The education of the will, the theory and practice of self-culture

Front matter

LIBRARY

Brigham Young University

GIFT OF

Book Iii— The Internal Measures

I. The Part of Meditative Reflection in the Education of the Will 141

II. What Meditation Means and How to Meditate 198

III. The Rôle of Action in the Education of the

Will 208

CONTENTS

Page

IV. Bodily Hygiene, Considered from the Point of View of the Student’s Education of His

Will 247

V. A General Glance 289

PRACTICAL SECTION

Book Iv— Private Meditations

I. The Enemies to Combat: Sentimental Day-

Dreams and Sensuality 295

II. Enemies to Combat: Companions, Acquaintances, etc 344

III. Enemies to Combat: Sophisms of the Indolent 355

IV. Joys of Work

Book V— The Resources Of Our Environment

I. Public Opinion, Professors, etc 389

II. Influence of the “Departed Great” . . . 412

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“What is so admirable is that they recognize the need of a master and of instruction in all other affairs — and study them with some care. It is only the science of life which they do not study at all, and which they do not desire to comprehend. 7 9

Nicole — “Treatise on the Necessity of Not Trusting to Chance. ”

In the seventeenth century and during a part of the eighteenth, religion held supreme sway over the mind : the problem of the education of the will could not present itself in all its generalities. The forces wielded by the Catholic Church, that incomparable mistress of character, were sufficient to regulate along its broader lines the life of the believer. But to-day this instruction has been eliminated by the majority of thinking men, and it has never been replaced. Newspapers, re-

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views, and even novels, vie with one another in depreciating the present unimportant rôle played by the will.

This universal neglect of the will has attracted the attention of physicians. But these physicians of the mind are unfortunately permeated with the prevalent doctrines of psychology. In the matter of the will, they attribute a special importance to the intelligence. They argue that what we lack is a metaphysical theory substantiated from the outside. Their ignorance is quite excusable. It is a law recognized in political economy that cultivation always shifts from the ground which is the softest but most unproductive to that which is the most fertile but the hardest to till. The same rule applies in the field of psychological science.

Before approaching the essential phenomena, the explanation of which is difficult, a study has been made of the simplest appearances, the conduct of which is of little importance. It is difficult to realize how insignificant is the influence on the character of a simple idea. The will is a sentimental power,

[viiil and every idea, in order to influence it, has to be colored with passion.

If the mechanism of the will is studied at close quarters, it will be seen that metaphysical theories are of little importance, and that there is no inclination deliberately followed which is not capable, by the intelligent use of our psychological resources, of influencing our entire life. A miser sacrifices every physical satisfaction ; he eats poor food, sleeps on a hard bed, lives without friends, without pleasures, all for the love of money. This being the case, why should not an idea less degraded have the power of shaping our destiny? The fact is, that one does not realize how varied are the means offered by psychology to give us the power of becoming what we would like to be.

Unfortunately, up to the present time very little attention has been given to the study of our resources from this point of view.

The spirits which have directed the train of European thought for the last thirty years have been divided by two theories, which are the pure and simple antitheses of the theory

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of the education of the will. The first consists in treating character as an immovable block over which we have no control. This infantile theory will be dealt with later on. The second seems apparently in keeping with the education of the will. It is the theory of the free agent. Stuart Mill himself 1 goes so far as to say that this theory has given its supporters a keen perception of “personal culture.” In spite of this assertion of a determinist, we do not hesitate in considering the theory of the free agent as dangerous to the mastery of self as is the preceding one, and as definitely discouraging. It has, in fact, led one to consider self-enfranchisement as something easy and natural when it is in reality a task of long duration, a task which requires much patience, and which demands a very precise knowledge of psychological resources.

Through its very simplicity, this theory has deterred many keen and subtle minds from the study of the states of the will. It has thus caused to psychology, and it may be said to humanity, an irreparable loss.

