objects in PRESENTATION Step. — I. In the analysis of what prcccdcs 
 
 which vibra- • t i \ • i 
 
 tionsthat souuds you must havc noticed that a) sometnnes the waves 
 
 result in sound ■, n tt / • -i 
 
 originate. are Started m each of two solids struck together, (as m the 
 clapper and the bell) ; b) sometimes in liquids falling into 
 liquids, (as in a water- fall) ; and c) again, in a gas imping- 
 ing a gas, (as in thunder). Observe also that the vibrations 
 may originate d) from contact of any two different states 
 of matter, as when a solid and a liquid are set in motion by 
 contact (rain falling on the roof). 
 
 The objects in which vibrations originate that result in 
 sound are of matter in solid, liquid, or gaseous form. 
 
 Media for jj ^5. there must be some form of matter to vibrate in 
 
 waves that re- 
 sult in sound, order to start the motion that results in sound, so there 
 
 must be some form of matter to carry the vibrations. Since, 
 
 for example, the piano was in another house, the waves to 
 
Sensations 37 
 
 reach my ear had to travel through both the air and the 
 solid walls. 
 
 Strike the brush and soap together under water. Can 
 you hear them? The liquid must transmit the vibrations 
 part of the way. 
 
 Close the air passages of the ears with cotton for half an 
 hour. Do not vibrations from the house and street still 
 come to your auditory system through the ground, the 
 building, and the bony framework of your body? Do not 
 confuse -the jarring motions with sound oscillations. 
 
 Accustom yourself to detect the media for the different 
 vibrations that aft'ect your ear. 
 
 Matter in some form, solid, liquid, or gaseous is necessary 
 to transmit waves that result in sound. 
 
 III. The organ of the sense of hearing is composed of The organ of 
 
 .....,, , , • 1 11 t^^ sense of 
 
 three easily distniguishable parts, the outer, the middle, hearing, 
 and the inner ear. 
 
 Of these, the outer ear, a fold of skin and cartilage, re- 
 flects the air-waves and air-shocks into the hollow tube 
 which is closed by the tympanic membrane. 
 
 This membrane is thrown into vibration by the motion 
 of the air particles, and its motion is transmitted to a series 
 of three bones within the middle ear, a hollow in the tem- 
 poral bone. 
 
 Next adjoining the middle ear is the inner ear, a series 
 of hollows also in the temporal bone, a very minute struc- 
 ture and wonderfully complicated. 
 
 In some way excitation transmitted to the inner ear is 
 communicated to the auditory nerve and finally to ter- 
 minals in the temporal lobes of the brain. 
 
 The ear has been fancifully likened to a tiny piano with 
 a keyboard for the air to play on. 
 
 IV. All the knowledge that we get through the sense 
 of hearing is included under the term sounds. 
 
38 
 
 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 Probably all of the sounds that you have noticed are 
 complex, that is, they are made up both of noisy and 
 musical elements, and, depending upon the preponderance 
 of one or the other, are called noises or music. 
 
 1. Sounds the result in mind of a slow and irregular rate 
 of vibration are noises, (as, the pop of a soap-bubble, the 
 sound of a footstep) ; 
 
 2. Those, the result of rapid and regular ones are musi- 
 cal. Among the differences that should be noticed in 
 musical sounds are those in a) pitch, b) intensity, c) vol- 
 ume, and d) quality. 
 
 a). In pitch a sound is acute or grave. This character- 
 istic is found to depend on the number of vibrations in a 
 given time necessary to produce the sound, — the greater 
 the number, the higher the pitch. The gravest musical 
 sound audible is the result of about sixteen regular vibra- 
 tions the second. Jars or shocks slower than this rate are 
 not heard at all. The highest estimate of the limit of 
 acuteness places it at fifty thousand vibrations the second. 
 
 From the fact that there is a certain definite proportion 
 in the rate of vibration for musical tones, the science of 
 harmony is possible. 
 
 Though the ear- is susceptible to 11000 differences in 
 pitch, only about ninety are used in the musical scale, which 
 falls well within the vibration rates of 64 to 5000 per sec- 
 ond. The range of the music that we know is relatively 
 not many octaves higher and lower than that of the lipman 
 voice, perhaps because it all evolved from singing. Among 
 the great operas Lohengrin is interesting as the only one 
 written chiefly in the higher register. 
 
 b). By the intensity of a sound is meant its loudness or 
 softness. The amplitude of the waves in the vibrating source 
 determines this characteristic. The distance of the vibrating 
 
Sensations 39 
 
 source also makes a difference in the loudness or softness 
 of it. 
 
 c). The sounds you have noticed differ also in volume, 
 that is, in their amount, fullness, or quantity. One voice, 
 for example, is of less volume than a hundred voices— an 
 organ tone has greater volume than that of a piano. 
 
 d). But perhaps the most interesting difference in musi- 
 cal sounds to the amateur observer is that in quality. The 
 pitch and intensity of two voices may be the same, but it 
 is the peculiar quality of each that identifies it for us. 
 
 The explanation of this characteristic of sound is in the 
 fact that every vibrating body moves as a whole and at the 
 same time also in parts. The vibration of a body as a whole 
 results in its fundamental tone ; that of its parts, in over- 
 tones. The effect of the blending of these tones, different 
 for every substance, is the quality, or timhre of sounds. 
 
 Application Step. — I. How many differences in sounds 
 did you name in the Preparation-Step ? Classify those dif- 
 ferences now in something like this list : Differences in 
 sounds in 
 
 1. Pitch : High, low, shrill, grave, soprano, alto, con- 
 tralto, baritone, bass, flat, sharp, piercing, acute, deep. 
 
 2. Intensity: Penetrating, loud, soft, heavy, faint, 
 strong, powerful, timid, bold, strident, piano, forte. 
 
 3. Volume: Heavy, light, tiny, pipy, small, little, puny, 
 fine, full, rich, masculine, feminine, chest and head tones, 
 pompous, ineffective, bellowing, booming. 
 
 4. Quality: Musical, unmusical, noisy, sweet, harsh, 
 hoarse, fine, coarse, cornet-like, throaty, aspirate, guttural, 
 strident, flute-like, masculine, feminine, reed-like, silvery, 
 alto, soprano, tenor, bass, rumbling, slamming, clashing, 
 crashing, tearing, ripping, sonorous, crackling, rolling, pen- 
 
40 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 etrating, childish, bird-like, husky, rasping, nasal, chest 
 and head tones, gay, solemn, tinny, metallic, pleasant, 
 whining, having a tang, sharp, resonant, uncultivated, 
 breathy, sympathetic, mellow, flat, lifeless, squeaky, dry, 
 strained, dull. 
 
 II. Of musical instruments that we know the flute has 
 fewest overtones, and for that reason it is often regarded 
 Avhen played alone as rather colorless. The violin on the 
 other hand has many overtones and noise elements, and thus 
 infinite possibilities in character. 
 
 III. Analyze noises to determine tone elements (pitch) 
 in them. Some one says that the roar of a great city is in F. 
 
 IV. Think of ways in which we extend the sense of hear- 
 ing: Explain the megaphone; the ordinary speaking-tube; 
 the dentiphone ; the graphophone ; the electric telephone. 
 
 V. Do you see now why we do not hear sounds from the 
 heavenly bodies'? There is no air most of the way out, no 
 matter to transmit whatever waves there are from them 
 to us. 
 
 VI. Americans are much criticized for their lack of cul- 
 tivation in voice and speech. Richard Harding Davis tells 
 about ' ' the high public-school voice. ' ' The French people 
 at home, since they think we cannot speak our own lan- 
 guage, choose the English in preference to us to teach their 
 children English. In Henry James' judgment, " The parts 
 of our speech, the syllables of our words, the tones of our 
 voice, the shade of our articulation, are among the most 
 precious of our familiar tools." Here is much food for 
 thought for American teachers. 
 
 VII. " No genius is more precocious than that for music, 
 and with talent, progress during the early teens is often 
 prodigious. For the average youth there is probably no 
 such agent of educating the heart to love of God, home, 
 nature, and hence there is no aspect of our educational life 
 
Sensations 41 
 
 more sad than the neglect or perversion of musical training 
 from this, its supreme end. * * * Darwin holds that 
 music, instead of originating in speech cadences, as Spencer 
 thinks, sprung from and is reminiscent of the physchoses 
 of old courtships of a long past age.* * * Singing is the 
 most universal language, because it is the language of feel- 
 ing. Piety, patriotism, all the racial and domestic senti- 
 ments and love of nature can be thus trained. Teachers 
 of singing have drifted very far from the intent of nature 
 in this respect. Love, home, war, religion, country * * * 
 it is their lirst duty to preform in the heart. The merely 
 technical process of reading notes is a small matter com- 
 pared with the education of the sentiments." (G, S. Hall 
 " Adolescence.") 
 
 Lesson III 
 
 THE SENSE OP SIGHT 
 
 Preparation Step. — I. How many colors do you know 
 by name'? Write out the list. 
 
 II. If you had always been blind, how much of the world 
 about you should you miss ? Study it out at your leisure in 
 detail. 
 
 III. In order that I may see the red of a Christmas bell 
 at which I am now looking vibrations started in the sun 
 must come through the medium ether, undergo a change at 
 a certain part of their course, reach my eye, and set up 
 nerve impulse in my optic nerve and brain cells. Then 
 there is a result in my mind of the color red. 
 
 IV. How do different reds differ ? How is dark red made 
 in mixing paints? Light red? pink? purple? brown? If 
 possible, combine color disks on a wheel to analyze the com- 
 plex color effects of the clothing you have on and of objects 
 in the room. 
 
42 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 V. Do you ever see colors with your eyes closed 1 Recall 
 a blue-print you saw recently ; a grove of trees. Did you not 
 think these in blues, browns, and greens ? Study the images 
 carefully, as it takes a little time to realize that most of 
 us think often in the terms of secondary visual images, and 
 that even with the eyes open. Of what use are your eyes 
 in absolute darkness ? 
 
 VI. If a flame of hydrogen is burned in an atmosphere 
 of oxygen can you see it? Why must calcium be in- 
 troduced ? 
 
 VII. Notice the photographs mounted for a stereoscope : 
 they are not alike, but the lenses of the instrument so com- 
 bine them that they make one picture, and that one in 
 perspective. 
 
 How accurate is your estimate of distance by sight? 
 Study the photograph or the painting before you as a 
 group of colors representing distance. 
 
 VIII. Speaking and writing are familiar means of ex- 
 pression ; why might not drawing be as commonly used? 
 What advantage would it be to you to sketch as readily and 
 as effectively as you talk "1 What would the last letter you 
 wrote gain by illustrations? 
 
 Objects in PRESENTATION Step.— I. a. The vibratious to which the 
 
 which vibra- 
 tions that eye is sensitive may originate in solid matter (as in a glow- 
 result in color ' • » i • n 
 
 originate. iug coal ; solid particlcs of carbon m a flame of gas, oil, or 
 alcohol; red hot iron; the carbon of an electric light,) and 
 in certain liquids (molten glass, iron,); in certain sub- 
 stances not in combustion said to be phosphorescent ; in a 
 vacuum under certain electrical stimulus, and in some other 
 conditions not understood. 
 
 b. The source of most of the vibrations that make pos- 
 sible color for us is the sun. This body is matter in a state 
 
Sensations 43 
 
 of intense vibration and it gives off its vibrations in all 
 directions at all times. 
 
 We see all sides of the sun in the course of a year, though 
 we are on the side of the earth that is turned away from 
 the sun half of the day. Since there was not light enough 
 to see to follow the occupations of the daytime during this 
 half, we as a race have formed the habit of sleeping through 
 most of it. 
 
 c. Though only a few objects originate vibrations that 
 result in color, an innumerable number constantly reflect 
 these waves from every point of their surface. It is, in 
 fact, by means of reflected lines of vibration that we see 
 everything except the so-called self-luminous objects, that 
 is, those that are themselves originating the motion. 
 
 A surface that reflects all the vibrating rays unchanged 
 is a perfect mirror and is itself invisible. 
 
 II. a. The medium for vibrations resulting in sounds is Medium 
 matter in solid, liquid, or gaseous form. No one of these 
 forms of matter is necessary, however, to carry the waves 
 that result in color, though all three will allow them to 
 pass through under certain conditions. 
 
 jMatter that will allow all the vibrating ra.ys to pass 
 through is said to be transparent, and if it does not reflect 
 any vibrations cannot itself be seen. 
 
 b. Little is known of the medium that transmits the 
 waves to the eye. From their phenomena it seems probable 
 that they, the waves, conform to the same laws that govern 
 like conditions in the sense of sound, therefore we speak as 
 though there Avere a medium analogous to matter and we 
 call it ether. 
 
 Ill a. The eye is a combination of lenses which bend the Organ, 
 vibrating rays of ether so that they may be brought to a 
 focus on the retina, the true nervous end organ of sight. 
 
44 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 These lenses are a development of layers of the skin. The 
 retina, which lines the back part of the eye-ball, is a bit of 
 the brain pushed out to meet the particular physical excita- 
 tion to which it is sensitive. 
 
 The eye-ball is moved in its socket by six strong muscles. 
 
 b. The effect of having two eyes is that we see our world 
 in perspective. A simple experiment will show you some- 
 thing of the mechanism of this phenomenon: 
 
 Hold your left hand six inches in front of your face with 
 the palm facing toward the right, the thumb toward your 
 face. With the left eye closed draw what the right eye 
 sees of the hand. Next, without moving the head or hand, 
 draw what the left eye sees. These pictures are not alike. 
 Through the right eye you saw the thumb and palm, 
 through the left, the thumb and back of the hand. 
 
 Observe many objects in the room through each eye sep- 
 arately, and you will find that the pictures on the two 
 retinae are never just alike. 
 
 Now these two images are always combined by the eyes 
 in such a way that there is in the mind one image, and 
 that is in perspective. We wear a stereoscope all the time, 
 only it is a natural one, and as a result we say that we 
 see a third dimension in our world. 
 Knowledge. I^- &• The result of the stimulus of the optic nerve is in 
 
 general brightness and color of varying intensity. All our 
 visual experience may be reduced to the following simple 
 elements : 
 
 1. Colorless light elements, white, gray, and black — (in 
 
 evolution, the primitive experience, dating back to 
 the eye-specks of jelly-fish). 
 
 2. Red, yellow, green, blue— (later, more complicated in 
 
 race experience, the results of vibrations from 440 
 billions to 790 trillions per second). 
 
Sensations 45 
 
 b. From your observation of colors you will no doubt 
 have been astonished at the multiplicity of them required 
 to make your world. Most of this great number seem not 
 to differ fundamentally from each other, but to have re- 
 sulted from the combination of the few simple elements 
 named above. 
 
 c. A color is pure, or saturated in proportion as it is free 
 from all admixture with other colors. The colors that we 
 see in nature and that we use in clothing, decoration, and 
 art are rarely pure. Without combination with both black 
 and white a pure color would seem crude and bizarre, and 
 usually other colors, as well, enter into the complex. 
 
 d. There is no science of colors corresponding to that of 
 musical sounds, harmony. 
 
 Application Step. — I. Though we cannot hear sounds 
 from the heavenly bodies, we can see their light. The vi- 
 brating rays that they originate or reflect are readily trans- 
 mitted " through ether " to us, and we see the glories of 
 an innumerable host. 
 
 II. We extend the sense of sight by the artificial lenses 
 that we wear over our eyes, as eye-glasses and spectacles. 
 Explain opera glasses ; a telescope ; a microscope. 
 
 III. What is the influence of sight on other senses ? Com- 
 pare your enjoyment of music when you cannot see the 
 musicians with that when you can; of speaking when you 
 cannot see the speaker with that when you can. 
 
 It is noticeable that those who become blind lose their 
 appetite. Think how much sight adds to our enjoyment 
 of the table. 
 
 IV. Correspondences between color and sound : 
 
 a. Both are the result in mind of vibration, sound of 
 rates from 16 up to 50,000 the second; color, of rates up 
 in the billions and trillions. 
 
46 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 b. Sensations of simple noise in sound correspond to sen- 
 sations of brightness in sight. 
 
 c. The rapidity of the periodic rate makes the ditit'erence 
 in the pitch of sounds ; in sight, it makes the difference in 
 colors, the red end of the spectrum corresponding to the 
 grave tones, the violet to the shrill tones. 
 
 V. According to the theory of evolution, the race is 
 evolving toward insensibility to the red end of the spec- 
 trum and, on the other hand, to greater sensibility to the 
 violet end. 
 
 In support of the theory it is noticed that savage races 
 have been found having names only for black, white, and 
 red. They have not yet evolved to a knowledge of blue. 
 
 Color blindness, moreover, is blindness to red. Savages 
 are rarely color-blind (only one in twenty) ; civilized races 
 are losing their sensitiveness to the red end of the spectrum 
 (one in five of those tested for positions on railways fail 
 through ignorance or absolute color-blindness). On the 
 other hand artists and those trained in color see violet in 
 all nature and as a part of all color experience. 
 
 An experiment made with a group of men and women 
 showed that of 30 men, 10 to 3 preferred blue to red ; of 
 30 women, 4 to 5 preferred blue to red. Since woman is 
 more generic than man, this result was regarded as further 
 confirmation of the theory that we are losing sensitiveness 
 to the red end and gaining sensitiveness to the violet end 
 of the spectrum. 
 
 VI. At first thought it would seem that besides colors we 
 see distance, form, shape, size, and position. Yet the optic 
 nerve does not respond in different ways (that is, rates) 
 for colors one yard away and for the same colors five yards 
 distant; for a square object and a spherical one; for a 
 large object and a small one. 
 
Sensations 47 
 
 We know the distance, size, and shape of the table as 
 compared with those of the wall by the associations we 
 have established with different groups of colors before. 
 When the given groups of colors are in mind, we think at 
 once. The wall is farther away than the table ; the table is 
 not so broad as the wall and is square. 
 
 VII. Remember that to be blind is not always the same 
 as to be in darkness. Though a child sees colors he is 
 blind to many objects, forms, and distances, because the 
 given colors are not discriminated and correlated with other 
 parts of his experience. 
 
 A blind man on first having his " sight restored " is as 
 blind as he was before. To be sure his optic nerve is as- 
 sailed by as many stimuli as ours is, but he has a long and 
 complex process of establishing associations to go through 
 before he can have in his mind a definite group of colors 
 followed by the thought, ' ' my cat " or " the floor. ' ' 
 
 Did you ever think how convenient it is to be able to see 
 objects at a distanced Suppose we had to depend on touch 
 and sound alone in judging distance. 
 
 We have always to remember that it is not the eye but 
 the mind that sees. 
 
 VIII. How many colors did you find that you knew by 
 name ? 
 
 It seems that naming makes a difference in knowledge of 
 color. It was found by experiment that when three differ- 
 ent shades of gray were exposed, the subject on seeing each 
 one alone later readily identified it. But when two addi- 
 tional shades were inserted among these three, making five 
 graduated grays, the subject was not sure of any one when 
 it was shown alone. When, however, the shades were 
 marked 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, the subject later readily identified 
 each one. 
 
48 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 The conclusion drawn is that if we knew more color 
 names, that is, if there were names and we learned them of 
 more of the colors that we see, we should be able to remem- 
 ber and use a greater number of them and should have 
 greater thought power in everything that involves imaging 
 in color. 
 
 It is said that the workers in mosaic in the Vatican must 
 have distinguished as many as 40,000 colors. Frederick 
 Tracy found in his examination of child vocabularies, a 
 few years ago, that out of 5400 words known to children 
 only about 30 are color terms. 
 
 We have not only no science of color but also no system 
 of naming colors that is in any measure adequate to our ex- 
 perience. It is to be hoped that some ingenious mind will 
 devise such a system for the benefit of kindergartens and 
 primary and intermediate grades. There is much, meantime, 
 that can be done in training the color sense of children. 
 
 IX. If one knew more, that is a larger number, of color 
 sensations rightly correlated, what difference would it make 
 in his ability to think? 
 
 Surely he would have more power in those lines involving 
 color and a knowledge of color. But multiplicity of sensa- 
 tions alone, notice, does not make all the difference; their 
 relations as well must be considered. Imagine a mind with 
 the color discrimination of an artist, the knowledge of 
 sounds of a musician, and the sensitiveness to touch of the 
 blind, and all these systems adequately correlated in the 
 higher forms of thought. What about its power? Would 
 the person having such a mind be a better statesman, me- 
 chanic, son, than he would be were he blind and deaf? In 
 what ways? 
 
 The two senses of sight and hearing certainly supply 
 material greatly superior to that of the others for elabora- 
 tion into ideational proeesses. 
 
Sensations 49 
 
 Yet education must guard against arrest of development 
 in that stage of advancement when sensation is the pre- 
 dominant mode of thought. Among races this condition 
 is illustrated by the Indians. The excessive training of 
 their senses seems to have had the effect of stultifying their 
 later and higher power of thought. 
 
 X. The study of genetic psychology shows that the best 
 time for sense-training and development of the powers of 
 observation (that is, supplying a large potential of sensa- 
 tions in right relations) is probably before nine years of 
 age. The spontaneous curiosit^^ and love of nature that 
 characterize childhood, the ' ' native tendencies ' ' of the 
 period offer a wonderful opportunity for such training. 
 
 XI. Then again at adolescence occurs a distinctly differ- 
 ent phase of sense development and training. The medulla- 
 tion of new associational fibres in the brain and the almost 
 spontaneous outburst of the great wealth of the emotional 
 nature modify the problem of teaching here fundamentally. 
 
 ' ' There is, no doubt, an important change in the relative 
 prominence of the different senses in our psychic life at 
 this stage (adolescence) with its new emotions, interests, and 
 apathies. Adolescent years mark the golden age of sense, 
 which is so prone to become sensual if uncontrolled. Then 
 -the soul exposes most surface, as it were, to the external 
 world. The eye gate and ear gate especially are open their 
 widest, and not only that, but the feeling tone and the gen- 
 eral sense feeling, so largely independent of perception, 
 are also at their best, so that the possibilities of knowing 
 our world and acquiring experience on the one hand, and 
 of lapsing to a life of indulgence, are now most developed." 
 (G. S. Hall, "Adolescence.") 
 
50 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 Lesson IV 
 
 TASTE AND SMELL 
 
 Preparation Step.— L To get material for the gener- 
 alizations of this lesson, let us take the smell and taste sen- 
 sations that go to make up a single meal— for example, 
 breakfast : 
 
 Suppose we start with grape fruit: It has a faint fra- 
 grance, a sweet taste, a slightly bitter taste, and a some- 
 what sour taste, also a peculiar flavor. Suppose cereal with 
 cream comes next: The cereal has a salty taste, is sweet, 
 and has the peculiar flavor of oatmeal ; the cream is sweet 
 and has a flavor peculiar to it. Both have slight but char- 
 acteristic odors. The next course is, say, bacon and baked 
 potatoes with coffee and rolls. The bacon has a pungent 
 odor and a smoky flavor; both it and the potatoes have a 
 salty taste, and the potatoes have a flavor peculiar to them 
 as well as an odor. The coffee has a characteristic odor, 
 a flavor, and a sweet taste. 
 
 II. a. In order to have the sweet taste of the sugar in the 
 coffee particles of the solution must come in contact with 
 the nerve terminals in the tongue. Excitation peculiar to 
 the gustatory nerve is set up, brain-cells are changed, and 
 the result in mind is the taste sensation sweet. 
 
 b. The smell of coft'ee: When the coffee was boiled a 
 true gas was given oft' into the air. Matter is minutely 
 divisible and widely dift'usible, so that tiny particles often 
 travel through small openings and long distances. Thus 
 minute particles of the coffee traveled through several 
 rooms, keyholes, and small cracks, and were breathed into 
 the nostrils with the air. They came in contact with the 
 terminals of the olfactory nerves, which are distributed in 
 
Sensations 51 
 
 the mucous membrane lining the nasal passages, set up an 
 excitation in the nerves and brain-cells, and the result in 
 mind is a sensation of the odor of coffee. 
 
 III. After you have observed carefully many substances 
 that have taste, make experiments with them. Try tasting 
 meats, vegetables, and fruits (all minced, so that their 
 peculiar resistance and touch sensations shall not identify 
 them) with the nasal passage stopped. You will find that 
 celery, steak, and many other foods have no "taste" 
 left. 
 
 IV. Observe carefully all the sensations in connection 
 with what you eat at every meal. 
 
 V. What difference does a cold make in your enjoyment 
 of the table ? 
 
 VI. Experiment to find the differences in sensitiveness 
 of different parts of the tongue to svigar; to salt, vinegar, 
 and quinine. 
 
 VII. Make lists of the other substances besides foods that 
 have tastes and smells. 
 
 Presentation Step. — I. a. The tongue, especially its The sense 
 sides and the tip and back of its upper surface, the forward organ, 
 surface of the palate, and sometimes other parts of the 
 mucous membrane lining the mouth cavity are sensitive to 
 taste stimuli. 
 
 b. Not all parts of the tongue furnish us given sensations 
 with equal sensitiveness. The tip seems to be particularly 
 sensitive to sweet and salt, the sides to sour. Some sub- 
 stances, furthermore, such as saccharine, produce one taste 
 in one part of the mouth and a different one in another. 
 
 c. In masticating food relish for it increases from tht' 
 tip to the back of the tongue, an inducement that has 
 evolved with us to keep the morsel moving backwards till 
 it is swallowed. 
 
52 
 
 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 Objects. 
 
 Knowledge 
 
 d. The sense of taste seems often to improve through life 
 and sometimes to develop to an exquisite degree of sensi- 
 bility in old age. 
 
 II. To stimulate the nerve terminals in the tongue mat- 
 ter must be soluble in water or saliva and must be in 
 contact with the tongue. If the tongue is dry, no taste 
 sensation is possible. 
 
 III. a. There seem to be only four taste elements, salt, 
 sour, sweet, and its opposite bitter. 
 
 b. Another class of sensations peculiar to the tongue, 
 though more complex than these four since they involve 
 touch, are those like alkaline, astringent, fiery, acrid, 
 metallic. 
 
 c. All these sensations, however, are not enough to cover 
 our experience with food. What we loosely speak of as 
 different tastes are often complexes of odors, motor exper- 
 iences, pressures, pains, visual elements, and sensations of 
 temperature with a far more limited number of taste ele- 
 ments than we ordinarily suppose. 
 
 The sense of 
 smell. Organ. 
 
 IV. a. Because of the difficulty in localizing within the 
 nostrils the areas of the olfactory nerve terminals, little is 
 really known of the physiological conditions of smell. 
 
 Exhaustion of the nostrils for certain continuous smells 
 seems to show that different parts of the end organs, as 
 in taste, are affected by distinct stimuli. 
 
 b. Each nasal cavity opens at its farther end into the 
 pharynx, and it is through this passage that gaseous par- 
 ticles from the mouth enter the nostrils to stimulate the 
 smell sensations, flavors, that so often seem to be a part of 
 the taste of our food. 
 
 c. The human brain is far less developed in its olfactory 
 centres than the animal brain. The power of discrimina- 
 
Sensations 53 
 
 tion in this sense and consequent instruction and guidance 
 by means of it are relatively great among many animals, 
 especially carnivorous quadrupeds, like the dog. 
 
 V. The fact has recently been established that the smell o^'Jects. 
 stimulus is always a true gas. The presence of oxygen 
 seems necessary to stimulation, since, in human beings, at 
 least, in case the nostrils are filled with liquid no smell sen- 
 sation results. 
 
 The sense of smell has been called " taste at a distance." 
 Yet in smell, not less than in taste, contact with the matter 
 is necessary to stimulus. 
 
 VI. a. Smell sensations may be classified as sweet, or ^"^owiedge. 
 fragrant, (as rose, jasmine, apple,) and their opposites. 
 
 b. Those odors in sympathy with the lungs have been 
 described as fresh and close. Fresh odors have a refresh- 
 ing, quickening, exhilarating effect on the lungs (as can de 
 Cologne, lavender, peppermint, musk). Close or suffocat- 
 ing odors arise from a depressed action of the lungs. (De- 
 ficiency of oxygen, the decay of organic matter, the effluvia 
 of crowds lower the powers of life and are accompanied by 
 a depressing effect.) 
 
 c. Many odors (like ammonia, nicotine, mustard) have 
 a quality derived through the excitation of the nerves of 
 touch, a sharp, stinging sensation described as pun- 
 gency. 
 
 d. The sense of smell is less acute in children than in 
 adults. The abundance of mucous in infancy and the pres- 
 ence of mechanical difficulties in the form of the nostrils 
 up to seven years of age explain this obtuseness of smell 
 sensibilities in childhood. 
 
 Application Step.— I. Has the wood of your pencil 
 taste? Can you not tell pine from cedar by tasting them? 
 And is wood soluble in saliva? 
 
54 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 Of course it is not, but it may contain oils or gums, 
 minute particles of which passing through the nasal pas- 
 sages when you put the pencil in your mouth affect the sense 
 of smell and give a characteristic flavor to the wood. 
 
 In order to have the sensations of the flavor of the wood 
 of my pencil, (taste yours and follow the analysis through 
 with me,) small particles of an oil in the wood are set free 
 in my mouth as the pencil touches my tongue and in the 
 act of expiration accompanying tasting are carried into 
 the cavities of the nose and start an excitation in the nerves 
 of smell. The result in mind is the sensation of the flavor 
 of wood. 
 
 Resins are not soluble, for example, spruce gum. This 
 resin contains an essential oil, however, that gives it its 
 peculiar, agreeable flavor. 
 
 II. When you place a drop of camphor on your tongue 
 it smarts and there is precipitated a white insoluble sub- 
 stance. This precipitate is camphor gum, an essential oil, 
 not soluble in water, hence witiiout taste. It has, however, 
 the strong odor and the characteristic flavor by which 
 camphor is readily identifled. 
 
 III. Determine by experiment whether the following 
 substances have tastes or flavors, or both : Oranges, peaches, 
 apples of different kinds, currants, olives, peanuts, butter- 
 nuts, dates, onions, turnips, potatoes, celery, lettuce, vanilla, 
 tea, vinegar, cinnamon, cloves, lemon, radishes, pepper, 
 chocolate, alum, brass, rubber, paper, leather, celluloid, 
 glue, ink, fish, turkey, and many others. 
 
 IV. "The famous mosque of Saint Sophia in Constanti- 
 nople is always fragrant with the odor of musk and has 
 been so ever since it was built in the ninth century, the 
 curious thing being that nothing is done to keep it per- 
 fumed. The solution of the seeming mystery lies in the 
 
Sensations 55 
 
 fact that when it was built, over 1,000 years ago, the stones 
 and bricks were fixed with mortar mixed with musk." 
 
 This example illustrates the extraordinary degree to 
 which some matter has the properties of divisibility and 
 dift'usibility. 
 
 V. Kipling tells about "the hair-trigger-like sensitive- 
 ness of a Jungle nose.'' 
 
 Imagine what a dog is thinking in a room full of people. 
 Where to us it seems a multiplicity of colors and sounds, it 
 probably seems to the dog a bewildering complex of smells. 
 
 VI. "Art employs visual and auditory materials, both 
 because they admit such numberless combinations, and be- 
 cause, also, forms and colors are relatively permanent and 
 sounds are readily reproducible. Odors, on the other hand, 
 are far less capable of fusions and are neither permanent 
 nor easily revivable, hence they are of little importance in 
 art ; and so it comes about that the perfumer is even less 
 likely than the cook to be reckoned among artists." 
 ("Psychology"— Mary W. Calkins.) 
 
 VII. " Taste is the door-keeper at the entrance to the 
 alimentary canal, and the human face, including nose and 
 eyes, which are primarily food-finders, and the jaws, which 
 are triturators, have developed as accessories. All the 
 higher metabolism depends upon keeping the appetite true 
 to the needs of the body, like a somatic conscience always 
 pointing steadfastly toward undiscovered poles, the one of 
 nutritive need and the other of human destiny." (G. S. 
 Hall, "Adolescence.") 
 
 Lesson V 
 
 TOUCH, MUSCULAR, TEMPERATURE, AND ORGANIC SENSATIONS 
 
 Preparation Step.— I. Stand up for a moment: How 
 long could you stand if the soles of your feet were com- 
 
56 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 pletely insensible? Could you rise, step, walk, run, skate? 
 Imagine each of these movements if the hip joints were 
 insensible to the weight of the body. 
 
 II. Notice the resulting sensations when you touch fur, 
 the bristles of a stiff brush, cold water, warm water ; notice 
 the touch and pressure sensations of clothing on different 
 parts of the body ; heft the weight of a book ; recall how 
 your hat feels on your head ; press the rubber of your pencil, 
 your collar with the muscles of your neck ; recall sensations 
 of hunger, of the enjoyment of food, of your foot asleep, 
 of tickling, itching, smarting, fatigue, feverishness. 
 
 III. Hunger seems to be a matter of the general depletion 
 of the blood. Perhaps because we connect sensations of 
 repletion with the stomach, we have come to localize those 
 of hunger in the same organ. When the nerves of the stom- 
 ach are deranged in a certain way, the excitation is trans- 
 mitted to the brain and the result in mind is the sensation 
 of hunger. 
 
 IV. The pressure of my collar against my neck affects 
 the nerve terminals in the skin and muscles there, the ex- 
 citation is carried to the brain, and the result in mind is 
 a sensation of pressure, or resistance. 
 
 V. Clench the hand firmly, but in such a manner that its 
 surfaces do not touch each other. Pick out some one muscle 
 of a finger or part of the palm, look at it carefully as it 
 is strained and find out just where the sense of strain is 
 localized. Is it not where the tendons, or fibrous cords 
 connect the muscle with the bone? As you move the finger 
 can you not detect also sensations of the jamming together 
 and stretching apart of the joints and of the contraction 
 and relaxation of the muscles ? 
 
 All muscular action takes energy, and all conscious mus- 
 cular movement takes more or less conscious effort. Notice 
 
Sensations 57 
 
 the effort required to rise from yonr chair, to walk, to talk, 
 to write. 
 
 VI. Analyze into sensations the experiences of yawning, 
 coughing, sneezing, hiccoughing, stretching the muscles, 
 swallowing. 
 
 VII. Do you know anybody who is ever moody, irritable 
 without outward cause? What is your habitual outlook 
 on life, optimistic or pessimistic ? 
 
 Presentation Step.— I. The organ of the sense of touch The sense of 
 is the surface of the entire body. Not all parts of the body, 
 however, are equally sensitive. The upper surface of the 
 tongue is exceedingly delicate, as is also the mucous mem- 
 brane which lines the nostrils. Parts of the eye, and the lip 
 seem to rank next in sensitiveness to touch, and the other 
 parts of the body, speaking very generally, in the following 
 order: the palm of the hand, the sole of the foot, the fore- 
 arm, leg, shoulder, breast, abdomen, back and upper part 
 of the thigh. 
 
 II. a. In order to affect the sense of touch, matter must objects, 
 be in solid form. We do not say of water and air that they • 
 feel smooth or rough to the touch. We know their presence 
 
 by the senses of temperature and pressure rather than by 
 touch. 
 
 b. No medium is to be considered in connection with 
 touch; actual contact with solids is necessary to stimulate 
 the nerve terminals that one may have primary sensations 
 of touch. 
 
 III. a. The simplest knowledge through the sense of Knowledge, 
 touch is that of contact. Next most simple is that of smooth 
 
 and rough. Still more complex are classed coarse, polished, 
 damp, sticky, oily. For all except the simplest knowledge, 
 motion and pressure as well as contact are necessary. 
 
58 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 b. It is commonly thought that we know hardness by the 
 sense of touch. Critically speaking, however, this is not the 
 ease. 
 
