The mind and its education

Front matter

IP o il?(r

BY

GEORGE HERBERT BETTS

Chapter I Page

How we may come to know the mind. — The personal character ^of consciousness. — Where the mind resides. — ^The means by which each may study his own mind ; introspection. — The mental processes revealed by introspection. — Consciousness likened to a stream ; points of resemblance. — The wave in the stream ; attention. — The contents of the stream. — The three modes of activity in which consciousness manifests itself : knowing, feeling, willing ...... 1

Chapter II

The nature of attention. — Some degree of attention present at all times. — The effects of attention ; increase of efficiency through concentration. — How we attend. — ^Types of inattention. — Cultivation of attention. — How attention is secured ; involuntary attention, nonvoluntary attention, voluntary attention. — Interest and nonvoluntary attention. — The will and voluntary attention. — Interrelation of the two types of attention. — The habit of attention 12

Chapter III

The mind and the brain. — The nervous system the machine through which the mind works. — The structure of the nervous system. — The neuron. — ^The central nervous system ; brain and cord. — The peripheral nervous system ; end organs. —

ix

CONTENTS

Division of labor in the nervous system ; sensory and motor functions. — The end organs and the external world. — Dependence of the mind on the senses for its material . . .25

Chapter IV

Education dependent on both body and mind. — Efficiency of nervous system resting largely on development and nutrition. — Undeveloped potentialities of our nervous systems. — Development through varied stimuli and untrammeled response. — The factors involved in a simple act. — Application to education, — The effect of fatigue and malnutrition. — Factors involved in good nutrition. — Necessity for sleep and freedom from worry and overfatigue ...... 43

Chapter V

The part which habit plays in our life. — Habit a method of economy. — Physical habits. — Mental habits. — Our powerlessness to prevent habits from forming. — The physical basis of habit ; our nervous system an automatic register of our acts. — Control of our habits through our acts. — The part of habit in education. — Youth the time of habit-forming. — The value of certain habits. — Danger even in good habits. — Maxims for habit-forming ........ 56

Chapter VI

The constant appeal made to the mind by our environment. — The mind constructing its world of material objects from these stimuli. — How thought reaches beyond the knowledge of the senses. — ^The senses working together in a copartnership. — The sensory processes ; interaction of stimulus and nervous mechanism. — ^The qualities which we usually ascribe to objects really existent in the mind. — The problem which confronts the child ; how he proceeds. — Our problem and process the same.

CONTENTS xi

— How perception of objects and of space is accomplished. — Sensation and perception the basis for our thought structure. — Necessity of entering largely into the world of our material environment . . 70

Chapter VII

All present thinking dependent on past experience. — How the past interprets the present and future. — How past experience is conserved : on the physical side by habit, on the mental side in images. — ^The study of our mental images through introspection. — Galton's test of imagery. — The value of a wide range of imagery. — The use of imagery in the interpretation of literature and other studies. — Development of the power of imagery. — Application to education . . . . .90

Chapter VIII

The nature of memory.— Its physical basis. — Retention and recall dependent on neural plasticity and activity. — Individual differences in brains. — Images the material of memory. — Types of memory. — The laws of memory. — Association ; its laws inexorable. — The necessity for right thinking. — What constitutes a good memory. — Improvement of the memory ; physiological conditions ; methods of recording facts. — ^The misuse of mnemonic devices ......... 107

Chapter IX

The test of a good imagination ; various standards. — Necessity for different types of imagination. — The use of imagination in interpreting the thought of others ; in our own thinking. — Some practical applications : in science ; in the arts ; in the humdrum of every-day life ; in conduct ; in building ideals. — Imagination limited (1) by material available in form of images, (2) by constructive ability, (3) by definite purpose. — Abuse of the imagination. — Cultivation of the imagination . 128

Xii CONTENTS

Chapter X Page

Interdependence of physical and mental objects. — The function of thinking, to discover relations. — The thinking of the child and that of the adult. — The necessity for classification in our knowledge. — How this is accompHshed through thinking. — The nature and formation of the concept. — The necessity for good concepts. — Judgment, its forms and uses. — Reasoning. — How we proceed in reasoning. — Its types, and how they are related. — The necessity for broad inductions. — The syllogism and its use. — Cultivation of thinking . . . . .143

Chapter XI

The influence of heredity in our lives. — Instinct the result of race experience. — ^The function of instinct. — Through instinct the habits of the race inherited by the individual. — How instincts are modified through education and made into individual habits. — The ripening of instincts. — Transitoriness of instincts. — The human instincts of imitation, fear, and play . .161

