There is much contention among men whether thought or feeling is the better; but feeling is the bow and thought the arrow; and every good archer must have both. Alone, one is as helpless as the other. The head gives artillery; the heart, powder. The one aims, and the other fires.
Beecher.
It may be noted that medical men, who are a scientific class, and, therefore, more than commonly aware of the great importance of disinterestedness in intellectual action, never trust their own judgment when they feel the approach of disease. They know that it is difficult for a man, however learned in medicine, to arrive at accurate conclusions about the state of a human body that concerns him so nearly as his own, even though the person who suffers has the advantage of actually experiencing the morbid sensations.
Hamerton.
When pupils are encouraged to make for themselves fresh combinations of things already known, additional progress is certain. Variety of exercise in this way is as attractive to children as many of their games. If, when such exercises are given, the rivalry involved in taking places were discontinued, and all extraneous excitement avoided, the play of intelligence would bring an ample reward. I plead for discontinuance of rivalry in such exercises, because, while it stimulates some, in other cases it hinders and even stops the action of intelligence. If any teacher doubts this, he may subject a class to experiment by watching the faces of the pupils, and next by asking from the child who has been corrected an explanation of the reason for the correction. Hurry in such things is an injury, and so is all commingling of antagonistic motives. All fear hinders intellectual action, and the fear of wounded ambition offers no exception to the rule. The fear of being punished is more seriously detrimental than any other form of fear which can be stirred. It is essentially antagonistic to the action of intelligence. Let mind have free play.
Calderwood.
XVIII
THINKING AND FEELING
Bodily conditions.
In all our thinking it is very important to get a clear and full vision of the thing to be known. This is not always as easy as it seems. Like Nelson in the battle of Copenhagen, we may consciously turn the blind eye towards what we do not like and exclaim, “I do not see it.” The lenses through which we gaze may be green, or smoked, or ill-adjusted, and thus without suspecting it we may see things in false colors or distorted shapes. Our bodily condition may color everything we see and think. In health and high animal spirits every thought is rose-colored. In periods of disease and depression everything we think seems to pass, “like a great bruise, through yellow, green, blue, purple, to black. A liver complaint causes the universe to be shrouded in gray; and the gout covers it with inky pall, and makes us think our best friends little better than fiends in disguise.”
Prejudice.
One of the greatest hinderances to correct thinking is prejudice. Hence all who have presumed to give advice on the conduct of the understanding have had something to say concerning prejudice. Bacon has a chapter on the idols of the mind, and Locke contends that we should never be in love with any opinion. In a charming little volume on the “Art of Thinking,” Knowlson has a chapter in which he enumerates and discusses the prejudices arising from birth, nationality, temperament, theory, and unintelligent conservatism. The list might easily be enlarged. Close analysis must convince any one that feeling strengthens all forms of prejudice, and there are very few, if any, fields of thought in which it is not essential for the attainment of truth to divest ourselves of preconceived notions and the resultant feelings, and to weigh the arguments on both sides of a question before reaching a conclusion.
The wishes of the heart and the conclusions of the intellect.
A student may take up geometry with a feeling of prejudice for or against the study, based upon what he has heard from others concerning its difficulties or the teacher who gives the instruction; but after he has mastered the demonstration of a theorem he does not lie awake at night wishing the opposite were true. In the realms of mathematics the wishes of the heart are not in conflict with the conclusions of the intellect. In the domain of ethical, social, historical, or religious truth the head often says one thing and the heart another. “We see plainly enough what we ought to think or do, but we feel an irresistible inclination to think or do something else.” In most of the instances in which the study of science has led to agnosticism the wish was father to the thought. When two men argue the same question, weighing the same arguments and reaching opposite conclusions, as did Stonewall Jackson and his father-in-law at the outbreak of the Civil War, the inclinations and wishes of the heart must have influenced their thinking.
Feeling an element in all mental activity.