 It is true that we know certain types of hardness by the 
 sense of resistance, but the physical quality of hardness is 
 more complex than the simple sensation of resistance. This 
 quality is defined as that which matter has of resistance to 
 being scratched or having its particles torn apart. The 
 diamond scratches glass, therefore it is harder than glass. 
 
 The way to determine the hardness of a material is to 
 test it by another material. If it is scratched by that other, 
 it is softer than it; if it scratches the other, it is harder. 
 The sense of touch alone, by the simple process of contact 
 would never determine this quality of hardness or softness. 
 
 The muscular jy. The muscular sense involves the muscles, skin, joints, 
 
 sense. Organs. 7 7 «j 7 
 
 ligaments, and tendons. 
 
 Objects. y Matter in any form, solid, liquid, or gaseous may 
 
 start the excitation of the nerves that results in sensations 
 of effort and pressure. It may be started also, by any mo- 
 tion of the body. 
 
 Knowledge. yj ^ ^hc two distiuct elements involved in movements 
 
 of the muscles are first, sensations of effort and second, 
 sensations of resistance. Through these sensations we have 
 a knowledge of force and extension. 
 
 b. The muscular sense is developed very early. It makes 
 our ideas of the activity of the muscles of the body as con- 
 cerned in movement and balancing. Perhaps a child's first 
 ideas of the self as active come as soon as the limbs are 
 moved. This experience would be the beginning of atten- 
 tion, as well as the first knowledge of the external world, 
 and ultimately the ideas both of mental and of physical 
 force. 
 
Sensations 59 
 
 c. Taken alone, however, the muscular sensations give us 
 little knowledge. Without touch and sight, movements of 
 the body are co-ordinated in only a vague way. 
 
 ******* 
 
 VII. The temperature sense has its end apparatus in the '^g^p^^^^J^l 
 skin. " Temperature spots," minute points, the terminals O'^e^"- 
 
 of nerves, some for heat and others for cold, are scattered 
 over the skin in varying degrees of nearness to each other, 
 with consequent variations in the delicacy of perception. 
 
 VIII. The stimulus of the temperature spots results in Knowledge, 
 mind in sensations of warm and cool, hot and cold. 
 
 IX. As the name organic implies, these sensations are lo- Organic 
 
 sensations. 
 
 calized in the different internal organs of the body, as the 
 muscles, the nerves, the circulatory and nutritory tracts, 
 the glands, the heart, the lungs. 
 
 X. The sources of excitation of the nerves connected Mode of 
 with these organs are often in injuries or disease, often in 
 some form of well-being. 
 
 XI. a. Some classes of organic sensations that we dis- Knowledge, 
 criminate are : 
 
 1. Muscular: cramp, spasm, pains that are acute, intense, 
 racking, burning, shooting, pricking, smarting, aching, 
 stunning, rheumatic ; pains of muscular fatigue, and pleas- 
 urable sensations of repose, falling to sleep. 
 
 2. Nervous : fatigue and exhaustion, neuralgic sensations, 
 weakness, prostration, ennui, heaviness, dullness, exhilara- 
 tion, elation, irritability. 
 
 3. Sensations connected with nutrition: hunger, thirst, 
 repletion, indigestion, nausea, relish. 
 
 4. Sensations connected with circulation : those arising 
 from stricture, from long confinement in one posture, the 
 prickly sensations of one's foot asleep. "The sleek, fat. 
 
60 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 full-blooded temperament has its peculiar mental tone, 
 attributable to the circulation and nutrition rather than 
 to the quality of the nerves." (A. Bain, " Mental 
 Science.") 
 
 5. Sensations connected with respiration are suffocation 
 of varying degrees, grateful freshness, buoyancy, fainting, 
 bracing. 
 
 b. All organic sensations undoubtedly reduce to more or 
 less complex groups of those we know at the surface of the 
 body as pressure, temperature, and pains. 
 
 c. The organic sensations are not of a high order intel- 
 lectually. Yet, these vague feelings of bodily comfort or 
 discomfort are of great value in mental life since they fonn 
 the background of our emotional condition. " They indi- 
 cate an elevated or depressed condition of bodily vitality 
 and give general cast to our state of mind. The dyspeptic 
 soon becomes unreasonable or gloomy, and biliousness in- 
 terferes with the normal activity of the mind." (J. M. 
 Baldwin, ''Hand-book of Psychology.") 
 
 Application Step.— I. Which are harder, metals or 
 minerals ? 
 
 " Metals," did you say? No, we use minerals to scour 
 metals, therefore minerals must be the harder. 
 
 II. Study touch, pressure, and temperature sensations in 
 connection with the identification of different kinds of food 
 in the mouth. 
 
 III. Analyze many movements of different parts of the 
 body in the terms of joint, tendon, and muscular sensations. 
 
 IV. Watch for secondary organic sensations in trains of 
 association : as, the remembrance of the thrill that followed 
 the sight of the flag; the qualm that followed the imagina- 
 tion of a sharp blade drawn through the hand ; the peculiar 
 
Sensations 61 
 
 inner shudder that followed the sight or touch of a writh- 
 ing snake. 
 
 V. We extend the senses of touch and resistance (that is, 
 we experience smooth, rough, and pressure) through the 
 hair, the teeth, the clothing, the sleeve, the sole of the boot, 
 the hat, the pen and paper, the walking-stick, the fishing- 
 rod, the building — ( I can feel through resistance sensations 
 the nature of the vehicle in the street when it passes over 
 some pipes laid there that connect with this building). 
 
 The sense of temperature is supplemented by the ther- 
 mometer ; the sense of pressure by the scales. All machines, 
 however simple or complicated are devices for changing the 
 direction of force, either of the muscles or for the advantage 
 of the muscles. 
 
 VI. As might be expected in connection with so funda- 
 mental a sense as touch, a great number of our primitive, 
 instinctive fears are touch fears and complexes of them. 
 Spencer's theory of the development of the eye as antici- 
 patory touch to avoid sudden contact, and the definition of 
 science as prevision organized to enable man to anticipate 
 shock from afar indicate the sensitiveness of the organism 
 during the course of evolution to injurious contacts and its 
 wonderful power of adaptation to its environment. 
 
 VII " The true beginning for a psychology essentially 
 genetic is hunger, the first sentient expression of the will to 
 live, which with love, its other fundamental cjuality, rules 
 the world of life, * * * every organ is in a sense a 
 digestive organ * * * and man is what he eats and 
 what he completely digests * * * gH fins, legs, wings, 
 and tails were developed either to get food or to escape 
 finding a grave in some other creature's stomach * * * 
 Some two-thirds or more of all the kinetie energy of the 
 human body goes to digestion * * *. In the slow pro- 
 
6^ Lessons in Psychology 
 
 cess of cephalization by which the brain and centers develop 
 near the month end of the alimentary canal, the first laugh, 
 if Spencer is right, was in prospect of food." (The first 
 nod, an affirmative biting toward food ; the first negation, a 
 turning of the mouth away from food ; and the first kiss, a 
 little bite.) "The great epoch marked by the descent of 
 fire and cooking not only economized digestion and freed 
 its energy for higher uses, but evolved hearth, home, and 
 mealtimes * * *. Every cell and tissue has its own 
 specific hunger, and what we call appetite is a symphony of 
 many parts or a net algebraic result aggregated from the 
 specified hunger of all the tissues and cells * * *. Sen- 
 sation and perhaps thought, are in one sense functions of 
 nutrition. If the parts and molecules latest to develop and 
 most distinctively human, being more complex than others, 
 * * * are broken down in the function of thought and 
 feeling, we can well understand that the nervous system, 
 which is the master tissue of the body, may be the seat 
 of the highest complexity, where matter is most nearly 
 transubstantiated into soul * * *. In a sense every 
 disease is due to cell hunger, and old age and death are 
 progressive starvation. Most of the diseases of middle 
 and later life are pj-obably due to avoidable errors of diet." 
 (G. Stanley Hall, "Adolescence.") 
 
CHAPTER. Ill 
 
 PERCEPTION 
 
 Lesson I 
 
 DEFINITION OF PERCEPTION 
 
 Preparation Step.— I. The stream of thought is a imit. 
 We may study it, however, from many diiferent stand- 
 points. Just as we may look at the capitol from the side 
 of its architectural features, its use, or its history, always 
 remembering that it is the same building, so we may con- 
 sider the same thoughts under such' aspects as associations, 
 sensations, memories, or attention. We must not mistake 
 the standpoints, however, for separate " faculties," since 
 no faculties can be separated from the action and interac- 
 tion of sensations in the stream of thought. 
 
 When we studied our thoughts from the point of view of 
 associations, we were thinking of the relations that exist 
 between their elements; when from that of sensations, we 
 were thinking of the elements themselves. - 
 
 Our study in this lesson will be from the standpoint of 
 perception. 
 
 II. Name the parts of the room and the objects in it. 
 Would there be anything left of the room if all that you 
 have named were taken away? If there would be, keep on 
 naming till you have exhausted it alJ. 
 
 Each object has a place in space and a definite relation to 
 other objects. You think of each one now, you remember 
 to have seen it in the past, and can imagine that you will 
 or will not see it in the future, and thus. each one has also 
 definite time relations. 
 
64 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 Name, next, and think of all the objects and parts of the 
 house ; of the city ; the state ; the earth ; all your universe. 
 
 Everything you have thought of is matter in space, and 
 it all goes to make up your outer world. It all has the un- 
 iversal properties of matter, such as weight, porosity, divisi- 
 bility, inertia, impenetrability, indestructibility. 
 
 III. In order to have the sensation of a burn on the back 
 of my hand, the nerve terminals there must be excited, the 
 vibrations must be carried along the length of the nerve 
 through my arm and spinal cord to the brain, and there 
 must be a result in mind, a sensation of pain, a burn. 
 
 Suppose that the nerves and brain-cells here involved 
 had always been excited in just the same way, would there 
 be thinkable any sensation resulting in mind? Surely not. 
 There must be a change in the physical condition and a con- 
 sciousness of the change in mind in order that a sensation 
 may be in mind. 
 
 IV. Where are all the sensations that you have noticed 
 and studied"? Is it not clear from your analysis of what 
 precedes each one that all sensations of whatever kind are 
 in your mind? 
 
 V. And when are they all 1 Has not every one that you 
 have ever experienced been in the present ? The burn which 
 I remember iioiv to have had a moment ago was present 
 then. 
 
 VI. We are naively conscious of objects as units, or 
 wholes only, until our attention is called to the fact that all 
 objects are groups of sensations. 
 
 Presentation Step.— I. What sensations does it take 
 to make the pencil in your hand? 
 
 You say it takes color sensations of red, brown, gray; 
 sensations of touch and resistance, smoothness, weight, and 
 
Perception 65 
 
 the peculiar pressure of rubber; smell sensations of cedar 
 and rubber; flavor sensations of cedar. 
 
 That you may have sensations, consciousness of difference 
 is necessary. But given the sensations you have named 
 above, that is, just the results in mind of colors, touches, 
 tastes, and smells, you could not make the pencil. In order 
 to make it the sensations, in addition, must be grouped in 
 time and space relations. That is, there must be a con- 
 sciousness of whereness and whenness, or time and space, 
 in which the sensations are definitely grouped. The red of 
 this group, for example, is not out in the street yesterday, 
 but in a certain definite relation to the grays and browns 
 to make the single complex, my pencil, now. 
 
 II. Analyze many objects following the order indicated 
 above : 
 
 1. Name the sensations that make the object for the 
 moment ; 
 
 2. In order to have these elements, there must be a con- 
 sciousness of each sensation as difi^erent from the imme- 
 diately preceding one ; 
 
 3. In order to have perception, time and space must be 
 thought ; 
 
 4. The sensations must be realized as definitely grouped, 
 associated, or synthesized in times and spaces to make ob- 
 jects, wholes, units. 
 
 III. The above order does not imply that our original 
 experience is at first made of singular elements, that is, 
 that in childhood we have only sensations, that then for a 
 time we are conscious of the sensations in time and space, 
 and finally in definite time and space relations. 
 
 Nor does it imply that in making my shears I have at one 
 moment sensations, at the next, consciousness of space, and 
 so on. My experience from the beginning is of undistin- 
 5 
 
66 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 guished and undiscriminated complexity. I know my shears 
 not as a group of sensations but as a single object. 
 
 But though these dilt'erent steps are not chronologically 
 successive, in the process of analyzing perception as a 
 psychological fact they must be considered as logically suc- 
 cessive and in the above definite order. That is, we cannot 
 think of sensations as grouped till we can think time and 
 space in which to group them. Nor can we think time and 
 space before we think sensations to limit them. Nor again, 
 can we know sensations in undifferentiated continuum. 
 Though in experience the three steps are a simultaneous 
 synthesis, in analyzing each object logically one must think 
 them as we have outlined them. 
 
 IV. We are not concerned here with the origin of the 
 ideas of difference, time, space, and grouping. We have 
 only to notice these forms as characteristic of all the sen- 
 sations that make the outer world, many of the parts of 
 which you have named and analyzed. 
 
 V. All the parts of your physical world, all the congeries 
 of objects you have thought of and named are at any and 
 all moments made of sensuous elements. 
 
 VI. The process of making our outer world out of sensa- 
 tions in time and space relations is perception. . 
 
 Application Step.— I. It is somewhat difficult to realize 
 that anything so complicated as our experience of the outer 
 world is really made out of sensation stuff. I must beg of 
 you to dwell patiently on the analysis of objects and acts 
 of all kinds and to try to realize that these same sensations 
 are the vague undifferentiated matrix out of which all the 
 richness of the qualitative variety in our world is 
 elaborated. 
 
 II. What is the difference between the sensation red and 
 the perception red of my pencil ? 
 
Perception 67 
 
 The sensation red is the result in mind of the excitation 
 of brain cells, the perception is the red-of-the-pencil-now- 
 in-my-hand. 
 
 That is, the presentative element of my experience is the 
 sensation, and this sensation-in-its-time-and-space-relations 
 is the percept. 
 
 So far as we can think we never have sensations that 
 have not a "whereness" and a "whenness," that is, that 
 are not at the same time perceptions. 
 
 III. You formerly thought perhaps of the "percept" of 
 the pencil as a tixed, unchangeable, static entity, which 
 came to mind whenever you needed it, a group of sensations 
 that you carried about with you always the same. A little 
 reflection on the objects of your world, however, will show 
 you that you probably never have two thoughts of an object 
 just alike", or two groups of sensations that are exactly 
 similar. There seems indeed to be nothing static about 
 consciousness. 
 
 Since my "percept" is really a small part of the process 
 of perception, the indefinitely rapid grouping of sensations 
 in time and space relations, the term is a needless distinc- 
 tion in psychology. 
 
 IV. The stream of thought must not be understood to 
 mean merely the superficial thoughts that flit through the 
 mind. Since will action is one of its aspects, we have to 
 realize that at any moment our acts are groups of sensations. 
 For the muscles and other parts of the body are known and 
 controlled only in the terms of mind. 
 
 V. Analyze from the standpoint of perception many 
 movements of dififerent parts of the body in the terms of 
 joint, tendon, and muscular sensations. After you have 
 made a thorough concrete study of the effects of insensi- 
 bility in the joints and tendons of the ankles, knees, waist 
 and backbone, neck, shoulder, elbow, wrist, hand, and fin- 
 
68 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 gers, you will have a clearer idea of muscular movemeut as 
 groups of sensations. 
 
 Lesson II 
 
 THE OUTER AND INNER ORDERS OF THE STREAM OF THOUGHT 
 
 Preparation Step.— I. Imagine the cone of a searchlight 
 on the nightboat, for example, as it sweeps over the city of 
 Albany and the banks of the Hudson River. In the dark- 
 ness the city does not exist in the terms of color. The 
 searchlight, when it flashes out, makes the streets, buildings, 
 and trees in the terms of greens, grays, browns, and reds. 
 
 II. In your trains of association you have found all mem- 
 bers after the first to be recalled, or secondary. These 
 secondary members form your inner world, — that part of 
 your experience that no one else shares with you. 
 
 III. Ask someone to think of the color of the building in 
 which you are : How are you ever going to find out of what 
 he is thinking? You can never by any possibility get in- 
 side his mind to find out, certainly. 
 
 IV. You no doubt remember having learned in physics 
 that the rainbow you see is not the same one that your 
 neighbor makes. Think about this fact and study out its 
 explanation. 
 
 V. The stream of thought is a succession of outer and 
 inner experiences. Of which do you have a greater number, 
 first members or subsequent members in the trains of 
 association ? 
 
 VI. Notice that the inner groups like the outer, physical 
 ones are made out of sensations as elements. Analyze these 
 secondary groups in the same Avay that you have analyzed 
 those of the outer order. 
 
 VII. Recall the pencil you analyzed in the last lesson. 
 Image as vividly as you can the colors, pressures, touches, 
 
Perception 69 
 
 and tastes that were primary then. How does the recalled 
 color brown that you think of now differ from the primary 
 brown of the pencil itself? 
 
 The secondary brown is not so distinct as the primary, it 
 is not so intense or lasting. 
 
 Study as you may this and other sensations, about the 
 only differences you can find between outer and inner sen- 
 sations are those in intensity and duration ; and these dif- 
 ferences are not always present. 
 
 VIII. Sensations, whether they are primary or sec- 
 ondary, are the result in mind of cerebral excitation. 
 
 Presentation Step. — I. AYhat sensations does it take to 
 make your paper? It takes grays, blues, reds, smoothness, 
 and pressure in certain definite grouping in time and space. 
 
 II. Now if all these grouped sensations that you have 
 named were taken away, what would there be left ? 
 
 "Why the paper, the matter," you say. 
 
 But weight is one of the sensations we took away — and 
 all the other properties of matter can be shown to be only 
 more or less complex groups of sensations. All that we 
 know of matter indeed is its properties, and they are all in 
 the terms of mind. 
 
 III. Think of your consciousness as like the searchlight 
 in its action. In the darkness the city does not exist in the 
 terms of color. The light literally makes all of it that we 
 see out of greens, grays, browns, and reds of varying de- 
 grees of brightness. 
 
 So the mind seems to make the paper out of sensations, 
 not of color alone, but of all kinds. 
 
 (Psychology is not concerned with the consideration as 
 to whether there is an extra-mental duplicate of the outer 
 world always existing or with what there is "left" when 
 sensations are not existing. 
 
70 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 Different theories of metaphysics, however, have assumed 
 that there is something aside from mind, a "permanent 
 potentiality of matter," a "world-mind" or a '"ding an 
 sich." Still another theory teaches that mind is governed 
 by unchangeable, universal laws, according to which I and 
 everyone else under like circumstances can make the paper. 
 Read B. P. Bown: "Metaphysics," pp. 407 ff.). 
 
 IV. And thus the mind of each person makes not only the 
 paper as it is needed, but all the physical, " describable " 
 world of city, country, the earth, the "heavens, and all 
 that in them is." 
 
 There must be, moreover, as many papers, as many 
 worlds, as many spaces as there are minds, but in some 
 way we think of our outer, describable world as always 
 existing, one hard and fast physical world, shared by all 
 alike and alike for all. 
 
 (Astounding and incomprehensible as the fact that noth- 
 ing thinkable is left of matter if no mind makes it at first 
 seems, do not fear or fail to realize it literally and abso- 
 lutely. A clear comprehension of the metaphysics of it is 
 a great help to an understanding of the psychology of 
 perception. ) 
 
 VI. Our outer world, then, is made up of sensations in 
 time and space relations. This outer world, moreover, can 
 be distinguished from our inner world only by the grouping 
 of the sensations. The group that for the moment makes 
 my pencil fits in with the stream of sensations that has been 
 distinguished as my outer order always. A recalled image 
 of the pencil that I may have later will not belong to the then 
 outer order, but it will ' ' dovetail ' ' in with the inner order. 
 
 VII. We have come in some way that we cannot now de- 
 termine to form the habit of making out of sensations the 
 same in kind without confusion the two orders of our life, 
 outer and inner, "physical" and "mental, "—two orders 
 
Perception 71 
 
 apparently different with now one present and again the 
 other, yet forming a single stream of thought. 
 
 Application Step.— I. Though most psychologists admit 
 that the sensuous material of the outer and the inner order 
 is qualitatively one and the same, it is customary to limit the 
 application of the term perception to the formation of the 
 outer order. 
 
 There seems to be no difference in kind, however, on 
 which to base this distinction. 
 
 The question is of importance here only when one strives 
 to realize that the whole stream of thought is the action and 
 interaction of sensations the same in kind. 
 
 II. Groups of sensations may be now of the inner order, 
 now of the outer, and again mixed, or fused. Of the differ- 
 ent groups that are my pencil, for example, one may be at 
 the same time an object, the first member of a train of as- 
 sociation; another of the inner order only. The group 
 always has enough sensations that have been in my mind 
 before with the thought, "my pencil," so that I can recog- 
 nize it each time. 
 
 I have as many different "perceptions" of the pencil, 
 then, as I have experiences with it or thoughts about it. 
 
 III. Is it not strange that though the secondary members 
 of trains of association, that is, inner thoughts outnumber 
 outer ones overwhelmingly, is it not strange, that, as one 
 thinks over uncritically the last hour it seems to be made 
 up of outer experiences only? 
 
 IV. What parts of your world do you habitually make in 
 the terms of taste, smell, touch, resistance, and temperature 
 sensations? In the terms of touch and resistance sensa- 
 tions? In what terms do you think of the inside of the 
 toe of your boot ? Of your hat on your head ? Of the inside 
 of your pocket ? 
 
72 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 V. The stream of thought, whatever else it is, seems to 
 be the "epiphenomenon" of the brain condition, and this 
 condition is a resultant blended of all the factors of the 
 present stimuli as modified by the brain's past history, 
 individual, ancestral, and racial. 
 
 "All we know of submaximal nerve-irritations, and of 
 the summation of apparently ineffective stimuli, tends to 
 show * * * ^jjg^ presumably »o -changes in the brain 
 are bare of psj^chological result." (James, "Psychology," 
 Vol. I.) 
 
 VI. Do you see that each person makes not only his own 
 rainbow, but in just the same way, his own house, city, 
 world, body, acts, friends, everything? 
 
 Dwell on the fact of how individual a matter a mind is. 
 "No man" indeed "knoweth the things of a man save the 
 spirit of the man that is in him." 
 
 VII. Can we ever really, know another person ? Every 
 one about us is for "us body and soul, our own creation and 
 construction. 
 
 What the incitement is that makes us make different 
 people as we do is a question with which we are not here 
 concerned. The important matter is the comprehension of 
 the fact that we do so make them. 
 
 VIII. To the ordinary consciousness there is the mind 
 within and the great world of hard and fast facts outside. 
 And to the psychologist the same is true, except that the 
 psychologist realizes that both are made of the same kind 
 of stuff. 
 
 The fact that the outer order is mental should not make 
 it seem any the less real, stable, reliant, orderly. It is never 
 capricious. Since it is as I make it, I might think that, if I 
 wished, I could have a goldpiece in my hand now. I must 
 not think it, however, for no matter how hard I try, my 
 imagination will not make it there as a group of sensations 
 
Perception 73 
 
 fitting in with my present outer order. I know as a result 
 of lifelong experience what must be in my physical world, 
 and ordinarily I do not try to make other things there. 
 
 IX. By the processes of perception and thought each in- 
 dividual guided by the discoverer builds up and formulates 
 for himself the sciences of physics, astronomy, and all other 
 groups of classified knowledge, out of this world that we 
 make. We can never get outside our minds to find out what 
 the laws that govern us really are— they are as unattainable 
 as Plato's "types laid up in heaven," or as the German 
 "things in themselves," but the sciences that are formu- 
 lated are the human mind's best guesses at these laws and 
 attempts to classify them. 
 
 Lesson III 
 
 INFERENCES IN PERCEPTION 
 
 Preparation Step.— Some of the inferences that have 
 been assumed in the study of perception should be made 
 explicit. 
 
 I. Notice some of the facts that you say you see in con- 
 nection with the space relations of objects: You say you 
 see that the reading-glass is round ; that its lense is curved ; 
 its handle cylindrical ; that it is large. You "see" that the 
 shears are pointed ; that the book has angles ; that the 
 table is round. You "see" that the window-seat is two 
 feet wide; that the wall is ten feet distant; that there is 
 space between the houses across the street. 
 
 You "see," also, that it rains; that the car moves; that 
 the wind blows ; that the bread is done ; that the reading- 
 glass is made of wood, nickel, and glass ; that the table is 
 polished; that fruit looks good; that a friend looks ill. 
 
 A little thought will show you that you do not literally 
 see one of these thinas. 
 
74 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 II. You say that you hear a car passing in the street ; that 
 you hear your name called ; that you hear a person say that 
 it rains. 
 
 And here again you do not literally say what you mean. 
 
 III. The perspective of scenery in the theatre, the fres- 
 coes on the walls of many buildings, deceive us easily,— the 
 distance is inferred from the representation of depth on a 
 flat surface. 
 
 IV. I heard some music yesterday. To-day is a holiday, 
 but to-morrow will not be a holiday. Last year at this time 
 there was snow on the ground. I am going to the play Sat- 
 urday night, and it is now Monday. 
 
 These events are all thought of as belonging to a more 
 or less definite time. 
 
 V. Go over your own thoughts tracing the trains of as- 
 sociation involved in experiences similar to those given 
 above; for example, (1). A group of colors; (2. Thought 
 words) It rains. — (1). A group of sounds; (2. Thought 
 words) It rains. — (1). A group of temperature and press- 
 ure sensations; (2. Thought words) It rains. 
 
 You would ordinarily say in these cases, first, "I see that 
 it rains;" second, "I hear it rain," and third, "I feel the 
 rain." 
 
 Presentation Step. — I. AVhen one says that he sees that 
 the knife is sharp, what does he really see 1 Is sharpness a 
 result in mind from the excitation of the optic nerve? Of 
 course not. It is a result of the excitation of the nerves of 
 touch. 
 
 In this person 's mind a certain group of color sensations, 
 (steel color, lustre, grays) that has been in consciousness 
 before with the touch sensations and the thought word, 
 sharp, is now followed by the same thoughts. Therefore 
 he says that he "sees" that the knife is sharp. 
 
Perception 75 
 
 In the same way he may infer by association from a group 
 of colors that the lamp is spherical ; that it is two feet dis- 
 tant ; that it is in front of him ; that it is symmetrical, grace- 
 ful in shape ; that it is one yard from the window. He may 
 infer by associations before established with a group of 
 sound sensations that the can of the lamp is filled ; that the 
 shade is of glass ; that it is near and in front of him. 
 
 Practically all our knowledge of space relations, such as 
 the distance, direction, extent of movement, shape, size, and 
 position of objects is a matter of the association of touch, 
 muscular sensations, colors, and sounds among themselves 
 and with words. 
 
 II. I say that I heard my name spoken. What I really 
 heard was a group of sound sensations only. These by pre- 
 viously established association were followed by the thought 
 word, "Cousin." 
 
 Thus it is with all language we hear spoken. It is only 
 sounds, absolutely meaningless except as we supply mean- 
 ing by association. In reading, also, all that we see is color 
 sensations,— we must supply all the thoughts. 
 
 III. We also associate with color, sound, and touch 
 groups, the names of objects, materials, qualities, quantities, 
 acts, events to a degree incredible to us until we have made 
 a study of these inferences. 
 
 IV. How do I know that the music I heard yesterday was 
 sung yesterday and not two years ago ? 
 
 I know that I heard it yesterday because every hour not 
 only of yesterday, but of my whole life has been known as 
 time only by being filled with events, groups of sensuous 
 elements, my stream of thought. Whatever time has not 
 been filled has not existed for me. 
 
 The stream of thought that made the time of yesterday 
 has in many places the thought of Christmas Day, not Sat- 
 urday. Nor do I go to church on Friday. Two years ago 
 
76 Lessons in 1'svchology 
 
 I went to church, but I did not hear the Neidlinger Carol 
 sung. The group of sounds that makes the music fits in 
 with other sensations, that, all together, make the duration 
 of yesterday, sensations, any part of which I recognize or 
 recall as belonging to yesterday. 
 
 In five days it will be New Year's Day. The ideas that 
 make that day do not fit in with any that have made an 
 outer order in the past, therefore I judge that it will be in 
 the future. 
 
 The actual present, the meeting-place between the past 
 and the future, has no duration. We know an event as 
 present, in the same way that we know the past and the 
 future, from the relations of ideas. 
 
 All our knowledge of time relations, that is, time, 
 rhythm, frequency, rate is a matter of the association of 
 ideas. 
 
 V. Thus we see that only a small part of our so-called 
 knowledge of the outer world is direct perception. Follow- 
 ing primary sensations there flash into our minds associa- 
 tions about space and time relations as well as a bewilder- 
 ing multiplicity of identifying associations that make the 
 primary sensations usable by us. 
 
 Application Step.— I. Watch the experience of a child 
 in learning distances and shapes, that is, in establishing 
 associations among groups of colors, touches, arm 's lengths, 
 paces, and words. 
 
 I know a child who cried for the moon. She really thought 
 it was against the Avindow. Certain colors had been in her 
 mind before with the ten-paces-distant window, so that a 
 visual image of these colors again was followed by the in- 
 ference that the moon was in the window. 
 
 A man told me that when he was a little chap he lived 
 where he could see railwav trains cross a river bridge at 
 
Perception 77 
 
 some distance from his home. These trains, of course, 
 looked small to him though they did not seem far away. 
 They later passed his home, but he could not see where the 
 tracks turned, and so did not know that they, the cars, were 
 the same. 
 
 He often wondered, he said, why those little trains that 
 he saw on the bridge, trains like the toy-cars he dragged 
 around the yard after him, never came by his house. You 
 see he had not associated the distance of six city blocks with 
 the sight complexes that made the trains on the bridge. 
 
 Try to realize by constant concrete observation how com- 
 plex a composite the space relations of your outer world 
 that you have built up hour by hour since childhood— try 
 to realize how complex a composite these relations are. 
 
 II. What advantage would it be to us to be more accurate 
 and adequate in our associations of space measurements? 
 to estimate, for example, at a glance the size of the park as 
 seventy acres ; to be able to imagine how an animal five feet 
 high would look; a fall of water two hundred feet high; 
 a mountain 5000 feet high, a bird four inches long. 
 
 III. As we grow up and grow older the function of pri- 
 mary sensations becomes more and more merely to "touch 
 off" the complexes. Only a few elements of our experience 
 are of the outer order ; the rest of a group is supplied from 
 the inner order. 
 
 A good example of this fact is our experience in reading : 
 Cover the lower half of a line of print and read it. Then 
 cover the upper half of another line and read it. 
 
 Which of the two did you read more readily"? Unless 
 your experience differs from that of others, you will have 
 read the first more easily. 
 
 In hasty reading we form the habit of making only the 
 tops of the letters as of the outer order and supplying the 
 rest as secondary, though we are not conscious of this fact 
 
78 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 till attention is called to it. 'Slost adults would say that 
 they see the whole word on the page. Because they so 
 rarely do, children make better proof-readers than adults. 
 
 IV. It is thought that in early mental evolution con- 
 sciousness was primary, all outer. As experience grew, 
 secondary ideas appeared, and as they were found useful 
 to supplement the primary experience their store increased. 
 Lastly, as language developed, the mere symbol came to 
 take the place of the group of sensations. 
 
 And as we grow older our stream of thought comes to be 
 in some instances almost entirely in the terms of language. 
 
 V. Though ordinarily we make our inner and our outer 
 order without confusion and with apparent truth, we are 
 sometimes inadequate to our outer world. As we occasion- 
 ally fill out the rest of a word or a sentence in reading in- 
 correctly, so we make mistakes now and then in filling out 
 other groups. 
 
 A young lady recently entered a room where she saw a 
 small parcel done up in oiled paper. After a few minutes 
 she said, ' ' I smell violets. How sweet they are ! ' ' The 
 flowers in the paper were odorless mountain daisies. There 
 was perhaps about them some little fragrance of the green 
 house, and Miss S. had completed the few outer elements — 
 by secondary elements, so that she smelled violets distinctly. 
 
 VI. This odor was an illusion, and the experience 
 may be taken as a type of illusions. It is probable that 
 there are always some few sensations that touch off the 
 complex, and perhaps far oftener than we realize, our per- 
 ceptions are filled out in the wrong way. 
 
 Make a study of the extent to which emotions, desires, 
 moods, the fixedness of an idea, and prepossessions influence 
 our illusions. 
 
 VII. "The whole world of reality, as well as that of 
 knowledge, may be considered as one system, embracing 
 
Perception 79 
 
 within the unity of its totality all the various systems with 
 their complicated parts. From this point of view every- 
 thing bears relations to everything else in the universe." 
 
 "Inference (in higher thought) consists in interpreting 
 the implications of the system to which the given in con- 
 sciousness belongs." 
 
 "He only sees well who sees the whole in the parts and 
 the parts in the whole. ' ' 
 
 A child at first sees only immediate relations. His chief 
 business is the collection of material in which he feels only 
 the more necessary and obvious connections. With advancing 
 maturity he is able to feel relations more and more remote. 
 "It is therefore the w^ell-furnished mind which sees things 
 as most widely related, and discerns the potential as well 
 as the actual manifestation, which will prove the most fer- 
 tile in accurate inference, in prophetic suggestion, and in 
 inventive resource." (J. G. Hibben, "Inductive Logic.) 
 
CHAFER IV 
 
 MEMORIES 
 
 Lesson I 
 
 RETENTION 
 
 Preparation Step.— I. Recall a face that you saw yes- 
 terday on the street ; image it vividly. Recall the sounds 
 of a band that you heard last summer; the smell and flavor 
 of the coffee that you drank for breakfast; the touch and 
 pressure of fur that you wore at some particular time last 
 winter ; the temperature and organic sensations of the last 
 over-heated room you entered ; the sensations of a burn, an 
 electric shock, a headache. 
 
 Recall at your leisure definite scenes and experiences in 
 the terms of as many senses as possible from each year of 
 your life as far back as you can remember. Take time to 
 get a definite idea in each case and image each one 
 vividly. 
 
 II. Notice that the secondary image of the face that you 
 saw yesterday on the street, (as well as all the other secon- 
 dary images recalled above) is a group of sensations 
 definitely arranged, and that it has the definite time, space, 
 and other relations to other groups that the primary image 
 had. 
 
 One face, for example, that I recall having seen is that 
 of a young woman : the flesh tints, a definite group of color 
 sensations, are surrounded by the grays of her prematurely 
 white hair; I recall that she wore a black suit; I saw her 
 against the background of a shop window; the time was in 
 the morning — and so on. — I may reproduce a large number 
 of relations in which this Tiarticular visual image was set. 
 
Memories 81 
 
 All the groups of sensations that you have recalled have, 
 in the same way, the same settings that they had as primary 
 groups. 
 
 III. The law of associations from the standpoint of brain- 
 cells, you remember, states, that ' ' brain-cells that have been 
 excited together tend the more readily to fall into a like 
 state of commotion when part of them is again excited." 
 
 The law describes the mode of action not of brain-cells 
 alone, but of the elements of the whole body as well. 
 
 IV. Recall what your physiology taught you about the 
 three parts of your brain. Point out as definitely as you 
 can in your own skull the medulla oblongata, the cerebellum, 
 and the cerebrum, and imagine their successive evolution 
 from the spinal cord. 
 
 V. Matter, both inorganic and organic, is modified by 
 every slightest change in it. The effects of every change, 
 moreover, are permanent. In the case of bodily modification, 
 where the elements are undergoing perpetual renewal, the 
 form persists. An insignificant scar on the skin, for ex- 
 ample, remains throughout life. An indefinite number of 
 bodily changes too minute for the senses to detect yet in 
 their effects last always. 
 
