Chapter IX: Imagination (6)

The central action that constitutes attention is the factor of the greatest psychological and philosophic value, and the one which has always represented the maximum among the practical values in pedagogy. The whole art of teachers has consisted, in substance, in preparing the attention of the child to make it _expectant_ of their instruction, and in securing the cooperation of those internal forces which should "open the door" when they "knock." And as the thing which is quite unknown, or that which is inaccessible to the understanding, can awaken no interest, the fundamentals of the art of teaching were to go gradually from the known to the unknown, from the easy to the difficult. It is the preexistent "known" which excites expectation and _opens the door_ to the novel "unknown"; and it is the already present "easy work" which opens new ways for penetration, and puts the attention into a state of expectation.

Thus, according to the conceptions of pedagogy, it should be possible to "prepare good offices for oneself," the cooperation of the psychical concomitants of the attention. Everything would depend on skilful manipulation between the known and the unknown and similar things: the clever teacher would be like the great military strategist, who prepares the plan of a battle upon a table; and man would be able to _direct man_, leading him wheresoever he pleases.

This, moreover, has long been the materialistic principle which governs psychology. According to Herbert Spencer, the mind is at first, as it were, an indifferent day, on which external impressions "rain," leaving traces more or less profound. "Experiences" are, according to him and the English empiricists, the constructive factors of the mind even in its highest activities. Man is what experience has made him; hence, in education, by preparing a suitable structure of experiences, it is possible to _build up the man_. A conception not less materialistic than that which presented itself for a moment before the marvelous progress of organic chemistry, when the series of syntheses succeeded that of analyses. It was then believed that a species of albumen might be manufactured synthetically, and as albumen is the organic basis of the cells, and as the human ovum is nothing but a cell, man himself might one day be manufactured on the chemist's table. The conception of man as the creator of man was quickly discredited in the material domain; but the psychical _homunculus_ still persists among the practical conceptions of pedagogy.

No chemical synthesis could put into the cell, apparently nothing more than a simple clot of nucleated protoplasm, that _activity sine matter_, that potential vital force, that mysterious factor which causes a cell to develop into man.

And the elusive attention of children would seem to tell us that the psychical man is subject to analogous laws of auto-creation.

The most modern school of spiritualistic psychologists, to which William James belonged, recognized, in the concomitant of attention, a fact bound up with the nature of the subject, a "spiritual force," one of the "mysterious factors of life."

"... From whence his intellect
Deduced its primal notices of thought,
Man therefore knows not; or his appetites
Their first affection; such In you as zeal
In bees to gather honey."

(Carey's translation, Dante's _Purgatorio_, Canto XVIII.)

There is in man a special attitude to external things, which forms part of his nature, and determines its character. The internal activities act as cause; they do not react and exist as the _effect_ of external factors. Our attention is not arrested by all things indifferently, but by those which are congenial to our tastes. The things which are useful to our inner life are those which arouse our interest. Our internal world is created upon a selection from the external world, acquired for and in harmony with our internal activities. The painter will see a preponderance of colors in the world, the musician will be attracted by sounds. It is the quality of our attention which reveals ourselves, and we manifest ourselves externally by our aptitudes; it is not our attention which creates us. The individual character, the internal form, the difference between one man and another, are also obvious among men who have lived in the same environment, but who from that environment have taken only what was necessary for each. The "experiences" with which each constructs his _ego_ in relation to the external world do not form a _chaos_, but are _directed_ by his intimate individual aptitudes.

If there were any doubt as to the natural force which directs psychical formation, our experiences with little children would furnish a decisive proof. No teacher could procure such phenomena of attention by any artifices; they have evidently an internal origin. The power of concentration shown by little children from three to four years old have no counterpart save in the annals of genius. These little ones seem to reproduce the infancy of men possessing an extraordinary power of attention, such as Archimedes, who was slain while bending over his circles, from which rumors of the taking of Syracuse had failed to distract him; or Newton, who, absorbed in his studies, forgot to eat; or Vittorio Alfieri, who, when writing a poem, heard nothing of the noisy wedding procession which was passing with shouts and clamor before his windows.

Now, these characteristics of the attention of genius could not be evoked by an "interesting" teacher, however subtle his art; nor could any accumulation of passive experiences become such an accumulator of psychical energies.

If there be a spiritual force working within the child, by which he may open the door of his attention, the problem which necessarily presents itself is a problem of _liberty_, rather than a problem of pedagogic art effecting the construction of his mind. The bestowal of the nourishment suitable to psychical needs, by means of the external objects, and readiness to respect liberty of development in the most perfect manner possible, are the foundations which, from a logical point of view, should be laid down for the construction of a new pedagogy.

