energies of men

7/27/2019 energies of men

1/48

Aia;Oi00Oi6'6967

R

THEENERGIES OF MENa a a

By WILLIAM JAMES


2/48

II

PLEA tc =l DO MOT REMOVETHSS BOOK CARD^UIBMYtf/

Mojito)-jo^University Research Library

7?

-&

TOCO


3/48

This book is DUE on the last date stamped below

NOV 1 5 1927

JAN 3 192?MAR 5 Ib2b

OCT 24 193C&CT3 1942

1 1944/

jr. & 1931,co 2 It

rv

MAP 2 1933

RenewalForm L-9-15i-10,'25

5 IS* 7 194

^R 2 5 m7APR 8 Hip)SEP XOtW

JAW 6 ,953OCT 1 iaac

'963 i- V


4/48

Digitized by the Internet Archivein 2007 with funding fromMicrosoft Corporation


5/48

THE ENERGIES OF MEN


6/48

* *.


7/48

The Energies of MenBy

WILLIAM JAMESPROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

A Neio Edition

NEW YORKMOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY

1914


8/48

Copyright 1907, byTHE AMERICAN MAGAZINEReprinted by Permission


9/48

T

4-60

INTRODUCTORY.^HOUGH it would seem that the sane andsimple message of this essay could not bemisconstrued, the fact that it has been wholly

misunderstood in newspaper comment warns usthat it is necessary to preface it by stating thatit does not counsel all persons to drive themselvesat all times beyond the limits of ordinary endur-ance, that it is not a gospel of overstrain nor anadvocate of the use of alcohol and opium as stim-ulants in emergencies.

It states that second wind is a reality in themental as in the physical realm and that it can befound and used when needednothing more.


10/48


11/48

The Energies of MenEVERYONE knows what it is to start apiece of work, either intellectual or mus-cular, feeling staleor oold, as an Adirondackguide once put it to me. And everybody knowswhat it is to warm up to his job. The processof warming up gets particularly striking in thephenomenon known as second wind. On usualoccasions we make a practice of stopping an oc-cupation as soon as we meet the first effectivelayer (so to call it) of fatigue. We have thenwalked, played, or worked enough, so we de-sist. That amount of fatigue is an efficacious ob-struction on this side of which our usual life iscast. But if an unusual necessity forces us topress onward, a surprising thing occurs. Thefatigue gets worse up to a certain critical point,when gradually or suddenly it passes away, andwe are fresher than before. We have evidentlytapped a level of new energy, masked until thenby the fatigue-obstacle usually obeyed. Theremay be layer after layer of this experience. Athird and a fourth wind may supervene. Men-tal activity shows the phenomenon as well asphysical, and in exceptional cases we may find,

[7]


12/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENbeyond the very extremity of fatigue-distress,amounts of ease and power that we neverdreamed ourselves to own,sources of strengthhabitually not taxed at all, because habitually wenever push through the obstruction, never passthose early critical points.

Getting One's Second Wind,For many years I have mused on the phenome-

non of second wind, trying to find a physiologicaltheory. It is evident that our organism hasstored-up reserves of energy that are ordinarilynot called upon, but that may be called upon:deeper and deeper strata of combustible orexplosible material, discontinuously arranged,but ready for use by anyone who probes sodeep, and repairing themselves by rest as wellas do the superficial strata. Most of us con-tinue living unnecessarily near our surface.Our energy-budget is like our nutritive budget.Physiologists say that a man is in nutritiveequilibrium when day after day he neither gainsnor loses weight. But the odd thing is that thiscondition may obtain on astonishingly differentamounts of food. Take a man in nutritiveequilibrium, and systematically increase or les-

[8]


13/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENsen his rations. In the first case he will begin togain weight, in the second case to lose it. Thechange will be greatest on the first day, less onthe second, less still on the third; and so on, tillhe has gained all that he will gain, or lost all thathe will lose, on that altered diet. He is now innutritive equilibrium again, but with a newweight; and this neither lessens nor increases be-cause his various combustion-processes have ad-justed themselves to the changed dietary. Hegets rid, in one way or another, of just as muchN, C, H, etc., as he takes in per diem.

