The reader may possibly have heard of a peculiar7 theory of the emotions, commonly referred to in psychological literature as the Lange–James theory. According to this theory, our emotions are mainly due to those organic stirrings that are aroused in us in a reflex way by the stimulus8 of the exciting object or situation. An emotion of fear, for example, or surprise, is not a direct effect of the object’s presence on the mind, but an effect of that still earlier effect, the bodily commotion9 which the object suddenly excites; so that, were this bodily commotion suppressed, we should not so much feel fear as call the situation fearful; we should not feel surprise, but coldly recognize that the object was indeed astonishing. One enthusiast10 has even gone so far as to say that when we feel sorry it is because we weep, when we feel afraid it is because we run away, and not conversely. Some of you may perhaps be acquainted with the paradoxical formula. Now, whatever exaggeration may possibly lurk11 in this account of our emotions (and I doubt myself whether the exaggeration be very great), it is certain that the main core of it is true, and that the mere12 giving way to tears, for example, or to the outward expression of an anger-fit, will result for the moment in making the inner grief or anger more acutely felt. There is, accordingly, no better known or more generally useful precept13 in the moral training of youth, or in one’s personal self-discipline, than that which bids us pay primary attention to what we do and express, and not to care too much for what we feel. If we only check a cowardly impulse in time, for example, or if we only don’t strike the blow or rip out with the complaining or insulting word that we shall regret as long as we live, our feelings themselves will presently be the calmer and better, with no particular guidance from us on their own account. Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly14 regulate the feeling, which is not.
Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there. If such conduct does not make you soon feel cheerful, nothing else on that occasion can. So to feel brave, act as if we were brave, use all our will to that end, and a courage-fit will very likely replace the fit of fear. Again, in order to feel kindly15 toward a person to whom we have been inimical, the only way is more or less deliberately16 to smile, to make sympathetic inquiries17, and to force ourselves to say genial18 things. One hearty19 laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon20 of uncharitable feeling. To wrestle21 with a bad feeling only pins our attention on it, and keeps it still fastened in the mind: whereas, if we act as if from some better feeling, the old bad feeling soon folds its tent like an Arab, and silently steals away.
The best manuals of religious devotion accordingly reiterate22 the maxim23 that we must let our feelings go, and pay no regard to them whatever. In an admirable and widely successful little book called ‘The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life,’ by Mrs. Hannah Whitall Smith, I find this lesson on almost every page. Act faithfully, and you really have faith, no matter how cold and even how dubious24 you may feel. “It is your purpose God looks at,” writes Mrs. Smith, “not your feelings about that purpose; and your purpose, or will, is therefore the only thing you need attend to. . . . Let your emotions come or let them go, just as God pleases, and make no account of them either way. . . . They really have nothing to do with the matter. They are not the indicators25 of your spiritual state, but are merely the indicators of your temperament26 or of your present physical condition.”
But you all know these facts already, so I need no longer press them on your attention. From our acts and from our attitudes ceaseless inpouring currents of sensation come, which help to determine from moment to moment what our inner states shall be: that is a fundamental law of psychology which I will therefore proceed to assume.
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A Viennese neurologist of considerable reputation has recently written about the Binnenleben, as he terms it, or buried life of human beings. No doctor, this writer says, can get into really profitable relations with a nervous patient until he gets some sense of what the patient’s Binnenleben is, of the sort of unuttered inner atmosphere in which his consciousness dwells alone with the secrets of its prison-house. This inner personal tone is what we can’t communicate or describe articulately to others; but the wraith27 and ghost of it, so to speak, are often what our friends and intimates feel as our most characteristic quality. In the unhealthy-minded, apart from all sorts of old regrets, ambitions checked by shames and aspirations28 obstructed29 by timidities, it consists mainly of bodily discomforts30 not distinctly localized by the sufferer, but breeding a general self-mistrust and sense that things are not as they should be with him. Half the thirst for alcohol that exists in the world exists simply because alcohol acts as a temporary an?sthetic and effacer to all these morbid31 feelings that never ought to be in a human being at all. In the healthy-minded, on the contrary, there are no fears or shames to discover; and the sensations that pour in from the organism only help to swell32 the general vital sense of security and readiness for anything that may turn up.
Consider, for example, the effects of a well-toned motor-apparatus, nervous and muscular, on our general personal self-consciousness, the sense of elasticity33 and efficiency that results. They tell us that in Norway the life of the women has lately been entirely34 revolutionized by the new order of muscular feelings with which the use of the ski, or long snow-shoes, as a sport for both sexes, has made the women acquainted. Fifteen years ago the Norwegian women were even more than the women of other lands votaries35 of the old-fashioned ideal of femininity, ‘the domestic angel,’ the ‘gentle and refining influence’ sort of thing. Now these sedentary fireside tabby-cats of Norway have been trained, they say, by the snow-shoes into lithe37 and audacious creatures, for whom no night is too dark or height too giddy, and who are not only saying good-bye to the traditional feminine pallor and delicacy38 of constitution, but actually taking the lead in every educational and social reform. I cannot but think that the tennis and tramping and skating habits and the bicycle-craze which are so rapidly extending among our dear sisters and daughters in this country are going also to lead to a sounder and heartier39 moral tone, which will send its tonic40 breath through all our American life.