Logic,” II, Book VI, Chap. II. Paris, P. Alean. [*]

This is why this book is dedicated to M. Eibot. It is dedicated less to our old professor, to whom we owe our taste for psychological research, than to the man of initiative, who was the first man in France to expel metaphysics from psychology. First in the field, he resolutely set aside the investigation of the nature of the phenomena of conscience, in order to study as a scholar the antecedents and the unconditional concomitants of the intellectual and volitional states. This method, it must be borne in mind, is in no way metaphysical. It does not exclude psychology from metaphysics, but simply metaphysics from psychology, which is a very different matter. It consists in treating psychology as a science. The aim of the scholar is not simply to acquire knowledge, but to turn his knowledge to account.

The fact that the undulatory theory of light is only an unverifiable hypothesis, is of little value to the physician so long as the hypothesis succeeds; and what does it matter to the psychologist if his hypothesis — for instance, the hypothesis of the absolute correlation of the nervous and psychologic states —

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is unverifiable so long as it succeeds? To succeed, to be able to anticipate events, to turn them to our advantage, and in a phrase to shape our destiny — here is the rôle of the scholar, and hence that of the psychologist. This, at least, is the conception we have formed of our task.

We have had to investigate the causes of the weakness of the will. We thought that the remedy was to be found in the careful culture of affective states. ‘ ‘ The means of forming and strengthening methods of self-enfranchisement, of annihilating or suppressing impressions antagonistic to self-mastery,” might have been the subtitle of the book we are offering to the public. This road has been untraveled; we have given our share of contributive effort to an important task. Instead of treating the education of the will “in abstract o,” we have taken as the essential subject “the education of the will such as is demanded by prolonged and persevering intellectual work.” We are convinced that students and intellectual workers generally will find here much very useful information. I have heard many young peo-

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pie complain of the absence of a method in arriving at self-mastery. I am offering them the results of nearly four years of study and meditation on the subject.

Jules Payot.

Chamouni, August 8, 1893.

The encouraging reception given by the foreign and domestic press and an enthusiastic public, who exhausted a first edition in a few weeks, proves that the appearance of this book was timely, and that it fulfils the urgent need of an enlightened public.

We thank our numerous correspondents, and especially those students of law and medicine who have sent us such valuable documents in praise of the first chapter of Book V. Some of them take exception to our ‘ ‘ pessimism.” Never, they say, has youth talked so much about action. Alas! to talk is of little value when we must act. It seems that the majority of young people confound noise and agitation with creative action. Some, and those the best qualified to speak, think that the youth of the schools consists for the most part of dilettanti and weaklings. Now dilettanteism and weakness are two diseases of the will which it is necessary to try to

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cure. The practical part of the education of the will has encountered hardly anything hut unmixed praise. The same can not be said of Chapter III (Book I) and Chapter I (Book II). We expected to be opposed on these points, hut many of the critics, we think, have passed to one side of the question.

We have never made the assertion that the imagination is devoid of all influence on the will. We have laid great stress, it is true, on the rôle played in our volitions by instinctive promptings and habits. But we maintain in one place that the superior will consists in submitting our tendencies to our ideas; and in another, that the imagination has directly and immediately no power over the “brute force of our lower natures.’ ’ The power of the imagination over such adversaries is indirect; it must, under pain of failure, get help from other sources — that is to say, from the affective states.

It is a curious fact that, while we were prepared to see our theory of liberty challenged by the defenders of the free agent, it is rather the partizans of the theory of the innateness of character who have taken us

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into account. Moreover, the theory of the free agent seems to be discarded more and more by teachers who find that they have to deal, not with abstraction but with living realities. On this subject, I have been told that M. Marion, who is a great authority in these matters, indicated with vehemence in his lecture course of 1884-85 the practical harm that has been done to us by the metaphysical hypothesis of the free agent in preventing us from studying the conditions of real liberty. M. Marion, in the preface to his thesis on moral solidity, opposes the formula of M. Fouillée that the idea of our freedom makes us free. In simply believing we are free, we never realize the extent of our freedom, and this view, therefore, is more true than useful. Nothing is more obvious than that we are not really free until we have learned to gain our liberty by a hard struggle.