Chapter XII Feel Ng And Its Function

The importance of feeling as a motive. — Definition. — Feeling an accompaniment of all mental processes. — The qualities of feeling. — Feeling tone, or mood ; how produced, and its influence. — How our dispositions are formed ; the part played by temperament. — ^The nature and growth of our sentiments ; their force as motives . . . . • . . .182

Chapter XIII

Interest a selective agency among our activities. — Its influence in directing our stream of thought. — The nature of interest ; relation to a subjective scale of values. — Objective side of interest. — The dynamic phase of interest. — Immediate and remote interests, and the part they play as motives.— Transitory in-

CONTENTS xiii

PAGE

terests. — ^The necessity for making a selection among our interests. — Danger of early specialization in our interests. — Interest and the will. — Interest and character ..... 195

Chapter XIV

The relation of instinct and emotion. — Emotion and the physical response. — Physiological explanation of emotion. — The control of our emotions. — Dependence of emotion on expression. — Growing tendency toward emotional control. — A desirable emotional balance. — ^The emotions and enjoyment. — The emotions as motives. — Cultivation of the emotions. — Danger from overwrought emotions, and from arousing the emotions without giving opportunity for expression. — Emotional habits . 212

Chapter XV

The function of the will : concerning itself wholly with causing or inhibiting acts. — Various types of action ; physiological reflexes ; instinctive acts ; ideo-motor acts ; deliberative acts. — Volitional acts preceded by nonvolitional. — The image and the act. — The process of deliberation. — The emotional factor in decision. — Types of decision. — The final test of power measured in attention. — ^Types of will. — Training of the will in the common duties of daily life. — The freedom of the will . 226

Chapter XVI

Interrelation of impression and expression. — ^The many sources of impressions. — ^The various forms of expression. — ^The necessity for cultivating expression. — The intellectual value of expression. — The moral value. — The religious value. — ^The social value. — The educational value. — Expression in the home and in the schools. — Expression as related to character . . 246

INDEX 259

Chapter I

The mind and its education. But how are we to How mind discover the nature of the mind, or know the proe- kno^w^n esses by which it works? For mind is not something that can be seen or felt or weighed. You and I may look into each other's face and there read something of the mind's activity, but neither can discover the real you of the other. I may learn to recognize your features, to know your voice, to respond to the clasp of your hand; but the mind, or consciousness, which does your thinking, and feels your joys and sorrows, I can never know completely —indeed can never know at all except through your various acts and bodily expressions. Nor can you in any way reveal yourself to me except through these means.

Between your consciousness and mine there exists The pera wide gap, which cannot be bridged no matter how Ictero?^""' well we become acquainted with each other. We may consciouswork together, live together, come to love or hate ''^^^' each other even, and yet our inmost selves forever stand apart. Only ijou can ever know you, and only / can ever know I in any intimate and first-hand way. When I consider how you must think or feel or act under certain circumstances, I am really but interpreting my own thoughts and feelings and actions under similar circumstances, and attributing them to you. I must always judge you in terms of myself or else not at all.

I dwell somewhere in this body, but where ? When my finger tips touch the object I wish to examine, I seem to be in them. When the brain grows weary from overstudy, I seem to be in it. When the heart throbs, the breath comes quick, and the muscles grow tense from noble resolve or strong emotion, I seem to be in them all. When, filled with the buoyant life of vigorous youth, every fiber and nerve is a-tingle with health and enthusiasm, I live in every part of my marvelous body. Small wonder that the ancients located the soul at one time in the heart, at another in the pineal gland of the brain, and at another made it coextensive with the body !

Later science has taught that the mind resides in and works through the nervous system, which has its central office in the train. And the reason why I seem to be in every part of my body is because the nervous system extends to every part, carrying messages of sight or sound or touch to the brain, and bearing in return orders for movements, which set the feet a-dancing or the fingers a-tingling. But more of this later.

