The power of thought; what it is and what it does

Introduction

By J. MAKK BALDWIN

I am glad to be able to write a few words in appreciation of the book of Mr. Sterrett; for I find it in many respects a timely and valuable work. And since my opinion is entirely professional, based on psychological reasons — for I have never known Mr. Sterrett personally — it may serve to bring the book more quickly to the notice of those who are likely to value it.

Mr. Sterrett seems to have done what many professed psychologists would like to be able to do, i.e., to write a book which interests people generally, without repelling them by scientific terms and phrases unfamiliar to the lay mind ; and at the same time not to fall into that other pit of popular scientific writers, the condemnation of having cheapened science by watering it. And this general expression may serve to indicate the two merits which, to my mind, commend the present book.

In the first place, Mr. Sterrett' s style is sufficiently noteworthy to draw favorable notice to his

VI INTRODUCTION

work. It is refreshingly spontaneous, unaffected, and telling; and the diction is individual and striking while not strained. For my own part, I am free to say — even though it involve a personal confession — that many of the current works on psychology seem to me in style hard, unliving, and rein wissenschaftlich, after reading the vivid English in which Mr. Sterrett puts his thought.

And in the second place, I find Mr. Sterrett's pages filled with points of view which are those of the latest scientific investigators. This is to me a matter of great interest; for Mr. Sterrett has written partially apart from the current of discussion. His personal semi-isolation has not impaired his results ; but the rather has it heightened the effect of his personal talent, and at the same time served to give a very unusual naturalness and convincing quality to the truths which the new scientific terms and formulas make, in a measure, rigid and forbidding. I might point out such points of view in larger number; but it may suffice to signalize certain of the greater doctrines which give main purpose and character to the work.

One such point of view is that which Mr. Sterrett has embodied in his title, "The Power of Thought," and which furnishes the real motive of the whole. The doctrine that all action is the outcome of thinking, in some shape; that conduct

INTRODUCTION Vll

only reveals, and cannot help revealing, the progress of knowledge — this is now just getting to be a doctrine of common acceptance under such terms as " Suggestion, " " Motor Elements, " " Dynamogenesis," etc. Mr. Sterrett carries out this view in many of its interesting bearings; among which I find his position on the "free will" controversy the only rational and true one. As part of this general position, his way of stratifying consciousness, as it were, in periods, beginning with the earliest infancy, leads him to a thoroughgoing, genetic method which he is the first, as far as I know, to embody in a text-book. Here again, I think, his intuitions are, in the main, true to the progress which genetic psychology is making.

Finally, the other thing which I would mention about Mr. Sterrett' s book is the philosophy which he brings to it. It is dualism — the point of view of Hamilton, and our own McCosh and Porter. But dualism in philosophy has, heretofore, suffered from an inadequate and superficial psychology. Neither the doctrine of "The Power of Thought," nor that on which the genetic method is founded, has been developed by the advocates of the so-called "soul theory"; and, as a prominent psychologist has recently said, the " soul theory " needed restatement in view of the advances of psychology in these and other lines. Quite noteworthy is his repudiation of those traditional

Vlll INTRODUCTION

burdens of dualism, the " substratum " theory and the "faculty " theory. I feel the freer in pointing out the success of Mr. Sterrett in this direction inasmuch as my own philosophical point of view is somewhat different from his. Even those who do not agree with the author, as of course I do not sometimes, will nevertheless recognize the high quality of his work.

Both in matter and form, therefore, I think Mr. Sterrett's book will be found trustworthy by the general reader, and also available by teachers in search of a text-book in the elements of psychology.

Princeton, July, 1896.

Preface

From of old, men have been much given to philosophizing. This spirit of restless inquiry is to be accounted for by the interest we all take in comprehending phenomena. The present effort is only another attempt in the same direction, differing from others, it may be, in some of its details, if not in conception. The questions treated are such as a young man may turn over in his mind, when engaged in the serious study of mental and moral problems.

The plan adopted was to write down my thoughts on any slip of paper found in my pockets, as I was walking, or riding, about the farm, or the neighborhood, and then wait, often for many days and weeks, or even months, until, after some desultory reading, or else conversation of the ordinary kind, I felt I was in a better mood to deal with some leading problem that was engaging my attention.

After some little time, I found I had a large bundle of these little slips, the which I subsequently sorted out and pinned together, as best I could. But when I undertook to compose the present monograph, I soon found that I was committed to the task of throwing away the greater ix

X PREFACE

number of my slips ; a discovery that surprised, and discouraged, me exceedingly.

