The Nature of Goodness Part 5

VIII

We now reach the climax of the whole process, effort, the actual sending forth through the deliberately chosen channel of the ideal desired and decided on. To it all the rest is merely preliminary, and in it the final move is made which commits us to the deed. About it, therefore, we may well desire the completest information. To tell the truth, I have none to give, and n.o.body else has. The nature of the operation is substantially unknown. Though something which we have been performing all day long, we and all our ancestors, no one of us has succeeded in getting a good sight of what actually takes place.

Our purposes are prepared as I have described, and then those purposes--something altogether mental--change on a sudden to material motions. How is the trans.m.u.tation accomplished? How do we pa.s.s from a mental picture to a set of motions in the physical world? What is the bridge connecting the two? The bridge is always down when we direct our gaze upon it, though firm when any act would cross.

Nor can we trace our pa.s.sage any more easily in the opposite direction. When my eyes are turned on my watch, for example, the vibrations of light striking its face are reflected on the pupil of my eye. There the little motions, previously existing only in the surrounding ether, are communicated to my optic nerve. This vibrates too, and by its motion excites the matter of my brain, and then--well, I have a sensation of the white face of my watch. But what was contained in that _then_ is precisely what we do not understand.

Incoming motions may be trans.m.u.ted into thought; or, as in effort, outgoing thought may be trans.m.u.ted into motion. But alike in both cases, on the nature of that trans.m.u.tation, the very thing we most desire to know, we get no light. In regard to this crucial point no one, materialist or idealist, can offer a suggestion. We may of course, in fault of explanation, restate the facts in clumsy circ.u.mlocution. Calling thought a kind of motion, we may say that in action it propagates itself from the mind through the brain into the outer world; while in the apprehension of an idea motions of the outer world pa.s.s into the brain, and there set up those motions which we know as thought. But after such explanations the mystery remains exactly where it was before. How does a "mental motion" come out of a bodily motion, or a bodily from a mental? It is wiser to acknowledge a mystery and to mark the spot where it occurs.

This marking of the spot may, however, illuminate the surrounding territory. If we cannot explain the nature of the crucial act, it may still be well to study its range. How widely is effort exercised? We should naturally answer, as widely as the habitable globe. I can sit in my office in Boston and carry on business in China. When I touch a b.u.t.ton, great ships are loaded on the opposite side of the earth and cross the intervening oceans to work the bidding of a person they have never seen. Perhaps some day we may send our volition beyond the globe and enter into communication with the inhabitants of Mars. It would seem idle, then, to talk about the limitations of volition and a restricted range of will. But in fact that will is restricted, and its range is much narrower than the globe. For when we consider the matter, with precision, it is not exactly I who have operated in China. I operate only where I am. In touching the b.u.t.ton my direct agency ceases. It is true that connected with that b.u.t.ton are wires conducting to a wide variety of consequences. But about the details of that conduction I need know nothing. The wire will work equally well whether I understand or do not understand electricity. Its working is not mine, but its own. The pressure of my finger ends my act, which is then taken up and carried forward by automatic and mechanical adjustments requiring neither supervision nor consciousness on my part. We might then more accurately say that my direct volition is circ.u.mscribed by my own body. My finger tips, my lips, my nodding head are the points where I part with full control, though indefinitely beyond these I can forecast changes which the automatic agencies, once set astir, will induce.

Am I n.i.g.g.ardly in thus confining the action of each of us within his own body? Is the range of volition thus marked out too narrow? On the contrary, it is probably still too wide. We are as powerless to direct our bodies as we are to manage affairs in China. This, at least, is the modern psychological doctrine of effort. It is now believed that volition is entirely a mental affair, and is confined to the single act of attention. It is alleged that when I attend to an ideal, fixing my mind fully upon it, the results are altogether similar to what occurred on my touching the b.u.t.ton. Every idea tends to pa.s.s automatically into action through agencies about which I know as little as I do about ocean telegraphs. This physical frame of mine is a curious organic mechanism, in which reflex actions and instincts do their blind work at a hint from me. I am said to raise my arm. But never having been a student of anatomy and physiology, I have not the least idea how the rise was effected; and if I am told that nerves excite muscles, and these in turn contract like cords and pull the arm this way or that, the rise will not be accomplished a bit better for the information. For, as in electric transmission, it is not I who do the work. My part is attention. The rest is adapted automatism. When I have driven everything else out of my mind except the picture of the rising arm, it rises of itself, the after-effects on nerves and muscles being apprehended by me as the sense of effort.

We cannot, then, exercise our will with a wandering mind. So long as several ideas are conflictingly attended to, they hinder each other.

