almost synonymous. Of course, what constitutes monotony will differ in the viewpoint of each person, for some are so constituted and habituated (for habit is a great factor) that it takes but few stimuli to arouse a well-sustained interest, and others need or think they need many things, a constantly changing set of circumstances for pleasure.

[1] Stanley Hall, in his book "Adolescence," lays great stress on monotony and its effects. See also Graham Wallas' "The Great Society."

Restlessness, eager searching for change, intense dissatisfaction are the natural fruit of monotony. Here is an important item in the problems of our times. Side by side with growth of the cities and their excitement is the growing monotony of most labor. The factory, with its specialized production, reduces the worker to a cog in the machinery. In some factories, in the name of efficiency, the windows are whitewashed so that the outside world is shut out and talking is prohibited; the worker passes his day performing his unvaried task from morning to night. Under such circumstances there arises either a burning sense of wrong, of injustice, of slavery and a thwarting of the individual dignity, or else a yearning for the end of the day, for dancing, drinking, gambling, for anything that offers excitement. Or perhaps both reactions are combined. Our industrial world is poorly organized economically, as witness the poor distribution of wealth and the periodic crises, but it is abominably organized from the standpoint of the happiness of the worker. Of this, more in another place.

Monotony brings fatigue, because there is a shutting out of the excitement that acts as an antidote to fatigue-feeling. A man who works without fatigue six days a week is tired all day Sunday and longs for Monday. The modern housewife,[1] with her four walls and the unending, uninteresting tasks, is worn out, and her fatigue reaction is the greater the more her previous life has been exciting and varied. Fatigue often enough is present not because of the work done but because the STIMULUS TO WORK HAS DISAPPEARED. Monotony is an enemy of character. Variety, in its normal aspect, is not only the spice of life; it is a great need. Stabilization of purpose and work are necessary, but a standardization that stamps out the excitement of variety is a deadly blow to human happiness.

[1] See my book "The Nervous Housewife!"

Under monotony certain types of personalities develop an intense inner life, which may be pathological, or it may be exceedingly fruitful of productive thought.

Some build up a delusional thought and feeling. For delusion merely means uncorrected thought and belief, and we can only correct by contact and collision. The whole outer world may vanish or become hostile and true mental disease develop. Perhaps it is more nearly correct to say that minds predisposed to mental disease find in monotony a circumstance favoring disease.

On the other hand, a vigorous mind shut out from outer stimuli[1] finds in this circumstance the time to develop leisurely, finds a freedom from distraction that leads to clear views of life and a proper expression. A periodic retirement from the busy, too-busy world is necessary for the thinker that he may digest his material, that he may strip away unessential beliefs, that he may find what it is he really needs, strives for and ought to have.

[1] Perhaps this is why real genius does not flourish in our crowded, over-busy days, despite the great amount of talent.

4. Here we come to another corollary of the need for excitement, the need of relaxation. At any rate, satisfaction and pleasure need periods of hunger in order to be felt. In the story of Buddha he is represented as being shielded from all sorrow and pain, living a life filled with pleasure and excitement, yet he sought out pain. So excitement, if too long continued--or rather if a situation that produces excitement of a pleasurable kind be too long endured--will result in boredom. "Things get to be the same," whether it be the excitement of love, the city, sports or what not. This is a basic law of all pleasures. In order that life may have zest, that excitement may be easily and pleasurably evoked and by normal means, we need relaxation, periods free from excitement, or we must pass on to a costly chase for excitement that brings breakdown of the character.

5. If the seeking of excitement, as such, is one of the prime pleasures of life, organized excitement in the form of interest is the directing and guiding principle of activity. At the outset of life interest is in the main involuntary and is aroused by the sights, sounds and happenings of the outer world. As time goes on, as the organism develops, as memories of past experiences become active, as peculiarities of personality develop, and as instincts reach activity, interest commences to take definite direction, to become canalized, so to speak. In fact, the development of interest is from the diffuse involuntary form of early childhood to a specialization, a condensation into definite voluntary channels. This development goes on unevenly, and is a very variable feature in the lives of all of us. Great ability expresses itself in a sustained interest; a narrow character is one with overdeformed, too narrow interest; failure is often the retention of the childish character of diffuse, involuntary interest. And the capacity to sustain interest depends not only on the special strength of the various abilities of the individual, but remarkably on his energy and health. Sustained "voluntary" interest is far more fatiguing than involuntary interest, and where fatigue is already present it becomes difficult and perhaps impossible. Thus after much work, whether physical or mental, during and after illness--especially in influenza, in neurasthenic states generally, or where there is an inner conflict--interest in its adult form is at a low ebb.

There are two main directions which interest may take, because there are two worlds in which we live. There is the inner world of our feelings, our thoughts, our desires and our struggles,[1]--and there is the outer world, with its people, its things, its hostilities, its friendships, its problems and facts, its attractions and repulsions. Man divides his interest between the two worlds, for in both of them are the values of existence. The chief source of voluntary interest lies in desire and value, and though these are frequently in coalescence, so that the thing we desire is the thing we value, more often they are not in coalescence and then we have the divided self that James so eloquently describes. So there are types of men to whom the outer world, whether it is in its "other people," or its things, or its facts, or its attractions and repulsions, is the chief source of interest and these are the objective types, exteriorized folks, whose values lie in the goods they can accumulate, or the people they can help, or the external power they exercise, or the knowledge they possess of the phenomena of the world, or the things they can do with their hands. These are on the whole healthy-minded, finding in their pursuits and interest a real value, rarely stopping from their work to ask, "Why do I work? To what end? Are things real?" Contrasted with them are those whose gaze is turned inward, who move through life carrying on the activities of the average existence but absorbed in their thoughts, their emotions, their desires, their conflicts,--perhaps on their sensations and coenaesthetic streams. Though there is no sharp line of division between the two types, and all of us are blends in varying degrees, these latter are the subjective introspective folk, interiorized, living in the microcosmos, and much more apt than the objective minded to be "sick souls" obsessed with "whys and wherefores." They are endlessly putting to themselves unanswerable questions, are apt to be the mentally unbalanced, or, but now and then, they furnish the race with one whose answers to the meaning of life and the direction of efforts guide the steps of millions.

[1] Herbert Spencer's description of these two worlds is the best in literature. "Principles of Psychology."

There is a good and a bad side to the two types of interest. The objective minded conquer the world in dealing with what they call reality. They bridge the water and dig up the earth; they invent, they plow, they sell and buy, they produce and distribute wealth, and they deal with the education that teaches how to do all these things. They find in the outer world an unalterable sense of reality, and they tend rather naively to accept themselves, their interests and efforts as normal. In their highest forms they are the scientist, reducing to law this tangle of outer realities, or the artist, who though he is a hybrid with deep subjective and objective interest, nevertheless remodels the outer world to his concept of beauty. These objective-minded folk, the bulk of the brawn and in lesser degree of the brain of the world, are apt to be "materialists," to value mainly quantity and to be self-complacent. Of course, since no man is purely objective, there come to them as to all moments of brooding over the eggs of their inner life, when they wonder whether they have reached out for the right things and whether the goods they seek or have are worth while. Such introspective interest comes on them when they are alone and the outer world does not reach in, or when they have witnessed death and misfortune, or when sickness and fatigue have reduced them to a feeling of weakness. For it is true that the objective minded are more often robust, hearty, with more natural lust, passion and desire than your introspectionists, more virile and less sensitive to fine impressions.