Such, in brief, is a history of the troubles I encountered when composing these pages ; my first, and certainly final, attempt to address the general public. Many of the conclusions reached were by no means anticipated. Indeed, many of my former views had to be reformed, in part or whole, or else abandoned entirely, as I wrote. And the hesitation with which some friendly psychologists, to whom I handed the manuscript for an opinion, received some of my speculations, admonishes me that they will be seriously challenged. But facts and their significance must control our theories. The cold gaze of hostile criticism will reveal the truth.

In the treatment of sensations, perceptions, and conceptions, much of what I have to say is mainly expository, and in keeping with received teachings. Still, I have not felt bound to follow any authority, however eminent, reserving room for independent judgment, without encumbering the argument with any formal statement of diverging views which I could not stop to refute, in detail. The attentive reader will remark, if I mistake not, that the argument is not without an individuality of its own.

Referring now to what is said on the subjects of Environment, The Power of Thought, Emotions and Desires, Alternative Choice, The Will, etc., etc., I have to say that I am not aware of any one prosecuting these studies after the manner in which I have treated them.

PREFACE XI

And here, I would be allowed the privilege of explaining the plan I adopted for conveying my views to the reader. It will be observed that I do not offer to explain everything, at once and exhaustively, but gradually, as the reader can follow the explication. For instance, when I am considering some old problem of psychology, say the power of our thoughts, emotions, and desires, etc., I am not to be understood as bound to say, then and there, all I have to say of conation, or the will, though, as a matter of fact, that power, as will be seen in the sequel, is really as much, if not more, pronounced in these latter as in any thought considered as an intellectual energy. Each subject in hand is explained, as fully as the stage of discussion will allow of a careful approach to the more difficult points involved ; an immediate explication preparing us for the heavier tasks reserved for a future page. For instance, when I am writing a sentence, I aim to put in all the qualifications needed to convey my meaning, at that time and place. I then follow up with other sentences, each of which qualifies its predecessors. And similarly, as to paragraphs, sections, chapters, and parts, as they succeed and relieve each other in orderly sequence, each and all of which are intended to qualify, and so bring out my meaning more adequately.

I acknowledge my obligations to Eev. Dr. James A. Quarles, of Washington and Lee University, Virginia, Prof. J. Mark Baldwin, of Princeton University, Prof. J. McKeen Cattell, of Columbia

Xll PREFACE

College, New York, and Prof. J. B. S. Sterrett, of Arnherst College, Massachusetts, for the kind interest and encouragement extended to me, under circumstances of grave anxiety and depression. For, without the assistance of these friends, this book had never seen its way to publication. In saying this, however, it is to be understood that they are not to be held responsible for anything I have written.

JOHN DOUGLAS STERRETT.

CONTENTS Part I

ENTERING UPON THE PROBLEM

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Preliminary Statements ... 3

II. The Infant 7

III. The Adult 17

IV. Mind and Brain . . . . .21 V. Environment 36

VI. Thought a Free Single .... 47

CHAPTER I Preliminary Statements

To be a free agent, man must have the ability to achieve his freedom. Then no one but himself can be implicated in his guilt or innocence.

And therefore I shall aim in what follows to present the facts of his freedom and urge the evidence for it. If these are not to be found in his soul, then, beyond doubt, the thesis for freedom has no credible support, and we are the slaves of an unbending necessity. Man goes upon his freedom, as a valid fact consciously affirmed and never disallowed. Still there is a wide divergence of opinions when attempt is made to interpret the phenomena which either antecede or synchronize with every act of free determination.

II

Who, then, is a moral agent? How does he become such, and why responsible?

The answer to these questions may be gathered as we proceed. For the present, I take a moral agent to be a rational person placed within the play of inducements, some good, some bad, and who can prefer the one or the other, on condition, how- 3 ever, of personal responsibility for his choice. An animal has a lower and less gifted free agency. But this is a question of comparative intellectual vision. Certainly man is free as to all that his distinctive intelligence can achieve. It remains true, nevertheless, that man, as the unit of all his powers, intellectual, animal, and moral, is free and responsible only when he founds what he does on conceptions of right and wrong.

The power to do right or wrong, at our option, but with a knowledge of the inevitable consequence that follows choice, is, therefore, what constitutes the soul a moral factor. For the present, however, I can only indicate the cardinal points, in passing — until, after some further outlining, the subject may be studied more deliberately.

