We have now completed a brief survey of the mind and its powers. Whatever we may have proved or failed to prove, this much we may say with assurance: the reader who has followed our brief sketch2 attentively3 has been disabused4 of any idea he may have held that he knows it all; and this is always the first step towards knowledge.
The mind is the instrument whereby our race has lifted itself out of beasthood. It is the instrument whereby we hold ourselves above the forces which seek to drag us down, and whereby we shall lift ourselves higher, if higher we are to go. How shall we protect this precious instrument? How shall we complete our mastery of it? What are the laws of the conduct of the mind?
The process of the mind is one of groping outward after new facts, and digesting and assimilating them, as the body gropes after and digests and assimilates food. The senses bring us new impressions, and we take these and analyze5 them, tear them into the parts which compose them, compare them with previous sensations, recognize difference in things which seem to be alike, and resemblances in things which seem to be different; we classify them, and provide them with names, which are, as it were, handles for the mind to grasp. Above all, we seek for causes; those chains of events which make what we know as order in the world of phenomena6. And when the mind has what seems to be a cause, it proceeds to test it according to methods it has worked out, the rules and principles of experimental science.
It is a comparatively small number of sensations which the body brings to the mind of itself; it is a narrow world in which we should live if our minds adopted a passive attitude toward life. But some minds possess what we call curiosity; they set out upon their own impulse to explore life; they discover new laws and make new experiences and new sensations for themselves. The mind forms an idea, and at first, after the fashion of the ancient Greek philosophers, it glorifies7 that idea and sets it in the seat of divinity. But presently comes the empirical method, which refuses authority to any idea unless it can stand the test of experiment, and prove that it corresponds with reality. Nowadays the thinker amasses8 his facts, and forms a theory to explain them, and then proceeds to try out this theory by the most rigid9 method that he or his critics can devise. If the theory doesn't "work"—that is, if it doesn't explain all the facts and stand all the tests—it is thrown away like a worn-out shoe. So little by little a body of knowledge is built up which is real knowledge; which will serve us in our daily lives, which we can use as foundation-stones in the structure of our civilization.
By this method of research man is expanding his universe beyond anything that could have been conceived in the pre-scientific days. Hour by hour, while we work and play and sleep, the mind of our race is discovering new worlds in which our posterity10 will dwell. For uncounted ages man walked upon the earth, surrounded by infinite swarms11 of bacterial12 life of whose existence he never dreamed. The invisible rays of the spectrum13 beat upon him, and he knew nothing of what they did to him, whether good or evil. He lifted his head and saw vast universes of suns, in comparison with which his world was a mere14 speck15 of dust; yet to him these universes were globes or lanterns which some divinity had hung in the sky.
One of the most fascinating illustrations of how the mind runs ahead of the senses is the story of the planet Uranus16, which, less than two hundred years ago, had never been beheld17 by the eye of man. A mathematician18 seated in his study, working over the observations of other planets, their motions in relation to their mass and distance, discovered that their behavior was not as it should be. At certain times none of them were in quite the right place, and he decided19 that this variation must be due to the existence of an unknown body. He worked out the problem of what must be the mass and the exact orbit of this body, in order for it to be responsible for the variations observed; and when he had completed these calculations, he announced to the astronomical20 world, "Turn your telescopes to a certain spot in the heavens at a certain minute of a certain night, and you will find a new planet of a certain size." And so for the first time the human senses became aware of a fact, which by themselves they might not have discovered in all eternity21.
Now, the importance of exact knowledge concerning a new planet may not be apparent to the ordinary man; but if the thing which is discovered is, for example, an unknown ray which will move an engine or destroy a cancer, then we realize the worthwhileness of research, and the masters of the world's commerce are willing to give here and there a pittance22 for the increase of such knowledge. But men of science, who have by this time come to a sense of their own dignity and importance, understand that there is no knowledge about reality which is useless, no research into nature which is wasted. You might say that to describe and classify the fleas23 which inhabit the bodies of rats and ground-squirrels, and to study under the microscope the bacteria which live in the blood of these fleas—that this would be an occupation hardly worthy25 of the divinity that is in man. But presently, as a result of this knowledge about fleas and flea24 diseases being in existence and available, a bacteriologist discovers the secret of the dread26 bubonic plague, which hundreds of times in past history has wiped out a great part of the population of Europe and Asia.
