The Introduction and Chapter 1 The Fisher King from the book "He : Understanding Masculine Psychology" by Robert A. Johnson

From "He : Understanding Masculine Psychology."  Copyright © 1989 by Robert A. Johnson.  Revised Edition.  Published by HarperCollins e-books.

Introduction

Often, when a new era begins in history, a myth for that era springs up simultaneously.  The myth is a preview of what is to come, and it contains sage advice for coping with the psychological elements of the time.

In the myth of Parsifal's search for the Holy Grail we have such a prescription for our modern day.  The Grail myth arose in the twelfth century, a time when many people feel that our modern age began; ideas, attitudes and concepts we are living with today had their beginnings in the days when the Grail myth took form.  One can say that the winds of the twelfth century have become the whirlwinds of the twentieth century.

The theme of the Grail myth was much in evidence in the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries.  We will be using the French version, which is the earliest written account, taken from a poem by Chretien de Troyes.  There is also a German version by Wolfram von Eschenbach.  The English version, 'Le Morte Darthur' by Thomas Malory, comes from the fourteenth century; but by that time it had been elaborated a great deal.  The French version is simpler, more direct and nearer to the unconscious; therefore it is more helpful for our purposes.

We must remember that a myth is a living entity, and exists within every person.  You will get the true, living form of the myth if you can see it as it spins away inside yourself.  The most rewarding mythological experience you can have is to see how it lives in your own psychological structure.

The Grail myth speaks of masculine psychology.  This is not to say that it is confined to the male, for a woman participates in her own inner masculinity, though it is less dominant for her.  We must take everything that goes into the myth as part of ourselves.  We will have to cope with a dazzling array of fair damsels, but must see them too as parts of the masculine psyche.  Women, too, will be interested in the secrets of the Grail myth, for every woman has to cope with one of these exotic creatures, the male of the species, somehow, as father, or husband, or son.  Also a woman partakes quite directly of the Grail myth as the story of her own interior masculinity.  Especially as modern women take more part in the masculine world by embracing a profession, the development of masculinity becomes important to her.  A woman's masculinity or a man's femininity is closer than one realizes.  The insights of this myth will be immediate and practical for our present time.

The Fisher King

Our story begins with the Grail castle, which is in serious trouble.  The Fisher King, the king of the castle, has been wounded.  His wounds are so severe that he cannot live, yet he is incapable of dying.  He groans; he cries out; he suffers constantly.  The whole land is in desolation, for a land mirrors the condition of its king, inwardly in a mythological dimension, as well as outwardly in the physical world.  The cattle do not reproduce; the crops won't grow; knights are killed; children are orphaned; maidens weep; there is mourning everywhere---all because the Fisher King is wounded.

The notion that the welfare of a kingdom depends upon the virility or power of its ruler has been a common one, especially among primitive people.  There are still kingdoms in the primitive parts of the world where the king is killed when he can no longer produce any offspring.  He is simply killed, ceremonially, sometimes slowly, sometimes horribly, because it is thought that the kingdom will not prosper if the king is becoming weak.

The whole Grail castle is in serious trouble because the Fisher King is wounded.  The myth tells us that years before, early in his adolescence, when he was out wandering around in the woods doing his knight errantry, the Fisher King came to a camp.  All the people of the camp were gone, but there was a salmon roasting on a spit.  He was hungry, there was the salmon roasting over the fire, and he took a bit of it to eat.  He found that the salmon was very hot.  After burning his fingers on it he dropped the salmon and put his fingers into his mouth to assuage the burn.  In so doing he got a bit of the salmon into his mouth.  This is the Fisher King wound and gives its name to the ruler of much of our modern psychology.  Modern suffering man is the heir to this psychological event which took place culturally some eight hundred years ago.

Another version of the story has it that the young Fisher King was overwhelmed with 'amour' one day and was out hunting for some experience of his passion.  Another knight, a Muslim pagan, had had a vision of the True Cross and was out searching for some expression of this quest.  The two came within sight of each other and, like true knights, each lowered visor and lance and went at the other.  There was a terrible clash, the pagan knight was killed and the Fisher King received the wound in his thigh which blighted the kingdom for so many years.

What a sight!  The knight of vision and the knight of sensuousness clash in terrible combat.  Instinct and nature now suddenly having been touched by a vision of spirit clashing with pure spirit which has been touched by a vision of instinct and nature.  Such is the crucible within which the highest evolution can take place---or a deadly conflict capable of psychological destruction.

I shudder at the implications of this clash, for it leaves us the legacy of our sensuous nature killed and our Christian vision terribly wounded.  Hardly a modern man escapes this collision in his own life and he may end up in the sad state described in our story.  His passion is killed and his vision is badly wounded.

The story of St. George and the dragon, which was adapted from a Persian myth at the time of the crusades, says much the same.  In battle with the dragon, St. George, his horse, and the dragon were all mortally wounded.  They would all have expired but for the fortuitous event that a bird pecked an orange (or a lime) that was hanging on a tree over St. George and a drop of the life-giving juice fell into his mouth.  St. George arose, squeezed some of the elixir into his horse's mouth and revived him.  No one revived the dragon.

Much is to be learned from the symbol of the wounded Fisher King.  The salmon or, more generally, the fish, is one of the many symbols of Christ.  As in the story of the Fisher King coming upon the roasting salmon, a boy in his early adolescence touches something of the Christ nature within himself but touches it too soon.  He is unexpectedly wounded by it and drops it immediately as being too hot.  But a bit of it gets into his mouth and he can never forget the experience.  His first contact with what will be redemption for him later in his life is a wounding.  This is what turns him into a wounded Fisher King.  The first touch of consciousness in a youth appears as a wound or as suffering.  Parsifal finds his Garden of Eden experience by way of the bit of salmon.  That suffering stays with him until his redemption or enlightenment many years later.

Most western men are Fisher Kings.  Every boy has naively blundered into something that is too big for him.  He proceeds halfway through his masculine development and then drops it as being too hot.  Often a certain bitterness arises, because, like the Fisher King, he can neither live with the new consciousness he has touched nor can he entirely drop it.

Every adolescent receives his Fisher King wound.  He would never proceed into consciousness if it were not so.  The church speaks of this wounding as the 'felix culpa,' the happy fall which ushers one into the process of redemption.  This is the fall from the Garden of Eden, the graduation from naive consciousness into self consciousness.

It is painful to watch a young man realize that the world is not just joy and happiness, to watch the disintegration of his childlike beauty, faith, and optimism.  It is regrettable but necessary---if we are not cast out of the Garden of Eden, there can be no Heavenly Jerusalem.  In the Catholic liturgy for Holy Saturday evening there is a beautiful line, "Oh happy fall that was the occasion for so sublime (noble, exalted) a redemption."

The Fisher King wound may coincide with a specific event, an injustice, such as being accused of something we didn't do.  In Dr. C. G Jung's autobiography he tells that once his professor read all of Jung's classmates' papers in the order of their merit, but didn't read Jung's paper at all.  His professor then said, "There is one paper here that is by far the best, but it is obviously a forgery.  If I could find the book I would have him expelled."  Jung had worked hard on the paper and it was his own creation.  He never trusted that man, or the whole schooling process, after that.  This was a Fisher King wound for Dr. Jung.