It is no longer a question of attempting to create the homunculus, like the chemists of the nineteenth century; but rather of taking the lantern of Diogenes and going in search of the man. A science should establish _by means of experiments_ what is necessary to the primordial psychical requirements of the child; and then we shall witness the development of complex vital phenomena, in which the intelligence, the will, and the character develop together, just as the brain, the stomach, and the muscles of the rationally nourished child develop together.

Together with the first psychical exercises, the first coordinated cognitions will be fixed in the child's mind, and the _known_ will begin to exist in him, providing the first germs of an intellectual interest, supplementing his instinctive interest. When this takes place, a state of things begins to establish itself which has some analogy with that mechanism of attention which the pedagogists of to-day take as the basis of the art of teaching. The transition from the known to the unknown, from the simple to the complex, from the easy to the difficult, is reproduced, from a certain point of view; but with special characteristics.

The progression _from the known to the unknown_ does not proceed from object to object, as would be assumed by the master who does not bring about the development of ideas from a center, but merely unites them in a chain, without any definite object, allowing the mind to wander aimlessly, though bound to himself. Here, on the other hand, the known establishes itself in the child as a _complex system_ of ideas, which system was actively constructed by the child himself during a series of psychical processes, representing in themselves an internal _formation_, a psychical growth.

To bring about such a progress we must offer the child a systematic, complex material, corresponding to his natural instincts. Thus, for instance, by means of our sensory apparatus we offer the child a series of objects capable of drawing his instinctive attention to colors, forms, and sounds, to tactile and baric qualities, etc., and the child, by means of the characteristically prolonged exercises with each object, begins to organize his psychical personality, but at the same time acquires a clear and orderly knowledge of things.

Thenceforth all external objects, for the reason that they have forms, dimensions, colors, qualities of smoothness, weight, hardness, etc., are no longer foreign to the mind. There is something in the consciousness of the child which prepares him to _expect_ these things, and invites him to receive them with interest.

When the child has added a cognition to the primitive impulse which directs his attention to external things, he has acquired other relations with the world, other forms of interest; these are no longer merely those primitive ones which are bound up with a species of primordial instinct, but have become a discerning interest, based upon the conquests of the intelligence.

It is true that all these new conquests are fundamentally and profoundly based upon the _psychical needs_ of the individual; but the intellectual element has now been added, transforming an impulse into a conscious and voluntary quest.

The old pedagogic conception, which assumed that to call the attention of the child to the unknown it is necessary to connect it with the known, because it is thus that his interest may be won for the new knowledge to be imparted, grasped but a single detail of the complex phenomenon we now witness after our experiments.

If the _known_ is to represent a new source of interest directed towards the unknown, it is essential that it should itself have been acquired in accordance with the tendency of nature; then preceding knowledge will lend interest to objects of ever-increasing complexity and of lofty significance. The culture thus created ensures the possibility of an indefinite _continuation_ in the successive evolution of such formative phenomena.

Moreover, this culture itself creates _order_ in the mind: when the teacher, giving her plain and simple lesson, says: This is long, this is short, this is red, this is yellow, etc., she fixes with a single word the clearly marked order of the sensations, classifies, and "catalogues" them. And each impression is perfectly distinct from the other, and has its own determined place in the mind, which may be recalled by a word; thenceforth, new acquisitions will not be thrown aside or mixed together chaotically, but will be duly deposited in their proper places, side by side with previous acquisitions of the same kind, like books in a well-arranged library.

Thus the mind not only has within itself the propulsive force required to increase its knowledge, but also an established order, which will be steadily maintained throughout its successive and illimitable enrichment by new material; and as it grows and gains strength, it retains its "equilibrium." These continual exercises in _comparison_, _judgment_, and _choice_ carried out among the objects, further tend to place the internal acquisitions so logically into relation one with another, that the results are a singular _facility_ and _accuracy_ of reasoning power, and a remarkable _quickness_ of comprehension: the law of "the minimum of effort" is truly carried out as it is everywhere where order and activity reign.

The internal coordination, like physiological adaptation, establishes itself as a result of the spontaneity of the exercises; the free development of a personality which grows and organizes itself is that which determines such an internal condition, just as in the body of the embryo the heart, in process of development, makes a place for itself in the space of the diastinum between the lungs, and the diaphragm assumes its arched form as a result of pulmonary dilation.

The teacher directs these phenomena; but, in so doing, she is careful to avoid calling the child's attention to herself, since the whole future depends upon his concentration. Her art consists in understanding and in avoiding interference with natural phenomena.

That which has been clearly demonstrated as regards the nutrition of the new-born infant and the first coordinated activities of the spirit will be repeated at every period of life, with the necessary modifications induced by the increased complexity of the phenomena.