Feeling is an element in all forms of mental activity. The intellect never acts without stirring the emotions. The teacher who reproved a pupil for showing signs of pleasure and delight over the reasoning of Euclid, saying, “Euclid knows no emotion,” must have been a novice in the art of introspection. Who cannot recall the thrill of delight with which he first finished the proof of the Pythagorean proposition? Mathematics is considered difficult; the emotions connected with victory and mastery sustain the student as he advances from conquest to conquest. The effort which some thinkers make to reduce the phenomena of the universe to a few universal principles is, without doubt, sustained and stimulated by a feeling that there must be unity in the midst of the most manifold diversity.
Descartes.
Scientists and philosophers are prone to imagine themselves free from the prejudices which warp the thinking of the common mind. Descartes started to divest himself of all preconceived notions; yet he could not divest himself of the notion that he was immensely superior to other men. “This French philosopher regarded himself as almost infallible, and had a scorn of all his contemporaries. He praised Harvey, but says he only learned a single point from him; Galileo was only good in music, and here he attributed to him the elder Galileo’s work; Pascal and Campanella are pooh-poohed. Here is an instance of how pride in one’s own work may beget a cheap cynicism with regard to the work of others; and how as a feeling it blinds the mind to excellences outside those we have agreed to call our own.” Of men in general Jevons, in his treatise on the “Physical Sciences,”[51] says,—
“It is difficult to find persons who can with perfect fairness register facts for and against their own peculiar views. Among uncultivated observers, the tendency to remark favorable and to forget unfavorable events is so great that no reliance can be placed upon their supposed observations. Thus arises the enduring fallacy that the changes of the weather coincide in some way with the changes of the moon, although exact and impartial registers give no countenance to the fact. The whole race of prophets and quacks live on the overwhelming effect of one success compared with hundreds of failures which are unmentioned or forgotten. As Bacon says, ‘Men mark when they hit, and never mark when they miss.’ And we should do well to bear in mind the ancient story, quoted by Bacon, of one who in Pagan times was shown a temple with a picture of all the persons who had been saved from shipwreck after paying their vows. When asked whether he did not now acknowledge the power of the gods, ‘Ay,’ he answered; ‘but where are they painted that were drowned after their vows?’”
Sometimes the feeling that a given way of looking at things is undoubtedly correct prevents the mind from thinking at all. A lady claimed that she had been taught to accept the statements of the Bible in their literal sense, and that in this belief she was going to live and die. She was asked to read the twenty-third Psalm. At the end of the first verse she was asked whether she could be anything else than a sheep if the Lord was literally her Shepherd. When, a little farther on, she was asked in what green pastures she had been lying down, she burst into tears. Her condition, and that of hundreds of thousands of others, is correctly given in the opening pages of J. S. Mill’s “Subjection of Women.”[52]
J. S. Mill on the influence of feeling upon thinking.
“So long as an opinion is strongly rooted in the feelings, it gains rather than loses in stability by having a preponderating weight of argument against it. For if it were accepted as the result of argument, the refutation of the argument might shake the solidity of the conviction; but when it rests solely on feeling, the worse it fares in argumentative contest the more persuaded its adherents are that their feeling must have some deeper ground which the arguments do not reach; and while the feeling remains, it is always throwing up fresh intrenchments of argument to fill any breach made in the old.”
Regard for truth.
When a man’s opinions are, as he thinks, grounded in first principles, it is but natural that he should be unwilling to abandon them without a struggle to intrench himself behind impregnable arguments. If he has reached his conclusions as the result of long and careful inquiry, he has a right to hold on to them with more than ordinary tenacity. The same regard for truth which led him to form an opinion should, however, make him willing to change whenever he finds himself in the wrong. He should avoid the frame of mind of the Scotch lady who, when it was charged that she was not open to conviction, exclaimed, “Not open to conviction! I scorn the imputation. But,” added she, after a moment’s pause, “show me the man who can convince me.” The secret of this tenacity of opinion is not love of truth, but love of self,—in one word, pride.
Emotions are helpful.
Dr. Brumbaugh on the emotions.