The introspectionists, culling, chewing the cud of their experiences and sensations, find in their own reactions the realities. In fact, interested in consciousness, they are sometimes bold enough to deny the realities of anything else. Where the others build bridges, they build up the ideas of eternal good and bad, of beauty, of the transitory and the permanent, of now and eternity. They deal with abstract ideas, and they luxuriate in emotions. They build up beliefs where thought is the only reality and is omnipotent. They are the founders of religious, cults, fads and fancies. They inculcate the permanent ideals, because they are the only ones who interest themselves in something beside the show of the universe.

But too often they are the sick folk. Without the hardihood and the energy to conquer the outer world, they fall back on a world requiring less energy to study, less energy to conquer. Sometimes they develop a sense of unreality which vitiates all their efforts to succeed; or they become hypochondriacs, feeling every flutter of the heart and every vague ache and pain. The Hamlet doubting type is an introspectionist and oscillates in his mind from yea to nay on every question. Such as this type develop ideas of compensation and power and become cranks and fake prophets. Or else, and this we shall see again, they become imbued with a sense of inferiority, feel futile as against the red-blooded and shrink from others through pain.

Everywhere one sees these phases of interest in antagonism and cooperation. The "healthy-minded" acknowledge the leadership of a past introspectionist but despise the contemporary one as futile and light-headed. The introverted (to use a Freudian term) call the others Philistines, and mock them for their lack of spiritual insight, yet in everything they do they depend for aid and sustenance upon them. Introspection gives no exact measurements of value, but it gives value and without it, there can be no wisdom. But always it needs the correction of the outer world to keep it healthy.

While we have dealt here with the extremes of extrospection and introspection, it is safe to say that in the vast majority of people there is a definite and unassailable interest in both of these directions. Interest in others is not altruism and interest in the self is not self-interest or egoism. But, on the whole, they who are not interested in others never become philanthropists; they who are not interested in things never become savants; and they who do not dig deep into themselves are not philosophers. There are, therefore, certain practical aspects to the study of interest which are essential parts of the knowledge of character.

1. Is the interest of the one studied controlled by some purpose or purposes, or is it diffuse, involuntary, not well directed?

2. Is it narrow, so that it excludes the greater part of the world, or is it easily evoked by a multiplicity of things? In the breadth of interest is contained the breadth of character, but not necessarily its intensity or efficiency. There are people of narrow but intense successful interest, and others of broad, intense successful interest, but one meets, too frequently, people quickly interested in anything, but not for long or in a practical fashion. There is a certain high type of failure that has this difficulty.

3. Is its main trend outward, and if so, is there some special feature or features of the world that excite interest?

4. Is its main trend inward, and is he interested in emotions, thoughts, sensations,--In his mind or his body, in ideas or in feelings? For it is obvious that the man interested in his ideas is quite a different person than he who is keenly aware of his emotions, and that the hypochondriac belongs in a class by himself.

5. If there are special interests, how do these harmonize with ability and with well-defined plan and purpose. It is not sufficient to be keenly interested, though that is necessary. One of the greatest disharmonies of life is when a man is interested when he is not proficient, though usually proficiency develops interest because it gives superiority and achievement.

Interest is heightened by the success of others, for we are naturally competitive creatures, or by admiration for those successful in any line of activity. The desire to emulate or excel or to get power is a mighty factor in the maintenance of interest. "See how nicely Georgie does it," is a formula for both children and adults, and if omitted, interest would not be easily aroused or maintained. In other words, the competitive feeling and desire in its largest sense are necessary for the concentrated excitement of interest. So any scheme of social organization that proposes to do away with competition and desire for superiority labors under the psychological handicap of removing the basis of much of the interest in work and study and must find some substitute for the lacking incentives before it can seriously ask for the adherence of those with a realistic view of human nature. One might, it is true, establish traditions of work, bring about a livelier social conscience as to service, but these are not sufficient to arouse real interest in the vast majority of the race. Here and there one finds a man in whom interest is aroused by the unsolved problem, by the reward of fame and the pleasure of achievement, but such persons are rare. The average man (and woman), in my experience, loses interest in anything that does not directly benefit him or in which his personal competitive feeling is not aroused. Interest becomes vague and ill-defined the farther the matter concerned is from the direct personal good of the individual, and proportionately it becomes difficult to sustain it.

That is why in our day "dollars and cents" appeals to interest are made; away with abstracts, away with sentiment; the publicity man working for a good cause now uses the methods of the man selling shoes or automobiles: he attempts to show that one's interest and cooperation are demanded and necessary because one's direct personal welfare is involved. Whether or not ethically justifiable, it is a recognition of the fact that interest is aroused and sustained, for the majority, by some direct personal involvement.

Thus in education, a fact to be learned, or a subject to be studied, should be first sketched or placed in some use value to the student. Knowledge for knowledge's sake is appealing only to the rare scholar, he who palpitates with interest over the relationship of things to one another, he who seeks to discover values. Now and then one finds such a person, one thrown into sustained excitement by learning, but the great majority of students, whether in medicine, law or mathematics, are "practical," meaning that their interests are relatively narrow and the good they seek an immediate one to be reaped by themselves. Recognizing this fact in the abstract, the most of teaching is conducted on the plane of the real scholar, and the average student is left to find values for himself. From first to last in teaching I would emphasize usevalue; true, I would seek to broaden the conception of usevalue, so that a student would see that usefulness is a social value, but no matter how abstract and remote the subject, its relationship to usefulness would be preliminary and continuously emphasized in order to sustain interest.

Interest, like any other form of excitement, needs new stimuli and periods of relaxation. People under the driving force of necessity continue at their work for longer periods of time and more constantly than is psychologically possible for the maintaining of interest. So it disappears, and then fatigue sets in at once,--a fatigue that is increased by the effort to work and the regret and rebellion at the change. The memory seems to suffer and a fear is aroused that "I am losing my memory"; the threat to success brings anguish and often the health becomes definitely impaired. Overconcentrated, too long maintenance of interest brings apathy,--an apathy that cannot be dispelled except by change and rest. Here there is wide individual variation from those who need frequent change and relaxation periods to those who can maintain interest in a task almost indefinitely.

A hobby, or a secondary object of interest, is therefore a real necessity to the man or woman battling for a purpose, whose interest must be sustained. It acts to relax, to shift the excitement and to allow something of the feeling of novelty as one reapproaches the task.

As a matter of fact, excitement and interest are not easily separated from their derivatives and elaborations. Desire, purpose, ambition, imply a force; interest implies a direction for that force. Interest may be as casual as curiosity aroused by the novel and strange, or as deep-seated and specialized as a talent. The born teacher is he who knows how to arouse and maintain and direct interest; the born achiever is the man whose interest, quickly aroused, is easily maintained and directs effort. To find the activity that is natively interesting and yet suited to one's ability is the aim in vocational guidance.

There are some curious pathological aspects to interest --"conflict" aspects of the subject. A man finds himself palpitatingly interested in what is horrible to him, as a bird is fascinated by a snake. Sex abnormalities have a marvelous interest to everybody, although many will not admit it. Stories of crime and bloodshed are read by everybody with great avidity,--and people will go miles to the site of grim tragedy. Court rooms are packed whenever a horrible murder is aired or a nauseating divorce scandal is tried. A chaste woman will read, on the sly and with inner rebellion, as many pornographic tales as she can get hold of, and the "carefully" brought up, i. e., those whose interest has been carefully directed, suddenly become interested in the forbidden; they seek to peek through windows when they should be looking straight ahead.