As for the reproach that has been made that the author has not made enough of innate character, it seems to us that this rests on an imperfect conception of what character is.

I

A character is not a simple substance. It is a complicated result of tendencies and ideas. In short, to affirm the innateness of a character is to affirm many absurdities.

First of all, it is assuming that a resultant, a mass of heterogeneous elements, a method of grouping forces, can be innate, which is unintelligible. It is assuming, moreover, that one can obtain, at the state of perfect purity, an innate element that can be detached from the maze woven by the influences of environment and education, which is impossible. The impossibility imposes on us the greatest diffidence in fixing the rôle played by innateness.

Lastly, to affirm that the character is innate implies an assertion against which our intimate experience, the experience of teachers and of the whole of humanity, rebels — the assertion that the essential elements of character and tendencies are forever unchangeable. We prove that there is nothing in this theory (II., iii), and that one can modify, repress, or strengthen a sentiment. If the whole of humanity was not of this opinion, one would not give one ’s self the trouble

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of bringing up children. Nature would take care of them herself by her immutable laws.

These theoretical views are sufficient to invalidate the doctrine of the innateness of character. One should read, to complete the ■ conviction, the recent works on character,1 and particularly the last part of the work by M. Paulhan. It will be seen that there exists for the most part plurality of types in the same individual ; that evolution makes tendencies disappear, or produces new ones as time goes on, that the substitutions of character in the same individual are frequent. What does this prove, except that nothing is so rare as character!

The vast majority of children present the spectacle of an anarchy of tendencies. Has not education rightly as its aim the task of organizing the disorder and producing stability and uniformity! Often indeed, when one thinks the work completed, arrives the crisis of puberty, which, like a wind-storm, overthrows everything ; anarchy recommences, and if the young man, henceforth

i Bibot, Revue philos., November, 1892; Paulhan, “Les Caractères, ' ' 1 vol. 237 pages, 1894, F. Alcan ; Perez, “Le caractère de l'enfant à l'homme," 1892, F. Alcan.

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alone, does not take his share in the task of moral unification, if he does not forge his character, he will become one of those “marionettes” of which we speak.

Moreover, if character was innate, if every one found everything complete, and, as a gift with which to celebrate the joyous advent of his birth, each man found the unity of life, it ought to he possible to find characters around us. Where are they!

Is it the political world which furnishes us with them! Except for lofty exceptions which render the contrast painful, one rarely sees whole lives directed toward a superior goal; the dispersal of ideas and inclinations is great; agitation is common, and fruitful actions are rare. One finds too often the souls of children in the bodies of men.

Who could fail to have observed in literature, after the terrible hurricane of 1870, an almost complete unanimity among those who held the pen to consecrate their efforts to the glorification of the human animal! And what shows the justice of the opinion of Manzoni 1 is that heredity goes just as far

1 Cf . page 208.

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PKEFACE TO THÉ SECOND EDITION toward lessening as toward increasing the passions.

Instead of stimulating what is greatest and noblest in ourselves, almost all writers have appealed to our inferior instincts ; they have considered all our instincts as confined to the spinal cord. Instead of a literature for thinkers, they have given us a literature for moral decadents.

But why continue? If character implies unity and stability, if it implies orientation toward higher ends, it can not be innate. This unity and this stability, which are repugnant to the natural anarchy we possess, must be mastered slowly. Those who can not, or will not, pretend to it, must at the same time renounce that which constitutes the greatness of the human personality, which is, liberty and the mastery of self.

Jules Payot.

Bar-le-Duc, January 12, 1894.