Just so one can be in what I might call effi-ciency-equilibrium (neither gaining nor losingpower when once the equilibrium is reached) onastonishingly different quantities of work, nomatter in what direction the work may be meas-ured. It may be physical work, intellectualwork, moral work, or spiritual work.

Keeping Up a Faster Pace.Of course there are limits: the trees don't

grow into the sky. But the plain fact remainsthat men the world over possess amounts of re-source which only very exceptional individualspush to their extremes of use. But the very same

[9]


14/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENindividual, pushing his energies to their extreme,may in a vast number of cases keep the pace upday after day, and find no reaction of a badsort, so long as decent hygienic conditions arepreserved. His more active rate of energizingdoes not wreck him; for the organism adapts it-self, and as the rate of waste augments, aug-ments correspondingly the rate of repair.

I say the rate and not the time of repair. Thebusiest man needs no more hours of rest than theidler. Some years ago Professor Patrick, of theIowa State University, kept three young menawake for four days and nights. When his ob-servations on them were finished, the subjectswere permitted to sleep themselves out. Allawoke from this sleep completely refreshed, butthe one who took longest to restore himself fromhis long vigil only slept one-third more time thanwas regular with him.

If my reader will put together these two con-ceptions, first, that few men live at their maxi-mum of energy, and second, that anyone may bein vital equilibrium at very different rates ofenergizing, he will find, I think, that a verypretty practical problem of national economy, as

[10]


15/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENwell as of individual ethics, opens upon his view.In rough terms, we may say that a man who en-ergizes below his normal maximum fails by justso much to profit by his chance at life; and thata nation filled with such men is inferior to a na-tion run at higher pressure. The problem is,then, how can men be trained up to their mostuseful pitch of energy? And how can nationsmake such training most accessible to all theirsons and daughters. This, after all, is only thegeneral problem of education, formulated inslightly different terms.Rough terms, I said just now, because the

words energy and maximum may easily sug-gest only quantity to the reader's mind, whereasin measuring the human energies of which Ispeak, qualities as well as quantities have to betaken into account. Everyone feels that his totalpower rises when he passes to a higher qualitativelevel of life.

Saying Yes and Saying No.Writing is higher than walking, thinking ishigher than writing, deciding higher than think-ing, deciding no higher than deciding yesat least the man who passes from one ofI l


16/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENthese activities to another will usually saythat each later one involves a greater ele-ment of inner work than the earlier ones, eventhough the total heat given out or the foot-pounds expended by the organism, may be less.Just how to conceive this inner work physiologi-cally is as yet impossible, but psychologically weall know what the word means. We need a par-ticular spur or effort to start us upon inner workit tires us to sustain it ; and when long sustained,we know how easily we lapse. When I speak ofenergizing, and its rates and levels and sources,I mean therefore our inner as well as our outerwork.

Saying Peace Be StillLet no one think, then, that our problem of in-

dividual and national economy is solely that ofthe maximum of pounds raisable against gravity,the maximum of locomotion, or of agitation ofany sort, that human beings can accomplish.That might signify little more than hurrying andjumping about in inco-ordinated ways; whereasinner work, though it so often reinforces outerwork, quite as often means its arrest. To relax,to say to ourselves (with the new thoughters )

[12]


17/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENPeace be still is sometimes a great achieve-ment of inner work. When I speak of humanenergizing in general, the reader must thereforeunderstand that sum-total of activities, someouter and some inner, some muscular, some emo-tional, some moral, some spiritual, of whose wax-ing and waning in himself he is at all times sowell aware. How to keep it at an appreciablemaximum? How not to let the level lapse?That is the great problem. But the work of menand women is of innumerable kinds, each kindbeing, as we say, carried on by a particularfaculty ; so the great problem splits into two sub-problems, thus

(1.) What are the limits of human facultyin various directions ?

(2.) By what diversity of means, in the dif-fering types of human beings, may the facultiesbe stimulated to their best results ?Read in one way, these two questions sound

both trivial and familiar : there is a sense in whichwe have all asked them ever since we were born.Yet as a methodical programme of scientific in-quiry, I doubt whether they have ever been seri-ously taken up. If answered fully, almost the

[13]


18/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENwhole of mental science and of the science of con-duct would find a place under them. I propose,in what follows, to press them on the reader'sattention in an informal way.