This we verify in regrettable experiences every day. On waking this morning, for example, I saw it was time to get up. But the bed was comfortable, and there were interesting matters to think of. I meant to get up, for breakfast was waiting, and there was that new book to be examined, and that letter to be written. How long would this require, and how should the letter be planned? But I must get up.

Possibly those callers may come. And shall I want to see them? It is really time to get up. What a curious figure the pattern of the paper makes, viewed in this light! The breakfast bell! Out of my head go all vagrant reflections, and suddenly, before I can notice the process, I find myself in the middle of the floor. That is the way. From wavering thoughts nothing comes. But suddenly some sound, some sight, some significant interest, raises the depicted act into exclusive vividness of attention, and our part is done. The spring has been touched, and the physical machinery, of which we may know little or nothing, does its work. There it stands ready, the automatic machinery of this exquisite frame of ours, waiting for the unconfused signal,--our only part in the performance,--then automatically it springs to action and pushes our purpose into the outer world. Such at least is the fashionable teaching of psychologists to-day. Volition is full attention. It has no wider scope. With bodily adjustments it does not meddle. These move by their own mechanic law. Of real connection between body and mind we know nothing. We can only say that such parallelism exists that physical action occurs on occasion of complete mental vision.

No doubt this theory leaves much to be desired in the way of clearness. What is meant by fixing the attention exclusively? Is unrelated singleness possible among our mental pictures? Or how narrowly must the field of attention be occupied before these strange springs are set in motion? At the end of the explanation do not most of the puzzling problems of scope, freedom, and selection remain, existing now as problems about the nature and working of attention instead of, as formerly, problems about the emergence of the intention into outward nature? No doubt these cla.s.sical problems puzzle us still. But a genuine advance toward clarity is made when we confine them within a small area by identifying volition with mental attention. Nor will it be anything to the point to say, "But I know myself as a physical creature to be involved in effort. The strain of volition is felt in my head, in my arm, throughout my entire body."

n.o.body denies it. After we have attended, and the machinery is set in motion, we feel its results. The physical changes involved in action are as apprehensible in our experience as are any other natural facts, and are remembered and antic.i.p.ated in each new act.

IX

Only one stage more remains, and that is an invariable one, the stage of satisfaction. It is fortunately provided that pleasure shall attend every act. Pleasure probably is nothing else but the sense that some one of our functions has been appropriately exercised. Every time, then, that an intention has been taken, up in the way just described, carried forth into the complex world, and there conducted to its mark, a gratified feeling arises. "Yes, I have accomplished it. That is good. I felt a defect, I desired to remove it, and betterment is here." We cannot speak a word, or raise a hand, perhaps even draw a breath, without something of this glad sense of life. It may be intense, it may be slight or middling; but in some degree it is always there. For through action we realize our powers. This seemingly fixed world is found to be plastic in our hands. We modify it. We direct something, mean something. No longer idle drifters on the tide, through our desires we bring that tide our way. And in the sense of self-directed power we find a satisfaction, great or small according to the magnitude of our undertaking.

In such a catalogue of the elements of action as has just been given there is something uncanny. Can we not pick up a pin without going through all six stages? Should we ever do anything, if to do even the simplest we were obliged to do six things? Have I not made matters needlessly elaborate? No, I have not unduly elaborated. We are made just so complex. Yet as a good teacher I have falsified. For the sake of clearness I have been treating separately matters which go together. There are not six operations, there is but one. In this one there are six stages; that is, there are six points of view from which the single operation may advantageously be surveyed. But these do not exist apart. They are all intimately blended, each affecting all the rest. Because of our dull faculties we cannot understand, though we can work, them _en bloc_. He who would render them comprehensible must commit the violence of plucking them asunder, holding them up detachedly, and saying, "Of such diverse stuff is our active life composed." But in reality each gets its meaning through connection with all the others. Life need not terrify because for purposes of verification it must be represented as so intricate an affair. It is I who have broken up its simplicity, and it belongs to my reader to put it together again.

REFERENCE ON SELF-DIRECTION

James's Psychology, ch. xxvi.

Sigwart's Der Begriff des Wollen's, in his Kleine Schriften.

A. Alexander's Theories of the Will.

Munsterberg's Die Willenshandlung.

Hoffding's Psychology, ch. vii.