Continuing the parallel with physical nutrition, let us consider the growing infant which has cut its teeth, developed its gastric juice, and so gradually requires a more complicated diet, until we come to the adult man, nourishing himself by means of all the complications of modern kitchen and table; to keep himself in health, he should eat _only_ the things which correspond to the intimate needs of his organism; and if he introduces over-rich or unusual, unsuitable or poisonous substances, the result will be impoverishment, self-poisoning, a "malady." Now it was the study of the child's nutrition during the period of suckling and during the first years of life which created alimentary hygiene, not only for the child but for the adult, and pointed out the perils to which all were alike exposed during the epoch when infantile hygiene was unknown.

There is a singular parallel in psychical life: the man will have an infinitely more complex life than the child; but for him, too, there should always be a correspondence between the needs of his nature and the manner in which his spirit is nourished. A _rule_ of internal life will always promote the health of the man.

Turning to attention, the primitive fact of correspondence between nature and stimulus which is the fundamental of life should prevail, however modified, when dealing with older children, and should remain the basis of education.

I am prepared for the objections of "experts." Children must be accustomed to pay attention to everything, even to things which are distasteful to them, because practical life demands such efforts.

The objection is based on a prejudice analogous to that which at one time made good fathers of families say: "Children should be accustomed to eat everything." In just the same way, moral training is put outside its rightful sphere--a fatal confusion. When ideas of this order, now happily obsolete, obtained, fathers would allow their children to fast all day, if they refused a dish they disliked at the mid-day meal, forbidding them anything but the rejected portion, which became ever colder and more disgusting, until at last hunger weakened the child's will and destroyed his caprice, and the plateful of cold food was swallowed. Thus, argued such a father, in the various circumstances in which he may be placed throughout his life, my son will be ready to eat whatever comes to hand, and will not be greedy and capricious. In those days also, sweets were forbidden to children (whose organisms require sugar, because the muscles consume a great deal of this during growth), in order to teach them to overcome greediness, and an easy and convenient method of correcting naughty children was to "send them to bed without any supper."

Very similar methods are now adopted by those who insist that children should pay attention to things they dislike, in order to accustom them to the necessities of life. But as in the case of psychical nourishment hunger is never brought to bear upon the "cold and distasteful viands," the indigestible and heavy food weakens and poisons the unwilling recipient.

Not thus shall we prepare the robust spirit, ready for all the difficult eventualities of life. The boy who swallowed the cold soup and went fasting to bed was the one whose body developed badly, who was too weak to resist infection when he encountered it, and fell ill; and morally it was he who, having a store of unsatisfied appetites within him, looked upon it as the greatest joy of his liberty, when he became an adult, to eat and drink to excess. How unlike was he to the boy of to-day, who, rationally fed and made robust of body, becomes the _abstemious_ man, who eats to live in health, and combats alcoholism and excessive and injurious feeding; the modern man, who can defend himself by so many means against infectious diseases, and who is so ready for effort that, without any compulsion, he braves the arduous exertion of sport, and attempts and carries out great enterprises, such as the discovery of the Poles and the ascent of lofty mountains.

So, too, the man capable of braving the icy wastes of moral conflict, of undertaking spiritual ascents, will be he whose will is strong, whose spirit is well balanced, whose decisions are prompt and stedfast.

And the more a man's inner life shall have grown _normally_, organizing itself in accordance with the provident laws of nature, and forming an individuality, the more richly will he be endowed with a strong will and a well-balanced mind. To be ready for a struggle, it is not necessary to have struggled from one's birth, but it is necessary to be strong. He who is strong is ready; no hero was a hero before he had performed his heroic deed. The trials life has in store for us are unforeseen, unexpected; no one can prepare us directly to meet them; it is only a vigorous soul that can be prepared for everything.

When a living being is in process of evolution, it is essential to provide for the special requirements of the moment, in order to ensure its normal development. The foetus must be nourished with blood; the new-born infant with milk. If during its intra-uterine life the foetus should lack blood rich in albuminous substances and oxygen, or if poisonous substances should be introduced into its tissues, the living being will not develop normally, and no after-care will strengthen the man evolved from this impoverished source. Should the infant lack sufficient milk, the mal-nutrition of the initial stage of life condemns him to a permanent state of inferiority. The suckling "prepares himself to walk" by lying stretched out, and spending long, quiet hours in sleep. It is by sucking that the babe begins his teething. So, too, the fledgling in the nest does not prepare for flight by flying, but remains motionless in the little warm shell where its food is provided. The preparations for life are indirect.

The prelude to such phenomena of Nature as the majestic flight of birds, the ferocity of wild beasts, the song of the nightingale, the variegated beauty of the butterfly's wings, is the preparation in the secret places of a nest or a den, or in the motionless intimacy of the cocoon. Omnipotent Nature asks only peace for the creature in process of formation. All the rest she gives herself.

Then the childish spirit should also find a warm nest where its nutrition is secure, and after this we should await the revelations of its development.

It is essential, therefore, to offer objects which correspond to its formative tendencies, in order to obtain the result which education makes its goal: the development of the latent forces in man with the minimum of strain and all possible fulness.