Failing to Do All that We Can.The first point to agree upon in this enterprise

is that as a rule men habitually use only a smallpart of the powers which they actually possessand which they might use under appropriate con-ditions.Every one is familiar with the phenomenon of

feeling more or less alive on different days.Every one knows on any given day that there areenergies slumbering in him which the incitementsof that day do not call forth, but which he mightdisplay if these were greater. Most of us feelas if a sort of cloud weighed upon us, keeping usbelow our highest notch of clearness in discern-ment, sureness in reasoning, or firmness in de-ciding. Compared with what we ought to be, weare only half awake. Our fires are damped, ourdrafts are checked. We are making use of onlya small part of our possible mental and physicalresources. In some persons this sense of beingcut off from their rightful resources is extreme,

[14]


19/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENand we then get the formidable neurasthenic andpsychasthenic conditions, with life grown intoone tissue of impossibilities, that so many medicalbooks describe.

Stating the thing broadly, the human individ-ual thus lives usually far within his limits; hepossesses powers of various sorts which he habit-ually fails to use. He energizes below hismaximum, and he behaves below his optimum.In elementary faculty, in co-ordination, in powerof inhibition and control, in every conceivableway, his life is contracted like the field of visionof an hysteric subjectbut with less excuse, forthe poor hysteric is diseased, while in the rest ofus it is only an inveterate habitthe habit of in-feriority to our full selfthat is bad.

Going Over the Dam.Admit so much, then, and admit also that the

charge of being inferior to their full self is fartruer of some men than of others ; then the prac-tical question ensues: to what do the better menowe their escape? and, in the fluctuations whichall men feel in their own degree of energizing,to what are the improvements due, when theyoccur?

[15]


20/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENIn general terms the answer is plain:Either some unusual stimulus fills them with

emotional excitement, or some unusual idea ofnecessity induces them to make an extra effortof will. Excitements, ideas, and efforts, in aword, are what carry us over the dam.In those hyperesthetic conditions which

chronic invalidism so often brings in its train, thedam has changed its normal place. The slight-est functional exercise gives a distress which thepatient yields to and stops. In such cases ofhabit-neurosis a new range of power oftencomes in consequence of the bullying-treat-ment, of efforts which the doctor obliges thepatient, much against his will, to make. Firstcomes the very extremity of distress, then fol-lows unexpected relief. There seems no doubtthat we are each and all of us to some extent vic-tims of habit-neurosis. We have to admit thewider potential range and the habitually narrowactual use. We live subject to arrest by degreesof fatigue which we have come only from habitto obey. Most of us may learn to push the bar-rier farther off, and to live in perfect comforton much higher levels of power.

[16]


21/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENThe Energies of Roosevelt,

Country people and city people, as a class,illustrate this difference. The rapid rate of life,the number of decisions in an hour, the manythings to keep account of, in a busy city man's orwoman's life, seem monstrous to a countrybrother. He doesn't see how we live at all. Aday in New York or Chicago fills him with ter-ror. The danger and noise make it appear likea permanent earthquake. But settle him there,and in a year or two he will have caught thepulse-beat. He will vibrate to the city's rhythmsand if he only succeeds in his avocation, what-ever that may be, he will find a joy in all thehurry and the tension, he will keep the pace aswell as any of us, and get as much out of him-self in any week as he ever did in ten weeks inthe country.The stimuli of those who successfully respond

and undergo the transformation here, are duty,the example of others, and crowd-pressure andcontagion. The transformation, moreover, is achronic one: the new level of energy becomespermanent. The duties of new offices of trustare constantly producing this effect on the hu-

[17]


22/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENman beings appointed to them. The physiolo-gists call a stimulus dynamogenic when it in-creases the muscular contractions of men towhom it is applied; but appeals can be dynamo-genic morally as well as muscularly. We arewitnessing here in America to-day the dynamo-genic effect of a very exalted political office uponthe energies of an individual who had alreadymanifested a healthy amount of energy beforethe office came.