I hope that here in America more and more the ideal of the well-trained and vigorous body will be maintained neck by neck with that of the well-trained and vigorous mind as the two coequal halves of the higher education for men and women alike. The strength of the British Empire lies in the strength of character of the individual Englishman, taken all alone by himself. And that strength, I am persuaded, is perennially42 nourished and kept up by nothing so much as by the national worship, in which all classes meet, of athletic43 outdoor life and sport.
I recollect44, years ago, reading a certain work by an American doctor on hygiene and the laws of life and the type of future humanity. I have forgotten its author’s name and its title, but I remember well an awful prophecy that it contained about the future of our muscular system. Human perfection, the writer said, means ability to cope with the environment; but the environment will more and more require mental power from us, and less and less will ask for bare brute45 strength. Wars will cease, machines will do all our heavy work, man will become more and more a mere director of nature’s energies, and less and less an exerter of energy on his own account. So that, if the homo sapiens of the future can only digest his food and think, what need will he have of well-developed muscles at all? And why, pursued this writer, should we not even now be satisfied with a more delicate and intellectual type of beauty than that which pleased our ancestors? Nay46, I have heard a fanciful friend make a still further advance in this ‘new-man’ direction. With our future food, he says, itself prepared in liquid form from the chemical elements of the atmosphere, pepsinated or half-digested in advance, and sucked up through a glass tube from a tin can, what need shall we have of teeth, or stomachs even? They may go, along with our muscles and our physical courage, while, challenging ever more and more our proper admiration47, will grow the gigantic domes36 of our crania, arching over our spectacled eyes, and animating48 our flexible little lips to those floods of learned and ingenious talk which will constitute our most congenial occupation.
I am sure that your flesh creeps at this apocalyptic49 vision. Mine certainly did so; and I cannot believe that our muscular vigor41 will ever be a superfluity. Even if the day ever dawns in which it will not be needed for fighting the old heavy battles against Nature, it will still always be needed to furnish the background of sanity50, serenity51, and cheerfulness to life, to give moral elasticity to our disposition52, to round off the wiry edge of our fretfulness, and make us good-humored and easy of approach. Weakness is too apt to be what the doctors call irritable53 weakness. And that blessed internal peace and confidence, that acquiescentia in seipso, as Spinoza used to call it, that wells up from every part of the body of a muscularly well-trained human being, and soaks the indwelling soul of him with satisfaction, is, quite apart from every consideration of its mechanical utility, an element of spiritual hygiene of supreme54 significance.
And now let me go a step deeper into mental hygiene, and try to enlist55 your insight and sympathy in a cause which I believe is one of paramount56 patriotic57 importance to us Yankees. Many years ago a Scottish medical man, Dr. Clouston, a mad-doctor as they call him there, or what we should call an asylum58 physician (the most eminent59 one in Scotland), visited this country, and said something that has remained in my memory ever since. “You Americans,” he said, “wear too much expression on your faces. You are living like an army with all its reserves engaged in action. The duller countenances60 of the British population betoken62 a better scheme of life. They suggest stores of reserved nervous force to fall back upon, if any occasion should arise that requires it. This inexcitability, this presence at all times of power not used, I regard,” continued Dr. Clouston, “as the great safeguard of our British people. The other thing in you gives me a sense of insecurity, and you ought somehow to tone yourselves down. You really do carry too much expression, you take too intensely the trivial moments of life.”
Now Dr. Clouston is a trained reader of the secrets of the soul as expressed upon the countenance61, and the observation of his which I quote seems to me to mean a great deal. And all Americans who stay in Europe long enough to get accustomed to the spirit that reigns63 and expresses itself there, so unexcitable as compared with ours, make a similar observation when they return to their native shores. They find a wild-eyed look upon their compatriots’ faces, either of too desperate eagerness and anxiety or of too intense responsiveness and good-will. It is hard to say whether the men or the women show it most. It is true that we do not all feel about it as Dr. Clouston felt. Many of us, far from deploring64 it, admire it. We say: “What intelligence it shows! How different from the stolid65 cheeks, the codfish eyes, the slow, inanimate demeanor66 we have been seeing in the British Isles67!” Intensity68, rapidity, vivacity69 of appearance, are indeed with us something of a nationally accepted ideal; and the medical notion of ‘irritable weakness’ is not the first thing suggested by them to our mind, as it was to Dr. Clouston’s. In a weekly paper not very long ago I remember reading a story in which, after describing the beauty and interest of the heroine’s personality, the author summed up her charms by saying that to all who looked upon her an impression as of ‘bottled lightning’ was irresistibly70 conveyed.