Ill

Here the question obtrudes itself again, How does man become a moral agent? I premise that there are many things connected with what he does for which he is not at all responsible, in the forum of conscience. For instance, what is purely native and, therefore, prior to any act of his, is not for him to account for in any way. He comes from a germ, and, at birth, is in no condition to exercise the functions of a rational and moral creature, and, for long, he cannot have command of his distinctive powers. But we may say that he has them in germ, or else in various stages of growth. For the birth of adult morality is held in long abeyance, until our rational conquests have wrought

PRELIMINARY STATEMENTS 5

out its deliverance fully. And the real point before us is to determine how and when man begins to act for himself.

Here are some facts which cannot be ignored: We have a vital, rational, and moral capacity,

! giving us, after a time, our proper personal powers.

1 In early infancy, these do not act with the acquired efficiency reserved for riper years.

But they take root then, and grow with the growth of life and thought, undergoing a discursive training which will inform us what to do, and hoiv, on experience and judgment.

But now when we can securely lay hands on our ripened powers, man is set apart to enter upon a new order of acts ; namely, those which express the force of moral convictions. He has labored up to the position of a moral creature, and governs himself by the power of his moral conceptions. He has entered upon a moral career ; his moral freedom

j is known in thought and act, because, on his dis-

1 covery of moral conceptions, he has discovered a power which he can make use of in shaping the affairs of conscience and conduct.

IV

But whose disposition actuates him? Manifestly his own, if, indeed, man acquires a moral power in acquiring moral distinctions. And yet what is called our dispositions is vexed with an \ overplus of the knottiest difficulties, most of which, however, have their source in an order of things coming in before our birth, and therefore b THE POWER OF THOUGHT

out of sympathy with the personal power acquired in amassing knowledge. The truth is, as before stated, that when one essays moral conduct, it is because he has discovered a law for right and wrong, and so himself evokes the awful stringency found in morals.

But, as I said, our native dispositions — even our nature and much of our environment — come in before we are born, giving each of us a peculiar individuality, even when in germ. Still, what is all this but the prelude to what is responsibly done when one is competent to command his conduct in accordance with conceptions distinctly his own? The Creator provides all this needed outfitting and antecedent furnishing, simply to have us equipped with a discursive competency to act for ourselves.

CHAPTER II The Infant

The first step in the argument for moral freedom should be an earnest and careful study of the child's mind and native forces. I am referring to its native endowments or dispositions more particularly. We are certainly governed by our dispositions, and, when acting for ourselves, must come to know them as factors which enter into our every act. However, for present purposes, let us take them to be that combination of psychical capacities, rational, animal, and moral, which opens the way to that accepted responsibility for our acts which comes of our conscious achievements.

So much, to have done with this ambiguity, for the present.

II

It may possibly aid our study to offer some explanation of how the child succeeds in acquiring the powers of a moral agent. Minute details apart, some few controlling facts may suffice for our present purposes. The child is just born. Its own life — sensations, cognitions, etc., with the concomitant emotions — comes to its apprehension on 7 first acquaintance, and as a first knowledge it knows not how or whence. It is a surprise party, without the support of even a minimum of experience to steady its unfolding powers, or to assure it of a foothold beyond its incipient struggles. It finds itself suddenly caught up into vivid consciousness from the ends of the earth, and, as yet, with no balance of judgment for confronting the unwonted powers of flesh, spirit, and nature. It wails helplessly as it makes its way into the overshadowing mystery that bangs about its ears and rings through its soul. However, thought is eagereyed, combative, curious, and anxious for the work of interrogation and discovery, and the child becomes gradually reassured, if not aggressively active and sapient.

Ill

I have adverted to a few of the more obvious foundation facts found in the infant soul. And here, it is important to remember that these are vitally articulated with the supreme factors of mind and morals. And I have made mention of its struggles. At first it knows nothing, not even itself, nor thought, nor consciousness, for it has no conscious antecedents, realizing conscious thought without previous acquaintance. But in an instant, this, our child, then so inexperienced, awakens to the touch of consciousness, the hidden powers of flesh and spirit pulsing through its s©ul in a strange jargon. But all these beginnings of life, and thought, and action, in one so artless and

THE INFANT 9

inexperienced, are pregnant, supernatural facts coming direct from the Creator's mind, and there is more of the superhuman seen in them than in the more stupendous monuments of nature.

