change periods of life--at puberty and the climacteric (or the menopause)--the sudden change in the activity of the sex organs may produce great alterations[2] in the coenaesthesia and therefore in the energy and mood of the individual.

[1] This is not the place to describe the vegetative nervous system. (It was formerly called the sympathetic nervous system, but this term is now limited to one part of this system, and the term autonomic to another part, although some writers still use the term sympathetic for the whole, and others [the English] the term autonomic for the whole.) This system is the nervous mechanism of organic life, regulating heart, lungs, blood vessels, intestines, sex organs, acting together with endocrines, etc. A huge amount of work has been done of late years on this system and we know definitely that it stimulates, inhibits and regulates these organs, and also that it records their activities. We are commencing to believe that this system is fully as important, in mental life, as the brain. See Langley, Schaeffer, Higier, etc.

[2] This is especially true of the menopause in women, and often enough of each menstrual period. That there is a climacteric in men is not so clear, but something corresponding to it occurs, at least in the case of some men.

In addition, these activities, which are so all-important, determine the basic conduct by arousing the basic appetites and desires of the individual. It is the change in the gastro-intestinal tract and in the tissues of the body that starts up the hunger feeling and the impulses which prompt men to seek food; in other words, this type of coenaesthesia has set going all the physical and mental activities relating to food; it is the basic impulse behind agriculture and stock raising, as well as energizing work activities of all kinds. It is the tension in the seminal vessels of the male that wakes up his passion, if it is not the sole source of that passion. Sex desire in the adult male has many elements in it, not pertinent at present, but the coenaesthetic influence of the physical structures is its starting point. In men as well as women there is a cycle of desire, with height due to physical tension and abyss following the discharge or disappearance of tension, that profoundly influences life and conduct. Here the sympathetic nervous system and the internal secretion of the genital glands awaken into sexual activity brain, spinal cord and muscles, so that the individual seeks a mate, plunges into marriage and directs his conduct, conscious of taste and desire, but largely unconscious of the physical condition that is impelling him on. In this sense the subconscious activities dominate in life, because the functions of nutrition and reproduction are largely unconscious in their origin, but there is no organized, plotting subconsciousness at work.

Once a thing is experienced, it is stored in memory. What is the basis and position of a memory when we are not conscious of it, when our conscious minds are busy with other matters? What happens when a desire is repressed, inhibited into inaction; when consciousness revolts against part of its own content? Is a "forgotten" memory ever really lost, or a desire that is squelched and thrust out of "mind" really made inactive? Do our inhibitions really inhibit, or do we build up another self or set of selves that rise to the surface under strange forms, under the guise of disease manifestations?

Sigmund Freud and his followers have made definite answers to the foregoing, answers that are incorporated in a doctrine called Freudianism. Freud is an Austrian Jew, a physician, and one that soon specialized in nervous and mental diseases. Early in his career he did some excellent work in the study of the paralysis of childhood (infantile hemiplegia), but his attention and that of an older colleague, Breuer, were soon drawn (as has occurred to almost every neurologist) to the manifestations of that extraordinary disease, hysteria. Hysteria has played so important a role in human history, and Freud's ideas are permeating so deeply into modern thought that I deem it advisable to devote a chapter to them.

CHAPTER V. HYSTERIA, SUBCONSCIOUSNESS AND FREUDIANISM

Hysteria was known to the ancients and in fact is as old as the written history of mankind. Considered essentially a disease of women, it was given its present name which is derived from "hysteron," the Greek name for the womb. We know to-day that men also are victims of this malady, though it arises under somewhat different circumstances than is the case with the other sex. Men and women, living in the same world and side by side, are placed in greatly different positions in that world, are governed by different traditions and are placed under the influences of differing ambitions, expectations, hopes and fears. Hysteria arises largely out of the emotional and volitional reactions of life, and these reactions differ in the sexes.

It was a group of French neurologists, headed by Charcot--and including very illustrious men, such as Janet and Marie, who paid the first scientific attention to the disease. Under their analyses hysteria was defined as a mental disease in which certain symptoms appeared prominently.

1. Charcot especially paid attention to what are known as the attacks. The hysteric patient (usually a woman, and so we shall speak of the patient as "she") under emotional stress and strain, following a quarrel or a disagreement or perhaps some disagreeable, humiliating situation, shows alarming symptoms. Perhaps she falls (never in a way to injure herself) to the floor and apparently loses consciousness, closes her eyes, rolls her head from side to side, moans, clenches her fists, lifts her body from the floor so that it rests on head and heels (opisthotonic hysteria), shrieks now and then and altogether presents a terrifying spectacle. Or else she twitches all over, weeps, moans, laughs and shouts, and rushes around the room, beating her head on the walls; or she may lie or stand in a very dramatic pose, perhaps indicating passion or fear or anger. The attacks are characterized by a few main peculiarities, which are that the patient usually has had an emotional upset or is in some disagreeable situation, that she does not hurt herself by her falls, that consciousness is never completely abolished and fluctuates so that now she seems almost "awake" and then she seems almost in a complete stupor, and that the expression of emotion in the attack is often very prominent. These symptoms are readily differentiated from what is seen in epilepsy.[1]

[1] The French writers of the school of Babinski deny that the above symptom and even the majority of the following have a real existence in hysteria. The English, American and German neurologists and the rest of the French school describe hysteria substantially as I am here describing it.

2. The hysteric paralyses which are featured in all the literatures of the world are curious manifestations and often very stubborn. Following an accident (especially in industry and in war) and after some emotional difficulty there is a paralysis of some part of the body. The arm or some particular part of the arm cannot be moved by the will, is paralyzed; or else the difficulty involves one or both legs. Sometimes speech is gone, or the power of moving the head; occasionally the difficulty is with one side of the face, etc. Usually the paralysis comes on suddenly, but often it comes on gradually. Modern neurology soon discovered that these paralyses were quite unlike those seen when there is "real" injury to the brain, spinal cord or the peripheral nerves. They corresponded to the layman's idea of a part. Thus a paralysis of the arm ends at the shoulder, a paralysis of the feet at the ankle, and in ways not necessary to detail here differ from what occurs when the organic structure of the nervous system is involved. For example, the reflexes in hysteria are unaltered, and stiffness when it occurs is not the stiffness of organic disease. If a neurologist were to have a hysteric paralysis a very interesting problem in diagnosis would be presented.

Further, the paralysis yields in spectacular fashion to various procedures or else disappears spontaneously in remarkable fashion overnight. Paralyses of this type have disappeared under hypnosis, violent electric shocks, "magical" liniments, threats, prayers, the healer's, the fakir's, the doctor's personal influence; under circumstances of danger (a fire, a row, etc.); by pilgrimages to Lourdes, St. Anne de Beaupre, the Temple of Diana, the relic of a saint; by the influence of sudden joy, fear, anger; by the work of the psychoanalyst and by that of the osteopath! Every great religious leader and every savage medicine man beating a tom-tom has had to, prove his pretensions to greatness by healing the sick--so intensely practical is man--and he has proved his divinity by curing the hysterics, so that they threw away their crutches, or jumped blithely out of bed, or used their arms, perhaps for the first time in years. Hysteria has caused more talk of the influence of mind over body than all other manifestations of mental peculiarity put together. Wherever there is anything to be gained by hysteric paralyses, these appear in much greater frequency than under ordinary circumstances. Thus the possibility of recovering damages seems to play a role in bringing about a paralysis that defies treatment until the litigation is settled; similarly the possibility of being removed from the fighting line played a large part in the causation of war hysteric paralysis.

