Mentality and freedom

Introduction

IN this series of essays, the dominant motif of Human Potentiahty has been sounded from many view-points. The continual repetition of the fundamental theme is by no means a novel method in the propounding of truth. Indeed, it is only by repetition and reiteration through many aspects of the same great truths that potent convictions, demanding action, are formed. It is not urdike the method used by the organist improvising upon his theme and placing it in different settings ; at one time he uses the simple motif with conspicuous clearness ; at another it is only a subtle suggestion; occasionally the fundamental chord is given, and through it all the dominant theme vibrates true.

The great curse that blights and enfetters human life — ^the world's besetting sin — ^is ignorance. It is the ignorance of mental lethargy, of arrested growth and of thoughtless acquiescence in the tenets of external domination. This ignorance is evident when human minds, instead of exercising reason, mechanically reflect the opinions of the crowd, when they accept without review the creeds of external authority and lose themselves in dwarfing mind-habits which are deeply rutted in tradition. Thus individuality is deadened and Godhood is crucified.

The indomitable foe of autocracy is not sociaHsm or anarchy; it is the free, unfettered mind that

INTRODUCTION

thinks as an individual and acts according to innate wisdom. Such a mind upholds government, law and order, and abhors anarchy, which is but chaos; its ideal of government is freedom, justice and brotherhood. True individuality is impregnated with social purpose in harmony with the Cosmic Spirit of hfe. It demands universal education and the development of each according to his natural endowment; it stands for universal suffrage and equality of opportunity, with encouragement for all. It is the happy mean between the slavery of the masses by hereditary privilege or selfish authority, on the one hand, and unrestrained license and anarchy on the other. It is the only hope for the ultimate realization of enlightened, social-democratic government and universal tolerance.

Ignorance is a condition of undevelopment. Every normal child is born essentially wise, with an appetency for knowledge and with mental power in embryo peculiar to his individuality and designed for effective service in the world. The development and use of one's mental power is virtue ; the disuse and resultant atrophy of such endowed power is ignorance and sin. Happiness, usefulness and human power depend upon the development of one's mentahty, not upon the highly specialized growth and vigor of one part, but upon the all-round development of the whole. The world cries out today for thinking men and women, for complete human beings, for individuals whose lives reflect their peculiar inherent power, which they will persistently apply with social purpose in their journey toward the great Cosmic Goal.

INTRODUCTION

The brain, like the physical body, can only be developed through usage; as every part must be exercised if one would have a natural, healthy body, so every part of the human brain needs exercise or it will lose its vital power. A reasoning judicial brain will retain its plasticity; but if external opinions are habitually accepted as one*s own and are not presented to the tribunal of one's mind, the brain becomes a mere grooved and hardened substance, recording soullessly and mechanically the opinions of others, with the result that one's mental life becomes more and more submerged in the deep ruts of thoughtlessness and automatism.

Man is naturally an intelligent, social and spiritual being. Education should be the process of development to the full realization of oneself. When men grow to be what they were ordained to be and what they have the power within themselves to become, the evils of the world will disappear. The consort of all vice and error is ignorance, while wisdom, truth, love and happiness are synonymous terms, which can only be realized through completeness. To glimpse the ideal, one must develop one's faculties — all of one's faculties — to the utmost.

There is no uniformity in nature, the law of variability is supreme. There can, therefore, be no such thing as uniform crowd education. Each must grow in harmony with his nature to the realization of his peculiar individuality. The work of the world must be performed in multifarious channels, and legions of men with the most variable mental endowments are created to fittingly perform this diversified work. True education is not the

INTRODUCTION

Academical forcing of child minds into one authoritatively-decreed, pedagogical mold, but it is the growth and development to power of diversities, the encouragement of initiative, the fertilizing of differences in human endowment ; and only through individuality intensified by social purpose can the world progress.