 Presentation Step. — I. Let us take for concrete study 
 your memory of the music of a band that you heard last 
 summer. Recall the sounds clearly, and get back as much 
 of the setting as possible. 
 
 Where has this group of sound sensations been since 
 that day? 
 
 "In my memory," you say. 
 
 But where is that"? What do you think of when you 
 think of your memory? Perhaps of a sort of receptacle 
 filled with pigeon-holes. But where are the pigeon-holes 
 of memory *? 
 6 
 
82 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 "In my mind," you say, "in unconsciousness or sub- 
 consciousness. ' ' 
 
 But how do you know this fact? No one has ever been 
 in his unconscious or sub-conscious mind to see that there 
 is such a place. 
 
 Is it not, after all, in order to account for the presence 
 of these sounds in your mind now that you are so sure that 
 they have been somewhere? If, then, we can account for 
 the secondary image of the music in some other way, you 
 will no longer need to think of mental states as carried 
 about in unconsciousness. And we can so account for the 
 recalled sounds. 
 
 The only answer you can give, then, to the question where 
 the sounds have been, is, "I don't know. They went out 
 of existence, so far as I can tell, when they left my con- 
 sciousness that day." 
 
 II. To understand how you can recall the music now, 
 think of what took place that you might hear the sounds 
 last summer : Vibrations reached and excited the auditory 
 nerve, and this excitation was transmitted to brain-cells 
 with the result in mind of the melody. Some one said to you, 
 "Music in the Gardens — the band is playing." The entire 
 group of sensations fitted together with others making a 
 stream of thought, any part of which is recognized as last 
 summer's experience. 
 
 III. When the brain-cells resulting in the thought words, 
 "Music last summer," are now stimulated in connection 
 with my request, according to the law of habit the cells that 
 vibrated before with them are excited again with the result 
 in mind of sound sensations like those you then heard. 
 
 Such is the process by which the secondary or ' ' recalled ' ' 
 material of the stream of thought is made. For convenience 
 in analysis, I shall classify the steps of the process loosely 
 
Memories 83 
 
 as those of Retention, Reproduction, and Recognition. ( The 
 last two are considered in Lessons II and III.) 
 
 IV. First as to Retention : The word means to keep, 
 to hold from escape. What is it that is kept, and where 
 is it keptt 
 
 The sounds of the music when you ceased to be conscious 
 of them, or forgot them went out of existence, so that they 
 are not retained; the brain, however, has been so modified 
 by the original stimulus that its cells have the disposition, 
 when some of them are restimulated, to respond again in 
 the same way as at first. The place of retention is, then, 
 the brain. 
 
 And as to what is retained or kept, it is neither secsations 
 nor mental states, but it is the tendency, or disposition of 
 the elements of the body. 
 
 Retention, then, is a matter of the disposition of elements 
 of the brain that have been modified together at some pre- 
 vious time, when a part of them is stimulated again to 
 respond together. 
 
 Application Step.— I. It is thought that retention (the 
 physical tendencies) is perfect for everybody. Is it not 
 strange, then, that we have so little use in thought of the 
 great wealth of its stores ? That we forget so much and so 
 often? 
 
 II. A little closer approach to the problem of nerve and 
 brain structure will show us something of the economy of 
 forgetting. 
 
 The nerve cell, the ultimate center of nervous activities, 
 is the storehouse of nervous energy. It is exceedingly 
 minute in size and in almost infinite numbers composes the 
 gray matter of the brain and spinal cord. This cell is a 
 mass of protoplasm, grayish in color; it contains a nucleus 
 
84 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 and branches out into infinitely numerous processes, or 
 fibres of two kinds. Those of one kind, long and medullated 
 are the afferent and efferent nerves ; those of the other kind 
 are short and non-medullated. Each central nerve cell, 
 with its fibrillar offshoots, is an isolated entity. 
 
 As to the process of functioning, each filament jutting out 
 from a cell is held to be a transmitter of impulses that 
 operates intermittently, like a telephone wire that is not 
 always "connected," and like that wire, the nerve fibril 
 operates by contact and not by continuity. Under proper 
 stimulation of nerves from the sense organ the ends of 
 the fibrils reach out, come in contact with other end fibrils 
 of other cells, and conduct their destined impulse. Again 
 they retract, and communication ceases for the time between 
 those particular cells. Fibrils thus connected, however, 
 seem to retain the tendency to touch again on the occasion 
 of a similar restimulus of one of them. 
 
 Meantime, by a different arrangement of the various 
 conductors, different sets of cells are placed in communica- 
 tion, different associations of nervous impulses induced, 
 different trains of thought result. 
 
 According to this conception "one can imagine, for ex- 
 ample, by keeping in mind the flexible nerve prolongations, 
 how new trains of thought may be engendered through 
 novel associations of cells ; how facility of thought or of 
 action in certain directions is acquired through the habitual 
 making of certain nerve-cell connections ; how certain bits 
 of knowledge may escape our memory, and refuse to be 
 found for a time, because of a temporary incapacity of the 
 nerve cells to make the proper connections; and so on 
 indefinitely." (Henry Smith Williams, M. D. "The Cen- 
 tury's Progress in Experimental Psychology." — Harper's 
 Magazine, September, 1899. Read also, Henry Herbert 
 Donaldson, "The Growth of the Brain.") 
 
Memories 
 
 85 
 
 III. All writers on the subject are now agreed that there 
 is no such thing- as formal memory training. Nor is there 
 any bump in the brain by enlarging which we can gam 
 better or more retentive memories. 
 
 IV. If it is true, moreover, that the law of contiguity 
 governs not only the brain, but also the entire physical 
 structure, then the whole body as well as the brain is the 
 seat of retention. In the human organism, however, excita- 
 tion of the hemispheres is the essential cerebral condition 
 of memory and foresight. 
 
 If all retention were obliterated in the cerebrum alone, 
 one could recall no conscious sensations, none of the 
 thoughts involved in higher intelligence and volition. If 
 retention were obliterated in the cerebellum, also, one would 
 have forgotten the co-ordination of muscular contraction. 
 The staggering of drunkenness, for example, is due to the 
 partial paralysis of the cerebellum. 
 
 In the medulla originate the nerves controlling the most 
 vital functions of the body, so that if retention here were 
 obliterated our nerves would forget to control the lungs for 
 breathing and to beat the heart, thus life could not continue. 
 
 The fact is practically established that in fatigue, brain- 
 fag, and with advancing years it is the sensitive higher 
 centres that are atrophied first. The tendencies that have 
 been longest established are, in general, retained most 
 persistently. 
 
 V. Make a study of habits. The eifect of repetition is to 
 establish in the body dispositions, or tendencies to ever 
 more ready response to a given stimulus with constant fad- 
 ing of the accompanying mentality, so that, in time, our 
 nerves and muscles alone do many things for us that before 
 required consciousness. 
 
 VI. Make a study of the relation between retention and 
 heredity. 
 
86 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 Heredity has been defined as race-retention. By it modes 
 of structure in a parent organism -are transmitted to the off- 
 spring, in the sense that (according to one theory of hered- 
 ity) a tendency is imparted to embryonic cell structure to 
 grow and develop into a structure like that of the parents. 
 
 A member of a given family, no matter where he is 
 brought up, will have the physical characteristics of his 
 progenitors. The results in mind of the stimulus of similar 
 organisms must be similar, and so one hears the remark 
 that "Mary has her mother's disposition," or "John has his 
 grandfather 's orderly ways. ' ' 
 
 Trace the evolution of the human body ; of the brain and 
 special senses. 
 
 "Each present brain-state is a record in which the eye 
 of Omniscience might read all the foregone history of its 
 owner." (James, "Psychology," Vol. I.) 
 
 ' ' The whole nervous system is a single organ of sensation 
 and its present state is a history of its life and the life of 
 its progenitors. ' ' 
 
 VII. It has been said that the children of uneducated 
 races have to learn anew from the beginning ; those of edu- 
 cated races have but to remember. What does the saying 
 mean ? 
 
 Lesson II 
 
 REPRODUCTION 
 
 Preparation Step.— I. If one has only the passive 
 modifications of the body, retention, he has nothing in his 
 mind, he is not thinking. Another step is necessary in 
 order to think, that of Reproduction. 
 
 II. Recall events that occurred when you were a child: 
 Did you ever move from one house to another? From one 
 city or place to another? What do you recall of houses, 
 gardens, journeys, frocks, people, voices, plays, games? 
 
Memories 87 
 
 What do you remember of your first day at school"? Of 
 early schoolrooms and teachers? 
 
 Recall early fears, as of the dark, getting lost, falling 
 from high places, smothering. 
 
 Can you recall among these early experiences many that 
 are made of sound sensations? Of organic, muscular, 
 smell, or temperature sensations ? 
 
 III. I am thinking of a fireboard that I saw when I was 
 a child. Retention has made it possible for me to keep the 
 tendency then established in the brain cells to a certain 
 sort of excitation. Let us say the line of excitation as 
 shown by the resulting train of association is somewhat like 
 
 this: a' b' c' d' and the train of association in mind, 
 
 a. Visual image of paper; b. I must write more reminis- 
 cences; c. I have often recalled Grandfather's house; d. 
 Visual image of the fireboard there. 
 
 IV. The result in mind of the excitation of brain cells, 
 no matter how, is sensation. That is, the brain cells may be 
 stimulated from the nerves and end organs, or, on the other 
 hand, they may be excited in the course of associations. 
 The result in mind is apparently the same in kind in both 
 cases, a sensation. 
 
 Presentation Step.— I. The picture on the fireboard is 
 a group of sensations, blues, reds, and grays, representing 
 two children playing by a stream. For some reason it ap- 
 pealed to my childish imagination and I have always re- 
 membered it. 
 
 These colors result in mind now from the stimulus of the 
 same brain-cells that were excited when I saw it. The com- 
 motion is set up in them according to the law of habit. Let 
 a', b', c', and d' represent the groups of brain cells involved 
 
88 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 and the order of their stimulus. I say that I reproduce the 
 visual image of the fireboard in its place d among the sec- 
 ondary members of a train of associations, each member of 
 which is the result in mind of the restimulus respectively 
 of a', b', c', d', which are now vibrating according to the 
 law of associations. 
 
 To reproduce means to form again. The "reproduced" 
 image, a result in mind of the restimulus of the same brain 
 elements, seems really to be created anew each time we 
 think of the experience. 
 
 Reproduction is the process of restimulating certain 
 brain-cells on the occasion of the re-excitation of brain-cells 
 that were stimulated with them before, with a result in 
 mind of sensations similar to those then experienced. 
 
 Application Step. — I. Compare the reproduced images 
 with the primary ones as to size, duration, clearness, dis- 
 tinctness, adequacy. 
 
 II. Animals retain experience only in accordance with 
 the complexity of their structure,— thus they have not the 
 power of free recall that enables the complex human mind 
 to think, reflect, and act. 
 
 III. One reason why we forget may be in the fact that 
 the nerve cells are incapacitated to make proper con- 
 nections. 
 
 But there are certain indications that our inability to 
 "recall" desired mental states is not always due to de- 
 fective retention. The hypnotist, for example, has the art 
 to cause his subject to repursue even lightly established 
 paths of associations, such as would not result in mind 
 ordinarily. 
 
 Records of prodigies of memory performed by persons 
 in delirium and impossible to ordinary consciousness also 
 show the perfection even in severe illness of retention in 
 
Memories 89 
 
 the nerve cells. Such facts as these seem to indicate that 
 one cause of dilficulty in recalling is in the process of stim- 
 ulating the brain paths. 
 
 Schools, moreover, force us to "learn" so much material 
 and to learn it so rapidly that only few and fleeting ten- 
 dencies are established, and as a result we cannot find 
 "cues" from the side of consciousness to start lines of 
 stimulation. 
 
 It seems probable that in proportion as mental effort in 
 learning is merely formal, mechanical, or as it fails to in- 
 volve interests, instincts, and dynamic factors in us, it 
 blunts, instead of develops, the power to establish and to 
 use the stores of retention and the consequent ability to 
 think and act. 
 
 IV. The body seems to go on doing work for us when the 
 mind is not discriminating the thoughts. If we study to 
 learn a song or a piece of poetry at night, even though we 
 cannot remember to have recited it through the night, we 
 can reproduce it in the morning more perfectly than we 
 could when we left it last the night before. It is noticeable 
 that in the spring one can ride a wheel, for example, better 
 than one could at the close of the autumn before. The 
 Germans have a proverb which says that ' ' we learn to swim 
 in the winter and to skate in the simimer. ' ' 
 
 These and kindred phenomena have been explained by 
 the theory that the blood circulating in the tracts where 
 association paths have been lightly established confirms 
 these paths by refreshing and nourishing the cells. Thus 
 the body working without explicit direction of the mind 
 gains skill for us. 
 
 V. The study of children shows that during the periods 
 of infancy and childhood muscular co-ordination and men- 
 tal development proceed hand in hand. 
 
 In right-handed people many more co-ordinations of mus- 
 
90 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 cles are established on the right side of the body than on 
 the left side. It is also true that more thinking is done 
 with the left hemisphere of the brain, which is the one 
 that controls the right side of the body, than with the right. 
 
 It is inferred from facts like these that perfect and com- 
 plete muscular co-ordination exercises a profound influence 
 on the development of the mind. 
 
 This theory is one of the strongest arguments advanced 
 for the introduction in schools of the right sort of manual 
 training and all around physical training. 
 
 VI. Suppose we could read the modifications of other 
 people's brains and nervous systems. We might know all 
 they thought, indeed be within their mind— a tempting con- 
 ception to fiction. This fascinating accomplishment of 
 sharing each others thoughts was possessed, you remember, 
 by Peter Ibbetson and the Duchess. And Grant Allen 
 wrote the tale of a youth who read consciously not only the 
 brain records of other people, but also those remains estab- 
 lished in his own organism by heredity from ancestors all 
 the way back to the "hairy anthropoids on the jungle-clad 
 banks of some tropical stream!" 
 
 VII. Notice how subtle some of our ways of communica- 
 tion are. We say that "a glance spoke volumes." "The 
 turn of a hair," the contraction of a muscle, a fleeting ex- 
 pression of the face may tell us a great deal. No doubt 
 much that masks under the name of telepathy can be ex- 
 plained in the terms of the senses and associations. 
 
 VIII. When we think of it, all we know and are at any 
 moment, all there is of any individual is just an infinitely 
 complex succession of related sensations, a stream of 
 thought, a constantly shifting present. Yet, in a sense, all 
 one's life is now completely present ; try to realize anew that 
 the mental condition of this moment is the complete liistory 
 of one's past, individual, ancestral, and racial. 
 
Memories 91 
 
 IX. Make a study in this connection of the responsibility 
 of teachers in the matter of training children and estab- 
 lishing in them lofty and etfective ideals. 
 
 Lesson III 
 
 RECOGNITION 
 
 Preparation Step.— I. Recall some recent time when 
 you walked in the street ; rode on a car, a train ; glanced in 
 a shop-window; asked a question; shook hands with some 
 one ; talked of the weather ; dined out. Recall the best time 
 you have had recently. 
 
 Image vividly the above experiences and analyze quickly 
 the processes of association, retention, and reproduction by 
 which it is possible for you to think each one. 
 
 They are each and all groups of secondary sensations in 
 time and space relations, the results in mind of the restimu- 
 lus of brain-cells according to tendencies formerly 
 established. 
 
 II. With us all a great part of our daily experiences is 
 never recalled. We remember what we need and the rest, 
 though permanent in its influence, is lost in time to con- 
 scious recall. 
 
 Presentation Step.— Suppose for a minute that your 
 thoughts came back in wrong time and space relations : that 
 your recent "best time" was placed, say, in a dentist's 
 chair instead of in a pew; that the last dinner out seemed 
 to have been on Christmas Day instead of on New Year's 
 Day; that it was thought of as at a hotel instead of at a 
 friend 's home ; that a song sung to you was recalled as ad- 
 dressed to some one else. 
 
 With relationships changed in this way, should ,you recog- 
 nize your "best time" or your last dinner out? Of course 
 
92 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 you coiild not. Each group must be reinstated in its former 
 relations to seem familiar. The last dinner out, say, must 
 be thought of as on New Year's Day at Dr. B's with Miss 
 B., her father, mother, and Mile I. only present. It was in 
 the evening in a certain room and was followed by some 
 music. 
 
 And not only must the groups "dove-tail" with other 
 groups but the sensations of each group must be reinstated 
 in the same relations as before that we may know it again 
 as a former experience. Professor James somewhere says 
 that something seems "to click" when we recognize a 
 thought. 
 
 The color and other sensations that make the people, the 
 lighted table, the flowers, the dishes, and the food must all 
 be grouped in the same time and space relations (and logi- 
 cal relations, or correlations, also) as formerly. The effect 
 of all this reinstating of the elements of secondary exper- 
 ience is that you recognize these ideas as the reproduction of 
 your experience the last time you dined out. 
 
 The feeling of familiarity in the process of reinstating 
 sensations in their former relations is Recognition. 
 
 Application Step.— I. One caution should be observed 
 in your practice in analyzing memories, namely, do not 
 confuse the steps : Retention is not reproduction, nor is 
 it recognition. Reproduction is not recognition. Each 
 step is logically distinct. 
 
 II. Analyze your memories of many secondary thoughts 
 daily somewhat in this way: I recall band music that I 
 heard last summer. In order that I might hear it then, vi- 
 brations from the instruments set the air in motion, this 
 motion reached my ears, and excited my auditory nerve and 
 successive brain-cells, with the result in mind of a melody 
 played by a band. In order that I may think the same mel- 
 
Memories ' 93 
 
 ody now, the same braiu-cells must be excited again. They 
 are now excited in accordance with the law of habit, and 
 the following mental states result in my stream of thought : 
 (a) I saw my paper, (b) I thought I must write one com- 
 plete analysis of memories, (c) I'll use the "band music," 
 (d) secondary sounds of band music, (e) secondary visual 
 image of a park and people. The elements of the secondary 
 sounds are remstated m their former relations, these groups 
 fit in with those of the scenes and people, and I recognize 
 the tune as that played by the Highland Band in West 
 Princes Street Gardens last summer. 
 
 Retention was in the tendency of my brain-cells to be 
 active as they were last summer even though I am no longer 
 in Edinboro. 
 
 The process of restimulating those brain-cells because 
 others now active were active with them then, with the re- 
 sult in mind of exactly similar sound sensations is 
 Reproduction. 
 
 The feeling accompanying the process of reinstating 
 the sensations in their former relations is Recognition. 
 
 (I must ask you to pardon so much repetition— but my 
 excuse for it is that it is only in the constant analysis of 
 different mental experiences that one can become familiar 
 with the facts of psychology. I can promise you that the 
 longer you work at it the more fascinating it becomes. ) 
 
 III. Recognition is a relative matter. There are all de- 
 grees of reinstatement of sensations in their former rela- 
 tions, hence all degrees of recognition. I hummed to my- 
 self, for example, the other day vaguely part of an air. It 
 came to my mind several times afterward, when more and 
 more sensations were reinstated and I decided that it was 
 Gluck's aria, Euridice. I kept at work recalling more and 
 more about it and reinstating all the material in its former 
 relations, till I had the relatively complete recognition of 
 
94 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 the aria as sung by Miss W. at the D. Club at Miss- M's 
 house three years ago. 
 
 Thus all thought is characterized by dift'erent degrees of 
 recognition from the vaguest, most tieetiug recognition that 
 the object before one is a child, not a chair — to the complete 
 consciousness of all that is known of the given image. 
 
 IV. Though the recognition of secondary experience only 
 has been spoken of, the recognition of primary groups of 
 sensations is a process the same in kind. 
 
 V. The parts of all thought as it flows along are associ- 
 ated with other parts, consequently recognized. An 
 isolated thought is unthinkable. 
 
 The fact that our mental life is coherent is perhaps the 
 basis of our feeling of selfhood. 
 
 It is by recognition through association that objects and 
 experiences have meaning for us. "When a complex pro- 
 cess holds together it has meaning. ' ' 
 
 VI. Reproduction and Recognition in memory are just 
 the process of Perception looked at from the aspect of the 
 inner order. 
 
 VII. The evolution of the process of recognition is 
 interesting : 
 
 "The mood of at-homeness or confidence is a weakened 
 form of the emotion of relief. Fear of strange things and 
 strange people is instinctive with man ; and it is a survival 
 of fear unfulfilled, of relief, that we experience when we 
 recognize * * *. It follows that every recognition is 
 inherently pleasant. Oftentimes, it is true, the pleasantness 
 of the at-home mood is outweighed by the unpleasantness 
 of the associated ideas: we may recognize a person whom 
 we particularly want to avoid." ("A Primer of Psychol- 
 ogy," E. B. Titchener.) 
 
Memories 95 
 
 Lesson IV 
 
 MEMORY TRAINING 
 
 Preparation Step.— I. It is the commonly accepted opin- 
 ion that there is no such thing as formal memory training. 
 To apply the generalizations of these lessons, however, to 
 many particular cases, to look at mental life from many 
 standpoints is desirable. And there are still several con- 
 siderations of interest in connection with memories, which, 
 with no implications as to formal training, can well be 
 grouped under the above general head. 
 
 II Why should one have a good memory! 
 
 To have forgotten, say, the experienceSi of all the fore- 
 noons of one 's life would be manifestly inconvenient. Think 
 how much this loss would have troubled you to-day about 
 the house, in the street, in all your relationships. But it 
 would be more than inconvenient. 
 
 Forgetfulness is fatal, in proportion as one suffers from 
 it, to the attainment of his ideals, to his power of accom- 
 plishment. It is not what one has in his note-books, or what 
 he knows where to find in books of reference or from people, 
 but what is available at the moment from his own potential 
 mental store, what he can remember in the terms of thought 
 and muscles that gives him ability, power to do. In fact, 
 one measure of a person's ability at any moment is 
 the readiness with which he has the use of his past exper- 
 ience. In a sense we are limited in what we would do to 
 what our memories of the past enable us to do. 
 
 It is quite important, then, that one have potentially 
 available all the wealth of knowledge in right relations and 
 of muscular co-ordinations of his past that will make him a 
 wise and capable man, or, in other words, that he have "a, 
 good memory. ' ' 
 
96 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 III. What are the qualities of a good memory'? If you 
 could have your wish, what qualities would you choose? 
 
 It would be of advantage to have a memory that is 
 tenacious, retentive, ready, spontaneous, vivid, accurate, 
 detailed, logical for some facts, mechanical for others— such 
 are a few qualities usually named as belonging to a good 
 memory. 
 
 IV. In what respects is your memory good? In what, 
 poor? Analyze it critically. 
 
 V. Recall the loudest sound that you ever heard; the 
 brightest light. In an experience with many students I 
 have seldom found one who could recall these conditions. 
 
 At first thought one is likely to say that intensity of sen- 
 sations makes the difference in our memory for them. It is 
 doubtful, however, whether it does. 
 
 VI. Observe from concrete instances what difference con- 
 ditions of rest and fatigue make in your memories; health 
 and sickness; youth and age. 
 
 VII. What subjects did you like best in school and col- 
 lege? How many memories have you of these as compared 
 with other subjects? 
 
 Presentation Step. — I. Though one speaks of his mem- 
 ory as if it were a faculty separate from mental content, 
 there is really no such general faculty. You must see from 
 your observation that what we have is memories rather 
 than memory. 
 
 II. Pick out the facts that you have remembered all 
 your life, that have come back whenever you needed them, 
 and analyze them to find the reason why you have remem- 
 bered them so well : 
 
 Let us say, a long time ago when you were away from 
 home some one said to you, "Your house burned to the 
 ground last ni-ght." You did not have to repeat that fact 
 
Memories 97 
 
 ten times in order to remember it, or to have it written on 
 the black-board or in your note-book. 
 
 Notice the knowledge, the associations involved to make 
 this fact, "your house burned to the ground last night." 
 The thought of your home is a part of many complexes. 
 You can hardly start out to think on any subject that you 
 do not come upon some thought of the house^ the occupants, 
 rooms, furniture, books, pictures, sounds, occupations, in- 
 terests, pleasures, and sorrows connected with it. You 
 know that "burned to the ground" means complete de- 
 struction; that last night is a definite past time. All this 
 wealth of material is brought into new relations, rear- 
 ranged to make the reality, "My home was burned to the 
 ground last night." 
 
 Suppose, again, I could tell you, and it would be true, 
 "You are the heir to a million dollars." I should not need 
 to give you a text-book to explain the fact, or to keep you 
 after school to be sure that you would remember it till 
 examination time. 
 
 Thoughts of denials, missed opportunities, what you 
 would do for yourself and others if you had more money, — 
 there is much material here, too, to make into the idea, 
 "I am the heir to a million dollars." 
 
 Both these thoughts would thus be inevitably in many 
 trains of association; they would be interesting, because 
 each involves a large amount of related material. 
 
 That which is in many trains of association, interesting, 
 made out of rich material is best remembered. The mem- 
 ory for such facts is retentitive, and the facts are available 
 when needed. 
 
 III. So much for the nature of the mental material in- 
 volved to secure retentive memories. 
 
 A second matter of great importance in remembering 
 facts is that of the relations between them. 
 7 
 
98 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 Science is classified knowledge, and it is with this kind 
 that schools are concerned. 
 
 "The best i)ossible sort of system into which to weave 
 an object, mentally, is a rational system, or what is called 
 a science. Place the thing in its pigeon-hole in a classifi- 
 catory series ; explain it logically by its causes, and deduce 
 from it its necessary ett'ects * * *. a science is thus 
 the greatest of labor-saving contrivances. It relieves the 
 memory of an immense number of details, replacing, as 
 it does, merely contiguous associations by the logical ones 
 of identity, similarity, or analogy." (James, "Talks to 
 Teachers. ' ' ) 
 
 But learning sciences in the right way is only another 
 way of describing the process of mental growth. It is 
 indeed literally true that "the only way to improve the 
 memory is to nnprove the mind." 
 
 Application Step.— I. What can one do to improve a 
 poor memory ? 
 
 Misled by the fallacy of formal training, many people 
 begin to study systems designed to improve the memory. 
 These systems are usually adaptations of Professor Edward 
 Pick's work on memories. They are often helpful to the 
 untrained as they suggest new and ingenious kinds of as- 
 sociations, they classify material, and stimulate an inert 
 mind to more vigorous effort. AVith the same amount of 
 work, however, expended in the search for logical rela- 
 tions, for scientific classification, the results would be, no 
 doubt, more satisfactory. The mechanical parts of memory 
 systems "may sometimes be crutches, but in the end we 
 have to carry our crutches." 
 
 II. As for helping one's self to remember the many 
 small matters of daily tasks, one forgets here largely be- 
 cause he is not willing to work hard enough to remember, 
 
 -»^ >" .: 
 
Memories 99 
 
 to go through the drudgery involved in always remem- 
 bering. Though much sentimentality is wasted in vain 
 wishes for a ' ' good memory, ' ' we are not enough in earnest 
 to give the persistent, constant thought necessary to re- 
 member to mail letters and to do trivial errands in the time 
 of them, until perhaps some day we wake up quite helpless 
 in these matters and almost beyond improvement. 
 
 Mme. D., a well-known teacher of physical culture, is 
 wont to tell her would-be patient of the indolent type, "I 
 can do nothing for you, you have no mind ! ' ' What she 
 means is that the luckless applicant has not sufficient will 
 power, control, to work at her exercises daily, hourly, 
 patiently, and persistently forever ! 
 
 And in remembering the trivial requirements of daily 
 life it is, in the same way, largely a matter of control, of 
 "keeping up the loose end-s, " of the ingrained habit of a 
 lifetime of doing the thing that ought to be done when it 
 ought to be done, of being responsible. 
 
 III. Suppose you forgot all the subjects that you studied 
 in, for example, the high school ; suppose that literally all 
 traces there made in the brain-cells and nerves were oblit- 
 erated: Could you learn the same subjects more readily 
 a second time! Under these conditions, surely not. 
 
 Suppose, again, that only a few of the brain tendencies 
 were obliterated — those established, let us say, by your 
 study of arithmetic : Could you learn algebra again as 
 easily as you did at first? Or with geography forgotten, 
 could you learn history as easily? It seems to be true that 
 one school subject is a help, a mental discipline for an- 
 other in proportion as the two use the same brain paths, 
 or as they have material in common. We literally "learn 
 with all we have learned." 
 
 But the matter of mental discipline involves more than 
 learning as it is generally understood. We seem to be 
 LOfC 
 
100 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 limited in our ability to do to what we have done. Suppose 
 for a third case, that a person forgot all his knowledge, all 
 his mental content : how much ability to act would he have 
 left f All the conceivable terms in which he does his think- 
 ing, planning, and executing are gone, and if there is any 
 such thing as "formal discipline" left to help him, it is 
 too attenuated and intangible a matter to be understood. 
 
 IV. Is it not truly appalling to think how much time is 
 wasted in schools under this false notion that ability gained 
 - in the mechanical study of no matter what subjects is still 
 transferable when the content is forgotten! 
 
 Perhaps this notion has arisen to justify formal, per- 
 functory ways of teaching. Luckily there is no place left 
 in modern pedagogical ideals for formal teaching of any 
 kind. Teachers are beginning to realize that, in proportion 
 as learning is formal, it is stultifying. The great millen- 
 nium, however, when there will be a proper appreciation of 
 all the wealth of human culture that should be taught in 
 schools and taught to be remembered and used in daily 
 life, every fact of it, still seems very far away. Yet ideals 
 are surely present that involve not memory for the sake of 
 memory, but mental growth by the acquisition at the ripe 
 time of knowledge in right relations, real growth in 
 wisdom. 
 
 V. There is probably some one time in school life when 
 each of the subjects usually taught in schools is most con- 
 genial, interesting, and readily understood. If the given 
 subject were taught then, its facts would be retained and 
 available for later resource and power. As most subjects 
 are now taught, however, that is, out of place and formally, 
 pupils have for them only a mechanical memory, which is 
 likely to be but fleeting and irresponsible. 
 
 A whole science of teaching might be formulated (and 
 much has been done) 1) from research in the contents of 
 
Memories 101 
 
 children's minds and observation of their successive in- 
 stinctive interests and tendencies as determining the time 
 for specific teaching and training, and 2) from the estab- 
 lishment of right relations between different subjects and 
 parts of the same subject taught. 
 
 VI. It is perhaps going too far to press the question, 
 should anything be taught in schools that is not to be re- 
 membered "? 
 
 Yet the only consistent answer psychologically is, No. 
 Herbert Spencer showed in his chapter on "What Knowl- 
 edge is of Most Worth 'I ' ' the great value, necessity, even, in 
 daily life, of the facts of many sciences, mathematics, and, 
 in a measure, of history. An estimate of the wonderful 
 value of the facts of history from a different standpoint is 
 presented by the Herbartians. 
 
 Contrasted with all this wealth of knowledge for pleas- 
 ure, guidance, and inspiration, the barren results of the 
 formal book training for examinations common to some 
 schools seem barren indeed. 
 
 It is often thought too much to require that one should 
 be able to recall at any time for pleasure or use particular 
 facts, "to pass an examination" on all one has learned in 
 schools. Yet the daily requirements of life are our "ex- 
 aminations," the opportunities that we improve or miss 
 depending on the availability of our wisdom,— these are 
 the tests of memory and consequent power. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Apperception 
 Lesson I 
 
 DEFINITION OF APPERCEPTION 
 
 Preparation Step.— I. Look through a kaleidoscope. 
 What is the explanation of the figures that you see"? 
 
 The instrument is usually a hollow prism lined with re- 
 flectors. Small pieces of glass are so confined at one end 
 against a translucent disc as to move freely. The eye of 
 the observer looks through the other end at these pieces 
 of glass and their reflections. As the prism is turned or 
 jarred slightly, with the constant rearrangement of per- 
 haps only ten pieces of glass, figures of an almost infinite 
 variety are formed. 
 
 II. Still think of the stream of thought, consciousness, 
 as made up of sensations all the same in kind, some of 
 which form the outer order (the first, or primary members 
 of trains of associations), the rest of which form the inner 
 order (the other members of trains of associations). 
 
 III. Think, also, of the sensations not as carried about 
 in "memory," but as always a present result in mind of 
 the stimulus of brain-cells, — the sensations primary when 
 the stimulus is from the end organs, secondary when by 
 the law of habit. 
 
 IV. The stream of thought is an individual matter. Ask 
 several persons to sketch quickly the front of the building 
 in which you are. Compare the drawings: Why should 
 they be so different ? 
 
 Pronounce to several persons the words Empire State, 
 2b, cobblestones. West Point : then ask each person what he 
 thought when he heard each word. Why did not all think 
 
Apperception 103 
 
 of the same thing, the 2b, for example, that was in your 
 mind 1 
 
 Each one, you answer, gave the associations established 
 by his past experience. If two of these persons had had the 
 same past experiences, could they then have made exactly 
 similar drawings, or would they have had the same asso- 
 ciations '? If they were brothers brought up always in the 
 same family, would both think the same thought, have the 
 same opinions? 
 
 It does not take much reflection to show you that to have 
 thoughts that are really alike two persons must be more 
 nearly similar than even brothers. 
 
 V. Let your imagination play for a moment on the prob- 
 lem under what circumstances two persons could have ex- 
 actly similar thoughts, the same associations: 
 
 These persons must have had not only the same individ- 
 ual past, but also the same heredity ; they must be the same 
 as to their bodies, atom for atom and must have been always 
 in the same place at the same time — but the conditions 
 are getting beyond even imagination ! And there are per- 
 haps other factors not physical and not now calculable, that 
 would still contribute to the difference in response that any 
 two people make to apparently the same stimulus. 
 
 The present conditions, physical and mental, of each per- 
 son are a resultant of his past, and the past for each in- 
 dividual is necessarily different from that of all others. 
 Therefore the stream of thought is for each person an in- 
 dividual matter, and it is inconceivable that any two per- 
 sons should have exactly similar associations and per- 
 ceptions. 
 
 Presentation Step.— I. But if each person's present is 
 the resultant of his past you will ask, do we never have an 
 experience that is wholly new? 
 
104 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 Think of something that seemed a wholly new experience 
 and analyze it. Think, for example, of the last new book 
 you read : you say you gained new thoughts from the book — 
 did mental states fly through the air from the page to your 
 mind? Surely not! In what sense is it, then, that you 
 gained new thoughts? 
 
 Suppose you read the sentence, ' ' For several years there 
 has been an unmistakable diminution of the public interest 
 in oratorio." All these words were known to you before, 
 but not in just these relations. As you perceived each word 
 or group of words it was followed by trains of association, 
 and the sentence had meaning to you depending on the 
 nature of these associations and their present relations. 
 All you gained from the book, then, was what you brought 
 to it somewhat rearranged. 
 
 Analysis of all so-called new experience will show that 
 the content is invariably "old" or secondary, and that 
 what is new is as invariably the arrangement. 
 
 II. But, you will ask, is there not in. the beginning of life 
 some wholly new experience? Suppose, in answer, that a 
 person who has been totally blind to the age of twenty 
 years suddenly receives his sight. He can see at first only 
 what the structure of his eyes, optic nerve, and brain as 
 determined by heredity and individual growth enables him 
 to see. 
 
 There is never a time, moreover, when it is thinkable 
 that something comes from without to within the mind, 
 when something the elements of which at least were not 
 potentially in the mind before is introduced. 
 
 And the colors and touches, even the primary ones that 
 you make into the print of the book and the book itself; 
 those, also, that the man formerly blind, or the little child 
 makes into objects about him, instead of being something 
 added to the mind from without it, — all are only those sen- 
 
Apperception 105 
 
 sations that the past of each, individual and racial, enables 
 him to make out of components potentially there. 
 
