Practical Essays Part 1

Practical Essays.

by Alexander Bain.

PREFACE.

The present volume is in great part a reprint of articles contributed to Reviews. The princ.i.p.al bond of union among them is their practical character. Beyond that, there is little to connect them apart from the individuality of the author and the range of his studies.

That there is a certain amount of novelty in the various suggestions here embodied, will be admitted on the most cursory perusal. The farther question of their worth is necessarily left open.

The first two essays are applications of the laws of mind to some prevailing Errors.

The next two have an educational bearing: the one is on the subjects proper for Compet.i.tive Examinations; the other, on the present position of the much vexed Cla.s.sical controversy.

The fifth considers the range of Philosophical or Metaphysical Study, and the mode of conducting this study in Debating Societies.

The sixth contains a retrospect of the growth of the Universities, with more especial reference to those of Scotland; and also a discussion of the University Ideal, as something more than professional teaching.

The seventh is a chapter omitted from the author's "Science of Education"; it is mainly devoted to the methods of self-education by means of books. The situation thus a.s.sumed has peculiarities that admit of being handled apart from the general theory of Education.

The eighth contends for the extension of liberty of thought, as regards Sectarian Creeds and Subscription to Articles. The total emanc.i.p.ation of the clerical body from the thraldom of subscription, is here advocated without reservation.

The concluding essay discusses the Procedure of Deliberative Bodies. Its novelty lies chiefly in proposing to carry out, more thoroughly than has yet been done, a few devices already familiar. But for an extraordinary reluctance in all quarters to adapt simple and obvious remedies to a growing evil, the article need never have appeared. It so happens, that the case princ.i.p.ally before the public mind at present, is the deadlock in the House of Commons; yet, had that stood alone, the author would not have ventured to meddle with the subject. The difficulty, however, is widely felt: and the principles here put forward are perfectly general; being applicable wherever deliberative bodies are numerously const.i.tuted and heavily laden with business.

ABERDEEN, _March_, 1884.

I.

COMMON ERRORS ON THE MIND.[1]

On the prevailing errors on the mind, proposed to be considered in this paper, some relate to the Feelings, others to the Will.

In regard to Mind as a whole, there are still to be found among us some remnants of a mistake, once universally prevalent and deeply rooted, namely, the opinion that mind is not only a different fact from body--which is true, and a vital and fundamental truth--but is to a greater or less extent independent of the body. In former times, the remark seldom occurred to any one, unless obtruded by some extreme instance, that to work the mind is also to work a number of bodily organs; that not a feeling can arise, not a thought can pa.s.s, without a set of concurring bodily processes. At the present day, however, this doctrine is very generally preached by men of science. The improved treatment of the insane has been one consequence of its reception. The husbanding of mental power, through a bodily _regime_, is a no less important application. Instead of supposing that mind is something indefinite, elastic, inexhaustible,--a sort of perpetual motion, or magician's bottle, all expenditure, and no supply,--we now find that every single throb of pleasure, every smart of pain, every purpose, thought, argument, imagination, must have its fixed quota of oxygen, carbon, and other materials, combined and transformed in certain physical organs. And, as the possible extent of physical transformation in each person's framework is limited in amount, the forces resulting cannot be directed to one purpose without being lost for other purposes.

If an extra share pa.s.ses to the muscles, there is less for the nerves; if the cerebral functions are pushed to excess, other functions have to be correspondingly abated. In several of the prevailing opinions about to be criticised, failure to recognise this cardinal truth is the prime source of mistake.

To begin with the FEELINGS.

I. We shall first consider an advice or prescription repeatedly put forth, not merely by the unthinking ma.s.s, but by men of high repute: it is, that with a view to happiness, to virtue, and to the accomplishment of great designs, we should all be cheerful, light-hearted, gay.

I quote a pa.s.sage from the writings of one of the Apostolic Fathers, the Pastor of Hermas, as given in Dr. Donaldson's abstract:--

"Command tenth affirms that sadness is the sister of doubt, mistrust, and wrath; that it is worse than all other spirits, and grieves the Holy Spirit. It is therefore to be completely driven away, and, instead of it, we are to put on cheerfulness, which is pleasing to G.o.d. 'Every cheerful man works well, and always thinks those things which are good, and despises sadness. The sad man, on the other hand, is always bad.'"[2]

[FALLACY OF PRESCRIBING CHEERFULNESS.]

Dugald Stewart inculcates Good-humour as a means of happiness and virtue; his language implying that the quality is one within our power to appropriate.

In Mr. Smiles's work ent.i.tled "Self-Help," we find an a.n.a.logous strain of remarks:--

"To wait patiently, however, man must work cheerfully. Cheerfulness is an excellent working quality, imparting great elasticity to the character. As a Bishop has said, 'Temper is nine-tenths of Christianity,' so are cheerfulness and diligence [a considerable make-weight] nine-tenths of practical wisdom."