Mark Twain tells in his "Connecticut Yankee" how his hero was able to overcome the wizard Merlin, because he knew in advance of an eclipse of the sun. And this was fiction, of course; but if you prefer fact, you may read in the memoirs27 of Houdin, the French conjurer, how he was able to bring the Arab tribes into subjection to the French government by depriving the great chieftains of their strength. He gathered them into a theatre, and invited their mighty28 men upon the stage, and there was an iron weight, and they were able to lift it when Houdin permitted, and not to lift it when he forbade. These noble barbarians29 had never heard of the electro-magnet, and could not conceive of a force that could operate through a solid wooden floor beneath their feet.
Such things, trivial as they are, serve to illustrate30 the difference between ignorance and knowledge, and the power which knowledge gives. The man who knows is godlike to those who do not know; he may enslave them, he may do what he pleases with their lives, and they are powerless to help themselves. Anyone who would help them must begin by giving them knowledge, real knowledge. There is no such thing as freedom without knowledge, and it must be the best knowledge, it must be new knowledge; he who goes against new knowledge armed with old knowledge is like the Chinese who went out to meet machine-guns with bows and arrows, and with umbrellas over their heads.
Once upon a time knowledge was the prerogative31 of kings and priests and ruling castes; but this supreme32 power has been wrested33 from them, and this is the greatest step in human progress so far taken. "Seek and ye shall find," is the law concerning knowledge today. "Knock, and it shall be opened unto you." In this, my Book of the Mind, I say to you that knowledge is your priceless birthright, and that you should repudiate34 all men and all institutions and all creeds35 and all formulas which seek to keep this heritage from you. Beware of men who bid you believe something because it is told you, or because your fathers believed it, or because it is written in some ancient book, or embodied36 in some ancient ceremonial. Break the chains of these venerable spells; and at the same time beware of the modern spells which have been contrived37 to replace them! Beware of party cries and shibboleths38, the idols39 of the forum40, as Plato called them, the prejudices which are set as snares41 for your feet. Beware of cant—that paraphernalia42 of noble sentiments, artificially manufactured by politicians and newspapers for the purpose of blinding you to their knaveries43. Remember that you live in a world of class conflicts; at every moment of your life your mind is besieged44 by secret enemies, it is exposed to poison gas-clouds deliberately45 released by people who seek to make use of you for purposes which are theirs and not yours. In the fairy-tales we used to love, the hero was provided with magic protection against the perils46 of those times; but what hero and what magic will guard the modern man against the propaganda of militarism, nationalism, and capitalist imperialism47?
The mind is like the body in that it can be trained, it can be taught sound habits, its powers can be enormously increased. There are many books on mind and memory training, some of which are useful, and some of which are trash. There is an English system widely advertised, called "Pelmanism," of which I have personally made no test, but it has won endorsements48 of a great many people who do not give their endorsements lightly.
This is the subject of applied49 psychology50, and just as in medicine, or in law, or in any of the arts, there is a vast amount of charlatanry51, but there is also genuine knowledge being patiently accumulated and standardized52. When the United States government had to have an army in a hurry it did not make its millions of young men into teamsters or aviators53 at random54. It used the new methods of determining reaction times, and testing the coordination55 of mind and body. Recently I visited the Whittier Reform School in California, where delinquent56 boys are educated by the state. A boy had been set to work in the tailor shop, and it had been found that he was unable to make the buttons and the buttonholes of a coat come in the right place. For nine years the state of California, and before it the state of Georgia, had been laboring57 to teach this boy to make buttons and buttonholes meet; the effort had cost some five thousand dollars, to say nothing of all the coats which were spoiled, and all the mental suffering of the victim and his teachers. Finally someone persuaded the state of California to spend a few thousand dollars and install a psychological bureau for the purpose of testing all the inmates58 of the institution; so by a half hour's examination the fact was developed that this boy was mentally defective59. Although he was eighteen years old in body, his mind was only eight years old, and so he would never be able to achieve the feat60 of making buttons and buttonholes meet.
This is a new science which you may read about in Terman's "The Measurement of Intelligence." By testing normal children, it is established that certain tasks can be performed at certain ages. A child of three can point to his eyes, his nose and his mouth; he can repeat a sentence of six syllables61, and repeat two digits62, and give his family name. Older children are asked to look at a picture and then tell what they saw; to note omissions63 in a picture, to arrange blocks according to their weight, to arrange words into sentences, to note absurdities64 in statements, to count backwards65, and to make change. Children of fifteen are asked to interpret fables66, to reverse the hands of a clock, and so on. Of course there are always variations; every child will be better at some kinds of tests than at others. But by having a wide variety, and taking the average, you establish a "mental age" for the child—which may be widely different from its physical age. You may find some whose minds have stopped growing altogether, and can only be made to grow by special methods of education. Enlightened communities are now conducting separate schools for defective children—replacing the old-fashioned schoolmaster who wore out birch-rods trying to force poor little wretches67 to learn what was beyond their power.