3. A group of sensory phenomena is conspicuous in hysteria, sometimes combined with the paralyses and attacks but often existing alone. A part of the body will become curiously insensitive to stimulation. Thus one may thrust a pin into any part without evoking any pain and APPARENTLY without being felt; one may rub the cornea of the eye, that exquisitely sensitive part, without arousing a reaction; one may push a throat stick against the uvula as it hangs from the palate without arousing the normal and very lively reflex of "gagging." These insensitive areas, known as stigmata, played a very important role in the epidemic of witchcraft hunting of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the witch was so diagnosed if she felt no pain when a needle was thrust into her. Mankind has often enough worshiped the insane and mentally aberrant and has as often been diabolically cruel to them.

What has been stated of the paralyses is true of the insensitive areas; they correspond to an idea of a part and not to an anatomical unit. Thus a loss of sensation will reach up to the wrist (glove type) all around, front and back, or to the elbow or the shoulder, etc. No organically caused anaesthetic area ever does this, and so the neurologist is able, usually, to separate the two conditions. And the anaesthesias yield as do the hysteric paralyses to a variety of agents, from prayer and persuasion to a bitter tonic or a blow. I confess to a weird feeling in the presence of a hysteric whose arm can be thrust through and through with a needle without apparently suffering any pain, and it seems to me that this may be the explanation of the fortitude of those martyrs who have astonished and sometimes converted their persecutors by their sublime resistance to torture.

There has been described as part of hysteria the hysteric temperament. The characteristics of this temperament are the emotional instability, the strong desire for sympathy, the effort to obtain one's desire through weakness, through the appeal to the sympathy of others, an irritable egoism never satisfied and without firm purpose. It is true that the majority of peace-time hysterics show this peculiar temperament, but it is also true that the war-time hysterics often enough were of "normal" character, without prior evidence of weakness.

As I before mentioned, Freud became greatly interested in this group of patients and especially in the female patients, since in ordinary neurological practice the male hysteric is not common. Out of his experience and effort he built up a system of beliefs and treatment, the evolution of which is interesting, but which is not here important.

At the present time the Freudian doctrine hangs on the following beliefs:

1. That from the beginning to the end of life everything in the mental activities of man has a cause and a meaning, and that these causes and meanings may be traced back to infancy. No slip of the tongue is accidental; it has purpose and this purpose can be traced by psychoanalysis. So with hysteric phenomena: the paralyses, the sensory changes, all the queer and startling things represent something of importance and of value to the subconscious.

2. There is in man a subconscious mentality, having wills, purposes, strivings, desires, passions. These trends are the raw, native, uninhibited desires of man; they are our lusts, our crude unsocialized desires, arising out of a metaphysical, undifferentiated yearning called libido. In the Freudian "psychology" the libido is mainly sex desire and takes the form of homosexual feelings, incest feelings (desire for the father or for the mother--the oedipus complex), desire for the sister or brother.[1] (The human being, according to Freud, goes through three stages in his sex life: first, a sex attachment to himself marked by thumb sucking, masturbation, etc., second, an attachment to the same sex--homosexuality--and, finally, the attachment or desire for the opposite sex.) In the practical application of the Freudian psychology to the patients the sex conflicts (of which we shall speak shortly) are all important; the subconsciousness is largely taken up with sex and with efforts to obtain gratification for these sex desires.

[1] The Freudians would protest against this. Libido is the life energy,--but all the Freudian analyses of actual cases published make libido sex, and usually "perverse." (I put the perverse in quotations because I fear to be called prudish by Freudians.)

3. But, the theory continues, the conscious personality is the socialized personality, having aims and ends not consistent with desire for mother, homosexual cravings, lust for a married man or woman. So there ensues a battle between desire and inhibition. The inhibiting agent is a something called the censor, who pushes back into the subconsciousness the socially tabooed, the socially abhorrent desires; represses emotions and instincts that are socially out of order. But there is no real victory for the consciousness, for the complex (the name given to a desire or wish with its attendant ideas, emotions and motor manifestations) is still active, subconsciously changing the life of the person, causing him to make slips in his speech, expressing itself in his dreams and his work, and if sufficiently powerful, giving rise to nervous or mental disease of one type or another. Nothing is ever forgotten, according to Freud, and the reason our childhood is not voluntarily remembered is because it is full of forbidden desires and curiosities and the developing censor thrusts it all into the subconsciousness, where it continues to make trouble all the rest of the individual's life. In fact, a cardinal part of Freudianism (which he and his followers are lately modifying) is that it is the results of the "psychic traumata" (psychical injuries) of infancy and childhood that cause the hysteria of the adult; and these psychical traumata are largely (about ninety- nine per cent.) sexual.

4. Freudianism has borrowed the time-honored dictum that every sensation has a natural result in action and has elaborated it into the statement that every affective state, every desire and craving of whatever sort, needs a motor discharge, an avenue of outlet. If the desire or emotion is inhibited, its excitement is transferred with it into the subconscious and that excitement may attach itself to other excitements and break into consciousness as a mental disturbance of one type or another. If you can get at the complex by psychoanalysis, by dragging it to the light, by making it conscious, you discharge the excitement and health is restored. This originally was very important in the Freudian work and was called by the crude term of catharsis.

5. How can one get at these subterranean cravings and strivings, at the fact that originally one desired one's mother and was jealous of one's father, or vice versa? Here Freud developed an elaborate technique based on the following:

Though the censor sits on the lid of the subconsciousness, that wily self has ways and means of expression. In dreams, in humor, in the slip of the tongue, in forgetfulness, in myths of the race, in the symptoms of the hysteric patient, in the creations of writers and artists, the subconsciousness seeks to symbolize in innocent (or acceptable) form its crude wishes. By taking a dream, for example, and analyzing it by what is known as the free association method, one discovers the real meaning of the terms used, the meaning behind the symbol; and behind the apparent dream-content one sees revealed the wishes and disorganizing desires of the subconscious or the real person. For throughout Freud's work, though not so definitely expressed, there is the idea that the subconscious is by far the most important part of the personality, and that the social purposes, the moral injunctions and feelings are not the real purposes and real desires of the real personality.

In analyzing dreams, the symbols become quite standardized. The horses, dogs, beards, queer situations of the dream (falling, walking without clothes, picking up money, etc.), the demons, ghosts, flying, relate definitely to sex situations, sex organs, sex desires. (The Freudians are apt to deny this theoretically, but practically every dream of the thousands they publish is a sex dream of crude content.) Naturally a "pure" girl is quite shocked when told that because she dreamed she was riding a gray horse in a green meadow that she really has bad (and still is troubled by) incestuous desires for her father, but that is the way to cure her of her neurasthenia or fatigue or obsession of one kind or other.

I have not attempted a detailed account of the technique of free association, nor the Freudian account of humor, etc. There are plenty of books on the market written by Freud himself and his followers. Frankly I advise the average person not to read them. I am opposed to the Freudian account of life and character, though recognizing that he has caused the psychologist to examine life with more realism, to strip away pretense, to be familiar with the crude and to examine conduct with the microscope.

I do not believe there is an ORGANIZED subconsciousness, having a PERSONALITY. Most of the work which proves this has been done on hysterics. Hysterics are usually proficient liars, are very suggestible and quite apt to give the examiner what he looks for, because they seek his friendly interest and eager study. Wherever I have checked up the "subconscious" facts as revealed by the patient as a result of his psychoanalysis or through hypnosis, I have found but little truth. On the other hand, the Freudians practically never check up the statements of their patients; if a woman tells all sorts of tales of her husband's attitude toward her, or of the attitude of her parents, it is taken for granted that she tells the truth. My belief is that had the statements of Freud's patients been carefully investigated he would probably never have evolved his theories.