Never in the history of the human family were there more glaring facts to substantiate the need of the individual to realize his innate power for creative good. The one ray of hope for this battlescarred world is universal education in the truth that alone can make men free. It is time that the world ceased to reverence the Napoleons and Alexanders of history, the enemies and destroyers of freedom, democracy and lasting progress. Our children must be taught the attributes of true manhood and the dimensions of real heroes. Their receptive minds should by truth be kept free from prejudice, so that they will spontaneously respond to the Apostles of Beauty and Love, to the world's sages who are the real creative builders of human happiness and well-being, and thus will they grow in harmony with the great Cosmic Plan of Evolution toward perfection.

The author hopes to publish during the coming year a separate volume of essays on this same general subject, dealing more directly with education and the mental development and freedom of the young.

W. A. F.

Great Barrington, Mass.

October 28, 1917.

I

THE average man has depths of possibilities that are never reached, inherent capabilities that are never utihzed and valuable potentiahties that forever he dormant, undeveloped and even undiscovered in the substratum of his personality. Few, even, of our so-called successful men could be truthfully termed "efficient" when the exercise of all their innate powers and their actual achievements are compared with the great possibilities afforded by their wonderful and often diversified mental equipment, endowed for utilization and service in the world. On every hand there are men of five talents using but one and that indifferently or aimlessly. The human mind is composed of many attributes or talents that, instead of being brought forth for use and service, are carefully wrapped in napkins and are hidden away in the archives of cerebral obhvion.

"He that made us with such large discourse Looking before and after^ gave us not That capability and God-like reason To fust in us unused."

There is a waste in the world today far greater than that which can be determined by any economic statistics, and is infinitely more serious than the most reckless extravagance occasioned by man's prodigality of nature's materialistic resources. The greatest waste in the world, handicapping progress and marring happiness, is the waste of men's minds. Bacon said that man is of kin to the beasts, by his body, and if he be not of kin to the great Cosmic spirit by his mind and soul, "he is a base and ignoble creature." The human mind is the harp upon which the soul sends forth its message and its energized vibrations to the world. How many strings has our harp, how many of these strings are attuned and pitched to send forth true notes and how many strings are being actually used as we play in the great Orchestra of Life?

Man instinctively expresses those mental attributes that are exhibited by the most intelligent forms of lower animal life, but much of the remainder of his wonderfully created and peculiarly human brain, instead of functioning as a world force, is atrophied by an "indolent vacuity of thought," with the possible exception of certain well-worn grooves of habitual and so-called higher mental processes, which have been proven necessary for survival and his economic success in life. The ordinary human brain is like a vast stretch of land with the greater part lying fallow and uncultivated; that which is neglected has neither seed time nor harvest. Moreover, most of the dominion of the brain is a great uncharted country whose wealth and possibihties are undreamed of. Like muscles of the body, mental powers must be exercised if they are to be brought to and maintained in a state of healthful vigor. Thought and feehng are to the brain what bodily exercise is to the muscles; they put it into activity, stimulate the circulation of blood and cause an augmented elaboration of nervous energy.

There is a fundamental law of nature that use develops and lack of use atrophies. Lamarck's theory of evolution, which can be absorbed in the larger and broader theory of natural selection, was based upon the principle of appetency plus the basic fact that use follows desire and disuse follows apathy or indifference; — by constant use living parts grow and by disuse they atrophy. This can be further described as the Law of Habit, — the function prompts the growth of the organ, and the development of organs and their force of action are constantly in ratio to the employment of these organs. To increase the strength and energy of any organ and function, it is necessary to exercise them regularly and judiciously according to the laws of their constitution. Talents utilized bring forth interest which compounds itself and tends to make the small grow to large; but talents ignored, corrode and disappear and men of possible greatness degenerate into mediocrity solely because of neglect of inherent forces and the drifting into mental sluggishness.

Life is thought and it is the mind alone that can make the body truly live. Thoughts are supreme and when in harmony with Cosmic truth, they synchronize with the great potent forces which rule the world. Strength of mind is the fruit of mental exercise ; it is acquired by activity, not by rest. Idleness is emptiness. *'The tree in which the sap is stagnant, remains fruitless."