Bottled lightning, in truth, is one of our American ideals, even of a young girl’s character! Now it is most ungracious, and it may seem to some persons unpatriotic, to criticise71 in public the physical peculiarities72 of one’s own people, of one’s own family, so to speak. Besides, it may be said, and said with justice, that there are plenty of bottled-lightning temperaments73 in other countries, and plenty of phlegmatic74 temperaments here; and that, when all is said and done, the more or less of tension about which I am making such a fuss is a very small item in the sum total of a nation’s life, and not worth solemn treatment at a time when agreeable rather than disagreeable things should be talked about. Well, in one sense the more or less of tension in our faces and in our unused muscles is a small thing: not much mechanical work is done by these contractions75. But it is not always the material size of a thing that measures its importance: often it is its place and function. One of the most philosophical76 remarks I ever heard made was by an unlettered workman who was doing some repairs at my house many years ago. “There is very little difference between one man and another,” he said, “when you go to the bottom of it. But what little there is, is very important.” And the remark certainly applies to this case. The general over-contraction may be small when estimated in foot-pounds, but its importance is immense on account of its effects on the over-contracted person’s spiritual life. This follows as a necessary consequence from the theory of our emotions to which I made reference at the beginning of this article. For by the sensations that so incessantly77 pour in from the over-tense excited body the over-tense and excited habit of mind is kept up; and the sultry, threatening, exhausting, thunderous inner atmosphere never quite clears away. If you never wholly give yourself up to the chair you sit in, but always keep your leg — and body-muscles half contracted for a rise; if you breathe eighteen or nineteen instead of sixteen times a minute, and never quite breathe out at that — what mental mood can you be in but one of inner panting and expectancy78, and how can the future and its worries possibly forsake79 your mind? On the other hand, how can they gain admission to your mind if your brow be unruffled, your respiration80 calm and complete, and your muscles all relaxed?
Now what is the cause of this absence of repose81, this bottled-lightning quality in us Americans? The explanation of it that is usually given is that it comes from the extreme dryness of our climate and the acrobatic performances of our thermometer, coupled with the extraordinary progressiveness of our life, the hard work, the railroad speed, the rapid success, and all the other things we know so well by heart. Well, our climate is certainly exciting, but hardly more so than that of many parts of Europe, where nevertheless no bottled-lightning girls are found. And the work done and the pace of life are as extreme an every great capital of Europe as they are here. To me both of these pretended causes are utterly82 insufficient83 to explain the facts.
To explain them, we must go not to physical geography, but to psychology and sociology. The latest chapter both in sociology and in psychology to be developed in a manner that approaches adequacy is the chapter on the imitative impulse. First Bagehot, then Tarde, then Royce and Baldwin here, have shown that invention and imitation, taken together, form, one may say, the entire warp84 and woof of human life, in so far as it is social. The American over-tension and jerkiness and breathlessness and intensity and agony of expression are primarily social, and only secondarily physiological85, phenomena86. They are bad habits, nothing more or less, bred of custom and example, born of the imitation of bad models and the cultivation87 of false personal ideals. How are idioms acquired, how do local peculiarities of phrase and accent come about? Through an accidental example set by some one, which struck the ears of others, and was quoted and copied till at last every one in the locality chimed in. Just so it is with national tricks of vocalization or intonation88, with national manners, fashions of movement and gesture, and habitual89 expressions of face. We, here in America, through following a succession of pattern-setters whom it is now impossible to trace, and through influencing each other in a bad direction, have at last settled down collectively into what, for better or worse, is our own characteristic national type — a type with the production of which, so far as these habits go, the climate and conditions have had practically nothing at all to do.
This type, which we have thus reached by our imitativeness, we now have fixed90 upon us, for better or worse. Now no type can be wholly disadvantageous; but, so far as our type follows the bottled-lightning fashion, it cannot be wholly good. Dr. Clouston was certainly right in thinking that eagerness, breathlessness, and anxiety are not signs of strength: they are signs of weakness and of bad co-ordination. The even forehead, the slab-like cheek, the codfish eye, may be less interesting for the moment; but they are more promising91 signs than intense expression is of what we may expect of their possessor in the long run. Your dull, unhurried worker gets over a great deal of ground, because he never goes backward or breaks down. Your intense, convulsive worker breaks down and has bad moods so often that you never know where he may be when you most need his help — he may be having one of his ‘bad days.’ We say that so many of our fellow-countrymen collapse92, and have to be sent abroad to rest their nerves, because they work so hard. I suspect that this is an immense mistake. I suspect that neither the nature nor the amount of our work is accountable for the frequency and severity of our breakdowns93, but that their cause lies rather in those absurd feelings of hurry and having no time, in that breathlessness and tension, that anxiety of feature and that solicitude94 for results, that lack of inner harmony and ease, in short, by which with us the work is so apt to be accompanied, and from which a European who should do the same work would nine times out of ten be free. These perfectly95 wanton and unnecessary tricks of inner attitude and outer manner in us, caught from the social atmosphere, kept up by tradition, and idealized by many as the admirable way of life, are the last straws that break the American camel’s back, the final overflowers of our measure of wear and tear and fatigue96.