VII

WILL

When the child chooses from among a considerable number of objects the one he prefers, when he moves to go and take it from the sideboard, and then replaces it, or consents to give it up to a companion; when he waits until one of the pieces of the apparatus he wishes to use is laid aside by the child who has it in his hand at the moment; when he persists for a long time and with earnest attention in the same exercise, correcting the mistakes which the didactic material reveals to him; when, in the silence-exercise, he retains all his impulses, all his movements, and then, rising when his name is called, controls these movements carefully to avoid making a noise with his feet or knocking against the furniture, he performs so many acts of the "will." It may be said that in him the exercise of the will is continuous; nay, that the factor which really acts and persists among his aptitudes is the will, which is built up on the internal fundamental fact of a prolonged attention.

Let us analyze some of the co-efficients of will.

The whole external expression of the will is contained in _movement_: whatever action man performs, whether he walks, works, speaks or writes, opens his eyes to look, or closes them to shut out a scene, he acts by "motion." An act of the will may also be directed to the restriction of movement: to restrain the disorderly movements of anger; not to give way to the impulse which urges us to snatch a desirable object from the hand of another, are voluntary actions. Therefore the will is not a simple impulse towards movement, but the intelligent direction of movements.

There can be no manifestation of the will without completed action; he who thinks of performing a good action, but leaves it undone; he who desires to atone for an offense, but takes no step to do so; he who proposes to go out, to pay a call, or to write a letter, but goes no farther in the matter, does not accomplish an exercise of the will. To think and to wish is not enough. It is action which counts. "The way to Hell is paved with good intentions."

The life of volition is the life of action. Now all our actions represent a resultant of the forces of impulse and inhibition, and by constant repetition of actions this resultant may become almost habitual and unconscious. Such is the case, for instance, with regard to all those customary actions, the sum of which constitute "the behavior of a well-bred person." Our impulse might be to pay a certain visit, but we know that we might disturb our friend, that it is not her day for receiving, and we refrain; we may be comfortably seated in a corner of the drawing-room, but a venerable person enters, and we rise to our feet; we are not much attracted by this lady, but nevertheless we also bow or shake her hand; the sweetmeat to which our neighbor helps herself is just the one we desired, but we are careful to give no sign of this. All the movements of our body are not merely those dictated by impulse or weariness; they are the correct expression of what we consider decorous. Without impulses we could take no part in social life; on the other hand, without inhibitions we could not correct, direct, and utilize our impulses.

This reciprocal equilibrium between opposite motor forces is the result of prolonged exercises, of _ancient habits_ within us; we no longer have any sense of effort in performing these, we no longer require the support of reason and knowledge to accomplish them; these acts have almost become reflex. And yet the acts in question are by no means reflex actions; it is not Nature but habit which produces all this. We know well how the person who has not been brought up to observe certain rules, but has been hastily instructed in the knowledge of them, will too often be guilty of blunders and lapses, because he is obliged to "perform" there and then all the necessary coordination of voluntary acts, and there and then direct them under the vigilant and immediate control of the consciousness; and such a perpetual effort cannot certainly compete with the "habit" of distinguished manners. The will stores up its prolonged efforts outside the consciousness, or at its extreme margin, and leaves the consciousness itself unencumbered to make new acquisitions and further efforts. Thus we cease to consider as _evidences of will_ those habits in which we nevertheless see the consciousness, as it were, hanging over and watchful of each act, that it may accord with the perfect rule of an external code of manners. An educated man who acts thus is merely a man _in himself_, merely a man of "healthy mind."

It is, in fact, only disease which can disintegrate the personality organized upon its adaptations, and induce a man of society to cease to act in a becoming manner; it is well known that a neurasthenic subject who begins to show the first symptoms of paranoia, may at first seem to be merely one who fails in good breeding.

But he, on the other hand, who remains within the limits of good breeding, is nothing more than a _normal man_. We will not venture to call him "a man of will"; the consciousness of such a man is always being put to the test, and the mechanisms stored up in the margin of consciousness no longer possess a "volitive value."

But the child is making his first trial of arms, and his personality is a very different thing from that just described. In comparison with the adult, he is an unbalanced creature, almost invariably the prey of his own impulses and sometimes subject to the most obstinate inhibitions. The two opposite activities of the will have not yet combined to form the new personality. The psychical embryo has still the two elements separate. The great essential is that this "combination," this "adaptation," should take place and establish itself as a supporting girdle at the margin of consciousness. Hence it is necessary to induce active exercise as soon as possible, since this is essential to such a degree of development. The aim in view is not to make the child a little precocious "gentleman," but to induce him to exercise his powers of volition, and to bring about as soon as possible the reciprocal contact of impulses with inhibitions. It is this "construction" itself which is necessary, not the result which may be achieved externally by means of this construction.