Stages of Evolution

According to tradition, there are potentially three stages of psychological development for a man.  The archetypal pattern is that one goes from the unconscious perfection of childhood, to the conscious imperfection of middle life, to conscious perfection of old age.  One moves from an innocent wholeness, in which the inner world and the outer world are united, to a separation and differentiation between the inner and outer worlds with an accompanying sense of life's duality, and then, at last, to enlightenment---a conscious reconciliation of the inner and outer in harmonious wholeness.

We are witnessing the Fisher King's development from stage one to stage two.  One has no right to talk about the last stage until he has accomplished the second one.  One has no right to talk about the oneness of the universe until he is aware of its separateness and duality.  We can do all manner of mental acrobatics and talk of the unity of the world; but we have no chance of functioning truly in this manner until we have succeeded in differentiating the inner and outer worlds.  We have to leave the Garden of Eden before we can start the journey to the Heavenly Jerusalem.  It is ironic that the two are the same place but the journey must be made.

A man's first step out of the Garden of Eden into the world of duality is his Fisher King wound: the experience of alienation and suffering that ushers him into the beginning of consciousness.  The myth tells us that the Fisher King wound is in the thigh.  You may remember the biblical story about Jacob wrestling with the angel and being wounded in the thigh.  A touch of anything transpersonal---an angel or Christ in the guise of a fish---leaves the terrible wound that cries incessantly for redemption.  The wound in the thigh means that the man is wounded in his generative ability, in his capacity for relationship.  One version of the story has it that the Fisher King was wounded by an arrow that transfixed both testicles.  The arrow could not be pushed through nor could it be withdrawn.  Again, the Fisher King is described as being too ill to live but unable to die.

Much of modern literature revolves around the lostness and alienation of the hero.  Moreover, we can see this alienation in the countenance of almost everyone we pass on the street---the Fisher King wound is the hallmark of modern man.

I doubt if there is a woman in the world who has not had to mutely stand by as she watched a man agonize over his Fisher King aspect.  She may be the one who notices, even before the man himself is aware of it, that there is suffering and a haunting sense of injury and incompleteness in him.  A man suffering in this way is often driven to do idiotic things to cure the wound and ease the desperation he feels.  Usually he seeks an unconscious solution outside of himself, complaining about his work, his marriage, or his place in the world.

The Fisher King is carried about in his litter, groaning, crying in his suffering.  There is no respite for him---except when he is fishing.  This is to say that the wound, which represents consciousness, is bearable only when the wounded is doing his inner work, proceeding with the task of consciousness which was inadvertently started with the wound in his youth.  This close association with fishing will soon play a large part in our story.

The Fisher King presides over his court in the Grail castle where the Holy Grail, the chalice from the Last Supper, is kept.  Mythology teaches us that the king who rules over our innermost court sets the tone and character for that court and thus our whole life.  If the king is well, we are well; if things are right inside, they will go well outside.  With the wounded Fisher King presiding at the inner court of modern western man we can expect much outward suffering and alienation.  And so it is: the kingdom is not flourishing; the crops are poor; maidens are bereaved; children are orphaned.  This eloquent language expresses how a wounded archetypal underpinning manifests itself in problems in our external lives.

The Inner Fool

Every night there is a solemn ceremony in the Grail castle.  The Fisher King is lying on his litter enduring his suffering while a procession of profound beauty takes place.  A fair maiden brings in the lance which pierced the side of Christ at the crucifixion, another maiden brings the paten which held the bread at the Last Supper, another maiden brings the Grail itself which glows with light from its own depth.  Each person is given wine from the Grail and realizes their deepest wish even before they voice that wish.  Each person, that is, except the wounded Fisher King who may not drink from the Grail.  This surely is the worst deprivation of all: to be barred from the essence of beauty and holiness when just those qualities are right in front of you is the cruelest of all suffering.  All are served except the Grail king.  All are conscious that their very center is deprived because their king can not partake of the grail.

I remember a time when beauty was denied me in just this manner.  Many years ago I was particularly lonely and at odds with the world during a trip to visit my parents for Christmas.  My journey took me through San Francisco and I stopped at my beloved Grace Cathedral.  A performance of Handel's Messiah was scheduled for that evening so I stayed to hear this inspiring work.  Nowhere is it better done than in that great building with its fine organ and master choristers.  A few minutes into the performance I was so unhappy that I had to leave.  It was then that I knew that the pursuit of beauty or happiness was in vain since I could not partake of the beauty even though it was immediately at hand.  No worse or frightening pain is possible for us than to realize that our capacity for love or beauty or happiness is limited.  No further outward effort is possible if our inward capacity is wounded.  This is the Fisher King wound.

How many times have women said to their men: "Look at all the good things you have; you have the best job you have ever had in your life.  Our income is better than ever.  We have two cars.  We have two and sometimes three day weekends.  Why aren't you happy?  The Grail is at hand; why aren't you happy?"

The man is too inarticulate to reply, "Because I am a Fisher King and am wounded and cannot touch any of this happiness."

A true myth teaches us the cure for the dilemma which it portrays.  The Grail myth makes a profound statement of the nature of our present day ailment and then prescribes its cure in very strange terms.

The court fool (and every good court has its resident fool) had prophesied long ago that the Fisher King would be healed when a wholly innocent fool arrived in the court and asked a specific question.  It is a shock to us that a fool should have to answer to our most painful wound but this solution is well known to tradition.  Many legends put our cure in the hands of a fool or someone most unlikely to carry healing power.

The myth is telling us that it is the naive part of a man that will heal him and cure his Fisher King wound.  It suggests that if a man is to be cured he must find something in himself about the same age and about the same mentality as he was when he was wounded.  It also tells us why the Fisher King cannot heal himself, and why, when he goes fishing, his pain is eased though not cured.  For a man to be truly healed he must allow something entirely different from himself to enter into his consciousness and change him.  He cannot be healed if he remains in the old Fisher King mentality.  That is why the young fool part of himself must enter his life if he is to be cured.

In my consulting room a man barks at me when I prescribe something strange or difficult for him: "What do you think I am?  A Fool?"  And I say, "Well, it would help."  This is humbling medicine to accept.

A man must consent to look to a foolish, innocent, adolescent part of himself for his cure.  The inner fool is the only one who can touch his Fisher King wound.

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The First 5 Chapters of Book II of Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle

From http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.2.ii.html

Nicomachean Ethics 

By Aristotle 

Written 350 B.C.E

Translated by W. D. Ross

Book II    

1 

Virtue, then, being of two kinds, intellectual and moral, intellectual virtue in the main owes both its birth and its growth to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and time), while moral virtue comes about as a result of habit, whence also its name (ethike) is one that is formed by a slight variation from the word ethos (habit). From this it is also plain that none of the moral virtues arises in us by nature; for nothing that exists by nature can form a habit contrary to its nature. For instance the stone which by nature moves downwards cannot be habituated to move upwards, not even if one tries to train it by throwing it up ten thousand times; nor can fire be habituated to move downwards, nor can anything else that by nature behaves in one way be trained to behave in another. Neither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit. 

Again, of all the things that come to us by nature we first acquire the potentiality and later exhibit the activity (this is plain in the case of the senses; for it was not by often seeing or often hearing that we got these senses, but on the contrary we had them before we used them, and did not come to have them by using them); but the virtues we get by first exercising them, as also happens in the case of the arts as well. For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them, e.g. men become builders by building and lyreplayers by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts. 

This is confirmed by what happens in states; for legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one. 