The voice, for example, in a surprisingly large number of us has a tired and plaintive97 sound. Some of us are really tired (for I do not mean absolutely to deny that our climate has a tiring quality); but far more of us are not tired at all, or would not be tired at all unless we had got into a wretched trick of feeling tired, by following the prevalent habits of vocalization and expression. And if talking high and tired, and living excitedly and hurriedly, would only enable us to do more by the way, even while breaking us down in the end, it would be different. There would be some compensation, some excuse, for going on so. But the exact reverse is the case. It is your relaxed and easy worker, who is in no hurry, and quite thoughtless most of the while of consequences, who is your efficient worker; and tension and anxiety, and present and future, all mixed up together in our mind at once, are the surest drags upon steady progress and hindrances98 to our success. My colleague, Professor Münsterberg, an excellent observer, who came here recently, has written some notes on America to German papers. He says in substance that the appearance of unusual energy in America is superficial and illusory, being really due to nothing but the habits of jerkiness and bad co-ordination for which we have to thank the defective99 training of our people. I think myself that it is high time for old legends and traditional opinions to be changed; and that, if any one should begin to write about Yankee inefficiency100 and feebleness, and inability to do anything with time except to waste it, he would have a very pretty paradoxical little thesis to sustain, with a great many facts to quote, and a great deal of experience to appeal to in its proof.
Well, my friends, if our dear American character is weakened by all this over-tension — and I think, whatever reserves you may make, that you will agree as to the main facts — where does the remedy lie? It lies, of course, where lay the origins of the disease. If a vicious fashion and taste are to blame for the thing, the fashion and taste must be changed. And, though it is no small thing to inoculate102 seventy millions of people with new standards, yet, if there is to be any relief, that will have to be done. We must change ourselves from a race that admires jerk and snap for their own sakes, and looks down upon low voices and quiet ways as dull, to one that, on the contrary, has calm for its ideal, and for their own sakes loves harmony, dignity, and ease.
So we go back to the psychology of imitation again. There is only one way to improve ourselves, and that is by some of us setting an example which the others may pick up and imitate till the new fashion spreads from east to west. Some of us are in more favorable positions than others to set new fashions. Some are much more striking personally and imitable, so to speak. But no living person is sunk so low as not to be imitated by somebody. Thackeray somewhere says of the Irish nation that there never was an Irishman so poor that he didn’t have a still poorer Irishman living at his expense; and, surely, there is no human being whose example doesn’t work contagiously103 in some particular. The very idiots at our public institutions imitate each other’s peculiarities. And, if you should individually achieve calmness and harmony in your own person, you may depend upon it that a wave of imitation will spread from you, as surely as the circles spread outward when a stone is dropped into a lake.
Fortunately, we shall not have to be absolute pioneers. Even now in New York they have formed a society for the improvement of our national vocalization, and one perceives its machinations already in the shape of various newspaper paragraphs intended to stir up dissatisfaction with the awful thing that it is. And, better still than that, because more radical105 and general, is the gospel of relaxation106, as one may call it, preached by Miss Annie Payson Call, of Boston, in her admirable little volume called ‘Power through Repose,’ a book that ought to be in the hands of every teacher and student in America of either sex. You need only be followers107, then, on a path already opened up by others. But of one thing be confident: others still will follow you.
And this brings me to one more application of psychology to practical life, to which I will call attention briefly108, and then close. If one’s example of easy and calm ways is to be effectively contagious104, one feels by instinct that the less voluntarily one aims at getting imitated, the more unconscious one keeps in the matter, the more likely one is to succeed. Become the imitable thing, and you may then discharge your minds of all responsibility for the imitation. The laws of social nature will take care of that result. Now the psychological principle on which this precept reposes109 is a law of very deep and wide-spread importance in the conduct of our lives, and at the same time a law which we Americans most grievously neglect. Stated technically110, the law is this: that strong feeling about one’s self tends to arrest the free association of one’s objective ideas and motor processes. We get the extreme example of this in the mental disease called melancholia.