A devastated city is a fearful sight. The ruins of

Pompeii fill one with awe, but a deserted city, pregnant with possibilities and haunted with ghost-like memories, is a horrible monument of unmeasurable calamity. It is expressive of a weird desolation, analogous to that of a human mind neglected and unused, with empty homes, streets and sections abandoned and the whole structure in tottering decay.

The mind not only has to function to acquire, but has to be fittingly exercised with psychological efficiency in order to retain. Locke has said, "There seems to be a constant decay of all our ideas ; even of those which are struck deepest, and in minds the most retentive, so that if they be not sometimes renewed by repeated exercise of the senses, or reflection on those kinds of objects which at first occasioned them, the print wears out and at last there remains nothing to be seen." Great virtues are never acquired by slight endeavors, and a healthy, vigorous, well-developed mind can only result from intelligent training, unwavering purpose and diversified exercise.

Life is evolving with hysterical speed ; our age is one of extreme nervous tension. Man is living under tremendous pressure and the pace of life is terrific ; its very momentum tending toward the unnatural, the superficial and the materialistic. Men whirl in dizziness and rush bhndly in their orbits, their true selves nimibed and deadened, their sense of proportion lost, their vision of life and reality blurred and out of focus. The whirl of existence produces not even the hysterical asceticism of the fanatical whirhng and howling dervish, but rather the empty-headedness and dizziness of an abused, neglected mentality in a puppet body, foolishly jerked about here and there in a mad endeavor to participate in the show of life.

Merely to breathe, walk, eat and sleep does not mean that we live, and even if all our abdominal organs function well, such a fact is not of necessity indicative of robust health. Cicero fittingly said that "The diseases of the mind are more and more destructive than those of the body." Even erroneous thoughts are better than none at all, for, whereas error enslaves, disuse and inactivity kill; there is always hope of freedom for the enslaved — there is no hope of recovery for the dead.

The modern world is enslaved and worships at the shrine of externals. Men are judged and graded not by what they are but by what they appear to be ; they are classified by the world, not with standards of mind and soul, but by faulty material measures of worldly wealth and fame. When psychological properties are acknowledged, they are weighed in the scales of popular belief by the crowd, which is always many long years behind the genius and the leaders of progressive thought. Two thousand years ago Seneca expounded a fundamental truth when he said, "If you hve according to nature you will never be poor; if according to the world's caprices, you will never be rich."

Montaigne, in one of his essays, wrote "It is marvelous that we ourselves are the only things not esteemed for their proper qualities. We commend a horse for his strength and speed, not for his trappings ; a greyhoimd for his swiftness, not his collar.

Why do we not esteem a man for that which is liis own? He has a goodly train of followers, a stately palace, so much rent coming in, so much credit among men. Alas, all that is about him, not in him. If you buy a horse, you see him bare of saddle and clothes. When you judge a man, why consider his wrappings only ? In a sword it is the quality of the blade, not the value of the scabbard, to which you give heed. A man should be judged by what he is himself, not by his appurtenances. Let him lay aside his riches and external honors and show himself in his shirt. Has he a sound body? What mind has he? Is it fair, capable and unpolluted and happily equipped in all its parts? Is it a mind to be settled, equable, contented and courageous in any circumstances?" Epictetus said that cattle care only for fodder, and, in the great fair of the world, some men exhibit the same dwarfed and restricted materialistic sentiments. He classed all externals as mere fodder, saying, "To all of you, who busy yourselves about possessions and farms and domestics and public posts, these things are nothing else but mere fodder." The great question to be asked in determining the success or failure of any individual life is not "What did he acquire?" but "What did he think and what did he doV^ Or, in other words, "What kind of a mind did he have and how did he use it?"

"Were I so tall to reach the Pole, Or grasp the ocean with my span, I must be measured by my soul: The mind's the standard of the man."