As a matter of fact, interest is as much inhibited as conduct. "You mustn't ask about that" is the commonest answer a child gets. "That's a naughty question to ask" runs it a close second. Can one inhibit interest, which is the excitement caused by the unknown? The answer is that we can, because a large part of education is to do this very thing. "Can we inhibit any interest without injuring all interests?" is a question often put. My answer would be that it is socially necessary that interest in certain directions be inhibited, whether it hurts the individual or not. But the interest in a forbidden direction can be shifted to a permitted direction, and this should be done. In my opinion, sex interest can be so handled and a blunt thwarting of this interest should be avoided. Some explanation leading the child to larger, less personal aspects of sex should be given.

The interest of the child is often thwarted through sheer laziness. "Don't bother me" is the reply of a parent shirking a sacred duty. Interest is the beginning of knowledge, and where it is discouraged knowledge is discouraged. Any inquiry can be met on the child's plane of intelligence and comprehension, and the parent must arrange for the gratification of this fundamental desire. How? By a question hour each day, perhaps a children's hour, a home university period where the vital interest of the child will be satisfied.

To return to the morbid interests: do they arise from secret morbid desires? The Freudian answer to that would be yes. And so would many another answer. It is the answer in many cases, especially where the desire is not so much morbid as forbidden. The virgin, the continent who are intensely interested in sex are not morbid, even though they have been forbidden to think of a natural craving and appetite. But when the interest is for the horrible it is often the case that the excitement aroused by the subject is pleasurable, because it is a mild excitement and does not quite reach disgust. Confronted with the real perversity, the disgust aroused would quite effectually conquer interest.

And here is a fundamental law of interest: it must lead to a profitable, pleasurable result or else it tends to disappear. If this is too bold a statement, let me qualify it by stating that a profitable, pleasurable result must be foreseen or foreseeable. Either in some affective state, or in some tangible good, interest seeks fulfillment. Disappointment is the foe of interest, and too prolonged a "vestibule of satisfaction" (to use Hocking's phrase) destroys or impairs interest.

CHAPTER VIII. THE SENTIMENTS OF LOVE, FRIENDSHIP, HATE, PITY AND DUTY. COMPENSATION AND ESCAPE

I shall ignore the complexities that arise when we seek to organize our reactions into various groups by making a simple classification of feeling, for the purposes of this book. There is a primary result of any stimulation, whether from within ourselves or without, which we have called excitement. This excitement may have a pleasurable or an unpleasurable quality, and we cannot understand just what is back of pleasure and pain in this sense. Such an explanation, that pleasure is a sign of good for the organism and pain a sign of bad, is an error in that often an experience that produces pleasure is a detriment and an injury. If pleasure were an infallible sign of good, no books on character, morals or hygiene would need to be written.

This primary excitement, when associated with outer events or things, becomes differentiated into many forms. Curiosity (or interest) is the focusing of that excitement on particular objects or ends, in order that the essential value or meaning of that object or individual become known. Curiosity and interest develop into the seeking of experience and the general intellectual pursuits. We have already discussed this phase of excitement.

An object of interest may then evoke further feeling. It may be one's baby, or one's father or a kinsman or a female of the same species. A type of feeling FAVORABLE to the object is aroused, called "tender feeling," which is associated with deep-lying instincts and has endless modifications and variations. Perhaps its great example is the tender feeling of the mother for the baby, a feeling so strong that it leads to conduct of self- sacrifice; conduct that makes nothing of privation, suffering, even death, if these will help the object of the tender feeling, the child. Tender feeling of this type, which we call love, is a theme one cannot discuss dryly, for it sweeps one into reveries; it suggests softly glowing eyes, not far from tears, tenderly curved lips, just barely smiling, and the soft humming of the mother to the babe in her arms. It is the soft feeling which is the unifying feeling, and when it reaches a group they become gentle in tone and manners and feel as one. The dream of the reformer has always been the extension of this tender feeling from the baby, from the child and the helpless, to all men, thus abolishing strife, conquering hate, unifying man. This type of love is also paternal, though it is doubtful whether as such it ever reaches the intensity it does in the mother. By a sort of association it spreads to all children, to all little things, to all helpless things, except where there exists a counter feeling already well established.

Though typical in the mother, child relationship, tender feeling or love, exists in many other relationships. The human family, with its close association, its inculcated unity of interests, in its highest form is based on the tender feeling. The noble ideal of the brotherhood of man comes from an extension of the feeling found in brothers. The brotherly feeling is emphasized, though the sisterly feeling is fully as strong, merely because the male member of genus homo has been the articulate member, he has written and talked as if he, and not his sister, were the important human personage. So fraternal feeling is tender feeling, existing between members of the same family, or the love that we conceive ought to be present. Is such love instinctive, as is the maternal love? If it is, that instinct is very much weaker, and hostile feeling, indifference, rivalry, may easily replace it. We rarely conceive of a mortal world where so intense a love as that of the mother will be the common feeling; all we dare hope for is a world in which there will be a fine fraternal feeling.

Fraternal feeling is born of association together, any task undertaken en masse, any living together under one roof. Even when men sit down to eat at the same table, it tends to appear. So college life, the barracks, secret orders, awaken it, but here, as always, while it links together the associated, it shuts out as non-fraternal those not associated.

What we call friendly feeling is a less vehement, more intellectualized form of tender feeling. It demands a certain equality and a certain similarity in tastes, though some friendships are noted for the dissimilarity of the friends. Friendship lives on reciprocal benefits, tangible or intangible, though sentimentalists may take exception to this. Primary in it is the good opinion of the friends and interest in one another; we cannot be friends with those who think we are foolish or mean or bad. We ALLOW a friend to say that we have acted wrongly because we think he has our interest at heart, because he has shown that he has this interest at heart, though his saying so sometimes strains the friendship for a while. Friendship ideally expects no material benefits, but it lives on the spiritual benefit of sympathy and expressed interest and the flattery of a taste in common. It is a unification of individuals that has been glorified as the perfect relationship, since it has no classifiable instinct behind it and is in a sense democracy at its noblest. Friendship is easiest formed in youth, because men are least selfish, least specialized at that time. As time goes on, alas, our own interests and purposes narrow down in order that we may succeed; there is less time and energy for friendship.

Sex love is only in part made up of tender feeling. Passion, admiration of beauty, desire of possession, the love of conquest, take away from the "other" feeling that is the basis of tenderness or true love. We desire so much for ourselves in sex love that we have not so much capacity for tender feeling as we usually think we have. The protests of eternal devotion and unending self-sacrifice are sincere enough but they have this proviso in the background: "You must give yourself to me." If the lovers can also be friends, if they have a real harmony of tastes, desires and ambitions, if they can recede their ego feeling, know how to compromise, then this added to sex feeling makes the most genuinely satisfying of all human relations, or at least the most reciprocal. But the two human beings who fall in love are rarely enough alike, and their relationship is rarely one of equality; traditional duties and rights are not equal; they will seek different things, and their relationship is too close and intimate to be an easy one to maintain. Sex love and marriage are different matters, for though they may be the same, too often they are not. Rarely does sex love maintain itself without marriage and marriage colors over sex love with parental feelings, financial interests, home and its emotions, etc. In sex gratification[1] there is the danger of all sensuous pleasure: that a periodic appetite gratified often leaves behind it an ennui, a distaste,--sometimes reaching dislike--of the entire act and associations.

[1] Stanley Hall says that after sex gratification there is "taedium vitae," weariness of life. In unsanctioned sex gratification this is extreme and takes on either bitter self-reproach or else a hate of the partner. But this is due to the inner conflict rather than the sex act.