IV

I offer now a short study of the growth of the infant soul, noting some of the earlier manifestations of its powers. Prominent among these are its native impulses ; native and therefore not to be confounded with the voluntary impulsions which are born of thought. The child has the feeling of hunger, thirst, curiosity, etc., shut up, as it is, to some vague form of unrest, or else to all the unhelpfulness and unwisdom of mere brute force. But even at that early period it can begin to energize discursively, albeit dominated by impulses, well nigh, if not altogether, animal and brutish. And therefore would I remark the more particularly how its distinctively human powers gather strength and expand in an ascending scale, as it discovers and explores the broad fields of research which invite investigation. For even such a beginner will strive to realize some of its possibilities, and act intelligently, and even responsibly, as may be presumed from the fact that, after all, the child is not an imbecile. So, at the appointed time, it will affirm knowledge and its power, and wield that power as it thinks. But when just born, it is not taught of its slumbering gifts, though their active mission will not be long delayed. Meantime, its infant wants are cared for by the mother. And as she is providing for all these, she is, at the same time, fostering the growth of its kindling intelligence.

Here a great change takes place. She informs its blind strivings, leading it afield by the light of informations addressed to its opening apperception. For though it be but a mere babe, it will soon give some first thought to what is brought to its notice. The mother is fond, and, as I said, informs her child in many tender ways. She kisses its little hurts, and it subsides into blissful, trustful, healthful, peaceful slumber. And the work of love and duty knows no intermission. The child is hers by right, divine and human, and her heart softens with blissful tenderness in its presence.

Meanwhile, it is regarding all these tactful, loving attentions with acutest, shrewdest interest. And by and by it is no longer a thing of ignorance, like a mere animal controlled by animal impulses. For, indeed, as soon as these latter are led forth in paths of human thought and achievement, they know the voice of their leader and follow him. And ever afterward, no exclusively animal, not to say brutish, impulse can determine conduct, except through some discovery of thought coming in to sanction or reject it — on condition, nevertheless, of a personal responsibility fixed upon the actor.

THE INFANT 11

But let us define more articulately the attitude of the infant mind when touched with all these maternal ministrations.

We have seen that it is alert, attentive, and curious almost from the outset. All intelligence is active, discursive, and watchful, and the child is emotioned accordingly. For what it sees, in that first contact of its infant thought with the world of things about it, is as fascinating as a dream of perpetual spring to its heaving breast. And therefore is it the more eagerly prompted to seek knowledge and so frame some first opinions of its mother, and the form and pressure of her attentions. Effort succeeds effort, as thought succeeds thought. And so, after some brief interval, sundry modest notions will begin to crystallize in some well-grounded convictions on which to act. Still, its native animalism is not to be too hastily supplanted by the conscience and conception of its later humanity. However, we shall not wait long.

The crude native appetencies, at first so untaught, are so often directed to objects specially fitted to appease them, the child has so often traced its sensations of touch, taste, sight, etc., to what produces them, that a time comes when it can form a valid judgment upon the problem of these so urgent physical promptings and their offices; and thereupon, by reason of its now more urgent humanity, it assumes for itself the task of personally appraising, not alone sensations and their gratification, but each kind of appetency, whether native or cultivated, by its conformity or non-conformity to its judgment of what is best or preferable in view of its cultivated wants. For, indeed, all thought is a discovery, or else a clarification in order to a discovery, of something which appeals to our educated wants. And if this be so, then the child must eventually see that its every thought tends to compass the intelligent needs and broader aspirations of its now instructed humanity.

VI

As previously intimated, the first intellections of the child are not slow to present themselves. In fact, they are seen in the faintest initial glows of the dawn of consciousness, while, as yet, it cannot discern them as maturely distinct from other elements with which they are associated.

Details will be cared for, as the argument proceeds, in this and future chapters. But the point I would here make is, that the child does, finally, relieve itself from a condition of bondage to native impulsions which, as purely vital and animal, cannot be mentally defined or known at the first, as they will be through the light of discoveries that set us free from the slavery of ignorance, or feeble thinking. • For, as thought takes up its resources, the child, becomes more and more under the sway of reason, though it may never, and should never, part company with what is distinctly animal and vital, lest peradventure it part company with, or at least mutilate, its characteristic humanities.

THE INFANT 13

I am now regarding the child as at an age when it can project a rational impulse, called emotion or desire. For thought without its power is an empty, impossible, and irrational acquisition. But there is none so feeble that it does not have at least a minimum of the power of a moral agent. Now, it is this thought, or knowledge, or conception, which furnishes the child with a rational impulse known as desire or emotion. But this is an anticipation.

Moreover, the child is no longer now compelled to act without thought, at the dictation of any native, or animal, impulse. The grip of thought sanctions and finalizes its acts. And what it does is done on a view of what is best for itself, judiciously, and, it may be, with many imperfections, but still with final, hearty approval. For it has now discovered within its soul the might and mystery of a dominant humanity which cannot allow the unquestioned sway of animal propensities.