What is the mind^ What is that which we call consciousness ? No definition can ever make it clearer than it is now to each one of us. And, indeed, if I were to attempt to define mind or consciousness, from any immediate knowledge of it, I should have to define my mind and not mind. The only mind which I have ever known, or can know, is my own ; and the only one which you have ever known, or can know, is yours. It is true that I may judge something of the working of your mind from the fact that you seem to act, think, love and hate, deliberate and decide, much as I do ; but yet I judge these things concerning your mind because I have experienced them in my own. Thus it follows that the only way to know what mind is, is to look in upon our own consciousness and observe what is transpiring there, or, in the language of the psychologist, to introspect. For you can never come to understand the workings of your mind from listening to lectures or studying books alone. These may show you what to look for and expect, but every statement must be tested by your own experience before you can understand its meaning. In order to introspect you must catch yourself in the act of thinking, of remembering, of loving, of deciding, and all the rest, and observe what it is that is going on. This is not so easy as it appears ; for the moment we turn to look in upon the mind, that moment it changes, and the thing we meant to examine is gone, and something else has taken its place. All that is left to us then is to view the mental object while it is still fresh in the memory, or to catch it again when it returns.

Nor are we to be discouraged if, even by introspec- Introspec-

.. jt - -I T I j^i •!• tion cannot

tion, we cannot discover precisely what the mmd is. reveal No one knows what electricity is, though nearly every- ^^^ ^^ one uses it in one form or another. We study the dynamo, the motor, and the conductors through which electricity manifests itself. We observe its effects in light, heat, and mechanical power, and so learn the laws which govern its operations. But we are almost as far from understanding its true nature as were the ancients who knew nothing of its uses. The dynamo does not create the electricity, but only furnishes the conditions which make it possible for elec-

But it can discover the process of its working.

Nature of the process — a stream.

tricity to manifest itself in doing the world's work. Likewise the brain or nervous system does not create the mind, but it furnishes the machine through which the mind works. We may study the nervous system and learn something of the conditions and limitations under which the mind operates, but this is not studying the mind itself. As in the case of electricity, what we know about the mind we must learn through the activities in which it manifests itself — these we can know, for they are in the experience of all. It is, then, only by studying these processes of consciousness that we come to know the laws which govern the mind and its development. What it is that thinks and feels and wills in us is too hard a problem for us here — indeed, has been too hard a problem for the philosophers through the ages. But the thinking and feeling and willing we can watch as they occur, and hence come to know.

In looking in upon the mind we must expect to discover, then, not a thing, but a process. The thing forever eludes us, but the process is always present. Consciousness is like a stream, which, so far as we are concerned with it in a psychological discussion, has its rise at the cradle and its end at the grave. It begins with the babe's first faint gropings after light in his new world as he enters it, and ends with the man 's last blind gropings after light in his old world as he leaves it. The stream is very narrow at first, only as wide as the few sensations which come to the babe when it sees the light or hears the sound; it grows wider as the mind develops, and is at last measured by the grand sum total of life's experience.

This mental stream is irresistible. No power outside of us can stop it while life lasts. We cannot stop it ourselves. When we try to stop thinking, the stream but changes its direction and flows on. While we wake and while we sleep, while we are unconscious under an anaesthetic, even, some sort of mental process continues. Sometimes the stream flows slowly, and our thoughts lag — we " feel slow "; again the stream flows faster, and we are lively and our thoughts come with a rush; or a fever seizes us and delirium comes on ; then the stream runs wildly onward, defying our control, and a mad jargon of thoughts takes the place of our usual orderly array. In different persons, also, the mental stream moves at different rates, some minds being naturally slow moving and some naturally quick in their operations.

Consciousness resembles a stream also in other par- Points of ticulars. A stream is an unbroken whole from its wanceto source to its mouth, and an observer stationed at one ^ stream, point cannot see all of it at once. He sees but the one little section which happens to be passing his station point at the time. The current may look much the same from moment to moment, but the component particles which constitute the stream are constantly changing. So it is with our thought. Its stream is continuous from birth till death, but we cannot see any considerable portion of it at one time. When we turn about quickly and look in upon our minds, we see but the little section of consciousness which occupies the present moment. That of a few seconds ago is gone and will never return. The thought which occupied us a moment since can no more be recalled, just as it was, than can the particles composing a stream be re-collected and made to pass a given point in its course in precisely the same order and relation to one another as before. This means, then, that we can never have precisely the same mental state twice ; that the same thought never comes to us a second time with just the same associates that it had the first time ; that the thought of this moment will never be ours again ; that all we can know of our minds at any one time is the part of the process present in consciousness at that moment.