Preface To The Twenty- Seventh Edition

In thirteen and a half years the “Education of the Will” has reached its twenty-seventh edition, and it has been translated into most European tongues. Such a success proves how great a need the book has filled. The publication of the letters which the author has received constitutes a document of vital interest on the mental attitude of the young people of our time.

The age to which we belong is conducive to mental unrest. Neither in dogmas nor institutions can be found the peace of mind which comes from the certitude of complete repose. Even Catholicism itself, which at one time offered a secure sanctuary for the unsettled mind, is full of the most serious internal dissensions.

In politics, sociology and morals no principle remains undiscust. Secondary education, knowing nothing of the will, remains almost exclusively intellectual. From the moral point of view, it is an ineffectual compromise between precedent and innovation.

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Preface To Twenty-seventh Edition

Young people start in life with a handicap: they have not been trained to patience long sustained, to disinterestedness, to methodical skepticism, all of which go to constitute the philosophical spirit.

Their tendency is toward intolerance, and this because the great doctrine of the relativeness of knowledge has not penetrated their practical rule of life. A discipline of liberty has not instilled in them the habit of looking for “the soul of truth,” which gives birth to new ideas. They take sides too soon, and from that moment they are useless for the elaboration of superior syntheses, or, in other words, for the search after truth.

Every man should apply himself with all his soul to the truth. It is in this that freedom consists — in the infusion of one’s personal attitude with the realities of life.

To be free means, therefore, that one realizes the laws which register the exterior and interior realities of life, and that one realizes one’s self. If these two conditions are not fulfilled, the complete and harmonious development of the personality is impossible.

This double consciousness, moreover, can

PREFACE TO TWENTY-SEVENTH EDITION only be acquired by action. In observing the effects of action on one’s self, little by little the cloak of prejudice and suggestion which conceals our deeper tendencies is penetrated, and the fundamental ego is revealed. Emerson remarks that his duty is something which has to do with his own personality, and not with the opinions of others — a rule as hard to apply in the practical as in the intellectual life, but which can take the place of all distinction between greatness and littleness. We must therefore have a distinct consciousness of ourselves if we wish to fulfil our personal destiny completely. If we do not know ourselves, we become the sport of circumstances, of suggestions, and of erroneous beliefs which mar our development and give it a direction which does violence to our fundamental tendencies.

Realizing ourselves and taught by realities in the midst of which we move, in order to fulfil our destiny we only have to treat with the law of causation. It is thus with the commander of a vessel. It is the tendency of the waves to swallow him up ; he obliges them to support him, in the same way that he com-

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PREFACE TO TWENTY-SEVENTH EDITION pels a contrary wind to take him to port. Not only does reflex action lay bare our fundamental tendencies, but it renders almost tangible the great moral law which dominates our social structure. The expansion of my personality and the proportionate value of my cooperation in the common task depend for a large part on the richness, intellectual and moral, of other men. My highest individual power coincides with the greatest degree of outside support and of justice.

But the slow exploration of our fundamental tendencies and the intelligent development of our will, subjected to the law of cause and effect, make repose necessary. We must resist the dilettante habits acquired by an early encyclopedic training; we must resist the terrifying mental dissipation of useless reading, and the trepidation of contemporary life. Tranquillity is required before a solution will form into crystals of regular beauty. In the same way, we need meditation if we would mold our fundamental personality into good, energetic habits.

Jules Payot.

Chamouni, April 10, 1907.

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THEORETICAL SECTION

Book I Preliminaries

I

The Various Forms Under Which a Weak Will Makes Itself Manifest in the Student and in the Intellectual Worker.

Caligula wished that all the Romans might have had only one head, so that he could decapitate them with a single stroke. It is unnecessary for us to entertain a similar wish concerning the enemies we have to combat, for there is only one cause of almost all our failures and of nearly all our misfortunes. This is the weakness of our will, which shows itself in our distaste for effort, especially for persistent effort. Our passiveness, thoughtlessness and dissipation of energy are only so many names to designate the depths of universal laziness, which is to human nature as gravity is to matter.