It conceives a good and a bad for itself, — rational convictions fairly and honestly labored up to. It reasons, and acts with its reasons. And ever afterwards it is a rational power, governed by its own opinion of what it shall do with itself.

In due time, this infant soul makes acquaintance of still another power. Surely, but slowly, there come to it tidings of the quality of its own and others' actions, the good and bad, the right and wrong, of thoughts, and deeds, and actors. In that very moment, moral power is born. The child has conceived its first ideas of moral rectitude and depravity. It is now a regenerated soul with power to conceive an order of acts founded on these later informations, but without the power to resume an order exclusively animal, or even simply intelligent. It has reached the last stage of spiritual pilgrimage, and is now a moral power, versed in the law of right and wrong.

IX

I offer here a final statement of conclusions reached in this chapter.

1. At birth, the child has a body and spirit furnished of God. These antecede its every act, being in no sense its acts, nor voluntary to it.

2. There is an ordinance of God which endows it with involuntary impulsions, or native appetencies. These challenge recognition, and that too without dispute, until it can lay hold on its responsible powers, and so make good its ability to attemper the former by opinion and judgment. And yet, withal, though true impulses, they are not true desires, because, acting as blind instigations, they cannot be voluntary.

3. For all such original factors, going, as they do, only to an original equipment for a competent thinker, can never be lifted out of their constitutive limitations, and put to playing the part of necessity within the precincts of discursion and choice.

THE INFANT 15

This would be to transmute the limitation by God's laws, and thus confound the action of heterogeneous powers — which is absurd.

4. It so happens that, just as the native impulses begin to act in the child, its thought, and subsequently its moral appreciations, rise into being, as incipient forces confronting the former. Now I am not mooting the question whether the child ever has even a single native impulse which emerges unchallenged by some qualifying mental supervision. But if so, the mind itself must have been off duty somewhere — for repairs. I am regarding the child as, once for all, equipped with rational competency, and beginning to act for itself. For, indeed, it is a power unto itself, fortified with the several resources of a far-seeing intelligence and, whenever and however acting, it is free to find its way of life by adhering to its way of thinking. As a genetic cause, belonging to the being and even anatomy of the child, necessity discharges its office once for all, but the sweep of its presence is definitely cut off by the approach of a new comer fenced in with the resources of mind, never at all acting for itself without thinking for itself.

5. Child, or, for that matter, man, has still involuntary potencies, — still everything to fit it for acting for itself. The blind impulses may still come in before its voluntary determinations, giving thus a notification of some want of the animal economy which, the child sees, requires attention in view of its own personal economy of rational wants and responsibilities.

6. The child has antecedents innumerable. It is finite. Nothing absolute about it. The reproductive agencies that made it a germ were not of its procuring. So of its nature, native endowments, involuntary impulses, etc. So, too, of the general tendency of everything around it to uphold its being and powers, of course, within the law of God which provides for its activities. So also, of heredity, idiosyncrasies, etc. All these are furnished of a creative original, in aid of the needed competency and stamp of an individual intelligence, personal and responsible. But when they have, once for all, discharged their office of ushering in, and contributing to, the being and life of the new power, they are debarred from doing anything, the doing of which is the special prerogative of that new power.

CHAPTER III The Adult I

At that stage of our discursive pilgrimage when thought and desire have effected a mature coalescence, the child has reached manhood. Years agone, it has achieved its first ideas, and mental power is now a several cause, voluntary, personal, and decisive. A cursory view of such a power must suffice for the present.

It is the human mind conceiving, and doing, a work of its own. And such a power bids fair to discover a way to consummate its rational views. Indeed, if one were but half-witted, he could not consent to give way to any kind of act, regardless of considerations evoked on a knowledge of what is good or bad, right or wrong, for himself.

And here I may suggest a reason why we have choice in things pertaining to our conduct. It is to save the Self consciously responsible, at all hazards. For, without choice, we could never affirm ourself responsible for our acts. At all events, it is not to have the headlong push of involuntary impulses.

But we may say, it is to have charge of the power of our own thoughts, and so be responsible for our c 17 acts. And though we may do badly, by making a bad choice, yet if we are to be our own keeper, and not a crippled, irresponsible force, we must be free to choose, and do, our own acts, and so affirm a conscious, personal responsibility for both choice and acts.

II

For, if one found conduct on reasons, he cannot take a neutral position. Unbridled desires, desires misplaced, unwise, even beastly, etc., these and others, all have to be subdued to the tone and temper of the now responsible self, which will maintain the right of choice, whether it fits in with downright depravity or the clearest preceptions of duty.