It is, in fact, merely a means to an end: and the end is that the child should act together with other children, and practise the gymnastics of the will in the daily habits of life. The child who is absorbed in some task, inhibits all movements which do not conduce to the accomplishment of this work; he makes a selection among the muscular coordinations of which he is capable, persists in them, and thus begins to make such coordinations permanent. This is a very different matter to the disorderly movements of a child giving way to uncoordinated impulses. When he begins to respect the work of others; when he waits patiently for the object he desires instead of snatching it from the hand of another; when he can walk about without knocking against his companions, without stamping on their feet, without overturning the table--then he is organizing his powers of volition, and bringing impulses and inhibitions into equilibrium. Such an attitude prepares the way for the habits of social life. It would be impossible to bring about such a result by keeping children motionless, seated side by side; under such conditions "relations between children" cannot be established, and infantile social life does not develop.

It is by means of free intercourse, of real practise which obliges each one to adapt his own limits to the limits of others, that social "habits" may be established. Dissertations on what ought to be done will never bring about the construction of the will; to make a child acquire graceful movements, it will not suffice to inculcate "ideas of politeness" and of "rights and duties." If this were so, it would suffice to give a minute description of the movements of the hand necessary in playing the piano, to enable an attentive pupil to execute a sonata by Beethoven. In all such matters the "formation" is the essential factor; the powers of will are established by exercise.

In education, it is of very great value to organize all the mechanism useful in the production of personality at an early stage. Just as _movement_, the _gymnastics_ of children, is necessary, because, as is well known, muscles which are not exercised become incapable of performing the variety of movements of which the muscular system is capable, so an analogous system of gymnastics is necessary to maintain the activity of the psychical life.

The uneducated organism may be easily directed towards subsequent deficiencies; he who is weak of muscle is inclined to remain motionless, and so to perish, when an action is necessary to overcome danger. Thus the child who is weak of will, who is "hypobulic" or "abulic," will readily adapt himself to a school where all the children are kept seated and motionless, listening, or pretending to listen. Many children of this kind, however, end in the hospital for nervous disorders and have the following notes on their school reports: "Conduct excellent; no progress in studies." Of such children some teachers confine themselves to such a remark as: "They are so good," and by this they tend to protect them from any intervention, and leave them to sink undisturbed into the weakness which threatens to engulf them like a quicksand. Other children, whose natural impulses are strong, are noted merely as creators of disorder, and are set down as "naughty." If we enquire into the nature of their naughtiness, we shall be told almost invariably that "they will never keep still." These turbulent spirits are further stigmatized as "aggressive to their companions," and their aggressions are nearly always of this kind: they try by every possible means to rouse their companions from their quiescence, and draw them into an association. There are also children in whom the inhibitory powers are dominant; their timidity is extreme: they sometimes seem as if they cannot make up their minds to answer a question; they will do so after some external stimulus, but in a very low voice, and will then burst into tears.

The necessary gymnastic in all these three cases is free action. The constant and interesting movement of others is the best of incitements to the abulic; motion directed into the channel of orderly exercise develops the inhibitory powers of the too impulsive child, and the child who is too much in subjection to his inhibitory powers, when liberated from the bondage of surveillance, and free to act privately on his own initiative--in other words, when he is removed from all external inducements to exercise inhibition, is able to find an equilibrium between the two opposite volitional forces. This is indeed the way of salvation for all men: that wherein the weak gain strength that wherein the strong attain perfection.

The want of balance as between impulse and inhibition is not only a familiar and interesting fact in pathology; it is further met with, though in a minor degree, among _normal_ persons, just as frequently as deficiencies of education are to be met with in the external social sphere.

Impulse leads criminals to commit evil actions against other men; but how often normal persons have to regret thoughtless acts and nervous outbursts which have sad consequences to themselves! For the most part the normal impulsive person harms himself only, compromises his career, and is unable to bring his talents to fruition; he suffers from a conscious servitude, as from a misfortune from which he might perhaps have been saved.

He who is pathologically the victim of his own powers of inhibition is certainly the more unhappy sufferer; he remains immobile and silent; but internally he longs to move. A thousand impulses which can find no outlet torture the soul which aspires to art, to work; and eloquent speech on his own misfortunes would fain flow from his lips to implore help from a physician, or comfort from some lofty soul; but his lips are sealed. He feels the horrible oppression of one buried alive. But how many normal persons suffer from something of the same kind! On some propitious occasion in their lives they ought to have come forward and shown their worth, but they were unable to do so. A thousand times they have thought that a sincere expression of feeling might have straightened out a difficult situation; but the heart has closed and the lips have remained mute. How passionately they have longed to speak to some noble soul who would have understood them, illuminated and comforted them! But when they have been face to face with this person, they have been unable to speak a word. The longed-for individual encouraged them, questioned them, urged them to express themselves, but the sole response to the invitation was an internal anguish. Speak! Speak! said impulse in the depths of their consciousness; but inhibition was inexorable as a resistless material force.