V

SELF-DEVELOPMENT

I

Conceivably a being such, as has been described might advance no farther. Conscious he might be, observant of everything going on within him and without; occupied too with inducing the very changes he observes, and yet with no aim to enlarge himself or improve the world through any of the changes so induced. Complete within himself at the beginning, he might be equally so at the close, his activity being undertaken for the mere sake of action, and not for any beneficial results following in its train. Still, even such a being would be better off while acting than if quiet, and by his readiness to act would show that he felt the need of at least temporary betterment. In actual cases the need goes deeper.

A being capable of self-direction ordinarily has capacities imperfectly realized. Changing other things, he also changes himself; and it becomes a part of his aim in action to make these changes advantageous, and each act helpfully reactive. Accordingly the aim at self-development regularly attends self-direction. I could not, therefore, properly discuss my last topic without in some measure antic.i.p.ating this. Every ideal of action, I was obliged to say, includes within it an aim at some sort of betterment of the actor. Our business, then, in the present chapter is not to announce a new theme, but simply to render explicit what before was implied. We must detach from action the influence which it throws back upon us, the actors. We must make this influence plain, exhibit its method, and show wherein it differs from other processes in some respects similar.

II

The most obvious fact about self-development is that it is a species of change, and that change is a.s.sociated with sadness. Herac.l.i.tus, the weeping philosopher of the Greeks, discovered this fact five hundred years before Christ. "Nothing abides," he said, "all is fleeting." We stand in a moving tide, unable to bathe twice in the same stream; before we can stoop a second time the flood is gone. In every age this is the common theme of lamentation for poet, moralist, common man and woman. All other causes of sadness are secondary to it. As soon as we have comprehended anything, have fitted it to our lives and learned to love it, it is gone.

Such is the aspect which change ordinarily presents. It is tied up with grief. We regard what is precious as stable; and yet we are obliged to confess that nothing on earth is stable--nothing among physical things, and just as little among mental and spiritual things.

But there are many kinds of change. We are apt to confuse them with one another, and in so doing to carry over to the n.o.bler sorts thoughts applicable only to the lower. In beginning, then, the discussion of self-development, I think it will conduce to clearness if I offer a conspectus of all imaginable changes. I will set them in groups and show their different kinds, exhibiting first those which are most elementary, then those more complex, and finally those so dark and important that they pa.s.s over into a region of mystery and paradox.

III

Probably all will agree that the simplest possible change is the accidental sort, that where only relations of s.p.a.ce are altered. My watch, now lying in the middle of the desk, is shifted to the right side, is laid in its case, or is lost in the street. I call these changes accidental, because they in no way affect the nature of the watch. They are not really changes in it, but in its surroundings. The watch still remains what it was before. To the same group we might refer a large number of other changes where no inner alteration is wrought. The watch is now in a brilliant light; I lay my hand on it, and it is in darkness. Its place has not been changed, but that of the light has been. Many of the commonest changes in life are of this sort. They are accidental or extraneous changes. In them, through all its change, the thing abides. There is no necessary alteration of its nature.

IV

But unhappily this is not the only species of change. It is not that which has brought a wail from the ages, when men have seen what they prize slip away. The common root of sorrow has been destructive change. Holding the watch in my hand, I may drop it on the floor; and at once the crystal, which has been so transparently protective, is gone. If the floor is of stone, the back of the watch may be wrenched away, the wheels of its delicate machinery jarred asunder. Destruction has come upon it, and not merely an extraneous accident. In consequence of altered surroundings, dissolution is wrought within.

Change of a lamentable sort has come. What before was a beautiful whole, organically const.i.tuted in the way described in my first two chapters, has been torn asunder. What we formerly beheld with delight has disappeared.

And let us not accept false comfort. We often hear it said that, after all, destruction is an illusion. There is no such thing. What is once in the world is here forever. No particle of the watch can by any possibility be lost. And what is true of the watch is true of things far higher, of persons even. When persons decay and die, may not their destruction be only in outward seeming? We cannot imagine absolute cessation. As well imagine an absolute beginning. There is no loss.

Everything abides. Only to our apprehension do destructive changes occur. We are all familiar with consolation of this sort, and how inwardly unsatisfactory it is! For while it is true that no particle of the watch is destroyed, it is precisely those particles which were in our minds of little consequence. Almost equally well they might have been of gold, silver, or steel. The precious part of the, watch was the organization of its particles, and that is gone. The face and form of my friend can indeed be blotted out in no single item. But I care nothing for its material items, The totality may be wrecked, and it is that totality to which my affections cling. And so it is in the world around--material remains, organic wholeness goes. It is almost a sarcasm of nature that she counts our precious things so cheap, while the bricks and mortar of which these are made--matters on which no human affection can fasten--she holds for everlasting. The lamentations of the ages, then, have not erred. Something tragic is involved in the framework of the universe. In order to abide, divulsion must occur. Destruction of organism is going on all around us, and ever will go on. Things must unceasingly be torn apart. One might call this destructive and lamentable change the only steadfast feature of the world.