The Sublime Heroism of Women.Humbler examples show perhaps still betterwhat chronic effects duty's appeal may producein chosen individuals. John Stuart Mill some-where says that women excel men in the power ofkeeping up sustained moral excitement. Everycase of illness nursed by wife or mother is a proofof this ; and where can one find greater examplesof sustained endurance than in those thousandsof poor homes, where the woman successfullyholds the family together and keeps it going bytaking all the thought and doing all the worknursing, teaching, cooking, washing, sewing,scrubbing, saving, helping neighbors, choringoutsidewhere does the catalogue end? If she

[18]


23/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENdoes a bit of scolding now and then who canblame her? But often she does just the reverse;keeping the children clean and the man goodtempered, and soothing and smoothing the wholeneighborhood into finer shape.Eighty years ago a certain Montyon left to theAcademie Francaise a sum of money to be given

in small prizes, to the best examples of virtueof the year. The academy's committees, withgreat good sense, have shown a partiality to vir-tues simple and chronic, rather than to her spas-modic and dramatic flights; and the exemplaryhousewives reported on have been wonderful andadmirable enough. In Paul Bourget's report forthis year we find numerous cases, of which this isa type; Jeanne Chaix, eldest of six children;mother insane, father chronically ill. Jeanne,with no money but her wages at a pasteboard-boxfactory, directs the household, brings up the chil-dren, and successfully maintains the family ofeight, which thus subsists, morally as well as ma-terially, by the sole force of her valiant will. Insome of these French cases charity to outsiders isadded to the inner family burden; or helplessrelatives, young or old, are adopted, as if the

[19]


24/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENstrength were inexhaustible and ample for everyappeal. Details are too long to quote here; buthuman nature, responding to the call of duty,appears nowhere sublimer than in the person ofthese humble heroines of family life.

Buried Coal Miner's Great Achievement.Turning from more chronic to acuter proofs

of human nature's reserves of power, we find thatthe stimuli that carry us over the usually effectivedam are most often the classic emotional ones,love, anger, crowd-contagion or despair. De-spair lames most people, but it wakes others fullyup. Every siege or shipwreck or polar expedi-tion brings out some hero who keeps the wholecompany in heart. Last year there was a terriblecolliery explosion at Courrieres in France. Twohundred corpses, if I remember rightly, were ex-humed. After twenty days of excavation, therescuers heard a voice. Me voici, said the firstman unearthed. He proved to be a collier namedNemy, who had taken command of thirteenothers in the darkness, disciplined them andcheered them, and brought them out alive.Hardly any of them could see or speak or walkwhen brought into the day. Five days later, a

[20]


25/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENdifferent type of vital endurance was unexpect-edly unburied in the person of one Berton who,isolated from any but dead companions, had beenable to sleep away most of his time.How a Soldier Survived an Awful Siege.A new position of responsibility will usuallyshow a man to be a far stronger creature than

was supposed. Cromwell's and Grant's careersare the stock examples of how war will wake a

, man up. I owe to Professor C. E. Norton, mycolleague, the permission to print part of a pri-vate letter from Colonel Baird-Smith, writtenshortly after the six weeks' siege of Delhi, in1857, for the victorious issue of which that excel-lent officer was chiefly to be thanked. He writesas follows... My poor wife had some reason tothink that war and disease between them had leftvery little of a husband to take under nursingwhen she got him again. An attack of camp-scurvy had filled my mouth with sores, shakenevery joint in my body, and covered me all overwith sores and livid spots, so that I was marvel-ously unlovely to look upon. A smart knock onthe ankle-joint from the splinter of a shell thatburst in my face, in itself a mere bagatelle of a

[21]


