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CHAPTER VI

THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM AND WHAT IT MEANS IN EDUCATION

WO young men were talking together. One was of a literary turn of mind and was very much interested in a book of fiction he had just completed, recounting some scenes among the early settlers in the Ozark Mountains in southern Missouri when the red man still occupied that country. The writer told his friend how he had gathered the material for the book and under what difficulties he had written it. He then told its story from beginning to end. When he had finished he asked his friend if he had ever written a book, and much to his surprise the friend replied, "Yes, I am writing one now. I have been laboring for about twenty-five years gathering the material and writing a book that is to me the most interesting book in all the world. But even now, with all the time I have put on it, it is far from what I would have it be. In spite of all I can do, much goes into it that I wish was not there; but, you know, it seems so hard to change a part of it after it has been written. The words, the sentences, the paragraphs, the chapters, want to remain just as I first wrote them. This is not true of the book you have told me about. You can rewrite and change any part of it whenever you desire, but when my book is written, it is written. The book that I am writing is the book of life."

This book of life is the book each one of us is engaged in writing from the day of his birth until the day of his death. It is not written for us by another. It does not just happen to be what it is, but we are from day to day

writing with our own hands what is therein contained, and what we write is written more indelibly than if it had been written on tablets of clay or stone. A few months ago, around the ruins of ancient Nineveh, there were found clay tablets that had been written more than six thousand years ago, and they were as legible as they were when they were first written. In the tombs of the ancient Egyptian kings there are frequently found inscriptions written more than five thousand years ago. It seems wonderful to us that the thoughts of a man could be preserved and made plain to his descendants who lived six thousand years after his death. But much more wonderful is the fact that in the nervous systems of these ancient monarchs is a record of their deeds more accurate and far more truthful than those written on clay or stone tablets. This is the book of life which now lies concealed from human eyes, a record written, as it were, in God's invisible ink, but the record will be revealed to all when God makes known his plan for making visible that which now is invisible.

As the master sings or plays into the receiving horn of the phonograph, a record is made of what he sings or plays. This record can be reproduced in about its original tones. This cylinder can be laid aside for a thousand years, perhaps, and then be made to give off as sweet a melody as on the day it was made. However, as I think of the wonders of the phonograph and its power to preserve the sounds of the human voice and of the most perfect musical instruments known to man, I realize that its wonders are not to be compared to the records that each one of us is making of the deeds of his life-a record that will be perfectly preserved, not in some mysterious book kept in some mysterious land, but in our own nervous systems; and I imagine that, on

the day when all secrets are revealed, the record we have been writing will be placed on God's wonderful phonograph, and every thought we have had and every deed we have done will be reproduced in perfect exactness.

It has been said that when one stirs a pail of water even with the finest feather its molecules are made to take a new arrangement, and not a single one occupies the space it did before. I raise my arm and lower it again to its original position. So far as I can see, everything is as it was before; but if my vision were more penetrating than it is, I could clearly see that this movement caused a rearrangement of certain molecules in my nerve cells and made it impossible for me to be what I was before. Every thought, every act, changes me, and after such a thought or act I can never be quite what I was before.

The nervous system is said to be composed of about three thousand million nerve cells or neurones which vary in length from a very small fraction of an inch to several inches. These nerve cells have the power of sending out messages, which tends to unite them into one interrelated mass. Now this nerve fiber is the most plastic substance that we know anything about, and it is extremely sensitive to even the most delicate nerve currents, and also to heat and cold, as those of us who have had the toothache can testify. We do not know how the nerve currents act upon it, whether the change is chemical or electrical, but we do know that it is modified by every thoughtcurrent that passes over it or through it. We know also that every thought-current that passes over these nerve cells leaves such an impression that, like phonographic records, it can be reproduced. We know that the more frequently thought passes over a channel, the deeper that channel becomes; and the more easily the thought is

reproduced, the more frequently an act is performed or an attitude taken, the more easily it is repeated.

This

is what we call the law of habit. When thought-force which results in an act or an attitude passes over a pathway of nerve cells once, it tends to pass that way ever afterward.

OUR THOUGHTS AND DEEDS MAKE US WHAT WE ARE

It is important that we know as early in life as we can that every thought we have and every movement of the body makes its pathway in our nervous system, and that such a thought or such an action becomes easier the more often it is repeated. In other words, all our actions and attitudes tend to become habitual, and our lives, for good or for evil, are but a mass of habits. We have often heard it said that habit is second nature. The Duke of Wellington once said that habit is ten times nature, and the late Professor James of Harvard said that “ninetynine hundredths, or possibly nine hundred and ninetynine thousandths of our activity is purely automatic or habitual, from our rising in the morning to our lying down each night. Our dressing, our undressing, our eating, our drinking, our greetings, our partings, are so fixed by repetitions as almost to be classed as reflex actions." Thus we make ourselves during the early part of our lives, for the most part before the age of seven years, and for the rest of our lives we are but "stereotyped creatures, imitators and copiers of our past selves."

As Professor James says, the important aim in education is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy. We should begin early to make habitual those actions and attitudes that will cause us to live in harmony with our environment, and inhibit all actions that tend to destroy such harmony. Not only this;

our parents should begin for us, before we know the importance of it, to place around us such an environment as will produce in us such harmony. Whether our lives are happy or unhappy will depend upon the education of our nervous system. Our lives will be happy if we have made automatic such attitudes and habits as honesty, courtesy, kindness, politeness, cheerfulness, regard for others, sympathy, friendship, thoroughness, accuracy, promptness, optimism, etc., and they will be unhappy if we permit the opposite of these to take possession of us. The kind person has acquired the habit of kindness, and the unkind, crabbed person has built up the habit of unkindness. We often say that we can see honesty or dishonesty in a man's face, and this is true, for it is written there through his nervous system more indelibly than if it had been written with a pen or pencil. The honest or dishonest act builds up the nerve cells in a certain way; these nerve cells reflect their structure in the structure and tension of the muscles, which give the face its expression. If one wants to have a kind and lovable disposition, let that one have kind and lovely thoughts which result in kind and lovely deeds, for such thoughts crystallize themselves in muscle structure, and may be read and known of all men. This is what the Great Teacher meant by saying, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." This means not only that a man's thoughts will give expression to his inner life, but that his thoughts make his life what it is.

IMPORTANCE OF EARLY EDUCATION

Thus we can see how important it is that parents begin early to develop in their children right habits. They should begin even while the child is in the cradle to throw around him such an atmosphere as will tend to

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