Is all tender feeling, all love, sexual in its essential nature? The Freudians say yes to this, or what amounts to yes. All mother love arises from the sex sphere, and it cannot be denied that in the passionate desire to fondle, to kiss and even to bite there is something very like the excitement of sex. But there is something very different in the wish for self-sacrifice, the pity for the helpless state, the love of the littleness. Women, when they love men, often add maternal feeling to it, but mainly they love their strength, size and vigor; and there tenderness and passion differ. Certainly there seems little of the sexual in the love of a father for his baby,[1] though the Freudians do not hesitate in their use of the term homosexual. Apparently all children have incestuous desire for their parents, if we are to trust Freud. Without entering into detailed reasoning, I disavow any truly sexual element in tender feeling. It is part of the reception we give to objects having a favorable relation to ourselves. Indeed, we give it to our houses, our dogs, our cattle; our pipes are hallowed by friendly association, and so with our books, our clothes and our homes. We extend it in deep, full measure to the very rocks and rills of our native land or to some place where we spent happy or tender days. Tender feeling, love, is inclusive of much of the sex emotion, and the characteristic mistake of the Freudians of identifying somewhat similar things has here been made.

[1] It's a very difficult world to live in, if we are to trust the Freudians. If your boy child loves his mother, that's heterosexual; if he loves his father, that's homosexual; and the love of a girl child for her parents simply reverses the above formula. If your wife says of the baby boy, "How I love him! He looks just like my father," be careful; that's a daughter-father complex of a dangerous kind and means the most unhallowed things, and may cause her to have a nervous breakdown some day!

Love, then, is this tender feeling made purposive and intelligent. It is a sentiment, in Shand's phrase, and seeks the good of its object. It may be narrow, it may be broad, it may be intense or feeble, but in its organized sense it plans, fights and cherishes. It has organized with it the primary emotions,--fear if the object is in danger, or anger is evoked according to the circumstances; joy if the object of love is enhanced or prospers; sorrow if it is lost or injured under circumstances that make the lover helpless. Love is not only the tenderest feeling, but it is also the most heroic and desperate fighter in behalf of the loved one. Here we are face to face with the contradictions that we always meet when we personify a quality or make an abstraction. Love may do the most hateful things; love may stunt, the character of the lover and the beloved. In other words, love, tender feeling, must be conjoined with intelligence, good judgment, determination and fairness before it is useful. It would be a nice question to determine just how much harm misguided love has done.

What is pity? Though objects of love always elicit pity, when helpless or injured, objects of pity are not necessarily objects of love. In fact, we may pity through contempt. Objective pity is a type of tender feeling in which there is little or no self-feeling. We do not extend the ego to the piteous object. We desire to help, even though the object of pity is an enemy or disgusting. One of the commonest struggles of life is that between self-interest and pity,--and the selfish resent any situation that arouses their pity, because they dislike to give. Pity tends to disappear from the life of the soldier and is, indeed, a trait he does not need; in the lives of the strong and successful, pity is apt to be a hindering quality. In a world in which competition is keen, the cooperative gentle qualities hinder success. The weak seek the pity of others; they need it; and the pity-seeker is a very distinct type. The strong and proud hate to be pitied, and when wounded they hide, shun their friends and keep the semblance of strength with a brave face. Pity directed toward oneself as the object is self-pity,--a quality found in children and in a certain amiable, weak, egoistic type, whose eyes are always full of tears as they talk of themselves. Of course, at times, we are all prone to this vice of character, but there are some chronically afflicted.

Certain so-called sentimentalists are those who die, tribute their pity in an erratic fashion. These are the vegetarians who are sad because it is wrong to kill for food; yet they wear without compunction the leather of cattle who have neither committed suicide nor died of old age. And the anti-vivisectionists view without any stir of pity the children of the slums and the sick of all kinds. Pity raises man to the divine but, like all the gentle qualities, it needs guidance by reason and common sense before it is of any value.

Just as there are objects and individuals recognized or believed to be as somehow favorable and who evoke tender feeling, so there are objects and individuals regarded as unfavorable, perhaps dangerous, who arouse aversion and hatred. The feeling thus produced is the other great sentiment of life, which on the whole organizes character and conduct on a great plane. Hatred, a decidedly primitive reaction, still is powerful in the world and is back of dissension of all kinds, from lawsuits to war. When one hates he is attached to the hated object in a fashion just the reverse of the attachment of love; joy, anger, fear and sorrow arise under exactly the opposite circumstances, and the aim and end of hate is to block, thwart and destroy the hated one. The earlier history of man lays emphasis on the activities of hate,--war, feats of arms, individual feuds. Hate, unlike love, needs no moral code or teaching to bring it into activity; it springs into being and constantly needs repression. Unlikeness alone often brings it to life; to be too different from others is recognized as a legitimate reason for hatred. The most important cause is conflict of interest and wounding of self-feeling and pride. Revengeful feeling, fostered by tradition and "patriotism," caused many wars and in its lesser spheres of operation is back of murders, assaults, insults and the lesser categories of injuries of all kinds.

The prime emotion of hatred is anger; in its less intense aspect of aversion it is disgust. The aim and end of anger is destruction of the offending object; the aim and end of aversion is removal, ejection. Hate may be and often is a noble sentiment, though the trend of modern thought, as it minimizes personal responsibility, is to eliminate hate against persons and intellectualize hate so that it is reserved for the battle against ideas. Whether you can really summon all your effort against any one, against his plans, opinions and actions, unless you have built up the steady sentiment of hatred for him, is a nice psychological question. Hate is most intense in little people, in persons absolutely convinced that their interests, opinions and plans are sacred, sure of their superiority and righteousness. Once let insight into yourself, your weakness and your real motives creep into your mind and your hate against opponents and obstructors must lessen. Those who realize most the fallibility of men and women, to whom Pilate's question "What is truth?" has added to it a more sceptical question, "What is right," find it hard to hate. Therefore, such persons, the broad-minded and the most deeply wise, are not the best fighters for a cause, since their efforts are lessened by sympathy for the opponent. Here is the marvel of Abraham Lincoln; rich with insight, he could hate slavery and secession and yet not hate the southern people. In that division of himself lies his greatness and his suffering.

The disappearance of personal hate from the world can only come when men realize the essential unity of mankind. For part of the psychological origin of hate lies in unlikeness. Great unlikeness in color and facial line seems to act as a challenge to the feeling of superiority. Wherever a "different" group challenges another's superiority, or enters into active competition for the goods of life, there hate enters in its most virulent form. The disappearance of the "unlike" feeling is very slow and is hindered by the existence of small "particular" groups. Little nationalities,[1] small sects, even exclusive clubs and circles are means of generating difference and thus hate.

[1] The more nationalities, each with its claim to a great destiny, the more wars! There is the essential danger and folly of tribal patriotism.

We shall not enter into the origin of hate through the danger to purpose, through rivalry among those not separated by unlikeness. Hate seems to be a chronic anger, or at least that emotion kept at a more or less constant level by perception of danger and the threat at personal dignity and worth. Obstructed love or passion and the feeling of "wrong," i. e., injury done that was not merited, that the personal conscience does not justify, furnish the most virulent types of hatred. "Love thine enemies" is still an impossible injunction for most men.

We cannot hope to trace the feeling of revenge in its effects on human conduct. Though at present religion and law both prohibit revengeful acts, the desire "to get even" flames high in almost every human breast under all kinds of injury or insult. This form of hate may express itself crudely in the vendetta of the Sicilian, the feud of the Tennessee mountaineer, or the assault and battery of an aggrieved husband; it is behind the present-day conflict in Ireland, and it threatened Europe for forty years after the Franco-Prussian War, --and no man knows how profoundly it will influence future world affairs because of the Great War. Often it disguises itself as justice, the principle of the thing, in those who will not admit revenge as a motive; and the eclipsed and beaten take revenge in slander, innuendo and double-edged praise. To some revenge is a devil to be fought out of their hearts; to others it is a god that guides every act. We may define nobility of character as the withdrawal from revenge as a motive and the substitution for it of justice.

