that consistent, thoughtful, steadfast order of civilized life which, though less warm in coloring, is ineffably more worthy." At the "parting of the ways," Lowell promises, if one follows the call of Duty, he shall find her finally more beautiful than Pleasure, and with vastly more to give. The "pilgrim chorus" in Wagner is better music than the "Venus music"; it deserves to drown the other, oneself being judge. Life means more, and love means more, with Elizabeth, than in the "Venus mountain." And definite, clear thinking, avoiding all vagueness, will show it. Paulsen states the same point with convincing clearness in his Introduction to Philosophy: "There is perhaps no man who could look back upon a life full of emptiness and baseness, full of falsehood and cowardice, full of wickedness and depravity, with feelings of satisfaction. At any rate, it would not be advisable for any one to make the trial. The lives of so-called men of the world and their female partners, or of blacklegs and scoundrels, little and big ones, are not apt to be described at length and openly either by themselves or others. Should it 1 The Microcosmus, Vol. II, p. 65. be done, and perhaps it would not be a useless task, it is not likely that any one would lay aside the book with the feeling: that was a happy and enviable life. And if such a life had achieved an apparent success, if it had committed everything and enjoyed everything with impunity, nevertheless, it would not easily strike an observer as a beautiful and desirable lot."1 In the life of the student there are peculiar dangers in habits of study. There are situations in life where the power to "cram," for example, is of undoubted value, and its use thoroughly justified, as is not infrequently true in the lawyer's profession in working up technical details required in some particular case. But to rely upon "cramming" in those subjects that make up one's educational course is quite another matter. This is simply to put an easy and sham process in the place of a hard and honest one. This cannot occur without mental and moral loss. A study so pursued cannot have been put in relation to the rest of one's thinking. It is no proper part of the man, and can never become one of his permanent interests. And the habit of merely easy and superficial work 1 Op. cit., p. 73. -the baneful want of thoroughness-must have an unfavorable moral effect. President Stanley Hall calls attention to a similar abuse of elective courses. To use the elective system only as giving opportunity for the choice of easy courses, or of taking many different subjects, is to lose in discipline of both intellect and will. For the beginnings of most subjects are easy; it is only as one pushes on that he can derive from them any severe training. There is study and study. Much that is so called hardly deserves the name. And the kind of study that a man does affects the whole man. Many students would gain by shortening their hours of so-called study, by stopping more frequently for brief periods of rest, and by studying with determined concentration while at it. This does not mean working on one's nerves, in a tense, strained attitude of mind, but cool, calm, steady attention to the work in hand, and to that alone, even if the mail comes in the midst of one's study. It is a great epoch in a student's career when he has had experience of the joy and achievement of the best concentration of which he is capable. Now he knows what study means, and he cannot again content himself with sitting before an open text-book, while from time to time he recalls his mind from the ends of the earth. Gone are the days of the rocking-chair and the open window, gone are the days of the half-hour's journey to class, and of the fifteen minutes' waiting before lectures, gone are all "gasings" in his precious hours of studyhe has learned to study! He has learned how to rest, and he has learned how to play; but he has stopped "fooling around." II. EMOTIONAL CONDITIONS Another natural inference from the unity of the mind is that of the influence of feeling on the conduct of life. The Stimulating Effect of Joyful Emotions. -The observations of physiological psychology show that joyful emotions have a positively stimulating effect, bodily bodily and mental. Henle's researches proved that joyful emotions relax the muscles of the arteries and of the bronchial tubes, quickening the circulation and making respiration freer, and this without the evil consequences which attend anger, though anger, also, relaxes the same muscles. The depres sing emotions, on the other hand, like sorrow and fear, contract the arterial and bronchial muscles and so distinctly interfere with both the circulation and breathing. It was long ago observed that blood flowed from an open wound more freely at the sound of music. Recent experiments on hypnotic subjects fully confirm these bodily results of the emotions. And it is only a broader illustration of the same influence which so careful an observer as Romanes gives, when, writing on the "science and philosophy of recreation," he says: "It is impossible to over-estimate the value of the emotions in this connection-a prolonged flow of happy feeling doing more to brace up the system for work than any other influence operating for a similar length of time." Miss Brackett, consequently, seems justified in saying that there is "no work, whatever it may be, that is so exhausting as painful emotion." "There is no tonic so uplifting and renewing as joy, which sets into active exercise every constructive power of the body."" Whether or not we accept Professor 1 Popular Science Monthly, Vol. XV, pp. 772 ff. |