CHAPTER VIII. MENTAL PHILOSOPHY. FOR many ages a knowledge of the human body was not thought necessary in the art of healing. The cure of disease was a matter of haphazard. Sometimes indiscriminate drugging and bleeding were used. At other times, recourse was had to charms and incantations. Some silly old man or woman was introduced, a rhyme, compounded of profanity and gibberish, was repeated over the patient, and the disease was supposed to be frightened away. In the present day the custom is very different. A man who aspires to be a physician must make the body the subject of a long, minute, and experimental study. He must learn all the different organs and all their different functions. He must learn all the different laws of the human frame; and it is upon his power to aid and control these laws that his success in healing is considered to depend. The treatment of the weaknesses and diseases of the mind has been very much the same. Long ago, indiscriminate drugging -mental drugging-was the rule in teaching. Even bleeding was not altogether unknown. Nay, we may even say that charms and incantations were used. The teacher did his work very much like a magician. With rod in hand he stood over his victim, he made several passes and applications of the rod to the victim's body, he uttered several sentences and verses in an unknown tongue, the victim repeated them after him, and ignorance and vice were supposed to be cast out. In the present day, these practices, too, have been changed. It is considered necessary that an educator should know psychology, or mental philosophy, that he should understand the nature of the different faculties, and that he should be able to make his teaching harmonize with the laws of the mind. All these qualifications, we say, are considered necessary. Whether they are always found in actual existence is a different matter. Now, all you who are earnest students are, or will be, educators-educators of yourselves. You cannot be always under the guidance of teachers and lecturers; you must be cast upon your own resources. You cannot be always fed with the spoon; you must be turned adrift to forage for yourselves. And, if you really desire to be rational creatures, you must continue your own education. By far the best part of a man's culture is his self-culture. If you study the lives of great men, you will discover that their greatness arose, not from what had been put into them at school or college, but from what they had acquired by their own mental vigor. Self-education, therefore, is necessary. But then starts up the first question: How should this selfculture be carried on? The answer is: There is only one sure and thorough way. You must look within: you must know a little of psychology. This is such a self-evident proposition that we are almost ashamed to enunciate it. You cannot develop your mind except by stimulating and directing the natural working of its faculties; and you cannot know the working of these faculties unless you watch them attentively. It is true, you may imitate some great man in his method of study; but his method will very likely be far too unwieldy for you. The armor which made Saul a tower of strength, would have proved an encumbrance and a weakness to David. At any rate, you will be working altogether in the dark, and will never be sure that you are giving your powers full play. It may therefore be laid down as an axiom, that every one who wishes to be a thoroughly intelligent and successful student, must know a little of psychology. The second question now comes up: From what text-books can a knowledge of psychology be gained? This, we admit, is a very difficult question. There is no book that is generally acknowledged to be a correct and complete statement of the truths of psychology. We have almost never in this science, as in some of the other sciences, the instance of a philosopher taking up investigations at the point at which some predecessor has stopped them, and carrying them forward toward completion. On the contrary, he generally begins his task by demolishing his predecessors' fabric, and then proceeding to build up his own. The result is, that there are almost as many systems as there are philosophers. Then, too, the theories are often so subtle and so ethereal that they cannot be apprehended by the general mind. Take, for instance, the question that meets us at the threshold of philosophy: How do we apprehend the material world? We know that an impression is made on our nervous system; but how that impression comes to affect the mind, how the sensation becomes a thought, we do not know. There is a gulf between matter and mind which philosophers, ever since the beginning of speculation, have in vain been trying to bridge over. They have only given us theories which cannot be verified, and which, therefore, are of no practical value. But fortunately text-books are less necessary in psychology than in any other science. You can get your knowledge by what is, after all, the best way of getting knowledge, namely, by experimenting for yourselves. Your experimenting laboratory will be your mind, containing subjects, tests, tools, and all; and you can carry it with you safely and easily, and can pursue your investigations anywhere, either at home or afield. If you adopt the right method, these investigations can easily be performed. Take the mental processes in turn-perception, memory, imagination, judgment, etc. Take as simple an instance of each as possible: such as, seeing a piece of white paper, remembering a blue sky, imagining a green swan, judging of the certainty of death. Confine your attention to one of these at a time, until you have thoroughly understood it. If you fail to understand it at first, turn to any psychological book you may have at hand, such as Dugald Stewart's "Works," Sir William |