26/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENwound, had been of necessity neglected underthe pressing and incessant calls upon me, and hadgrown worse and worse till the whole foot belowthe ankle became a black mass and seemed tothreaten mortification. I insisted, however, onbeing allowed to use it till the place was taken,mortification or no; and though the pain wassometimes horrible, I carried my point and keptup to the last. On the day after the assault Ihad an unlucky fall on some bad ground, and itwas an open question for a day or two whetherI hadn't broken my arm at the elbow. For-tunately it turned out to be only a severe sprain,but I am still conscious of the wrench it gave me.To crown the whole pleasant catalogue, I wasworn to a shadow by a constant diarrhoea, andconsumed as much opium as would have donecredit to my father-in-law (Thomas De Quin-cey) . However, thank God, I have a good shareof Tapleyism in me and come out strong underdifficulties. I think I may confidently say thatno man ever saw me out of heart, or ever heardone croaking word from me even when our pros-pects were gloomiest. We were sadly scourgedby the cholera, and it was almost appalling to meto find that out of twenty-seven officers present,I could only muster fifteen for the operations ofthe attack. However, it was done, and after itwas done came the collapse. Don't be horrified

[22]


27/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENwhen I tell you that for the whole of the actualsiege, and in truth for some little time before, Ialmost lived on brandy. Appetite for food I hadnone, but I forced myself to eat just sufficient tosustain life, and I had an incessant craving forbrandy as the strongest stimulant I could get.Strange to say, I was quite unconscious of itsaffecting me in the slightest degree. The excite-ment of the work was so great that no lesser oneseemed to have any chance against it, and I cer-tainly never found my intellect clearer or mynerves stronger in my life. It was only mywretched body that was weak, and the momentthe real work was done by our becoming completemasters of Delhi, I broke down without delayand discovered that if I wished to live I mustcontinue no longer the system that had kept meup until the crisis was passed. With it passedaway as if in a moment all desire to stimulate,and a perfect loathing of my late staff of lifetook possession of me.

Such experiences show how profound is thealteration in the manner in which, under excite-ment, our organism will sometimes perform itsphysiological work. The processes of repair be-come different when the reserves have to be used,and for weeks and months the deeper use maygo on.

[23I


28/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENMorbid Cases of Women.

Morbid cases, here as elsewhere, lay the nor-mal machinery bare. In the first number of Dr.Morton Prince's Journal of Abnormal Psycholo-gy, Dr. Janet has discussed five cases of morbidimpulse, with an explanation that is precious formy present point of view. One is a girl who eats,eats, eats, all day. Another walks, walks, walks,and gets her food from an automobile that es-corts her. Another is a dipsomaniac. A fourthpulls out her hair. A fifth wounds her flesh andburns her skin. Hitherto such freaks of impulse^have received Greek names (as bulimia, drom-omania, etc.) and been scientifically disposed ofas episodic syndromata of hereditary degenera-tion. But it turns out that Janet's cases are allwhat he calls psychasthenics, or victims of achronic sense of weakness, torpor, lethargy, fa-tigue, insufficiency, impossibility, unreality, and ,powerlessness of will; and that in each and allof them the particular activity pursued, deleteri-ous though it be, has the temporary result ofraising the sense of vitality and making the pa-tient feel alive again. These things reanimate:they would reanimate us; but it happens that in

[24]


29/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENI 1iach patient the particular freak-activity chosen\s the only thing that does reanimate ; and thereinlies the morbid state. The way to treat such per-sons is to discover to them more usual and usefulways of throwing their stores of vital energy intogear.

Is a Spree Ever Good for You?Colonel Baird-Smith, needing to draw on al-

together extraordinary stojpes of energy, foundthat brandy and opium were ways of throwingthem into gear.Such cases are humanly typical. We are vXfflto some degree oppressed, unfree. We donVcome to our own. It is there, but we don't get atvit. The threshold must be made to shift. Then|many o^ms no^ that an eccentric activity %i^spree, sayrelieves. There is no doubt that t'|ome men sprees and excesses of almost any kin^/what the moralists and doctors say.But when the normal tasks and stimulations oflife don't put a man's^eeper levels of energy on

tap, and he requires distinctly deleterious excite-ments, his constitution verges on the abnormal.The normal opener of deeper and deeper levels

[25]