V

Yet after all, and often in this very process of divulsion, we catch glimpses of a n.o.bler sort of change, For there is a third species to which I might perhaps give the name of transforming: change. When, for example, a certain portion of oxygen and a certain portion of hydrogen, each having its own distinctive qualities, are brought into contact with one another, they utterly change. The qualities of both disappear, and a new set of qualities takes their place. The old ones are gone,--gone, but not lost; for they have been transformed into new ones of a predetermined and constant kind. Only a single sort of change is open to these elements when in each other's presence, and in precisely that way they will always change. In so changing they do not, it is true, fully keep their past; but a fixed relation to it they do keep, and under certain conditions may return to it again. The transforming changes of chemistry, then, are of a different nature from those of the mechanic destruction just described. In those the ruined organism leaves not a wrack behind. In chemic change something definite is held, something that originally was planned and can he prophesied. An end is attained: the fixed combination of just so much oxygen with just so much hydrogen for the making of the new substance, water. Here change is productive, and is not mere waste, as in organic destruction. Something, however, is lost--the old qualities; for these cannot be restored except through the disruption of the new substance, the water in which they are combined.

VI

But there is a more peculiar change of a higher order still, that which we speak of as development, evolution, growth. This sort of change might be described as movement toward a mark. When the seed begins to be transformed in the earth, it is adapted not merely to the next stage; but that stage has reference to one farther on, and that to still others. It would hardly be a metaphor to declare that the whole elm is already prophesied when its seed is laid in the earth.

For though the entire tree is not there, though in order that the seed may become an elm it must have a helpful environment, still a certain plan of movement elmwards is, we may say, already schemed in the seed.

Here accordingly, change--far from being a loss--is a continual increment and revelation. And since the later stages successively disclose the meaning of those which went before, these later stages might with accuracy he styled the truth of their predecessors, and those be accounted in comparison trivial and meaningless until thus changed. This sort of change carries its past along with it. In the destructive changes which we were lamenting a moment ago, the past was lost and the new began as an independent affair. Even in chemic change this was true to a certain extent. Yet there, though the past was lost, a future was prophesied. In the case of development the future, so far from annihilating the past, is its exhibition on a larger scale. The full significance of any single stage is not manifest until the final one is reached.

I suppose when we arrive at this thought of change as expressing development, our lamentation may well turn to rejoicing. Possibly this may be the reason why the gloom which is a noticeable feature of the thought of many preceding centuries has in our time somewhat disappeared. While our ambitions are generally wider, and we might seem, therefore, more exposed to disappointment, I think the last half of the century which has closed has been a time of large hopefulness.

Perhaps it has not yet gone so far as rejoicing, for failure and sorrow are still by no means extirpated. But at least the thoughts of our day have become turned rather to the future than the past, a result which has attended the wider comprehension of development. To call development the discovery of our century would, however, be absurd. Aristotle bases his whole philosophy upon it, and it was already venerable in his time. Yet the many writers who have expounded the doctrine during the last fifty years have brought the thought of it home to the common man. It has entered into daily life as never before, and has done much to protect us against the sadness of destructive change. Perceiving that changes, apparently destructive, repeatedly bring to light meaning previously undisclosed, we more willingly than our ancestors part with the imperfect that a path to the perfect may be opened.

Is not this, then, the great conception of change which we now need to study as self-development? I believe not. One essential feature is omitted. In the typical example which I have just reviewed, the growth of an elm from its seed, we cannot say that the seed expands itself with a view to becoming a tree. That would be to carry over into the tree's existence notions borrowed from an alien sphere. Indeed, to a.s.sert that there has been any genuine development from the seed up to the finished tree is to use terms in an accommodated, metaphoric, and hypothetical way. Development there certainly has been as estimated by an outsider, an onlooker, but not as perceived by the tree itself. It has not known where it was going. Out of the unknown earth the seed pushes its way into the still less known air. But in doing so it is devoid of purpose. Nor, if we endow it with consciousness, can we suppose it would behold its end and seek it. The forces driving it toward that end are not conscious forces; they are mechanic forces.

Through every stage it is pushed from behind, not drawn from before.

There is no causative goal set up, alluring the seed onward. In speaking as if there were, we employ language which can have significance only for rational beings. We may hold that there is a rational plan of the universe which that seed is fulfilling. But if so, the plan does not belong to the seed. It is imposed from without, and the seed does its bidding unawares.