Sir Arthur Helps, in those essays of his, combining profound observation with strong genial sympathies and the highest charms of style, repeatedly adverts to the dulness, the want of sunny light-hearted enjoyment of the English temperament, and, on one occasion, piquantly quotes the remark of Froissart on our Saxon progenitors: "They took their pleasures sadly, as was their fashion; _ils se divertirent moult tristement a la mode de leur pays_"

There is no dispute as to the value or the desirableness of this accomplishment. Hume, in his "Life," says of himself, "he was ever disposed to see the favourable more than the unfavourable side of things; a turn of mind which it is more happy to possess than to be born to an estate of ten thousand a year". This sanguine, happy temper, is merely another form of the cheerfulness recommended to general adoption.

I contend, nevertheless, that to bid a man be habitually cheerful, he not being so already, is like bidding him treble his fortune, or add a cubit to his stature. The quality of a cheerful, buoyant temperament partly belongs to the original cast of the const.i.tution--like the bone, the muscle, the power of memory, the apt.i.tude for science or for music; and is partly the outcome of the whole manner of life. In order to sustain the quality, the physical (as the support of the mental) forces of the system must run largely in one particular channel; and, of course, as the same forces are not available elsewhere, so notable a feature of strength will be accompanied with counterpart weaknesses or deficiencies. Let us briefly review the facts bearing upon the point.

The first presumption in favour of the position is grounded in the concomitance of the cheerful temperament with youth, health, abundant nourishment. It appears conspicuously along with whatever promotes physical vigour. The state is partially attained during holidays, in salubrious climates, and health-bringing avocations; it is lost, in the midst of toils, in privation of comforts, and in physical prostration.

The seeming exception of elated spirits in bodily decay, in fasting, and in ascetic practices, is no disproof of the general principle, but merely the introduction of another principle, namely, that we can feed one part of the system at the expense of degrading and prematurely wasting others.

[LIGHT-HEARTEDNESS NOT IN OUR OWN POWER.]

A second presumption is furnished also from our familiar experience. The high-pitched, hilarious temperament and disposition commonly appear in company with some well-marked characteristics of corporeal vigour. Such persons are usually of a robust mould; often large and full in person, vigorous in circulation and in digestion; able for fatigue, endurance, and exhausting pleasures. An eminent example of this const.i.tution was seen in Charles James Fox, whose sociability, cheerfulness, gaiety, and power of dissipation were the marvel of his age. Another example might be quoted in the admirable physical frame of Lord Palmerston. It is no more possible for an ordinarily const.i.tuted person to emulate the flow and the animation of these men, than it is to digest with another person's stomach, or to perform the twelve labours of Hercules.

A third fact, less on the surface, but no less certain, is, that the men of cheerful and buoyant temperament, as a rule, sit easy to the cares and obligations of life. They are not much given to care and anxiety as regards their own affairs, and it is not to be expected that they should be more anxious about other people's. In point of fact, this is the const.i.tution of somewhat easy virtue: it is not distinguished by a severe, rigid attention to the obligations and the punctualities of life. We should not be justified in calling such persons selfish; still less should we call them cold-hearted: their exuberance overflows upon others in the form of heartiness, geniality, joviality, and even lavish generosity. Still, they can seldom be got to look far before them; they do not often a.s.sume the painfully circ.u.mspect att.i.tude required in the more arduous enterprises. They are not conscientious in trifles. They cast off readily the burdensome parts of life. All which is in keeping with our principle. To take on burdens and cares is to draw upon the vital forces--to leave so much the less to cheerfulness and buoyant spirits. The same corporeal framework cannot afford a lavish expenditure in several different ways at one time. Fox had no long-sightedness, no tendency to forecast evils, or to burden himself with possible misfortunes. It is very doubtful if Palmerston could have borne the part of Wellington in the Peninsula; his easy-going temperament would not have submitted itself to all the anxieties and precautions of that vast enterprise. But Palmerston was hale and buoyant, and the Prime Minister of England at eighty: Wellington began to be infirm at sixty.

[LIMITATIONS OF THE MENTAL FORCES.]

To these three experimental proofs we may add the confirmation derived from the grand doctrine named the Correlation, Conservation, Persistence, or Limitation of Force, as applied to the human body and the human mind. We cannot create force anywhere; we merely appropriate existing force. The heat of our fires has been derived from the solar fire. We cannot lift a weight in the hand without the combustion of a certain amount of food; we cannot think a thought without a similar demand; and the force that goes in one way is unavailable in any other way. While we are expending ourselves largely in any single function--in muscular exercise, in digestion, in thought and feeling, the remaining functions must continue for the time in comparative abeyance. Now, the maintenance of a high strain of elated feeling, unquestionably costs a great deal to the forces of the system. All the facts confirm this high estimate. An unusually copious supply of arterial blood to the brain is an indispensable requisite, even although other organs should be partially starved, and consequently be left in a weak condition, or else deteriorate before their time. To support the excessive demand of power for one object, less must be exacted from other functions. Hard bodily labour and severe mental application sap the very foundations of buoyancy; they may not entail much positive suffering, but they are scarcely compatible with exuberant spirits. There may be exceptional individuals whose _total_ of power is a very large figure, who can bear more work, endure more privation, and yet display more buoyancy, without shortened life, than the average human being. Hardly any man can attain commanding greatness without being const.i.tuted larger than his fellows in the sum of human vitality. But until this is proved to be the fact in any given instance, we are safe in presuming that extraordinary endowment in one thing implies deficiency in other things. More especially must we conclude, provisionally at least, that a buoyant, hopeful, elated temperament lacks some other virtues, apt.i.tudes, or powers, such as are seen flourishing in the men whose temperament is sombre, inclining to despondency. Most commonly the contradictory demand is reconciled by the proverbial "short life and merry".