In the same way psychology can be applied in industry, and in the detection of crime. Here, too, there is a vast amount of "fake," but also the beginning of a science. Our laws do not as yet permit the use of automatic writing and the hypnotic trance in the investigation68 of crime, but they have sometimes permitted some of the simpler tests, for example, those of memory association. The examiner prepares a list of a hundred names of objects, and reads those names one after another, and asks the person he is investigating to name the first thing which is suggested to him by each word in turn. "Engine" will suggest "steam," or perhaps it will suggest "train"; "coat" will suggest "trousers," or perhaps it will suggest "pocket," and so on. The examiner holds a stop-watch, and notes what fraction of a second each one of these reactions takes. The ordinary man, who is not trying to conceal69 anything, will give all his associations promptly70, and the reaction times will be approximately alike. But suppose the man has just murdered somebody with an axe71, and buried the body in a cellar with a fire shovel72, and taken a pocketbook, and a watch, and a locket, and a number of various objects, and climbed out of the cellar window by breaking the glass; and now suppose that in his list of a hundred objects the psychologist introduces unexpectedly a number of these things. In each case the first memory association of the criminal will be one which he does not wish to give. He will have to find another, and that inevitably73 takes time. One or two such delays might be accidental; but if every time there is any suggestion of the murder, or the method or scene of the murder, there is noticed confusion and delay, you may be sure that the conscious mind is interfering74 with the subconscious75 mind. The difference between the conscious and the subconscious mind is always possible to detect, and if you are permitted to be thorough in your experiments, you can make certain what is in the subconscious mind that the conscious mind is trying to conceal.
Here, as everywhere in life, knowledge is power, and expert knowledge confers mastery over the shrewdest untrained mind. The only trouble is that under our present social system the trained mind is very apt to be working in the interest of class privilege. The psychologist who is employed by a great corporation, or by a police department, may be as little worthy of trust as a chemist who is engaged in making poison gases to be used by capitalist imperialism for the extermination76 of its rebellious77 slaves. But what this proves is not that scientific knowledge is untrustworthy, but merely that the workers must acquire it, they must have their own organizations and their own experiments in every field. To give knowledge to the masses of mankind, slow and painful as the process seems, is now the most important task confronting the enlightened thinker.
The method of psychoanalysis gives us also much insight into the phenomena of genius, and the hope that we may ultimately come to understand it. At present we are embarrassed because genius is so often closely allied78 to eccentricity79; the supernormal appears in connection with the subnormal—and it is often hard to tell them apart. Great poets and painters in revolt against a world of smug commercialism, adopt irresponsibility as their religion; they live in a world of their own, they dress like freaks, they refuse to pay their debts, or to be true to their wives. They are followed by a host of disciples80, who adopt the defects of the master as a substitute for his qualities. And so there grows up a perverted81 notion of what genius is, and wholly false standards of artistic82 quality. There is nothing mankind needs more than sure and exact tests of mental superiority; not merely the ability to acquire languages and to solve mathematical equations, but the ability to carry in the mind intense emotions, while at the same time shaping and organizing them by the logical faculty83, selecting masses of facts and weaving them into a pattern calculated to awaken84 the emotion in others. This is the last and greatest work of the human spirit, and to select the men who can do it, and foster their activity, is the ultimate purpose of all true science.