 According to the theory of evolution an individual life 
 cannot be isolated from parental and ancestral lives. As 
 cell life in each organism develops, it is thinkable that 
 constant readjustments of elemental mental conditions 
 make possible in the course of time the stream of thought 
 as we know it. 
 
 III. Think of the action of the mind as somewhat like 
 that of the kaleidoscope, with the sensations corresponding 
 to the pieces of glass. As the kaleidoscope is turned, new 
 designs are formed that are the rearrangements of the same 
 pieces of glass. Somewhat thus with each new stimulus, 
 sensations created anew, yet secondary, for each moment 
 of the present, take new relations, and these newly ar- 
 ranged groups make up the stream of thought at every 
 moment. The mind, however, seems almost limitless in the 
 number of its possible elements. Its possible combinations, 
 also, seem infinite, and each new combination, beeause of 
 memory, becomes a possibility, an added potentiality for 
 future thought. The gain at each rearrangement, more- 
 over, is not only in the complexity of material, the content, 
 but also in the nature of the relations established. This 
 last matter, however, is another story which you will study 
 about from the standpoint of Thought. 
 
 IV. When we look at the stream of thought under the 
 aspect of the rearrangement of secondary mental material 
 into higher forms of relation, the standpoint is that of 
 Apperception. 
 
 Application Step. — I. With the idea in mind that each 
 one's stream of thought from moment to moment is the 
 progressive rearrangement of his own secondary mental 
 material, think over again the conditions that would make 
 
106 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 it conceivable for two persons to have exactly similar asso- 
 ciations. Is it not remarkable that we are as much alike, 
 even, as we seem to be? 
 
 Compare as to relative similarity your own thoughts and 
 those of an Esquimo on the one hand, and, on the other, 
 your own now with those that you had at ten years of age. 
 Which two would be more nearly alike? Suggest other 
 conditions for comparison. 
 
 II. In the terms of apperception what is the process of 
 reading? When you read the statement about oratorio, a 
 rapid series of associations followed every perceived word 
 or group of words so far as you understood what you read. 
 Secondary thoughts were brought together of which you 
 had never before been conscious in this relation. When 
 the first member of the trains of association is a written 
 or printed word, the process of rearranging secondary ma- 
 terial is reading. 
 
 III. Some one has said, "We do not judge a book, it 
 judges us." What did he mean? 
 
 IV. The interpretation of character from the standpoint 
 of apperception is a favorite study with authors— see, for 
 example, Wilkie Collins' "The Moonstone," "The Schon- 
 berg-Cotta Family," Kate Douglas Wiggin's "The Affair 
 at the Inn," Robert Browning's "The Ring and the Book." 
 
 In these books different persons relate the same series 
 of events as each made them, thereby revealing each his 
 own character. 
 
 Lesson II 
 
 LEARNING 
 
 Preparation Step.— I. Take for analysis any random 
 facts that you have learned to-day, such as 1) that it is 
 possible to travel nearly all the way from Portland, Maine, 
 
Apperception 107 
 
 to Lincoln, Nebraska by trolley; 2) that there is a cemetery 
 for clogs at Stratf ord-on-Avon ; 3 ) that the Post Office De- 
 partment of the United States does not pay, is not self- 
 supporting; 4) that a child of three by his heroism in res- 
 cuing his baby sister from a burning house is a candidate 
 for the Carnegie medal; 5) that the temperature this 
 morning was 14 degrees below zero; 6) that you have a 
 letter; and so on. 
 
 Since all mental action is apperceptive, these facts must 
 have been made out of secondary material. 
 
 What did it take to make into each fact? Suppose one 
 had never heard of Portland, or a trolley car — the first 
 statement would not mean much. On the other hand, if 
 you knew at least vaguely the direction and location of 
 these cities, the distance by steam cars in hours between 
 them, and in general, the route followed by trolley from 
 place to place ; if you knew what it means to ride through 
 the country by trolley ; if you knew perhaps that between 
 two cities on the route in New York State there is no trol- 
 ley line, if, I say, you had all this secondary material, you 
 would have enough then to learn with ordinary intelligence 
 the fact that you can travel nearly all the way from Port- 
 land to Lincoln by trolley. 
 
 Again, you knew what the condition is in a business that 
 does not earn so much as it expends; you thought of the 
 Post Office Department of the United States in the terms 
 of visual images of the local Post Office, the postman, mail 
 trains, and of thought words about collecting, transport- 
 ing, and distributing the mail from city and country, and 
 the complexity and cost of all this labor. Putting all these 
 ideas together in new relations you learned that "the Post 
 Office Department of the United States does not pay.'" 
 
 II. Hunt out the secondary material that it takes to 
 learn many other facts that you have learned recently. 
 
108 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 Presentation Step. — When we are looking at the 
 process of rearranging secondary material in the stream 
 of thought under the aspect of acquiring "new" ideas, 
 the standpoint is that of Learning. 
 
 Application Step.— I. From how much of our experience 
 do we learn ? Rearrangements are taking place every mo- 
 ment, and the tirst member of every train of association 
 involves the bringing together of material that has never 
 been together before. Clearly in spite of ourselves we 
 must be learning all the time. Now you can sympathize 
 with M. Jourdain's surprise when he found that he had 
 been speaking prose all his life! 
 
 IL But though we are learning all the time, not all that 
 we learn is of equal value. The ordinary haphazard ac- 
 quisition of children outside of school is not usually esti- 
 mated as very precious. In the case of school learning, 
 however, the teachers' aim should be to cause pupils so to 
 learn that the result will be systematized knowledge, 
 science, available for daily use and pleasure,— knowledge, 
 moreover, that as efifective motives to lofty achievement in 
 ecuiduct vitalizes character, that stimulates to research for 
 further knowledge, not only for self-realization, but also 
 to add to the general sum of human achievement. 
 
 III. Suppose that the little chap who saved his sister's 
 life was a member of your own family; that you were ac- 
 tually concerned in the administration of postal matters; 
 that you were expecting a letter of great interest to you; 
 that you had been over the route from Portland to Lincoln 
 by steam cars, also from Lincoln to some eastern city per- 
 haps by trolley. AVould it make any difference in your 
 learning of the facts"? Would you comprehend them more 
 intelligently than you do now"? AVhat difference would 
 
Apperception 109 
 
 these considerations make in your interest, in the number 
 of associations, and consequent memory and availability 
 of the facts"? What, in the degree to which they are 
 understood ? 
 
 What difference in short, does the nature and amount of 
 the secondary material rearranged in the process of learn- 
 ing make? 
 
 It makes all the difference in the world. In the degree 
 that learning is formal, perfunctory, a matter of words 
 and symbols, not involving a rich and full mental content 
 is it deadening. On the other hand, to make the applica- 
 tion to school learning, only as the act involves the greatest 
 wealth of mental content, that is, the interests and dynamic 
 factors instinctive to the dift'erent periods of a child's 
 growth as he recapitulates race advancement, is it spontan- 
 eous and consequently educative. 
 
 IV. The systematic and scientific study of children has 
 sHfted emphasis from the problem of teaching to that of 
 learning. 
 
 To find the contents of learners' minds, that is, their 
 native interests, tendencies, and reactions has thus become 
 the vital consideration for teachers. This matter disre- 
 garded, even though a teacher may be learned in his "sub- 
 ject matter," his work is weak in proportion; this matter 
 determined, he has an intelligent guide to what, when, and 
 how to teach. 
 
 "Knowledge of the subject-matter and a sense of 
 humor" doubtless go a long way toward making a good 
 teacher. Much good work has been done, moreover, em- 
 pirically and through sympathy, but how much better work 
 might teachers do, if at the same time that they have knowl- 
 edge, a sense of humor, and warm sympathy, they could 
 teach intelligently and scientifically ! 
 
110 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 The following vigorous protest against over-teaching 
 makes one think seriously : 
 
 "Is pedagogy an art with a science at its foundation, or 
 is it only a species of opportunism which should merely 
 stand by and occasionally smooth out a difficulty, humbly 
 conscious of the fact that all the motive force must come 
 from the learner"? In other words, can the teacher think 
 for the pupil, or must the pupil do his own thinking"? Is 
 not the conventional relation of pupil and teacher a pal- 
 pably artificial one, an irksome ligament which wears fear- 
 fully on both? Why, if this is not true, do so many chil- 
 dren who love to learn hate school? and why are most 
 teachers, especially most women teachers, sick, crabbed, 
 and cynical? Has the modern method of substituting a 
 ghastl}^ imitation of play for work, and of feeding the pupil 
 predigested knowledge, helped matters much ? Why, then, 
 did a rebellious kindergarten pupil recently announce that . 
 she wanted to get into the first grade at once, because she 
 was so tired of having to play all the time, and wanted to 
 learn something? Why should children learn to count, 
 read, and Avrite before they can understand the necessity 
 and object of such processes, and years before they have 
 any practical use for them? Is not building bridges the 
 only way of learning how to build bridges, and is not deal- 
 ing with people the only way of learning how to influence 
 people? Why should a man who knows how to do things 
 himself waste his time telling other people how to do them, 
 especially as it is futile to tell another person how to do 
 things'? How much influence would Napoleon have wielded 
 if he had been a professor of military tactics instead of a 
 practical strategist? Finally, would it not be better for 
 the world if there were less teaching and more learning?" 
 
 (R. T. House.) 
 
Apperception 111 
 
 Lesson III 
 
 TEACHING 
 
 Preparation Step.— I. Many aims have been posited in 
 education. Perhaps the most satisfactory one as a guide 
 and test of the daily work in the schoolroom is that of 
 character. 
 
 II. Try to realize anew the conception of your stream of 
 thought as in some way a unit which has two aspects, now 
 the outer, and again the inner, the two the same in kind. 
 Think of the ever shifting present of consciousness as the 
 rearrangement of secondary sensuous elements in time, 
 space, and higher relations into ever more adequate gen- 
 eralizations and abstractions. 
 
 III.- 1 wish you to learn a certain fact that can be made 
 out of the following secondary material : 
 
 How many times a day do you wash your hands ? You 
 answer, "I wash them many times." What do you use in 
 washing them? "I use water and soap, hand-sapolio 
 sometimes."' 
 
 Once at the seashore I saw a lady dust her silk ruffles 
 with handfuls of the clean dry sand on which she wa-^ 
 sitting. 
 
 Imagine that some one asks you to examine a dainty 
 book, delicately colored. Your first thought is perhaps, 
 "I must not soil it." You thereby show that you care for 
 the quality of the book, have deference, respect to its 
 beauty. 
 
 We have come to show respect in many cases in a figur- 
 ative way, by symbols alone : One raises his hat to an ac- 
 quaintance, bows to those he knows, rises to greet an older 
 person, waits to allow him to pass first, kneels in prayer. 
 What other symbolism do you use constantly? 
 
112 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 Think how you would feel without any work — suppose 
 you never had done anything toward a purpose. We have 
 a proverb which says, "Satan always finds some work for 
 idle hands to do," that is, our work keeps us out of mis- 
 chief. The report of a certain prison in Pennsylvania 
 states that eighty-three and one-half per cent of its inmates 
 have no trades, were idlers. 
 
 But the good results of work are not merely negative, 
 they are indeed positive in usefulness, virtue, and happiness. 
 
 Imagine as you look out that instead of trolley cars, 
 buildings, and trees you saw a rolling waste of sand and 
 sparse vegetation stretching away to the horizon in every 
 direction, with not a drop of water for miles and miles, 
 hours and hours. There is never any rain, the sun shines 
 all the long day with an intense heat, and it is always 
 summer. Imagine it vividly, as though you were actually 
 walking along in the desert. 
 
 Point in the direction of Arabia. If you really went in 
 the direction you are pointing, you would come to a star, 
 would you not! "Come down to the earth" and remem- 
 ber that you must consider the shape of the earth, its cur- 
 vature, in pointing to Arabia. 
 
 Picture, also, instead of the smartly-dressed Americans 
 whom you see in the street, such a group of^warthy Arabs 
 winding their way across the desert that you have made, — 
 such a group as you have seen in Schreyer's pictures, per- 
 haps. Imagine them as of middle stature and powerful 
 make, dressed in loosely draped white or colored garments, 
 with their heads protected from the sun by large turbans. 
 
 ' ' The Arabs express in their features dignity and pride. 
 They are naturally active, intelligent, and courteous, with 
 a character marked by temperance, bravery, and hospital- 
 ity, along with a strong propensity for poetry." 
 
Apperception 113 
 
 These people of the desert are, according to their lights, 
 devout, good people. As to religion, they are worshipers 
 of God whose prophet they believe to be Mohammed. A 
 Mohammedan, you remember, has fixed hours for prayer, 
 and, no matter where he is, at those times he turns his face 
 toward the Holy City and prays. 
 
 The other day just at dusk, as I was walking along the 
 almost deserted street, I suddenly became conscious that 
 there was some one coming on the pavement just back of 
 me. I glanced around and what was my amazement to 
 see a camel ! Then I remembered that Ben Hur was in 
 town and decided that the cainel and his attendant must 
 be bound for the theatre a little way farther on. But for 
 the moment it was inexpressibly strange to see a camel 
 stalking along the city street — it quite transported me to 
 another and very different scene— the long line of a cara- 
 van crawling over the desert. 
 
 Now the fact that I wanted to teach you is this one : 
 
 "The Arabs far from water wash their hands in the 
 sands of the desert before prayer. So the dust of labor 
 purifies us." (Auerbach.) 
 
 Presentation Step. — I. In learning this fact, you have 
 brought together several groups of secondary material that 
 had not been together before. In considering what teach- 
 ing is, the standpoint is changed. How did you come to 
 make these rearrangements 1 You made them because 
 something or someone stimulated them : 
 
 Teaching is the process of stinuilating rearrangements 
 of secondary material in some one's mind. 
 
 II. If we learn from all our experience, haphazard and 
 chance as well as directed, then every moment we must be 
 taught. In school teaching, however, there is a definite aim : 
 8 
 
114 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 School teaching is a process of stimulating in a pupil's 
 mind the rearrangement of secondary material into syste- 
 matized, scientitic knowledge available for guidance and 
 effective in enriching and energizing character. 
 
 Application Step.— I. Of late "methods" of teaching 
 have come somewhat into disrepute. This is as it should 
 be in so far as they were formal or "cut and dried." A 
 recent critic is indeed quite right to inveigh against labored, 
 artificial "method" as suggesting the work of "the mediae- 
 val barber's apprentice, who could set up for himself only 
 when lie could whip two ounces of soap into barrels of 
 lather." 
 
 In so far, however, as the mind acts in certain definite 
 ways, should not these ways be observed and taken as 
 guides in this most important of all occupations, teaching? 
 The fact, moreover, that "method" has been abused, that 
 it has subordinated content and substance to form and 
 made learning about as empty as it was when the teacher 
 merely heard pupils recite text-books is no reason for in- 
 veighing against all method. 
 
 II. It is urged, also, that teachers do not know psychol- 
 ogy, therefore it cannot be of use to them. But the fact 
 that one does not know psychology is no reason why one 
 should not study it. Psychology is not a more difficult 
 subject to learn than many others if one is only willing to 
 work patiently at jt in the detailed way, for example, that 
 one works at mathematics or the study of birds. 
 
 III. Though there are certain qualities in every good 
 teacher that were born with him, much may still be done 
 toward "making" him. 
 
 It is an advantage indeed to be well born as to health, 
 emotional capacity, and will potential, yet most young 
 people of average endowment in these respects can be made 
 
Apperception 115 
 
 into fairly intelligent and enthusiastic teachers. Knowl- 
 edge of subject matter alone, however, will not do it, nor, 
 of course, will knowledge of psychology alone. 
 
 You may have known, say, an excellent and enthusiastic 
 teacher of science who had attained his high success with- 
 out professional training. Yet was his enthusiasm for the 
 process of teaching, for the science he was imparting, or 
 for young people? The chances are that it was not for 
 the first. If in addition then to the mastery of his science 
 he could have had a mastery of the "reasons why" in teach- 
 ing, might not his success have been higher still? 
 
 IV. You have thought about the difference in response 
 by different people to the given stimulus. How individual 
 a matter must learning in schools then be ! Most teaching 
 is addressed to the "average" pupil. The really defective 
 type has little chance in ordinary schools and is usually 
 provided for in a special school ; the slow working type is 
 perhaps best helped by a plan like that originated at Ba- 
 tavia, thus those who are clever above the average are 
 doubtless the ones who suffer most from teaching in general. 
 
 V. No doubt classes are too large, particularly in pri- 
 mary and intermediate grades, in most city schools. Yet 
 in spite of the fact of the difference in response to the same 
 stimulus, I have seen really close individual work done 
 throughout primary and intermediate grades, no one of 
 which numbered less than thirty pupils, such work made 
 possible by the choice of a rich content of myth and his- 
 tory with all their suggestions for other content and form 
 subjects suited to the children's ages. Teachers here with 
 a "keen scent for pairts in laddies" had abundant chance 
 to discover individual aptitudes, and the pupils did not 
 come out of those grades "all just alike." 
 
 VI. Can any lesson, any subject be taught at any time? 
 Since the contents of a pupil 's mind determine finally what 
 
116 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 he can learn and since this material differs with each year 
 of life as instincts and race tendencies appear and ripen, 
 not all subjects or lessons are of equal interest or can be 
 learned at all times. 
 
 VII. Since all there is to character in young children is 
 instincts, education ought to be the process of making 
 instinctive reactions into conscious ones and of correlating 
 spontaneous acts into the reasoned ones of later character. 
 
 A suggestion as to how the school programme can ac- 
 complish this result (a suggestion happily followed by an 
 increasing number of schools in this country), comes from 
 the study of the contents of children's minds and charac- 
 teristic modes of thought and action, a study Mdiich shows 
 that the instincts ripening at different periods in a child's 
 life cause him to feel an essential sympathy with the life 
 and conditions of the corresponding • race period. In a 
 sense, the child remembers his racial past in the order in 
 which it was lived. How better, then, can complete ad- 
 vantage be taken of the child's native impulses than by 
 guiding him to liye with vigor and truth freely through the 
 best in successive periods of race development? For "In 
 order that the heroic impulses of boyhood may neither dis- 
 appear without serving a purpose nor degenerate, but 
 rather lead on to the period of reason, they need an ideal 
 presentation of such men as achieve what the boy would 
 like to achieve, and who at the same time reveal the more 
 suitably the transition to a higher order. ' ' 
 
 Lesson IV 
 
 THE LESSON UNIT 
 
 Preparation Step.— I. Through custom and convenience 
 our schools are fixed in the habit of devoting from thirty 
 to sixtv minutes of the day during each term oi- year to 
 
Apperception 117 
 
 each of the several subjects taught. The lesson is usually 
 made up of one fact or a number that are related so as 
 to form one whole. 
 
 II. One might ask in connection with the teaching of the 
 fact about the Arabs, why not just tell it? What is to be 
 gained by "lashing up so much lather?" Couldn't one 
 learn, remember, and use the fact just as well without all 
 that preparation? The answer of psychology to all three 
 is, No. 
 
 If teaching is the process of stimulating the rearrange- 
 ment of secondary material, then there is a distinct gain, 
 and several gains, in calling up the secondary material 
 before it is brought into new relations. Some of these 
 gains are : 
 
 a) It takes time to learn, that is, to recall all the sec- 
 ondary material that one may have potentially at com- 
 mand. A preparation step gives time. 
 
 b) The Preparation Step brings a larger amount of 
 secondary material to mind than could return if the new 
 thought were given or read without preparation. 
 
 c) The Preparation Step, since it stimulates a greater 
 amount of secondary material than would be in mind 
 without it, makes possible a clearer understanding of the 
 new fact. We "understand with all we know." 
 
 d) Since the Preparation Step brings up a large amount 
 of secondary material to make into the new fact, it, the 
 fact, will thus be in a larger number of trains of associa- 
 tion and therefore more readily available. This means 
 that the memory for it will be better. 
 
 e) The Preparation Step gives the teacher a chance to 
 stimulate interesting and rich material, to take advantage 
 of instincts and dynamic factors that make learning 
 pleasurable. And only as learning is spontaneous is 
 it educative. 
 
118 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 f ) We are said to be only relatively awake any of the 
 time, so that it is of advantage to be able to start a recita- 
 tion with material that will wake pupils up to a lively 
 interest. They have perhaps just come from play or from 
 another recitation, and they cannot spring at once into 
 the thought of this one without help. 
 
 g) The Presentation Step, moreover, in its logical ar- 
 rangement may begin in a relatively uninteresting place. 
 
 III. It is hard, perhaps, to realize from just one illus- 
 tration that one does learn a fact more intelligently be- 
 cause of the preparation, the consideration of the secondary 
 matter to be made into it — and yet when one considers the 
 whole school life, the gain day by day of having a real con- 
 tent, what is intrinsically interesting stimulated into right 
 relations, something of the value of preparation in the long 
 run is seen. 
 
 Presentation Step.— Psychology suggests the divi- 
 sion of each day's lesson, the lesson whole, or Lesson Unit 
 into ^^ the Preparation Step, the purpose of which is to 
 call up secondary material and give the chance to meditate 
 upon it, and '-^^ the Presentation Step, where the secondary 
 material is brought into new relations. (A third step of 
 the lesson-unit, the Application Step, will be considered 
 in the chapter on Thought.) 
 
 Application Step.— I. If you chance to be a teacher, 
 analyze every day's lessons into a lesson-unit. Accustom 
 yourself to make this analysis till you do so simply and 
 naturally, almost instinctively, the moment you think of 
 material to be taught. Try to arrange the material of nar- 
 rations, letters, anecdotes, lectures after the same plan. 
 
 II. If it has been your custom merely to hear pupils re- 
 cite what they have committed of the assignment of the 
 
Apperception 119 
 
 previous day, ''Learn five pages more of your text-book," 
 if this plan has been your custom, then try one somewhat 
 like the following: 
 
 Notice what "the next five pages of the text-book" con- 
 tain ; give the preparation step for that material before 
 assigning the lesson, and let the work at home on the "five 
 pages" be a part of the Presentation Step. The repetition 
 and added generalizations in class the next day can com- 
 plete the Presentation Step. The Application Step may 
 follow, partly in class and partly as assigned work to be 
 done at home the next night. 
 
 III. It is hoped that the following suggestions on the two 
 steps considered will be found helpful : 
 
 A. On the Preparation Step : 
 
 1. The preparation step (I hesitate to write it with 
 capitals — it seems to make so formal a thing of it) is 
 designed not as an introduction, a preface, a foreword to 
 lead up to the new idea, — its aim is rather a very different 
 one, that is, to call up all the secondary material that is 
 to be made into the new idea. 
 
 2. State the aim of the lesson to the class. (This state- 
 ment must not tell too much [the whole lesson], nor yet 
 too little.) 
 
 3. Consider the beginning place. ( Call up first the most 
 interesting, rich, and striking concrete, even homely, sec- 
 ondary material.) 
 
 4. Make directions definite and concrete. 
 
 5. Do not confuse Presentation (new) material with 
 Preparation (old, or secondary) material. 
 
 6. Prepare, in general, for all of the Presentation Step 
 in the Preparation Step. ^That is, call up all the sec- 
 ondary material needed to make the new ideas.) 
 
120 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 7. All of the material in the Preparation Step is in gen- 
 eral "old," or secondary. Sometimes, however, new mate- 
 rial that does not belong to the Presentation Step, yet is 
 necessary to an understanding of it, must be given here. 
 
 8. Do not call up more material in the Preparation Step 
 than you need to use in the Presentation, and do not call 
 up irrelevant material. 
 
 9. The form of the Presentation Step may be free ques- 
 tion and answer, an informal, spontaneous conversation to 
 bring vividly to mind the secondary material needed and 
 to stimulate the imagination. The order of procedure 
 should be psychological rather than logical. (Often the 
 teacher may do most of the talking, for it does not follow 
 that because pupils are not talking, they are not thinking 
 to the best possible advantage.) 
 
 10. Often the best material for preparation is concrete 
 material recalled from experience at home, at play, in 
 every-day life wholly outside of school. 
 
 11. The material brought to mind in the Preparation 
 Step should be as near to instinctive interests as possible. 
 
 12. It is often a help to pupils to have the teacher sum 
 up at the close in outline the secondary material involved. 
 
 B. On the Presentation Step : 
 
 1. Arrange the new material in a short series of clear, 
 numbered steps. (The teacher must have determined with 
 perfect definiteness upon the material for the Presentation 
 Step before either the Preparation or the Application 
 Step can be planned.) 
 
 2. Consider ^) the completeness, ^^ the unity, *^' the pro- 
 portion, and ^^ the progressive order of the Presentation 
 Step. 
 
 3. Fix the material by a sufficient number of repetitions. 
 (The purpose of the Application Step is sometimes mis- 
 
Apperception 121 
 
 taken to be repetition. All of the mere repetition of the 
 new material may well come in the Presentation Step.) 
 
 4. xVll of the matter of the Presentation Step is, in gen- 
 eral, new. 
 
 IV. The objection may be made that there would not 
 be time in the school courses as they are now to teach by 
 lesson-units. 
 
 In answer, it may seem more expeditious to teach chil- 
 dren to say the words. In proportion, however, as the 
 words are merely formal, involve only the tongue muscles, 
 they are deadening and not educative. On the other hand, 
 in proportion to the wealth of secondary material, past 
 experience involved, learning is worth while. ''Festina 
 leiite * * * should be printed in letters of gold over 
 the doorposts of every school room, but whether or not 
 teachers regard the motto, nature takes care that her best 
 advice is attended to without the formality of a sign- 
 board." No matter how much a teacher may flatter her- 
 self that, because the little tongues can recite the words 
 glibly, the children have learned, nature sees to it that the 
 poor children have to pay for the violation of her laws. It 
 takes time to learn and even though our formal devices 
 may seem to be short-cuts to knowledge, they are in reality 
 nothing of the sort. Here as elsewhere "the longest way 
 round is often the shortest way home." 
 
 V. There is danger here, as in the "method" inveighed 
 against by critics, that a teacher will become mechanical 
 and sacrifice all considerations to the form of the Lesson- 
 Unit. The danger is lessened, however, in proportion as 
 one keeps near to his psychology which gives the true rea- 
 son for each step. 
 
 Some one has called psychology the teacher's "Black- 
 stone." (Yet imagine a lawyer who goes back to his Black- 
 stone as seldom as most teachers go to their psychology.) 
 
122 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 It is more than that— it is his very life. Only as he keeps 
 near it, is his enthusiasm glowing and his work intelligent. 
 In proportion as he is ignorant of it, lacks a working idea 
 of it, or fails to use it as a basis for all thought and pro- 
 cedure is his work the weaker. 
 
 To be sure, sheer human sympathy and tact may make a 
 good teacher and may seem a substitute to a degree for ex- 
 plicit science, but human sympathy and tact are only true 
 psychology empirically applied. 
 
 VI. A master of his subject, inspired and vitalized by 
 a knowledge of the psychology of teaching, will come to 
 teach with ease and to impart not a text-book, but large 
 truths in a large way. His work, in time, will conceal the 
 "bones," the "skeleton" of any studied form— it will be- 
 come a matter, not of the letter, but of the spirit. One 
 thus able and energized will guide pupils naturally and 
 intelligently and will attain that high ideal of teaching, 
 the stimulation of the learner to spontaneous self-activity, 
 independent thought, and effective actualization of lofty 
 ideals of character— teaching that will "extend the pupil's 
 knowledge of things worth while, broaden and deepen his 
 sympathies, and force him to feel and be and live his 
 better self." 
 
 Lesson V 
 
 TRAINING THE "POWERS OF OBSERVATION" 
 
 Preparation Step. — I. A musician is able to pick out 
 a dissonant voice in a large group of singers. In an orches- 
 tra he can attend to the quality and pitch of each separate 
 instrument. He is not likely to be equally observing of 
 plant life, of conditions of health and disease, or of 
 bridges. 
 
 The moment a bank clerk touches a counterfeit paper 
 or coin he knows that it is spurious. The blind also are 
 
Apperception 123 
 
 very observing in the terms of touch, and their sense of 
 smell is developed with wonderful acuteness. 
 
 An artist is sensitive to colors. Most women are more 
 observing of colors than most men. 
 
 II. Imagine a group of persons on the day-boat passing 
 West Point. They are, say, an engineer, a historian, a young 
 girl, a West Pointer, a farmer : What will each one observe ? 
 
 III. In what lines are you observing'? In what, not? 
 
 IV. How often, when we have our attention called to a 
 certain thing, we see repeated instances of it though we 
 had never before noticed any ! We have become observing 
 of the matter. 
 
 Presentation Step. — I. In our "powers of observation" 
 we are limited to what our past experience makes it possi- 
 ble for us to observe. To all else we are literally blind, 
 deaf, callous. The musician has potentially an indefinitely 
 complex arid rich mental content of highly discriminated, 
 emotionally colored, and scientifically classified knowledge 
 of sounds. The artist has the same sort of knowledge of 
 colors. And in the same way the peculiar training of the 
 bank clerk has brought about a mental content that makes 
 him observing in his own particular interests to a degree 
 inconceivable to the ordinary man. 
 
 AA^e observe with all we have observed. 
 
 II. It follows then that no one kind of knowledge makes 
 a person observing in all directions. 
 
 The Indian, the type instance of acute sensitiveness to 
 surroundings, though he is vastly learned in forest lore and 
 wise in the interpretation of all of nature's signs, should 
 he look with his marvel ously trained eyes into a micro- 
 scope could see little. His eyes are acute to see only what 
 his thoughts enable him to see. Pie is observing only in 
 a few limited directions. 
 
124 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 Should a blind man receive his sight, though no longer 
 blind he is still unable to see. Pie has not correlations of 
 colors to lit the new circumstances and his complex cor- 
 relations in touch, muscular sense, and smell are not trans- 
 ferable to sight. 
 
 No formal training of the "powers of observation" is 
 possible. 
 
 Application Step. — I. "He that would bring home the 
 wealth of the Indies must carry out the wealth of the 
 Indies. ' ' 
 
 ' ' The only things that we commonly see are those which 
 we preperceive. " (W. James, "Psychology.") 
 
 "The difference" (in observation) "lies in the mind, not 
 in the brute fact." (John Adams, "Herbartian Psy- 
 chology.") 
 
 II. Sherlock Holmes criticizes a colleague: "He pos- 
 sesses two out of three qualities necessary for the ideal de- 
 tective. He has the power of observation and that of de- 
 duction. He is only wanting in knowledge * * *" but 
 that lack is fatal. The knowledge of Sherlock Holmes, on 
 the other hand, is wide. He is observing in very many 
 directions. 
 
 III. In what ways can training in school help children 
 to observe! What suggestions can psychology give to 
 teachers here? 
 
 "To cultivate observation, then, is not to train the eye, 
 the ear, the hand to extreme sensitiveness, but rather to 
 work up well-organized knowledge within the mind itself. 
 If we desire minute observation in a definite direction, we 
 must cultivate special knowledge to correspond. If we wish 
 to encourage general observation, we can only succeed by 
 eultivatinff wide interests." ("Herbartian Psychology Ap- 
 plied to Education," John Adams.) 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THOUGHT 
 
 Lesson I 
 
 THE SYLLOGISM 
 
 Preparation Step.— I. What is the object you have in 
 your hand? 
 
 It is a book, you say. (Notice the train of associations 
 here and the correlations.) 
 
 II. How do you know that this object is a book? 
 Because it has printed leaves bound together. 
 
 The reason that you have given is much condensed. Ex- 
 pand it into all that you imply. 
 
 All books, you say, have printed leaves bound together; 
 this object has printed leaves bound together, therefore, 
 it is a book. (Yon have not said just what you meant, but 
 for the moment, let it pass.) 
 
 III. Think in a similar way how you know other objects. 
 And how do you know that this is to-day? That a certain 
 color is blue? 
 
 In answer to the last you say, all blues are the result 
 of a certain affection of my eye and optic nerve ; this color 
 is the result of such an affection, therefore it is blue. 
 
 Presentation Step.— I. The group of sentences that you 
 gave in answer to the last question we shall call a syllogism. 
 
 II. How many sentences are there in this syllogism? 
 There are three. 
 
 What is a sentence? It is the expression of a thought 
 in words. 
 
 What are the parts of a sentence? They are the subject 
 and the predicate. 
 
126 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 What is the predicate of the last sentence in the syllo- 
 gism ? " ( is ) blue ' ' is the predicate. 
 
 Notice that it, the term "blue" occurs once again as 
 the subject of the first sentence. Write x over it in each 
 place. 
 
 What is the predicate of the first sentence '1 It is " result 
 of a certain affection." 
 
 How many times does this term occur in the syllogism? 
 It occurs twice. 
 
 Write y over it in each case. 
 
 In all, how many different terms are there in the syllo- 
 gism "? There are three. 
 
 A'Vrite z over the remaining third term. 
 
 How many times does each occur? 
 
 Writing out the letters instead of the terms we have; 
 
 X y 
 
 z y 
 
 Z X 
 
 All thought can in general be reduced to the form of 
 the syllogism made up of three sentences and of three 
 terms. This statement does not mean that we think con- 
 sciously in syllogistic figures, but only that this movement 
 is the natural one in apperception. 
 
 III. In logic (the science of the forms of thought) the 
 sentences of the syllogism are called propositions. 
 
 In making the proposition "all snow is frozen water," 
 I have a train of associations. The two terms of the 
 proposition are associated or related not only by contiguity, 
 but also by a correlation, that of identity. I assert identity 
 between the two terms. 
 
 Looked at from the standpoint of thought, the mental 
 assertion of the degree of relationship arrived at in the 
 process of thought between two terms is a Judgment. The 
 expression of a judgment in words is a Proposition. 
 
Thought 127 
 
 IV. How is it possible to express the degree of relation 
 between the two terms of the third proposition in each of 
 the syllogisms in the Preparation Step i 
 
 I can say that this object is a book because I have com- 
 pared both "this object" and "book" with the same idea, 
 "has printed leaves bound together," and I have found 
 the relation to be , such in each case that I can say, this 
 object is a book. 
 
 The mental assertion of the relation between two terms 
 depending on their relatiou to a common third term is a 
 Syllogism. The expression of the reasoning is also called 
 a Syllogism. 
 
 The process of Thought is that of seeing relationships. 
 
 V. A little way back it was noticed that you had not 
 said just what you meant. The syllogism given was : 
 
 1. All books have printed leaves bound together; 
 
 2. This object has printed leaves bound together, 
 
 3. Therefore, this object is a book. 
 
 Suppose we represent these three terms and their rela- 
 tions graphically: Let us picture "all books" as enclosed 
 in a small circle, "somewhat as sheep might be in a 
 pinfold, this circle containing all the 'books' and nothing 
 else." Let a greater circle contain the class of "objects 
 with printed leaves bound together. ' ' Now the first propo- 
 sition says that "all books" belong to the class of "objects 
 with printed leaves bound together." The picture of that 
 proposition would then be : 
 
 No books could get outside the larger circle because all 
 have printed leaves bound together. 
 
128 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 The second proposition says, "This object has printed 
 leaves bound together." Represent "this object" by a 
 third circle and show its relation to "objects that have 
 printed leaves bound together." Clearly it can go any- 
 where within the large circle. Suppose we put it in like 
 this: 
 
 Does it follow that "this object" must come within the 
 circle "all books?" Evidently not. It may or it may not. 
 There is no reason why it should— all that the second propo- 
 sition says is that "this object" must belong to "objects 
 that have printed leaves." Then, you see, it does not 
 follow that "this object" is a book, — we are not "driven 
 to the conclusion" from the reasoning, therefore the syllo- 
 gism is not a valid one. 
 