It is in the education of the will by means of free exercises wherein the impulses balance the inhibitions that the cure of such subjects might be found, provided such a cure could be undertaken at the age when the will is in process of formation.

* * * * *

Such an equilibrium established as a mechanism at the margin of consciousness, which makes a man of the world "correct" in his conduct, is by no means that which constitutes the "person of will." It has been said above that the consciousness remains free for other voluntary requirements. The most refined and aristocratic lady might nevertheless be a person "without will" and "without character," although she might have acquired the most rigorous mechanisms productive of a mechanical will directed solely to external objects.

There is a voluntary fundamental quality upon which not only are the superficial relations between man and man based, but on which the very edifice of society is erected. This quality is known as "continuity." The social structure is founded upon the fact that men can work steadily and produce within certain average limits on which the economic equilibrium of a people is constructed. The social relations which are the basis of the reproduction of the species are founded upon the continuous union of parents in marriage. The family and productive work: these are the two pivots of society; they rest upon the greatest volitive quality: constancy, or persistence.

This quality is really the exponent of the uninterrupted concord of the inner personality. Without it, a life would be a series of episodes, a chaos; it would be like a body disintegrated into its cells, rather than an organism which persists throughout the mutations of its own material. This fundamental quality, when it embraces the sentiment of the individual and the direction of his ideation, that is to say, his whole personality, is what we have called _character_. The man of character is the persistent man, the man who is faithful to his own word, his own convictions, his own affections.

Now the sum of these various manifestations of constancy has an exponent of immense social value: persistence in work.

The degenerate, even before he gave way to criminal impulse, before he betrayed the inconstancy of his affections, before he broke his word, before he made havoc of all the convictions that ennoble the soul of man, had a certain stigma which marked him as one lost and disintegrated: this was laziness, incapacity to persist in work. Directly an honest and well-behaved man begins to suffer from brain-disease, before he shows any violent impulses, disorder in conduct, or signs of delirium, he has a premonitory symptom: he can no longer apply himself to work. Among the masses, it is justly thought that a girl will make a good wife when she is industrious, and a man is said to be an honest fellow and one who can offer good prospects to the girl who is to be his wife, when he is a good workman. This _goodness_ is not a matter of ability; it implies steadiness, perseverance. For instance, a pseudo-artist of great skill in producing small artistic objects, but lacking the will to work, would not be considered a good match. Every one knows that he is not only incapable of economic production, but that he is a suspicious and dangerous character, that he might become a bad husband, a bad father, a bad citizen. On the other hand, the humblest artisan who "works" undoubtedly contains within himself all the elements which make for happiness and security in life. This unquestionably was the meaning of the great Roman encomium: "She stayed indoors and spun the wool," that is to say, she was a woman of character, a worthy companion for the conquerors of the world.

Now the little child who manifests perseverance in his work as the first constructive act of his psychical life, and upon this act builds up internal order, equilibrium, and the growth of personality, demonstrates, almost as in a splendid revelation, the true manner in which man renders himself valuable to the community. The little child who persists in his exercises, concentrated and absorbed, is obviously elaborating the constant man, the man of character, the man who will find in himself all human values, crowning that unique fundamental manifestation: persistence in work. Whatever task the child may choose it will be all the same, provided he persists in it. For what is valuable is not the work itself, but the work as a means for the construction of the psychic man.

He who interrupts the children in their occupations in order to make them learn some pre-determined thing; he who makes them cease the study of arithmetic to pass on to that of geography and the like, thinking it is important to direct their culture, confuses the means with the end and destroys the man for a vanity. That which it is necessary to direct is not the culture of man, but the man himself.

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If persistence be the true foundation of the will, we nevertheless recognize _decision_ as the act of the will _par excellence_. In order to accomplish any conscious act whatever, it is necessary that we should decide. Now a _decision_ is always the result of a _choice_. If we have several hats, we must decide which one we will put on when we go out; it may not in the least matter whether it be the brown hat or the gray, but we must choose one of them. For such a choice we must have our motives, whether they be in favor of the gray or the brown; but finally one of the motives will prevail and the choice will be made. Obviously, the habit of taking a hat and going out will facilitate our choice; we are almost unconscious which of the motives stirred and struggled within us. It is the question of a minute and leaves no impression of effort. Our knowledge as to which hat will be suitable for the morning or the afternoon, for the theater or for sport, saves us from any mental conflict.