The Freudians have made no consecutive study of normal childhood, though they lay great stress on this period of life and in fact trace the symptoms of their patients back to "infantile trauma." Most of Freud's ideas on sex development can be traced to, the one four-and-a-half-years-old child he analyzed, who was as representative of normal childhood as the little chess champion of nine years now astounding the world is representative of the chess ability of the average child. Moreover, the basis of the technique is the free association, an association released from inhibitions of all kinds. There isn't any such thing, as Professor Woodworth has pointed out. All associations are conditioned by the physical condition of the patient, by his mood, by the nature of the environment he finds himself in, by the personality of the examiner and his powers of suggesting, his purposes and (very important) by the patient's purposes, which he cannot bid "Disappear!" As for the results of treatment, every neurologist meets patients again and again who have been "psychoanalyzed" without results. Moreover, psychoneurotic patients get well without treatment, as do all other classes of the sick, and the Christian Scientist, the osteopath and the chiropractic also have records of "cures."

This is not the place to discuss in further detail the Freudian ideas (the wish, the symbol, the jargon of transference, etc). The leading follower of Freud, Jung, has already broken away from the parent church, and there is an amusing cry of heresy raised. Soon the eminent Austrian will have the pleasure of seeing a half-dozen schools that have split off from his own,--followers of Bleuler, Jung, Adler and others.

There IS a subconsciousness in that much of the nervous activity of the organism has but little or no relation to consciousness. There are mechanisms laid down by heredity and by the racial structure that accomplish great functions without any but the most indirect effect on consciousness and without any control by the conscious personality. We are spurred on to sex life, to marriage, to the care of our children by instinct; but the instinct is not a personality any more than the automatic heartbeat is. We repress a forbidden desire; if we are successful and really overcome the desire by setting up new desires or in some other way, the inhibited desire is not locked up in a subterranean limbo. There is nothing pathological about inhibition, for inhibition is as normal a part of character as desire, and the social instinct which bids us inhibit is as fundamental as the sex instinct. Most conflicts are on a conscious plane, but most people will not admit to any one else their deeply abhorrent desires. To all of us, or nearly all, come desires and temptations that we would not acknowledge for the world. If a wise examiner succeeds in getting us to admit them, it is very agreeable to find a scapegoat in the form of the subconsciousness. I have often said this to students: if all our thoughts and conscious desires could be exposed, the most of us would almost die of shame. True, we do not clearly understand ourselves and our conflicts and explanation is often necessary, but that is not equivalent to the subconsciousness; it merely means that introspection is not sagacious.

Nor is it true, in my belief, that dreams are important psychical events, nor that the subconsciousness evades a censor in elaborating them. To what end would that be done? What would be the use of it? Suppose that Freud and his school had never been; then dreams would always be useless, for they would have no interpreter. Men have dreamed in the countless ages before Freud was born,--in vain. Think how the poor, misguided subconsciousness has labored for nothing,--and how grateful it should be to Freud! Dreams are results and have the same kind of function that a stomach-ache has.

Things, experiences are forgotten, and whether they are remembered or not depends upon the number of times they are experienced, the attention they are given, the use they are put to and the quality of the brain experiencing them. Disease and old age may lower the recording power of the brain so that experiences and sensations do not stick, and now and then the brain is hypermnesic so that things are remembered with surprising ease.

The conflicts of life are generally conscious conflicts, in my experience. Desires and lusts that one does not know of do no harm; it is the conflict which we cannot settle, the choice we cannot make, the doubt we cannot resolve, that injures. It is not those who find it easy to inhibit a desire or any impulse that are troubled, though they may and do grow narrow. It is those whose unlawful or discordant desires are not easily inhibited who find themselves the theater of a constant struggle that breaks them down. The uneasiness of a desire that arises from the activity of the sex organs is not a manifestation of a subconscious personality, unless we include in our personality our livers, spleen and internal organs of all kinds. Such an uneasiness may not be clearly understood by the individual merely because the uneasiness is diffuse and not localized. But there is no personality, Do will, wish or desire in that uneasiness; it may and does cause to arise in the conscious personality wills and wishes and desires against which there is rebellion and because of which there is conflict.

Upon the issue of the conflicts within the personality hangs the fate of the individual. Race-old lines of conduct are inhibited by custom, tradition, teaching, conformity and the social instinct and its allies. Here is a subject worthy of extended consideration.

Freud has done the thought of our times a great service in emphasizing conflict. From the earliest restriction laid by men on his own conduct, wrestling with desire and temptation has been the greatest of man's struggles. Internal warfare between opposing purposes and desires may proceed to a disruption of the personality, to failure and unhappiness, or else to a solidified personality, efficient, single-minded and successful. Freud's work has directed our attention to the thousand and one aberrant desires that we will hardly acknowledge to ourselves, and he has forced the professional worker in abnormal and normal mental life to disregard his own prejudices, to strip away the camouflage that we put over our motives and our struggles. Together with Jung and Bleuler, he has helped our science of character a great deal through no other method than by arousing it to action against him. In order to fight him, our thought has been forced to arm itself with the weapons that he has used.

CHAPTER VI. EMOTION, INSTINCT, INTELLIGENCE AND WILL

In a preceding chapter we discussed man as an organism reacting against an outside world and spurred on by internal activities and needs. We discussed stimulation, reflexes, inhibition, choice and the organizing activity, memory and habit, consciousness and subconsciousness, all of which are primary activities of the organism. But these are mere theories of function, for the activities we are interested in reside in more definite reactions, of which the foregoing are parts.

We see a dreaded object on the horizon or foresee a calamity,--and we fear. That state of the organism (note I do not say that STATE OF MIND) resulting from the vision is an emotion. We fly at once, we hide, and the action is in obedience to an instinct. But ordinarily we do not fly or hide haphazard; we think of ways and means, if only in a rudimentary fashion; we shape plans, perhaps as we fly; we pick up a stick on the run, hoping to escape but preparing for the reaction of fight if cornered. "What shall I do--what shall I do? finds no conscious answer if the emotion is overwhelming or the instinctive flight a pell-mell affair; but ordinarily memories of other experiences or of teaching come into the mind and some effort is made to meet the situation in an "intelligent" manner.

Here, then, is a response in which three cardinal reactions have occurred and are blended,--the emotion, the instinctive action, and the intelligent action; or to make abstractions, emotion, instinct and intelligence. (Personally, I think half the trouble with our thought is that, we abstract from our experiences a common group of associations and believe that the abstraction has some existence outside our thoughts.) Thus there arise in us, as a result of things experienced, curious feelings and we speak of the feelings as emotions; we make a race-old response to a situation,--an instinctive reaction; our memories, past experiences and present purposes are stirred into activity, and we plan and scheme, and this is an intelligent reaction, but there is in reality no metaphysical entity Emotion, Instinct, Intelligence. I believe that here the philosophers whose mental activities are essentially in the direction of forming abstract ideas have misled us.