 VI. Is not what you really meant to say this syllogism? 
 
 y X 
 
 1. All object made of printed leaves bound together are, 
 books ; 
 
 z y 
 
 2. This object is made of printed leaves bound together, 
 
 Z X 
 
 3. Therefore, this object is a book. 
 
 X y y X 
 
 Now instead of z y we have z y Testing this syllo- 
 
 Z X Z X 
 
 gism by the circles we have, 
 
 1. All y's are x's 
 
 2. All z's are y's 
 
 3. Therefore, all z's are x's. 
 
Thought 129 
 
 Since all z's are y's, they surely must be x's, for all 
 y's are x's. This syllogism, then, is valid. 
 
 The second syllogism in the preparation step to be valid 
 must then be : 
 
 1. The result in my mind of a certain affection of my 
 eye and optic nerve is blue; 
 
 2. This color is the result of such an affection ; 
 
 3. Therefore it is blue. 
 
 Application Step.— I. I dwell upon this fallacy (or in- 
 valid course of reasoning) because it is so conunon. As I 
 was writing this lesson I noticed the following advertise- 
 ment of an insurance company : 
 
 "Savages do not insure their lives; 
 
 Morose and cranky people do not, — 
 
 Wife and children haters do not,— 
 
 Misers do not — 
 
 Persons whose sense of personal responsibility is feebly 
 developed, do not— 
 
 People who are hanged, seldom or never leave life in- 
 surance. 
 
 Victims of swelled heads, do not — 
 
 The meanest man you know, safe to say, has no life in- 
 surance, and does not want it." 
 
 The implication is that if we do not insure, we shall be 
 classed with these people. But we need not come under 
 any of the classes according to the reasoning. If the ad- 
 vertisement read, "Those who do not insure their lives 
 are savages," then it would follow, that one who did not 
 insure his life was' a savage. 
 
 The study of logic helps one to be critical of his lan- 
 guage, to say what he means. 
 
 II. There is a theory that all thought is condensed 
 syllogisms. It is difficult to determine this fact from 
 9 
 
130 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 watching one's self, so difficult that many writers doubt 
 whether we do think in this way. 
 
 III. From the observation of children it is evident that 
 their reasoning is syllogistic, but it is also evident that their 
 experience is so limited that they seem from the standpoint 
 of the mental content of adult minds to "jump at conclu- 
 sions." They judge from premises which to adults are 
 insufficient. (Read "The Psychology of Reasoning," Th. 
 Ribot, and other books on Thought.) 
 
 IV. Notice the predicate, "blue" of the third proposi- 
 tion : because it is a wider, or greater, or major term than 
 the subject it is called the major term. The subject is the 
 minor term. The term with which these two are compared 
 is the medium, the common measure, the middle term. It, 
 of course, does not occur in the third proposition. 
 
 This third proposition is a jconclusion drawn from the 
 comparison of the major and minor terms with the middle 
 term. It is always spoken of as the conclusion. The propo- 
 sition in which the major term occurs is the major premise, 
 that in which the minor term occurs is the minor premise. 
 In a strictly correct syllogism, the major premise stands 
 before the minor, but in ordinary wanting and speaking 
 this rule is seldom observed. Correct reasoning, however, 
 may always be reduced to the correct syllogistic form'. 
 
 V. Expand where it is necessary and rearrange the fol- 
 lowing arguments, then show what is wrong with them : 
 
 His imbecility of character might have been inferred 
 from his proneness to favorites; for all weak princes have 
 this failing. (De Morgan.) 
 
 Every one desires virtue, because every one desires 
 happiness. 
 
 VI. The syllogism by which we learn is apparently an 
 invalid one. For example, I have (1) a group of grays and 
 
Thought 131 
 
 drabs, (2) Thought words, grays and drabs, (3) Whistler's 
 portrait of Carlyle. This train of associations expanded is: 
 
 This portrait is painted in grays and drabs ; 
 
 But Whistler's Carlyle is painted in grays and drabs. 
 
 Therefore this portrait must be Whistler's Carlyle. 
 
 Then I confirm my conclusion point by point by valid 
 syllogisms. 
 
 Lesson II 
 valid syllogisms 
 Preparation Step.— 
 
 m. 1. All horseback riders should keep to the bridle-path ; 
 
 2. Those children are horseback riders; 
 
 3. Therefore, they should keep to the bridle-path. 
 
 n. 1. All stars are self-luminous; 
 
 2. No planets are self-luminous; 
 
 3. Therefore, no planets are stars. 
 
 o. 1. Mercury is not solid; 
 
 2. Mercury is a metal, 
 
 3. Therefore, some metals are not solid. 
 
 p. 1. No Americans are Europeans; 
 
 2. Some Europeans are progressive people; 
 
 3. Therefore, there are progressive people who are 
 
 not Americans. 
 
 Presentation Step.— I. A glance shows you that in 
 form not any two of these syllogisms are alike. For con- 
 venience in studying them, letter the terms with x, y, and z. 
 Always mark the predicate of the conclusion, the major 
 term, x, the minor term z. The term which is left, the 
 
132 Lessons in rsYciioLOGv 
 
 middle term, mark y. The lettering of these four syllo- 
 
 gisms is: 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 
 yx 
 
 xy 
 
 yx 
 
 xy 
 
 
 zy 
 
 zy 
 
 yz 
 
 yz 
 
 
 zx 
 
 zx 
 
 zx 
 
 zx 
 
 These four are the only combinations of subject and 
 predicate that can be made with the three terms in the 
 syllogism when the conclusion is zx. They are called the 
 four figures of the syllogism. 
 
 II. Notice that not all the propositions are like N. 1. 
 Contrast N. 1 with O. 3, as to the distribution of their 
 subjects: ■ 
 
 N. 1. All stars are self-luminous. 
 
 0. 3, Some metals are not solid. 
 
 In N. 1, the proposition affirms the predicate to belong 
 to the whole of the subject. That sort of proposition is 
 called a universal proposition. In contrast to N. 2, it is 
 affirmative. For convenience in speaking of it in logic it 
 is represented by A. Examples of A are M. 1, 2, and 3 ; 
 N. 1 ; 0. 2. 
 
 N. 2, no planets are self-luminous. This proposition, 
 also, is universal but negative. It is represented by E. 
 
 In contrast to the universal affirmative A, is the propo- 
 sition, Some Europeans are progressive people, a particular 
 affirmative, represented by I. 
 
 The particular negative proposition, Some progressive 
 people are not Americans, is represented by O. 
 
 Affirmative A 
 
 r 
 
 Universal 
 
 Propositions. -< 
 
 Particular 
 
 V. 
 
 Negative E 
 
 Affirmative I 
 Negative O 
 
Thought 133 
 
 Application Step.— I. Test each syllogism of the Prepa- 
 ration Step. The test for the last is : 
 
 X y 
 
 1. No Americans are Europeans ;=E=xy 
 
 X z 
 
 2. Some Europeans are progressive people,=^'I=yz 
 
 z 
 
 3. Therefore, some progressive people are not Ameri- 
 X xy 
 
 cans.=:0=zx, EIO in yz 
 
 zx 
 
 o 
 
 The second proposition says that some y's are z's, there- 
 fore the circle containing the y's overlaps that of the z's 
 and the syllogism is valid. 
 
 II. How many different syllogisms of three propositions 
 each is it possible to make out of the four propositions 
 A, E, I, and ? 
 
 You can have AAA AEA 
 
 AAE then AIA and so on. 
 
 AAI AOA 
 
 AAO 
 
 If you work them all out, you will find that you can make 
 in all sixty-four. Each one of these must be tested in each 
 of the four figures, and this multiplication makes 256 
 syllogisms. 
 
 III. For the sake of familiarizing yourself with the 
 propositions and the figures, test all 2.56 by the circles. You 
 
134 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 will come out with the following valid syllogisms iu each 
 figure : 
 
 First. 
 
 Second. 
 
 Third. 
 
 Fourth. 
 
 AAA 
 
 E A E 
 
 A A I 
 
 A A I 
 
 E A E 
 
 A E E 
 
 I A I 
 
 A E E 
 
 All 
 
 E I 
 
 A I I 
 
 I A I 
 
 E I 
 
 A 
 
 E A 
 
 E A 
 
 (A A I) 
 
 (E A 0) 
 
 A 
 
 E I 
 
 (E A 0) 
 
 (A E 0) 
 
 E I 
 
 i(A E 0) 
 
 IV. Expand into syllogistic form and test the validity 
 of the following arguments : 
 
 No Athenians could have been Helots ; for all Helots were 
 slaves, and all Athenians were free men. 
 
 Ireland is idle and therefore starves; she starves, and 
 therefore rebels. 
 
 V. Watch to see how much of your thought is in the 
 form of judgments and syllogisms, filled out or condensed, 
 incipient or complete. 
 
 Lesson III 
 
 CONCEPTION 
 
 Preparation Step.— I. Each syllogism contains three 
 terms. We are now ready to analyze the stream of thought 
 from the standpoint of the changes that are ever taking 
 place in the meaning of terms. 
 
 II. How extensive a traveler are you? How much do 
 you enjoy travel 1 Think out the reasons for your answer. 
 
 Let us suppose you have spent four years in a high 
 school. Now imagine that, instead of spending these years 
 in school, you had spent them in travel: Compare the 
 results in the two cases as to health, knowledge, general 
 intelligence, integrity of mind, maturity, character, breadth 
 and number of interests, resources, manners, memory, 
 
Thought 135 
 
 power to observe and reason, capability to earn your own 
 living and get on with people, to give pleasure to others. 
 
 III. Did you ever mistake, say, any verses for poetry 
 which you afterward found were not poetry t Think of 
 some definite time when you did. Your idea of poetry was 
 changed by the experience. 
 
 Recall instances of mistaking one person for another; 
 one object for another, as a box for a book, a grapefruit 
 for an orange ; one voice for another. 
 
 IV. Think of cases of uncertainty in identifying objects, 
 as when one is doubtful whether a tree is of one kind or 
 another ; doubtful as to the use of a knife at table, as 
 to a snatch of melody. 
 
 V. Recall how at certain definite times you have changed 
 other ideas such as those of teaching, learning, success, 
 beauty, right, wrong, duty, selfishness, hardness, pleasure. 
 
 Every change of this sort is surely expressed in language, 
 that is, in condensed propositions and syllogisms. 
 
 VI. By analysis is meant the process of loosing, of sep- 
 arating what is complex into its elements. Synthesis, on 
 the other hand, means the uniting of elements. 
 
 VII. What is a circle ? a basket ■? a crab ? distance 1 steel ? 
 a college settlement? a joke? 
 
 Have you defined each term adequately! Yet you have 
 no trouble in using these terms. In how many different 
 senses have you ever used the term joke, for example? 
 
 Presentation Step. — I. Our ideas are constantly chang- 
 ing as a result of our reading, our contact with people, and 
 our thinking — in general, as a result of our experience. 
 Think how different your idea of amusement is from what 
 it was ten or twenty years ago. Define it in each case. 
 
 II. All thinking is thus a process of classification, of 
 subsuming our concrete experience under one or another 
 
136 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 class, or excluding it from a class, according to the laws of , 
 association. By each concrete experience some class, as 
 poetry, is made broader or narrower in its extension, and 
 more definite in its own peculiar meaning, or intension. 
 
 All the changes that take place in our ideas come under 
 one of four kinds : 
 
 Take, for example, some of the changes that have taken 
 place in my idea of desk. I formerly thought that any 
 object upon which one might write was a desk, a) When 
 I found that a desk must have a slanting top, many objects 
 that before were included in the class desk (such as tables, 
 shelves) had to be excluded. Thus my notion of desk is 
 both narrowed and made more definite. Again, b) I had 
 to drop the idea that the top was tilted to display the or- 
 namentation, thus excluding a table with the top so turned. 
 c) At another time I added the quality that desks may be 
 used in churches, thereby including the lectern in the 
 class desk, d) I later dropped from the class desk the 
 quality that they must have legs, thereby including in the 
 class the sloping shelf-like desk in a bank. 
 
 These changes are onh^ types of those taking place every 
 time I have an experience with a desk or think of one. 
 They may be briefly classified as follows: 
 
 a ) By synthesis, when I added the 
 characteristic, "Must have 
 slanting top," thereby exclud- 
 ing certain tables for writing 
 that I had before called desks; 
 
 b) By analysis, when I dropped 
 the characteristic "slanted to 
 display the top," and excluded 
 a mosaic table from the class 
 desk. 
 
 narrowed the range 
 or extension of my<! 
 notion of desk 
 
Thought 
 
 137 
 
 I broadened the exten- 
 
 desk 
 
 /^a) By synthesis, when I added the 
 
 quality "used for reading/' 
 
 thereby including in the class 
 
 „ ^- r. desk lecterns; 
 
 sion 01 my notion oi J , , ^^ , . , ^ ^ 
 
 ^^^^^ ] b) By analysis, when I dropped 
 
 the idea that desks must have 
 
 legs, thereby including in the 
 
 extension the desk in a bank. 
 
 As a result of my life-long experience I have broadened 
 the extension of the class to include not only desks in school- 
 rooms, lecterns, and bank desks, but also portable writing- 
 desks of all kinds and materials, office desks, cashiers' 
 desks, and all the individual desks I have seen or heard of. 
 In fact, with every experience of a desk, even every thought of 
 one, I have broadened my class to include one more instance. 
 
 But, at the same time, every thought of desk has the 
 effect of narrowing the extension of my notion, in that it 
 removes something of the vagueness and superficiality of 
 the intension (or group of qualities without which an object 
 is not a desk) and thus rules out objects before included. 
 
 III. Accustom yourself to analyze the changes in many 
 notions. Work out these analyses somewhat as follows: 
 
 I remember to have changed my idea of root : 
 
 ^a) By synthesis, when I added to 
 the intension of the idea the 
 quality that roots must be un- 
 der-ground, thus excluding 
 from the extension the runners 
 of a strawberry ; 
 b) By analysis, when I dropped 
 the quality that they may have 
 nodes, thus excluding from the 
 extension of roots the potato. 
 
 once narrowed the 
 range, or extension <^ 
 of my idea of root 
 
138 
 
 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 I broadened the exten- 
 
 root 
 
 I narrowed the range, 
 or extension of my<; 
 idea of teaehinsr 
 
 'a) At another time by synthesis. 
 
 when I added the quality that 
 
 roots may be in the air, thus in- 
 
 „ . ^ „ eluding aerial roots ; 
 sion 01 my idea ot^ , x t^ , • , t i . 
 ^ ] b) By analysis, when 1 dropped 
 
 the quality that roots must be 
 
 fibrous, thereby admitting fleshy 
 
 roots like the carrot. 
 
 My idea of teaching has been changed many times. A 
 few of the changes were : 
 
 a) By synthesis, when I added the 
 quality that teaching must stim- 
 ulate the mind, thus shutting 
 out of the class instances of 
 formalism ; 
 
 b) By analysis, when I dropped 
 from the intension of the class 
 the quality that teaching may 
 be the mere hearing of recita- 
 tions, thereby excluding from 
 the class instances of hearing 
 pupils recite. 
 
 ^sl) By synthesis, when I added to 
 the intension the quality that 
 teaching may take place out of 
 schools, to include cases of 
 teaching by events; 
 b) By analysis, when I dropped 
 from the intension the idea that 
 teaching must be done by a 
 person, thereby including in- 
 stances of teaching done by 
 books. 
 
 I broadened the exten- 
 sion of my idea of-< 
 teaching 
 
Thought 139 
 
 IV. When we try to hunt down the "deskness" of the 
 desk, that group of qualities without which the object 
 would not be a desk, we find that the most abstract and 
 general notion we can think is the group of words, "A 
 support with a slanting top." This sort of statement of 
 the intension (the group of qualities without which it 
 would not be what it is) and extension (the range, or 
 breadth) of an idea is a definition, "such a description of 
 a thing as distinguishes it from everything else by briefly 
 telling what it is," and a definition is perhaps as near as 
 we can get to a "logical concept." A pure abstraction and 
 generalization, however, a pure concept is unthinkable by 
 a finite mind. 
 
 Some one has said that just as in medicine there are no 
 diseases but only patients, so in thought there are no gen- 
 eral notions but only perceptions that belong to classes. 
 
 V. Yet the activities of abstraction, generalization, and 
 their opposites are real experiences, and we are abstracting 
 and generalizing at every moment. It is these processes, 
 in fact, that we have been studying. 
 
 I was generalizing when I broadened the range of my 
 class desk to include lectern. I was hindering the process 
 of generalization, or specializing when I added the quality, 
 "slanting top," and, at the same time I was abstracting 
 the "deskness" of desks from the accidental qualities of 
 particular color, form, size, and use. 
 
 The opposite of the process of generalization is that of 
 specialization. It consists in narrowing the extension of 
 a general term. The opposite of the process of abstraction 
 is that of making concrete. 
 
 When we are making more general the application of 
 class names to individuals, we are generalizing; when we 
 are dwelling upon the peculiar "thingness" of the thing 
 
1-10 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 as separated from its accidental qualities, we are ab- 
 stracting. 
 
 VI. When we are studying the stream of thought from 
 the standpoint of its constant processes of abstraction, gen- 
 eralization, and their opposites our standpoint is that of 
 Thought. 
 
 Since they are an unthinkable abstraction, no definition 
 of "concepts" can be given. 
 
 Application Step.— I. As a result of this process of 
 thought the mind moves ever toward a realization of truth. 
 Here, again, as in so many other places we come to a con- 
 sciousness of its, the mind's limitation in that we can never 
 know absolute truth, the abstract "concept," — the truth we 
 know is always individual and relative. There is an advance 
 toward truth, however, with every thought. Some notion 
 has become broader and narrower in its extension, more 
 adequate in its intension. 
 
 II. I have used the term "logic concepts." Of course, 
 as has been said, we never have concepts of any sort in our 
 stream of thought. We do, however, constantly think some 
 intension in the terms of sensations or words. But it is 
 only when we look at this intension (which is always a 
 perception, an individual notion) from the standpoint of 
 abstraction, generalization, and their opposites that it 
 becomes a matter of conception. These imperfect, often 
 even mistaken, inadequate intensions that we think from 
 moment to moment are what the books call "psychological 
 concepts." 
 
 You will ask, perhaps, has not a word some one meaning 
 that we think, the same for all occasions? It has not one, 
 but many, many meanings. In fact, it never has just the 
 same meaning for us even twice. Think, for example, in 
 how many different senses you have used the term "man" 
 
Thought 141 
 
 —this last use differs from every other, at least, in that it 
 is for you the thousand and first use rather than the 
 thousandth use, your thousand and first "psychological con- 
 cept" of man. 
 
 Such a statement, on the other hand, as "The apple is 
 the fruit of the apple-tree, ' ' one that represents the broad- 
 est generalization and the most abstract abstraction of a 
 scientific type,— such a statement is the best guess of trained 
 specialists of a wide and lifelong experience in the subject 
 as to that impossible abstraction, ' ' a logical concept. ' ' 
 
 Think how much progress has been made in the process 
 of formulating these abstractions from the time of Plato 
 with his "types laid up in heaven" down to the present 
 with its many sciences— and particularly during the last 
 fifty years. 
 
 III. A concept is not, then, some thing, a mental product, 
 always the same that we can learn once for all, retain, 
 recall, and use. The intension, that rapid review, usually 
 in words, of qualities some of which are common to all of 
 a class, is never twice the same. It is upon this fact that 
 is based the most important application of the study of 
 thought for teaching. 
 
 Education, whatever else it is, is also the process of 
 making "psychological concepts" into more nearly "logi- 
 cal concepts," true wisdom available for daily living. And 
 the process is a slow one and one constantly continuing, 
 the work of a lifetime. A pupil can no more learn enough 
 in ten years to equip him for all time than he can eat 
 enough in ten years to last for the rest of his life. 
 
 That one never arrives should be no discouragement — 
 that condition is one of life itself. The aim of school is 
 to place one in the best possible position to continue learn- 
 ing in ever higher forms of thought to ever more complete 
 maturitv. 
 
142 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 IV. As you accustom yourself to analyze the changes in 
 the intension and extension of your ideas and become 
 familiar with the constant modifications that take place in 
 them, you will realize more and more fully how individual 
 a matter the process of reaching truth by reasoning is. You 
 cannot learn for another person any more than you can eat 
 for the nourishment of that other's body. Changes are 
 taking place at every moment in some idea, and it takes all 
 this lifelong series of changes (the so-called "psychological 
 concepts") to make into an adequate "logical concept," 
 that is, the particular intension and extension represented 
 by a definition that shall be the broadest working idea, 
 available from the hundred and one standpoints where one 
 needs to use it. 
 
 Sometimes a pupil will recite the words of a definition 
 glibly, and even remember it till the examination. We 
 flatter ourselves that we have taught him something. In 
 proportion, however, as the words are merely mechanical, 
 as "his tongue says it for him," is the "'earning" useless, 
 worthless, and even injurious. In proportion, on the other 
 hand, as the learning involves his own psychological inten- 
 sions of a lifetime is it educative. 
 
 V. "One would learn to know all the animals of the 
 world more quickly by visiting Noah's Ark than by trav- 
 ersing the world, and picking up knowledge as we went." 
 (Quoted by John Adams in "Herbartian Psychology Ap- 
 plied to Education. ") 
 
 A visit to the ark apparently would save much time and 
 pains to school children. Yet, compare for a moment the 
 results of the two methods, "Ark teaching" and "travers- 
 ing the world. ' ' 
 
 To be sure one could learn to name the animals and 
 could study comparative anatomy in the ark. But what 
 about the explanation of each animal himself? He is the 
 
Thought 143 
 
 result of his environment and can be understood, compre- 
 hended only in that environment. Not all the animals can 
 have their environment with them in the "ark," therefore 
 they can be adequately learned only in their homes by the 
 ' ' journey method. ' ' 
 
 But it is not in zoology alone that schools practice "ark- 
 teaching." Witness the museums; "lists of specific grav- 
 ities;" "lists of words spelled the same but having differ- 
 ent meanings;" that "Ark of Arks," the dictionary, and 
 many other cases. 
 
 These devices indeed are supposed to save children the 
 time and labor of "traversing the world and picking up 
 knowledge as they go," but their results are really formal 
 and worthless. 
 
 The defect of "ark teaching" is that it wrests facts 
 from their right relations, the only place where they can be 
 truly learned, and arranges them arbitrarily. It gives 
 empty "logical concepts" where traversing the world 
 makes the "psychological concepts" into "logical" ones at 
 every step. 
 
 Of course one could hardly recommend seriously that 
 children be literally taken to the ends of the earth to edu- 
 cate them, yet the truth that learning in proportion as it 
 involves facts distorted from their true places is worthless, 
 is indisputable. And we have to remember, moreover, that 
 education takes time and that it is the process not of avoid- 
 ing trouble but of "learning to take pains." 
 
 Yet the "Ark," the museum, and the dictionary have a 
 place in education and an important one. It is not before 
 experience, however, but after or at the end of it. (Read 
 "Herbartian Psychology Applied to Education," John 
 Adams.) 
 
 VI. Suppose all books, all records of classified knowledge 
 were now destroyed: What would be the effect from this 
 
1-14 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 time forward on the amount of each person's knowledge, 
 say, your own ? On your memories i Your power to rea- 
 son? Your self-reliance? Your capability"? Y^'our hap- 
 piness '? 
 
 VII. M^hat is a chair ? a house '? a hotel ? -a horse ? a circle ? 
 What is the meaning of yes! boy? graft? love? laughter? 
 
 Answer these questions offhand and give them to your 
 friends. Find out how near the real intension of these 
 notions your "psychological intensions" come. 
 
 If you do not know the meaning of these terms, think of 
 others whose meaning you do know. Doesn't it seem re- 
 markable that we get along so well as we do, knowing the 
 real significance of so few words that we use? Would it 
 be of advantage to us to know "intensions" more ade- 
 quately than we do ? Of what advantage would it be ? 
 
 The range and intension of our thoughts are of evident 
 importance in life. "If," for example, "our concept of 
 pleasure is limited to the feeling accompanying the satis- 
 fying of sensual appetites, we shall have trouble to com- 
 prehend pleasure as related to intellectual achievement, 
 spiritual communion, or esthetic appreciation * * * 
 we must have a broad experience." ("The Mind and Its 
 Education," G. H. Betts.) 
 
 Notice the sources of "logical intensions:" For some 
 we must go to the dictionary, for others to technical books 
 in science, to text-books, or to statutes, decisions of courts, 
 to sages who as a result of their peculiar experience, a life- 
 time of dwelling upon the qualities common to all of a 
 class, can "speak with crushing authority" and who, 
 with a mighty grasp of relations can ' ' think God 's thoughts 
 after Him." 
 
Thought 145 
 
 Lesson IV 
 
 INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION 
 
 Preparation Step. — I. The stream of thought in its 
 processes of abstraction, generalization, and their opposites 
 may be studied from another standpoint, that of Induction 
 and Deduction. 
 
 II. What changes have tal^en place in your idea of metal 
 since you were a child 1 Think concretely how you would 
 have described a metal then, and how the idea has changed 
 from time to time since. Where would you go to find out 
 what a metal is? 
 
 III. Think how the sciences of chemistry, physics, as- 
 tronomy, biology, and sociology have grown up and been 
 formulated. Was arithmetic formulated in the same w^ay'? 
 or algebra! or geometry! Did the formation of the last 
 three, like that of the others, depend on investigation, re- 
 search, and discovery! 
 
 IV. I must urge you to keep up the practice of analyz- 
 ing what you learn into its constituent secondary material, 
 also, of analyzing your experience from the standpoint of 
 teaching. 
 
 V. Say over the axioms of mathematics. Can you im- 
 agine any exception to the first one ! Can you imagine any 
 to the law of gravity! 
 
 Recent investigations in electrical inductance have shown 
 that it is a law more fundamental than gravity even. 
 
 Presentation Step.— I. Any self-evident truth is an 
 axiom. Since they cannot be analyzed into simple compo- 
 nents, axioms are the simplest facts in nature. The next 
 most simple facts are the laws and definitions, formulated 
 in the course of human experience, that constitute the dif- 
 10 
 
146 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 ferent sciences. But not all of these laws and definitions 
 are of the same degree of simplicity, as constant investiga- 
 tion and research often analyze those before thought to 
 be fundamental into something simpler. The theory has 
 thus arisen that all the generalizations of science are in 
 process of becoming axiomatic. 
 
 II. Relatively complex, on the other hand, are the con- 
 crete experiences. The different metals, for example, that 
 are on my table, the brass of my lamp, the mercury in my 
 thermometer, the steel of my knife, the gold of my watch 
 and pen are groups of many qualities, accidental and var- 
 iable. In the course of my experience I have analyzed these 
 complex groups, stripped away their accidental qualities 
 such as color, hardness, solidity, lustre, weight, sonorous- 
 ness, and abstracted, synthesized from them the simple 
 group of attributes common to all, imtil I have as the defi- 
 nition of metal : Any substance, usually elementary, elec- 
 tro-positive chemically, and forming with the elements of 
 water a base is a metal. 
 
 III. The process by which through analysis of complex 
 concrete instances, synthesis of their common elements, 
 and incidental confirmations,— this process by W'hich the 
 mind reaches and verifies simple general truths involves 
 both induction and deduction. In actual experience both 
 methods seem to be involved in the same complex act. 
 
 Considered abstractly, however, when we are looking at 
 the stream of thought from the side of reaching the simple 
 general truths, our standpoint is that of Induction. 
 
 When, from the side of applying these generalizations 
 to concrete instances, either in proof, confirmation, or in 
 extending knowledge, our standpoint is that of Deduction. 
 
 Application Step.— I. Considering them absolutely, no- 
 tice some of the contrasts between these methods : 
 
Thought 
 
 147 
 
 INDUCTION 
 
 Proceeds from complex 
 to simple, from particular 
 to general, from concrete to 
 abstract ; 
 
 Is empirical, that is, lim- 
 ited to experience, scientific. 
 
 Its reasoning is based on 
 experience, therefore, a 
 posteriori. 
 
 DEDUCTION, 
 
 Proceeds from simple to 
 complex, from general to 
 particular, from abstract to 
 concrete ; 
 
 Is rational, that is, has to 
 do with the reason rather 
 than experience, metaphy- 
 sical. 
 
 Its reasoning is from pre- 
 viously assumed general- 
 izations, a priori. 
 
 The two methods are identical in that both are processes 
 of inference. 
 
 II. The empirical sciences have been built up by the 
 formulation of general truths ascertained from observation 
 of and experiment on particular facts. These generaliza- 
 tions serve as the bases for the classification of phenomena 
 in logical order, thus making science. 
 
 But the logical order of scientific classification is not 
 always the order most easily comprehended and followed 
 by the mind in learning. For the attitude of the learner is 
 ever that of the discoverer; to have an intelligent knowl- 
 edge of the sciences, he, the learner, must literally make 
 them for himself by the slow processes of induction and 
 deduction. This statement does not mean that he must go 
 through all the difficulties and discouragements of the dis- 
 coverer of truth. But, though a teacher may remove im- 
 possibilities and arrange conditions, it is always the learner 
 himself must do the learning. 
 
 III. Think of a text-book in botany made only of log- 
 ically arranged generalizations. When an average house- 
 bred city child used, a few years ago, to learn the general- 
 
148 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 izations in this kind of book from cover to cover, he gained 
 from the experience little more in intelligence than a parrot 
 would have gained. 
 
 We are only looking, you see, at the old difificulty of 
 "Ark teaching," but from a new standpoint. It is only 
 by "traversing the world and picking up knowledge as he 
 goes" or by a method analogous to this one, the slow method 
 of induction and deduction, that a child can so master 
 knowledge that it will become available and effective as 
 ideals and motives. 
 
 IV. Analyze your concrete acts of the last hour from the 
 standpoint of deduction : I, for example, just wound my 
 watch (a concrete experience), because I knew, in general, 
 that unwound watches stop ; I cut out some clippings from 
 a paper, as I knew they would be useful in some of my 
 work; I read the evening paper, as I always like to know 
 what has happened during the day. 
 
 Analyze as applications of different systems of philosophy 
 the different schools of medicine, systems of law, political 
 parties, systems of theology. Study the concrete applica- 
 tions in daily life of maxims and general rules of conduct. 
 
 V. The theory of induction and deduction is applied 
 practically and concretely in the Lesson Unit. The method 
 thiough the Preparation and the Presentation Step is, in 
 general, inductive, through the Application Step, de- 
 ductive. 
 
 It is commonly acknowledged that teaching through the 
 first two steps is, in many subjects, fairly well ordered, but 
 through the Application Step (except in some parts of 
 mathematics) it must be conceded to be weak. 
 
 VI. "AVe have fallen from one extreme to the other: 
 whereas formerly a hard and lifeless instruction laid the 
 chief emphasis upon the memorizing of the text, it is the 
 custom of our times largely to neglect the applicaiion of 
 
Thought 149 
 
 that which is learned; consequently, the ever repeated 
 complaint, that though our youth indeed know a great 
 deal, they can do but little, that they possess indeed knowl- 
 edge, but little capacity and readiness to act, and that upon 
 leaving school, the knowledge largely disappears. Where 
 drill and application are lacking, where a line of thought 
 is developed, but in complete isolation from related thought, 
 the capacity of applying this knowledge to its natural and 
 appropriate field is soon lost, no matter how clear the 
 original thought may have been." ("Apperception," 
 Lange. ) 
 
 "It is perhaps the most frightful gift which an evil 
 genius makes to his age : knowledge without capacity to 
 do. ' ' (Pestalozzi, ' ' How Gertrude Teaches Her Children. ' ') 
 
 VII. In the work on the Lesson-Unit some suggestions 
 were given for the Preparation and Presentation Steps. 
 Those steps are designed, the first to recall material em- 
 pirically known, the second to make this material into one 
 or more generalizations. The method in these steps is, in 
 general, inductive; that in the Application Step is de- 
 ductive. 
 
 Suppose the Preparation and Presentation Steps have 
 been given to teach the generalizations : 
 
 1. Oxygen is a colorless, transparent, odorless, tasteless 
 gas, somewhat heavier than air. 
 
 2. Chemically it supports combustion and respiration, 
 promotes decay and rust. 
 
 The concrete applications of these general truths might 
 be somewhat as follows: 
 
 Application Step 
 
 Teacher— Why do we open a draft in a stove? 
 Pupil — To let in more air or 0, so that the burning will 
 be faster and the heat greater. 
 
150 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 Teacher— What will happen if we cover the top of a 
 lamp chimney'? 
 
 Pupil— The light will go out. 
 
 Teacher— Why? 
 
 Pupil— Because, when the draft is stopped, the is 
 exhausted in the chimney. 
 
 Teacher — Why do you cover a burn with oil or flour? 
 
 Pupil— To keep out the O which seems to irritate the 
 wound. 
 
 Teacher — Why do you have a cavity in your tooth filled 
 with gold or amalgam? 
 
 Pupil — To prevent the from continuing the decay. 
 
 Teacher — Explain why we can fruit and vegetables. 
 
 How is fine fruit preserved in the crates? 
 
 Pupil— It is wrapped in tissue paper to keep the air out 
 and to prevent bruising. 
 
 Teacher— Why is the wood-work painted or varnished 
 or oiled? Examine all materials in your home as to their 
 need of protection or not from oxygen. 
 
 Suppose the atmosphere were all of ; what would be 
 the condition of things in respect to combustion, rust, 
 decay ? And in respiration ? 
 
 Suppose there were no in the air: answer the above 
 question. 
 
 Why should a room be ventilated ? 
 
 Pupil— To supply fresh 0. 
 
 Teacher— How do fish breathe? (To be answered by 
 study at home.) 
 
 Teacher — How low down in the order of animal life does 
 respiration begin? (Home-work.) 
 
 Teacher— What has breathing to do with the temperature 
 of the blood in race history? (Home-work.) 
 
 Teacher— Name metals that do not rust? 
 
 Pupil — Gold and silver do not. 
 
Thought 151 
 
 Teacher— And this is one reason- why they are precious 
 metals. Find out whether tin rusts. (Home-work.) Why 
 do we have to paint tin roofs'? 
 
 What is the color of iron rust? 
 
 Pupil— It is red. 
 
 Teacher— Yes, the rouge which the fashionable lady uses 
 to paint her cheeks is chemically a sort of iron-rust. 
 
 What is the color of your cheeks when the blood is flow- 
 ing freely and rapidly? 
 
 Pupil — They are red. 
 
 Teacher— And what metal is in the blood? 
 
 Pupil— Iron is in the blood. 
 
 Teacher— Yes, and the pink of healthy cheeks is chemi- 
 cally really the rust of iron in the blood. So the fashion- 
 able lady only helps nature a little ! 
 
 You have seen that in the oxidation of wood, coal, and 
 paper in burning, heat is set free, as it is also in the pro- 
 cesses of respiration, rust, and decay. Thus as much heat 
 is given off in the slow decay of a house during a hundred 
 years as would be if the house burned to the ground in half 
 as many minutes. 
 
 VIII. A few suggestions on planning the Application 
 Step of lessons are : 
 
 1. The purpose of this step, if the work is to be deduc- 
 tive, is not mere repetition of the new facts (repetition is 
 provided for in the Presentation Step), nor is it to find 
 out what pupils know or have learned from the lesson. Its 
 purpose is to cause pupils to apply in many well-known 
 concrete instances the generalizations of the Presentation 
 Step, to increase general intelligence and all-around capa- 
 bility, to give "The maximum of opportunity with the 
 minimum of requirement," ("requirement" as ordinarily 
 understood, a hated task.) 
 