In view of the hinderances which certain kinds or degrees of feeling throw into the way of thinking, it might be inferred that the thinker must suppress the element of feeling in his inner life. No greater mistake could be made. If the Creator endowed man with the power to think, to feel, and to will, these several activities of the mind are not designed to be in conflict, and so long as any one of them is not perverted or allowed to run to excess, it necessarily aids and strengthens the others in their normal functions. Whilst it is a duty to overcome prejudice, fear, embarrassment, anxiety, and other emotions or degrees of emotion which interfere with our ability to think correctly, especially when face to face with an audience or with our peers and superiors, it is equally a duty to cultivate the emotions which stimulate thinking and strengthen the will. Without the ability to feel strongly, it is impossible to stir the hearts of an audience. A strong character is impossible without strong emotion. Jesus could weep and denounce. He showed the strongest emotion in his public discourses and at all the great turning-points of his life. The men and women who have done most for the race showed the element of strong feeling in their thinking and in their efforts at philanthropy and reform. It is the feeling of patriotism that sustains the soldier on the field of battle and the statesman in the midst of public criticism and personal abuse. According to Plato, the feeling with which education begins is wonder. “The elementary school,” says Dr. Brumbaugh, “does its best work when it creates a desire to learn, not when it satisfies the learner.” Teachers everywhere are beginning to see that it is the mission of the elementary school to beget a desire for knowledge that will carry the pupil onward and upward, and not to make him feel satisfied with a mere knowledge of the rudiments, so that he will leave the school at the first opportunity to earn a penny.
Dr. Brumbaugh further says,—
“We must recognize the emotional life as the basis of appeal for all high acting and high thinking. We can never make men by ignoring an essential element in manliness. To live well, we must know clearly, feel keenly, and act nobly; and, indeed, we shall have noble action only as we have gladsome action,—action inspired of feeling, not of thought. The church made men of great power because it made men of great feeling.”
Playing upon the feelings.
The close connection between thinking and feeling cannot be ignored without serious detriment to the intellectual development of the pupil. Some teachers play upon the feelings in ways that prevent accurate and effective thinking. The tones of voice in which they speak, their manner of putting questions and administering discipline, their lack of self-control, and their frantic efforts to get and keep order cause the pupils to feel ill at ease and destroy the calmness of soul, which is the first condition of logical thinking. The skilful teacher calls into play feelings like joy, hope, patriotism, that stimulate and invigorate the whole intellectual life; he is extremely careful not to stir emotions like fear, anger, and hate, which hinder clear and vigorous thinking.
Responsibility for failure at examinations.
Feeling plays an important part in the examinations by superintendents for the promotion of pupils, or by State boards whose function it is to license persons to teach or preach, to practise law, medicine, or dentistry, or to test the fitness of applicants for some branch of civil or military service. Examiners are often responsible for the failure of those whom they examine. If the first questions arouse the fear of failure, causing the mind to picture the disappointment and displeasure of parents and teachers and friends, and the other evils which result from a loss of class standing, the resulting emotions hinder effective thinking and thus prevent the pupil from doing justice to himself and his teachers. The expert seeks to lift those whom he examines above all feelings of embarrassment. With a friendly smile, a kind word, and a few easy questions he puts the mind at ease, dissipates the dread of failure, and gets results which are an agreeable surprise to all concerned. If he cannot otherwise make those before him work to the best advantage, he will even sacrifice his dignity by the use of a good-natured joke which turns the laugh upon himself or upon some other member of the board of examiners. Jokes at the expense of any one of those examined are a species of cruelty which cannot be too severely condemned, to say nothing of the effect upon the results of the examination.
Speculative thinking.
Darwin’s experience.
Within certain limits thinking begets feeling, and feeling stimulates thinking. Beyond these limits each interferes with the other. When feeling rises to the height of passion it beclouds the judgment and prevents reflection. Certain kinds of speculative thinking leave the heart cold and ultimately destroy the better emotions and the warmer affections. “It is terrible,” said the daughter of a voluminous writer on theology, “when a man feels a perpetual impulse to write. It makes him a stranger in his own house, and deprives wife and children of their husband and father.” Abstract thinking may be indulged in to the exclusion of the tastes and emotions which help to make life worth living. The oft-quoted experience of Darwin is a case in point. In his autobiography he gives his experience, showing the effect of his exclusive devotion to scientific pursuits upon his ability to enjoy poetry, music, and pictures. “Up to the age of thirty and beyond it poetry of many kinds gave me great pleasure, and even as a school-boy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also said that pictures formerly gave me considerable and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry. I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure.... My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts; but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive.... If I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once a week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept alive through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.”[53]
The sight of an audience.