Again, it is from the same causes and by the same means that every virtue is both produced and destroyed, and similarly every art; for it is from playing the lyre that both good and bad lyre-players are produced. And the corresponding statement is true of builders and of all the rest; men will be good or bad builders as a result of building well or badly. For if this were not so, there would have been no need of a teacher, but all men would have been born good or bad at their craft. This, then, is the case with the virtues also; by doing the acts that we do in our transactions with other men we become just or unjust, and by doing the acts that we do in the presence of danger, and being habituated to feel fear or confidence, we become brave or cowardly. The same is true of appetites and feelings of anger; some men become temperate and good-tempered, others self-indulgent and irascible, by behaving in one way or the other in the appropriate circumstances. Thus, in one word, states of character arise out of like activities. This is why the activities we exhibit must be of a certain kind; it is because the states of character correspond to the differences between these. It makes no small difference, then, whether we form habits of one kind or of another from our very youth; it makes a very great difference, or rather all the difference. 

2 

Since, then, the present inquiry does not aim at theoretical knowledge like the others (for we are inquiring not in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good, since otherwise our inquiry would have been of no use), we must examine the nature of actions, namely how we ought to do them; for these determine also the nature of the states of character that are produced, as we have said. Now, that we must act according to the right rule is a common principle and must be assumed-it will be discussed later, i.e. both what the right rule is, and how it is related to the other virtues. But this must be agreed upon beforehand, that the whole account of matters of conduct must be given in outline and not precisely, as we said at the very beginning that the accounts we demand must be in accordance with the subject-matter; matters concerned with conduct and questions of what is good for us have no fixity, any more than matters of health. The general account being of this nature, the account of particular cases is yet more lacking in exactness; for they do not fall under any art or precept but the agents themselves must in each case consider what is appropriate to the occasion, as happens also in the art of medicine or of navigation. 

But though our present account is of this nature we must give what help we can. First, then, let us consider this, that it is the nature of such things to be destroyed by defect and excess, as we see in the case of strength and of health (for to gain light on things imperceptible we must use the evidence of sensible things); both excessive and defective exercise destroys the strength, and similarly drink or food which is above or below a certain amount destroys the health, while that which is proportionate both produces and increases and preserves it. So too is it, then, in the case of temperance and courage and the other virtues. For the man who flies from and fears everything and does not stand his ground against anything becomes a coward, and the man who fears nothing at all but goes to meet every danger becomes rash; and similarly the man who indulges in every pleasure and abstains from none becomes self-indulgent, while the man who shuns every pleasure, as boors do, becomes in a way insensible; temperance and courage, then, are destroyed by excess and defect, and preserved by the mean. 

But not only are the sources and causes of their origination and growth the same as those of their destruction, but also the sphere of their actualization will be the same; for this is also true of the things which are more evident to sense, e.g. of strength; it is produced by taking much food and undergoing much exertion, and it is the strong man that will be most able to do these things. So too is it with the virtues; by abstaining from pleasures we become temperate, and it is when we have become so that we are most able to abstain from them; and similarly too in the case of courage; for by being habituated to despise things that are terrible and to stand our ground against them we become brave, and it is when we have become so that we shall be most able to stand our ground against them. 

3 

We must take as a sign of states of character the pleasure or pain that ensues on acts; for the man who abstains from bodily pleasures and delights in this very fact is temperate, while the man who is annoyed at it is self-indulgent, and he who stands his ground against things that are terrible and delights in this or at least is not pained is brave, while the man who is pained is a coward. For moral excellence is concerned with pleasures and pains; it is on account of the pleasure that we do bad things, and on account of the pain that we abstain from noble ones. Hence we ought to have been brought up in a particular way from our very youth, as Plato says, so as both to delight in and to be pained by the things that we ought; for this is the right education. 

Again, if the virtues are concerned with actions and passions, and every passion and every action is accompanied by pleasure and pain, for this reason also virtue will be concerned with pleasures and pains. This is indicated also by the fact that punishment is inflicted by these means; for it is a kind of cure, and it is the nature of cures to be effected by contraries. 

Again, as we said but lately, every state of soul has a nature relative to and concerned with the kind of things by which it tends to be made worse or better; but it is by reason of pleasures and pains that men become bad, by pursuing and avoiding these- either the pleasures and pains they ought not or when they ought not or as they ought not, or by going wrong in one of the other similar ways that may be distinguished. Hence men even define the virtues as certain states of impassivity and rest; not well, however, because they speak absolutely, and do not say 'as one ought' and 'as one ought not' and 'when one ought or ought not', and the other things that may be added. We assume, then, that this kind of excellence tends to do what is best with regard to pleasures and pains, and vice does the contrary. 

The following facts also may show us that virtue and vice are concerned with these same things. There being three objects of choice and three of avoidance, the noble, the advantageous, the pleasant, and their contraries, the base, the injurious, the painful, about all of these the good man tends to go right and the bad man to go wrong, and especially about pleasure; for this is common to the animals, and also it accompanies all objects of choice; for even the noble and the advantageous appear pleasant. 

Again, it has grown up with us all from our infancy; this is why it is difficult to rub off this passion, engrained as it is in our life. And we measure even our actions, some of us more and others less, by the rule of pleasure and pain. For this reason, then, our whole inquiry must be about these; for to feel delight and pain rightly or wrongly has no small effect on our actions. 

Again, it is harder to fight with pleasure than with anger, to use Heraclitus' phrase', but both art and virtue are always concerned with what is harder; for even the good is better when it is harder. Therefore for this reason also the whole concern both of virtue and of political science is with pleasures and pains; for the man who uses these well will be good, he who uses them badly bad. 

That virtue, then, is concerned with pleasures and pains, and that by the acts from which it arises it is both increased and, if they are done differently, destroyed, and that the acts from which it arose are those in which it actualizes itself- let this be taken as said. 

4 

The question might be asked,; what we mean by saying that we must become just by doing just acts, and temperate by doing temperate acts; for if men do just and temperate acts, they are already just and temperate, exactly as, if they do what is in accordance with the laws of grammar and of music, they are grammarians and musicians. 

Or is this not true even of the arts? It is possible to do something that is in accordance with the laws of grammar, either by chance or at the suggestion of another. A man will be a grammarian, then, only when he has both done something grammatical and done it grammatically; and this means doing it in accordance with the grammatical knowledge in himself. 

Again, the case of the arts and that of the virtues are not similar; for the products of the arts have their goodness in themselves, so that it is enough that they should have a certain character, but if the acts that are in accordance with the virtues have themselves a certain character it does not follow that they are done justly or temperately. The agent also must be in a certain condition when he does them; in the first place he must have knowledge, secondly he must choose the acts, and choose them for their own sakes, and thirdly his action must proceed from a firm and unchangeable character. These are not reckoned in as conditions of the possession of the arts, except the bare knowledge; but as a condition of the possession of the virtues knowledge has little or no weight, while the other conditions count not for a little but for everything, i.e. the very conditions which result from often doing just and temperate acts. 

Actions, then, are called just and temperate when they are such as the just or the temperate man would do; but it is not the man who does these that is just and temperate, but the man who also does them as just and temperate men do them. It is well said, then, that it is by doing just acts that the just man is produced, and by doing temperate acts the temperate man; without doing these no one would have even a prospect of becoming good. 

But most people do not do these, but take refuge in theory and think they are being philosophers and will become good in this way, behaving somewhat like patients who listen attentively to their doctors, but do none of the things they are ordered to do. As the latter will not be made well in body by such a course of treatment, the former will not be made well in soul by such a course of philosophy. 