Man's noblest ambition is to make the best of his potentialities; to bear fruit from every seedling implanted in the hmnan brain by Cosmic creative power; to neglect or abuse none; to nurture and utilize all. Every person is responsible for the development and use of all the forces within the scope of his inherent abihties and no one can tell whose sphere will prove the largest. To do the best one can, is a worthy motive when it is apphed to all one's diversified capabilities and when each deed is performed thoughtfully and with the full exercise of one's marvelous God-Hke mind. The statement "He does the best he can" is usually suggestive of failure, coupled with a belitthng explanation and subtle criticism. The manly part is to do with might and main all that is possible, — no half-hearted devotion, no drifting in the current of events and opinions, but determined purpose, energy, enthusiasm and achievement. He who does all his circumstances allow, "does well, acts nobly; angels could do no more."

In our civilization of artificialities, man is prone to neglect his wonderful birthright, follow blindly the common herd and mimic the sentiments of the hour with parrot glibness. In this twentieth century, the hardest task a man can give himself is to think, — to exercise his mental forces honestly and individually with the practice of reason and logic. Automatons with slothful minds and dwarfed souls flit aimlessly across the stage of life. Many men endowed with wonderful gifts — philosophers, scientists, artists in embryo — carry with them but the caskets symbohc of their failure to utilize those forces for whose expression they were created.

We are living in a self-satisfied age of dissatisfaction; as Deshouliere has said, "No one is satisfied with his fortune, nor dissatisfied with his intellect.'* Would that every living man could be awakened like Saul of Tarsus and see vividly that truth which shows absolute and relative values and the end of each of the pathways traversed through Hfe. The more superficial a man is, the more self-satisfied he seems to become. It is well to recall the philosophical admonition of Quarles, "Be always displeased at what thou art, if thou desire to attain what thou art not ; for when thou hast pleased thyself, there thou abidest." Self-satisfaction is of all things most unprofitable ; rather than think, record or boast of our own achievements, time would be better spent in noting faults and reckoning up defects, — a formidable task for even the most worthy.

We are told that this is the age of the specialist, but is this any legitimate argument why a man of five talents should use only one? A specialist with one narrow line of thought may contribute to the world's knowledge and advancement, but a man of concentrated mentahty, feeding and developing his mind through the exercise of all phases of his psychological endowment, is a far more potent speciahst in the line on which he chooses to concentrate his efforts, for his vision is of wide as well as deep focus and he sees not only the line, but the field that is more or less allied with it and the forces that converge into or radiate from it. A man with a great predominating talent is made greater and his usefulness to the world is vastly intensified as he develops to the utmost not only the one great luminous, conspicuous talent, but all his lesser, innate faculties and mental forces. Such all-round development makes a true genius of a crank and a world's leader out of an otherwise despised fanatic.

**Every thought," wrote Emerson, "which genius and piety throw into the world, alters the world," and Carlyle said, "In every epoch of the world, the great event, parent of all others, is it not the arrival of a Thinker in the world?" The average man drifts into a hne of work which makes peculiar and, at the same time, restricted demands upon him. He earns a competence, functions to make a believedly fitting return for the emolimient received, gravitates into a "position," settles into habitual Unes of thought, begins to operate with the subconscious mind as an automaton and meets unusual conditions with a mind becoming less and less exercised, and, therefore, less and less vital and efficient. He is soon lulled into somnolence and as a mental force in the world, dies prematurely without contributing much, if anything, to the world's progress. Epictetus likens such a man to a traveler "who returning into his country and meeting on the way with a good Inn, should remain there. 'Have you forgotten your intentions, man? You were not traveling to this place, but only through it.' 'But this is a fine place.' *And how many other fine Inns are there and how many pleasant fields, yet they are simply as a means of passage.' " There are many men who stop just as this traveler did at the first seemingly good Inn; they "go no farther, but sit down and waste their lives shamefully there as if among the sirens."