The surface of our mental stream is not level, but is broken by a wave which stands above the rest; which is but another way of saying that some one thing is always more prominent in our thought than the rest. Only when we are in a sleepy reverie, or not thinking about much of anything, does the stream approximate a level. At all other times some one object occupies the highest point in our thought, to nE;a\i\V sexi'i^^VpYv&ir'A^wi \ms^d^e4.;;H.dtovv5y y viouojofc

Fig. 1.

the more or less complete exclusion of other things which we might think about. A thousand and one objects are possible to our thought at any moment, but all except the one thing occupy a secondary place, or are not present to our consciousness at all. They exist on the margin, or else are clear off the edge of consciousness, while the one thing occupies the center. We may be reading a fascinating book late at night in a cold room. The charm of the writer, the beauty of the heroine, or the bravery of the hero so occupies the mind that the weary eyes and chattering teeth are unnoticed. Consciousness has piled up in a high wave on the points of interest in the book, and the bodily sensations are for the moment on a much lower level. But let the book grow dull for a moment, and the make-up of the stream changes in a flash. Hero,

and -Wtovvve'

heroine, or literary style no longer occupies the wave. They forfeit their place, the wave is taken by the bodily sensations, and we are conscious of the smarting eyes and shivering body, while these in turn give

Fig. 3.

way to the next object which occupies the wave. Figs. 1-3 illustrate these changes.

The consciousness of any moment has been less hap- Consciouspily likened to a field, in the center of which there is "ned toa an elevation higher than the surrounding level. This fi®^^- center is where consciousness is piled up on the object which is for the moment foremost in our thought. The other objects of our consciousness are on the margin of the field for the time being, but any of them may the next moment claim the center and drive the former object to the margin, or it may drop entirely out of consciousness. This moment a noble resolve

The "piling up " of consciousness is attention.

The contents of our mental stream.

may occupy the center of the field, while a troublesome tooth begets sensations of discomfort which linger dimly on the outskirts of our consciousness; but a shooting pain from the tooth or a random thought crossing the mind, and lo ! the tooth holds sway, and the resolve dimly fades away to the margin of our consciousness and is gone.

This figure is not so true as the one which likens our mind to a stream with its ever onward current answering to the flow of our thought; but whichever figure we employ, the truth remains the same. Consciousness is always piled up higher at some one point than at others. Either because our interest leads us, or because the will dictates, the mind is withdrawn from the thousand and one things which we might think about, and directed to this one thing, which for the time occupies chief place. In other words, we attend, for this piling up of consciousness is nothing, after all, but attention.

We have seen that our mental life may be likened to a stream flowing now faster, now slower, ever shifting, never ceasing. We have yet to inquire what constitutes the mass of the stream, or, in popular phrase, what is the " stuff " which makes up the current of our thought, what are the contents of our minds. This cannot be answered completely at this point, but can best be understood by each referring to his own experience to verify the description of the text. If we are sitting at our study table puzzling over a difficult problem in geometry, reasoning forms the wave in the stream of consciousness — the center of the field. It is the chief thing in our thinking. The fringe of our consciousness is made up of various sensations of the light from the lamp, the contact of our clothing, the sounds going on in the next room, some bit of memoryseeking recognition, a ' ' tramp ' ' thought which comes along, and a dozen other experiences not strong enough to occupy the center of the field.

But instead of the study table and the problem, give us a bright fireside, an easy-chair, and nothing to do. If we are aged, memories — images from out the past, will probably come thronging in and occupy the field to such extent that the fire burns low and the room grows cold; but still the forms from the past hold sway. If we are young, visions of the future may crowd everything else to the margin of the field, while the '' castles in Spain " occupy the center.

Our memories may also be accompanied by emotions — sorrow, love, anger, hate, envy, joy. And, indeed, these emotions may so completely occupy the field that the images themselves are for the time driven to the margin, and the mind is occupied with its sorrow, its love, or its joy.

Once more, instead of the problem or the memories or the '' castles in Spain," give us the necessity of making some decision, great or small, where contending motives are pulling us now in this direction, now in that, so that the question finally has to be settled by a supreme effort summed up in the words, I will. This is the struggle of the will which each one knows for himself, for who has not had a raging battle of motives occupy the center of the field while all else, even the sense of time, place, and existence, gave way in the face of this conflict! This struggle continues until the decision is made, when suddenly all the stress and strain drop out and other objects may again have their place in consciousness.