Some hatred expresses itself openly and fearlessly and as such gains some respect, even from its own object. Other hatred plots and schemes, the intelligence lends itself to the plans completely and the whole personality suffers in consequence. Some hatred, weak and without self-confidence, or seeking the effect of surprise, is hypocritical, dissimulates, affects friendly feeling, rubs its hands over insults and awaits the opportune moment. This type is associated in all minds with a feeling of disgust, for at bottom we rather admire the "good" hater.

We have spoken of these three specialized and directed outgrowths of excitement, interest, love and hatred as if they were primarily directed to the outside world, though in a previous chapter we discussed the introspective interest. What shall we call the love and hatred a man has for himself? Is the self-regarding sentiment any different than the sentiment of love for others? Is that hate and disgust we feel for ourselves, or for some action or thought, different from the hate and disgust we have for others?

Judged by Shand's dicta that anger and fear are aroused if the object of love is threatened, joy is aroused as it prospers, and sorrow if it is deeply injured or lost, self-love remarkably resembles other-love. The pride we take in our own achievements is unalloyed by jealousy, and there is always a trace of jealousy in the pride we take in the achievements of others, but there is no difference in the pride itself. There is no essential difference in the "good" we seek for ourselves and in the good we seek for others, for what we seek will depend on our idea of "good." Thus the ambitious mother seeks for her daughter a rich husband and the idealist seeks for his son a career of devotion to the ideal. And the sensualist devoted to the good of his belly and his pocket loves his child and shows it by feeding and enriching him.

There seems to be lacking, however, the glow of tender feeling in self-love. The projection of the self-interest to others has a passion, a melting in it that self-love never seems to possess, though it may be constant and ever-operating. Self-regard, self-admiration or conceit may be very high and deeply felt, but though more common than real admiration for others, it seldom reaches the awe and reverence that the projected emotion reaches.

In mental disease, of the type known as Maniac Depressive insanity, there is a curious oscillation of self-love and self-admiration. This disease is cyclic, in that two opposing groups of symptoms tend to appear and displace each other. In the manic, or excited state, there is greatly heightened activity with correspondingly heightened feeling of power. Self-love and admiration reach absurd levels: one is the most beautiful, the richest and wisest of persons, infallible, irresistible, aye, perhaps God or Christ. Sometimes the feeling of grandeur, the euphoria, is less fantastic and the patient imagines himself a great inventor, a statesman of power and wisdom, a writer of renown, etc. Suddenly, or perhaps gradually, the change comes; self-feeling drops into an abyss. "I am the most miserable of persons, the vilest sinner, hated and rightly by God and man, cause of suffering and misery. I am no good, no use, a horrible odor issues from me, I am loathsome to look at, etc., etc." Desperate suicidal attempts are made, and all the desires that tend to preserve the individual disappear, including appetite for food and drink, the power to sleep. It is the most startling of transitions; one can hardly realize that the dejected, silent person, sitting in a corner, hiding his face and hardly breathing, is the same individual who lately tore around the wards, happy, dancing, singing and boasting of his greatness of power. Indeed, is he the same individual? No wonder the ancients regarded such insanity as a possession by an evil spirit. We of a later day who deal with this disease on the whole are inclined to the belief that some internal factor of a physical kind is responsible, some neuronic shift, or some strange, visceral endocrinal disorder.

While self-hate in this pathological aspect is relatively uncommon, in every person there are self-critical, self-condemning activities which sometimes for short periods of time reach self-hatred and disgust. McDougall makes a good deal of the self-abasing instinct which makes us lower ourselves gladly and willingly. This seems to me to be an aspect of the emotion of admiration and wonder, for we do not wish ordinarily to kneel at the feet of the insignificant, debased; or it is an aspect of fear and the effort to obtain conciliation and pity. But the establishment of ideals for ourselves to which we are not faithful brings with it a disgust and loathing for self that is extremely painful and leads to a desire for penance of any kind In order that we may punish ourselves and feel that we have made amends. The capacity for self-hate and self-disgust depends largely upon the development of these ideals and principles of conscience, of expectation of the self. Frequently there is an overrigidity, a ceaseless self-examination that now and then produces miracles of character and achievement but more often brings the breakdown of health. This is the seeker of perfection in himself, who will not compromise with his instincts and his human flesh. There seekers of perfection are among the noblest of the race, admired in the abstract but condemned by their friends as "too good," "impractical," as possessors of the "New England conscience." One of the effects of a Puritanical bringing-up is a belief that pleasure is unworthy, especially in the sex field and even in marriage. Now and then one meets a patient caught between perfectly proper desire and an obsession that such pleasure is debasing; and a feeling of self-disgust and self-hatred results that is the more tragic since it is useless.

There are those in whom self-love and self-esteem is at a lower pressure than with the average man, just as there are those in whom it is at a much higher pressure. Such people, when fatigued or when subject to the hostile or even non-friendly opinion of others, become so-called self-conscious, i. e., are afflicted with fear and a feeling of inferiority. This may deepen into self-contempt and self-hatred. Part of what is called confidence in oneself is self-esteem, and under fatigue, illness, after punishment of a physical or mental nature, it is apt to disappear. Very distressing is this in those who have been accustomed to courage and self-confidence, perhaps whose occupation makes these qualities necessary. Soldiers, after gassing or cerebral concussion, men completely without introspection, fearless and gay with assurance, become apprehensive, self-analytical and without the least faith in themselves, so that they approach their work in fear. So with men who work in high places or where there is risk, such as steeplejacks, bridge builders, iron workers, engineers; let an accident happen to them, or let there occur an exhausting disease with its aftermath of neurasthenia, and the self-esteem and self-confidence disappear so that in many cases they have to give up their job.

Because self-disgust and hatred are so painful, compensatory "mechanisms" have been set up. There is in many people a tendency to project outward the blame for those acts or thoughts which they dislike. In the pathological field we get those delusions of influence that are so common. Thus a patient will attribute his obscene thoughts and words to a hypnotic effect of some person or group of persons and saves his own face by the delusion. In lesser pathological measure, men have fiercely preached against the snares and wiles of women, refusing to recognize that the turmoil of unwelcome desire into which they were thrown was internal in the greater part of its origin and that the woman often knew little or not at all of the effect she helped produce. One of the outstanding features in the history of the race has been this transfer of blame from the desire of men to the agent which aroused them. Of course, women have played on the desires of men, but even where this was true the blame for VULNERABILITY has seldom been fully accepted. Whenever any one has been "weak" or "foolish" or "sinful," his mind at once seeks avenues of escape from the blame, from the painful feeling of inferiority and self-reproach. The avenue of escape selected may be to blame others as tempting or not warning and not teaching, may become entirely delusional, or it may take the religious form of confession, expiation and repentance. There are some so hardy in their self-esteem that they never suffer, never seek any escape from self-reproach, largely because they never feel it; and others, though they seek escape, are continually dragged by conscience to self-imposed torture. Most of us seek explanations for our unwelcome conduct on a plane most favorable to our self-esteem, and there arises an elaborate system of self-disguise, expiation, repentance and confession that is in a large part the real inner life of most of us. To explain failure especially are the avenues of escape utilized. Wounded in his self-esteem, rare is the one who frankly acknowledges inferiority. "Pull," "favoritism," "luck," explain the success of others as do the reverse circumstances explain our failures to ourselves. Sickness explains it, and so the defeated search in themselves for the explanation which will in part compensate them. Escape from inferiority follows many avenues, --by actual development of superiority, by denying real superiority to others, or by explaining the inferiority on some acceptable basis.