A melancholic111 patient is filled through and through with intensely painful emotion about himself. He is threatened, he is guilty, he is doomed112, he is annihilated113, he is lost. His mind is fixed as if in a cramp114 on these feelings of his own situation, and in all the books on insanity115 you may read that the usual varied116 flow of his thoughts has ceased. His associative processes, to use the technical phrase, are inhibited117; and his ideas stand stock-still, shut up to their one monotonous118 function of reiterating119 inwardly the fact of the man’s desperate estate. And this inhibitive120 influence is not due to the mere fact that his emotion is painful. Joyous121 emotions about the self also stop the association of our ideas. A saint in ecstasy122 is as motionless and irresponsive and one-idea’d as a melancholiac. And, without going as far as ecstatic saints, we know how in every one a great or sudden pleasure may paralyze the flow of thought. Ask young people returning from a party or a spectacle, and all excited about it, what it was. “Oh, it was fine! it was fine! it was fine!” is all the information you are likely to receive until the excitement has calmed down. Probably every one of my hearers has been made temporarily half-idiotic by some great success or piece of good fortune. “Good! GOOD! GOOD!” is all we can at such times say to ourselves until we smile at our own very foolishness.
Now from all this we can draw an extremely practical conclusion. If, namely, we wish our trains of ideation and volition123 to be copious124 and varied and effective, we must form the habit of freeing them from the inhibitive influence of reflection upon them, of egoistic preoccupation about their results. Such a habit, like other habits, can be formed. Prudence125 and duty and self-regard, emotions of ambition and emotions of anxiety, have, of course, a needful part to play in our lives.
But confine them as far as possible to the occasions when you are making your general resolutions and deciding on your plans of campaign, and keep them out of the details. When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome. Unclamp, in a word, your intellectual and practical machinery126, and let it run free; and the service it will do you will be twice as good. Who are the scholars who get ‘rattled’ in the recitation-room? Those who think of the possibilities of failure and feel the great importance of the act. Who are those who do recite well? Often those who are most indifferent. Their ideas reel themselves out of their memory of their own accord. Why do we hear the complaint so often that social life in New England is either less rich and expressive127 or more fatiguing128 than it is in some other parts of the world? To what is the fact, if fact it be, due unless to the over-active conscience of the people, afraid of either saying something too trivial and obvious, or something insincere, or something unworthy of one’s interlocutor, or something in some way or other not adequate to the occasion? How can conversation possibly steer129 itself through such a sea of responsibilities and inhibitions as this? On the other hand, conversation does flourish and society is refreshing130, and neither dull on the one hand nor exhausting from its effort on the other, wherever people forget their scruples131 and take the brakes off their hearts, and let their tongues wag as automatically and irresponsibly as they will.
They talk much in pedagogic circles today about the duty of the teacher to prepare for every lesson in advance. To some extent this is useful. But we Yankees are assuredly not those to whom such a general doctrine2 should be preached. We are only too careful as it is. The advice I should give to most teachers would be in the words of one who is herself an admirable teacher. Prepare yourself in the subject so well that it shall be always on tap: then in the classroom trust your spontaneity and fling away all further care.
My advice to students, especially to girl-students, would be somewhat similar. Just as a bicycle-chain may be too tight, so may one’s carefulness and conscientiousness132 be so tense as to hinder the running of one’s mind. Take, for example, periods when there are many successive days of examination impending133. One ounce of good nervous tone in an examination is worth many pounds of anxious study for it in advance. If you want really to do your best in an examination, fling away the book the day before, say to yourself, “I won’t waste another minute on this miserable134 thing, and I don’t care an iota135 whether I succeed or not.” Say this sincerely, and feel it; and go out and play, or go to bed and sleep, and I am sure the results next day will encourage you to use the method permanently136. I have heard this advice given to a student by Miss Call, whose book on muscular relaxation I quoted a moment ago. In her later book, entitled ‘As a Matter of Course,’ the gospel of moral relaxation, of dropping things from the mind, and not ‘caring,’ is preached with equal success. Not only our preachers, but our friends the theosophists and mind-curers of various religious sects137 are also harping138 on this string. And with the doctors, the Delsarteans, the various mind-curing sects, and such writers as Mr. Dresser, Prentice Mulford, Mr. Horace Fletcher, and Mr. Trine to help, and the whole band of schoolteachers and magazine-readers chiming in, it really looks as if a good start might be made in the direction of changing our American mental habit into something more indifferent and strong.