A waste of purpose, motive and direction in life is what makes existence on this planet so uninteresting, dreary and monotonous ; and yet this very psychological attitude courts monotony and this negative theory of life, or, shall we say, lack of any theory and sane reasoning, attracts gloom and envelops the soul in a deadening pall of despair. A man may gain riches and power, be hailed as successful and yet be an automaton, a mere machine with money-making or power-grasping characteristics and with a mind woefully neglected and the nobler qualities and possibilities atrophied. Is there any comparison between the mental or spiritual life of man, on the one hand, and his materiahstic, sensuous and animal existence on the other?

"Better to fail in the high aim than Vulgarly in the low aim succeed."

The human brain is like an apartment with many rooms. Some men live in one or two rooms of their brain, and seldom use or even enter other equally attractive and important rooms. Many men are mere warehouses with every available cubic inch of their personality stuffed with merchandise and worldly goods, with a price-tag attached. Beecher, describing this class said, "There are apartments in their souls which were once tenanted by taste and love and joy and worship, but they are all deserted now and the rooms are filled with earthy and material things." And again he said, "Many men build in life as cathedrals have been built ; the part nearest the ground seems finished but those parts which soar toward heaven, the turrets and the spires, lie forever incomplete." Fuller expressed the same thought when he said, "Often the cock-loft is empty in those whom nature hath built many stories high." The human brain might be likened to a three-story house with basement in the rear. The biological evolution of man has progressed in a manner analogous to the building of a house and during man's ascent from the lower animals, two stories have been added to the original lower floor and basement. The cellar occupied in the rear is known as the cerebellum and science tells us that this part of the brain is primitive, brutish and sensual. The first floor or stratum of the brain performs functions in common with the higher forms of animal Hf e and can be fittingly designated as "animal" with its keen physical senses and its avarice, aggression, love of life, self-preservation and combativeness. The next floor, built through the ages as man by evolution became more and more a thinking and reasoning creature, can be termed the "human" or "material" stratum of the brain and it appears to house the meditative and critical faculties. The top floor, existing to some extent in all men, is the "ethical" stratum and this part of the brain has been created to naturally and fittingly house those psychological properties which have raised men above all other forms of life. On this floor are spaces designed to fittingly accommodate and nurture morality, ethics, reverence, ideals, sympathies, benevolence, conscientiousness, aspirations, honor, justice, constancy and consistency. Many men, presented by nature with a three-story house to use and live in, refuse to spend any time up stairs and seldom visit the upper floor.

Each floor of the house created to contain the brain is divided into rooms and there are front rooms and rear rooms. Scientists tell us that the room of Domesticity, like the kitchen of the average home, is in the rear ; and the distinctive intellectual faculties are in the front. As man has by evolution advanced farther and farther from the lower animals, the fore part of his brain has developed as well as the crown or upper part. There are old-fashioned and simple people hving in homes containing only a kitchen and a parlor, or, as the Scotch named them, "But" and "Ben," who keep the front and best room in the house closed up, using it only on Sundays and in extreme cases for parties, funerals and weddings. The frontal brain room is often used in a similar manner and wonderful, innate, intellectual faculties He unused, inert^ — dead.

Epictetus has said that man is a rational being, distinguished from wild and domesticated animals by mind and reasoning faculties. "Take care, then, to do nothing like a wild beast, otherwise you have destroyed the man ; you have not fulfilled what your nature promises. Take care, too, to do nothing hke cattle; for thus likewise the man is destroyed. When we act gluttonously, lewdly, rashly, sordidly, inconsiderately, into what are we sunk? Into cattle. What have we destroyed? The rational being. When we behave contentiously, injuriously, passionately and violently, into what have we sunk? Into wild beasts. And further, some of us are wild beasts of a larger size ; others Httle mischievous vermin. By means of this animal kindred, some of us, deviating toward it, become like wolves, faithless and crafty; others like lions, wild, savage and untamed; but most of us like foxes, disgraceful even among brutes. For what else is a slanderous and illnatured man but a fox or something yet more wretched and mean?"