Here (as elsewhere in character) there is evident an organic and a social basis for feeling. We have not emphasized sufficiently a peculiarity of all human feeling, all emotions, all sentiments. They have their value to the individual in organizing his conduct, his standard of value. They are of enormous importance socially. A great law of feeling of whatever kind, of whatever elaboration, is this; it tends to spread from individual to individual and excites whole groups to the same feeling; tender feeling is contagious, and so is hate. We are somehow so made that we reverberate at a friendly smile in one way and to the snarl and stern look of hate in another way. Ordinarily love awakens love and hate awakens hate, though it may bring fear or contempt. It is true that we may feel so superior or cherish some secret hate that will make another's love odious to us, and also we may admire and worship one who hates us. These are exceptional cases and are examples of exceptional sentimental stability. It is of course understood that by love is not meant sex passion. Here the curious effect of coldness is sometimes to fan the flame of passion. Desire obstructed often gains in violence, and the desire to conquer and to possess the proud, that we all feel, adds to the fire of lust.

Self-esteem, self-confidence, hateful to others if in excess or if obtrusive, is an essential of the leader. His feeling is extraordinarily contagious, and the morale of the group is in his keeping. He must not show fear, or self-distrust or self-lowering in any way. He must be deliberate, but forceful, vigorous, masterful. If he has doubts, he must keep them to himself or exhibit them only to one who loves him, who is not a mere follower. It is a law of life that the herd follows the unwounded, confident, egoistic leader and tears to pieces or deserts the one who is wearying.

The basic sentiments of interest, love and hate, projected outward or inward, organize personality. Men's characters and their destinies rest in the things they find interesting, the persons they love and hate, their self-confidence and self-esteem, their self-contempt and hatred. And it is true that often we hate and love the same person or circumstance; we are divided, secretly, in our tenderest feelings, in our fiercest hate, more often, alas, in the former. For occasionally admiration and respect will mitigate hate and render impotent our aim, but more commonly we are jealous of or envy son, brother, sister, husband, wife, father, mother and friend. We love our work but hate its tyranny, and even the ideal that we cherish, when we examine it too closely, seems overconventionalized, not enough our own, and it stifles and martyrs too many unpleasant desires. We rebel against our own affections, against the love that chains us perhaps to weakness and forces us, weary, to the wheel.

How deeply the feeling of "right" enters into the sentiments and their labors needs only a little reflection to understand. Here we come to the effect of the sentiment of duty, for as such it may be discussed. The establishment of conscience as our inner guide to conduct, and even to thought and emotions, has been studied briefly. On a basis of innate capacity, conscience arises from the teaching and traditions of the group (or groups). The individual who has a susceptibility or a readiness to believe and a desire to be in conformity accepts or evolves for himself principles of conduct, based on obligation, expectation of reward and fear of punishment, these entering in various proportions, according to the type of person. In children, or the very young child, expectation of reward and fear of punishment are more important than obligation, and this remains true of many people throughout life. Gradually right, what we call duty, becomes established as a guiding principle; but it must struggle with impulse and the desire for immediate pleasure throughout life. In fact, one of the dangers of the development of the feeling of duty lies in the view often held by those guided by principle and duty that pleasure is in itself somehow wrong and needs justification. Whereas, in my opinion, pleasure is right and needs no justification and is wrong only when it offends the fundamental moralities and purposes of Society.

The feeling of "right" depends to a certain extent on the kind of teaching in early childhood, but more on the nature of the individual. It is based on his social feeling, his desire to be in harmony with a group or a God that essentially stands above any group. For the idea of God introduces an element having more authority than the group whom He leads. Here also is a factor of importance: choice is difficult for the great majority. Placed in a situation where more than one response is possible, an unhappy state of bewilderment results unless there are formulae for action. The leader is the chooser for the group; religion is an established system of choices even in its "Thou shalt not" injunctions, and to be at one with God implies that one is following an infallible leader, and doubt and uncertainty disappear. Trotter[1] points out clearly the role the feeling of certitude plays in developing codes. As life becomes more complex, as more choices appear, the need of an established method of choosing becomes greater. The careful, cautious, conscientious types develop a system of principles for choice of action; they discard the uncertainty of pleasure as a guide for the certainty of a code laid down and fixed. Duty is the north star of conduct!

[1] "The Herd and its Instincts in Peace and War."

In passing, an interesting development of our times is worth noticing. The tendency is to discard established codes, to weaken dogma and to throw more responsibility on the individual conscience. That is the meaning of the Protestant reformation, and it is the meaning of the growth of Unitarianism within the Protestant church; it is also the meaning of the reform movement in Judaism. The Catholic church has felt it in the breaking away of state after state from its authority, which virtually means that the states have thrown their citizens back on their own consciences and the state laws. In fact, reliance on law is in part an effort to escape the necessity of choosing. The pressure of external authority has its burden, but in giving up its certainty man also gives up tranquillity. Much of modern neurasthenia is characterized by a feeling of uncertainty, unreality, doubt: what is right, what is real? True, as religion in the dogmatic sense relinquishes its power, ethics grow in value and men seek some other formula which will compensate for the dogma. It is no accident that as the old religions lose their complete control new ones appear, with all-embracing formula, like Christian Science, New Thought, etc. Though these start with elastic general principles, sooner or later the directions for conduct become minute and then fixed. The tragedy of a great founder of religion like Buddha or Christ is that though he gives out a great pure principle, his followers must have, demand and evolve a dogmatic religion with fixed ceremonials. Man, on the whole, does not want to choose; he wants to have the feeling that he ought to do this or that according to a code laid down by authority. This will make a real democracy always impossible.

However the sentiment of duty arises, it becomes the central feeling in all inner conflicts, and it wrestles with inclination and the pleasant choice. Duty is the great inhibitor, but also it says "Thou shalt!" Ideally, duty involves self-sacrifice, and practically man dislikes self-sacrifice save where love is very strong. Duty chains a man to his task where he is inclined for a holiday. Duty may demand a man's life, and that sacrifice seems easier for men to make than the giving up of power and pelf. (In the late war it was no great trouble to pass laws conscripting life; it was impossible to pass laws conscripting wealth. It was easier for a man to allow his son to go to war than to give up his wealth en masse.)

The power of the feeling of duty and right over men is very variable. There are a few to whom the feeling of "ought" is all powerful; they cannot struggle against it, even though they wish to. All of their goings, comings and doings are governed thereby, and even though they find the rest of the world dropping from them, they resist the herd. For the mass of men duty governs a few relationships--to family and country--and even here self-interest is camouflaged by the term "duty" in the phrase "a man owes a duty to himself." This is the end of real duty. The average man or woman makes a duty of nonessentials, of ceremonials, but is greatly moved by the cry of duty if it comes from authority or from those he respects. He fiercely resents it if told he is not doing his duty, but is quick to tell others they are not doing theirs.

There is also a group in whom the sense of duty is almost completely lacking, or rather fails to govern action. Ordinarily these are spoken of as lacking moral fiber, but in reality the organizing energy of character and the inhibition of the impulse to seek pleasure and present desire is feeble. Sometimes there is lack of affection toward others, little of the real glow of tender feeling, either towards children[1] or parents or any one. Though these are often emotional, they are not, in the good meaning of the term, sentimental.

[1] It is again to be emphasized that the most vital instincts may be lacking. Even the maternal feeling may be absent, not only in the human mother but in the animal mother. So we need not be surprised if there are those with no sense of right or duty.