What I wish to point out is this: that to any situation all three reactions may take place and modify one another. We are insulted--some one slaps our face--the fierce emotion of anger arises and through us surge waves of feeling manifested on the motor side by tensed muscles, rapid heart, harsh breathing, perhaps a general reddening of face and eyes. Instinctively our fists are clenched, a part of the reaction of fight, and it needs but the slightest increase of anger to send us leaping on the aggressor, to fight him perhaps to the death. But no,--the situation has aroused certain memories and certain inhibitions: the one who struck us has been our friend and we can see that he is acting under a mistaken impression, or else we perceive that he is right, that we have done him a wrong for which his blow is a sort of just reaction. We are checked by these cerebral activities, we choose some other reaction than fight; perhaps we prevent him from further assault, or we turn and walk away, or we start to explain, to mollify and console, or to remonstrate and reprove. In other words, "intelligence" steps in to inhibit, to bring to the surface the possibilities, to choose, and thus overrides the emotional instinctive reaction. It may not succeed in the overriding; we may hesitate, inhibit, etc., for only a second or so, before hot anger overcomes us, and the instinctive response of fight and retaliation takes place.

These examples might be multiplied a thousandfold. Every day of our lives situations come up in which there is a blending or an antagonism between emotional, instinctive and intelligent responses. In fact, very few acts of the organized human being are anything else. For every emotion awakens memories of past emotions and the consequences; every instinct is hampered by other instincts or by the inhibitions aroused by obstacles; and intelligence continually struggles against emotion and blind instinct. Teaching, experience, knowledge, all modify emotional and instinctive responses so that sometimes they are hardly recognizable as such. On the other hand, though intelligence normally occupies the seat of power, it is easily ousted and in reality only steers and directs the vehicle of life, choosing not the goal but the road by which the goal can safely be reached.

In general terms we shall define emotions, instincts and intelligence as follows:

1. For emotions we shall accept a modified James-Lange theory, supplementing it by the developments of science since their day. When a thing is seen or heard (or smelled or tasted or thought), it arouses an emotion; that emotion consists of at least three parts. First, the arousal of memories and experiences that give it a value to the individual, make it a desired object or a dreaded, distasteful object. Second, at the same time, or shortly preceding or succeeding this, a great variety of changes takes place in the organism, changes that we shall call the vaso-visceral-motor changes. This means merely that there is a series of reactions set up in the sympathetic nervous system, in the blood vessels and bodily structures they control and in the glands of internal secretion,--changes which include the blush or the pallor, the rapid heartbeat, the quickened or labored breathing, the changes in the digestive tract which include the vomiting of disgust and the diarrhoea of fear; the changes that passion brings in the male and the female and many other alterations to be discussed again. Third, there is then the feeling of these coenaesthetic changes,--a feeling of pleasantness, unpleasantness mingled with the basic feeling of excitement, and from then on that situation is linked in memory with the feeling that we usually call the emotion but which is only a part of it. Nevertheless, it becomes the part longed for or thereafter avoided; it is the value of the emotion to us, as conscious personalities, although it may be a false, disastrous, dangerous value. Excitement is the generalized mood change that results in consciousness in consequence of the vaso-visceral-motor changes of emotion; it is therefore based on bodily changes as is the feeling, pleasant or unpleasant, that also occurs. William James said that we laugh and are therefore happy; we weep and are therefore sad; the bodily changes are primary and the feeling secondary. We do not accept this dictum entirely, but we say that the organism reacts in a complicated way and that the feeling--sadness, disgust, anger, joy--springs from the memories and past experiences aroused by a situation as well as from the widespread bodily excitement also so aroused. For the neurologist both the cerebral and the sympathetic- endocrinal components of emotion are important.

For the moment we turn to instinct and instinctive reactions.

2. Man has always wondered that things can be known without teaching. So slow and painful is the process of mastering a technique, whether of handicraftsmanship or of art, so imbued are we with the need of education for the acquirement of knowledge, that we are taken aback by the realization that all around us are creatures carrying on the most elaborate technique, going through the most complicated procedures and apparently possessed of the surest knowledge without the possibility of teaching. The flight of birds, the obstetric and nursing procedures of all animals, and especially the complicated and systematized labors of bees, ants and other insects, have aroused the wonder, admiration and awe of scientists. A chick pecks its way out of its egg and shakes itself,--then immediately starts on the trail of food and usually needs no instruction as to diet. The female insect lays its eggs, the male insect fertilizes them, the progeny go through the states of evolution leading to adult life without teaching and without the possibility of previous experience. Since the parent never sees the progeny, and the progeny assume various shapes and have very varied capacities at these times, there can be no possible teaching of what is remarkably skillful and marvelously adapted conduct.[1]

[1] The nature of instinct has been a subject of discussion for centuries, but it is only within the last fifty years or thereabouts that instinctive actions have really been studied. I refer the reader to the works of Darwin, Romanes, Lloyd Morgan, the Peckhams, Fabre, Hobhouse, and McDougall for details as to the controversies and the facts obtained.

Herbert Spencer considered the instinct as a series of inevitable reflexes. The carrion fly, when gravid, deposits her eggs in putrid meat in order that the larvae may have appropriate food, although she never sees the larvae or cannot know through experience their needs. "The smell of putrid meat attracts the gravid carrion fly. That is, it sets up motions of the wings which bring the fly to it, and the fly having arrived, the smell, and the contact combined stimulate the functions of oviposition."[1] But as all the critics have pointed out, the theory of compound reflex action leaves out of account that there are any number of stimuli pouring in on the carrion fly at the same time that the meat attracts her. The real mystery lies in that internal condition which makes the smell of the meat act so inevitably.

[1] Hobhouse.

In fact, it is this internal condition in the living creature that is the most important single link in instinct. In the non-mating season the sight of the female has no effect on the male. But periodically his internal organs become tense with procreative cells; these change his coenaesthesia; that starts desire, and desire sets going the mechanisms of search, courtship, the sexual act and the care of the female while she is gravid. All instinctive acts have back of them either a tension or a deficit of some kind or other, brought about by the awakening of function of some glandular structure, so that the organism becomes ready to respond to some appropriate outside stimulus and inaccessible to others. During the mating season, with certain animals, the stimulus of food has no effect until there is effected the purposes of the sexual hunger. Changes in the body due to the activity of sex glands or gastric juices or any other organic product have two effects. They increase the stimulation that comes from the thing sought and decrease the stimulation that comes from other things. In physiological language, the threshold for the first is lowered and for the other it is raised.

But this does not explain HOW the changes in glands MAKE the animal seek this or that, except by saying that the animal has hereditary structures all primed to explode in the right way. We may fall back on Bergson's mystical idea that all life is a unity, and that instinct, which makes one living thing know what to do with another--to kill it in a scientific way for the good of the posterity of the killer--is merely the knowledge, unconscious, that life has of life. That pleasant explanation projects us back to a darker problem than ever: how life knows life and why one part of life so obviously seeks to circumvent the purpose of another part of life.

For us it is best to say that instinct arises out of the racial and individual needs; that physically there occur changes in the glands and tissues; that these set up desires which arouse into action simple or elaborate mechanisms which finally satisfy the need of the organs and tissues.[1]

[1] Kempf in his book on the vegetative nervous system goes into great detail the way the visceral needs force the animal or human to satisfy them. Life is a sort of war between the vegetative and the central nervous system. There is just enough truth in this point of view to make it very entertaining.

Even in the low forms of life instincts are not perfect at the start, or perfect in details, and almost every member of a species will show individuality in dealing with an obstacle to an instinctive action. In other words, though there is instinct and this furnishes the basis for action in the lowest forms of life, there is also the capacity for learning by experience,--and this is Intelligence. "The basis of instinct is heredity and we can impute an action to pure instinct only if it is hereditary. The other class of actions are those devised by the individual animal for himself on the basis of his own experience and these are called generally intelligent. Of intelligence operating within the sphere of instinct there is ample evidence. There are modifications of instinctive action directly traceable to experience which cannot be explained by the interaction of purely hereditary tendencies and there are cases in which the whole structure of the instinct is profoundly modified by the experience of the individual." Hobhouse, whom I quote, goes on to give many examples of instinctive action modified by experience and intelligence in the insect and lower animal world.