5 

Next we must consider what virtue is. Since things that are found in the soul are of three kinds- passions, faculties, states of character, virtue must be one of these. By passions I mean appetite, anger, fear, confidence, envy, joy, friendly feeling, hatred, longing, emulation, pity, and in general the feelings that are accompanied by pleasure or pain; by faculties the things in virtue of which we are said to be capable of feeling these, e.g. of becoming angry or being pained or feeling pity; by states of character the things in virtue of which we stand well or badly with reference to the passions, e.g. with reference to anger we stand badly if we feel it violently or too weakly, and well if we feel it moderately; and similarly with reference to the other passions. 

Now neither the virtues nor the vices are passions, because we are not called good or bad on the ground of our passions, but are so called on the ground of our virtues and our vices, and because we are neither praised nor blamed for our passions (for the man who feels fear or anger is not praised, nor is the man who simply feels anger blamed, but the man who feels it in a certain way), but for our virtues and our vices we are praised or blamed. 

Again, we feel anger and fear without choice, but the virtues are modes of choice or involve choice. Further, in respect of the passions we are said to be moved, but in respect of the virtues and the vices we are said not to be moved but to be disposed in a particular way. 

For these reasons also they are not faculties; for we are neither called good nor bad, nor praised nor blamed, for the simple capacity of feeling the passions; again, we have the faculties by nature, but we are not made good or bad by nature; we have spoken of this before. If, then, the virtues are neither passions nor faculties, all that remains is that they should be states of character. 

Thus we have stated what virtue is in respect of its genus. 

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Four Letters from Lucius Annaeus Seneca

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_the_Younger

From Wikipedia the free online encyclopedia:

Seneca the Younger

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (often known simply as Seneca; c. 4 BC – AD 65) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature.

He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero. While he was forced to commit suicide for alleged complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate Nero, he may have been innocent.[1][2] His father was Seneca the Elder and his elder brother was Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus, called Gallio in the Bible.

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Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Other names Seneca the Younger, Seneca

Born c. 4 BC in Cordoba, Hispania

Died AD 65 (aged 68–69) in Rome

Nationality Roman

Era      Ancient philosophy

Region Western philosophy

School Stoicism

Works

Works attributed to Seneca include a dozen philosophical essays, one hundred and twenty-four letters dealing with moral issues, nine tragedies, and a satire, the attribution of which is disputed.[21] His authorship of Hercules on Oeta has also been questioned.

Seneca generally employed a pointed rhetorical style. His writings expose traditional themes of Stoic philosophy: the universe is governed for the best by a rational providence; contentment is achieved through a simple, unperturbed life in accordance with nature and duty to the state; human suffering should be accepted and has a beneficial effect on the soul; study and learning are important. He emphasized practical steps by which the reader might confront life's problems. In particular, he considered it important to confront one's own mortality. The discussion of how to approach death dominates many of his letters.

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From http://www.stoics.com/seneca_epistles_book_1.html#%91II1 :

Letter 2  On discursiveness in reading.

     Judging by what you write me, and by what I hear, I am forming a good opinion regarding your future.  You do not run hither and thither and distract yourself by changing your abode; for such restlessness+ is the sign of a disordered spirit.  The primary indication, to my thinking, of a well-ordered maid is a man's ability to remain in one place and linger in his own company.  Be careful, however, lest this reading of many authors and books of every sort may tend to make you discursive and unsteady.  You must linger among a limited number of master thinkers, and digest their works, if you would derive ideas which shall win firm hold in your mind.  Everywhere means nowhere.  When a person spends all his time in foreign travel, he ends by having many acquaintances, but no friends. And the same thing must hold true of men who seek intimate acquaintance with no single author, but visit them all in a hasty and hurried manner. Food does no good and is not assimilated into the body if it leaves the stomach as soon as it is eaten; nothing hinders a cure so much as frequent change of medicine; no wound will heal when one salve is tried after another; a plant which is often moved can never grow strong.  There is nothing so efficacious that it can be helpful while it is being shifted about.  And in reading of many books is distraction.

Accordingly, since you cannot read all the books which you may possess, it is enough to possess only as many books as you can read. "But," you reply, "I wish to dip first into one book and then into another." I tell you that it is the sign of an overnice appetite to toy with many dishes; for when they are manifold and varied, they cloy but do not nourish.  So you should always read standard authors; and when you crave a change, fall back upon those whom you read before.  Each day acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes as well; and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day.  This is my own custom; from the many things which I have read, I claim some one part for myself.

The thought for to-day is one which I discovered in 'Epicurus'; for I am wont to cross over even into the enemy's camp, - not as a deserter, but as a scout.  He says: "Contented poverty is an honourable estate." Indeed, if it be contented, it is not poverty at all. It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.  What does it matter how much a man has laid up in his safe, or in his warehouse, how large are his flocks and how fat his dividends, if he covets his neighbour's property, and reckons, not his past gains, but his hopes of gains to come?  Do you ask what is the proper limit to wealth? It is, first, to have what is necessary, and, second, to have what is enough. Farewell. 

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Letter 15  On brawn and brains.

The old Romans had a custom which survived even into my lifetime.  They would add to the opening words of a letter: "If you are well, it is well; I also am well." Persons like ourselves would do well to say. "If you are studying philosophy, it is well." For this is just what "being well" means.  Without philosophy the mind is sickly, and the body, too, though it may be very powerful, is strong only as that of a madman or a lunatic is strong.  This, then, is the sort of health you should primarily cultivate; the other kind of health comes second, and will involve little effort, if you wish to be well physically.  It is indeed foolish, my dear Lucilius, and very unsuitable for a cultivated man, to work hard over developing the muscles and broadening the shoulders and strengthening the lungs.  For although your heavy feeding produce good results and your sinews grow solid, you can never be a match, either in strength or in weight, for a first-class bull.  Besides, by overloading the body with food you strangle the soul and render it less active.  Accordingly, limit the flesh as much as possible, and allow free play to the spirit. Many inconveniences beset those who devote themselves to such pursuits. In the first place, they have their exercises, at which they must work and waste their life-force and render it less fit to bear a strain or the severer studies.  Second, their keen edge is dulled by heavy eating.  Besides, they must take orders from slaves of the vilest stamp, ---men who alternate between the oil-flask and the flagon, whose day passes satisfactorily if they have got up a good perspiration and quaffed, to make good what they have lost in sweat, huge draughts of liquor which will sink deeper because of their fasting.  Drinking and sweating, ---it's the life of a dyspeptic!

Now there are short and simple exercises which tire the body rapidly, and so save our time; and time is something of which we ought to keep strict account. These exercises are running, brandishing weights, and jumping, ---high-jumping or broad-jumping, or the kind which I may call, "the Priest's dance," or, in slighting terms, "the clothes-cleaner's jump." Select for practice any one of these, and you will find it plain and easy.  But whatever you do, come back soon from body to mind.  The mind must be exercised both day and night, for it is nourished by moderate labour. and this form of exercise need not be hampered by cold or hot weather, or even by old age.  Cultivate that good which improves with the years.  Of course I do not command you to be always bending over your books and your writing materials; the mind must have a change, ---but a change of such a kind that it is not unnerved, but merely unbent.  Riding in a litter shakes up the body, and does not interfere with study: one may read, dictate, converse, or listen to another; nor does walking prevent any of these things.