Is the sentiment of duty waning? The alarmists say it is and point to the increase of divorce, falling off in church attendance, and the unrest among the laboring classes as evidence that there is a decadence. Pleasure is sought, excitement is the goal, and sober, solid duty is "forgotten." They point out a resemblance to the decadent days of Rome, in the rise of luxury and luxurious tastes, and indicate that duty and the love of luxury cannot coexist. Woman has forgotten her duty to bear children and to maintain the home and man has forgotten his duty to God.

Superficially these critics are right. There is a demand for a more satisfying life, involving less self sacrifice on the part of those who have in the past made the bulk of the sacrifices. Woman, demanding equality, refuses to be regarded as merely a child bearer and is become a seeker of luxury. The working man, looking at the world he has built, now able to read, write and vote, asks why the duty is all on his side. In other words, a demand for justice, which is merely reciprocal, universal duty, has weakened something of the sense of duty. In fact, that is the first effect of the feeling of injustice, of unjust inequality. Dealing with the emancipated, the old conception of duty as loyalty under all conditions has not worked, and we need new ideals of duty on the part of governments and governing groups before we can get the proper ideals of duty in the governed.

Some of those ideals are commencing to be heard. International duty for governments is talked of and some are bold to say that national feeling prevents a real feeling of duty to the world, to man. These claim that duty must have its origin in the extension of tender feeling, in fraternity, to all men. In a lesser way business is commencing to substitute for its former motto, "Handelschaft ist keine Bruderschaft" (business is no brotherhood), the ideal of service, as the duty of business. Everywhere we are commencing to hear of "social duty," of obligation to the lesser and unfortunate, of the responsibility of the leaders to the led, of the well to the sick, of the law-abiding to the criminal. Strange notion, this last, but one at bottom sound and practical.

In the end, the true sense of duty is in a sense of individual responsibility. Our age feels this as no other age has felt it. Other ages have placed responsibility on the Church, on God and on the State. Difficult and onerous as is the burden, we are commencing to place duty on the individual, and in that respect we are not in the least a decadent generation.

CHAPTER IX. ENERGY RELEASE AND THE EMOTIONS

One of the problems in all work is to place things in their right order, in the order of origin and importance. This difficulty is almost insoluble when one studies the character of man. As we see him in operation, the synthesis is so complete that we can hardly discern the component parts. Inheritance, social pressure, excitement, interest, love, hate, self-interest, duty and obligation, --these are not unitary in the least and there is constantly a false dissection to be made, an artefact, in order that clearness in presentation may be obtained.

We see men as discharging energy in work and play, in the activities that help or hurt themselves and the race. They obtain that energy from the world without, from the sunshine, the air, the plants and the animals; it is built up in their bodies, it is discharged either because some inner tension builds up a desire or because some outer stimulus, environmental or social, directs it. Though we have no way of measuring one man's energy against another, we say, perhaps erroneously, "He is very energetic," or "He is not"; "He is tireless," or "He breaks down easily." As students of character, we must take this question of the energies of men into account as integral in our study.

Granting that the human being takes in energy as food and drink and builds it up into dischargeable tissues, we are not further concerned with the details of its physiology. How does the feeling of energy arise, what increases the energy discharge and what blocks, inhibits or lowers it? For from day to day, from hour to hour, we are conscious either of a desire to be active, a feeling of capacity or the reverse. We depend on that feeling of capacity to guide us, and though it is organic, it has its mysterious disappearances and marvelous reenforcements.

It arises, so we assume, from the visceral-neuronic activities, subconsciously, in the sense we have used that word. It therefore fluctuates with health, with fatigue, with the years. We marvel at the energy of childhood and youth, and the deepest sadness we have is the depletion of energy-feeling in old age. We love energy in ourselves and we yield admiration, willing or unwilling, to its display in others. The Hero, the leader, is always energetic. In our times, in America, we demand "pep," action and energy-display as an essential in our play and in our work, and we worship quite too frankly where all men have always worshiped.

What besides the organic activity, besides health and well-being, excites the feeling of energy and what depresses it?

1. This feeling is excited by the society of others, by the herd-feeling, and depressed by long-continued solitude or loneliness. The stimuli that come from other people's faces, voices, contacts--their emotions, feelings and manifestations of energy--are those we are best adapted to react to, those most valuable in stirring us up. Scenery, the grandeur of the outer world, finally depress the most of us, and we can bear these things best in company. Who has not, on a long railroad journey, watched with weariness and flickering interest valley and hill and meadow swing by and then sat up with energy and definite attention as a human being passed along on some rural road? Lacking these stimuli there is monotony and monotony always has with it as one of its painful features a subjective sense of lowered energy, of fatigue. This is the problem of the housewife and the solitary worker everywhere,--there is failure of the sense of energy due to a failure to receive new stimuli in their most potent form, our fellows.

2. The disappearance or injury of desire and purpose. Let there be a sudden blocking of a purpose or an aim, so that it seems impossible of fulfillment, and energy-feeling drops; movement, thought, even feeling seem painful. The will flags, and the whole world becomes unreal. This is part of the anhedonia we spoke of.

In reality, we have the disappearance of hope as basic in this adynamia. Hope and courage are in part organic, in part are due to the belief that a desired goal can be reached. Whether that goal is health, when one is sick, or riches, or fame, or love and possession, if it is a well-centralized goal toward which our main energies are bent, and then seems suddenly impossible to reach, there is a corresponding paralysis of energy.

Here is where a great difference is seen between individuals and between one time of life and another. There are some to whom hope is a shining beacon light never absent; whatever happens, hope remains, like the beautiful fable of Pandora's box. There are others to whom any obstruction, any discouraging feature, blots out hope, and who constantly need the energy of others; their persuasions and exhortations, for a renewal of energy. Here, as elsewhere in life, some are givers and others takers of energy. In the presence of the hopeless it is hard to maintain one's own feeling of energy and that is why the average man shuns them. He guards as priceless his own enthusiasm.

Curiously enough, when energy tends to disappear in the face of disaster to one's plans, a tonic is often enough the reflection, "it might have been worse" or "there are others worse off."[1] Though one rebels against the encouraging effect of the last statement, it does console, it does renew hope. For hope and energy and desire are competitive, as is every other measure of value. So long as one is not the worst off, then there is something left, there is a hopeful element in the situation. Similarly a certain rough treatment helps, as when Job is told practically, "After all, who is Man that he should ask for the fulfillment of his hopes?" A sense of littleness with the rest of the race acts to bring resignation, and after that has been established, hope can reappear. For resignation is rarely a prolonged state of mind; it is a doorway through which we reenter into the vista-chambers of Hope.

[1] A humorous use of this fact is in the popular "Cheer up, the worst is yet to come!" This acts as a rough tonic.

And one clearly sees the benefit of a belief, a faith in God. "Gott in sein Mizpah ist gerecht," cries the orthodox Jew when his hope is shattered,--"God's decree is just." This is Hope Eternal; "my purposes are blocked, but were they God's purposes? No. He would not then block them. I must seek God's purposes." Faith is really a transcendent Hope, renewing the feeling of energy.

3. The belief that one has the good opinion of others is a powerful stimulus to energy and feeling. We have already considered the effect of praise and blame. Some are so constituted that they need the approval of others at all times; they are at the mercy of any one who gives them a cold look or a harsh word. Others cling to the need of their own self-approval; they are aristocrats, firm and secure in their self-estimate. Let their self-esteem crumble, and these proud and haughty ones are humble, weak, inefficient. We fiercely resent criticism because in it is a threat to our source of energy, our very feeling of being alive.