What I wish especially to point out is that man has many instinctive bases for conduct, but instincts as such are not often seen in pure form in man. They are constantly modified by other instincts and through them runs the influence of intelligence. The function of intelligence is to control instincts, to choose ways and means for the fulfillment of instincts that are blocked, etc. Moreover, the effects of teachings, ethics, social organization and tradition, operating through the social instincts, are to repress, inhibit and whip into conformity every mode of instinctive conduct. The main instincts are those relating to nutrition and reproduction, the care of the young, to averting danger or destroying it, to play and organized activity, to acquiring, perhaps to teaching and learning and to the social relations generally. But manners creep in to regulate our methods of eating and the things we shall eat; and we may not eat at all unless we agree to get the things to eat a certain way. We may not cohabit except under tremendous restriction, and marriage with its aims and purposes is sexual in origin but modified largely and almost beyond recognition by social consideration, taste, esthetic matters, taboos and economic conditions. We may not treat our enemy as instinct bids us do,--for only in war may one kill and here one kills without any personal purpose or anger, almost without instinct. We may be compelled through social exigencies to treat our enemy politely, eat with him, sleep with him and help him out of difficulties and thus completely thwart one instinctive set of reactions. Play becomes regulated by rules and customs, becomes motivated by the desire for superiority, or the desire for gain, and may even leave the physical field entirely and become purely mental. And so on. It does no special practical good to discuss instincts as if they operated in man as such. They become purposes. Therefore we shall defer the consideration of instincts and purposes in detail until later chapters of this book.

Since instincts are too rigid to meet the needs of the social and traditional life of man, they become intellectualized and socialized into purposes and ambitions, sometimes almost beyond recognition. Nevertheless, the driving force of instinct is behind every purpose, every ambition, even though the individual himself has not the slightest idea of the force that is at work. This does not mean that instinct acts as a sort of cellar- plotter, roving around in a subconsciousness, or at least no such semi-diabolical personality need be postulated, any more than it need be postulated for the automatic mechanism that regulates heartbeat or digestion. The organic tensions and depressions that constitute instinct are not conscious or subconscious; they affect our conscious personalities so that we desire something, we fit that desire in with the rest of our desires, we seek the means of gratifying that desire first in accordance with means that Nature has given us and second in accordance with social teaching and our intelligence. If the desire brings us sharply in contact with obstacles imposed either by circumstances or more precious desire, we inhibit that desire,--and thus the instinct. Because organic tensions and depressions are periodic and are dependent upon the activities of glands and tissues not within our control, the desires may never be completely squelched and may arise as often as some outer stimulus brings them into activity, to plague and disorder the life of the conscious personality.

3. With this preliminary consideration of instinct, we pass on to certain of the phases of intelligence. How to define intelligence is a difficulty best met by ignoring definition. But this much is true: that the prime function of intelligence is to store up the past and present experiences so that they can be used in the future, and that it adds to the rigid mechanism of instinct a plastic force which by inhibiting and exciting activity according to need steers the organism through intricate channels.

Instinct, guided by a plan, conveniently called Nature's plan, is not itself a planner. The discharge of one mechanism discharges another and so on through a series until an end is reached,--an end apparently not foreseen by the organism but acting for the good of the race to which the organism belongs. Intelligence, often enough not conscious of the plans of Nature,[1] indeed, decidedly ignorant of these plans, works for some good established by itself out of stimuli set up by the instincts. It plans, looks backward and forward, reaches the height of reflecting on itself, gets to recognize the existence of instinct and sets itself the task of controlling instinct. Often enough it fails, instinct breaks through, takes possession of the means of achievement, accomplishes its purpose--but the failure of intelligence to control and the misguided control it attempts and assumes are merely part of the general imperfections of the organism. A perfect intelligence would be clearly able to understand its instincts, to give each of them satisfaction by a perfect compromise, would pick the methods for accomplishment without error, and storing up the past experiences without loss, would meet the future according to a plan.

[1] We are at this stage in a very dark place in human thought. We say that instincts seek the good of the race, or have some racial purpose, as the sexual instinct has procreation as its end. But the lover wooing his sweetheart has no procreation plan in his mind; he is urged on by a desire to win this particular girl, a desire which is in part sexual, in part admiration of her beauty, grace, and charm; again it is the pride of possession and achievement; and further is the result of the social and romantic ideals taught in books, theaters, etc. He may not have the slightest desire for a child; as individual he plans one thing,--but we who watch him see in his approach the racial urge for procreation and even disregard his purposes as unimportant. Who and what is the Race, where does it reside, how can it have purposes? Call it Nature, and we are no better off. We must fall back on an ancient personalization of forces, and our minds rest easier when we think of a Planner operating in all of us and perhaps smiling as He witnesses our strivings.

As we study the nervous systems of animals, we find that with the apparent growth of intelligence there is a development of that part of the brain called the cerebrum. In so far as certain other parts of the brain are concerned--medulla, pons, mid-brain, basal ganglia cerebellum--we who are human are not essentially superior to the dog, the cow, the elephant or the monkey. But when the neopallium, or the cerebrum, is considered, the enormous superiority of man (and the superiority of the higher over the lower animals) becomes striking. Anatomically the cerebrum is a complex elaboration of cells and fibers that have these main purposes: First, to record in perfect and detailed fashion the EXPERIENCES of the organism, so that here are memory centers for visual and auditory experiences, for skin, joint and bone experiences of all kinds, speech memories, action memories, and undoubtedly for the recording in some way not understood of the pleasure-pain feelings. Second, it has a hold, a grip on the motor mechanism of the body, on the muscles that produce action, so that the intelligence can nicely adapt movement to the circumstances, to purpose, and can inhibit the movements that arise reflexly. Thus in certain diseases, where the part of the brain involved in movement is injured, voluntary movement disappears but reflex action is increased. Third, the neopallium, or cerebrum, is characterized by what are known as association tracts, i.e., connections of intricate kinds which link together areas of the brain having different functions and thus allow for combinations of activity of all kinds. The brain thus acts to increase the memories of the past, and, as we all know, man is probably the only animal to whom the past is a controlling force, sometimes even an overpowering force. It acts to control the conduct of the individual, to delay or to inhibit it, and it acts to increase in an astonishing manner the number of reactions possible. One stimulus arousing cerebral excitement may set going mechanisms of the brain through associated tracts that will produce conduct of one kind or another for years to come.

We spoke in a previous chapter of choice as an integral function of the organism. While choice, when two competing stimuli awake competing mechanisms, may be non-cerebral in its nature, largely speaking it is a function of the cerebrum, of the intelligence. To choose is a constant work of the intelligence, just as to doubt is an unavailing effort to find a choice. Choice blocked is doubt, one of the unhappiest of mental states. I shall not pretend to solve the mystery of WHO chooses,--WHAT chooses; perhaps there is a constant immortal ego; perhaps there is built up a series of permanently excited areas which give rise to ego feeling and predominate in choice; perhaps competing mechanisms, as they struggle (in Sherrington's sense) for motor pathways, give origin to the feeling of choice. At any rate, because we choose is the reason that the concept of will has arisen in the minds of both philosopher and the man in the street, and much of our feeling of worth, individuality and power--mental factors of huge importance in character--arises from the power to choose. Choice is influenced by--or it is a net result of--the praise and blame of others, conscience, memory, knowledge of the past, plans for the future. It is the fulcrum point of conduct!