152 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 2. Much of the material of the Preparation Step may be 
 explained by pupils in this step. 
 
 (The material of the Preparation Step is made up of 
 well-known facts which have been observed, but are for 
 the most part only empirically known. In the Application 
 Step pupils should be able to explain it all scientifically.) 
 
 3. The Application Step as the culmination of the lesson 
 should stimulate and inspire pupils to constant observation, 
 investigation, research, study, thought, creation, action, 
 and positive self-direction in connection with this particu- 
 lar lesson, without as well as within school, everywhere and 
 always. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 ATTENTION 
 
 Lesson I 
 
 DEFINITION OF ATTENTION 
 
 Pkeparation Step.— I. Pay attention to what passes in 
 the street for ten minutes. At the end of that time write 
 out as much as you can recall of all that passed through 
 your mind while you were at the window. 
 
 II. Notice how the body adjusted itself in this act of 
 attention. The head and trunk, no doubt, bent forward, 
 all the muscles seemed to converge toward that to which 
 you attended. 
 
 Make a study of such physiological adjustments when- 
 ever you are attending to anything. Notice, also, other phy- 
 siological accompaniments of attention, such as scowling, 
 straining the muscles, sighing, changes in breathing, and 
 the circulation of the blood. 
 
 III. Watch for instances in yourself and others of imita- 
 tion of action that you see ; watch cases of the acting out of 
 thoughts, as, when I thought of cutting with the shears, my 
 lower jaw began to move ; I know of a person who cut him- 
 self with a knife through very fear of cutting. 
 
 Watch cases of control of bodily movement and condi- 
 tion by persistent dwelling on an ideal. 
 
 IV. The etymology of the word attend shows it to be 
 made up of two parts meaning to stretch and to or toward. 
 
 V. Notice how large a part of all trains of association is 
 made up of judgments, propositions, or affirmations, either 
 expressed or implied, complete or condensed. 
 
154 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 VI, Are you realizing more and more fully that the fleet- 
 ing present is a constant rearrangement of your past °l That 
 it is secondary material that makes each thought of both 
 the outer and the inner order? 
 
 VII. Pay attention to your pencil for fifteen minutes : 
 perhaps what you thought was somewhat like these series : 
 "Pay attention to the pencil! Muscular sensations of 
 scowling; Why, what shall I think"? Visual image, The 
 pencil is red ; Visual image, It is pretty well used up ; 
 Visual image. It has a tin cap to hold the rubber; sound 
 sensations. What a cracked bell ! I hear that bell every time 
 the car goes around the corner. Secondary visual image 
 of the car, A yellow car ; primary visual image of my table 
 — I was to pay attention to my pencil ; where was it made? 
 They made pencils at Keswick ; Secondary visual image of 
 a stone bridge, a stream, and trees with the gables of 
 Southey 's home. How hard it rained that morning ! Pri- 
 mary smell sensations of fresh ironing. Miss P. must have 
 finished. It is getting late. I must pay attention to my 
 pencil," and so on. 
 
 Presentation Step. — I. For how much of the time were 
 you paying attention to the pencil? 
 
 I was attending to it while I was thinking of it. 
 
 Each element and group of elements as it comes along in 
 the stream of thought is related to others— often this rela- 
 tion is definitely thought out in words, judgments, propo- 
 siticns. In the terms of propositions, when w^ere you at- 
 tending to the pencil? 
 
 I was attending to it when it, the pencil, formed one 
 member of the propositions, (as w^hen I thought. It is 
 almost used up; I wonder where it was made). 
 
 You were attending to the pencil, then, for perhaps ten 
 out of twenty judgments. 
 
Attention 155 
 
 What were you doing the rest of the time? 
 
 I was attending to something else. 
 
 For how much of the time were you attending to some- 
 thing "? 
 
 I must have been attending to something all the time. 
 
 II. We are indeed attending to some thought always, 
 now, to a first member, again to subsequent members of 
 trains of association ; now to the outer order, again to the 
 inner order. Attention is only another standpoint, then, 
 from which to study the stream of thought. 
 
 When one is regarding the process of taking possession 
 by the mind of an idea by being conscious of this idea in 
 its relations, often by expressing consciously those relations 
 in judgments incipient or completed, the standpoint is that 
 of Attention, 
 
 Application Step.— I. Contrast the standpoints of 
 thought and attention: 
 
 In studying mental life under the aspect of thought we 
 are dwelling upon generalization and abstraction through 
 judgment and reasoning; under that of attention, we are 
 dwelling upon the process of "stretching the thought tow- 
 ard" an idea. Both acts involve the process of judgment. 
 
 II. A question of perennial interest is, to how many 
 thoughts can we attend at once f Though the question can- 
 not perhaps be answered categorically, there are certain lines 
 of observation suggested by it that are profitable to follow. 
 
 First. Have you ever tried to appreciate, to realize the 
 quickness of thought in your own experience "? How slowly 
 the members of the body, the pen, and even the tongue 
 move compared with thought. 
 
 The typewriting record is just now held by a woman who 
 wrote 87 words a minute. Two women have just earned 
 championships for speed on ''arithmetical devices," one 
 
156 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 as the adder and lister of 500 checks in seven minutes, 
 53 seconds, the other by adding on a simple adding machine 
 a column of 34 lines in three and four figure items in 23 
 seconds. These people must have had to think quickly. 
 Yet probably you often think as quickly as they did — 
 only not in ways that can be tested like these. 
 
 The British Society of Musicians publishes this statement : 
 In the present state of piano playing the eye of the pianist 
 must be cultivated to see about 1500 signs in one minute, 
 the fingers to make about 2,000 movements, the brain to 
 receive and understand separately the 1,500 signs while it 
 issues the 2,000 orders. 
 
 Second. Notice that the two questions, How many things 
 can you do at a given time, and, How many thoughts 
 can you think simultaneously, are not at all the same 
 question. 
 
 Think how many acts are performed by the muscles 
 alone, with only a start or direction by the quickly shifting 
 mind. Watch in writing how many words your hand writes 
 for you ; in speaking, how many words your tongue says 
 with only the most fleeting guidance from time to time 
 by your consciousness. 
 
 Notice, moreover, how many different sets of muscles one 
 can keep going under this flitting direction of conscious- 
 ness. While the fingers are playing the piano, the tongue 
 can be kept talking quite intelligently, the eyes watching 
 the movements of- a person near, the ears listening to the 
 answers and questions of this person and several others — 
 all these under the superintendence of the stream of 
 thought, which passes with marvelous quickness from one 
 to another function. 
 
 Third. Why do you close your eyes at the telephone? 
 Why, choose a sheltered place to read ? Is it not in the first 
 case because Avhat you see distracts you? That is, you 
 
Attention 157 
 
 cannot attend both to what you see and to the conversa- 
 tion on the telephone, also, simultaneously. You attend to 
 one at a time. 
 
 A student was in a room where she heard the intermittent 
 whir of machinery for an hour. She heard, also, during 
 this time, water dripping from a faucet. Upon leaving the 
 room she was surprised to discover that the whir of the 
 machinery was not intermittent but steady — it had seemed 
 to cease when she had, at intervals, attended to the drip- 
 ping of the water. That is, while she attend«ed to the drip- 
 ping she did not hear the whir. 
 
 To a person untrained in music a chord is one sound. 
 Trained musicians, on the other hand, if they analyze the 
 complex, think the different notes in quick succession. 
 
 All of these matters are of interest in connection with the 
 question as to whether we attend to more than one thought 
 at a given time, or whether the ultimate elements of thougnt 
 are successive. 
 
 III. As to the physiological accompaniments or con- 
 ditions of attention : 
 
 The nervous system consists in general of pairs of nerves, 
 an out-carrying coupled with each in-carrying nerve, run- 
 ning from the surface and organs of the body to the brain 
 and spinal cord. The stimulus of every in-carrying nerve, 
 whether there is a discriminated result in mind or not, is 
 followed by the response of a corresponding out-carrying 
 nerve which brings about motion, actual or incipient, in 
 the muscles, and these movements leave behind in the brain 
 motor residua, we remember them. Thereafter, by the law 
 of habit, movement is inherent in the image, "every image 
 contains a tendency towards motion." Just as secondary 
 visual or other images do not always possess hallucinatory 
 vividness, so the motor elements may exist only in a nascent 
 state. As you read or think these words, for example, are 
 
158 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 not the muscles of your tongue and throat working rapidly, 
 ineipiently pronouncing the words? 
 
 In infancy and early childhood all the muscular move- 
 ments incited by the elferent nerves take place. Mental 
 life is mostly outer, primary, — trains of association are 
 short, consequently there can be little thought or control 
 of the attention. With added experience and years these 
 random activities come, some of them to be inhibited, others 
 to be the co-ordinated, controlled, skilled movements of 
 maturity. Though in the process of training, much of the 
 spontaneous, useless activity is suppressed, or at least only 
 ineipiently executed, there is still a result in mind from the 
 stimulation of the afferent and efferent nerves. Thus 
 thought has been described as "repressed action," the re- 
 sult in mind of incipient action, or, as Bain has it, "To 
 think is to refrain from speaking or acting." 
 
 Any physical excitation produces a movement. Stimu- 
 lation from any complex object produces incessantly re- 
 peated adaptation. Attention is not then a continuous, 
 formal faculty in ahstracto. Ribot describes it as a "psy- 
 cho-physiological complex * * * intellectual mon- 
 oideism, " the result in mind of successive spontaneous or 
 artificial adaptations of the individual. 
 
 "Motor manifestations with their subjective side are 
 attention. ' ' 
 
 IV. The above facts are wide in their application, and 
 of profound significance in the study of a human being as 
 a self-adjusting mechanism. Make a study of and explain 
 muscular movement (except automatic and reflex move- 
 ments) by them. 
 
 Take first the cases of simple imitation,— such as, in speak- 
 ing with a person who stuttered the image of the convulsion 
 was so vivid in my mind that I with difficulty controlled 
 my own tongue. A mother in watching her daughter re- 
 
Attention 159 
 
 cite imitated the movements of lips, facial muscles, and 
 gestures. These movements were ' ' inherent in the images ' ' 
 in her mind, that is, fundamentally associated with them 
 through the instinctive and lifelong relation of afferent 
 and efferent nerves. 
 
 Study concrete instances to realize how much of our 
 lives is imitation of others in matters of dress, mode of 
 living, occupations, beliefs, ideals, amusements, and morals. 
 
 Second. The case of acting out a thought in mind : As 
 I read the words, "deep breathing," I took a deep breath. 
 A teacher gave in an examination the topic, "The Pleas- 
 ures of Memory." She could tell when the pupils were 
 writing on this topic by the expression of their faces. 
 
 Not long ago I met a Japanese law student who had come 
 to this country to study medicine. He explained as the 
 reason for the change in his course that he had suft'ered so 
 greatly from all the diseases he studied about in the medi- 
 cal books that he had been obliged to give up that work. 
 
 V. This instinctive, naive relation between thought and 
 action is so strong that we have come to speak of it as con- 
 trol of the body by the mind. 
 
 In the matter of this influence, psychology has not yet 
 seriously advocated control that involves organic changes, 
 though it sees nothing unreasonable in mental control of 
 all functional bodily changes. The application here is an 
 important and far-reaching one for education. 
 
 VI. Habitual thoughts and moods in spite of us control 
 the movements of the body, especially the finely adjusted 
 and flexible muscles of the face, and these muscles are thus, 
 in time, so modified that, to a discriminating observer, a 
 face reveals something of mood, nature, and character. 
 
 VII. In general the effect of controlled attention on 
 muscular adjustment is to give skill ; on the senses, to 
 sharpen them; and on the emotions, to strengthen them. 
 
160 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 Lesson II 
 
 CONTROL OF THE ATTENTION 
 
 Preparation Step.— I. In what are you most interested? 
 If you are approaching twenty years of age, think about 
 your interest in, say, fiction ; your friends ; dress ; athletics ; 
 your work; your future plans; air castles. 
 
 II. Think out concretely and at your leisure how we 
 should get on if we had no curiosity, no inquisitiveness as 
 to the affairs of daily life, how and what to eat, to wear, 
 what to do at home and abroad, — no desire to know what 
 books say, what is to be seen in the world, what has been 
 and is being done. 
 
 Suppose we had no fear of dangers that may arise in the 
 street ; of unsanitary conditions in the house or city ; of 
 poverty, wrong, dishonor, and of a thousand other things 
 and conditions. 
 
 Suppose we were inattentive to hunger; to all the inter- 
 ests that arise from instincts of affection for other people. 
 
 If we had not paid attention to these matters, what would 
 be our condition as individuals and as a race, and how 
 long could we have existed 1 
 
 III. Watch a child for an hour to discover how much 
 control he has over his attention. Discover, also, the nature 
 of the ideas to which he gives his spontaneous attention. 
 
 IV. A little child left a book out of doors. It rained, 
 the book was ruined, and the child was punished. Later 
 he left another book out of doors. This time when it 
 threatened rain he remembered to take care of the book. 
 What is his train of associations likely to have been? 
 
 As he grew older, in proportion to the effectiveness of 
 his training in responsibility, he no longer left the book 
 out till the rain fell, he remembered it, he came upon the 
 
Attention 161 
 
 idea of responsibility in trains of association before the 
 danger came. 
 
 V. Accustom yourself to watch your trains of associa- 
 tion for the presence in some form of the idea of paying 
 attention. Glance over the last few pages that you have 
 been through in a book you are reading in order to find the 
 places where you "came back," or came upon the thought 
 of attending again. With the idea, "I must pay attention 
 — I must work hard"— muscular strain begins. One "sits 
 up," the forehead is scowled, the jaw is set, the hand or 
 other muscles become rigid, and often it is the conscious- 
 ness of this strain that is followed by the thought of con- 
 trol. One thinks, why am I scowling ? yes, I was paying 
 attention to my work: then he starts in again to attend. 
 
 VI. Since we make the present out of the secondary 
 material that we have, that secondary material must de- 
 termine largely what the present can be. AVhat we can 
 attend to, then, the relations we can make, depends on 
 what secondary material we have potentially. 
 
 VII. Do you know any one who is absent-minded? I 
 know a person who, because she was thinking of something 
 else, left her key in the door she had just unlocked. 
 
 Presentation Step.— In considering the subject of 
 training the attention two matters are to be noticed: 
 
 1) The difference in ability to pay attention that mental 
 content, its a) amount and b) nature, makes. 
 
 2) Control. 
 
 1. a. A musician is readily attentive to matters that have 
 to do with his profession. How does the amount of his 
 mental content on the subject of music and allied interests, 
 the number of facts he knows in right relations here, com- 
 pare with the number of facts he knows in other lines, 
 say, house-keeping ? He is likely to know much more about 
 11 
 
162 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 music than he knows about the other matters. To a given 
 book on music that he may be reading, he brings a great 
 wealth of material with which to make relations and pay 
 attention. 
 
 Suppose that you do not know Greek,— how long could 
 you pay intelligent attention to a page of this language? 
 Not long, as you do not bring to it any associations that 
 would enable you to judge of the meaning of the page,— 
 even though that page be a letter from your dearest friend. 
 Suppose next that every other word only on the page were 
 Greek— relatively how long could you attend to the page? 
 Then suppose that every word is in English, what would be 
 your condition as to attention ? It would indeed be active. 
 
 "When confronting any scientific problem, the New- 
 tonian mind * * * falls a prey to a perpetual irrita- 
 tion, which holds it in its power without cessation or rest. ' ' 
 Ribot. 
 
 These examples illustrate the difference that the amount 
 of material, the number of facts known makes in ability to 
 pay attention. 
 
 b. As to the difference in ability to pay attention made 
 by the nature of the mental content stimulated : 
 
 The activity of fundamental instincts makes a large 
 amount of our experience from childhood up. In child- 
 hood the thoughts made out of these native tendencies 
 alone can hold the attention. A child at a certain time, 
 for example, feels a fundamental interest in his food and 
 objects connected with it. Later he is interested, among 
 other things, in the life of the periods of chivalry. At this 
 time he will master and live out an enormous content from 
 this period of race history with the most absorbed attention. 
 
 We speak of experiences of the outer order as "attract- 
 ing" our attention. The term "attract" is misleading, be- 
 cause not every bodily stimulus brings about a discrim- 
 
Attention 163 
 
 mated result in mind. "My experience" furthermore, "is 
 what I agree to attend to * * * without selective in- 
 terest, experience is an utter chaos * * *. Interest 
 alone gives accent and emphasis, light and shade, back- 
 ground and foreground — intelligible perspective, in a word. 
 It varies in every creature." (William James, "Principles 
 of Psychology.") 
 
 The motives to attend to primary experiences have been 
 arranged according to the attractiveness they have gained 
 in the course of evolution in the following order : 1. Curi- 
 osity ; 2, Fear ; 3. Hunger ; 4. Love ; 5. Use. 
 
 To sum up, the musician is interested in his music, a 
 child is interested in the life of the periods of chivalry. In 
 each case the attention for the topic of interest is spon- 
 taneous and may last for a relatively long time. In the 
 last case, that of the chivalrous child, the interest is evi- 
 dently made out of instincts; in the first, this fact is not 
 so patently yet none the less surely true. Though all in- 
 terests trace back ultimately to instincts, the great amount 
 of knowledge, the large system of facts known makes pos- 
 sible the interest of the musician and the scientist. 
 
 Given a) a wealth of mental content on a given subject, 
 or b) a native interest in it, one can pay attention to it. 
 
 2. Control: Though our thoughts are ever "stretching 
 toward" something, it is not always the right thing. The 
 musician perhaps is attending to music when he should be 
 attending to counting money. The process of training the 
 attention must be one by which we gain control of it, so 
 that we can attend to whatever we wish whenever we wish. 
 
 Whatever else control is, it is noticeable that it is a pro- 
 cess of constantly returning to a consciousness of control, to 
 the idea of attending in some form. Clearly unless one 
 meets this idea he does not realize that he is "wool 
 gathering. ' ' 
 
164 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 One way then to help gain control of attention, or to 
 make it voluntary, is to get the idea of paying attention 
 into many trains of associations, to make it a dominant one, 
 so that, no matter on what subject one may start out to 
 think, he cannot get far afield before he comes upon the 
 thought of having his wits about him, of being responsible, 
 of not forgetting, of improving his time, of not procras- 
 tinating, or any of the many forms that this idea of control 
 may take as a result of his training. "The faculty of 
 voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and 
 over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and 
 will. No one is compos sui if he have it not." (William 
 James, "The Principles of Psychology.") 
 
 Application Step. — I. What would be the effect on at- 
 tention if we had no primary sensations, no outer exper- 
 iences? We come nearest to such a condition at night, 
 when we go to sleep. There is a case on record of a boy, 
 a defective, who was deprived of all his senses except the 
 sight of one eye. When his attendant wished to put him 
 to sleep, he closed that eye and the boy went to sleep with 
 the regularity of a machine. The effect of primary sen- 
 sations is to keep us awake, attentive. 
 
 II. What we shall attend to in each case, and what the 
 successive members of trains of associations shall be, seem 
 to be ultimately a result of race experience. We attend, 
 for example, to the painful sensations follwing contact with 
 fire because that result has proved a useful one to which 
 to attend. Inattention to it was followed by destruction. 
 We never attend, on the other hand, to the dark that we 
 might experience from the constant closing of the eyes in 
 winking. Before noticing this fact, it seems to us that 
 our eyes are always open. To attend to the dark intervals 
 has never been useful to us. 
 
Attention 165 
 
 III. The power of concentration is sometimes worshiped 
 as the desirable end in training the attention. But is it 
 really so desirable a thing for ordinary people"? What is 
 absent-mindedness but concentration, though on the wrong 
 thing! Perhaps, however, if one had concentration enough 
 he would not then be ordinary, and, while he was doing 
 great things, he could have a keeper to attend to all the 
 common concerns of life. At any rate, if one has control, 
 he can concentrate his attention when he wishes and dis- 
 tribute it when that is necessary. 
 
 IV. So far as the process goes, there seems to be no 
 ditference between controlled, or volimtary attention, non- 
 voluntary, and involuntary attention. Voluntary atten- 
 tion, however, is always characterized by a sense of effort— 
 perhaps the "mental reverberation of the physical strain," 
 the muscular or bodily strain that is the physiological ac- 
 companiment of the thought of control. 
 
 V. What ways do you take to help control your atten- 
 tion when you sit down to work ? Suppose you are writing 
 a theme: Do you think it all out before you begin to 
 write f Or do you sit down with pen and paper at a famil- 
 iar table in your room? Do not the sight and touch of the 
 familiar objects often serve to remind you, "I must get 
 to work on my paper— I must p&y attention— I must not 
 waste my time." If you have ever tried to work in un- 
 familiar surroundings, you have surely found that sights 
 and sounds with which the thoughts of control were not 
 associated prove extraordinarily distracting. 
 
 Notice other helps that we give ourselves in paying at- 
 tention : We turn as many senses as possible towards the 
 idea ; we strain the muscles to get what aid we can in that 
 way; certain nei'vous little mannerisms seem to help us, 
 such as moving the hands, playing with a pencil, button, 
 or something of the sort. 
 
166 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 VI. Why cannot a young child pay voluntary attention? 
 Because, for one thing, he has not the idea of paying atten- 
 tion interrelated and interwoven with his mental content. 
 He thinks of one thing after another without ever coming 
 upon the idea of control. 
 
 VII. Whatever else it is, teaching is the process of stim- 
 ulating the rearrangement of secondary material in a mind. 
 The teaching is educative in proportion to the wealth of 
 the material involved in the rearrangement. As to the 
 bearing of attention in the matter, before the age of con- 
 trol, only in proportion to the presence in mind of a wealth 
 of secondary material of instinctive interest can a child 
 pay attention. 
 
 VIII. And as to the process of gaining control, one aim 
 in education is to cause the idea of attending, of responsi- 
 bility in some form to become dominant. Think of the 
 directions one hears parents give : "Be careful ! ", " Shall 
 you ever learn to be responsible ! ", " Do not forget ! Attend 
 to what you are doing!" and so on— all with the purpose 
 of making dominant in trains of associations some thought 
 of control. 
 
 One part, then, of the process of training the attention 
 must be that of getting the thought of paying attention in 
 some form into many trains of association. 
 
 One way to accomplish this result is to give formal, ar- 
 bitrary directions like those I have just spoken of. 
 
 Another way is to supply a mental content of concrete 
 ideals of people who were responsible, conscientious, self- 
 directed in the affairs of life. 
 
 Suppose that, for example, a child's time in the grades 
 were spent in living freely through successive periods of 
 race history corresponding to his advancement from year 
 to year with all the chances of such a program for the 
 teaching of language, literature, art. the sciences, number, 
 
Attention 167 
 
 physical training, and character. The great wealth of 
 native, instinctive interests that he brings to make such 
 material will cause it to hold his absorbed attention, and his 
 life may be filled with an immense treasure, knowledge of 
 the best from all human culture, — concrete and effective 
 ideals of conduct and responsibility, the highest in all 
 literature and history. 
 
 IX. When it comes to the question, How can psychology 
 help me now to control my attention? — here as in training 
 the memory to a sense of responsibility, control does not 
 come by accident. Nor does the process of gaining control 
 involve merely superficial mentality, for since attention and 
 will are one, the process is as broad as life itself. It is not 
 a matter of intermittent, spasmodic, sentimental effort, but 
 it is a matter of habit ingrained in the physical make-up, 
 the whole personality by unalterable loyalty and faithful- 
 ness, in season and out of season, whether the need or re- 
 ward is in sight or not, everywhere and always,— unalter- 
 able loyalty and faithfulness to one's tasks. It is only such 
 life-long training that results in the ability to do what one 
 wants to do when he wants to do it, in self-control. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 IMAGINATION 
 
 Lesson I 
 
 IMAGING AND IMAGINATION 
 
 Preparation Step.— I. Name ten people you know. 
 Think of the face of each as though the person were before 
 you, that is, image it vividly. Test some of the images by 
 drawing them. 
 
 Image the sounds of voices, peculiar enunciation, pro- 
 nunciation, or quality. Image "bird-calls, yawps, hoots, 
 barks, cackles, ' ' automobiles ; the music of human voices, 
 of instruments. 
 
 Image definite scenes of last summer, yesterday, ten 
 years ago, your childhood ; image buildings, the starry 
 heavens at night. Do the stars shine in the daytime? 
 
 Hold your mouth open wide while you think the words, 
 " I 'm bound to blow bubbles. ' ' 
 
 What did you really think? 
 
 II. Imagine the sort of clothing you would have if you 
 could have anything you wanted. Imagine the sort of 
 journey you would take if you could go wherever you 
 wished ; Imagine, if you had your choice, the sort of home 
 you would build and the people you would have in it; 
 the sort of person you would like to be in appearance and 
 character, the sort of person you will be ten years hence. 
 
 Please do not just smile, but take time to 'imagine and 
 image in detail these conditions or others of your own 
 choosing. 
 
 III. Recall the scenes and characters you imagined to 
 make the last book you read— other books. 
 
Imagination 169 
 
 IV. Do you imagine the conditions of the Atomic Theory 
 and the theory of perception more adequately than you 
 did before you began working over your world in their 
 terms ? 
 
 V. Before in this lesson you recalled images, imaged 
 them, under what circumstances did you image? Where 
 did you use imagination? 
 
 Study the variety of sensuous elements in all your 
 imagery. To what extent were the thoughts of your ideal 
 journey visual, to what motor? 
 
 VI. Remember that the stream of thought at any moment 
 is present, the action and interaction of sensations all the 
 same in kind though varying in vividness, all secondary, 
 sometimes of the outer and sometimes of the inner order. 
 Remember that we do not carry about with us mental states 
 from our past experience, but that we create anew as we 
 need it and in accordance with the law of association sec- 
 ondary material that we recognize as answering the purpose 
 of yesterday's outer or inner order. 
 
 Presentation Step.— I. In using the terms imaging and 
 imagination I have assumed the ordinary understanding of 
 them. 
 
 In imaging the faces, scenes, and sounds of the first ques- 
 tion, you were trying to reproduce then as completely as 
 possible — to have sensations in the same relations, as many 
 as possible, and as nearly like the former experience. You 
 no doubt imaged vividly also the scenes in your imaginary 
 journey, the appearance of your ideal house and garments. 
 
 When we are thinking of the adequate, vivid production 
 of sensations in time and space relations, we are looking at 
 the stream of thought from the standpoint of imaging. 
 
 II. In imagination, w^hen thinking, for example, of what 
 kind of journey you would like, you varied literal repro- 
 
170 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 duction. You built up from your secondary material struc- 
 tures that conformed to an ideal of, say, a trip around the 
 world. Part by part you fitted together images, rejecting 
 by the law of association what did not and choosing what 
 did conform to your standard. 
 
 In imagination our standpoint is that of a synthesis of 
 sensations that transcends experience, a combination con- 
 structed to conform to a given standard. 
 
 Application Step. — I. Study the source of material 
 that you use in imagining; study an act of imagination 
 from the standpoint of trains of associations, of memory, 
 of apperception, and of attention. 
 
 II. Analyze the process of your imagination in having 
 purchased and had made your last new garment; in mak- 
 ing the last journey you took on the cars; in writing your 
 last letter. Notice how the secondary material that came 
 to your mind was tested point by point by a standard, east 
 aside if it did not conform and, if it did, was built up into 
 the ideal of what was to be done. 
 
 III. Go over some of your lesson-units and study each 
 step to see whether you have stimulated imagination all 
 that you might and whether you have made the images as 
 vivid as you might. 
 
 IV. It is said of Puvis de Chavannes that, when he had 
 a wall to decorate, he sat before the space and planned, 
 imagined, and imaged his design until he saw it all vividly, 
 then only did he begin to work on cartoons. 
 
 Mr. Will H. Low gives a delightful analysis of construc- 
 tive imagination in his account of the decoration of the 
 ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria. 
 
 The fact that there were on the walls a number of 
 lunettes and medallions first determined the size and shape 
 of his designs. He then had to decide on subjects. The 
 
Imagination 171 
 
 purpose of the room, a stately salon for balls and music, 
 fixed his choice on human figures rather than on landscape. 
 Instead of representing the customary muses, Mr. Low 
 lent a modern interest to his work by composing for each 
 medallion an ideal female figure to stand for a countiy on 
 whose peculiar musical instrument she is performing. 
 
 Of course there was no difficulty in the choice of such an 
 instrument for Scotland — it could be no other than the 
 bagpipes. Ireland, also, could be pictured only with the 
 harp, and Spain with the castanets. When it came to 
 Russia, however, the choice was not so easy — it finally fell 
 upon a string of sleighbells. And the selection for our 
 own country, which was really the most difficult of all, 
 w^as happily settled at length by the representation of the 
 figure of a young girl holding a scroll in her hands from 
 which she is singing. 
 
 Mr. Low's whole sketch of his plan" for studio accommo- 
 dation, for the use of canvas instead of the perishable plas- 
 ter of the wall, and other details affords an admirable and 
 fascinating analysis of the processes of selection and con- 
 struction in active artistic imagination. 
 
 V. Notice the use of imagination on the part of all 
 writers in construction, style, and figures. 
 
 How much more secondary material, how many more 
 trains of association do figures stimulate and rearrange for 
 us than just plain literal statements could do. Cable some- 
 where tells about a house with "the shutters so tightly 
 closed that it hurt your finger-nails to look at them." Paul 
 Leicester Ford made one of his men say in answer to the 
 question as to what he thought of the heroine's eyes, that 
 they were fine — "rather dressy, however, for the daytime." 
 Thought and expression, alas, do not always flow with equal 
 readiness — how often in writing or speaking is one re- 
 minded that he seems to be "wadinu' throush glue"! 
 
172 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 Compare figures such as these with literal language as to 
 force, vividness, and power to call up images that enrich 
 meaning. 
 
 VI. When we think of imagination as used only in con- 
 struction in art, literature, and music, the view is entirely 
 too narrow. 
 
 How far could you have gone in the course of to-day's 
 activities without imagination? How could you have 
 dressed, eaten your meals, spoken to people or conversed 
 with them, read, gone to your work or office, done your 
 tasks had you been confined to literal reproduction '? What 
 has imagination to do with your appreciation of nature, 
 music, art, beauty anywhere"? AVhat with your relation 
 to other people, your sympathy with their joy or sorrow, 
 with unselfishness, thought fulness, ideals, and character? 
 
 VII. What are the disadvantages of being too literal? 
 Do you know a Peter Bell"? 
 
 The lack of imagination makes life dull, prosaic, common- 
 place, empty, — hampers one in every way. Because with- 
 out imagination one has nothing to say, he cannot converse, 
 —he is like Charles Lamb with his "dumb devil;" because 
 he is not ingenious, he cannot get out of a difficulty ; being 
 a literalist he has no sense of humor — why was the English- 
 man always three jokes behind"? Deprived of his heart's 
 dearest, he has no resources. 
 
 Lesson II 
 
 CULTIVATING IMAGINATION 
 
 Preparation Step.— I. A certain man with seven small 
 brothers and sisters made their home a veritable fairyland 
 for them. "The lower part of the garden," a sister writes, 
 "Avas a wilderness at night where we would all go with my 
 eldest brother (we did everything with him when he was 
 
Imagination 173 
 
 home), taking rugs and comfortables, and lie on the grass, 
 telling stories or rather being told stories, picking out the 
 different stars and constellations— watching their motion 
 and listening to the crickets, the contrast between their lives 
 ending with the frosts and the eternal stars never failing 
 to charm and fascinate him. Every sound heard in an 
 adjoining yard— every light was accounted for and ex- 
 plained in, some way to fit in with the circumstances. 
 Witches, ghosts, buga-boos, and caw-caws -were as familiar 
 to us as were any of the people we associated with. Ever 
 since in all my reading I have come across places and per- 
 sons familiar to me all my life from this naming of every 
 spot and thing and this figurative way of accounting for 
 the most ordinary occurrences from Don Quixote, Arabian 
 Nights, Shakespere, Victor Hugo, the Old Testament,— all 
 with an added interest because of this. 
 
 ' ' We had an open stove where we sat most of the time in 
 the winter. When coal was put on we sang to the fire to 
 make it burn so the front could come off. We sang all kind 
 of nonsense to tunes I have since found out are airs from 
 the great operas," and so on— I have pages describing the 
 charm and delight of this home. 
 
 "I am aware," continues th* sister's account, "that to 
 an outsider much of it must seem the variest nonsense, but 
 to us living in that atmosphere from the time we were born, 
 it has been a source of great pleasure * * * there 
 never were children so happy and I learned more that way 
 than I ever did in school * * *, Above all, don't mis- 
 judge my brother and think of him as simply a fanciful 
 man. He is a smart, taciturn civil engineer, claiming no 
 love for children but with an almost extreme compassion 
 for the sufferings of a child or animal." 
 
 One does not often find a staid and practical adult with 
 so fanciful an imagination. 
 
17-1 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 II. Your observation will surely have convinced you 
 that all our experience is in the terms of mental content. 
 Whatever mind may be without its thoughts, we can never 
 catch it by itself. Since our sensuous material has always 
 a whenness and a whereness, in sleeping and waking we 
 are always perceiving. Since we cannot even imagine an 
 experience the elements of which we have not before known, 
 we are always at the same time remembering. Since we 
 are always reaching broader generalizations and higher 
 forms of logical relations, we are always thinking and ap- 
 perceiving. And since, to a critical observer, each mo- 
 ment's experience is at least slightly different from any 
 preceding one, imagination is involved in each successive 
 present. The degree, nature, and spontaneity of the im- 
 agination will thus have to do with the mental content of 
 the individual at any given age and moment. 
 
 III. Mr. N., the civil engineer, has no doubt, a vivid and 
 facile imagination in the construction of bridges and such 
 things, but it was not his professional knowledge that en- 
 abled him to make the children's paradise. Nor was this 
 paradise made out of nothing. It required mental content 
 of a specific kind. 
 
 Suppose that by virtue of a person's imagination in that 
 direction he is a gifted actor— these gifts would not secure 
 his success as manager of a traction company. 
 
 Only as he has the content and spontaneity can one im- 
 agine in the terms of any given content. 
 
 Since there is then no such thing as The Imagination in 
 general, it is not possible to cultivate it anj^ more than it is 
 to cultivate The Memory ; therefore the subject of this 
 lesson ought to be cultivating the Imaginations. 
 
 IV. The imagination of primitive peoples and children 
 is regarded as their earnest and honest endeavor to explain 
 their world and conditions. Because of their insufficient data 
 
Imagination 175 
 
 these explanations seem to us fanciful and grotesque. We 
 are accustomed to say that children have more imagination 
 than adults. Perhaps they have ; certainly their imagina- 
 tion is diiferent from that of adults. It is a familiar fact 
 indeed that in childhood the predominant mode of thought 
 is that of fanciful imagination. 
 
 The tirst appearance of imagination in race and individ- 
 ual seems to be in play. "It is often a well marked epoch 
 when the young child first learns that it can imagine and 
 state things that have no objective counterpart in its life, 
 and there is often a weird intoxication when some absurd 
 and monstrous statement is made, while the first sensations 
 of a deliberate break with truth cause a real excitement 
 which is often the birth pang of the imagination. 
 
 "Sometimes their (children's) fancy * * * de- 
 velops into a kind of mythopeic faculty * * * all their 
 life is imagination. Its control and not its elimination in 
 a Gradgrind age of crass facts is what should be sought in 
 the interests of the highest truthfulness and of the evolu- 
 tion of thought as something above reality * * *" 
 (G. S. Hall, "Adolescence.") 
 