Thus we see that if we could cut the stream of consciousness across as we might cut a stream of water from bank to bank with a huge knife, and then look at the cut-off section, we should find very different constituents in the stream at different times. We should at one time find the mind manifesting itself in perceiving, rememhering, imagining, discriminating, comparing, judging, reasoning, or the acts by which we gain our knowledge; at another in fearing, loving, hating, sorrowing, enjoying, or the acts of feeling; at still another in choosing, or the act of the will. These processes would make up the stream, or, in other words, these are the acts which the mind performs in doing its work. We should never find a time when the stream consists of but one of the processes, or when all these modes of mental activity are not represented. They will be found in varying proportions, now more of knowing, now of feeling, and now of willing, but some of each is always present in our consciousness. The nature of these different elements in our mental stream, their relation to each other, and the manner in which they all work together in amazing perplexity yet in perfect harmony to produce the wonderful mind, will constitute the subject-matter we shall consider together in the pages which follow.

Think of your home as you last left it. Can you see vividly just how it looked, the color of the paint on the outside, with the familiar form of the roof and all; can you recall the perfume in some old drawer, the taste of a favorite dish, the sound of a familiar voice in farewell?

When you say that you remember a circumstance which occurred yesterday, how do you remember it? That is, do you see in your mind things just as they were, and hear again sounds which occurred, or feel again movements which you performed? Do you experience once more the emotion you then felt?

Try occasionally during the next twenty-four hours to turn quickly about mentally and see whether you can observe your thinking, feeling, or willing in the very act of taking place.

What becomes of our mind or consciousness while we are asleep?

How are we able to wake up at a certain hour previously determined?

Can a person have absolutely nothing in his mind?

James, " Psychology," Briefer Course, Chapter XI. James, " Principles of Psychology," Chapter IX. Baldwin, " The Story of the Mind," Chapters II-IV. Morgan, " Introduction to Comparative Psychology," Chapter I.

Dewey, " Psychology," Chapter II.

Royce, " Outhnes of Psychology, " Chapter IV, sees. 34-36.

Chapter II

In the last chapter the concentration of consciousness on one object was described as constituting a state of attention. Everyone knows what it is to attend. The story so fascinating that we cannot leave it, the critical points in a game, the interesting sermon or lecture, the sparkling conversation, the absorbing lesson or recitation — these all compel our attention. We live in them, and are almost unaware of what is going on about us. It is easier to attend to them than not. But what about the dull story, the slow game, the lecture or sermon which drags, the conversation which is a bore, the lesson without life or interest? These may likewise all receive attention, but in this case we attend with effort. A thousand things from outside entice us away from them. It requires the frequent '' mental jerk " with which each is familiar to bring ourselves back to them ; and when brought back, we feel the constant " tug " of the mind to be free again.

But this very effort of the mind to free itself from one object of thought that it may busy itself with another, is because the attention is solicited by this other. That is, attention of S07ne sort is present at all times when we are thinking, which is only equivalent to saying that some one object of thought is always more prominent than the remainder of the objects in consciousness at that moment. Indeed, without this condition it is doubtful whether we can think at all; and, roughly speaking, the efficiency of our thinking is directly proportional to our ability to attend to one object of thought to the exclusion of all others. I say '' to the exclusion of all others '' because, when we are attending to a certain object, the mind must be withdrawn from a multitude of other objects upon which it might rest, and be focused on this one thing. Attention is, after all, as much attending away from unnecessary or irrelevant thoughts as it is attending to necessary and relevant ones.

A state of attention gives us the " wave " in the stream of consciousness piled up high above the common level of the surface. It gives us the " center " of the field rising vivid and clear above the' remainder of consciousness. And whatever the wave or center may be, whether it be a bit of a memory, an air castle, a sensation from an aching tooth, the reasoning on an algebraic formula, a choice which we are making, the setting of an emotion — ^whatever be the object to which we are attending, that object is illumined and made to stand out from its fellows as the one prominent thing in the mind's eye while the attention rests on it. It is like the one building which the search light picks out among a city full of buildings and lights up, while the remainder are left in the semilight or in darkness.

In a state of attention the mind may be likened to the rays of the sun which have been passed through a burning glass. You may let all the rays which can pass through your window pane fall hour after hour upon the paper lying on your desk, and no marked

The effects of attention.

Only concentration will bring results.

effects follow. But let the same amount of sunlight be passed through a lens and converged to a point the size of your pencil point, and the paper will at once burst into flame. What the diffused rays could not do in hours or in ages is now accomplished in seconds. Likewise the mind, allowed to scatter over many objects, can accomplish but little. We may sit and dream away an hour or a day over a page or a problem without securing results. But let us call in our wits from their woolgathering and ** buckle down to it '' with all our might, withdrawing our thoughts from everything else but this one thing, and concentrating our mind on it. More can now be accomplished in minutes than before in hours. Nay, things which could not he accomplished at all before now become possible.