But this will not be the case if, for instance, we are about to spend a certain sum of money on a present. What shall we buy among the various objects from which it will be possible to choose? If we have no very definite knowledge of the things, our task may become an anxiety. We should like to choose something artistic, but we do not know much about art, and we fear to be deceived and so to cut a sorry figure; we know not what is customary and have no idea whether a piece of lace or a silver bowl would be suitable. We then feel the need of some one to enlighten us as to all these unknown details, and we go to ask advice. It does not, however, follow that we shall take the advice we receive. To tell the truth, the advice was to deal with our ignorance; we required an aid to knowledge rather than an incitement to an effort of the will. Volition is something which we jealously reserve for ourselves, and is a very different matter from the knowledge indispensable to a decision. The choice which we make after the advice of one or more persons will bear our own impress, it will be the decision of our _ego_.

The choice which the mistress of a house will make to prepare a dinner for guests is of the same nature; but there she has a perfect knowledge of the subject, and good taste, and the decision will be made with pleasure and without any extraneous aid.

But who does not know that in every case this making a decision is an _internal labor_, a genuine effort; so much so that persons of feeble will try to avoid it, as a thing irksome to them. If possible, the mistress of the house will leave the decisions to the cook, and to a dressmaker all the arguments necessary to make one of the many motives that come into play in the choice of a gown prevail over the rest; the dressmaker, seeing that a decision will only be reached after long hesitation, will say at a certain moment: Choose this which suits you so well, and the lady will agree, more to evade the effort of a decision than because the garment pleases her. Our entire life is a continual exercise of decisions. When we go out of the house after having locked the door, we have a clear consciousness of this act, a certainty that the house is well protected, and we _decide_ to step out and walk away from it.

The stronger we are in such exercises, the more independent we shall be of others. Clarity of ideas, the mechanism of the habit of decision, give us a sense of liberty. The heaviest chain, which may bind us in a humiliating form of slavery, is an incapacity to make our own decisions, and the consequent need to refer to others; the fear of making "a mistake," the sense of groping in the dark, of having to bear the consequences of an error we are not certain to recognize, makes us run behind another person like a dog on a chain. Finally, we shall fall into an extremity of dependence; we shall no longer be able to despatch a letter or buy a pocket-handkerchief without asking advice.

But when an actual conflict arises in such a consciousness, and the decision has to be instantaneous, irresolution is the portion of one whose weakness has placed him in subjection to another stronger will, and then we behold a subjection which has almost imperceptibly become an incubus: the victim has taken the first step towards an abyss where the feeble in will run the risk of perdition. Thus the more the young are placed in subjection, without power to exercise their own wills, the more easily do they fall a prey to the perils of which the world is full.

That which gives strength to resist is not the _moral vision_, it is the _exercise of will-power_; and this exercise is to be found in the routine of life itself. The mother of a family, much occupied in her mission of domestic work, and accustomed to decide in all matters pertaining to the daily round, is more likely to gain the victory in the event of moral conflict than a childless woman who lives in an enervating atmosphere of domestic idleness, and has accustomed herself to accept her husband's will as her own. Yet both of these women might have the same moral vision. The first-mentioned, if left a widow, might make herself conversant with business and carry on the undertaking managed by her husband; but the second in like circumstances would require tutelage, and would run every risk of disaster. To ensure moral salvation, it is primarily necessary to _depend_ on oneself, because in the moment of peril we are _alone_. And strength is not to be acquired instantaneously. He who knows that he will have to fight, prepares himself for boxing and dueling by strength and skill; he does not sit still with folded hands, because he knows that he will then either be lost or he will have to depend, like the shadow of a body, on some one to protect him step by step throughout his life, which in practise is impossible.

One single moment served to conquer us,

says Francesca, in Dante's _Inferno_.

Temptation, if it is not to conquer, must not fall like a bomb against another bomb of instantaneous moral explosions, but against the strong walls of an impregnable fortress strongly built up, stone by stone, beginning at that distant day when the foundations were first laid. Persistent work, clarity of ideas, the habit of sifting conflicting motives in the consciousness, even in the minutest actions of life, decisions taken every moment on the smallest things, the gradual master over one's actions, the power of self-direction increasing by degrees in the sum of successively repeated acts, these are the stout little stones on which the strong structure of personality is built up. This may then be inhabited by morality, as by a princess who lives among the embattled towers and moats of a medieval fortress that is in a perpetual state of defense, always under arms, but with every probability of remaining the "lady," the "_châtelaine_." If to "build up the house" which morality will inhabit, some mastery of the body is also necessary, such as abstinence from alcohol, which is the chief example of poison taken from without and tending to weaken, and movement in the open air, which facilitates material recuperation by freeing us from the poisons which we ourselves manufacture and which weaken us, how much more essential must be the continual exercise of the will as a vivifying means of psychical recuperation?