 Presentation Step.— I. When one tries to sift down to 
 something tangible the different demands made on schools 
 "to cultivate the children's imagination," one finds that 
 they fall loosely into two classes: 
 
 1. The demand for a training that shall bring about 
 greater creative ability, power to originate in the ordinary 
 affairs of life. President Eliot once said: "There are two 
 kinds of people in the world, — imitators and creators — 
 advancement is made by creators. Get to be a creator as 
 soon as possible." 
 
 Unless one loves his work there can be little spontaneity 
 in creation. If schools, instead of trying to make all chil- 
 
176 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 dreu just alike, could but discover or cultivate special apti- 
 tudes, "detect a scholar in the egg," there would be a 
 better^ chance for later originality, inventiveness, and ad- 
 vancement. 
 
 Genius has been defined as the preservation into mature 
 years of the fecund mental spontaneity of childhood. How 
 much have schools to answer for in that we have not more 
 geniuses ? 
 
 2. The demand for the preservation in later life of some- 
 thing of the poetic imagination of childhood, a matter of 
 the aesthetic and emotional interests. 
 
 If it is true that a "poet has died young in the breast of 
 the most stolid," surely something might have been done 
 by education to cherish the life of this bard ; to arouse a 
 deeper and more lasting love of "beauty which is every- 
 where a sweetener of life;" to foster romance and idealism 
 which, since "one's reach is beyond his grasp," ever elevate 
 to a "heaven" that may be his daily life, and to that glow- 
 ing spiritually 'which makes in later maturity the prophet 
 and the seer who dream dreams and "are not disobedient 
 to the heavenly vision." "Without a vision the people 
 perish." 
 
 II. But these "imaginations" do not grow and thrive 
 by accident and on nothing. They need food and cultiva- 
 tion. If schools instead of deadening the instinctive spon- 
 taneity of fanciful imagination in childhood should nourish 
 and strengthen it on its native food, the stores of anthro- 
 pomorphic myth and legend, all later life both the poetic 
 and the practical side would gain in charm and power. 
 
 Application Step.— I. What would be the value of 
 imaging and imagining more vividly and adequately in 
 matters of daily life, say, in clearness of thought and enun- 
 
Imagination 177 
 
 elation when we speak : in deftness, skill, and speed in what 
 we do with our hands ; in definite planning for a busy day 
 or lifetime; in reading books, in ingeniousness, inventive- 
 ness— (Do people say of you as they did of Sentimental 
 Tommy, "He'll find a way?"), in time of danger such as 
 fire, drowning, runaway, railway disaster; in kindness, 
 thoughtf ulness, and sympathy for those about us ; in the 
 positive realization of how good a thing life really is? 
 
 It is said that if a person wishing to learn to skate could 
 and should think out, imagine, and image definitely and 
 clearly all the muscular co-ordinations involved, he could 
 skate at once without practice. 
 
 II. What difference does "acting it out" make in the 
 vividness of imaging and imagination? 
 
 It makes a vast difi'erence. When I asked you to think 
 with your mouth rigidly open the words, "I'm bound to 
 blow bubbles," thus hampered was not what you thought 
 something like this combination, "I'ng 'oung 'oo 'ow 
 'ugh- 'ugh?" That is, you thought what you would have 
 to speak with your mouth open. Now see how much your 
 imaging of the labials and Unguals is helped by actually 
 putting the lips and tongue in right position. Without 
 whispering, move the lips and tongue as though speaking 
 and think the words again. You can image all the sounds 
 completely. This simple illustration gives us a hint of the 
 gain in imaging from "acting it out." 
 
 To a child, acting it out makes all the difference in the 
 world, and every advantage should be taken of the spon- 
 taneous impulses native to childhood so to act out every- 
 thing possible in school and outside, number, nature study, 
 art, as well as the life of primitive peoples. This acting 
 out in its broad sense is the most important chance that 
 comes for muscular co-ordination and consequent brain 
 12 
 
178 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 correlation. It is the golden opportunity, too often wasted, 
 for all early muscular and bodily training with its corres- 
 ponding brain development and growth of power. 
 
 Play is regarded as the motor habits and spirit of the 
 past of the race persisting in the present. "This is why 
 the heart of youth goes out into play as into nothing else, 
 as if in it man remembered a lost paradise. This is why, 
 unlike gymnastics, play has as much soul as body * * * 
 play is the ideal type of exercise for the young, most favor- 
 able for growth, and most self-regulating in both kind and 
 amount * * *. Play at its best is only a school of 
 ethics. It gives not only strength but courage and con- 
 fidence, tends to simplify life and habits, gives energy, de- 
 cision, and promptness to the will * * * brings out 
 individuality. 
 
 "The field of play is as wide as life and its varieties 
 far outnumber those of industries and occupations in 
 the census. 
 
 "The present thought, if true, is only action repressed 
 to be ripened to more practical form * * * muscles 
 come before mind, Avill before intelligence, and sound ideas 
 rest on a motor basis * * *. The roots of play lie 
 close to those of creative imagination and idealism." (G. 
 S. Hall, "Adolescence.") 
 
 III. "Every healthy boy and girl needs an immense 
 deal of play not only with the legs and hands, but with the 
 imagination. Childhood ought to be surrounded by a 
 broad zone of mystery and wonder. The unimaginative 
 childhood makes the drudge in middle life and the cynical 
 man in age. The childhood that is rich in imagination 
 brings the artistic quality into work and distils so much 
 sentiment into the soul that in all the relations of life 
 there is underneath its cares, responsibilities and preoccu- 
 pations a touch of romance, and life without a romance 
 
Imagination 179 
 
 is not only prose, but prose that kills. The world needs 
 more dreamers. There ought to be more lovers and poets 
 among men ; there cannot be too many of them. But lovers 
 and poets are not made in middle life ; they are made in 
 childhood, and they are made by appeal to the imagina- 
 tion." The Outlook. 
 
 IV. There are still people who look askance with a severe 
 Puritan fear at the make believe life of a natural child. 
 Myth and studies from primitive life are frowned down, 
 and a child is taught only the truly true from history, 
 which he, if unspoiled, promptly turns into "make be- 
 lieve," because "it is his nature to." 
 
 Many parents and teachers, however, are coming to see 
 that children's spontaneous fanciful tendencies are ines- 
 timably valuable for education and to realize the necessity, 
 not only of not suppressing them, but also of taking ad- 
 vantage of them, and even of cherishing, feeding, and cul- 
 tivating them to the greatest possible extent on the richest 
 possible content, a whole wealth of which exists in the 
 literature of power. 
 
 "Out of the ignorance of the nature of the child, and 
 from the spirit of dogmatism and bigotry, there has come 
 the falsehood that says the myth does not contain the 
 whole truth, and therefore must be rejected. Who knows 
 the whole truth? Shall the child be robbed of that which 
 delights its soul and lays the foundation of true religious 
 life? No greater mistake can be made in regard to the 
 spontaneous activities of the child, for the myth is the 
 first fire-mist of character, it contains golden symbols that 
 point upward to God and to heaven. The myth is the 
 fovindation of faith ' in the future life, the foundation of 
 all spiritual growth. The fairies and trolls change, as the 
 soul changes, to real folk and real life * * *. ^q 
 rough voice and no ignorant soul should ever tell the little 
 
180 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 child that Santa Clans does not exist, for Santa Clans 
 is the foreshadowing of the All-Giver, All-Lover, the one 
 who gives because he loves. (Francis W. Parker, "Talks 
 on Pedagogics.") 
 
 IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS? 
 
 Reprinted on this Christmas morning at the request of many friends 
 
 of The Sun, of Santa Claus, of the little Virginias of 
 
 yesterday and to-day, and of the author 
 
 of the essay, the late F. P. Church. 
 
 We take pleasure in answering at once and thus prominently the 
 communication below, expressing at the same time our great grati- 
 fication that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of 
 The Sun : 
 
 Dear Editor; I am eight years old. 
 Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. 
 Papa says, " If you see it in The Sun it's so." 
 Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus? 
 
 Virginia O'Hanlon. 
 115 West Ninety-fifth Street. 
 
 Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected 
 by the scepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except 
 they see. They think that nothing can be which is not compre- 
 hensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they 
 be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours 
 man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the 
 boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable 
 of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. 
 
 Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as 
 love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they 
 abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas ! 
 how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus ! 
 It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would 
 be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable 
 this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense 
 
Imx^gination 181 
 
 and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world 
 would be extinguished. 
 
 Not believe in Santa Claus? You might as well not believe in 
 fairies ! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all 
 the chimnej's on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if 
 they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? 
 Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no 
 Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that 
 neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing 
 on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not 
 there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are 
 unseen and unseeable in the world. 
 
 You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the 
 noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which 
 not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the 
 strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, 
 poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and 
 picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real ? Ah, 
 Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. 
 
 No Santa Claus ! Thank God ! he lives, and he lives forever. A 
 thousand years from now, Virginia, nay. ten times ten thousand 
 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of child- 
 hood. — Leader in the Nezv York Sun, December ^3, 1906. 
 
 V. Consider yotir school text-books as stimuli to the im- 
 agination. Let us start with geography. The pictures and 
 maps are usually a great help to the text, and the text is 
 often written so as to enable the children to travel quite 
 extensively in imagination. Yet a student told me not 
 long ago that she was quite well grown before she realized 
 that the blue spot on the map of her geography was meant 
 for the Lake George where she spent her summers. 
 
 And in history: Compare the ordinary text -book with 
 the historical novel as a stimulus to the imagination. Which 
 of the two books uses to a greater extent the material of 
 your own life to make the people and events of other times? 
 AVhieh people are more real, which do j^ou remember more 
 vividly? Another student told me that she was quite 
 
182 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 "through'' American History before she realized that the 
 present time was not the first period of peace ever enjoyed 
 by our country. As she had learned her liistory, it was a 
 succession of wars and battles. 
 
 In literature the edited classic overloaded with notes is 
 charged with giving undue attention to details, technical- 
 ities, and leaving nothing to a child's imagination or in- 
 vention. Too often the eternal spirit of the substance of 
 literature is missed in undue attention to philological, 
 chronological, and historical dry bones. Carl Holliday in 
 an appeal for the cultivation of the imagination in the 
 study of literature urges, "Let us, in the name of all that 
 is beautiful, sincere, and ennobling study literature for 
 its spirit, for its eloquence of beauty, for the reason that 
 here is expressed well the thing which every man has felt 
 but could not tell * * * (Literature) appeals to the 
 soul, it preserves the imagination * * *, 
 
 Richard Le Gallienne once asked a famous scientist for 
 a definition of life. " 'Nothing easier,' he gaily replied. 
 'Life is a product of solar energy, falling upon the carbon 
 compounds, on the outer crust of a particular planet of a 
 particular corner of the solar system.' 
 
 " 'And that,' I said, 'really satisfies you as a definition 
 of life— of all the wistful wonder of the world.' And as 
 I spoke I thought of Moses with mystically shining face 
 upon the Mount of the Law, of Ezekiel rapt in his divine 
 fancies, of Socrates drinking his cup of hemlock, of Christ's 
 agony in the garden, the golden faces of the great of tlie 
 world passed as in a dream before me, — soldiers, saints, 
 poets, and lovers * * *. 
 
 ' ' The carbon compounds ! 
 
 ' ' I took down Romeo and Juliet, listened to its passionate 
 spherical music, and the carbon compounds have never 
 troubled me again. 
 
Imagination 183 
 
 ' ' Love laughs at the carbon compounds, and a great book, 
 a noble act, a beautiful face make nonsense of such cheap 
 formulae for the mystery of human life." 
 
 "Knowing, then, the value of the imagination in the 
 youth of man,— its power to arouse sympathy; its ability 
 to bring happiness out of adversity, its force as a creator 
 of action, above all, its absolute necessity in the erection of 
 ideals, can we believe an education complete that has not 
 included a training of this mighty spiritual faculty? 
 Surely, it would seen that in the unremitting effort toward 
 the uplifting of man there must soon come a new direction 
 of energy — a zealous movement from the standpoint of 
 his imagination." 
 
CHAPTER IX '^ 
 
 WILL 
 
 Lesson I 
 
 WILL ACTION 
 
 Preparation Step.— I. How much of your day are you 
 quiet, not doing", or planning to do anything? 
 
 II. Everything that is consciously done, every thought 
 and impulse, all feelings, emotions, desires, as well as mus- 
 cular action, — all are food for observation in the study of 
 will action. 
 
 III. Think over some of the things you have done in the 
 last hour. I, for example, answered the telephone ; showed 
 a maid aboilt some work; sat still and thought out some- 
 thing that I wanted to say; sorted and classified some 
 material for my work. 
 
 Recall definite acts of yesterday, last week, last year, 
 and so on. 
 
 IV. Notice the activities that your muscles carry on for 
 you without conscious direction, such as beating the heart, 
 breathing, winking. How much conscious direction do 
 your muscles require when you walk across the room? 
 Walk about and see. When you walk down town there is 
 some slight direction of the body by the mind at the street 
 corners. Aside from this guidance, do not your feet walk 
 for you quite alone most of the time ? 
 
 How much conscious direction is required in talking, 
 writing, singing, dressing, eating, conversing, reading, un- 
 derstanding, driving an automobile? 
 
 V. How much of your day is made up of acts and plan- 
 ning for them? 
 
Will 185 
 
 VI. In the analysis of will we shall follow what is known 
 as the biologic theory, though without in the least involving 
 its metaphysical implications. The theory is psycho- 
 logically sound, and no other theory is so simple and clear 
 and has so great a value in stimulating observation. 
 
 VII. For the moment, then, study the stream of thought 
 as though it were made up of the action and interaction of 
 sensations, sometimes inner, sometimes outer with an ac- 
 companiment of feeling pleasurable or painful, all the 
 resultant at each moment of the entire bodily condition, and 
 accept as existing the impulse that keeps up a constant and 
 continuous purposive activity without consideration of its 
 origin. All thought is repressed action, and "In all 
 forms of attention * * * ^g ^j^^j selective activity 
 going on. Selection always implies a purposive, forward- 
 looking type of action, and this is precisely what attention 
 is in all its forms. It stands for the fact that the organism 
 is teleological in its very constitution. That is, to say, 
 the organism contains within itself certain ends to be at- 
 tained in the course of development by adjustive activities. 
 In part these ends exist imbedded in the physiological 
 mechanisms, where' they come to light as reflex, automatic, 
 and instinctive acts, sometimes accompanied by conscious- 
 ness." (J. R. Angell, "Psychology.") 
 
 Presentation Step.— I. Perhaps the* simplest analysis 
 of will action in modern psychology is that of Professor 
 James in his "Talks on Psychology." 
 
 "Suppose now you appear before the child with a new 
 toy intended as a present for him. No sooner does he see 
 the toy than he seeks to snatch it. You slap the hand ; it 
 is withdrawn and the child cries. You then hold up the 
 toy, smiling and saying, 'Beg for it nicely, — so!' The 
 child stops crying, imitates you, receives the toy and 
 
186 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 crows with pleasure; and that little cycle of training is 
 complete. 
 
 ' ' Now, if the child had no memory, the process would not 
 be educative. No matter how often you came in with, a 
 toy, the same series of reactions would fatally occur, each 
 called forth by its own impression: see, snatch; slap, cry; 
 hear, ask; receive, smile. But, with memory there, the 
 child at the very instant of snatching, recalls the rest of 
 the earlier experience, thinks of the slap and the frustra- 
 tion, recollects the begging and the reward, inhibits the 
 snatching impulse, substitutes the 'nice' reaction for 
 it, and gets the toy immediately, by eliminating all the 
 intermediary steps." 
 
 This little cycle gives the gist of psychologic will theory. 
 No matter how complex the act, it may be analyzed to the 
 elements here outlined, perception, thought, action, all 
 ultimately reducible to native or instinctive reactions. 
 
 II. a) For the sake of studying volition more closely, 
 divide each conscious act into its parts. The following 
 analysis is not intended as an explanation of acts of will, 
 but rather as a form and guide in their observation. 
 
 Notice that there are involved m Professor James' ex- 
 ample two mental states of chief importance : 
 
 1. When the child first saw the toy, the idea in his mind 
 was that of himself witkout the toy; 
 
 2. The "conscious purpose," or "recognized inclination" 
 that struggled to displace it was that of himself as having 
 the toy; 
 
 3. Notice, in the third place, his idea or plan of how 
 to get it : first, to snatch it, and second, after his will was 
 educated, or trained in that particular, to "ask for it 
 nicely." 
 
 4. Fourth, the actualization of this plan was an act of 
 will. 
 
Will 187 
 
 b) Now, please go over several of your own acts in the 
 same way. I^ for example, just answered the telephone : 
 AVhen I first heard the bell^ 
 
 1. The idea actually in my mind in reference to the act 
 in question was that of myself as not having answered 
 the bell; 
 
 2. The "conscious purpose" of myself as having an- 
 swered the bell at once struggled towards actualization; 
 
 3. I planned quickly in the terms of secondary muscu- 
 lar and visual sensations 1) to rise, m) to turn towards the 
 door, n) pass through the hall, o) to go down stairs, p) 
 to stand before the telephone, q) to take the receiver and 
 
 speak ; 
 
 4. In the terms of perception, each step of the above 
 series became in turn a part of the outer order until the 
 idea of myself as having answered the telephone was 
 actualized. 
 
 c ) Another case : I sat still and planned a lesson : When 
 in thinking over the work of the day the idea of my class 
 came, 
 
 1. The thought was of myself as not having planned my 
 lesson ; 
 
 2. The conscious purpose of myself as having planned 
 the lesson at once became impulsive ; 
 
 3. In my plans for the actualization of this idea 1) I 
 thought, I'll sit down and work it out, m) I'll think what 
 we did yesterday, n) and think out a list in order for 
 to-day. 
 
 4. Each step of this plan was carried out until the idea 
 of myself as having outlined the lesson was actualized. 
 
 d) And just one more: Last summer I took a long 
 journey. I first decided at Easter to go. Then, 
 
 1. The idea in my mind in reference to this volition was 
 that of myself as not having spent the summer in travel ; 
 
188 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 2. The idea that then became impulsive was that of my- 
 self as having spent the summer in travel ; 
 
 3. The tieetiug plans that at that moment flashed through 
 my mind were vastly modified and elaborated in the months 
 that followed. I can pick them out quite definitely, how- 
 ever, step by step ; 
 
 4. Each step was carried out approximately as planned, 
 and by autumn the idea of myself as having taken the long 
 journey was actualized. 
 
 In these cases and others the actualization of a conscious 
 purpose is an act of wnll. 
 
 Application Step.— I. In Professor James' analysis the 
 child's instincts, or primitive impulses to snatch the toy, 
 to avoid hurt, and to please some one were made over into 
 a reasonable act. 
 
 II. j\Iake out a list of instincts in children that become 
 constituents in volition, such as the impulses to creep, to 
 walk, to grasp, to make movements in self-defence, to carry 
 objects to the mouth, to eat, to construct, to imagine, to 
 make sounds, to play, to use the senses, to attract atten- 
 tion, to imitate, to co-operate, to show off, to collect, to 
 fight, to run away. The instincts of curiosity, affection, 
 and its opposites, fears, aggressiveness, freedom, adventure, 
 diffidence, egotism, selfishness, adornment, cruelty, gregar- 
 iousness, and hundreds more, 
 
 ]Man having had a longer chance at racial development 
 than any other animal, has a greater number of instincts, 
 consequentiy his volitional life is correspondingly complex. 
 
 All impulses become co-ordinated into muscular acts 
 where control and skill make a profound difference in cap- 
 ability and strength of volition. 
 
 TIT. "Although we readily recognize and admit the 
 volitidiud processes in childhood are, in their origin, de- 
 
Will 189 
 
 pendent upon impulses, it is not so obvious that adult con- 
 duct is in the same manner bound up with impulse. Nev- 
 ertheless, this is the fact * * *. Indeed, the statement 
 is often made that the development of volition is neither 
 more nor less than a process of reducing our impulses to 
 order, and that a mature character is simply one in which 
 the impulses are thus subordinated to some systematised 
 principles. Instead, therefore, of the conception that a 
 developed will or character is one in which all primitive 
 impulses have been extirpated or repressed, we have the 
 conception of these impidses as continuously operative, hut 
 operative in a rational and coherent ivay, rather than in 
 the chaotic fashion characterizing childhood and infancy. 
 This view is unquestionably correct in its general impli- 
 cations * * *." ("Psychology," James Rowland 
 Angell.) 
 
 The italics are mine. "The development of volition is 
 * * * a process of reducing our impulses to order." 
 To say that only rational acts are volitional sounds arbi- 
 trary, yet it seems to describe the case. To a reasonable 
 being an idea becomes impulsive when it is seen to be the 
 reasonable, right, wise, noble, or good thing to be done. 
 
 IV. But, you will ask, what about the unreasonable, the 
 foolish and wrong things we do, are they not, acts of will? 
 
 To answer the question, study these acts concretely. Is 
 not each done as the result of a hasty, thoughtless impulse, 
 or of ignorance, or because you are the slave of a bad 
 habit? All these acts are far from the actualization of 
 reasonable conscious purposes, therefore they are not 
 volitional but they are done because of the absence of 
 volition. 
 
 Yet even these acts are to be reckoned with in the study 
 of will since they are parts of the stream of thought that 
 influence later plans and volitions. 
 
190 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 V. "Kationality — morality— freedom— firmness of char- 
 acter, are apprehensions of the same notion from different 
 sides. He who acts rationally acts morally ; for the con- 
 tent of reason is the demands of the moral law; he is also 
 free in his action, because he determines himself, not in 
 accordance with the momentary state of his consciousness, 
 which is inclined to favor now this, now that desire, but 
 according to the unchanging demands of his rational in- 
 sight * * *. By thus freeing his volition from all 
 accidental vacillations, he acts consistently; i.e. as having 
 character." ("Empirical Psychology," G. A. Lindner.) 
 
 Lesson II 
 
 FEELINGS 
 
 Preparation Step.— I. Kindly make the following ex- 
 periment: Read something thrilling, such as one of Poc's 
 tales of horror and mystery or Mrs. Shelley's "Frankin- 
 stein. ' ' As you read, notice the changes in the circulation 
 of the blood as shown by your pulse and heart beats; 
 changes in the color of your face ; in the size of the pupils 
 of your eyes ; in breathing, temperature, and digestion ; in 
 the secretion of sweat and saliva ; in muscles. 
 
 II. Observe the bodily accompaniments of fear: They 
 are pallor and trembling, spasm of the heart, effects on the 
 abdominal viscera, goose-flesh on the skin, cold sweat, 
 bristling of the hair, dryness of the mouth, choking, par- 
 alysis of the voice or hoarse screaming, tendency to flight, 
 sensations of weakness. 
 
 The bodily accompaniments of pleasure are general ex- 
 pansiveness, sparkling eyes, flushing face, bodily warmth, 
 deep breathing, smiling, rounded face, and other external 
 movements. 
 
Will 191 
 
 III. Recall instances from history, fiction, and poetry of 
 primitive rage, love, hate, of passionate devotion to a 
 cause, an ideal, the accomplishment of a purpose. Com- 
 pare your own emotions with these as to strength and 
 spontaneity; your own now with those you had in child- 
 hood. 
 
 Wherein lay the power of Paul, Luther, Pestalozzi, Jean 
 d'Arc, King Arthur, Keats? 
 
 IV. To the critical observer of the growth of a child 
 the emotional life more than any other phase of mentality 
 proclaims the great diversity of personalities in the same 
 individual as development progresses, often in jerks and 
 leaps, through the different strata of racial life. In these 
 multiplex personalities "the voices of extinct generations, 
 sometimes still and small, sometimes strident and shrill" 
 reverberate until increasing mental unity brings relative 
 maturity. Thus, not only, is the intellectual and volitional 
 life made out of instincts, but also the emotional life. 
 
 V. In the first lesson only completed acts were studied. 
 Suppose, now, that in some way I had been hindered from 
 answering the telephone, or that I had been prevented from 
 going abroad : how should I have felt about it "I My feel- 
 ing would have been one of disappointment in both cases — 
 of great disappointment in the second. But I w^as not 
 hindered in either act, and I enjoyed actualization in both. 
 
 VI. Think over again the many little acts that have 
 made your day. Suppose, instead of having been able to 
 do each one in a capable and efficient manner, you had been 
 hindered and thwarted at every turn, should you have had 
 a happy day? 
 
 On the other hand, everything went as you had planned, 
 and you feel pleased and satisfied. Some of the acts, like 
 answering the telephone, seem trivial — there was no great 
 pleasure accompanying the realization here of the con- 
 
192 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 scious purpose. Still, if one imagines a hindrance to 
 actualization, there is discernible a distinct feeling of 
 annoyance. 
 
 All feeling seems to be, not absolute, but relative. Yet 
 one can realize that a feeling is relatively pleasurable some- 
 times only by supposing the opposite condition, a hin- 
 drance to actualization, when the disappointment resulting 
 shows that actualization was relatively pleasurable. 
 
 VII. Make out a list of feelings that you have exper- 
 ienced. Notice that, though your list contains many dif- 
 ferent names, all the feelings may be classified as either 
 pleasurable or painful. Classify them in these two 
 divisions. 
 
 VIII. How definitely can you plan and act under strong 
 emotions? How accurate a description can you give of 
 such an event as, say, your wedding, the burning of your 
 home? What effect on one's sanity and self-control does 
 great joy or sorrow have? 
 
 Presentation Step. — I. Any discriminated result in 
 mind of a change in the cebrebral terminals of the sensory 
 nerves is a sensation. It has a presentative element — is 
 red or smooth or musical or sour or loud. Feeling, on the 
 other hand, has no content, it is simply the pleasure or pain 
 that goes along with, or attends mental action. 
 
 The accompaniment of mental action then is feeling, 
 painful when there is a hindrance, an obstruction, or 
 thwarting, — pleasurable when there is a furtherance of 
 interests or intentions. 
 
 II. As to the bodily conditions from which feelings 
 result : 
 
 Sensations, as those of color, are the result of change 
 in a particular part of the cerebral cortex. The geography 
 of the brain has been tentatively mapped out to quite a 
 
Will 193 
 
 degree for areas whose stimulus results in sensations and 
 muscular action. And even though they have no definite 
 content and brain localization, feelings, as well as sensa- 
 tions, are thought to be results of bodily condition. Thus 
 we are pleased because we smile, expand the muscles gen- 
 erally; because we weep, actually or incipiently, we are 
 sad. "Can one fancy the state of rage and picture no 
 ebullition in the chest, no clenching of the teeth, no impulse 
 to vigorous action, but in their stead limp muscles, calm 
 breathing, and a placid face? The present writer for one, 
 certainly cannot. The rage is as completely evaporated as 
 the sensation of its so-called manifestations, and the only 
 thing that can possibly be supposed to take its place is 
 some cold-blooded and dispassionate judicial sentence, con- 
 fined entirely to the intellectual realm, to the effect that 
 a certain person or persons merit chastisement for their 
 sins,* * *. A purely disembodied human emotion is 
 a nonentity." (W. James, "Psychology.") 
 
 "The bodily changes follow directly the perception of 
 the exciting fact, and * * * our feeling of the same 
 changes as they occur is the emotion." (Ibid.) 
 
 This peculiar accompaniment then of mental action, 
 feeling, is a mental resultant (like sensations, but, unlike 
 them undiscriminated) of all elements of the bodily con- 
 dition. 
 
 III. There is always an emotional accompaniment in the 
 stream of thought, and its nature depends on the mental 
 content that is passing through the mind. Where the con- 
 tent is relatively simple and primitive the feelings are in- 
 stinctive and generic (The mental content of ideas of dan- 
 ger, a hindrance to self-preservation, is accompanied by 
 the feeling of fear). 
 
 Where, on the other hand, the stream of thought is in- 
 formed, reasonable, sane, the emotions are relatively com- 
 13 
 
194 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 plex. (As feelings of enjoyment of one's work, the accom- 
 paniment of a furtherance of one's ideas of well-being.) 
 IV. Study many concrete feelings both as the accom- 
 paniment of hindrance and furtherance of volitions and at 
 the same time the resultant of the general bodily condition. 
 
 Application Step.— I. If one thinks away all the bodily 
 conditions of fear, there is no fear left. Is there not a 
 hint here for the positive cultivation of bravery, good 
 nature, kindliness, optimism, and other virtues through 
 the persistent assumption of their bodily conditions and 
 attitudes ? 
 
 Take the case of bravery: the presence of an emotion is 
 so noticeably upsetting to reasonable control that it, emo- 
 tion, is even explained by Dewey and Angell as "the 
 temporary suspension of voluntary control in the forward 
 movement of consciousness." If, then in the first con- 
 sciousness that one 's house is afire, instead of ' ' losing one 's 
 head," he could "keep his wits about him," or could 
 "collect himself" by controlling the bodily manifestations, 
 while he reasons what to do, mightn't the timid really 
 become quite brave f There seems, indeed, to be something 
 in "putting on a bold front" and "whistling to keep your 
 courage up." 
 
 Psychologists say that policemen, firemen, and soldiers 
 realize dangerous and terrifying conditions, yet because 
 they apprehend them in a cold-blooded and self-controlled 
 way, they do not feel fear. 
 
 II. If only reasonable acts are volitional and if the 
 furtherance of these is always pleasurable, then is not 
 duty always pleasurable? This question sounds, perhaps, 
 like cant, yet it really involves a profound scientific truth, 
 namely, that reasonable acts are always ultimately pleas- 
 urable. Why not make the most of the truth, then ? One 
 
Will 195 
 
 misses so much through overestimation of what one has 
 done, through loving to be a martyr and miserable ! Why 
 not realize life as the abounding joy that it is? 
 
 Stevenson said, "I know what pleasure is, for I have 
 done good work." 
 
 "Duty * * * is not adequately conceived and felt 
 if it is not pleasure." (G. S. Hall.) 
 
 III. But even in the most healthy and reasonably con- 
 trolled individuals, there appear sometimes the native in- 
 stinctive impulses, feelings that in spite of high ideals are 
 reversions to the blind, unreasoning joys and sorrows of 
 primitive life. There are cases in which these feelings are 
 not weakening, but, in general, "character forming is the 
 process of reducing impulses to order. ' ' 
 
 In application of the last statement, it is interesting to 
 note the following definition of immoral literature given by 
 Mary Wood- Allen : ' ' Immoral . literature is any litera- 
 ture which depicts love as a feverish, irresponsible passion, 
 that comes we know not whence, and carries us we know not 
 whither, but that must be followed wherever it leads." 
 And from G. S. Hall, "In six leading contemporary alien- 
 ists I jSnd the following definitions of love as described in 
 novels: Emotive delusion, fixed idea, rudimentary par- 
 anoia, psychic neurasthenia, psychic emotive obsession and 
 episodic symptoms of hereditary degeneracy." 
 
 IV. Why should one have strong feelings? Have you 
 strong interests? What are they? Test each ruthlessly 
 by the amount of money, time, and effort you spend on it. 
 
 Education has been defined as a process of starting in- 
 terests. This aim is certainly a good "working" one for 
 teachers, for whatever education is, it is not finished at 
 the end of school-life. 
 
 And yet what in general has been the effect of education, 
 cultivation on strength of emotions? "In our day and 
 
196 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 civilization" writes Dr. Hall, "the hot life of feeling is 
 remote and decadent * * *. The very word passion is 
 becoming obsolete in psychological literature * * *, 
 The life of feeling has its prime in youth, and we are pre- 
 maturely old and too often servile in heart * * *. Our 
 sensibilities are refined, but our perspective is narrow 
 * * * our very philosophy as well as our religion * * * 
 looks with some contempt upon enthusiasm. Our senti- 
 ments are oversubtilized and sophisticated and reduced to 
 puny reactions to music and appreciation of art that are 
 nine parts criticism and one part appreciation. What we 
 have felt is second-hand, bookish, shop-worn, and the heart 
 is parched and bankrupt. ' ' 
 
 But in the souls of children and adolescents we are ever 
 rejuvenated emotionally. "Their hearts are young, fresh, 
 and in the golden age. There is color in their souls, bril- 
 liant, livid, loud. They are still the light and hope of the 
 world." 
 
 Lesson III 
 
 DESIRES 
 
 Preparation Step.— I. Why do we not all have the same 
 desires ? 
 
 What one desires in each case is the purpose in an act of 
 will, the impulsive mental state. The question then comes 
 back to the one considered from the standpoint of Apper- 
 ception, under what circumstances could two persons have 
 the same thought? It is because each one's present stream 
 of thought is made by the rearrangement of his secondary 
 experience, by his past, that no two persons can have just 
 the same desires. See how important memory is in the 
 matter. 
 
 II. What makes a mental state impulsive? 
 
Will 197 
 
 A mental state becomes impulsive as soon as it is seen 
 to be the reasonable, right thing to do. Notice, in passing, 
 how acute and subtle one's consciousness, or conscience, 
 comes by experience to be in the distinction between rea- 
 sonable and foolish things, between right and wrong. 
 
 III. AYhat have you desired to do recently ? I desired to 
 go to a committee meeting this morning; to make some 
 visits this afternoon ; to read a newspaper to-night ; to hear 
 a person sing to-morrow, and many other things. 
 
 Did you ever when you were a child, desire to reach 
 the moon ? Think over other desires that you have had, 
 those that have come to you in day-dreams, such as to be 
 rich, happy, beloved, beautiful, wise, clever, famous, good, 
 well, to rest, to be frivolous. What are you doing to make 
 these desires come true? 
 
 Notice that some of your desires are realized at once, 
 some last a long, long time. 
 
 IV. Surely no one enjoys a visit to the dentist's chair, 
 3^et you go there even when you are not actually suffering 
 from toothache if you know that you should go. That is, 
 brought up as you have been, you could not stay away with 
 any ultimate comfort. 
 
 Think of other cases where you do not enjoy the process 
 of actualization in itself, yet where without actualization 
 there would be no real satisfaction. 
 
 V. The analysis here attempted is not intended as an 
 explanation of desire,— it is hoped only that the classifica- 
 tion of parts outlined will stimulate to more constant ob- 
 servation of the stream of thought from the standpoints 
 of desire, will, and feeling. 
 
 Presentation Step. — I. The analysis of my desire to 
 attend a committee meeting this morning shows it to have 
 
198 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 been composed of these parts: When four days ago I re- 
 ceived a notice of the meeting. 
 
 1) The idea in my mind in reference to the act was that 
 of myself as not having attended the meeting this morning ; 
 
 2) The idea. of myself as having attended the meeting 
 became impulsive; 
 
 3) My plans at that time were a) fleeting thoughts of 
 how I should place the notice in sight on my table so as 
 not to forget it; b) thoughts of arranging my work for 
 to-day so as to flnish it by eleven o'clock; c) thoughts of 
 myself as walking to the meeting; 
 
 4) Before I carried out my plans and finally attended 
 the meeting, that is, while I desired to go, my feeling was 
 relatively painful ; 
 
 5) If two days ago I had become convinced that I could 
 not go to the meeting because of extra work, though much 
 disappointed, I should have ceased all effort toward going. 
 If, again, my belief in my ability to go had been restored, 
 I should have continued to make an effort to go. When I 
 believed the end to be unattainable, I should still have had 
 a "vain wish" to go, as business of importance to me was 
 to be transacted. 
 
 II. The general condition of struggle, preceding volition 
 and including, 
 
 1. The idea in consciousness of myself in reference to 
 that act, 
 
 2. The impulsive idea, 
 
 3. The plans, 
 
 4. The relatively painful feeling, and 
 
 5. The belief in the attainability of the end,— the general 
 condition of struggle including all these makes desire. 
 
 III. Accustom yourself to the constant observation and 
 analysis of concrete desires. 
 
Will 199 
 
 Application Step.— I. According to the definition given, 
 the term desire includes both more and less of our exper- 
 ience than is commonly included in it. It includes more in 
 that what precedes all the little trivial acts of will as well 
 as the important ones must be desire. Our days seem to 
 be made up of one conscious actualization after another, 
 so that we have many desires every day. 
 