You need not scorn voice-culture; but I forbid you to practice raising and lowering your voice by scales and specific intonations.  What if you should next propose to take lessons in walking! If you consult the sort of person whom starvation has taught new tricks, you will have someone to regulate your steps, watch every mouthful as you eat, and go to such lengths as you yourself, by enduring him and believing in him, have encouraged his effrontery to go. "What, then?" you will ask; "is my voice to begin at the outset with shouting and straining the lungs to the utmost?" No; the natural thing is that it be aroused to such a pitch by easy stages, just as persons who are wrangling begin with ordinary conversational tones and then pass to shouting at the top of their lungs.  No speaker cries "Help me, citizens!" at the outset of his speech.  Therefore, whenever your spirit's impulse prompts you, raise a hubbub, now in louder now in milder tones, according as your voice, as well as your spirit, shall suggest to you, when you are moved to such a performance.  Then let your voice, when you rein it in and call it back to earth, come down gently, not collapse; it should trail off in tones half way between high and low, and should not abruptly drop from its raving in the uncouth manner of countrymen.  For our purpose is, not to give the voice exercise, but to make it give us exercise. 

You see, I have relieved you of no slight bother; and I shall throw in a little complementary present, ---it is Greek, too.  Here is the proverb; it is an excellent one: "The fool's life is empty of gratitude and full of fears; its course lies wholly toward the future." "Who uttered these words?" you say.  The same writer whom I mentioned before. And what sort of life do you think is meant by the fool's life?  That of Baba and Isio?  No; he means our own, for we are plunged by our blind desires into ventures which will harm us, but certainly will never satisfy us; for if we could be satisfied with anything, we should have been satisfied long ago; nor do we reflect how pleasant it is to demand nothing, how noble it is to be contented and not to be dependent upon Fortune.  Therefore continually remind yourself, Lucilius, how many ambitions you have attained.  When you see many ahead of you, think how many are behind!  If you would thank the gods, and be grateful for your past life, you should contemplate how many men you have outstripped.  But what have you to do with the others?  You have outstripped yourself. 

Fix a limit which you will not even desire to pass, should you have the power.  At last, then, away with all these treacherous goods!  They look better to those who hope for them than to those who have attained them.  If there were anything substantial in them, they would sooner or later satisfy you; as it is, they merely rouse the drinkers' thirst.  Away with fripperies which only serve for show!  As to what the future's uncertain lot has in store, why should I demand of Fortune that she give rather than demand of myself that I should not crave?  And why should l crave?  Shall I heap up my winnings, and forget that man's lot is unsubstantial?  For what end should I toil?  Lo, to-day is the last; if not, it is near the last.  Farewell.

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Letter 16  On philosophy, the guide of life.

It is clear to you, I am sure, Lucilius, that no man can live a happy life, or even a supportable life, without the study of wisdom; you know also that a happy life is reached when our wisdom is brought to completion, but that life is at least endurable even when our wisdom is only begun.  This idea, however, clear though it is, must be strengthened and implanted more deeply by daily reflection; it is more important for you to keep the resolutions you have already made than to go on and make noble ones.  You must persevere, must develop new strength by continuous study, until that which is only a good inclination becomes a good settled purpose.  Hence you no longer need to come to me with much talk and protestations; I know that you have made great progress.  I understand the feelings which prompt your words; they are not feigned or specious words.  Nevertheless I shall tell you what I think, ---that at present I have hopes for you, but not yet perfect trust.  And I wish that you would adopt the same attitude towards yourself; there is no reason why you should put confidence in yourself too quickly and readily.  Examine yourself; scrutinize and observe yourself in divers ways; but mark, before all else, whether it is in philosophy or merely in life itself that you have made progress.  Philosophy is no trick to catch the public; it is not devised for show.  It is a matter, not of words, but of facts.  It is not pursued in order that the day may yield some amusement before it is spent, or that our leisure may be relieved of a tedium that irks us.  It moulds and constructs the soul; it orders our life, guides our conduct, shows us what we should do and what we should leave undone; it sits at the helm and directs our course as we waver amid uncertainties. Without it, no one can live fearlessly or in peace of mind.  Countless things that happen every hour call for advice; and such advice is to be sought in philosophy.

Perhaps someone will say: "How can philosophy help me, if Fate exists?  Of what avail is philosophy, if God rules the universe?  Of what avail is it, if Chance governs everything?  For not only is it impossible to change things that are determined, but it is also impossible to plan beforehand against what is undetermined; either God has forestalled my plans, and decided what I am to do, or else Fortune gives no free play to my plans." Whether the truth, Lucilius, lies in one or in all of these views, we must be philosophers; whether Fate binds us down by an inexorable law, or whether God as arbiter of the universe has arranged everything, or whether Chance drives and tosses human affairs without method, philosophy ought to be our defense.  She will encourage us to obey God cheerfully, but Fortune defiantly; she will teach us to follow God and endure Chance. But it is not my purpose now to be led into a discussion as to what is within our own control, ---if foreknowledge is supreme, or if a chain of fated events drags us along in its clutches, or if the sudden and the unexpected play the tyrant over us; I return now to my warning and my exhortation, that you should not allow the impulse of your spirit to weaken and grow cold.  Hold fast to it and establish it firmly, in order that what is now impulse may become a habit of the mind. 

If I know you well, you have already been trying to find out, from the very beginning of my letter, what little contribution it brings to you.  Sift the letter, and you will find it.  You need not wonder at any genius of mine; for as yet I am lavish only with other men's property. ---But why did I say " other men"?  Whatever is well said by anyone is mine. This also is a saying of Epicurus: "If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; if you live according to opinion, you will never be rich." Nature's wants are slight; the demands of opinion are boundless. Suppose that the property of many millionaires is heaped up in your possession. Assume that fortune carries you far beyond the limits of a private income, decks you with gold, clothes you in purple, and brings you to such a degree of luxury and wealth that you can bury the earth under your marble floors; that you may not only possess, but tread upon, riches.  Add statues, paintings, and whatever any art has devised for the luxury; you will only learn from such things to crave still greater. 

Natural desires are limited; but those which spring from false opinion can have no stopping-point.  The false has no limits.  When you are travelling on a road, there must be an end; but when astray, your wanderings are limitless.  Recall your steps, therefore, from idle things, and when you would know whether that which you seek is based upon a natural or upon a misleading desire, consider whether it can stop at any definite point.  If you find, after having travelled far, that there is a more distant goal always in view, you may be sure that this condition is contrary to nature.  Farewell.

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Letter 38  On quiet conversation.

You are right when you urge that we increase our mutual traffic in letters.  But the greatest benefit is to be derived from conversation, because it creeps by degrees into the soul.  Lectures prepared beforehand and spouted in the presence of a throng have in them more noise but less intimacy.  Philosophy is good advice; and no one can give advice at the top of his lungs.  Of course we must sometimes also make use of these harangues, if I may so call them, when a doubting member needs to be spurred on; but when the aim is to make a man learn and not merely to make him wish to learn, we must have recourse to the low-toned words of conversation. They enter more easily, and stick in the memory; for we do not need many words, but, rather, effective words. 