Every teacher has both felt and witnessed the effect of embarrassment upon ability to think. To face an audience of a thousand people was embarrassing to some excellent thinkers like Melanchthon and Washington. On the other hand, the sight of a multitude of listening, upturned faces stimulates natures and temperaments like that of Martin Luther and Patrick Henry, causing them to think more vigorously and to feel more deeply.
Great thoughts.
Great thoughts spring from the heart. This is certainly true of thoughts which have lifted men to higher planes of effort. And it is true of the best thoughts and volitions which a pupil puts forth. The desire for knowledge may develop into the love of truth. The student is half made as soon as he seeks knowledge for its own sake and values the possession of truth above all other worldly possessions.
Interest.
The Herbartians deserve praise for the attention they have given the doctrine of interest. The older text-books on psychology seldom refer to interest as an important element in the education of the child. The greatest boon which can come to a child is happiness, and this was impossible in the days when fear of the rod held sway in the school-room. Then children looked forward to the school with feelings of dread; they went with fear and trembling. From the day that the children became interested in their lessons the rod was no longer required. Instead of crying because they must go to school, they now cry because they cannot go. Through interest the school becomes the place to which children best like to go.
Interest in a clock.
A boy who was pronounced incorrigible, and who had been transferred from school to school because he could not get along with his teachers, at last met a teacher who discovered that he could take apart and put together watches and clocks. She allowed him to fix her clock, and thus won his heart. She asked him to explain to the school the mechanism of instruments for keeping time. His interest in clocks she connected with the numbers twelve and sixty, then with the time-table, with denominate numbers, and finally with the whole subject of arithmetic. Interest in the exercises of the school converted the incorrigible boy into an obedient and studious pupil.[54]
There is no more important element of emotion for teachers to cultivate than that which enters into the feeling of interest. Interest sustains the power of thought, diminishes the need of effort in the direction of voluntary attention, and lies at the basis of all successful teaching, book-making, and public speaking. The teacher, the writer, the speaker who wearies us has lost his power over us. The lesson, the book, the sermon that interests us has found an entrance to our minds; the greater the interest the more potent and profound the influence upon the inner life.
Interest conditions ability to think.
The moment a teacher begins to lose interest in a subject, that moment he begins to lose his ability to teach that subject. From this point of view the recent graduate has a manifest advantage over the old pedagogue whose interest in the subjects of instruction has been dulled by frequent repetition. The latter can keep himself from reaching the dead-line by keeping up his studies in the allied departments of knowledge, and by watching the growth of mind and heart in his pupils,—a growth that always reveals something new and interesting by reason of the boundless possibilities that slumber in every human being. The interest in the growing mind is spontaneously transferred to the branches of knowledge which stimulate that growth, and, in ways that no one can explain, the interest which the teacher feels is communicated to the pupils whose minds are prepared to grasp his instruction.
Fiction.
By far the larger proportion of books taken from our free libraries are books of fiction,—books which appeal to our emotional life. It shows that even those who are habitual readers can be best reached through the emotions. Of course, the act of reading proves that their feelings are reached through the intellect; yet it cannot be denied that emotion is the element of their inner life which sustains the interest in the novel. Appeals to the intellect which do not touch the heart fail to reach the deepest depths of our being, and hence fail to stimulate in others the productive powers of the soul. Only thoughts which come from the heart can reach the heart. This is true of the child and the adult, of the reader and the listener, of the scientist and the man of affairs, of the author and the editor, of the orator and the philosopher, of the teacher, and, in short, of all whose duty it is to stimulate the thinking and to influence the conduct of their fellow-men.