30/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENof energy is the will. The difficulty is to use it,to make the effort which the word volition im-plies. But if we do make it (or if a god, thoughhe were only the god Chance, makes it throughus), it will act dynamogenically on us for amonth. It is notorious that a single successfuleffort of moral volition, such as saying no tosome habitual temptation, or performing somecourageous act, will launch a man on a higherlevel of energy for days and weeks, will givehim a new range of power. In the act ofuncorking the whiskey bottle which I hadbrought home to get drunk upon, said a man tome, I suddenly found myself running out intothe garden, where I smashed it on the ground.I felt so happy and uplifted after this act, thatfor two months I wasn't tempted to touch adrop.The emotions and excitements due to, usual sit-

uations are the usual inciters of the will. But.these act discontinuously ; and in the intervals thefshallower levels of life tend to close in and shutvus off. Accordingly the best practical knowersof the human soul have invented the thing knownas methodical ascetic discipline to keep the deeper

[26]


31/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENlevels constantly in reach. Beginning with easy-tasks, passing to harder ones, and exercising dayby day, it is, I believe, admitted that disciples ofasceticism can reach very high levels of freedomand power of will.

Wonders of the Yoga System.Ignatius Loyola's spiritual exercises must

have produced this result in innumerable de-votees. But the most venerable ascetic system,and the one whose results have the most volumi-nous experimental corroboration is undoubtedlythe Yoga system in Hindustan. From time im-memorial, by Hatha Yoga, Raja Yoga, KarmaYoga, or whatever code of practise it might be,Hindu aspirants to perfection have trained them-selves, month in and out, for years. The resultclaimed, and certainly in.many cases accorded byimpartial judges, is strength of character, per-sonal power, unshakability of soul. In an arti-cle in the Philosophical Revi&w for January last,from which I am largely copying here, I havequoted at great length the experience withHatha Yoga of a very gifted European friendof mine who, by persistently carrying out forseveral months its methods of fasting from food

[271


32/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENand sleep, its exercises in breathing and thought-concentration, and its fantastic posture-gymnas-tics, seems to have succeeded in waking up deeperand deeper levels of will and moral and intellec-tual power in himself, and to have escaped froma decidedly menacing brain-condition of the cir-cular type, from which he had suffered foryears.Judging by my friend's letters, of which the

last I have is written fourteen months after theYoga training began, there can be no doubt ofhis relative regeneration. He has undergonematerial trials with indifference, traveled third-class on Mediterranean steamers, and fourth-class on African trains, living with the poorestArabs and sharing their unaccustomed food, allwith equanimity. His devotion to certain inter-ests has been put to heavy strain, and nothing ismore remarkable to me than the changed moraltone with which he reports the situation. A pro-found modification has unquestionably occurredin the running of his mental machinery. Thegearing has changed, and his will is availableotherwise than it was.My friend is a man of very peculiar tempera-

[28]


33/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENment. Few of us would have had the will to startupon the Yoga training, which, once started,seemed to conjure the further will-power neededout of itself. And not all of those who couldlaunch themselves would have reached the sameresults. The Hindus themselves admit that insome men the results may come without call orbell. My friend writes to me: You are quiteright in thinking that religious crises, love-crises,indignation-crises may awaken in a very shorttime powers similar to those reached by years ofpatient Yoga-practice.

Probably most medical men would treat thisindividual's case as one of what it is fashionablenow to call by the name of self-suggestion, orexpectant attention as if those phrases wereexplanatory, or meant more than the fact thatcertain men can be influenced, while others can-not be influenced, by certain sorts of ideas. Thisleads me to say a word about ideas considered asdynamogenic agents, or stimuli for unlockingwhat would otherwise be unused reservoirs of in-dividual power.One thing that ideas do is to contradict other

ideas and keep us from believing them. An idea[29


34/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENthat thus negates a first idea may itself in turnbe negated by a third idea, and the first idea maythus regain its natural influence over our beliefand determine our behavior. Our philosophicand religious development proceeds thus by cred-ulities, negations, and the negating of negations.Ideas Which Unlock Our Hidden Energies.But whether for arousing or for stopping be-

lief, ideas may fail to be efficacious, just as awire at one time alive with electricity, may at an-other time be dead. Here our insight into causesfails us, and we can only note results in generalterms. In general, whether p, given idea shall 1^'be a live idea depends more on the person intowhose mind it is injected than on the idea itself.Which is the suggestive idea for this person, andwhich for that one? Mr. Fletcher's disciples re-generate themselves by the idea (and the fact)that they are chewing, and -re-chewing, andsuper-chewing their food. Dr. Dewey's pupilsregenerate themselves by going without theirbreakfasta fact, but also an ascetic idea. Notevery one can use these ideas with the same suc-cess.But apart from such individually varying sus-[30]