Adverting now to the object that Helps had so earnestly at heart--namely, to rouse and rescue the English population from their comparative dulness to a more lively and cheerful flow of existence--let us reflect how, upon the foregoing principles, this is to be done. Not certainly by an eloquent appeal to the nation to get up and be amused.

The process will turn out to be a more circuitous one.

The mental conformation of the English people, which we may admit to be less lively and less easily amused than the temperament of Irishmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Italians, or even the German branch of our own Teutonic race, is what it is from natural causes, whether remote descent, or that coupled with the operation of climate and other local peculiarities. How long would it take, and what would be the way to establish in us a second nature on the point of cheerfulness?

Again, with the national temperament such as it is, there may be great individual differences; and it may be possible by force of circ.u.mstances, to improve the hilarity and the buoyancy of any given person. Many of our countrymen are as joyous themselves, and as much the cause of joy in others, as the most light-hearted Irishman, or the gayest Frenchman or Italian. How shall we increase the number of such, so as to make them the rule rather than the exception?

[SOLE MEANS OF ATTAINING CHEERFULLNESS.]

The only answer not at variance with the laws of the human const.i.tution is--_Increase the supports and diminish the burdens of life_.

For example, if by any means you can raise the standard of health and longevity, you will at once effect a stride in the direction sought. But what an undertaking is this! It is not merely setting up what we call sanitary arrangements, to which, in our crowded populations, there must soon be a limit reached (for how can you secure to the ma.s.s of men even the one condition of sufficient breathing-s.p.a.ce?), it is that health cannot be attained, in any high general standard, without worldly means far above the average at the disposal of the existing population; while the most abundant resources are often neutralised by ineradicable hereditary taint. To which it is to be added, that mankind can hardly as yet be said to be in earnest in the matter of health.

Farther: it is especially necessary to cheerfulness, that a man should not be overworked, as many of us are, whether from choice or from necessity. Much, I believe, turns upon this circ.u.mstance. Severe toil consumes the forces of the const.i.tution, without leaving the remainder requisite for hilarity of tone. The Irishman fed upon three meals of potatoes a day, the lazy Highlander, the Lazaroni of Naples living upon sixpence a week, are very poorly supported; but then their vitality is so little drawn upon by work, that they may exceed in buoyancy of spirits the well-fed but hard-worked labourer. We, the English people, would not change places with them, notwithstanding: our _ideal_ is industry with abundance; but then our industry sobers our temperament, and inclines us to the dulness that Helps regrets. Possibly, we may one day hit a happier mean; but to the human mind extremes have generally been found easiest.

Once more: the light-hearted races trouble themselves little about their political const.i.tution, about despotism or liberty; they enjoy the pa.s.sing moments of a despot's smiles, and if he turns round and crushes them, they quietly submit. We live in dread of tyranny. Our liberty is a serious object; it weighs upon our minds. Now any weight upon the mind is so much taken from our happiness; hilarity may attend on poverty, but not so well on a serious, forecasting disposition. Our regard to the future makes us both personally industrious and politically anxious; a temper not to be amused with the relaxations of the Parisian in his _cafe_ on the boulevards, or with the Sunday merry-go-round of the light-hearted Dane. Our very pleasures have still a sadness in them.

Then, again, what are to be our amus.e.m.e.nts? By what recreative stimulants shall we irradiate the gloom of our idle hours and vacation periods? Doubtless there have been many amus.e.m.e.nts invented by the benefactors of our species--society, games, music, public entertainments, books; and in a well-chosen round of these, many contrive to pa.s.s their time in a tolerable flow of satisfaction. But they all cost something; they all cost money, either directly, to procure them, or indirectly, to be educated for them. There are few very cheap pleasures. Books are not so difficult to obtain, but the enjoying of them in any high degree implies an amount of cultivation that cannot be had cheaply.

Moreover, look at the difficulties that beset the pursuit of amus.e.m.e.nts.

How fatiguing are they very often! How hard to distribute the time and the strength between them and our work or our duties! It needs some art to steer one's way in the midst of variety of pleasures. Hence there will always be, in a cautious-minded people, a disposition to remain satisfied with few and safe delights; to a.s.sume a sobriety of aims that Helps might call dulness, but that many of us call the middle path.