That animals have intelligence in the sense in which I have used the term is without doubt. No one who reads the work of Morgan, the Peckhams, Fabre, Hobhouse and other recent investigators of the instincts can doubt it. Whether animals think in anything like the form our thought takes is another matter. We are so largely verbal in thought that speech and the capacity to speak seem intimately related to thought. For the mechanics of thought, for the laws of the association of ideas, the reader is referred to the psychologists. That minds differ according to whether they habitually follow one type of associations or another is an old story. The most annoying individual in the world is the one whose associations are unguided by a controlling purpose, who rambles along misdirected by sound associations or by accidental resemblances in structure of words, or by remote meanings,--who starts off to tell you that she (the garrulous old lady) went to the store to get some eggs, that she has a friend in the country whose boy is in the army (aren't the Germans dreadful, she's glad she's born in this country), city life is very hard, it isn't so healthy as the country, thank God her health is good, etc., etc.," and she never arrives at the grocery store to buy the eggs. The organizing of the associations through a goal idea is part of that organizing energy of the mind and character previously spoken of. The mind tends automatically to follow the stimuli that reach it, but the organizing energy has as one of its functions the preventing of this, and controlled thinking follows associations that are, as it were, laid down by the goal. In fatigue, in illness, in certain of the mental diseases, the failure of the organizing energy brings about failure "to concentrate" and the tyranny of casual associations annoys and angers. The stock complaint of the neurasthenic that everything distracts his attention is a reversion back to the unorganized conditions of childhood, with this essential difference: that the neurasthenic rebels against his difficulty in thinking, whereas the child has no rebellion against that which is his normal state. Minds differ primarily and hugely in their power of organizing experience, in so studying and recording the past that it becomes a guide for the, future. Basic in this is the power of resisting the irrelevant association, of checking those automatic mental activities that tend to be stirred up by each sound, each sight, smell, taste and touch. The man whose task has no appeal for him has to fight to keep his mind on it, and there are other people, the so-called absent-minded, who are so over- concentrated, so wedded to a goal in thought, that lesser matters are neither remembered nor noticed. In its excess overconcentration is a handicap, since it robs one of that alertness for new impressions, new sources of thought so necessary for growth. The fine mind is that which can pursue successfully a goal in thought but which picks en route to that goal, out of the irrelevant associations, something that enriches its conclusions.

Not often enough is mechanical skill, hand-mindedness, considered as one of the prime phases of intelligence. Intelligence, en route to the conquest of the world, made use of that marvelous instrument, the human hand, which in its opposable thumb and little finger sharply separates man from the rest of creation. Studying causes and effects, experimenting to produce effect, the hand became the principal instrument in investigation, and the prime verifier of belief. "Seeing is believing" is not nearly so accurate as "Handling is believing," for there is in touch, and especially in touch of the hands and in the arm movements, a Reality component of the first magnitude. But not only in touching and investigating, but in pushing and pulling and striking, IN CAUSING CHANGE, does the hand become the symbol and source of power and efficiency. Undoubtedly this phase of the hands' activities remained predominant for untold centuries, during which man made but slow progress in his career toward the leadership of the world. Then came the phase of tool-making and using and with that a rush of events that built the cities, bridged the waters, opened up the Little and the Big as sources of knowledge and energy for man and gave him the power which he has used,--but poorly. It is the skill of human hands upon which the mind of man depends; though we fly through the air and speed under water, some one has made the tools that made the machine we use. Therefore, the mechanical skill of man, the capacity to shape resisting material to purpose, the power of the detailed applications of the principles of movement and force are high, special functions of the intelligence. That people differ enormously in this skill, that it is not necessarily associated with other phases of intelligence are commonplaces. The dealer in abstract ideas of great value to the race may be unable to drive a nail straight, while the man who can build the most intricate mechanism out of crude iron, wood and metal may be unable to express any but the commonplaces of existence. Intelligence, acting through skill, has evolved machinery and the industrial evolution; acting to discover constant principles operating in experience, it has established science. Seeking to explain and control the world of unknown forces, it has evolved theory and practice. A very essential division of people is on the one hand those whose effort is to explain things, and who are called theorists, and those who seek to control things, the practical persons. There is a constant duel between these two types of personalities, and since the practical usually control the power of the world, the theorists and explainers have had rather a hard time of it, though they are slowly coming into their own.

Another difference between minds is this: that intelligence deals with the relations between things (this being a prime function of speech), and intelligence only becomes intellect when it is able to see the world from the standpoint of abstract ideas, such as truth, beauty, love, honor, goodness, evil, justice, race, individual, etc. The wider one can generalize correctly, the higher the intellect. The practical man rarely seeks wide generalizations because the truth of these and their value can only be demonstrated through the course of long periods of time, during which no good to the individual himself is seen. Besides which, the practical man knows that the wide generalization may be an error. Practical aims are usually immediate aims, whereas the aims of intellect are essentially remote and may project beyond the life of the thinker himself.

We speak of people as original or as the reverse, with the understanding that originality is the basis of the world's progress. To be original in thought is to add new relationships to those already accepted, or to substitute new ones for the old. The original person is not easily credulous; he applies to traditional teaching and procedure the acid test of results. Thus the astronomers who rejected the theological idea that the earth was the center of the universe observed that eclipses could not be explained on such a basis, and Harvey, as he dissected bullocks' hearts and tied tourniquets around his arms, could not believe that Galen's teaching on circulation fitted what he saw of the veins and valves of his arm. The original observer refuses to slide over stubborn facts; authority has less influence with him than has an apple dropping downward. In another way the original thinker is constantly taking apart his experiences and readjusting the pieces into new combinations of beauty, usefulness and truth. This he does as artist, inventor and scientist. Most originality lies in the rejection of old ideas and methods as not consonant with results and experience; in the taking apart and the isolation of the components of experience (analysis) and in their reassemblage into new combinations (synthesis). The organizing activity of the original mind is high, and curiosity and interest are usually well maintained. Unless there is with these traits the quality called good judgment (i.e., good choice), the original is merely one of those "pests" who launch half-baked reforms and projects upon a weary world.

We have spoken of intelligence as controlling and directing instinct and desire, as inhibiting emotion, as exhibiting itself in handicraftsmanship, as the builder up of abstractions and the principles of power and knowledge; we have omitted its relationship to speech. Without speech and its derivatives, man would still be a naked savage and not so well off in his struggle for existence as most of the larger animals. It is possible that we can think without words, but surely very little thinking is possible under such circumstances. One might conduct a business without definite records, but it would be a very small one. Speech is a means not only of designating things but of the manifest relations between things. It "short-cuts" thought so that we may store up a thousand experiences in one word. But its stupendous value and effects lie in this, that in words not only do we store up ourselves (could we be self-conscious without words?) and things, but we are able to interchange ourselves and our things with any one else in the world who understands our speech and writings. And we may truly converse with the dead and be profoundly changed by them. If the germ plasm is the organ of biological heredity, speech and its derivatives are the organs of social heredity!

The power of expressing thought in words, of compressing experiences into spoken and written symbols, of being eloquent or convincing either by tongue or pen, is thus a high function of intelligence. The able speaker and writer has always been powerful, and he has always found a high social value in promulgating the ideas of those too busy or unfitted for this task, and he has been the chief agent in the unification of groups.

The danger that lies in words as the symbols of thought lies in the fact pointed out by Francis Bacon[1] (and in our day by Wundt and Jung) that words have been coined by the mass of people and have come to mean very definitely the relations between things as conceived by the ignorant majority, so that when the philosopher or scientist seeks to use them, he finds himself hampered by the false beliefs inherent in the word and by the lack of precision in the current use of words. Moreover, words are also a means of stirring up emotions, hate, love, passion, and become weapons in a struggle for power and therefore obscure intelligence.