Words should be scattered like seed; no matter how small the seed may be, if it has once found favourable ground, it unfolds its strength and from an insignificant thing spreads to its greatest growth.  Reason grows in the same way; it is not large to the outward view, but increases as it does its work.  Few words are spoken; but if the mind has truly caught them, they come into their strength and spring up.  Yes, precepts and seeds have the same quality; they produce much, and yet they are slight things.  Only, as I said, let a favourable mind receive and assimilate them. Then of itself the mind also will produce bounteously in its turn, giving back more than it has received.  Farewell. 

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Chapters 6 and 7 from the book Talks to Teachers On Psychology by William James

From http://www.uky.edu/~eushe2/Pajares/james.html#talks

From Talks to Teachers On Psychology

Copyright © 1899 by William James

Preface

Chapter 1 - Psychology and the Teaching Art

Chapter 2 - The Stream of Consciousness

Chapter 3 - The Child as a Behaving Organism

Chapter 4 - Education and Behavior

Chapter 5 - The Necessity of Reactions

Chapter 6 - Native Reactions and Acquired Reactions

Chapter 7 - What the Native Reactions Are Chapter   8 - The Laws of Habit

Chapter   9 - The Association of Ideas

Chapter 10 - Interest

Chapter 11 - Attention

Chapter 12 - Memory

Chapter 13 - The Acquisition of Ideas

Chapter 14 - Apperception

Chapter 15 - The Will

* * * *

Talks to Teachers

William James

CHAPTER 6

Native Reactions and Acquired Reactions

WE ARE by this time fully launched upon the biological conception. Man is an organism for reacting on impressions: his mind is there to help determine his reactions, and the purpose of his education is to make them numerous and perfect. Our education means, in short, little more than a mass of possibilities of reaction, acquired at home, at school, or in the training of affairs. The teacher's task- is that of supervising the acquiring process.

This being the case, I will immediately state a principle which underlies the whole process of acquisition and governs the entire activity of the teacher. It is this:—

Every acquired reaction is, as a rule, either a complication grafted on a native reaction, or a substitute for a native reaction, which the same object originally tended to provoke.

The teacher's art consists in bringing about the substitution or complication, and success in the art presupposes a sympathetic acquaintance with the reactive tendencies natively there.

Without an equipment of native reactions on the child's part, the teacher would have no hold whatever upon the child's attention or conduct. You may take a horse to the water, but you cannot make him drink; and so you may take a child to the schoolroom, but you cannot make him learn the new things you wish to impart, except by soliciting him in the first instance by something which natively makes him react. He must take the first step himself. He must do something before you can get your purchase on him. That something may be something good or something bad. A bad reaction is better than no reaction at all; for, if bad, can couple it with consequences which awake him to its badness. But imagine a child so lifeless as to react in no way to the teacher's first appeals, and how can you possibly take the first step in his education?

To make this abstract conception more concrete, assume the case of a young child's training in good manners. The child has a native tendency to snatch with his hands at anything that attracts his curiosity; also to draw back his hands when slapped, to cry under these latter conditions, to smile when gently spoken to, and to imitate one's gestures.

Suppose now you appear before the child with a new toy intended as a present for him. No sooner does he see the toy than he seeks to snatch it. You slap the hand; it is withdrawn, and the child cries. You then hold up the toy, smiling and saying, "Beg for it nicely, —so!" The child stops crying, imitates you, receives the toy, and crows with pleasure; and that little cycle of training is complete. You have substituted the new reaction of 'begging' for the native reaction of snatching, when that kind of impression comes.

Now, if the child had no memory, the process would not be educative. No matter how often you came in with a toy, the same series of reactions would fatally occur, each Called forth by its own impression: see, snatch; slap, cry; hear, ask; receive, smile. But, with memory there, the child, at the very instant of snatching, recalls the rest of the earlier experience, thinks of the slap and the frustration, recollects the begging and the reward, inhibits the snatching impulse, substitutes the 'nice' reaction for it, and gets the toy immediately, but eliminating all the intermediary steps. If a child's first snatching impulse is excessive or his memory poor, many repetitions of the discipline may be needed before the acquired reaction comes to be an ingrained habit; but in an eminently educable child a single experience will suffice.

One can easily represent the whole process by a brain diagram. Such a diagram can be little more than a symbolic translation of the immediate experience into spatial terms; yet it may be useful, so I subjoin it.

Figure 1 shows the paths of the four successive reflexes executed by the lower or instinctive centers. The dotted lines that lead from them to the higher centers and connect the latter together, represent the processes of memory and association which the reactions impress upon the higher centers as they take place.

In Figure 2 we have the final result. The impression (see) awakens the chain of memories, and the only reactions that take place are the beg and smile. The thought of the slap, connected with the activity of Center 2, inhibits the snatch, and makes it abortive, so it is represented only by a dotted line of discharge not reaching the terminus. Ditto of the cry reaction. These are, as it were, short-circuited by the current sweeping through the higher centers from see to smile. Beg and smile, thus substituted for the original reaction snatch, become at last the immediate responses when the child sees a snatchable object in some one's hands.

The first thing, then, for the teacher to understand is the native reactive tendencies,—the impulses and instincts of childhood,—so as to be able to substitute one for another, and turn them on to artificial objects.

It is often said that man is distinguished from the lower animals by having a much smaller assortment of native instincts and impulses than they, but this is a great mistake. Man, of course, has not the marvelous egg-laying instincts which some articulates have; but, if we compare him with the mammalia, we are forced to confess that he is appealed to by a much larger array of objects than any other mammal, that his reactions on these objects are characteristic and determinate in a very high degree. The monkeys, and especially the anthropoids, are the only beings that approach him in their analytic curiosity and width of imitativeness. His instinctive impulses, it is true, get overlaid by the secondary reactions due to his superior reasoning power; but thus man loses the simple instinctive demeanor. But the life of instinct is only disguised in him, not lost; and when the higher brain-functions are in abeyance, as happens in imbecility or dementia, his instincts sometimes show their presence in truly brutish ways.

I will therefore say a few words about those instinctive tendencies which are the most important from the teacher's point of view.

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CHAPTER 7

What the Native Reactions Are

FIRST of all, Fear. Fear of punishment has always been the great weapon of the teacher, and will always, of course, retain some place in the conditions of the schoolroom. The subject is so familiar that nothing more need be said about it.

The same is true of Love, and the instinctive desire to please those whom we love. The teacher who succeeds in getting herself loved by the pupils will obtain results which one of a more forbidding temperament finds it impossible to secure.

Next, a word might be said about Curiosity. This is perhaps a rather poor term by which to designate the impulse toward better cognition in its full extent; but you will readily understand what I mean. Novelties in the way of sensible objects, especially if their sensational quality is bright, vivid, startling,  invariably arrest the attention of the young and hold it until the desire to know more about the object is assuaged. In its higher more intellectual form, the impulse toward completer knowledge takes the character of scientific or philosophic curiosity. In both its sensational and its intellectual form the instinct is more vivacious during childhood and youth than in later life. Young children are possessed by curiosity about every new impression that assails them. It would be quite impossible for a young child to listen to a lecture for more than a few minutes, as you are now listening to me. The outside sights and sounds would inevitably carry his attention off.

And, for most people in middle life, the sort of intellectual effort required of the average schoolboy in mastering his Greek or Latin lesson, his algebra or physics, would be out of the question. The middle-aged citizen attends exclusively to the routine details of his business; and new truths? especially when they require involved trains of close reasoning, are no longer within the scope of his capacity.