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1
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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attentively
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| adv.聚精会神地；周到地；谛；凝神 | |
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disabused
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| v.去除…的错误想法( disabuse的过去式和过去分词 )；使醒悟 | |
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analyze
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| vt.分析，解析 (=analyse) | |
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phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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glorifies
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| 赞美( glorify的第三人称单数 )； 颂扬； 美化； 使光荣 | |
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amasses
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| v.积累，积聚( amass的第三人称单数 ) | |
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rigid
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| adj.严格的，死板的；刚硬的，僵硬的 | |
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posterity
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| n.后裔，子孙，后代 | |
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swarms
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| 蜂群，一大群( swarm的名词复数 ) | |
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bacterial
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| a.细菌的 | |
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spectrum
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| n.谱，光谱，频谱；范围，幅度，系列 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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speck
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| n.微粒，小污点，小斑点 | |
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Uranus
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| n.天王星 | |
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beheld
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| v.看，注视( behold的过去式和过去分词 )；瞧；看呀；（叙述中用于引出某人意外的出现）哎哟 | |
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mathematician
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| n.数学家 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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astronomical
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| adj.天文学的，（数字）极大的 | |
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eternity
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| n.不朽，来世；永恒，无穷 | |
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pittance
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| n.微薄的薪水，少量 | |
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fleas
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| n.跳蚤( flea的名词复数 )；爱财如命；没好气地（拒绝某人的要求） | |
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flea
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| n.跳蚤 | |
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worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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memoirs
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| n.回忆录；回忆录传( mem,自oir的名词复数) | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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barbarians
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| n.野蛮人( barbarian的名词复数 )；外国人；粗野的人；无教养的人 | |
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illustrate
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| v.举例说明，阐明；图解，加插图 | |
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prerogative
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| n.特权 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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wrested
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| （用力）拧( wrest的过去式和过去分词 )； 费力取得； （从…）攫取； （ 从… ） 强行取去… | |
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repudiate
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| v.拒绝，拒付，拒绝履行 | |
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creeds
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| （尤指宗教）信条，教条( creed的名词复数 ) | |
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embodied
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| v.表现( embody的过去式和过去分词 )；象征；包括；包含 | |
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contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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shibboleths
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| n.（党派、集团等的）准则( shibboleth的名词复数 )；教条；用语；行话 | |
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idols
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| 偶像( idol的名词复数 )； 受崇拜的人或物； 受到热爱和崇拜的人或物； 神像 | |
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forum
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| n.论坛，讨论会 | |
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snares
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| n.陷阱( snare的名词复数 )；圈套；诱人遭受失败（丢脸、损失等）的东西；诱惑物v.用罗网捕捉，诱陷，陷害( snare的第三人称单数 ) | |
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paraphernalia
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| n.装备；随身用品 | |
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knaveries
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| n.流氓行为( knavery的名词复数 ) | |
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besieged
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| 包围，围困，围攻( besiege的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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perils
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| 极大危险( peril的名词复数 )； 危险的事（或环境） | |
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imperialism
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| n.帝国主义，帝国主义政策 | |
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endorsements
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| n.背书( endorsement的名词复数 )；（驾驶执照上的）违章记录；（公开的）赞同；（通常为名人在广告中对某一产品的）宣传 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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charlatanry
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| n.吹牛，骗子行为 | |
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standardized
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| adj.标准化的 | |
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aviators
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| 飞机驾驶员，飞行员( aviator的名词复数 ) | |
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random
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| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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coordination
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| n.协调，协作 | |
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delinquent
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| adj.犯法的，有过失的；n.违法者 | |
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laboring
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| n.劳动，操劳v.努力争取(for)( labor的现在分词 )；苦干；详细分析；（指引擎）缓慢而困难地运转 | |
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inmates
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| n.囚犯( inmate的名词复数 ) | |
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defective
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| adj.有毛病的，有问题的，有瑕疵的 | |
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feat
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| n.功绩；武艺，技艺；adj.灵巧的，漂亮的，合适的 | |
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syllables
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| n.音节( syllable的名词复数 ) | |
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digits
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| n.数字( digit的名词复数 )；手指，足趾 | |
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omissions
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| n.省略( omission的名词复数 )；删节；遗漏；略去或漏掉的事（或人） | |
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absurdities
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| n.极端无理性( absurdity的名词复数 )；荒谬；谬论；荒谬的行为 | |
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backwards
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| adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地 | |
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fables
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| n.寓言( fable的名词复数 )；神话，传说 | |
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wretches
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| n.不幸的人( wretch的名词复数 )；可怜的人；恶棍；坏蛋 | |
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investigation
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| n.调查，调查研究 | |
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conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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promptly
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| adv.及时地，敏捷地 | |
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axe
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| n.斧子；v.用斧头砍，削减 | |
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shovel
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| n.铁锨，铲子，一铲之量；v.铲，铲出 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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interfering
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| adj. 妨碍的 动词interfere的现在分词 | |
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subconscious
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| n./adj.潜意识(的)，下意识(的) | |
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extermination
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| n.消灭，根绝 | |
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rebellious
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| adj.造反的，反抗的，难控制的 | |
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allied
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| adj.协约国的；同盟国的 | |
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eccentricity
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| n.古怪，反常，怪癖 | |
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80
disciples
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| n.信徒( disciple的名词复数 )；门徒；耶稣的信徒；（尤指）耶稣十二门徒之一 | |
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81
perverted
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| adj.不正当的v.滥用( pervert的过去式和过去分词 )；腐蚀；败坏；使堕落 | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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awaken
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| vi.醒，觉醒；vt.唤醒，使觉醒，唤起，激起 | |
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