35/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENceptibilities, there are common lines along whichmen simply as men tend to be inflammable byideas. As certain objects naturally awaken love,anger, or cupidity, so certain ideas naturallyawaken the energies of loyalty, courage, endur-ance, or devotion. When these ideas are effectivein an individual's life, their effect is often verygreat indeed. They may transfigure it, unlock-ing innumerable powers which, but for the idea,would never have come into play. Fatherland,the Flag, the Union, Holy Church, theMonroe Doctrine, Truth, Science, Lib-erty, Garibaldi's phrase Rome or Death, etc.,are so many examples of energy-releasing ideas.The social nature of such phrases is an essentialfactor of their dynamic power. They are forcesof detent in situations in which no other forceproduces equivalent effects, and each is a forceof detent only in a specific group of men.

The Power in a Temperance PledgeThe memory that an oath or vow has been made

will nerve one to abstinences and efforts other-wise impossible; witness the pledge in the his-tory of the temperance movement. A mere prom-ise to his sweetheart will clean up a youth's life all

[31]


36/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENoverat any rate for a time. For such effectsan educated susceptibility is required. The ideaof one's honor, for example, unlocks energyonly in those of us who have had the educationof a gentleman, so called.That delightful being, Prince Pueckler-Mus-

kau, writes to his wife from England that he hasinvented a sort of artificial resolution respectingthings that are difficult of performance. My de-vice, he continues, is this: I give my word ofhonor most solemnly to myself to do or to leaveundone this or that. I am of course extremelycautious in the use of this expedient, but whenonce the word is given, even though I afterwardsthink I have been precipitate or mistaken, I holdit to be perfectly irrevocable, whatever incon-veniences I foresee likely to result. If I werecapable of breaking my word after such matureconsideration, I should lose all respect for my-self,and what man of sense would not preferdeath to such an alternative? . . . When themysterious formula is pronounced, no alterationin my own view nothing short of physical im-possibilities, must, for the welfare of my soul,alter my will. ... I find something very satis-

[32]


37/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENfactory in the thought that man has the powerof framing such props and weapons out of themost trivial materials, indeed out of nothing,merely by the force of his will, which therebytruly deserves the name of omnipotent. *

Conversions,, whether they be political, scien-tific, philosophic, or religious, form another wayin which bound energies are let loose. They unifyus, and put a stop to ancient mental interfer-ences. The result is freedom, and often a greatenlargement of power. A belief that thus settlesupon an individual always acts as a challenge tohis will. But, for the particular challenge to op-erate, he must be the right challenge. In re-ligious conversions we have so fine an adjustmentthat the idea may be in the mind of the challen-gee for years before it exerts effects; and whyit should do so then is often so far from obviousthat the event is taken for a miracle of grace, andnot a natural occurrence. Whatever it is, it maybe a highwater mark of energy, in which noes,once impossible, are easy, and in which a newrange of yeses gains the right of way.* Tour in England, Ireland and France, Philadelphia, 1833, p. 435.

[33]


38/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENThe Value of Christian Science.We are just now witnessing a very copious

unlocking of energies by ideas in the persons ofthose converts to New Thought, ChristianScience, Metaphysical Healing, or otherforms of spiritual philosophy, who are so numer-ous among us to-day. The ideas here are healthy-minded and optimistic; and it is quite obviousthat a wave of religious activity, analogous insome respects to the spread of early Christianity,Buddhism, and Mohammedanism, is passing overour American world. The common feature ofthese optimistic faiths is that they all tend to thesuppression of what Mr. Horace Fletcher callsfearthought. Fearthought he defines as theself-suggestion of inferiority ; so that one maysay that these systems all operate by the sug-gestion of power. And the power, small or great,comes in various shapes to the individual,power, as he will tell you, not to mind thingsthat used to vex him, power to concentrate hismind, good cheer, good temperin short, to putit mildly, a firmer, more elastic moral tone.The most genuinely saintly person I have ever

known is a friend of mine now suffering from[34]