The sensational curiosity of childhood is appealed to more particularly by certain determinate kind of objects. Material things, things that move, living things, human actions and accounts of human action, will win the attention better than anything that is more abstract. Here again comes in the advantage of the object-teaching and manual training methods. The pupil's attention is spontaneously held by any problem that involves the presentation of a new material object or of an activity on any one's part. The teacher's earliest appeals, therefore, must be through objects shown or acts performed or described. Theoretic curiosity, curiosity about the rational relations between things, can hardly be said to awake at all until adolescence is reached. The sporadic metaphysical inquiries of children as to who made God, and why they have five fingers, need hardly be counted here. But, when the theoretic instinct is once alive in the pupil, an entirely new order of pedagogic (educational) relations begins for him. Reasons, causes, abstract conceptions, suddenly grow full of zest, a fact with which all teachers are familiar. And, both in its sensible and in its rational developments, disinterested curiosity may be successfully appealed to in the child with much more certainty than in the adult, in whom this intellectual instinct has grown so torpid (lethargic) as usually never to awake unless it enters into association with some selfish personal interest. Of this latter point I will say more now.

Imitation. Man has always been recognized as the imitative animal par excellence. And there is hardly a book on psychology, however old, which has not devoted at least one paragraph to this fact. It is strange, however, that the full scope and pregnancy of the imitative impulse in man has had to wait till the last dozen years to become adequately recognized. M. Tarde led the way in his admirably original work, "Les Lois de I'Imitation"; and in our own country Professors Royce and Baldwin have kept the ball rolling with all the energy that could be desired. Each of us is in fact what he is almost exclusively by virtue of his imitativeness. We become conscious of what we ourselves are by imitating others—the consciousness of what the others are precedes—the sense of self grows by the sense of pattern. The entire accumulated wealth of mankind—languages, arts, institutions, and sciences—is passed on from one generation to another by what Baldwin has called social heredity, each generation simply imitating the last. Into the particulars of this most fascinating chapter of psychology I have no time to go. The moment one hears Tarde's proposition uttered, however, one feels how supremely true it is. Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked.

Imitation shades imperceptibly into Emulation. Emulation is the impulse to imitate what you see another doing, in order not to appear inferior; and it is hard to draw a sharp line between the manifestations of the two impulses, so inextricably do they mix their effects. Emulation is the very nerve of human society. Why are you, my hearers, sitting here before me? If no one whom you ever heard of had attended a 'summer school' or teachers' institute, would it have occurred to any one of you to break out independently and do a thing so unprescribed by fashion? Probably not. Nor would your pupils come to you unless the children of their parents' neighbors were all simultaneously being sent to school. We wish not to be lonely or eccentric, and we wish not to be cut off from our share in things which to our neighbors seem desirable privileges.

In the schoolroom, imitation and emulation play absolutely vital parts. Every teacher knows the advantage of having certain things performed by whole bands of children at a time. The teacher who meets with most success is the teacher whose own ways are the most imitable. A teacher should never try to make the pupils do a thing which she cannot do herself. "Come and let me show you how" is an incomparably better stimulus than "Go and do it as the book directs." Children admire a teacher who has skill. What he does seems easy, and they wish to emulate it. It is useless for a dull and devitalized teacher to exhort her pupils to wake up and take an interest. She must first take one herself; then her example is effective as no exhortation can possibly be.

Every school has its tone, moral and intellectual. And this tone is a mere tradition kept up by imitation, due in the first instance to the example set by teachers and by previous pupils of an aggressive and dominating type, copied by the others, and passed on from year to year, so that the new pupils take the cue almost immediately. Such a tone changes very slowly, if at all; and then always under the modifying influence of new personalities aggressive enough in character to set new patterns and not merely to copy the old. The classic example of this sort of tone is the often quoted case of Rugby under Dr. Arnold's administration. He impressed his own character as a model on the imagination of the oldest boys, who in turn were expected and required to impress theirs upon the younger set. The contagiousness of Arnold's genius was such that a Rugby man was said to be recognizable all through life by a peculiar turn of character which he acquired at school. It is obvious that psychology as such can give in this field no precepts of detail. As in so many other fields of teaching, success depends mainly on the native genius of the teacher, the sympathy, tact, and perception which enable him to seize the right moment and to set the right example.

Among the recent modern reforms of teaching methods, a certain disparagement of emulation, as a laudable spring of action in the schoolroom, has often made itself heard. More than a century ago, Rousseau, in his 'Emile,' branded rivalry between one pupil and another as too base a passion to play a part in an ideal education. "Let Emile," he said, "never be led to compare himself to other children. No rivalries, not even in running, as soon as be begins to have the power of reason. It were a hundred times better that he should not learn at all what he could only learn through jealousy or vanity. But I would mark out every year the progress he may have made, and I would compare it with the progress of the following years. I would say to him: 'You are now grown so many inches taller; there is the ditch which you jumped over, there is the burden which you raised. There is the distance to which you could throw a pebble, there the distance you could run over without losing breath. See how much more you can do now!' Thus I should excite him without making him jealous of any one. He would wish to surpass himself. I can see no inconvenience in this emulation with his former self."

Unquestionably, emulation with one's former self is a noble form of the passion of rivalry, and has a wide scope in the training of the young. But to veto and taboo all possible rivalry of one youth with another, because such rivalry may degenerate into greedy and selfish excess, does seem to savor somewhat of sentimentality, or even of fanaticism. The feeling of rivalry lies at the very basis of our being, all social improvement being largely due to it. There is a noble and generous kind of rivalry, as well as a spiteful and greedy kind; and the noble and generous form is particularly common in childhood. All games owe the zest which they bring with them to the fact that they are rooted in the emulous passion, yet they are the chief means of training in fairness and magnanimity. Can the teacher afford to throw such an ally away? Ought we seriously to hope that marks, distinctions, prizes, and other goals of effort, based on the pursuit of recognized superiority, should be forever banished from our schools? As a psychologist, obliged to notice the deep and pervasive character of the emulous passion, I must confess my doubts.

The wise teacher will use this instinct as he uses others, reaping its advantages, and appealing to it in such a way as to reap a maximum of benefit with a minimum of harm; for, after all, we must confess, with a French critic of Rousseau's doctrine, that the deepest spring of action in us is the sight of action in another. The spectacle of effort is what awakens and sustains our own effort. No runner running all alone on a race-track will find in his own will the power of stimulation which his rivalry with other runners incites, when he feels them at his heels, about to pass. When a trotting horse is 'speeded,' a running horse must go beside him to keep him to the pace.

As imitation slides into emulation, so emulation slides into Ambition; and ambition connects itself closely with Pugnacity and Pride. Consequently, these five instinctive tendencies form an interconnected group of factors, hard to separate in the determination of a great deal of our conduct. The Ambitious Impulses would perhaps be the best name for the whole group.

Pride and pugnacity have often been considered unworthy passions to appeal to in the young. But in their more refined and noble forms they play a great part in the schoolroom and in education generally, being in some characters most potent spurs to effort. Pugnacity need not be thought of merely in the form of physical combativeness. It can be taken in the sense of a general unwillingness to be beaten by any kind of difficulty. It is what makes us feel 'stumped' and challenged by arduous achievements, and is essential to a spirited and enterprising character. We have of late been hearing much of the philosophy of tenderness in education; 'interest' must be assiduously awakened in everything, difficulties must be smoothed away. Soft pedagogics have taken the place of the old steep and rocky path to learning. But from this lukewarm air the bracing oxygen of effort is left out. It is nonsense to suppose that every step in education can be interesting. The fighting impulse must often be appealed to. Make the pupil feel ashamed of being scared of fractions, of being 'downed' by the law of falling bodies; rouse his pugnacity and pride, and he will rush at the difficult places with a sort of inner wrath at himself that is one of his best moral faculties. A victory scored under such conditions becomes a turning-point and crisis of his character. It represents the high-water mark of his powers, and serves thereafter as an ideal pattern for his self-imitation. The teacher who never rouses this sort of pugnacious excitement in his pupils falls short of one of his best forms of usefulness.