Our little children are constructing their own wills when, by a process of self-education, they put in motion complex internal activities of comparison and judgment, and in this wise make their intellectual acquisitions with order and clarity; this is a kind of "knowledge" capable of preparing children to form their own decisions, and one which makes them independent of the suggestions of others; they can then _decide_ in every act of their daily life; they decide to take or not to take; they decide to accompany the rhythm of a song with movement; they decide to check every motor impulse when they desire silence. The _constant work_ which builds up their personality is all set in motion by _decisions_; and this takes the place of the primitive state of _chaos_, in which, on the other hand, _actions_ were the outcome of _impulses_. A voluntary life develops gradually within them; and doubt and timidity disappear, together with the darkness of the primitive mental confusion.

Such a development of the will would be impossible if, instead of allowing order and clarity to mature in the mind, we should seek to encumber it with chaotic ideas, or with stores of lessons learnt by heart, and then prevent children from making decisions by deciding everything for them. Teachers who adopt these methods are justified in saying that "a child ought not to have a will of his own," and in teaching him that "there is no such plant as 'I will.'" Indeed, they prevent the infantine will from developing. Under such conditions children are conscious of a power which inhibits all their actions; they become timid, and have no courage to undertake anything without the help and consent of the person on whom they depend entirely. "What color are these cherries?" a lady once asked a child, who knew quite well that they were red. But the timid, nervous child, doubtful as to whether it would be right or wrong to answer, murmured: "I will ask my teacher."

The volitive mechanism which prepares for decision is one of the most important mechanisms of the will; it is valuable in itself, and should be established and strengthened in itself. Pathology illustrates it for us apart from the other factor of the will, and thus places it before our eyes as a pillar of the great vault which supports the human personality. The so-called "mania of doubt" is one of the most frequent phases in the degenerative forms of psychopathy, and sometimes precedes certain obsessions, which urge the sufferer on irresistibly to the commission of immoral or harmful acts. But there may also be a mania of doubt simple and genuine, which is confined to the impossibility of taking a decision, and which produces a serious state of distress, though it induces no moral lapses, and may even arise from a moral scruple. In a hospital for nervous disorders I once encountered a characteristic case of the "mania of doubt" which had a moral basis. The patient was a man whose business it was to go round to houses collecting refuse; he was seized with misgivings lest some useful object should have accidentally fallen into the rubbish-baskets, and that he would be suspected of appropriating it. Hereupon the unhappy man, just when he was about to go off with his load, climbed all the stairs again, and knocked again at all the doors, asking whether something valuable might not perhaps have chanced to be in the baskets. Going away after assurances to the contrary, he would return and knock again, and so on. In vain he applied to the doctor for some means of strengthening his will. We told him repeatedly that there was nothing of any value in the baskets, that he might be quite easy on this point, and carry on his business without any preoccupations. Then a gleam of hope shone in his eyes. "I may be quite easy!" he repeated, going away. In a minute he was back again. "Then I may really be easy?" In vain we reassured him. "Yes, indeed, quite easy." His wife led him away, but from the window we saw the man stop at a certain point in the street, struggle with her, and come back in great agitation. Once more he appeared at the door to ask: "I may be quite easy then?"

But how often normal persons harbor in their minds the germs of such a mania! Here, for instance, is a person who is going out; he locks the door and shakes it; but when he has gone a few steps he is assailed by doubt: did he fasten the door? He knows that he did, he perfectly remembers having shaken it, but an irresistible impulse makes him go back to see if the door is really fastened. There are children who, before getting into bed at night, always look under it to see if there are any animals there--cats, for instance; they see there are none, and quite understand there are none. Nevertheless, after a while they get out again "to see if there is anything." These germs are carried about enclosed like tubercular bacilli in some tiny lymphatic gland; the whole organism is weak. But the mischief is hidden and causes no uneasiness, just as the pallor of the face may be concealed for a time by rouge.

If we consider that the will must manifest itself in actions which the body must carry out effectively, we shall understand that a formative exercise is necessary to develop it by means of its mechanisms.

There is a perfect parallel between the formation of the will and the coordination of movement of its physiological structure, the striated muscles. It is evident that exercise is necessary to establish precision in our movements. We know that we cannot learn to dance without preliminary exercises, that we cannot play the piano without practising the movements of the hand; but prior to this, the fundamental coordination of movements, that is to say, ambulation and prehension, must have already been established from infancy. It is not yet so evident to us that similar gradual preparations are necessary to develop the will.

In the purely physiological functions of the muscular apparatus, our voluntary muscles do not all act in the same manner, but rather in two opposite senses; some, for instance, serve to thrust the arm out from the body, others to draw it near; some serve to bend, others to straighten the knee; they are, that is to say, "antagonistic" in their action. Every movement of the body is the result of a combination between antagonistic muscles, in which now one, now the other prevails in a kind of collaboration by which the greatest diversity of movements is made possible to us: movements energetic, graceful, elegant. It is thus we are enabled to establish not only a noble attitude of the body, but a delightful motor correspondence with musical rhythm.