CHAPTER I

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL GROUNDS FOR THE RECOGNITION OF THE COMPLEXITY OF LIFE

I. THE EVIDENCE OF THE DIFFERENT DEPARTMENTS OF PSYCHOLOGY

EVERY one of the departments of psychological investigation serves to emphasize this complexity. Even in the field of the older psychology-the study of the normal mind of the adult civilized man-it is now recognized that the facts are far less simple than they at first seemed. The immense emphasis now laid on the accurate study of the simpler phenomena of child life-itself seen to have wonderful variety-is evidence of this felt complexity. Physiological psychology emphasizes the complex intertwining at every point of the physical and the psychical, especially the correlation of psychical with brain processes. Race psychology adds the study of national traits, and of the relations of all minds, civilized and barbarous. Pathological psychology affirms the essential unity

of normal and abnormal minds, that insanity itself only carries to extremes tendencies which lie in us all. Comparative psychology goes a step farther and calls attention to the many likenesses between human and animal minds. Finally the felt need in psychology of the experimental method that has so largely characterized the recent advances in the subject, is itself a further recognition of the complexity of the psychical phenomena.

It is not strange, then, that the results of such varied investigations, every one of which has something vital to contribute to the understanding of this enigma of our life, should, at first sight, seem bewildering. "What is man?" It is this question, in all its complexity of meaning, that modern psychology seeks to answer.

And modern philosophy confirms, here, the psychological trend. For man, Erdmann says, is the great subject of modern philosophy-but man in all the fullness of his concrete existence; man, body and spirit; man, intellect, feeling, and will; man, as world in little and God in little; man, as summing up all in a complexity of being, rich past tracing out. For modern philosophy begins, like the Reformation it reflects,

in protest-protest against the narrowing of the interests of man, protest against the separation of sacred and secular, protest against the denial of legitimate worldly interests; and among all the heresies of the age it counts none so great as the heresy of denying the complexity of the life of man, and of removing from religion the most of life.

II. THE NEED OF A WIDE RANGE OF
INTERESTS

Psychology speaks here with no uncertain sound. It knows well that a man's world is no greater than the number of objects to which he can attend with interest; this is his world-the only world in which he really lives. He moves among many other things, but so far as they are ignored, they practically do not exist for him. Psychology knows, too, that the meaning of experience, itself, is what we attend to; that the environment that really makes us is not, as is so often said, all that surrounds us, but only those parts of our surroundings to which we attend; that a man's life is measured, therefore, by the interests to which he can respond; and that his growth depends on

the enlarging of this circle of interests. So James says: "A man's empirical thought depends on the things he has experienced, but what these shall be is to a large extent determined by his habits of attention. A thing may be present to him a thousand times, but, if he persistently fails to notice it, it cannot be said to enter into his experiWe are all seeing flies, moths, and beetles by the thousand, but to whom, save an entomologist, do they say anything distinct? On the other hand, a thing met only once in a lifetime may leave an indelible experience in the memory. Let four men make a tour in Europe. One will bring home only picturesque impressions-costumes and colors, parks and views and works of architecture, pictures and statues. To another all this will be non-existent; and distances and prices, populations and drainage - arrange ments, door- and window-fastenings, and other useful statistics will take their place. A third will give a rich account of the theaters, restaurants, and public balls, and naught besides; whilst the fourth will perhaps have been so wrapped in his own subjective broodings as to tell little more than a few names of places through, which he

passed. Each has selected out of the same mass of presented objects those which suited his private interest, and has made his experience thereby."

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Moreover, one's possible influence over others depends, in no small degree, upon the range of his interests; for influence normally requires sympathetic understanding, and sympathetic understanding means the ability to enter into the interests of the other man-to see the matter from his point of view. Here lies a main task of every teacher, and of every leader of men, who does not mean to be a mere demagogue. If one cares to exert the highest influence, then,- not merely to dominate another's choices - he must seek such an influence as the other shall be able to recognize as simply the demand of his own sanest and best self. That influence is possible only to the man who has sufficient breadth of interests to enter into into another's life with understanding, respect, and sympathy.

For breadth and depth of influence, one needs especially to be always attuned to the "ever-recurring fundamental characteristics of human life”—the common, simple, large, 1 1 Psychology, Vol. I, pp. 286–287.