The only real antagonist that can effect the persevering will must be found in a continued force. The passions are by nature transitory; the more violent they are, the shorter their duration, except in those rather rare cases where they attain a fixity and a force bordering on insanity, therefore their intermittent character does not permit us to consider them as true obstacles to continuity of effort. There is time enough between the intervals of their attacks for a great amount of work. The real obstacle lies in a fundamental ever-present state of the mind which may be called effeminacy, apathy, idleness, or laziness. To arouse one’s self constantly to fresh efforts and to renew daily the struggle against this natural state of mind is the only way in which we may dare hope for victory.

We call this state of mind fundamental, but we may as well call it natural. Indeed, any continued effort is not kept up long by man, except under pressure of necessity. Travelers are unanimous in their statements that, among uncivilized races, there is an absolute incapacity for all persevering effort. M. Eibot thoughtfully remarks that the first efforts of voluntary attention were probably effected by women who were constrained by fears of blows to regular labor while their masters rested or slept. Have we not, with our own eyes, seen the redskins disappearing, preferring to be exterminated rather than attempt any regular labor which would give them a greater degree of comfort in life?

Without going so far for familiar examples, we may observe how slowly a child settles down to regular work. How few are the farmers and laborers who try to do better work than that which was done before their day, or that which is being done by their fellows. You may, with Spencer, make a mental review of all the objects which you use during the day, and you will find that there is not one which could not be better adapted to the use which is made of it by some slight effort of intelligence, and you will conclude with the author “that it really seems as if the aim of the great majority was to get through life with the least possible outlay of thought. ’ ’

If we go back to our student days, how many workers could we cite among our classmates? Did not almost all put forth only the minimum effort necessary to pass their examinations? And since those college days how difficult all personal effort and all concentrated reflection has seemed ! In all countries students can stand well in examinations, by the simple efforts of their memory. Their ideals, alas! are not very high. What they desire, as M. Maneuvrier has very astutely remarked, concerning his own country, France, are ‘ ‘ official positions which are badly salaried and of little account, without any future or horizon, where the person ages as an employee and daily participates in the nothingness of an almost sterile occupation, to the decay and gradual numbing of his faculties, but, in which he rejoices unspeakably, in not being obliged to think or decide or act. A tutelary regulation impresses on his activity the regular movements of a clock, and excuses him from the fatiguing privilege of acting and living. ’ ’

But one really ought not to put all the blame upon those in official positions. No profession, no career, however elevating it may be, is able of itself to safeguard one’s personality, or vigor, or energy. During the earlier years of life the mind is capable of very active exercises, but soon the number of new combinations, the number and the poste]

sibility of the cases which make effort, reflection and research necessary diminish. The accomplishment of the highest functions which apparently demand powerful mental efforts, becomes purely a matter of habit. The lawyer, magistrate, physician, and professor, all live on an acquired fund of knowledge which very rarely increases and then only very slowly. The desire for effort diminishes from year to year, and from year to year fewer occasions arise which would bring these superior faculties of the mind into play. Euts are thus formed in the mind, the intellect becomes deadened for lack of exercise, and with it the attention, the reflective faculties and the power of reasoning. If one does not cultivate some intellectual pursuits, one can not avoid the gradual torpor which will steal over one’s energy.

Now as our book is addrest chiefly to students and intellectual workers, it is necessary to examine very closely the forms which the “evil to combat” takes among them.