39/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENcancer of the breastI hope that she may par-don my citing her here as an example of whatideas can do. Her ideas have kept her a practi-cally well woman for months after she shouldhave given up and gone to bed. They have an-nulled all pain and weakness and given her acheerful active life, unusually beneficent to othersto whom she has afforded help. Her doctors, ac-quiescing in results they could not understand,have had the good sense to let her go her ownway.How far the mind-cure movement is destinedto extend its influence, or what intellectual modi-fications it may yet undergo, no one can foretell.It is essentially a religious movement, and toacademically nurtured minds its utterances aretasteless and often grotesque enough. It alsoincurs the natural enmity of medical politicians,and of the whole trades-union wing of that pro-fession. But no unprejudiced observer can failto recognize its importance as a social phenom-enon to-day, and the higher medical minds arealready trying to interpret it fairly, and make itspower available for their own therapeutic ends.

[35]


40/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENPrayer as a Sleep-Producer.

Dr. Thomas Hyslop, of the great West Rid-ing Asylum in England, said last year to theBritish Medical Association that the best sleep-producing agent which his practice had revealedto him, was prayer. I say this, he added (I amsorry here that I must quote from memory),purely as a medical man. The exercise of prayer,in those who habitually exert it, must be regardedby us doctors as the most adequate and normal ofall the pacifiers of the mind and calmers of thenerves.But in few of us are functions not tied up

by the exercise of other functions. Relativelyfew medical men and scientific men, I fancy, canpray. Few can carry on any living commercewith God. Yet many of us are well aware ofhow much freer and abler our fives would be,were such important forms of energizing notsealed up by the critical atmosphere in which wehave been reared. There are in every one po-tential forms of activity that actually are shuntedout from use. Part of the imperfect vitality un-der which we labor can thus be easily explained.One part of our mind dams upeven damns upthe other parts.

[36]


41/48

THE ENERGIES OF MEN I - I - I 11.11 , II I N I. -III. I ,

Trying to Work with One Finger.Conscience makes cowards of us all. Socialconventions prevent us from telling the truthafter the fashion of the heroes and heroines ofBernard Shaw. We all know persons who aremodels of excellence, but who belong to the ex-treme philistine type of mind. So deadly is theirintellectual respectability that we can't converseabout certain subjects at all, can't let our mindsplay over them, can't even mention them in theirpresence. I have numbered among my dearestfriends persons thus inhibited intellectually, withwhom I would gladly have been able to talkfreely about certain interests of mine, certainauthors, say, as Bernard Shaw, Chesterton, Ed-ward Carpenter, H. G. Wells, but it wouldn't do,it made them too uncomfortable, they wouldn'tplay, I had to be silent. An intellect thus tieddown by literality and decorum makes on one thesame sort of an impression that an able-bodiedman would who should habituate himself to dohis work with only one of his fingers, locking upthe rest of his organism and leaving it unused.

I trust that by this time I have said enough toconvince the reader both of the truth and of the

[37]


42/48

THE ENERGIES OF MENimportance of my thesis. The two questions,first, that of the possible extent of our powers;and, second, that of the various avenues of ap-proach to them, the various keys for unlockingthem in diverse individuals, dominate the wholeproblem of individual and national education.We need a topography of the limits of humanpower, similar to the chart which oculists use ofthe field of human vision. We need also a studyof the various types of human being with refer-ence to the different ways in which their energy-reserves may be appealed to and set loose. Biog-raphies and individual experiences of every kindmay be drawn upon for evidence here.

[38]


43/48


44/48


45/48


46/48


47/48

3 1158 00080 3808

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARYLos Angeles

This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.

I&m-^-f,

AUG 03


48/48

Date post:	13-Apr-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	ghanghasankit
View:	216 times
Download:	0 times

energies of men

Documents