[1] This is Bacon's "Idols of the Market Place."

Words, themselves, arise in our social relations, for the solitary human would never speak, and the thought we think of as peculiarly our own is intensely social. Indeed, as Cooley pointed out, our thought is usually in a dialogue form with an auditor who listens and whose applause we desire and whose arguments we meet. In children, who think aloud, this trend is obvious, for they say, "you, I, no, yes, I mustn't, you mustn't," and terms of dialogue and social intercourse appear constantly. Thought and words offer us the basis of definite internal conflict: one part of us says to the other, "You must not do that," and the other answers, "What shall I do?" Desire may run along smoothly without distinct, internal verbal thought until it runs into inhibition which becomes at once distinctly verbal in its, "No! You musn't!" But desire obstructed also becomes verbal and we hear within us, "I will!"

We live secure in the belief that our thoughts are our own and cannot be "read" by others. Yet in our intercourse we seek to read the thoughts of others--the real thoughts--recognizing that just as we do not express ourselves either accurately or honestly, so may the other be limited or disingenuous. Whenever there occurs a feeling of inferiority, the face is averted so the thoughts may not be read, and it is very common for people mentally diseased to believe that their thoughts are being read and published. Indeed, the connection between thoughts and the personality may be severed and the patient mistakes as an outside voice his own thoughts.

A large part of ancient and modern belief and superstition hinges on the feeling of power in thought and therefore in words. Thought CAUSES things as any other power does. Think something hard, use the appropriate word, and presto,--what you desire is done. "Faith moves mountains," and the kindred beliefs of the magic in words have plunged the world into abysses of superstition. Thought is powerful, words are powerful, if combined with the appropriate action, and in their indirect effects. All our triumphs are thought and word products; so, too, are our defeats.

It is not profitable for us at this stage to study the types of intelligence in greater detail. In the larger aspects of intelligence we must regard it as intimately blended with emotions, mood, instincts, and in its control of them is a measurement of character. We may ask what is the range of memory, what is the capacity for choosing, how good is the planning ability, how active is the organizing ability, what is the type of associations that predominate and how active is the stream of thought? What is the skill of the individual? How well does he use words and to what end does he use them? Intelligence deals with the variables of life, leaving to instinct the basic reactions, but it is in these variables that intelligence meets situations that of themselves would end disastrously for the individual.

Not a line, so far, on Will. What of the will, basic force in character and center of a controversy that will never end? Has man a free will? does his choice of action and thought come from a power within himself? Is there a uniting will, operating in our actions, a something of an integral indivisible kind, which is non-material yet which controls matter?

Taking the free-will idea at its face value leads us nowhere in our study of character. If character in its totality is organic, so is will, and it therefore resides in the tissues of our organism and is subject to its laws. In some mental diseases the central disturbance is in the will, as Kraepelin postulates in the disease known as Dementia Praecox. The power of choice and the power of acting according to choice disappear gradually, leaving the individual inert and apathetic. The will may alter its directions in disease (or rather be altered) so that BECAUSE of a tumor mass in the brain, or a clot of blood, or the extirpation of his testicles, he chooses and acts on different principles than ever before in his life. Or you get a man drunk, introduce into his organism the soluble narcotic alcohol, and you change his will in the sense that he chooses to be foolish or immoral or brutal, and acts accordingly. When from Philip drunk we appeal to Philip sober, we acknowledge that the two Philips are different and will different things. And the will of the child is not the will of the adult, nor is that the will of the old man. If will is organic it cannot be free, but is conditioned by health, glandular activity, tissue chemistry, age, social setting, education, intelligence.

Moreover, behind each choice and each act are motives set up by the whole past of the individual, set up by heredity and training, by the will of our ancestors and our contemporaries. Logically and psychologically, we cannot agree that a free agent has any conditions; and if it has any conditions, it cannot in any phase be free. To set up an argument for free will one has to appeal to the consciousness or have a deep religious motive. But even the ecclesiastical psychologists and even so strong a believer in free will as Munsterberg take the stand that we may have two points of view, one--as religiously minded--that there is a free will, and the other--as scientists--that will is determined in its operations by causes that reach back in an endless chain. The power to choose and the power to act may be heightened by advice and admonitions. In this sense we may properly tell a man to use his will, and we may seek to introduce into him motives that will fortify his resolution, remove or increase his inhibitions, make clearer his choice. But that will is an entity, existing by itself and pulling at levers of conduct without itself being organic, need not be entertained by any serious-minded student of his kind.

Is there a unit, will? A will power? I can see no good evidence for this belief except the generalizing trend of human thought and the fallacy that raises abstractions into realities. Napoleon had a strong will in regard to his battles and a weak one regarding women. Pitt was a determined statesman but could not resist the lure of drink. Socrates found no difficulty in dying for his beliefs, but asked not to be tempted by a beautiful youth. Francis Bacon took all knowledge to be his province, and his will was equal to the task, but he found the desire for riches too great for him. In reality, man is a mosaic of wills; and the will of each instinct, each desire, each purpose, is the intensity of that instinct, desire or purpose. In each of us there is a clash of wills, as the trends in our character oppose one another. The united self harmonizes its purposes and wills into as nearly one as possible; the disunited self is standing unsteadily astride two or more horses. We all know that it is easy for us to accomplish certain things and difficult to make up our minds to do others. Like and dislike, facility or difficulty are part of each purpose and enter into each will as parts.

Such a view does not commit one to fatalism, at least in conduct. Desiring to accomplish something or desiring to avoid doing something, both of which are usually considered as part of willing, we must seek to find motives and influences that will help us. We must realize that each choice, each act, changes the world for us and every one else and seek to harmonize our choice and acts with the purposes we regard as our best. If we seek to influence others, then this view of the will is the only hopeful one, for if will is a free entity how can it possibly be influenced by another agent? The very essence of freedom is to be noninfluenced. Seeking to galvanize the will of another, there is need to search for the influences that will increase the energy of his better purposes, to "appeal to his better self," meaning that the spurs to his good conduct are applied with greater force, but that first the nature of the particular things that spur him on must be discovered. Praise? Blame? Reward? Punishment? Education? Authority? Logic? Religion? Emotional appeal? Substitution of new motives and associations?

The will is therefore no unit, but a sum total of things operating within the sphere of purpose. Purpose we have defined as arising from instinct and desire and intellectualized and socialized by intelligence, education, training, tradition, etc. Will is therefore best studied under the head of purpose and is an outgrowth of instinct. Each instinct, in its energy, its fierceness, its permanence, has its will. He who cannot desire deeply, in whom some powerful instinct does not surge, cannot will deeply.

If we look at character from the standpoint of emotion, instinct, purpose and intelligence, we find that emotion is an internal discharge of energy, which being FELT by the individual becomes an aim or aversion of his life; that instinctive action is the passing over of a stimulus directly into hereditary conduct along race-old motor pathways for purposes that often enough the individual does not recognize and may even rebel against; that instinct is without reflection, but that purpose, which is an outgrowth of instinct guided and controlled by intelligence, is reflective and self-conscious. Purpose seeks the good of the individual as understood by him and is often against the welfare of the race, whereas instinct seeks the good of the race, often against the welfare of the individual. Intelligence is the path of the stimulus or need cerebrally directed, lengthened out, inhibited, elaborated and checked. Often enough faulty, it is the chief instrument by which man has become the leading figure on the world stage.