Worry means always and invariably inhibition of associations and loss of effective power. Of course, the sovereign cure for worry is religious faith; and this, of course, you also know. The turbulent billows of the fretful surface leave the deep parts of the ocean undisturbed, and to him who has a hold on vaster and more permanent realities the hourly vicissitudes139 of his personal destiny seem relatively140 insignificant141 things. The really religious person is accordingly unshakable and full of equanimity142, and calmly ready for any duty that the day may bring forth143. This is charmingly illustrated144 by a little work with which I recently became acquainted, “The Practice of the Presence of God, the Best Ruler of a Holy Life, by Brother Lawrence, being Conversations and Letters of Nicholas Herman of Lorraine, Translated from the French.”3 I extract a few passages, the conversations being given in indirect discourse145. Brother Lawrence was a Carmelite friar, converted at Paris in 1666. “He said that he had been footman to M. Fieubert, the Treasurer146, and that he was a great awkward fellow, who broke everything. That he had desired to be received into a monastery147, thinking that he would there be made to smart for his awkwardness and the faults he should commit, and so he should sacrifice to God his life, with its pleasures; but that God had disappointed him, he having met with nothing but satisfaction in that state. . . . ”
3 Fleming H. Revell Company, New York.
“That he had long been troubled in mind from a certain belief that he should be damned; that all the men in the world could not have persuaded him to the contrary; but that he had thus reasoned with himself about it: I engaged in a religious life only for the love of God, and I have endeavored to act only for Him; whatever becomes of me, whether I be lost or saved, I will always continue to act purely148 for the love of God. I shall have this good at least, that till death I shall have done all that is in me to love Him. . . . That since then he had passed his life in perfect liberty and continual joy.”
“That when an occasion of practising some virtue149 offered, he addressed himself to God, saying, ‘Lord, I cannot do this unless thou enablest me’; and that then he received strength more than sufficient. That, when he had failed in his duty, he only confessed his fault, saying to God, ‘I shall never do otherwise, if You leave me to myself; it is You who must hinder my failing, and mend what is amiss.’ That after this he gave himself no further uneasiness about it.”
“That he had been lately sent into Burgundy to buy the provision of wine for the society, which was a very unwelcome task for him, because he had no turn for business, and because he was lame101, and could not go about the boat but by rolling himself over the casks. That, however, he gave himself no uneasiness about it, nor about the purchase of the wine. That he said to God, ‘It was his business he was about,’ and that he afterward150 found it well performed. That he had been sent into Auvergne, the year before, upon the same account; that he could not tell how the matter passed, but that it proved very well.”
“So, likewise, in his business in the kitchen (to which he had naturally a great aversion), having accustomed himself to do everything there for the love of God, and with prayer upon all occasions, for his grace to do his work well, he had found everything easy during fifteen years that he had been employed there.”
“That he was very well pleased with the post he was now in, but that he was as ready to quit that as the former, since he was always pleasing himself in every condition, by doing little things for the love of God.”
“That the goodness of God assured him he would not forsake him utterly, and that he would give him strength to bear whatever evil he permitted to happen to him; and, therefore, that he feared nothing, and had no occasion to consult with anybody about his state. That, when he had attempted to do it, he had always come away more perplexed151.”
The simple-heartedness of the good Brother Lawrence, and the relaxation of all unnecessary solicitudes152 and anxieties in him, is a refreshing spectacle.
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The need of feeling responsible all the livelong day has been preached long enough in our New England. Long enough exclusively, at any rate — and long enough to the female sex. What our girl-students and woman-teachers most need nowadays is not the exacerbation153, but rather the toning-down of their moral tensions. Even now I fear that some one of my fair hearers may be making an undying resolve to become strenuously154 relaxed, cost what it will, for the remainder of her life. It is needless to say that that is not the way to do it. The way to do it, paradoxical as it may seem, is genuinely not to care whether you are doing it or not. Then, possibly, by the grace of God, you may all at once find that you are doing it, and, having learned what the trick feels like, you may (again by the grace of God) be enabled to go on.
And that something like this may be the happy experience of all my hearers is, in closing, my most earnest wish.
