of self-activity as the ultimate principle in the treatment of the mind, is a similar emphasis. And no one has given a broader application of the need of intelligently directed action in education than Professor Dewey in his The School and Society. Many other names might be added to the list, but perhaps no one has more strongly or clearly emphasized the central importance of the will than Professor Münsterberg in his recent book on Psychology and Life, in which, in close sympathy with Fichte, man's whole life is defined in terms of the will. The range of his thought requires a long quotation, and may serve, also, as a kind of summary of the preceding discussion. "Far from allowing psychology," he says, "to doubt whether the real life has duties, we must understand that there is no psychology, no science, no thought, no doubt, which does not, by its very appearance, solemnly acknowledge that it is the child of duties. Psychology may dissolve our will and our personality and our freedom, and it is constrained by duty to do so, but it must not forget that it speaks only of that will and that personality which are by metamorphosis substituted for the personality and the will of real life, and that it is this real personality and its free will which create psychology in the service of its ends and aims and ideals." "In the real life we are willing subjects whose reality is given in our will attitudes, in our liking and disliking, loving and hating, affirming and denying, agreeing and fighting; and, as these attitudes overlap and bind one another, this willing personality has unity. We know ourselves by feeling ourselves as those willing subjects; we do not perceive that will in ourselves; we will it." "History speaks only of those will acts which are acknowledged as merely individual. We know other will acts in ourselves which we will with an over-individual meaning, those attitudes we take when we feel ourselves beyond the domain of our purely personal wishes." "If the system of our individual will acts is interpreted and connected in the historical sciences, the system of our over-individual will acts is interpreted and connected in the normative sciences, logic, æsthetics, ethics, and philosophy of religion. Logic treats of the over-individual will acts of affirming the world, æsthetics, of those of appreciating the world, religion, of those of transcending the world, ethics, of those of acting for the world." "On the basis of these normative sciences, the idealistic philosophy has to build up its metaphysical system which may connect the disconnected will attitudes of our ethical, æsthetical, religious and logical duties in one ideal dome of thoughts." "The world we will," thus Professor Münsterberg says, "is the reality; the world we perceive is the deduced, and therefore unreal system. Professor Dewey's fundamental principle "that society, whether from the side of association (sociology) or of individualization (psychology), is to be interpreted with reference to active interests or organized interactions, not with reference to thoughts, intellectual contents," shows at least a closely related view. Now the very possibility of such a definition of life in terms of will, whether one wholly accepts it or not, is an impressive proof of the central importance of will. The facts which have been passed in review give ample ground for the "voluntaristic trend" in psychology, and for belief in the central importance of will and action: -impulse to action the deepest thing in us; every experience, bodily and mental, tending to terminate in action; expression required for the sake of thought and feeling; the 1 Psychology and Life, pp. 23–28. (Abridged.) our decisive power of the will in attention; the predominant influence of practical interests in consciousness; the fact that even philosophical solutions are prevailingly practical; current current phenomena in psychological literature; and especially the possibility of defining the whole of man's life in terms of will. Matthew Arnold might well say that conduct was three-fourths of life. Hence we may not hope to come to clear and comprehensive views of the rational management of life without careful recognition of these facts now passed in review,—of the importance of will and action. Manifestly, these facts touch upon our character, our happiness, our influence, at every point. What definite suggestions, now, for rational and ethical and spiritual living has this third great insistence of modern psychology? Many practical inferences have been already implied in setting forth the psychological facts; but there are certain counsels which deserve more precise statement. CHAPTER X THE CENTRAL IMPORTANCE OF WILL AND ACTIONSUGGESTIONS FOR LIVING 1. THE ENORMOUS PLACE OF WILL AND IN the first place, these facts give a new sense of the enormous place of will in life, and of the need of definite will-training. "If,” says that psychologist who has done more than any other to make psychology vital, "the 'searching of our heart and reins' be the purpose of this human drama, then what is sought seems to be what effort we can make. He who can make none is but a shadow; he who can make much is a hero." "And the effort which he is able to put forth to hold himself erect and keep his heart unshaken is the direct measure of his worth and function in the game of human life." Life has its reality, its meaning, its interest, its end, in the will-attitudes which we take. We have already seen how Münster1James, Psychology, Vol. II, p. 578. |