The brain is Hke a library with sections referring to different prime classifications of subjects and each section with its shelves and nimierous volimies. How many men spend their lives perusing the books on only one shelf or in one section, thus making it impossible to hve well-rounded lives! Reading is the great channel by which one can gain knowledge, broaden the vision and stimulate thought. Books have been written deahng with every field of human knowledge, research and endeavor, and a modern, well-stocked library has shelves Hberally suppHed with such books. "All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been, is lying in magic preservation in the pages of books. The true University of these days is a collection of books" (Carlyle) . The human brain, like a modern library, should be the circulating abode of diversified knowledge with great breadth and depth of multiform interests and each well-rounded personality will see that the brain shelves of knowledge are not empty nor the books once placed therein dusty and disfigured with the cobwebs of disuse.

The average man refuses not only to think but also to read, i. e., to read such books as are worth while, that stimulate thought, awaken dormant faculties and spur onward to activity. "That book is good which puts me in a working mood." The perusal of newspapers, light novels and "kill time"

printed matter is not reading. A few minutes each day on current news is time well spent and necessary for one's development, but as a nation we are great time wasters in the reading of our newspapers, magazines and those "best sellers" whose relation to literature is what sensuous ragtime is to music. To read worth-while, thought-stimulating and action-provoking matter requires some effort, concentration and a little practice, but not one person in a hundred, even of those capable of digesting intellectual food, is willing to submit to dietetic rules and develop his mind to receive, retain and profit by real literature.

We would not give a Kindergarten child calculus to study as a first lesson in mathematics, but would commence his instruction with simple additions and subtractions, to be followed later by multiplication and division, until after years of concentrated effort and persistent application, the difficulties of integral and differential calculus might be attacked with good prospects of being mastered. Similar judgment should be displayed in reading and in the choice of books, but all reading may be educational and, therefore, profitable. Epictetus most fittingly said, "Some who can scarce digest a crumb, will yet buy and swallow whole treatises ; and so they throw them up again or cannot digest them ; and then come colics, fluxes and fevers. Such persons ought to consider what they can bear. No great thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or figs. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you, that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen. Since, then, the fruit of a fig tree is not brought to perfection suddenly or in an hour, do you think to possess instantaneously and easily the fruit of the human mind? I warn you, expect it not."

Books are storehouses of knowledge and reservoirs of wisdom. They are the record of the thought, research and intuitions of the past. If impregnated with truth they live forever, defying time. The classics of the ancients are fountains of learning and philosophic wisdom, spreading eternal truth and freedom in a world prone to drift to error and slavery; they stimulate thought, invigorate the will and encourage the exercise of reason and logic as much today as they did thousands of years ago. An ancient Sage said that even in his day, what the world needed were men to apply the eternal principles found in books — ^men whose actions would bear indisputable testimony to their acceptance of truth.

Reading and study are to the mind what exercise is to the body, and both the quality and the nature of the movements and the time or duration factor are essential to success. Mental as well as physical health is preserved, strengthened and invigorated by intelligent exercise and utilization of faculties. "Shall I show you the muscular training of a philosopher?" asked Epictetus. "It is a wiU undisappointed, evils avoided, powers duly exerted, careful resolution, unerring decisions." The beginning of philosophy is a desire for education and mental development and a consciousness of our own weakness, inability, neglected faculties and stunted growth. The true purpose of education is to develop to the fullest extent the capabilities of every kind with which we are endowed. The more mental food we assimilate, the more conspicuous and discouraging our ignorance appears. Education alone can conduct us to that broad and satisfying enjoyment of life which can only be realized by the efficient utihzation of faculties expended in true service. Plato said that "It is better to be unborn than untaught; for ignorance is the root of misfortune." It is surprising that ignorance seems with diabolical perverseness to cohabit with conceit, most often expressed to the world as vanity, arrogance and selfish pride. Ignorance is darkness, oblivion and the phantom of mental death. The "devil" in the world, the cause of war, discord, disease, poverty, inhumanity and all evil is ignorance. It is the negative of truth and stalks abroad a frightful, soulless spectre, fed by selfishness and clothed in egoism; its motive is avarice, its religion is superstition and in its wake are suffering and death.