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doctrines
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| n.教条( doctrine的名词复数 )；教义；学说；（政府政策的）正式声明 | |
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doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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hygiene
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| n.健康法，卫生学 （a.hygienic） | |
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psychology
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| n.心理，心理学，心理状态 | |
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justify
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| vt.证明…正当(或有理)，为…辩护 | |
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6
therapeutic
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| adj.治疗的，起治疗作用的；对身心健康有益的 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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8
stimulus
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| n.刺激，刺激物，促进因素，引起兴奋的事物 | |
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commotion
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| n.骚动，动乱 | |
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enthusiast
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| n.热心人，热衷者 | |
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11
lurk
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| n.潜伏，潜行；v.潜藏，潜伏，埋伏 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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13
precept
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| n.戒律；格言 | |
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indirectly
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| adv.间接地，不直接了当地 | |
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kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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inquiries
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| n.调查( inquiry的名词复数 )；疑问；探究；打听 | |
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genial
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| adj.亲切的，和蔼的，愉快的，脾气好的 | |
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19
hearty
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| adj.热情友好的；衷心的；尽情的，纵情的 | |
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20
demon
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| n.魔鬼，恶魔 | |
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21
wrestle
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| vi.摔跤，角力；搏斗；全力对付 | |
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22
reiterate
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| v.重申，反复地说 | |
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23
maxim
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| n.格言，箴言 | |
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24
dubious
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| adj.怀疑的，无把握的；有问题的，靠不住的 | |
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indicators
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| （仪器上显示温度、压力、耗油量等的）指针( indicator的名词复数 )； 指示物； （车辆上的）转弯指示灯； 指示信号 | |
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26
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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27
wraith
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| n.幽灵；骨瘦如柴的人 | |
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28
aspirations
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| 强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 )； 志向； 发送气音； 发 h 音 | |
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29
obstructed
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| 阻塞( obstruct的过去式和过去分词 )； 堵塞； 阻碍； 阻止 | |
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discomforts
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| n.不舒适( discomfort的名词复数 )；不愉快，苦恼 | |
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31
morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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32
swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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33
elasticity
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| n.弹性，伸缩力 | |
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34
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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35
votaries
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| n.信徒( votary的名词复数 )；追随者；（天主教）修士；修女 | |
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36
domes
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| n.圆屋顶( dome的名词复数 )；像圆屋顶一样的东西；圆顶体育场 | |
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37
lithe
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| adj.(指人、身体)柔软的，易弯的 | |
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38
delicacy
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| n.精致，细微，微妙，精良；美味，佳肴 | |
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39
heartier
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| 亲切的( hearty的比较级 )； 热诚的； 健壮的； 精神饱满的 | |
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40
tonic
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| n./adj.滋补品，补药，强身的，健体的 | |
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41
vigor
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| n.活力，精力，元气 | |
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42
perennially
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| adv.经常出现地；长期地；持久地；永久地 | |
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athletic
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| adj.擅长运动的，强健的；活跃的，体格健壮的 | |
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44
recollect
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| v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得 | |
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45
brute
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| n.野兽，兽性 | |
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46
nay
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| adv.不；n.反对票，投反对票者 | |
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47
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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48
animating
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| v.使有生气( animate的现在分词 )；驱动；使栩栩如生地动作；赋予…以生命 | |
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49
apocalyptic
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| adj.预示灾祸的，启示的 | |
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50
sanity
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| n.心智健全，神智正常，判断正确 | |
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51
serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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52
disposition
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| n.性情，性格；意向，倾向；排列，部署 | |
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53
irritable
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| adj.急躁的；过敏的；易怒的 | |
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54
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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55
enlist
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| vt.谋取(支持等)，赢得；征募；vi.入伍 | |
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56
paramount
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| a.最重要的，最高权力的 | |
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57
patriotic
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| adj.爱国的，有爱国心的 | |
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58
asylum
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| n.避难所，庇护所，避难 | |
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59
eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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60
countenances
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| n.面容( countenance的名词复数 )；表情；镇静；道义支持 | |
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61
countenance
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| n.脸色，面容；面部表情；vt.支持，赞同 | |
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62
betoken
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| v.预示 | |
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63
reigns
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| n.君主的统治( reign的名词复数 )；君主统治时期；任期；当政期 | |
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64
deploring
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| v.悲叹，痛惜，强烈反对( deplore的现在分词 ) | |
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65
stolid
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| adj.无动于衷的，感情麻木的 | |
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66
demeanor
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| n.行为；风度 | |
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67
isles
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| 岛( isle的名词复数 ) | |
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68
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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69
vivacity
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| n.快活，活泼，精神充沛 | |
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70
irresistibly
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| adv.无法抵抗地，不能自持地；极为诱惑人地 | |
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71
criticise
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| v.批评，评论；非难 | |
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72
peculiarities
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| n. 特质, 特性, 怪癖, 古怪 | |
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73
temperaments
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| 性格( temperament的名词复数 )； （人或动物的）气质； 易冲动； （性情）暴躁 | |
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74
phlegmatic
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|
| adj.冷静的，冷淡的，冷漠的，无活力的 | |
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75
contractions
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| n.收缩( contraction的名词复数 )；缩减；缩略词；（分娩时）子宫收缩 | |
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76
philosophical
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| adj.哲学家的，哲学上的，达观的 | |
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77
incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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78
expectancy
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| n.期望，预期，（根据概率统计求得）预期数额 | |
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79