CHAPTER VII. EXCITEMENT, MONOTONY AND INTEREST

No matter what happens in the outside world, be it something we see, hear or feel, in any sense-field there is an internal reverberation in our bodies,--excitement. Excitement is the undifferentiated result of stimuli, whether these come from without or from within. For a change in the glands of the body heaps up changes within us, which when felt, become excitement. Thus at the mating period of animals, at the puberty of man, there is a quite evident excitement demonstrated in the conduct of the animal and the adolescent. He who remembers his own adolescence, or who watches the boy or girl of that age, sees the excitement in the readiness to laugh, cry, fight or love that is so striking.

Undoubtedly the mother-stuff of all emotion is the feeling of excitement. Before any emotion reaches its characteristic expression there is the preparatory tension of excitement. Joy, sorrow, anger, fear, wonder, surprise, etc., have in them as a basis the same consciousness of an internal activity, of a world within us beginning to seethe. Heart, lungs, blood stream, the great viscera and the internal glands, cerebrum and sympathetic nervous system, all participate in this activity, and the outward visage of excitement is always the wide-open eye, the slightly parted lips, the flaring nostrils and the slightly tensed muscles of the whole body. Shouts, cries, the waving of arms and legs, taking the specific direction of some emotion, make of excitement a fierce discharger of energy, a fact of great importance in the understanding of social and pathological phenomena. On the other hand, excitement may be so intensely internal that it shifts the blood supply too vigorously from the head and the result is a swoon. This is more especially true of the excitement that accompanies sorrow and fear than joy or anger, but even in these emotions it occurs.

There are some very important phases of excitement that have not been given sufficient weight in most of the discussions.

1. In the very young, excitement is diffuse and spreads throughout the organism. An infant starts with a jump at a sudden sound and shivers at a bright light. A young child is unrestrained and general in his expression of excitement, no matter what emotional direction that excitement takes. Bring about any tension of expectation in a child--have him wait for your head to appear around the corner as you play peek-a-boo, or delay opening the box of candy, or pretend you are one thing or another--and the excitement of the child is manifested in what is known as eagerness. Attention in children is accompanied by excitement and is wearying as a natural result, since excitement, means a physical discharge of energy. A child laughs all over and weeps with his entire body; his anger involves every muscle of his body and his fear is an explosion. The young organism cannot inhibit excitement.

As life goes on, the capacity for localizing or limiting excitement increases. We become better organized, and the disrupting force of a stimulus becomes less. Attention becomes less painful, less tense, i.e., there is less general muscular and emotional reaction. Expectation is less a physical matter--perhaps because we have been so often disappointed--and is more cerebral and the emotions are more reflective and introspective in their expression and less a physical outburst. Indeed, the process often enough goes too far, and we long for the excitement of anticipation and realization. We do not start at a noise, and though a great crowd will "stir our blood" (excitement popularly phrased and accurately), we still limit that excitement so that though we cheer or shout there is a core of us that is quiet.

This is the case in health. In sickness, especially in that condition known as neurasthenia, where the main symptoms cluster around an abnormal liability to fatigue, and also in many other conditions, there is an increase in the diffusion of excitement so that one starts all over at a noise, instead of merely turning to see what it is, so that expectation and attention become painful and fatiguing. Crowds, though usually pleasurable, become too exciting, and there is a sort of confusion resulting because attention and comprehension are interfered with. The neurasthenic finds himself a prey to stimuli, his reaction is too great and he fatigues too readily. He finds sleep difficult because the little noises and discomforts make difficult the relaxation that is so important. The neurasthenic's voluntary attention is lowered because of the excitement he feels when his involuntary attention is aroused.

In the condition called anhedonia, which we shall hear of from time to time, there is a blocking or dropping out of the sense of desire and satisfaction even if through habit one eats, drinks, has sexual relationship, keeps up his work and carries out his plans. This lack of desire for the joys of life is attended by a restlessness, a seeking of excitement for a time, until there arises a curious over-reaction to excitement. The anhedonic patient finds that noises are very troublesome, that he becomes unpleasantly excited over music, that company is distressing because he becomes confused and excited, and crowds, busy scenes and streets are intolerable. Many a hermit, I fancy, who found the sensual and ambitious pleasure of life intolerable, who sought to fly from crowds to the deserts, was anhedonic but he called it renunciation. (Whether one really ever renounces when desire is still strong is a nice question. I confess to some scepticism on this point.)

2. Seeking excitement is one of the great pleasure-trends of life. In moderation, tension, expectation and the diffuse bodily reactions are agreeable; there is a feeling of vigor, the attention is drawn from the self and there is a feeling of being alive that is pleasurable. The tension must not be too long sustained, nor the bodily reaction too intense; relaxation and lowered attention must relieve the excitement from time to time; but with these kept in mind, it is true that Man is a seeker of excitement.

This is a factor neglected in the study of great social phenomena. The growth of cities is not only a result of the economic forces of the time; it is made permanent by the fact that the cities are exciting. The multiplicity and variety of the stimuli of a city--social, sexual, its stir and bustle--make it difficult for those once habituated ever to tolerate the quiet of the country. Excitement follows the great law of stimulation; the same internal effect, the same feeling, requires a greater and greater stimulus, as well as new stimuli. So, the cities grow larger, increase their modes of excitement, and the dweller in the city, unless fortified by a steady purpose, becomes a seeker of excitement.

Not only is excitement pleasurable when reached through the intrinsically agreeable but it can be obtained from small doses of the intrinsically disagreeable. This is the explanation of the pleasure obtained from the gruesome, from the risk of life or limb, or from watching others risk life or limb. Aside from the sense of power obtained by traveling fast, it is the risk, THE SLIGHT FEAR, producing excitement, that makes the speed maniac a menace to the highways. And I think that part of the pleasure obtained from bitter foods is that the disagreeable element is just sufficient to excite the gastro-intestinal tract. The fascination of the horrible lies in the excitement produced, an excitement that turns to horror and disgust if the disagreeable is presented too closely. Thus we can read with pleasurable excitement of things that in their reality would shock us into profoundest pain. The more jaded one is, the more used to excitement, the more he seeks what are, ordinarily, disagreeable methods of excitement. Thus pain in slight degree is exciting, and in the sexual sphere pain is often sought as a means of heightening the pleasure, especially by women and by the roue. I suspect also that the haircloth shirt and the sackcloth and ashes of the anhedonic hermit were painful methods of seeking excitement.

Sometimes pain is used in small amounts to relieve excitement. Thus the man who bites his finger nails to the quick gets a degree of satisfaction from the habit. Indeed, all manner of habitual and absurd movements, from scratching to pacing up and down, are efforts to relieve the tension of excitement. One of my patients under any excitement likes to put his hands in very hot water, and the pain, by its localization, takes away from the diffuse and unpleasant excitement. The diffuse uncontrolled excitement of itching is often relieved by painful biting and scratching. Here is an effort to localize a feeling and thus avoid diffuse discomfort, a sort of homeopathic treatment.

3. As a corollary to the need of excitement and its pleasure is the reaction to monotony. Monotony is one of the most dreaded factors in the life of man. The internal resources of most of us are but small; we can furnish excitement and interest from our own store for but a short time, and there then ensues an intense yearning for something or somebody that will take up our attention and give a direction to our thought and action. Under monotony the thought turns inward, there is daydreaming and introspection,[1] which are pleasurable only at certain times for most of us and which grow less pleasurable as we grow older. Watch the faces of people thinking as they travel alone in cars,--and rarely does one see a happy face. The lines of the face droop and sighs are frequent. Monotony and melancholy are not far apart; monotony and a restless seeking for excitement are....