One has shrewdly to examine his fellow men from this angle: "Does he work up his own steam; are his boilers of energy heated by his own enthusiasm and his own self-approval? Or does he borrow; can he work only if others add their fire to his; does his light go out if his neighbors turn away or are too busy to help him?" One type of man may be as admirable as another in his gifts, but the types need different treatment.

Self-valuation is to a large extent our opinion of the valuation of others of ourselves.[1] We believe people like us, think we are fine and able, or beautiful, and we react with energy to difficulties. We may be wrong; they may call us a conceited ass and laugh at us behind our backs, but so long as we do not find it out, it doesn't matter. There is, however, no blow quite so severe as the sudden realization that we have mistaken the opinion of others, we have been "fooled." To be fooled is to be lowered in one's own self-esteem, and we like sincerity and hate insincerity largely because our self-esteem stands on some solid basis in the one case and on none whatever in the other. Most of us would rather have people say bad things of us to our face than run the risk of the ridicule and the foolish feeling that comes with insincerity. There are some who are always suspicions that people are insincere in praise or friendly words; they hate being fooled, they know of no criterion of sincerity and such people are in an adynamic state most of the time. The difference between the trusting and the suspicious is that one responds with energy and belief to the manifestations of friendliness in everybody, and the other has no such inner response to guide his energy and his actions. Trust in others is a releaser of energy; distrust paralyzes it.

[1] To paraphrase Doctor Holmes the biggest factor in John's self-valuation is HIS idea of Jane's idea of John.

4. Doubt and inability to choose may be contrasted with certitude and clear choice in their effect on energy release. Of course, one of the signs of lowered energy is doubt, as a sign of high energy is certainty. Nevertheless, a situation of critical importance, in which choice is difficult or digagreeable, inhibits energy feeling[1] and discharge perhaps as much as any other mental factor. Especially is this true when the inhibition concerns a moral situation--"Ought I to do this or that"--and where the fear of being wrong or doing wrong operates so that the individual does nothing and develops an obsession of doubt. This "to be or not to be" attitude is typical of many intelligent people, yes, even intellectual people. They we so many angles to a situation, they project so far into the future in their thoughts, that a weary discouragement comes. To such as these, the counsel of "action right or wrong but action anyway!" is good, but the difficulty is to make them overcome their doubts. Their cerebral oscillation makes them weary but they cannot seem to stop it; their pendulum of choice never stops at action.

[1] See William James' "Varieties of Religious Experiences," for beautiful examples. The Russian writers are often narrators of this struggle.

If one wishes to destroy the energy of any one, the best way to do it is to sow the seeds of doubt. "Your ideal is a fine one, my friend, but--isn't it a little sophomoric?" "A nice piece of work, but--who wants it?" On the other hand, to one obsessed by doubt it may happen that a whole-hearted endorsement, a resolution of the doubt, brings with it first relief and then a swing of energy into the channels of action.

5. Competition is a great factor in energy release. Every one has seen a horse ambling along, apparently without sufficient energy to go more than four miles an hour. Suddenly he cocks up his ears as the sounds of the hoof beats of a rapidly traveling horse are heard. He shakes his head and to the amazement or amusement of his driver sets off in rivalry at a two-minute clip. Intensely cooperative and gregarious as man is, he is as intensely competitive, spurred on by his observations of the other fellow. Introduce a definite system of rivalry into a school or an office, and you release energies never manifested before. There are some to whom this is the main releaser of energy; struggle, competition and victory over another is their stimulus. They can play no game unless there is competition, and the solitary pleasures and satisfactions, like reading, exploring, a row on the river or a walk in the woods, cannot arouse them. Others dislike rivalry or competition; they are too sympathetic to wish victory over another and also they dread to lose. They prefer team play and cooperation. The world will always seem different to these two types. This may be said now that for most of us, who are somewhat of a blend in this matter, rivalry is pleasant and stimulating when there is a show of success, but we prefer cooperation when we foresee failure.

This brings up the interesting phase of precedent in energy release. Early success, unless it brings too high a self-valuation, which is its great danger, is remarkably valuable in releasing energy, and failure establishes a precedent that may bring doubt, fear and the attendant inhibition of energy. Of course, failure may bring with it caution and a recasting of plans and thus constitute the most valuable of experiences. But if it is too great, or if there is lacking a certain fortitude, it may act as a paralyzer of energy thenceforth. In the prize ring this is often noted; the spirit of a man goes with a defeat and he never again has self-confidence; thereafter his energy is constantly inhibited.

Emotions have long been studied in their effects on energy. In fact, every animal that bristles and snarls as it faces a foe is, unconsciously, attempting to paralyze with fear its opponent, to render it helpless through the inhibition of action. So with the lurking tiger; it waits in silence for the prey and seeks the fascination of surprise as a factor in victory. On the other hand, the emotion of fear may be a releaser of energy for the prospective victim; it may release the energies of flight and add to the power of the animal. In this, there is a unique and neglected phase of emotion, i.e., if you shake your fist at your enemy and he runs away or knocks you down, then your manifestation of anger has been unsuccessful for you but his reaction has been successful for him. If he becomes so paralyzed with fear that you can work your will with him, then your anger is successful while his fear is not. Most of the psychologists have neglected this phase of emotion. Thus it is hard to understand the use fainting from terror has to the victim. The answer is it is useful to him who has caused the victim to faint.

6. For the individual, the emotion of fear has as its function a preparation for a danger that is foreseen to be too powerful to be met with effective resistance. Fear says, "It's no use to fight, fly or hide." Therefore, normally there is a heightening of energy feeling and action in these two directions. There are plenty of recorded incidents where fear has enabled men to run distances utterly impossible to them otherwise. In the fear states of mental disease, the resistance a frail woman will offer to her attendants is such that the utmost strength of several people is required to restrain her. Under these circumstances fear acts as an energizer, causing physical reactions not ordinarily within the will of the person. "Fear lends wings," is the time-honored way of expressing this. The trapped animal makes "frantic" efforts to escape.

Fear is extraordinarily contagious, perhaps because as herd members the cry of fear sets us all racing for safety. This is the grimmest danger from fires in public places or the presence of a coward in a military unit. Panic occurs with its blind unreasoning flight, and the result is disastrous. I emphasize again that emotions are poorly adapted to the welfare of the individual. Business panics are in large measure the result of the contagiousness of fear; timidity spreads like wildfire, distrust and suspicion are aroused and stagnation results without a "real" basis. In President Wilson's phrase, the panic is "purely psychological."

Intellectualized, fear becomes one of the driving forces of life, as Hobbes[1] pointed out. Fear of punishment undoubtedly deters from crime, though it is not in itself sufficient, and the kind of punishment becomes important. Fear of hunger has brought prudence, caution, agriculture into the world. Life insurance has its root in fear for others, who are really part of one's self; the fear of the rainy day is back of most of the thrift, though the acquisitive feeling and duty may also operate powerfully. Fear of venereal disease impels many a man to continence who otherwise would follow his desire. And fear of the bad opinion of others is the most powerful deterrent force in the world. "What will people say" is, at bottom, fear that they will say bad things, and though it keeps men from the "bad" conduct, it inhibits the finer nobler actions as well. There is a great deal of unconventional untrammeled belief in the world that never finds expression because of fear.

How deeply the fear of death modifies the life of people it is impossible to state. To every one there comes the awful reflection that he, that warmly pulsating being, in love with the world and with living, "center of the universe," HE himself must die, must be cold and still and have no will, no power, no feeling; be buried in the ground. Most of the essential ....

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