forsake
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| vt.遗弃，抛弃；舍弃，放弃 | |
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80
respiration
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| n.呼吸作用；一次呼吸；植物光合作用 | |
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81
repose
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| v.(使)休息；n.安息 | |
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82
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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83
insufficient
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| adj.(for，of)不足的，不够的 | |
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84
warp
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| vt.弄歪，使翘曲，使不正常，歪曲，使有偏见 | |
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85
physiological
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| adj.生理学的，生理学上的 | |
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86
phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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87
cultivation
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| n.耕作，培养，栽培（法），养成 | |
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88
intonation
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| n.语调，声调；发声 | |
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89
habitual
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| adj.习惯性的；通常的，惯常的 | |
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90
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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91
promising
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| adj.有希望的，有前途的 | |
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92
collapse
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| vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷 | |
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93
breakdowns
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| n.分解( breakdown的名词复数 )；衰竭；（车辆或机器的）损坏；统计分析 | |
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94
solicitude
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| n.焦虑 | |
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95
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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96
fatigue
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| n.疲劳，劳累 | |
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97
plaintive
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| adj.可怜的，伤心的 | |
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98
hindrances
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| 阻碍者( hindrance的名词复数 )； 障碍物； 受到妨碍的状态 | |
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99
defective
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| adj.有毛病的，有问题的，有瑕疵的 | |
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100
inefficiency
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| n.无效率，无能；无效率事例 | |
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101
lame
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| adj.跛的，(辩解、论据等)无说服力的 | |
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102
inoculate
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| v.给...接种，给...注射疫苗 | |
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103
contagiously
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| 传染性地，蔓延地 | |
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104
contagious
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| adj.传染性的，有感染力的 | |
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105
radical
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| n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的 | |
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106
relaxation
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| n.松弛，放松；休息；消遣；娱乐 | |
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107
followers
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| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
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108
briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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109
reposes
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| v.将（手臂等）靠在某人（某物）上( repose的第三人称单数 ) | |
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110
technically
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| adv.专门地，技术上地 | |
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111
melancholic
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| 忧郁症患者 | |
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112
doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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113
annihilated
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| v.（彻底）消灭( annihilate的过去式和过去分词 )；使无效；废止；彻底击溃 | |
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114
cramp
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| n.痉挛；[pl.](腹)绞痛；vt.限制，束缚 | |
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115
insanity
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| n.疯狂，精神错乱；极端的愚蠢，荒唐 | |
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116
varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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117
inhibited
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| a.拘谨的，拘束的 | |
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118
monotonous
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| adj.单调的，一成不变的，使人厌倦的 | |
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119
reiterating
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| 反复地说，重申( reiterate的现在分词 ) | |
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120
inhibitive
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| a.起抑制作用的 | |
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121
joyous
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| adj.充满快乐的；令人高兴的 | |
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122
ecstasy
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| n.狂喜，心醉神怡，入迷 | |
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123
volition
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| n.意志；决意 | |
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124
copious
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| adj.丰富的，大量的 | |
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125
prudence
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| n.谨慎，精明，节俭 | |
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126
machinery
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| n.(总称)机械，机器；机构 | |
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127
expressive
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| adj.表现的，表达…的，富于表情的 | |
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128
fatiguing
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| a.使人劳累的 | |
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129
steer
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| vt.驾驶，为…操舵；引导；vi.驾驶 | |
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130
refreshing
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| adj.使精神振作的，使人清爽的，使人喜欢的 | |
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131
scruples
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| n.良心上的不安( scruple的名词复数 )；顾虑，顾忌v.感到于心不安，有顾忌( scruple的第三人称单数 ) | |
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132
conscientiousness
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| 责任心 | |
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133
impending
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| a.imminent, about to come or happen | |
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134
miserable
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| adj.悲惨的，痛苦的；可怜的，糟糕的 | |
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135
iota
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| n.些微，一点儿 | |
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136
permanently
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| adv.永恒地，永久地，固定不变地 | |
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137
sects
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| n.宗派，教派( sect的名词复数 ) | |
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138
harping
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| n.反复述说 | |
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139
vicissitudes
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| n.变迁，世事变化；变迁兴衰( vicissitude的名词复数 )；盛衰兴废 | |
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140
relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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141
insignificant
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| adj.无关紧要的，可忽略的，无意义的 | |
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142
equanimity
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| n.沉着，镇定 | |
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143
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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144
illustrated
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| adj. 有插图的，列举的 动词illustrate的过去式和过去分词 | |
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145
discourse
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| n.论文，演说；谈话；话语；vi.讲述，著述 | |
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146
treasurer
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| n.司库，财务主管 | |
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147
monastery
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| n.修道院，僧院，寺院 | |
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148
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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149
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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150
afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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151
perplexed
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| adj.不知所措的 | |
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152
solicitudes
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| n.关心，挂念，渴望( solicitude的名词复数 ) | |
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153
exacerbation
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| n.恶化，激怒，增剧；转剧 | |
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154
strenuously
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| adv.奋发地，费力地 | |
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