 The term desire includes less than is ordinarily thought 
 in another sense. Do you ever desire to do what is not rea- 
 sonable, wise, or right? At first thought it seems as 
 though you do, yet when you have watched yourself for 
 awhile, I think you will have to agree that desire must be 
 limited to the striving for reasonable, right things, alone. 
 The foolish or wrong impulses come only when one does 
 not give the right desires a chance. These impulses come 
 because we are the slave of a habit, a "lower motive," or 
 are ignorant. 
 
 This distinction, that we desire to do only the right 
 thing, follows from the psychological idea of volition, 
 "the process of reducing our impulses to order." The 
 craving unrest of desire is always for what will give one 
 pleasurable satisfaction ultimately, and, to a reasonable 
 and sane person no matter how painful the process may 
 be, only the actualization of what is reasonable and sane 
 will ever do so. The ethical implications and applications 
 of such a conception for purposes of actual living are 
 tremendous. 
 
 Thus the meaning of the term desire in connection with 
 volition is seen to be not so broad as its ordinary use would 
 justify. 
 
 II. Did you ever desire to go to the moon? I know a 
 child who did, who used actually to plan how she would 
 make the journey. When, as she grew older, she realized 
 
200 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 that the end in her desire was unattainable, she still had 
 left a "vain wish," she often dwelt upon how nice it 
 would be to go, but all effort to reach the moon ceased. 
 
 Thus, when one's belief in the attainability of an end is 
 destroyed, there may remain a mere "vain wish," but 
 desire is ended. The test of desire is always the struggle, 
 the effort, what one does to further actualization. 
 
 Perhaps, however, "vain wishes" still have a place— they 
 are "the stuff that dreams are made of," and what should 
 we be without dreams? To be sure their pleasures are not 
 very keen, "they who do but shadows kiss" have "but a 
 shadow's bliss." Yet, how often have the "vain wishes" 
 proved profoundly suggestive in plans and execution as 
 well as in ideals themselves ! 
 
 One would not, however, hold up as a model the type of 
 character that lives habitually in "vain wishes," in a gen- 
 eral sentimentality, ineffectiveness, any more than one 
 would admire him who has the "weeping-over-spilt-milk" 
 attitude,— both types incapable of any vigorous accom- 
 plishment. "In willing we work, but wishes play with us." 
 
 III. Why does one like to be thought to have strong 
 desires? What difference would it make if people had a 
 greater number of desires than they have? What differ- 
 ence, if one thought, imagined, and imaged more vividly 
 and definitely in connection with ideals, even the most 
 trivial, and plans for their realization? 
 
 jy "* * * desire occupies an extremely fundamen- 
 tal position in the development of will and the formation 
 of character. In the first place, the actual psychical con- 
 dition presented by desire afi^ords us a striking instance 
 of the great salient features of the mind with which all our 
 previous study has been concerned. In it we find elaborate 
 thought processes at work; we find conspicuous affective 
 
Will 201 
 
 factors and we see the whole onward moving conative char- 
 acter of consciousness brought clearly to light. Moreover, 
 it discloses to us an epitome of the character at any given 
 moment." (J. R. Angell, "Psychology.") 
 
 V. Some observation is necessary to enable one to realize 
 the force of belief in connection with desires and volition. 
 Professor Abby Leach in an address before the Association 
 of Collegiate Alumnae recently showed strikingly the dif- 
 ference between knowledge that does not bring conviction 
 and that which does in effectiveness. She said: 
 
 "We have seen in the Japanese-Russian war a heroism 
 in answer to the call of duty that has never been surpassed 
 in all history. We have seen * * * the words 'It is 
 sweet to die for one's country' suddenly transformed from 
 mere fine phraseology into the animating principle of men's 
 lives * * *^ We have seen patient thought applied to 
 every detail, however small, and we have seen on a scale 
 never seen before, human foresight and effort so directed 
 by the keenest intelligence that the incalculable element of 
 chance hardly counted in the issue. What was the secret 
 of it all 1 Do we need to ask ? Is it not because the Jap- 
 anese believe what they profess ? believe so profoundly that 
 they do the thing? Wounds are often dangerous on the 
 battlefield because some shred of soiled clothing is carried 
 to the wound with the bullet, and so — a bath and clean 
 clothing before the battle. Did we not know this in the 
 Cuban war as well as they? Did we do it? Knowledge 
 transmuted into belief, that is a force that is irresistible 
 and that to my thinking is what the Japanese have and we 
 lack. They are trained so that they believe what they 
 learn, they live what they believe. In them we see the 
 power of ideals, for the nation has grown great because of 
 its profound conviction of some of the fundamental truths 
 of life. 
 
202 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 "No matter how sound the principles taught, how correct 
 the moral standards, how profound the truths, education 
 has failed of its purpose unless it can make these part and 
 parcel of the life, ineradicable beliefs that no influence 
 from without or temptation from within can move in the 
 slightest, beliefs that with the coming and going of the 
 days and the chances and changes of life but take the 
 deeper root, but gain in strength and beauty. For educa- 
 tion is not the learning of tables of weights and measures 
 but the study of values and standards and such complete 
 acceptance of these that the life is atfected thereby." 
 
 VI. President Butler recently emphasized the impor- 
 [tance of careful attention on the part of schools to the 
 instillation of right principles: 
 
 "Put bluntly, the situation which confronts Americans 
 to-day is due to lack of moral principle. New statutes 
 may be needed, but statutes will not put moral principle 
 where it does not exist. The greed for gain and the greed 
 for power have blinded men to the time-old distinction 
 between right and wrong. Both among business men and 
 at the bar are to be found advisers, counted shrewd and 
 successful, who have substituted the penal code for the 
 moral law as the standard of conduct. Right and wrong 
 have given way to the subtler distinction between legal, not- 
 illegal and illegal, or better, perhaps, between honest, law- 
 honest and dishonest." 
 
 Dr. G. S. Hall, also, points out the difference between 
 mere superficial, formal knowing and doing: 
 
 <«* * * ^jjg intellect may be so trained as to enfeeble 
 and dissipate the will, and it is because this is so widely 
 seen and felt that it has come to be one of the chief en- 
 deavors of educational thought to-day to go deeper and 
 to moralize as well as to mentalize children and to develop 
 will as a chief factor of character." 
 
 N 
 
Will 203 
 
 And President Briggs in "Routine and Ideals" makes 
 clear the truth that life is an educational process ; its end is 
 not to present the greatest number of ideals to a man, but to 
 pass the greatest number of ideals into him; to make his 
 visions authoritative in his life by transmuting his ideals 
 from the realm of dreams into the realm of character. 
 
 Lesson IV 
 
 CHARACTER 
 
 Preparation Step.— I. A mother recently told me of 
 her little son aged eight to whom she had related stories of 
 the training of a page as set forth in the tales of chivalry. 
 The child immediately became her page and asked often 
 about what pages did. AVhere formerly she had to say, 
 "Elton, please open the door for me," she now finds that 
 Elton runs to open the door when he sees her rise to leave 
 the room. Where he formerly needed to be requested not 
 to slam the door, now he remembers to close it gently with- 
 out such reminder. And she is finding that the ideal makes 
 him not only much more positive in his thoughtfulness and 
 foresight for her and his sister, more gentle in his ways 
 about the home, but also more conscientious and responsible 
 in his tasks in school. 
 
 A certain "fourth grade had shown a degree of restive- 
 ness which was at once despair for the practice teachers 
 and interesting study for the teacher of psychology 
 * * *. Influence after influence was tried with very 
 little result. At last it was determined to ask a new 
 teacher * * * to tell the children the Arthurian 
 stories, and let them live the Arthurian life as far as pos- 
 sible * * *. Very soon it was found that all the 
 Arthurian literature in the libraries * * * ^^gg qq^- 
 
204 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 sufficient to meet the demands of the children and practice 
 teachers. Another large library was called upon and gen- 
 erously lent its resources. A jousting-place appeared on 
 the playground, and was rarely without contending knights 
 in the hours given to play. Helmets, shields, spears, swords, 
 lances, and Arthurian costumes for both sexes were soon 
 in process of manufacture not only in the shop and the 
 schoolroom, but in the homes of the children. Each boy in 
 the grade assumed the name of one of Arthur's knights, 
 and agreed to try to imitate his life and to gain his char- 
 acter. Each girl became a lady of Arthur's court and was 
 shortly acting well her part. No observer could doubt the 
 value of the result. A noisy and restless school became 
 orderly and obedient. Courtesy took the place of self- 
 assertion on the playground, and evidence was obtained 
 that many of the children were carrying the new spirit into 
 the home conduct. 'That is unknightly' became a strong 
 deterrent ; and * * * the transformation was lasting. " 
 ("The Elementary School Teacher," Vol. VI, No. 3, 
 p. 137.) 
 
 In a certain school where the children lived through dif- 
 ferent race periods, a visitor to the Roman room noticed 
 on the board the words, "Power through law," the ethical 
 core of study for the grade. The very atmosphere of the 
 room seemed full of the stern integrity and self-control for 
 which the word Roman stands to us. And both in this 
 room and in the Greek one before it, the children seemed 
 really to have lived through something of the "Glory 
 that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome." 
 
 ' ' The old traveler, Rafinesque, tells us that, when he was 
 a boy he read the voyages of Captain Cook and Pallas and 
 Le Vaillant, and his soul was fired with the desire to be a 
 great traveler like them. 'And so I became such,' he adds 
 shortly." 
 
Will 205 
 
 Lincoln after reading Weems' "Life of Washington" de- 
 clared, "I do not always intend to delve, grub, shock corn, 
 split rails^ ajid the like." 
 
 "Nurture your minds with gTeat thoughts. To believe 
 in the heroic makes heroes. ' ' Inspire a child with an ideal 
 and he will take care of his own education, advancement 
 in life, and character. 
 
 II. Though at first all mental states are instinctively 
 impulsive, education soon begins to effect the inhibition of 
 undesirable impulses and the substitution of ideas of wise 
 action. Thus, in the analysis of acts of will, one finds es\fih 
 time one purpose, or end that is impulsive, that is seeking 
 actualization. It is in every case the idea of what is the 
 expedient, wise, reasonable, right thing to be done, a re- 
 sultant of individual experience as well as hereditary and 
 racial influences. 
 
 What effect would ignorance of factors involved in an 
 act have on the definiteness and adequacy of this ideal 
 purpose! When the little chap of the first instance did 
 not know about the duties of a page, he did not have in 
 many trains of association the ideal purposes of gentle 
 manners and conscientiousness. Even though he had been 
 told the generalizations, "Be courteous, do well in school," 
 he did not really know them, he did not have a "working 
 idea" of them as he did when he lived freely and com- 
 pletely the life of a page. 
 
 Study most carefully the relation in your own exper- 
 ience between knowing and doing. There are those w^ho go 
 even so far as to say that "adequate knowing is doing." 
 
 III. What difference does your condition of health make 
 in your alertness, effectiveness, and capability"? In your 
 relations to other people in helpfulness? The final esti- 
 mate of character seems to be a matter of contacts with 
 other people. 
 
206 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 Think back over your own experience to discover the dif- 
 ference that physical movement and muscular co-ordina- 
 tion have made in mental and volitional skill, confidence, 
 and efficiency. Science says that through infancy and 
 childhood, at least, the development of the two factors, 
 physical and mental, go hand in hand. 
 
 It is said of young Americans that most of them have 
 not even a rudimentary conscience in regard to care of 
 the health, bodily development, and intelligent physical 
 training. Another factor of importance in the estimate of 
 the value of a life is the length of its period of usefulness. 
 
 In Germany military training is developing a nation of 
 men of strong and vigorous physique; agile, plastic, and 
 alert ; enured to Spartan simplicity of life and to hard- 
 ships; trained to obedience and inoculated with the sol- 
 dier's virtue of loyalty and self-sacrifice. Yet one would 
 not for a moment desire conscription and universal military 
 training for American youth. One would desire, however, 
 a more serious realization of the vast importance of physi- 
 cal training to secure health, vigor, and will potential. 
 
 "The great increase of city and sedentary life has been 
 far too sudden for the human body— which was developed 
 by hunting, war, agriculture, and the manifold industries 
 now given over to steam and machinery— to adapt itself 
 healthfully or naturally to its new environment * * * 
 reflect what movements we habitually make each day, and 
 realize how disproportionately our activities are distributed 
 compared with the size or importance of the muscles, and 
 how greatly modern specialization of work has deformed 
 ovir bodies. The muscles that move the scribbling pen are 
 an insignificant fraction of those in the whole body, and 
 those that wag the tongue and adjust the larynx are also 
 comparatively few and small * * * it is disastrous to 
 concentrate education upon them too exclusively or too 
 
Will 207 
 
 early in life." (G. S. Hall, "Moral Education and Will 
 Training.") 
 
 Presentation Step.— There are two factors to be 
 reckoned with in considering the science of character; one 
 is the presence of effective ideals, the other, such a phy- 
 sical condition and development as make their actualization 
 possible. 
 
 I. In regard to ideals: 
 
 The individual at each moment, the sum of all his past, 
 is his character. If character were something uninfluenced 
 by thought and experience or something separate from the 
 individual, training would not be possible. But action is 
 at least sometimes influenced by knowledge, and thus the 
 character is educable. 
 
 If at a given time the individual 's act is reasonable, com- 
 pletely adapted to his condition and time, then his is to 
 that extent a good character. In proportion as the sum 
 of his acts is invariably reasonable, he may be said to be 
 educated, morally trained. 
 
 Reasonable will acts, then, are good character. Since 
 the will at each moment is not something wholly indepen- 
 dent of everything else, but is one aspect of the stream of 
 thought at that time, the thoughts are an important con- 
 sideration. If .the thoughts are of the right kind, acts are 
 more likely to be so, but if they are not, action will be 
 faulty. 
 
 But a completely fashioned will is not something that 
 comes by accident. The problem for teachers then is how 
 to furnish a child in school with a mental content by which 
 he will be educated, morally trained. 
 
 As a child is trained at present by the public schools, his 
 stream of thought is almost empty of ideas that give a posi- 
 tive quality to his acts. The study of children would seem 
 
208 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 to indicate that their wrong-doing is largely due to their 
 ignorance as well as to lack of tact on the part of parents 
 and teachers. Their native impulses, moreover, are neg- 
 lected or perverted instead of made into motives reasonable 
 for their years. The formal maxims that a child has been 
 given, like. Do not lie. Always do right, since psycholog- 
 ically he is incapable of any wide application of general- 
 izations, do not always come when they are needed to save 
 him from wrong-doing. If then instead of general and 
 haphazard directions he could be given an adequate knowl- 
 edge of a large number of concrete, intelligible ideals of 
 conduct suited to his years, if his stream of thought could 
 be filled with a wealth of motive forming material, the 
 spontaneous product of his instincts he would come much 
 nearer to being the positive, self-directed, responsible hu- 
 man being that his age, not an adult 's but a child 's, requires. 
 II. As to the relation of muscular training to will, 
 "Muscles are in a most intimate and peculiar sense 
 the organs of the will. They have built all roads, 
 cities and machines in the world, written all the books, 
 spoken all the words, and, in fact, done everything that 
 man has accomplished with matter. If they are unde- 
 veloped or grow relaxed and flabby, the dreadful chasm 
 between good intentions and their executions is liable to 
 appear and widen. Character might be in a sense defined 
 as a plexus of motor habits. To call conduct three-fourths 
 of life, with Matthew Arnold; to describe man as one-third 
 intellect and two-thirds will, with Schopenhauer; to urge 
 that man is what he does or that he is the sum of his move- 
 ments, with F. N. Robertson; that character is simply 
 muscle habits, with Maudsley; that the age of art is now 
 slowly superseding the age of science, and that the artist 
 will drive out the professor ; that history is conscious-willed 
 movements; to hold that most thought involves change of 
 
Will 209 
 
 muscle tension as more or less integral to it — all this shows 
 how we have modified the antique Ciceronian conception 
 vivere est cogitari to vivere est velle, and gives us a new 
 sense of the importance of muscular development." (A. 
 W. Trettien in American Education.) 
 
 "The trouble is that few realize what physical vigor is 
 in man or woman, or Itoiv dangerously near weakness often 
 is to ivickedness, how impossible healthful energy of will 
 is without strong muscles which are its organ, or how en- 
 durance and self-control, no less than great achievement, 
 depend on muscle-habits. Both in Germany and Greece 
 a golden age of letters was preceded, by about a generation, 
 by a golden age of national gymnastic enthusiasm which 
 constitutes, especially in the former country, one of the 
 most unique and suggestive chapters in the history of 
 pedagogy. Symmetry and grace, hardihood and courage, 
 the power to do everything that the human body can do 
 with and without all conceivable apparatus, instruments 
 and even tools, are culture ideals that in Greece, Rome and 
 Germany respectively have influenced, as they might again 
 influence, young men as intellectual ideals never can do 
 save in a select few * * *. Even will-training does 
 not reach its end till it leads the young up to taking an 
 intelligent, serious and life-long interest in their own phy- 
 sical culture and development." (G. S. Hall, "Pedagogical 
 Seminary," Vol. II, 1892.) 
 
 Application Step. — I. Many schools in Germany and an 
 increasingly large number in this country are taking ad- 
 vantage for character training of the child's native impulses 
 by causing him to live through in the grades the best in 
 successive periods of race development. For genetic psy- 
 chology teaches that the individual recapitulates the per- 
 iods of race development, and its ideal has never been better 
 14 
 
210 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 formulated than in Goethe's words, "The youth must al- 
 ways begin anew and as an individual traverse the epochs 
 of the world's culture * * *, One could be genuinely 
 aesthetic-didactic if he could pass with his pupils before 
 all that is worth feeling, or if he could bring it before them 
 exactly at the moment in which it culminates and when 
 they are most highly sensitive." And, "Sin," says Dr. 
 Balliet, "in all its forms is but little else than an arrest of 
 ancestral instincts on their primitive plane. The child 
 must live through the lower stages successfully if it would 
 arrive at the highest." 
 
 In some American schools children of six are led to live 
 for a few months through a period of primitive life, — 
 really to live not simply to read it, or to study about it as 
 they do in formal school courses. A boy in one of these 
 schools lives through the hunter period, represented, per- 
 haps, by Indian life with Hiawatha for his hero. He wants 
 to be just like his hero, brave not foolhardy, uncomplain- 
 ing, truthful, and to feel a kinship with plant and animal 
 life. His concrete ideal comes to him in many associations 
 to show him how to act. The thought, "If I lie, the teacher 
 will punish me" may come to mind when needed to hinder 
 a lie, but if he is sure she will not find it out, he is likely 
 to lie with impunity. Compare this last motive with the 
 motive furnished by the Hiawatha ideal, "Hiawatha always 
 told the truth. I want to be just like him," as to which 
 is the more adequate, lasting, and worthy. 
 
 Later the boy, while he is recapitulating their epoch, 
 lives freely through other typical periods of primitive and 
 historic life: after the hunter period, the nomadic period, 
 taking the Aryan boy for a type with his native myths of 
 "Cinderella," "Jack and the Beanstalk," "Jack the Giant 
 Killer;" the soldier period of the Persian boy, and all the 
 other successive periods of Greece, Rome, chivalry, the 
 
Will 211 
 
 Renaissance, and Puritan and modern history, with all 
 their wealth of suggestion for literature, sciences, art, 
 formal studies, and bodily training. 
 
 Think of a public school course so planned that the chil- 
 dren live, as I have seen them do, through a large number 
 of periods and lofty ideals chosen thus from history and 
 the literature of power. How inestimable a wealth of 
 motives is the result ! Given such a content there is some- 
 thing to which to appeal when a child does make mistakes 
 or misjudgments. Now a direction or suggestion as to con- 
 duct tinds few relations in the mind of the average school 
 child— he obeys a direction to please the teacher, perhaps, 
 but his conduct in general has not that initiative quality 
 that comes from knowing the best, from a complete famil- 
 iarity, saturation even with a concrete ideal adequate to 
 all the needs of his age, individual and social. 
 
 And try to realize, also, the gain in character that re- 
 sults to the children from loving their work, from the 
 spontaneity of their effort, and from all the richness, hap- 
 piness, grace, and charm that belong to such a school life, — 
 thus led the children, indeed, ' ' have life more abundantly. ' ' 
 
 The caustic critic's phrase, the "flabby goodness of imi- 
 tation or the hysteric virtue of suggestion" does not at all 
 fit the conduct of one whose heart is thus filled with high 
 ideals, for, as he has advanced from year to year through 
 the changing race ideals, ideals always the creation of his 
 spontaneous instincts and interests as his life recapitulates 
 the periods, an accumulation for will, a habit of living, a 
 "second nature," and a "higher heredity of wisdom and 
 virtue" have been built up which are the highest type of 
 morally trained character. 
 
 II. So much for the suggestions of psychology for 
 schools; now as to a few matters practical in will-training 
 for the individual : 
 
212 Lessons in Psychology 
 
 Is it possible and advantageous to make quick, and at the 
 same time, wise decisions'? Can you train yourself to this 
 habit in any way? Study different people for differences 
 in decision, firmness, thoroughness, self-reliance, respon-' 
 sibility in improving opportunities, capacity for sustained 
 effort, and the attitude toward discouragements. 
 
 " * * * if there is any one thing of which our indus- 
 tries and practical arts are in more crying need than an- 
 other, it is the old-fashioned virtue of thoroughness, of a 
 kind and degree which does not address merely the eye, 
 is not limited by the letter of a contract, but which has 
 some regard for its products for their own sake, and some 
 sense for the future. Whether in science, philosophy, 
 morals, or business, the fields for long-ranged cumulative 
 efforts are wider, more numerous, and far more needy than 
 in the days when it was the fashion for men contentedly 
 to concentrate themselves to one vocation." (G. S. Hall.) 
 
 "It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction 
 about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae, which 
 will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, con- 
 centrate their energies, do the thing." (No. 25, Four- 
 Track Series.) 
 
 "Energy of will * * * can only gradually be de- 
 veloped by means of persistent actual will -attempts and 
 will-actions * * *. An Argonautic expedition, a lion 
 hunt in Central Africa, the ascent of the Gross Glockner, 
 a north pole expedition— all these are executed, but the 
 preservation of untarnished honor and of clear conscience 
 upon the Argonautic Journey of human life is a task which 
 summons up the full will-power of man." (G. A. Lindner, 
 "Empirical Psychology.") 
 
 In training the will in connection with the small duties 
 of daily life, an important consideration is the beginning 
 places, — it is easy enough to do things when one is once 
 
Will 213 
 
 started. With an understanding of this difficulty, one can 
 go about its correction intelligently. Practice, then, "in- 
 stant actualization." One does not need to make up ar- 
 tificial conditions to train the will here, for surely every 
 one has daily and hourly opportunity to overcome pro- 
 crastination. Of all subtle sappers of strength of will, 
 this one is perhaps the subtlest as well as the most 
 fundamental. 
 
 It is necessary, however, to observe a few cautions in the 
 practice of "instant actualization." One is, remember that 
 the impulsive idea is always an idea of the wise thing to 
 be done— hurried action, then, is not possible. Nor is it 
 possible to be nervous, fussy, over-alert, or over-exacting 
 with one's self or others. A morbid attitude toward life 
 is always to be avoided, such an attitude as sometimes drives 
 one, though already fagged, to continue work, when the 
 only reasonable thing to do is to relax. So few people in 
 mature life who are "bearing the burden and heat of the 
 day" know how and when to relax, to rest! Which is 
 worse, to take one's self too seriously or not seriously 
 enough ? 
 
 To one who, through formalism and familiarity with 
 platitudes, has become lukewarm and lackadaisical in the 
 practice of the homely virtues of the will, there sometimes 
 comes something of renewed inspiration, stimulus, and 
 enthusiasm in the comprehension of conduct as a science, 
 in the realization that here as inevitably as in chemistry do 
 results follow causes, that not only all laxness but all effort 
 as well counts. Whether one thing or another is done, it 
 will not indeed "all be the same in a hundred years." 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abstraction, an activity of mind, 139. 
 
 Action, physical, related to the stream of thought, 158. 
 
 Apperception, Chapter V, 102; defined, 105; in Attention, 161. 
 
 Application Step of a Lesson, deductive in method, 148; neglected in 
 teaching, 148; Illustrated, 149; Suggestions for, 151. 
 
 "Ark" Teaching, 142; examples of, 143; objections to, 143; from the 
 standpoint of Induction and Deduction, 148. 
 
 Associations, Chapter I, 7; how to trace, 7; Law of, 10; Analysis 
 of, 18; and habit, 10, 15; in Education, (21 , 26:) Identical Elements 
 in, 11; Multiple, 16; Reading defined in the terms of, 11; Sensa- 
 tions in, 11; Similarity defined in the terms of, 12; Stream of 
 Thought from the standpoint of, 7; in Sleep, 10; Value of, 21; 
 which are Correlations, 21; defined, 26; our condition without, 26. 
 
 Atomic Theory, of assistance in understanding the theory of Sensations, 
 30. 
 
 Attend, relative strength of motives to, 163. 
 
 Attention, Lesson on, 153; an act of, analyzed, 154; defined, 155 
 physical accompaniment of, 157; Control of. Lesson on. 160 
 What makes the difference in ability to control the, 161 
 process of securing control of, 164fjf; governed by racial interests, 
 163; difference between a child and an adult in, 160. 
 
 Brain, in Associations, 10; in memories, 87. 
 
 Character, in Associations and, 21; Lesson on, 203; influence on, 
 of effective ideals, 203; outgrowth of the stream of thought, 207; 
 generalizations ineffective in training, 208; school to train, 209; 
 need for training, 212. 
 
 Color, What precedes a sensation of, 41. 
 
 Colors, Naming makes a difference in number of, known, 47. 
 
 Concentration not the end in training the attention, 165. 
 
 Concept, logical, referred to, 140, cannot be defined, 139,140; psycholog- 
 ical, 140; in education, 140. 
 
 Conception, in Thought, Lesson on, 134; analysis in, 136. 
 
 Concrete, process of making, the opposite of abstraction, 139. 
 
 Conduct, as a science, inspiration from the conception of, 213. 
 
 Correlations, 21. 
 
216 Index 
 
 Deduction, Lesson on, and Induction, 145; defined, 146; contrasted 
 with Induction, 147; a process of Inference, 147; Applications of, 
 147ff. 
 
 Definition, defined, 139. 
 
 Desires, Lesson on, 196; defined, 198; without belief in attainability, 
 become vain wishes, 198; force of beUef in connection with, 200ff. 
 
 Discipline, formal, 89, 99; mental, of school subjects, 99. 
 
 Distance an inference from sight, 46, 75. 
 
 Drawing, Its value, 42. 
 
 Duty, always pleasurable, 194. 
 
 Education from the standpoint of Associations, 21,26; from that of 
 Thought, 141; defined in terms of Interests, 195; process of sub- 
 stituting reasoned for instinctive acts, 205. 
 
 Extension, analysis of changes in, of a term, 136ff; defined, 139; of our 
 ideas important in life, 144. 
 
 Feelings, Lesson on. 190; defined, 192; resultant of bodily condition, 192. 
 
 Flavor distinguished from taste, 52; what precedes a sensation of, 54. 
 
 Foods analyzed in the terms of sensations, 50. 
 
 Forgetting in the terms of Associations, 17; from the standpoint of 
 brain physiology, 88; from the standpoint of consciousness, 89. 
 
 Formal Discipline, 89. 
 
 Formalism, objections to, 100; not educative, 109. 
 
 Generalization, an activity of mind, 139; involves both induction and 
 deduction, 146. 
 
 Generalizations in process of becoming axiomatic, 146. ^ 
 
 Growth, nature of mental, 105. 
 
 Habit, retention a, 83; Law of, in Memory, 85. 
 
 Harmony, made possible, 38. 
 
 Heredity, race retention, 86. 
 
 Hunger, true beginning of genetic psychology, 61. 
 
 Identical Elements in Trains of Associations, 11. 
 
 Ulusions, 78. 
 
 Imaginations, instances of, in writers, 171; in daily life, 172; effects of 
 lack of power in, 172; Cultivating, Lesson on, 172; mental content 
 makes the difference in, 172ff; in primitive life, 174; What is de- 
 manded of schools in the training of, 175; predominant mode of 
 thought in childhood, 175,179; value of, in education, 178ff; in 
 schoolbooks, 181. 
 
 Imaging and Imagination, Lesson on, 168; contrasted, 169; instances of, 
 in artists, Puvis de Chavannes and Mr. Low, 170; value of, in daily 
 fife, 176; difference that acting it out makes in, 177. 
 
Index 217 
 
 Induction, Lesson on, and Deduction, 145; defined, 146; contrasted 
 with Deduction, 147; a process of Inference, 147. 
 
 Inference, both Induction and Deduction are, 147,79. 
 
 Inferences in Perception, 73; in higher thought, 79. 
 
 Instincts in will action, 188, 205. 
 
 Intension, analysis of, changes that take place in, of a term, 136ff ; defined, 
 139,141; of our ideas, important in life, 144; sources of, 144. 
 
 Intensity of sound, 38. 
 
 Interests, strength of, 195; Education defined in terms of, 195. 
 
 Joints, sensations of, 56. 
 
 Judgments in Reasoning, defined, 126; in Attention, 155. 
 
 Learning, Lesson on, 106; defined in the terms of Apperception, 108; 
 in school, 108; difference that the nature of secondary material 
 rearranged in, makes, 109; The logical order of scientific classi- 
 fication not always the psychological in, 147. 
 
 Lesson Unit, Lesson on, 116. 
 
 Matter, a group of properties all of which are sensuous, 69; the 
 construction of mind, 69, 70. 
 
 Meaning of words, 140. 
 
 Memories, Chapter IV, 80; value of, 95; involved in will action, 
 186. 
 
 Memory, no formal training of, 95; In what sense it can be trained, 
 96ff; qualities of a good, 96. 
 
 Method, psychological, defendea, 114. 
 
 Multiple Associations, 16. 
 
 Muscular coordination and mental development, 90. 
 
 Muscular sense, 55; Organs, 58; Objects, 58; Knowledge, 58. 
 
 Musical Training, in schools, value of, 140. 
 
 Myth, value of, in education, 179ff. 
 
 Nervous System in connection with Sensations, 29; in connection with 
 Memories, 83. 
 
 New, what is, in experience, 104. 
 
 Object, the relation between, and Perception, 70. 
 
 Observation, Training "The Powers of," Lesson on, 122; no formal 
 training of, possible, 123. 
 
 Odors of little importance in art, 55. 
 
 Organic sensations, 59; What precedes, 56; different classes of, 59. 
 
 Outer order of stream of thought, 68; no difference in kind between 
 inner and, 70,71. 
 
 Perception, Chapter on, 63; Analysis of an act of, 65; defined, 66; dis- 
 tinguished from sensation, 67; Metaphysics of, 70;the relation of , to 
 objects, 70; not capricious, 72; sciences defined in the terms of, 73. 
 
218 Index 
 
 Physical training, importance of, in will, 205, 208. 
 
 Pitch of sounds, 38. 
 
 Play, value of, 78; 78. 
 
 Pleasure in school work, gain from, 211. 
 
 Preparation Step in a lesson, reasons for, 117; Suggestions for, 119; 
 
 Inductive in method, 148. 
 Presentation Step in a lesson, suggestions for, 120; Inductive in Method, 
 
 148. 
 Pressure sensations, 56. 
 Proposition in Reasoning, defined, 126; kinds of, 132; in Attention, 
 
 155. 
 Psychology not concerned with the metaphysics of Perception, 
 
 69. 
 Quality of sounds, 39. 
 Reading, defined in the terms of Associations, 11; defined in the terms 
 
 of Apperception, 106. 
 Recognition, in Memory, 91; Definition of, 92; Evolution of the pro- 
 cess of, 94. 
 Reproduction, in Memory, 86; defined, 87. 
 Retention, in Memory, 80; not mental, but physical, 83; defined, 83; 
 
 perfect, 83. 
 Sciences, defined in the terms of Perception, 73. 
 Searchlight, illustrates the action of the Mind in Perception, 69. 
 Self-Control, process of gaining, one of Attention, 167. 
 Sensations, Chapter II, 29; kind, in associations, 11; defined, 33; 
 
 effects of, in Attention, 164. 
 Senses, Training of, 48,49. 
 
 Shape of objects an inference from the grouping of colors, 75. 
 Sight, Sense of, 41; Objects of the sense of, 42; Medium of, 43; 
 
 Organ of, 43; Knowledge from, 44; Correspondences between 
 
 sound and, 45; distance, size, and shape inferences from, 75. 
 Similarity defined in the terms of Associations, 12. 
 Size of objects an inference from the grouping of colors, 46,75. 
 Sleep, Associations in, 10. 
 Smell, Sense of, 50; what precedes a sensation of, 50; Organ of, 52; 
 
 Objects of, 53; Knowledge from, 53. 
 Sound, what precedes sensations of, 35; Objects of, 36; media for, 
 
 36; Organ of, 37; Knowledge from, 38; noisy and musical, 38; 
 
 Pitch of, 38; Intensity of, 38; Volume of, 39; Quality of, 39; Sense 
 
 of, extended, 40; correspondences between color and, 45. 
 Strain, sensations of, 56. 
 
Index 219 
 
 Stream of Thought, from the standpoint of Associations, 7; the result- 
 ant of bodily condition, 33; made of sensational elements, 34, 66; 
 a unit, 34, 63; not static, 67; Will, one aspect of, 67, 184; a succession 
 of outer and inner experiences, 70; from the standpoint of Mem- 
 ories, 90; in Apperception, 105; an individual matter, 102; similar 
 in two different persons, 103; Under the aspect of Attention, 155; 
 simultaneous thoughts in, 155; suppressed action, 158, 178; Relation 
 between and action, 150; from the standpoint of Will, 185; is tel- 
 eological, 185; from the standpoint of Desire, 199, 200; from 
 the standpoint of Character, 207. 
 
 Syllogism, The, Lesson on, 125; defined, 127; graphic tests for, 127; 
 Terms of, 130; valid, Lesson on, 131; Figures of, 132. 
 
 Taste, Sense of, 50; what precedes a sensation of, 50; Organ of, 51; 
 Objects of, 52; Knowledge from, 52; function of, 55. 
 
 Teaching, Lesson on, 111; defined, 113; should follow the child's lead, 
 110,115; Educative only when, 121; Value of a knowledge of the 
 psychology of, 114. 
 
 Temperature, sense of, 55. 
 
 Thought, Chapter VI, 125; defined, 140; never adequate, 141; an in- 
 dividual matter, 142; rapidity of, 156. 
 
 Time in perception, 64, 66. 
 
 Touch, what precedes sensations of, 31; Lesson on, 55; Organ of, 
 57; Objects of, 57; Knowledge from, 57; fears, 61. 
 
 Voices of Americans, 40. 
 
 Volume of Sounds, 39. 
 
 Will, Chapter IX, 184; Action, Lesson on, 184; inherent in the stream 
 of thought, 185; analysis of, 185ff ; involves memory, 186; develop- 
 ment of, a process of reducing impulses to order, 189; Only rational 
 acts are acts of, 189; relation between knowing and doing in, 205; 
 relation of muscular training to, 206, 208. 
 
 Wishes, vain, only, left when belief in attainability of desire is destroyed, 
 198,199. 
 
APR 30 1908 
 
/' 
 
 ^w 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 ill 
 
 021 761 731 5