The gravest form of evil among students is that atony, that “languor of the mind,” which manifests itself in all the actions of the young man. He sleeps several hours too long and gets up feeling stupid, dull and lazy. He slowly and yawningly makes his toilet, losing thereby considerable time. He does not feel very “fit,” he has no inclination for work. He finds this a sad cold world. His laziness is apparent on his very face, his languor is written on every line of it, his manner is vague, dull and preoccupied; there is neither vigor nor precision in his movements. After this lost time he lingers over his breakfast, reading the newspaper through even to the advertisements, because that occupies him without requiring any effort on his part. In the afternoon, however, some of his energy comes back, but this is soon wasted in gossiping, in useless discussions, and, what is worse (as all idlers are envious), in slander. Politicians, literary men and professors all come in for their share of his criticism. In the late evening this unfortunate youth retires a little more irritable than he was the night before. For this atony or sloth, with which he approaches his work, is with him most of the time in his pleasures. No joy is attained without some difficulty in this world. All happiness presupposes some effort. To read a book, to visit a museum, to take a walk in the park, are pleasures demanding initiative. They are active pleasures. But active pleasures are the only ones which count, the only ones which can be indefinitely renewed at one’s pleasure. Lazy people inflict upon themselves the emptiest lives imaginable. They allow pleasures to slip through their fingers, because it is too much trouble to close their hand. St. Jerome facetiously compares them to wooden soldiers who always have their swords raised, without ever striking a blow.

Fundamental laziness in no way hinders periodic instances of energy. Uncivilized people are by no means averse to occasional outbursts of energy. What is so distasteful to them is that regulated persistent labor which in the end amounts to a very superior degree of energy. Any regular expenditure of energy, even tho it be slight, accomplishes more than great efforts separated by long rests. Idlers can readily endure war, which demands momentary violent efforts, followed by long periods of inactivity. The Arabs conquered a vast empire, but they did not hold it, because they were not able to keep up the continued effort of organizing and administrating the country, such as making roads, and founding schools and industries. Even lazy students, when whipt up by the approach of an examination, are able to buckle down to slight but steady exertion, which has to be kept up, every day for months and years. It is so true that moderate, but continued, effort alone expresses real and fruitful energy, that we may consider all work deviating from this type as lazy work. It goes without saying that continued work implies continuity of direction. Therefore the energy of the will expresses itself less by multiple efforts than by the direction of all the forces of the mind down to hard work, but what they hate is that toward one definite end.

Here is a type of laziness that is very frequent. A young man is lively, gay and energetic; he is rarely idle. During the day he reads some treatise on geology, an article by Brunetière on Bacine; he glances through several journals; rereads some notes; makes a rough sketch of a theme, and translates a few pages of a foreign language. He has not been indolent for a single moment. His comrades admire his working power and the variety of his occupations. Yet we must brand this young man as a lazy student. To the psychologist, this great variety of work simply indicates a certain spontaneous attention, rich in its ability, but which has not as yet become voluntary attention. This apparent power for varied work means nothing more than a great weakness of the will. Our student furnishes us a very common type of laziness which we may call the disseminated type. Such “ mental excursions”1 are truly delightful, but they are only pleasure strolls. Nicolle describes those workers who flit here and there to no purpose as having “buzzing minds.” They are, to recall Fénelon ’s simile, “like a lighted candle set in a windy place.”

The great disadvantage in scattering one’s efforts is due to the fact, that no impression has time enough to become permanent. We may lay it down as an absolute law controlling all intellectual work, that if we treat all the ideas and feelings which come into our

1 Leibnitz, ‘ 1 Théodicée, ; ' Section 56.

ini minds, as if they were transient guests in a hotel, they will never he more than strangers to us, and will soon be forgotten. We shall see, in the following chapter, that true intellectual work requires that all our efforts should be put forth in a single direction.

This distaste for real effort, that is to say, for the coordination of all efforts toward a certain definite aim, is complicated by an equally strong aversion for personal effort. Indeed, it is one thing to bring forth a creative work or an invention, and another to store in one ’s memory that which others have done. Moreover, if personal effort is difficult it is because it necessarily implies coordination. The two supreme forms of intellectual labor are inseparably united in the work of creation. It is therefore easy to understand how distasteful such work must be to the great majority of pupils, who may, nevertheless, to-morrow be made class presidents.