The next instinct which I shall mention is that of Ownership, also one of the radical endowments of the race. It often is the antagonist of imitation. Whether social progress is due more to the passion for keeping old things and habits or to the passion of imitating and acquiring new ones may in some cases be a difficult thing to decide. The sense of ownership begins in the second year of life. Among the first words which an infant learns to utter are the words 'my' and 'mine,' and woe to the parents of twins who fail to provide their gifts in duplicate. The depth and primitiveness of this instinct would seem to cast a sort of psychological discredit in advance upon all radical forms of communistic utopia. Private proprietorship cannot be practically abolished until human nature is changed. It seems essential to mental health that the individual should have something beyond the bare clothes on his back to which he can assert exclusive possession, and which he may defend adversely against the world. Even those religious orders who make the most stringent vows of poverty have found it necessary to relax the rule a little in favor of the human heart made unhappy by reduction to too disinterested terms. The monk must have his books: the nun must have her little garden, and the images and pictures in her room.

In education, the instinct of ownership is fundamental, and can be appealed to in many ways. In the house, training in order and neatness begins with the arrangement of the child's own personal possessions. In the school, ownership is particularly important in connection with one of its special forms of activity, the collecting impulse. An object possibly not very interesting in itself, like a shell, a postage stamp, or a single map or drawing, will acquire an interest if it fills a gap in a collection or helps to complete a series. Much of the scholarly work of the world, so far as it is mere bibliography, memory, and erudition (and this lies at the basis of all our human scholarship), would seem to owe its interest rather to the way in which it gratifies the accumulating and collecting instinct than to any special appeal which it makes to our cravings after rationality. A man wishes a complete collection of information, wishes to know more about a subject than anybody else, much as another may wish to own more dollars or more early editions or more  engravings before the letter than anybody else.

The teacher who can work this impulse into the school tasks is fortunate. Almost all children collect something. A tactful teacher may get them to take pleasure in collecting books; in keeping a neat and orderly collection of notes; in starting, when they are mature enough, a card catalogue; in preserving every drawing or map which they may make. Neatness, order, and method are thus instinctively gained, along with the other benefits which the possession of the collection entails. Even such a noisome thing as a collection of postage stamps may be used by the teacher as an inciter of interest in the geographical and historical information which she desires to impart. The Swedish Sloyd system successfully avails itself of this instinct in causing the pupil to make a collection of wooden implements fit for his own private use at home. Collecting is, of course, the basis of all natural history study; and probably nobody ever became a good naturalist who was not an unusually active collector when a boy.

Constructiveness is another great instinctive tendency with which the schoolroom has to contract an alliance. Up to the eighth or ninth year of childhood one may say that the child does hardly anything else than handle objects, explore things with his bands, doing and undoing, setting up and knocking down, putting together and pulling apart; for, from the psychological point of view, construction and destruction are two names for the same manual activity. Both signify the production of change, and the working of effects, in outward things. The result of all this is that intimate familiarity with the physical environment, that acquaintance with the properties of material things, which is really the foundation of human consciousness. To the very last, in most of us, the conceptions of objects and their properties are limited to the notion of what we can do with them. A 'stick' means something we can lean upon or strike with; 'fire,' something to cook, or warm ourselves, or burn things up withal; 'string,' something with which to tie things together. For most people these objects have no other meaning. In geometry, the cylinder, circle, sphere, are defined as what you get by going through certain processes of construction, revolving a parallelogram upon one of its sides, etc. The more different kinds of things a child thus gets to know by treating and handling them, the more confident grows his sense of kinship with the world in which he lives. An unsympathetic adult will wonder at the fascinated hours which a child will spend in putting his blocks together and rearranging them. But the wise education takes the tide at the flood, and from the kindergarten upward devotes the first years of education to training in construction and to object-teaching. I need not recapitulate here what I said awhile back about the superiority of the objective and experimental methods. They occupy the pupil in a way most congruous with the spontaneous interests of his age. They absorb him, and leave impressions durable and profound. Compared with the youth taught by these methods, one brought up exclusively by books carries through life a certain remoteness from reality: he stands, as it were, out of the pale, and feels that be stands so; and often suffers a kind of melancholy from which he might have been rescued by a more real education.

There are other impulses, such as love of approbation (approval) or vanity, shyness and secretiveness, of which a word might be said; but they are too familiar to need it. You can easily pursue the subject by your own reflection. There is one general law, however, that relates to many of our instinctive tendencies, and that has no little importance in education; and I must refer to it briefly before I leave the subject. It has been called the law of transitoriness in instincts. Many of our impulsive tendencies ripen at a certain period; and, if the appropriate objects be then and there provided, habits of conduct toward them are acquired which last. But, if the objects be not forthcoming then, the impulse may die out before a habit is formed; and later it may be hard to teach the creature to react appropriately in those directions. The sucking instincts in mammals, the following instinct in certain birds and quadrupeds, are examples of this: they fade away shortly after birth.

In children we observe a ripening of impulses and interests in a certain determinate order. Creeping, walking, climbing, imitating vocal sounds, constructing, drawing, calculating, possess the child in succession; and in some children the possession, while it lasts, may be of a semi-frantic and exclusive sort. Later the interest in any one of these things may wholly fade away. Of course, the proper pedagogic moment to work skill in, and to clench the useful habit, is when the native impulse is most acutely present. Crowd on the athletic opportunities, the mental arithmetic, the verse-learning, the drawing, the botany, or what not, the moment you have reason to think the hour is ripe. The hour may not last long, and while it continues you may safely let all the child's other occupations take a second place. In this way you economize time and deepen skill; for many an infant prodigy, artistic or mathematical, has a flowering epoch of but a few months.

One can draw no specific rules for all this. It depends on close observation in the particular case, and parents here have a great advantage over teachers. In fact, the law of transitoriness has little chance of individualized application in the schools.

Such is the little interested and impulsive psychophysical organism whose springs of action the teacher must divine, and to whose ways he must become accustomed.  He must start with the native tendencies, and enlarge the pupil's entire passive and active experience. He must ply him with new objects and stimuli, and make him taste the fruits of his behavior, so that now that whole context of remembered experience is what shall determine his conduct when he gets the stimulus, and not the bare immediate impression. As the pupil's life thus enlarges, it gets fuller and fuller of all sorts of memories and associations and substitutions; but the eye accustomed to psychological analysis will discern, underneath it all, the outlines of our simple psychophysical scheme.

Respect then, I beg you, always the original reactions, even when you are seeking to overcome their connection with certain objects, and to supplant them with others that you wish to make the rule. Bad behavior, from the point of view of the teacher's art, is as good a starting-point as good behavior. In fact, paradoxical as it may sound to say so, it is often a better starting-point than good behavior would be.

The acquired reactions must be made habitual whenever they are appropriate. Therefore Habit is the next subject to which your attention is invited.

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